Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/717873
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS If you read Superman comics as a kid, you're probably familiar with Bizarro World — the planet where everything is the opposite of life on Earth. I bring this up because it's clear Donald Trump is running for president of Bizarro World. Trump is on track to lose female voters like no other candidate in modern times — a new poll in pivotal Flor- ida says that he's losing white women by 17 points — so you would think, here on Earth, that he'd want to prepare for the autumn de- bates by enlisting an adviser who's politically savvy about women. But no. Hewing to the rules of Bizarro World, Trump will take debate ad- vice from Roger Ailes — the Fox News chairman who lost his job amidst allegations that he sexually harassed at least 20 women. Trump is bursting with Bizarro behavior these days. He has no chance — zero, nada — of winning Maine or Connecticut or Wiscon- sin ... so naturally he has campaigned this month in all three. He's trying to pitch himself to black vot- ers ... so naturally he staged a rally in a white suburb. He badly needs to broaden his "appeal" beyond the fever swamp ... so naturally he an- nounced this week in yet an- other staff shakeup that his new campaign CEO is Steve Bannon, the notorious chair- man of Breitbart News, a fe- ver swamp website that's pitched to people who think Fox News is too nice. Bannon is bad enough — conservative critic Er- ick Erickson says the Trump campaign is "moving from dumpster fire to Chernobyl" — but the fateful pairing of Trump and Ailes is what fas- cinates me most. Two serial sexists, jointly plotting their last hurrah. They deserve each other. Even as various Trump flacks tried to deny that Ailes is on board, it's pa- tently obvious why Trump wants him around. Ailes is the acknowledged master of using television to fool gull- ible viewers. Long before he ever worked his magic at Fox News, creating a misin- formation propaganda shop that masquerades as jour- nalism, Ailes made his bones repairing and honing the TV images of Republican candi- dates. And no candidate has ever needed image repair more than Trump. Ailes won't be the only voice in Trump's ear as de- bate season draws near, but he alone brings expertise dating back to Dick Nixon in 1968. His task that year, as Nixon's media adviser, was to package a New Nixon in place of the Old Nixon. The Old Nixon was paranoid and polarizing; the New Nixon was wise and mature. It was all fakery, of course, but Ailes did his job well. He crafted 30-minute infomer- cials that featured Nixon taking a lot of softball ques- tions in TV studios from cit- izens pre-chosen by Ailes. The studio spectators ap- plauded every answer. It'll be the challenge of Ailes' career to soften Trump's detestable image, especially during his debates with Hillary Clinton. It's one thing to fool the credulous viewers of Fox News, but it'll be tough to foist a New Trump on the broader, skep- tical public. During debate prep, Ailes will probably try to shave down Trump's rough edges, try to make people forget the divisive bellowing buffoon. Heck, even an alleged sexual harrasser understands that female viewers won't vote for an alpha male who yells at a woman. But there are two big prob- lems: (1) Trump doesn't listen to anybody, and (2) The rest of Trump's brain trust — new CEO Steve Bannon, Putin- compromised Paul Manafort, and new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway (who has toiled in vain for 20 years trying to get more women to vote Republican) — will be competing to make Trump listen. Bannon, for instance, is not big on image make- overs; he thinks that Trump should just be Trump. How sad for Roger Ailes. He may have launched his political career as a genius, but now, after leaving Fox News in disgrace, he risks going down in the smoking wreckage. DickPolmanisthenational political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com. Dick Polman Roger Ailes and Donald Trump deserve each other Cartoonist's take America's freedom has de- clined by an objective stan- dard, particularly economic freedom, as I showed last week. Our rank- ing as a nation dropped from the 17th freest nation in 2008 to 20th freest a year ago, a decline that began in 2000. The report cited "a steady de- cline of economic freedom and 'rule of law'…the war on ter- ror, the war on drugs and the erosion of property rights, due to greater use of eminent do- main, all have contributed to the U.S. decline." I stated that the "wars" on terror and drugs were more detrimental by their failure. Terrorism, by its proliferation, is very destructive to the sense of freedom and security that citizens require to carry out their normal, inherently eco- nomic, activities. Simply look at the inevitable negative im- pact terrorism has on airlines, airline customers, and the general sense of safety people expect in restaurants and pub- lic events like concerts. The drug culture has noth- ing but negative economic re- percussions, including the pot economy; growers, legal or not, reap profits but the money that goes "up in smoke" by marijuana users is, by def- inition, not spent in econom- ically productive ways. Like gambling, drug usage deprives various other businesses of the benefit of normal buying and selling. Areas, whether urban and minority or rural and white, that suffer from the intracta- ble scourge of crime and vio- lence that accompanies drug cultures, cannot sustain the retail activity they would ab- sent drug gangs and users. Us- ers inevitably become of mar- ginal use to employers. Busi- nesses, insecure from thefts that feed drug habits, flee to