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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 Acabinetpopulatedbybankersand wealthy insiders. A $1 million premier package of tickets to the presidential in- auguration in January. And a posh dinner with Mr. 47 Percent, himself, Mitt Rom- ney. If his earliest actions are any guide, America's incom- ing chief executive isn't so much draining Washington's swamp as he is refilling it with higher quality sludge. As The Washington Post reports, three of President- elect Donald J. Trump's cab- inet picks have personal net worths running to the bil- lions of dollars. One possi- ble pick for energy secretary, Harold Hamm, is worth $15 billion alone. That's $15 billion — with a "B." Crack open your wallet — do you even have $15 in cash in it right now? And if you're thinking about heading to Washing- ton for the inaugural festiv- ities, you'd better take out that second mortgage now. Trump and his team are looking to raise an eye-wa- tering and record-breaking $65 million to $75 million to finance inaugural events across the Capital. They're doing it on the back of high-dollar events that include an "exclusive" luncheon with Trump's cabi- net picks; a dinner with Vice President-elect Mike Pence and his wife and a "ladies luncheon" with Ivanka and Melania Trump, The New York Times reported. The events will run any- where from $25,000 to as much as $1 million. That's a long way from the hot dogs and chips populism that fu- eled Trump's packed rallies on the campaign trail earlier this year. And, just for good mea- sure, Trump's chief strat- egist, Stephen K. Bannon, once mused about the pos- sibility of only letting prop- erty owners vote. When an associate reminded him that would shut out a lot of black voters, Bannon allegedly said "maybe that's not such a bad thing." So maybe it's no sur- prise that the shine went off Trump's populism not long after he entered the halls of power. It was a mirage to be- gin with. Keep in mind, this is a guy with a private jet; who lives in a gold-plated pent- house on top of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, and who has never had a prob- lem showing off the gaudy trappings of his success. The "blue-collar" billion- aire who was going to build a wall; repeal and replace Obamacare and "lock-up" Hillary Clinton has since been exposed as something much more obvious — and far less surprising — a card- carrying member of the same elite he said he would scourge. Remember how Trump teed off on Hillary Clinton's six-figure speeches to Gold- man Sachs during his ral- lies? Well, it's not such a nest of vipers that he's above raiding it for two of his cabi- net picks. Trump's choice for trea- sury secretary is former Goldman partner Stephen Mnuchin. Another Goldman executive, Gary Cohn, might be tapped for budget direc- tor. As Politico notes, after a decade in the "wilderness," the Wall Street firm that was the embodiment of the fi- nancial collapse is set for a big-time return to Washing- ton and maybe even a reha- bilitation of its battered pub- lic image. After all, as recently as October, Trump was Tweet- ing that Clinton was "[meet- ing] in secret with interna- tional banks to plot the de- struction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich" her do- nors. Putting aside the disturb- ingly undertones of anti- Semitism from candidate Trump in that 140-character burst, President-elect Trump now seems to find that in- ternational cabal of bankers perfectly acceptable. Again, that's no surprise. It's always been accepted wisdom that Trump, a Wash- ington outsider, with little to no existing political network, was going to have to turn to Washington's elite and vet- eran Republican hands to populate his administration. On the one hand, that's a good sign because it means that some of Trump's more radical campaign trail pro- posals will be moderated. And despite the presence of Bannon, the white nation- alist Trump-whisperer at his side, both Mnuchin and Cohn are Jewish, which means some of the uglier, dog-whis- tle tactics of the campaign might be jettisoned as well. But that again might leave the blue-collar voters who packed Trump's rallies won- dering what they signed on for. If Trump doesn't repeal and replace all of Obamacare, doesn't bring back coal or manufacturing jobs, but in- stead doles out goodies to the 1 percent in the form of tax cuts (as a Republican Con- gress will no doubt demand), there could be some restless- ness in the cheap seats. At the Sex Pistols' noto- rious final live show at San Francisco's Winterland in 1978, lead singer Johnny Rot- ten asked the crowd, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" After 18 months of being promised the Earth — and the moon to boot — Trump's hardcore supporters might want find themselves asking the same thing. An award-winning political journalist, Micek is the Opinion Editor and Political Columnist for PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Readers may follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek and email him at jmicek@ pennlive.com. John Micek Thepopulist and his crew of billionaires Cartoonist's take Here's a little retrospection over positions and arguments I held over the election cycle— given the massive upset by Don- ald Trump over Hillary Clinton (Non-CA: T=51%, C=49%). It was almost a year ago that a former real estate friend ap- proached me, bursting with exuberance about Trump. I was a bit re- served and somewhat cool, having been put off by Trump's personal and braggadocios style. She professed that, ab- sent a record, great things were coming. Later in the ski season, an older broker in Oregon ex- pressed over a cup of cocoa how impressed he was with Trump's accomplishments and potential, to which I allowed that his experience would serve both him and this nation