Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/720876
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 The mainstream media has a tough time "balancing" the coverage of a presiden- tial campaign where one candidate is temperamentally suited for the Oval Of- fice and the other candidate belongs in a middle school locker room, snapping wet towels. But in the service of "bal- ance," the media is trying its best nonetheless. This week, for instance, the As- sociated Press has targeted the Clinton Foundation — isn't everyone? — looking for the ever-elusive smoking gun, the incontrovertible ev- idence that Hillary turned the State Department into a "pay for play" playground for the fat cats who pumped money into her family's charitable group. The AP found zilch. People who think the mainstream press is "in the tank" for Hillary should check out the AP's social me- dia drumbeat. When the story was posted on Tues- day afternoon, it was accom- panied by two promotional items that were designed to rivet our eyeballs: "AP analysis: More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Founda- tion." And this: "At least 85 of 154 people who met or had phone con- versations with HC while she was SOS donated or pledged commitments to her family charity." Wow, more than half! 85 of 154 people! That looks re- ally bad — until you stop and think and say to your- self, "Wait a sec. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State for four years...and in all that time she met or had phone chats with only 154 people? Is that really true?" Of course not. You rack up the hits on social media only if you keep things simple. Nuance is the enemy. By all accounts, Clinton during her tenure met world- wide with roughly 1,700 peo- ple. The AP simply decided to eliminate, from its tally, everyone who worked in any capacity for any government, foreign or domestic. That's how the AP got it down to 154. In other words, dur- ing Clinton's four-year ten- ure, 85 of the 1,700 people she dealt with — a mere five percent — had donated or pledged to the Clinton Foun- dation. Which in itself should not be surprising, because the Foundation does good works around the world (fight- ing poverty and AIDS, stuff like that), and any State De- partment leader is destined as a matter of course to en- counter philanthropists and other heavy hitters who have an abiding interest in those good works. You might ask, "OK, but what about those five per- cent? That's still 85 people. That's enough to show a pat- tern of pay-to-play, the trad- ing of cash for favors." Which brings us to the case of Muhammad Yumus. This was the AP's showcase attempt to prove pay-to-play. Yumus is an anti-poverty activist and economist based in Bangladesh. He gave money to the Clinton Foun- dation — not personally, but through a nonprofit bank that he chaired. During Hill- ary's time at State, he was clashing with the Bangla- deshi government over his tenure on the nonprofit bank board. He asked for her help in three meetings, and, as the story reported, "she or- dered aides to find ways to assist him." He later re- signed from the board, and Clinton emailed one of her aides, "Sad indeed." Somehow, this revelation has failed to take my breath away. I suppose you could ar- gue that she wanted to help Yumus because his bank had donated to the Foun- dation. But it's way too fac- ile to say that he bought ac- cess. Thing is, you could just as easily argue that she wanted to help him because (1) he's the winner of a No- bel Peace Prize, (2) he has been awarded the Presiden- tial Medal of Freedom, (3) he has been awarded a Con- gressional Gold Medal, (4) he has been listed as one of For- eign Policy magazine's "top 100 global thinkers," ranking one notch from the very top, and (5) he has served on the board of the United Nations Foundation. Granted, the Clintons made things worse for themselves by running a charitable group while Hillary was in office, the kind of arrangement that typically (as the AP put it) "fuels perceptions" of derring do. But there is no "growing proof of pay-to-play," despite all the mainstream media's exertions to "balance" cam- paign coverage. Someone should also re- mind Reince Priebus that Donald Trump has given $110,000 to the Clinton Foun- dation (and has received no favors in return), and presum- ably he has done so because, in the words of current cam- paign manager Kellyanne Conway, the Clinton group "does a lot of good work." Now there's a revela- tion. Even a Trump spinner will occasionally let slip the truth. 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 Let'schew on Clinton Foundation nothing burger Cartoonist's take To paraphrase Forest Gump, "Freedom is as freedom does." Consider America's diminish- ing freedom— over the last 8 years, America's freedom rank- ing dropped from 17th to 20th among 25 coun- tries. You must take into account something that was not part of the surveys: The sense of freedom that individ- ual Americans have, and how that feeling of being free to act upon our convictions as citi- zens, in our representative self- government, can be crushed. I listened to an interview on July 5 with Kimberly Stras- sel, author of "The Intimidation Game: How the Left is Silencing Free Speech." It occurred to me that, over those same 8 years, the increasing brazenness of leftist attacks on conservative activists has become a scourge on our streets, the Internet, in abusive lawsuits, and targeted judicial/IRS action. People are inspired to act to affect the leg- islative process, or weigh in in an organized way, with ads, fly- ers, petitions and contacts with officials. Those are basic free- doms, even responsibilities, of men and women in our Amer- ica Republic, a representa- tive democracy; progressives threaten it all. This is not to say that people