safer locations. One can easily make the case that the monetary drug of dependency on government benefits has, on balance, neg- ative economic repercussions. Another writer made the same point, calling it an addiction. The annual allocation of hun- dreds of billions of budget- ary dollars, must be extracted from taxpayers, or borrowed requiring repayment by future taxpayers. What used to be pejora- tively referred to as being "on the dole," has become a toler- ated, encouraged, even praise- worthy means of supporting oneself and one's dependents. You can argue the conspirato- rial intentions of big govern- ment types and the political class in the inexorable growth of welfare, food stamps, hous- ing subsidies and medical care; but set that aside and just consider its economic ef- fects. Historically, the aversion by Americans to accepting hand- outs had to be overcome for the purpose of inducing oth- erwise able-bodied but tem- porarily "down on their luck" workers to take free money. Government program direc- tors and advocates overcame that hurdle to gain acceptance by recipients, and approval by the taxpaying public; they had to make it respectable to live off the good graces of others. Many hard-pressed citizens avoided even private char- ity, donated for the purpose of being given away to anyone needing it. However, when it became "the business" of govern- ment to distribute funds ex- tracted from productive citi- zens via the Internal Revenue Service (Get it? It's a "Ser- vice") to those who did noth- ing to earn them, something else came with it. Government "redistribution" became in- grained in America's economic life; moneys removed from the private sector via taxation cre- ated a secondary economic stream. It's been hypocriti- cally described by welfare/ food stamp/unemployment benefit fans like Nancy Pelosi as "the best thing for boosting the economy." No irony is detected over the fact, the irrefutable eco- nomic fact, that transferring money through such programs is a net drain, a drag if you will, on the private sector. It's rarely acknowledged that by encouraging people to accept government dependency, they are dis-incentivized from the natural tendency to improve their skills, hone talents, and use their innate imagination to create and improve per- sonal worth. We now have the quanti- fiably negative results, for state budgets, of provid- ing health care for the poor through Medicaid. Look up and read, "Growth in State Medicaid Spending Crowding Out Spending on Other Major State Programs" by Marc Joffe, Oct. 28, 2015. It's an analytical product of the Mercatus Cen- ter, George Mason University, "Long-Term Trends in Medic- aid Spending by the States." It shows how "expanding state Medicaid spending is 'crowd- ing out' spending on other ma- jor state programs, most nota- bly education and transporta- tion infrastructure. Remember that, but for Medicaid expansion, Obam- acare has failed to change (it actually marginally reduced) the number or percentage of privately insured Americans. Obamacare has made health care, particularly health insur- ance, more expensive; part of the reason is the Medicaid ex- pansion because the program greatly underpays providers. Allowed insurance rates for Obamacare policies have dras- tically ballooned, and failed to keep pace with the expenses associated with self-selection of plans by less-healthy adults. Rounded figures show that, while Medicaid spending by states grew from 19% to 26% of their budgets from 2000 to 2014, K-12 education spending declined from 22% to 19.5%; public assistance, corrections, transportation and higher ed- ucation also declined over the same period. "The percentage of state spending nationwide devoted to Medicaid has increased as Medicaid enrollment and spending have grown…Even as state budgets have increased over time, spending for Med- icaid has grown faster, leav- ing relatively fewer resources for other areas that states might like to prioritize, such as schools and roads." That, readers, only hurts America's economic freedom. We've gone beyond the economic limits of government benefit spending. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@yahoo.com. The way I see it Drugs, gov't spending hurt liberty Even as various Trump flacks tried to deny that Ailes is on board, it's patently obvious why Trump wants him around. Ailes is the acknowledged master of using television to fool gullible viewers. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Maybe someone who works at a glass shop? Scott Gifford: On police searching for suspect in spate of broken windows When I lived in Red Bluff we didn't even lock our doors. Sad to hear about all of the violent crime there now. Kimberly Archie: On a home invasion robbery on Miller Avenue Friday Don Polson StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 2060 Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 895- 4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator. nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sac- ramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558-3160, governor@ governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa, 507 Cannon House Office Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393- 0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Francisco 94111, 510 286-8537, fax 202 224-0454 Local Tehama County Supervi- sors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 District 5, Burt Bundy, Ext. 3016 Red Bluff City Manager, Richard Crabtree, 527-2605, Ext. 3061 Corning City Manager, Kristina Miller, 824-7033 YOUR OFFICIALS OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, August 23, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6