well—if he followed through with action. Upon hearing that Tea Party folks were fully on board, I hesitated to embrace their enthusiasm due to the thin resume of conservatism Trump offered. When my barber waxed on, with elation, about Donald Trump, I had to insist that po- tential accomplishments de- pended on the reliability of the man. Politicians have plied us with the right positions and sound bites, only to "adjust to the reality" of Washington— which sounds more like sim- ply breathing the liberal air and drinking the elite govern- ment-centric water. Trump seemed to viciously burn his bridges to the supporters of every other Republican can- didate, reinforcing the "Nev- erTrump" arguments (which sounded like sour grapes to this writer). My disgust over the way he dispatched my guy, Ted Cruz, mellowed to a conviction that, having won the nomination fair and square, Trump had to be supported, warts and all, if America was to be delivered from 1) the Clinton dynasty, 2) the potential corruption that was surely to follow her record as the most corrupt Secretary of State in modern history, 3) the expanded weapon-ization of the Executive branch, reg- ulatory and judicial arms of that branch, and 4) perpetual Democrat dominance of elec- tions as all attempts to purge voting rolls of fraud and il- legal registrations get sty- mied by left-leaning judges and Democrat state Attorneys General. I found some thoughts worth sharing in "Trump: The Hail Mary Pass That Con- nected" (thedeclination.com). "Folks, this was so close to the end, I could almost see the bottom. A 1% demographic shift would have delivered this whole thing to Hillary. I felt we were a hair's breath from Kurt Schlicter's People's Re- public, where Civil War or Venezuelan-level corruptoc- racy were the only possibili- ties left for America. "Love or hate Donald Trump, he saved us from that, at least. For a while, anyway. A lot of us on the Right didn't like him. Many still don't. But that matters not. What does matter is that we have some time, and we need to use every second of it, because we won't get another chance. This is it, the final chance to turn the Titanic around before the ice- berg. The media came all out for Hillary in ways we've never seen before. We always knew they were biased, but now they came at us with their full strength. And we beat them." Lest readers (at least the solid majority on my side) be- come swayed by news media, I would suggest that you re- gard all news reporting as anti-Trump propaganda first, allowing for the kernels of ob- jectivity they seed into their "opining-masquerading-as-re- porting." In doing so, you may have recognized that 1) the Trump transition, so bewailed by the media as disorganized, has actually been one of the smoothest, timeliest and im- pressive set of nominations we've seen, 2) the appoint- ment of Marine Gen. Mattis is "a big start toward fixing the military that Obama turned from warriors into social-jus- tice warriors and a big blow against the PC culture in gen- eral" (J. Fund). 3) The media's sense of self- importance has been deci- mated by one man with a twit- ter and YouTube voice, and 4) Communist China's diplomatic and regional lock on influence is now below and behind the message that "we're not aban- doning our allies on the Pacific Rim." Look up "5 Ways Donald Trump's Victory Is Barack Obama's Legacy—What most people haven't realized yet is the extent to which Donald Trump's election victory is the unintended legacy of President Obama," by Robert Tracinsky. 1) "Obama discouraged more electable alternatives to Hill- ary Clinton." Obama, Clinton, Sanders—left, lefter and far left. The Democrats' runner up, arguably the one that cap- tured the soul of the party was a freaking socialist, for crying out loud. 2) "Obama's mania for un- popular policies ran his party into the ground." To pass his signature, named-after-him health insurance takeover, ObamaCare, he told Republi- cans to shut up, get out of the way while he sacrificed his Congressional majorities to pass it. 3) "Instead of transcending racial politics, Obama revived it." Their theory of an "Emerg- ing Democratic Majority" de- pended on a slavish (ironically) devotion to the most radical, race-centric, anti-cop griev- ance-mongering groups to be found in America. "We saw President Obama pass up ev- ery opportunity to be a calm- ing and uniting figure in racial controversies from the Beer Summit to Trayvon Martin to Ferguson to Black Lives Mat- ter. While he quietly demurred to the idea that all of his critics must be racists, he didn't ex- actly go out of his way to dis- courage his supporters from making that argument." 4) "Obama's stagnant econ- omy bred hopelessness." Worst recovery ever; 95 million not working. Employers obsessed with keeping hiring and hours worked down—thanks, Obam- aCare. 5) "Obama cultivated the sense of a diminished Amer- ica." Iraq: he cut and ran while ISIS grew. Libya: they unseated and killed Gaddafi while Is- lamist thugs murdered State Dept people. From the Middle East to Russia and Asia, their leaders think less of America— Obama's legacy. 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 Thank Obama for Trump The events will run anywhere from $25,000 to as much as $1 million. That's a long way from the hot dogs and chips populism that fueled Trump's packed rallies on the campaign trail earlier this year. 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, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558-3160, governor@governor. ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Of- fice 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 Supervisors, 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 Your officials OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, December 6, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4