Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/97039
6A Daily News ��� Tuesday, December 4, 2012 Opinion Mountain climbing and cliff jumping DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes letters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All 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 cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submitted will be considered for publication. Letters will be edited. Letters are published at the discretion of the editor. Mission Statement We believe that a strong community newspaper is essential to a strong community, creating citizens who are better informed and more involved. The Daily News will be the indispensible guide to life and living in Tehama County. We will be the premier provider of local news, information and advertising through our daily newspaper, online edition and other print and Internet vehicles. The Daily News will reflect and support the unique identities of Tehama County and its cities; record the history of its communities and their people and make a positive difference in the quality of life for the residents and businesses of Tehama County. How to reach us Main office: 527-2151 Classified: 527-2151 Circulation: 527-2151 News tips: 527-2153 Sports: 527-2153 Obituaries: 527-2151 Photo: 527-2153 On the Web www.redbluffdailynews.com Fax Newsroom: 527-9251 Classified: 527-5774 Retail Adv.: 527-5774 Legal Adv.: 527-5774 Business Office: 527-3719 Address 545 Diamond Ave. Red Bluff, CA 96080, or P.O. Box 220 Red Bluff, CA 96080 Much can be said about the physical fitness benefits of mountain climbing and the thrills of cliff jumping, but when these similes are applied to our personal and national budgets there are damages to account and legitimate fears of financial abyss. Another benefit of mountain climbing is the vista afforded from the top that can bring clarity and perspective of one���s position and an appreciation of the dangers of toppling from a lofty perch. Such are the circumstances many face individually and all of us face collectively as residents of California and the United States as we consider the consequences of spending that exceeds income. While going into debt may be necessary in periods of emergency need, or justified when prudently investing in real estate and other large capital purchases, such periods should be both short lived and carefully managed to ensure fiscal fitness. Unfortunately for many personal houses and our state and national coffers, periods of debt have become the norm rather than the exception, and since the toll of servicing such debts grows exponentially, we are on the brink of bankruptcy and financial collapse. When a wise person finds him- self in a deep hole the first thing he or she does is to stop digging. Only by stemming the damage being done can one achieve balance and begin the process of reconstruction. So when debt mounts inexorably the only prudent course is to cut spending while pursuing all means to increase income. On a state or national level caution is required to keep from excessively slowing overall economic activity and sending our economies in self defeating death spirals as tax collections plummet and public assistance need soars. It is clear we are in quite a pickle, and it is essential to let cool minds and sound policy prevail as wisdom and discipline are applied. Sadly the commodities of wisdom and discipline are in increasing short supply in our state and national legislatures where many members have made absolute partisan pledges and the focus is on the next election cycle rather than doing the difficult work of addressing years of misguided leadership and failure to pay the prices of our fiscal misdeeds. The problem is principally one in which our leaders are predisposed to dispense favor to win re-election at any cost, even when to do so pushes us ever closer to financial abyss. For this reason it is essential ing the public trust, and this is a very slippery slope that we reform campaign when climbing mounfinance practices as a tains of public debt. necessary precursor to I say it is time to take the pursuit of fiscal saniour medicine, steel our ty. No longer can we nerves, and jump off the reward financial malfeafiscal cliff. It may be sance by allowing reprepainful once we hit the sentatives to buy their ground, but at least we seats ��� it���s time to can pick ourselves up as impose strict limits and we have many times accountability on cambefore, brush ourselves paign spending to set the stage for how they manRichard off, and begin rebuilding on a firm foundaage public resources. tion. The fact is that our Granting corporations national economy is the unlimited ability to built on a house of control the airwaves and cards, with a tax system thereby manipulate pubso complex and full of lic sentiment toward loopholes that armies of political candidates does accountants and a great disservice to the principles of fairness and equal lawyers aggrandize themselves representation. Contrary to what and their clients at public expense, Mitt Romney or the Supreme overlapping and inefficient public Court justices believe, corpora- programs fail to meet simple tions are not people deserving of needs, and cynicism infects almost free speech rights, instead they are every aspect of public policy. Pain regulated entities permitted to con- and struggle are the well-springs of duct trade in our public market- action and innovation, all of which places. Unlike persons, corpora- are needed to propel and steel us as tions have no soul, no innate good- a state and nation while mountain ness or compassion, and are driven climbing and cliff jumping. by only one objective ��� self preserRichard Mazzucchi can be vation. So, we get what we pay for, or allow others to pay for by abus- reached at living-green@att.net. Mazzucchi Positive Point Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN ��� Jim Nielsen (R) State Capitol Bldg., Room 6031 Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 319-2002; Fax (916) 3192102 STATE SENATOR ��� Doug LaMalfa (R) State Capitol Bldg., Room 3070 Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 651-4004; Fax (916) 