Don's Tuesday Column

          THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   1/21/2020

   The circus comes, other ongoing acts

Before opining on the “Schiff Show 2.0,” let’s touch on some other topics.

Regarding the proposed 1 cent sales tax hike, I’m “agin’ it” due to a (so far) unpersuasive, even nonexistent, case by the county, as would be made if one was going to a bank for a business loan. Have they laid out the trends for annual income and growth of expenses? This could be done, even if it required some staff time to research those figures. Please tell the taxpayers what tax and fee receipts were, say, over several decades.

A transparent case would be expected by a lender (this sales tax hike is probably more permanent than a loan—we won’t likely see it expire) showing 1) the hopefully temporary decline in income, broken down into sources, with explanations and projections; and 2) expenses by category with reasons for what has gotten more expensive and why. My bad if I missed it.

We all acknowledge the vagaries of revenues and unexpected costs; we are mature adults able—much like parents paying for a student’s college expenses—to listen to honest presentations. For instance, the inflation-adjusted, per-pupil expense for K-12 public education has roughly tripled, from about $5,000 to about $15,000 over 40 years; I remember a graph showing an inexplicable, inexorable upward slope. Results anyone?

I suspect we’d see an inexplicable, inexorable growth in public employee benefit-driven costs, approved by elected officials who, hypocritically, rely on union-dues paying their campaigns. Is there a disconnect when I read a Dan Walters column: “California tax revenue is soaring”? I guess not locally.

Since the tax moneys are fungible, as they say, are we being hit up for the sales tax hike to allow for paying the costs of the “homeless”? Again, I have personal generosity for local residents that have fallen on hard times but if we are collectively being asked to feed and house anyone showing up in our county, the experiences of other municipalities may enlighten us.

Look up: “Ohio town rolls out red carpet for homeless. Is shocked when stream of homeless show up,” by Victoria Taft, 1/07, pjmedia.com. “They just wanted to do the right thing. The small town of Middletown, Ohio, a town of 49,000 people, has opened all manner of homeless services. There is everything from soup kitchens and shelters, that allow you to be high and drunk, to rehab facilities to sober up. And that’s the problem. 

“You can come to Middletown to stay drunk and high and get three hots and a cot without having to do much. (DP: There are likely advocates, lawyers, and judges to ensure that.) Now the homeless are from someplace else, according to the former police chief. Of course they are.” Please read it through.

Also proving why many are immediately suspicious of appeals to charity by the government—and showing the inability of critics to avoid knee-jerk anti-Trump-ism—we learned that a Puerto Rican emergency services official had, in fact, engaged in blatant greed and corruption by stocking a warehouse full of American-provided, life-saving catastrophe-relief supplies in 2017. 

President Trump was criticized and pilloried for pointing to the corruption and incompetency of Puerto Rican government, not only for misappropriation of relief (and other) supplies, but also for the pre-hurricane, corruption-compromised electric utility systems that failed entirely after the storm. Trump provokes the political and governing left to hysterical and deranged reactions due to nothing other than opposing whatever Trump does or says.

I saw impeachment preludes and corollaries in last July’s DN issues 7/24-25, “Mueller takes the TV stage; Dems hope America tunes in,” and “Mueller rejects Trump’s claims of Russia probe exoneration.” Then, as now, the Democrat/media cabal breathlessly hoped for the public to glue their eyes to the expected “bombshells” that would “close in the walls,” for the “beginning of the end” of Trump’s presidency. 

The revelations, then as now, produce a “molehill out of a mountain”; the same cabal obsesses over a turn of phrase, a whiff of accusation, and inability of then-Mueller, now-Schiff/Nadler et al to find fire under their arse’s smoke. Then: no collusion, no cite-able obstruction; now: no “treason, bribery or other high crimes or misdemeanors,” not even the accusation of “obstruction of justice.” Just one count of thumbing his nose at the carnival-grade, rigged shell-game of (cue solemnity) “Impeachment Articles,” complete with gold, bullet-shaped signing pens for all, and a laugh-fest for Pelosi on Bill Maher’s loony lefty show.

Analysis roundup: “Nancy Pelosi said, ‘it’s not a question of proof, it’s a question of allegations!’ Oh really? What a disgrace this Impeachment Scam is for our great Country” (Judge Jeanine). “Let me get this straight…Biden blackmailed Ukraine with a billion in tax dollars to drop an investigation into his son, and Democrats want to impeach President Trump simply for asking if it was true?” 

“Impeachment is ‘Pornography For The Trump-Deranged,” by Mollie Hemingway, (look up at The Federalist.com). A 1000-word picture at “House Impeachment Managers: Pelosi’s Avengers,” by Deanna Fisher, shows Adam Schiff’s face photo-shopped in place of Napoleon Bonaparte’s face on a reared-up white stallion; in Schiff’s hand is, in place of a sword—a yellow rubber chicken.

Back to the “casus belli,” William Jacobson wrote “Investigating Biden influence peddling didn’t become illegitimate just because Joe ran for president…Running for president does not provide immunity from investigation—just ask Donald Trump, who was investigated by the Obama administration while running for president.”

If their lips are moving, they are lying: “Nadler Out-And-Out lies on ‘Face the Nation…” by Nick Arama. Victoria Taft included video to show “Adam Schiff Tell Three Laughable Impeachment Whoppers in Less Than 90 Seconds.” M. Goodwin: “Democrats’ ‘unfixable’ extremism uses Trump as an excuse.” True!