who are engaged on the other side of an issue, or an opposing campaign or candidate, are out of bounds to actively support, publicly weigh in, write letters to the editor or hold events of their own. People can be as vo- cal, as organized, and as pas- sionate as they feel is appropri- ate to their cause. What they can't do, if they value civil lib- erty and fair political practices, is engage in underhanded at- tacks on people, anonymous character assassination, efforts to hurt the families or busi- nesses of opponents, or use le- gal means (also known as "law- fare") to silence, restrict or pun- ish their opponents. Strassel referenced the Cal- ifornia initiative, Proposition 8, which sought to define mar- riage as between one man and one woman. We all remem- ber that people were passion- ate both for and against it. Now, I will divide readers based on their opinions of, not the issue itself, but whether it was wrong and out-of-bounds for certain things occur. You might want to think long and hard before answering that you approved of the tactics of the anti-Prop 8 crowds. Was it wrong to disclose do- nors' names, and amounts they contributed in favor of Prop 8, when the law said it was con- fidential? The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 50 years ago, in fa- vor of the secrecy of NAACP do- nors, citing their vulnerabil- ity to intimidation and harass- ment. That meant the Prop 8 disclosures were wrong, even illegal and, given what subse- quently happened, abominable as a matter of civic propriety. Was it wrong for Prop 8 op- ponents (gay marriage support- ers) to then use such informa- tion to attack fellow citizens who held an opposing position? Was it wrong to organize boy- cotts against their employers, their businesses, their spouse's employers or businesses, their service groups, their theater companies, their vehicles, prop- erty, Prop 8 signage, and on and on? I don't recall Prop 8 oppo- nents speaking out against gay marriage supporters that were hounding, harassing and physically attacking Mor- mon churches and church-go- ers, even little old ladies. Many of us have never forgotten and, never having been asked, we've never forgiven. While at the Republican booth for that year's fair, among the passers-by was a uniformed Sheriff's deputy that engaged us in discussing our position sup- porting Prop 8; the male dep- uty was opposed. The discus- sion turned to debate with the deputy loudly saying we were hateful and intolerant—things totally irrelevant to anything we had said. Sounds intimidat- ing, no? Kimberley Strassel presents an "alarming look at how the Left, once the champion of civil liberties, is today orchestrat- ing a coordinated campaign to bully Americans out of free speech…and how both disclo- sure and campaign finance laws have been hijacked by the Left as weapons against free speech and free association, becom- ing the most powerful tools of those intent on silencing their political opposition." Among the examples cited— each an outrageous political overreach and scare tactic— that constitute evidence, to this writer, of a "long train of abuses and usurpations": 1) the left set off a wave of liberal ha- rassment against conservative politicians after the Supreme Court decision, Citizens United (the Court ruled that private citizens, who formed a polit- ical corporation to fund and run anti-Hillary Clinton ads, acted legally); 2) the IRS used partisan standards to twist the tax code to target Tea Party groups; 3) Wisconsin prosecutors, state Attorneys General and a Democrat Congress attacked political activists and busi- nesses; 4) the Obama admin- istration politicized a host of government agencies includ- ing the FEC, FCC, and the SEC. There are others; I hope to read it this summer. Here's what conservative Jo- nah Goldberg said: Regarding the increasingly repressive cli- mate towards free speech, "no books have connected the dots between the Obama White House, Congressional Dem- ocrats, and the spider web of 'grassroots' organizations the way Kim Strassel does…It is re- quired reading for those who want to know what's behind the supposedly spontaneous outrages we see every day." Stephen Hayes: "Public shaming encouraged by lead- ing political figures. Pre-dawn police raids. Federal agencies targeting groups and individ- uals because of their political views. It's hard to believe these things are happening, and more frequently, in the United States. But they are and in this searing indictment of the sys- tematic attempt of the politi- cal left to shut down political debates they cannot win, Kim- berley Strassel provides the of- ten-horrifying details. It's a shocking and assiduously well- reported chronicle of the illib- eral tactics of the new progres- sives." When under attack, political freedom, if not vigorously de- fended, will wither away. 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 Threats to freedom from the le By all accounts, Clinton during her tenure met worldwide with roughly 1,700 people. The AP simply decided to eliminate, from its tally, everyone who worked in any capacity for any government, foreign or domestic. That's how the AP got it down to 154. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Thank goodness it will be open again. Desiree Bretzke George: On the scheduled reopening of the Jellys Ferry Bridge A friend and I wanted to take our kids to do free things in Red Bluff. We went to the visitor center and Gaumers for our field trip. The kids loved it. We also like to go to the discovery center and check out their displays. A lot of Red Bluff history in these little spots. Shannon Stone: On roundup of weekend events planned for Aug. 27-28 Don Polson OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, August 30, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6