Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson           Red Bluff Daily News 9/30/2025

        Bus driver hero; violent lefty villain

Has anything happened over the last several months in our not-so-fair state? Things given little news coverage or that cast a negative light on the Gov. Newsom/Democrat ruling elite? It appears so.

First, kudos to Jamie Lee Curtis (producer) and Matthew McConaughey (actor) for making, and the Prime-now-Spotlight Cinemas for showing, “The Lost Bus,” about the heroic bus driver who brought children and teachers to safety during the deadly Camp Fire. I’ll have to check it out when we’re back in town.

Let’s take the opportunity to review the single greatest contributing factor to fires from Paradise to Palisades and Altadena: Failure to remove flammable foliage under power lines in the Camp Fire, and the untreated growth that turned small fires into conflagrations down south.

It’s entirely possible to perform such preventative work; nothing but lack of will, dedicated financing and manpower allows overgrown foliage. We’ve seen numerous power lines crossing roads in Oregon and Idaho; you see the wholesale removal of trees, bushes and grasses down to a knee-level strip under the lines and 50 or so feet on either side. Supplementing that with clearing the forest floor of bushes and lower-story trees is simply common sense fire prevention.

What has kept PG&E or utilities in SoCal from doing so? We know that state “green energy” mandates have forced PG&E to expend massive amounts of money on unreliable solar and wind power. Did that displace funds for brush clearing under power lines? How about environmentalist resistance to forest clearing? The Palisades fire started where objections to disturbing some obscure plant kept flammable poles from being replaced with metal ones.

Humans, not climate, “cause” wildfires. Ignoring prevention inevitably costs property loss and human lives.

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“Questions and outrage have swirled around what happened to the estimated $100 million FireAid raised, which was advertised as going to help victims of the Palisades and Altadena fires. A look into just a handful of organizations that received the money exposes a network of wealthy NGOs, all connected to Democrat politicians like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. It’s not just that the $100 million of FireAid money got sucked into nonprofits and never reached victims of the fires; it’s darker than that.

“The powerful elite, elected to serve the people of California, sat back and let entire neighborhoods burn to the ground. They then swooped in and took hundreds of thousands of dollars meant to help those victims and funneled it right back into their political organizing machinery.” (Redstate.com, 9/08)

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I see hysteria over ginned-up “free speech” issues, now that the social media titans are admitting to having been browbeaten into canceling the unapproved speech, aka expression, of their users over numerous inconvenient topics (think COVID). Recently, an “anti-parody” law signed by Gov. Newsom in 2024 was overturned on First Amendment grounds in September, by U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez.

“The laws were passed after Newsom wrote a post on X suggesting that a parody video of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris should be ‘illegal.’ The state’s legislature then passed two laws banning political expression labeled as ‘materially deceptive content.’” (Redstate.com) Hint: Complainers—over the FCC and President Trump weighing in on falsehoods told by Jimmy Kimmel, a “comedian”—had no objections to California Democrats literally making parody videos illegal, especially around elections. Hypocrisy on steroids.

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“Christian Baker Pleads For SCOTUS To End California’s Lawfare Against Her Religious Beliefs” (thefederalist.com, 8/29). Not unlike the Colorado cake shop case, practitioners of “alternative” relationships (perverse in some religious beliefs) aren’t content being able to enlist any other baker’s services; they must engage in legal persecution of someone who chooses not to bake a cake celebrating what her faith tells her is immoral.

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Not that I give a rat’s about the Kimmel brew-ha-ha, but in Sacramento, a lunatic lefty fired shots into an ABC studio/office because of hyped-up anger over the suspension of Kimmel’s show. “The man suspected of firing 3 shots into the window of an ABC affiliate in California after the Kimmel decision is a former teacher's union legislative director whose X feed is full of far-left rhetoric encouraging escalation.”

The X account, identified by “Variety” for Anibal Hernandez-Santana (suspected shooter), contained a lot of angry posts and thinly-veiled urging of violence over the Kimmel firing, saying “Rules don’t apply if election was stolen. FIGHT!”; also, “Where is a good heart attack when we need it the most?? Please Join in my thoughts and prayers for the physical demise of our fearful leader.” Also, “He left a note warning Trump officials ‘They’re next’” (Nationalrevew.com).

Previously, ABC/Sacramento protesters had signs calling Trump "Hitler" and a “fascist enabler.” They also said “Free speech is a right.” Fact: if a private company cancels a show, it isn't a violation of free speech.