Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   5/13/2014

Questions for candidates on guns, teachers and the BLM

Every local event that puts candidates in front of the citizens whose votes they seek illustrates the core of our Constitutional representative democracy; I have to give a big thumbs-up to the Tea Party Patriots for their candidates’ forum. The able, affable and fair-to-all MC Cal Hunter kept the pace moving and the questions concise and relevant to the office being sought. Submitting written questions rather than providing an open microphone may have crimped some attendees’ style; however, it was a blessing to everyone’s patience to filter out queries on federal-centric issues and the inevitable speechifying that sometimes occurs.

As the evening proceeded, the questions and answers left some issues out. While saying you support the 2^nd Amendment is up there with “Mom” and apple pie, and since the issue is decided in Washington, D.C., Sacramento and the judicial branch, it would be more informative to voters if candidates for Supervisor were asked if they support “shall issue” policies regarding permits for “carrying concealed weapons” (or CCW).

I challenge all such candidates to let voters know their position. I would hope the question is not obscure to them, and I would hope for a firm and vigorous answer supporting local law enforcement presuming in favor of providing law-abiding citizens the permit to carry their choice of legally purchased firearms for their own protection. There should simply be no hoops to jump through or verifiable threat to a citizen’s safety to be able to legally carry a handgun.

For the Clerk-Recorder position, I would like candidates to state their position on pro-actively purging deceased voters from the voting rolls. While the subject of “voter ID” is not decided at the local level, in deference to state and judicial authority, I would like to know if their bias is for or against seeing identification similar to that needed to, say, open a checking account or use a credit card, or even (here’s the irony) to enter Eric Holder’s Justice Department or many federal offices or events. Do such candidates feel it is as great a miscarriage of justice for someone to illegally vote, thus canceling another’s legally cast ballot, as it is for someone to be disenfranchised of their vote?

From candidates for Superintendent of Schools, I would like to know if, in their many years in their classrooms and offices, have they been aware of the incompetent teachers as well as the good and excellent ones? It’s incomprehensible that, in any profession, let alone the teaching field where education and training thresholds are, reportedly, considerably lower than business or technical fields, there are not those performing below the necessary standards for continued employment. Surely, the two Superintendent candidates have witnessed teachers whose performance should have cried out for termination.

Surely, they must have realized that bad teachers do a disservice to students, parents, and, ultimately, our nation’s economic success, by turning out ill-educated and even illiterate graduates—not in Tehama County, to be fair, but certainly elsewhere. More to the point (acknowledging the inevitable presence of incompetent teachers), have they seen terminations resulting from substandard performance? Have they witnessed teachers’ union support for removal of bad teachers, some with nearly criminal levels of misconduct? Or has the reverse been the case: removing a bad teacher is fought, with almost ferocious tenacity, by the union that ought to have the students’ best interest in mind? Stories abound where teachers are simply transferred, paid lump sums to leave, or assigned to permanently vacant “study halls,” with no stain upon their record. Inquiring minds might like to know.

Finally, for Supervisor candidates, I would expect a clear answer on the issue of the Bend Recreation Area, under the Bureau of Land Management’s administration, which was proposed years ago, approved by a divided Board of Supervisors, and drew much opposition from those suspicious of the kind graces of the BLM. It never went further when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010 and put such empire-building efforts on hold; their agenda was to shut down Sen. Diane Feinstein’s project over her lack of sufficient concern for existing property and usage rights and future compromises of same. The way I see it, anyone wanting that county elective position ought to be able to tell voters that, in light of BLM’s record of abuse of ranchers, they would not vote for the Bend Recreation Area unless hard-and-fast protections for rights and usage by locals was etched in stone.

Correction note: It doesn’t surprise me to find that, with limited time and 800+ words of space, I conveyed a less-than-thorough summary of the origins of land for western states. Thankfully, Mr. Janot made the effort to fill out the record and note my errors. What remains irrefutable is that, while mismanagement occurred before 1934, we now have gross, institutional mismanagement favoring species, habitat and trees rotting on the ground in the service of radical, environmental—meaning anti-any-traditional-use of resources—land grabbing in the west, including closed trails and roads. Federal land should be returned to local and state control, benefiting our economies and budgets, period. Readers may have noted that, once again, leftists simply cannot argue issues without adding snide insult and personal attacks.