Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson       Red Bluff Daily News 7/08/2025

        Local views: Road tax? A relative passes

Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, usually light-hearted, had a monumental Independence Day message (better “Independence Day” than “4^th of July”). “A Republic if you can keep it” (Benjamin Franklin quote) is a challenge for the ages. Even our Founders, like Alexander Hamilton, warned that the most perfect governing charter ever conceived—The United States Constitution—was not impervious to usurpation by “factions.”

Modern equivalent examples would be the environmental movement and its anti-fossil fuel jihad, or the military/industrial complex but more specifically elites that find it easy to project that power in the service of the “Intelligence Community” faction’s stealth foreign policy objectives. Then there’s the unelected bureaucracy, aka the “deep state,” that cares not who the voters put in office or the stated policies those voters chose, but implement their own agendas based on political affiliations aligned against the executive and the legislative opposing party.

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Our home in Bend, Oregon allows us to put camp chairs right at our curb to watch the largest fireworks display in central Oregon from our front yard. We can reminisce over watching Red Bluff’s show from across the river in a vacant lot, or a location behind Main Street; one time we put camp chairs on top of our motorhome on Saint Marys Avenue and used binoculars.

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“Budget showing declines,” June 27 Daily News headline, was good news (I think), given the “decrease by 10.84 percent.” It’s refreshing to not have hyped-up protests and doom-mongering—cue hysteria on the national level over purely sensible tightening of benefits and limiting them to citizens (not illegal aliens), who should work or train 20 hours a week if they are able-bodied.

Is it such an outlandish idea that government can do about as good a job with a bit less money, since it is the taxpayers forking it over? We should get the most value for our money without the answer to everything being “more revenue.”

That said, the state of some, well many, Red Bluff roads begs for more money, but is more taxes the only answer?

Perhaps someone can provide a decade or two of budget data showing how some parts have grown inordinately at the expense of, say, road maintenance. I’ve often said, as have many fiscal conservatives, that it is a massive conflict of interest for public employees to be unionized. Citizens pay those salaries and benefits, as well as the union dues, which dues then fund their political coffers that are invariably used to help elect officials who will kindly remember who helped elect them (and who could un-elect them) when the employee contracts require negotiation.

What is the likelihood that officials will tell the unions that salary or benefit hikes aren’t possible until the road repairs are caught up? Yeah, I thought so—not very. I’m a “No” on more local taxes until that happens.

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The Supervisor Pati Nolen imbroglio makes me scratch my head. Being mostly out of the county—it’s been decades since we were on a first-name basis with supervisors like the great (to me) Bob Williams—I look suspiciously at efforts to remove Supervisors before the voters can weigh in come election time.

I know it’s been done but I’ve never liked the “short circuiting” of the very “representative democracy” Independence Day represents. I wouldn’t know Ms. Nolan on the street (I’d still know Mr. Williams) and certainly couldn’t tell you if she’s an “R” or a “D.” ‘Nuff said.

More: Bothered by the high cost of pot? Just do without! It never fails, “It” being killing the “Goose that laid the golden egg” parable. If anything can ruin the “pot industry,” it’d be the government.

June 24’s missing column can be found at donpolson.blogspot.com and the deletion was not well-received by this writer. I’ve told management that my rule is “I write the column; you print the column; people enjoy reading it in the paper.” If they have a problem, call me and we’ll work it out; I expect more respect after never missing a week in over 20 years. My 5 hours a week equals almost a dozen 24-hour days a year of volunteer effort; my labor of love should be deferred to rather than dumped in the...well, you know.

A relative passed away in a memory care home. With family gathered around, she abruptly opened her eyes and focused intently on the doorway; such eye motion and alertness had disappeared recently. It was a rather obvious (to family) greeting of an angel come to take her to Jesus. May this give some inspiration to those of us far closer to the “expiration date” written in invisible ink on the birth certificate. It’s never too late to say “Hi” to our Lord and Savior and ask for a place in Heaven.