Don's Tuesday Column

           THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   5/01/2024

Sometimes they are out to get you

The “writers-on-water-issues” have served readers well. It’s hard, from 300+ miles away, more than that in RV camping season, to get mental and emotional juices aroused when water is, for us, either a municipal given in Bend, Oregon, or a fairly trusty-but-aged domestic well in Red Bluff. Forgive my ignorance and disregard over the “mandate” to register our humble, occasionally-repaired well.

However, our admirable columnists have labored over keyboards, researched local and state minutiae, and showed up at meetings that I would avoid even if ski season were over and I were in town. That said, it roused my conspiratorial suspicions to read recently that outside powers are apparently fiddling with measurements of ground water, not unlike how Gov. Newsom is fiddling with snow measurements, substituting a season-long trend for decades-long spot measurements used to assign water allocations.

Are Newsom et al creating standards for doling out less of California’s most precious commodity than is needed? Are there ulterior motives like refusing to build more dams as agriculture is deemphasized over urban needs? Yet, that could well be the common motive for altered snowpack measurements and groundwater standards.

First, it was the bogus “spotted owl” crisis used to decimate logging, rural economies, and classroom funding. We eventually found that 1) the supposedly “endangered” owl could and was adapting to nesting in non-old growth locales, and 2) the proximate cause of spotted owl decline was the barred owl. It was too late to reverse the damage.

Now, a writer suggests they might be “out to get us,” targeting the only remaining source of abundance for Tehama County, our agricultural base. It needs only the precious liquid gold resting behind dams built when Sacramento powers and politicos saw a priority to provide what a growing population needed: roads, dams and reliable electricity generation.

Monstrously expensive, resource-intensive, and sun-and-wind-dependent solar and wind-turbine power is a small percentage of electricity generation. Pipe-dreams involve: storage in batteries; moving it from remote, renewable-energy “farms” to California’s megalopolises; Electric Vehicle mandates that cannot be relied on for transporting people and goods.

No, what that will “get us” are lives of reduced income, the priority of controlling mandates over economic freedom, and huddled masses yearning for better lives unavailable in a “progressive, green energy wasteland” of rich ruling classes and a shrinking middle class. History shows that, from Marxist Russia, Maoist China, Castro’s Cuba to Chavez’s Venezuela, entrepreneurial business and middle classes must be brought under the thumb, and boot, of central (dare I say) Communist authority. You’re watching it.

Further evidence: The near top-of-illegal-entries in the San Diego Sector—34,000 behind only the Tucson Sector at 42,000 in March—is welcomed by the Democrat political powers. Update: “By the third week of April, first place moved to the San Diego Sector…nearly 25,000 migrants surpassed El Paso’s 22,000 migrants and Tucson Sector’s arrest of just over 21,000 migrants” (“California Takes the Lead in Illegal Migrant Apprehensions,” Pjmedia.com, Breitbart.com). I lived in San Diego County in the 70s; it was pretty but I’d never go back.

That’s 1.1 million illegals in FY 2024. 85 percent of San Diego Sector’s 210,000 were released into the U.S. It’s a conspiracy fact, not theory, that Democrats in blue states like CA, IL, and NY see illegal aliens as a substitute for departing Republican residents. They see red or swing states like Texas and Arizona as ripe targets for “regularizing” the illegals with “documents” like driver’s licenses, work permits and eventual voter registration. It’s permanent Democrat rule by design.

Democrats undeniably expressed their need for bodies in their districts to maintain their Congressional seats. Their votes and policies adamantly reject using only legal citizens for apportionment and, most importantly, Electoral College (EC) votes in national election years.

The extra 10 to 20 House seats going to blue state Democrats mean potential majorities in Congress; the EC vote can then give the Democrat presidential candidate the edge in a close race. Even 10 or 15 extra EC votes from blue states due to illegal aliens can mean a 273 EC vote majority vs. a 265 EC vote loss.

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Not to beat a “dead horse” or, in this case, dead fast-food jobs, but owners of multiple restaurants are accelerating their transition to kiosks for ordering and robotic burger-makers, together with price hikes to remain financially afloat.

It’s been truly said that the actual minimum wage is “zero”; youngsters with little work experience beyond household and yard chores aren’t worth $20 an hour. Joke: “How do you know a college grad with a useless degree and tens of thousands of dollars in debt? They’ll say ‘May I take your order?’”

“Dems in CA Assembly Say Gavin Newsom Has Every Right to Play Hide the Sausage Behind an NDA” (Redstate.com). The “sausage-making” process for the $20 minimum wage law—which exempted Newsom-connected contributors and their fast-food franchises—is hidden behind “non-disclosure agreements” that have no place in supposedly transparent, legislative “people’s business.” Dems: “Pay no attention; move along.”