445-7750 GOVERNOR ��� Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 558-3160; E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE ��� Wally Herger (R), 2595 Ceanothus Ave., Ste. 182, Chico, CA 95973; 893-8363. U.S. SENATORS ��� Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 3930710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Commentary Two countries; people coming to choose Tea Party Patriots meeting note: There will be a DVD shown on the subject of the United Nations (Westside Grange, 6 PM). I���m without details; however, anyone chortling and eye-rolling over the seemingly conspiracy-minded cries of Agenda 21 might consider that being paranoid doesn���t mean no one is ever out to get you. Finding plots to undermine America���s Constitutional system in plain sight under the disguised imprimatur of the UN doesn���t negate their existence, or their threats to our way of life and selfgovernance. Will there come a time when we must decide which America to love, cherish and defend: One of limited government, fiscal prudence and personal and economic freedom and responsibility? Or an unlimited debt-laden state of everencroaching, minutiae-controlling and centrally planned redistribution? The two visions cannot coexist any more than America could remain half-slave and half-free. After weekend outages, some thoughts: There are probably a lot of folks that occasionally find that the advances in technology they dragged themselves to embrace (and take or leave) 15 or 20 years ago have become indispensable to daily life, even while traveling. Having an interruption to Internet broadband (anyone remember dial-up when you still had one phone line that was inoperable for talking while surfing?) that is weather-related can deprive one of knowing what���s going on, for instance, after choosing to abandon packaged news from networks. Why rely on someone else���s judgment of how much of the story to tell in their predetermined time slots when I can ���drill down,��� as they say, anytime into details and perspectives they don���t find newsworthy? Shedding major newspapers, likewise. Simply watching broadcasted entertainment becomes a guessing game when you���ve come to rely on online program listings and customized grids as an alternative to the ever-shrinking paper grids that come with the Daily News. How to know, say, that overlapping shows will require recording one on my PC, while watching the other on my old tech, picture-in-picture, cathode ray tube with converter boxes. I���m not complaining, mind you, but having equipment fail on top of the weather, on the weekend, brings about adjustments, scheduling delays and a sense of getting behind on the web sites and blogs I like to keep up on. Enough about that. I have in front of me numerous articles, charts and graphs that all show what should be disturbing trends, polling results and economic statistics. Combine them all with the apparently unbridgeable disconnect between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, Red states and Blue states, and city vs. country dwellers, and you have what I think are two Americas. Consider the local and passionate debate, tiresome to many, over the use of half staff or inverted flag flying. Such venom from those who had no unkind words for ���Occupy��� campers walking and defacing American flags. Personally, while finding the presidential reelection of Barack Obama to be beyond disappointment, bordering on hope-crushing, I am reminded that it was an election, after all, sanctioned and carried out under The siren song of governmentConstitutional provisions and freeprovided benefits soothes the doms. gullible into giving up America is not distheir God-given rights to tressed by foreign miliself-provision. tary onslaught upon our My flag is not used to soil; the Earth has not make political stateopened up to swallow ments. However, it is entire cities nor have the now flown strictly on oceans swept into inland ���Fly the flag��� days, valleys and plains ala rather than at every science fiction novels. opportunity. That While having lost expresses my disappointsome ground at the fedment that one of the eral level, about 30 smallest majorities to states are now under ever re-elect a sitting Republican governance, Don President is being used a modern day maxiPolson by Obama���s party to promum. Red states voted claim debates and disaround or above 60 perThe way putes over taxes, regulacent for Mitt Romney, as tion and federalism to be did Tehama County; I see it over and decided in their local liberal loudmouths favor. should take note that Consider the many signatures, many of us literally seethe and clench our teeth at your lecturing including mine, that have been and ideological preening. Almost placed in the record asking for 20 states have chosen to defy the secession for our states from the ObamaCare mandate to set up federal government (Whitehealth insurance exchanges, as is House.gov/petitions). Of course it is an empty gesture, an exercise in their Constitutional right. I have some foreboding over the futility and, for the 15,000+ Caligrowing resistance by Republican fornians who signed, an outcome states to Democrat-driven legal, that would be undesirable anyway, regulatory and taxing overreach unless our fair state divided in a that may indeed escalate to force- north/south manner, along the ful imposition and violent opposi- red/blue county lines of most elections. tion. I found it laughable that loony The Federalist Papers expounded on how the most sophisticated leftists started a petition to deport governing document ever devised, those of us signing secession petithe U.S. Constitution, while tions. Yeah, you and all your tofu-eatexpressly enshrining and protecting the individual citizen and state ing, Occupy-encamped, dopeparents���-basementand local independence, could still smoking, be manipulated in implementing dwelling Internet trolls just try. tyranny. Yes, it was and still is posDon Polson has called Red Bluff sible and, as Ronald Reagan said, we are only one generation away home since 1988. He can be by e-mail at from losing our liberties, never to reached donplsn@yahoo.com. be regained.