Don's Tuesday Column

            THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   6/11/2024

From cold snap to outdoor sauna

Some stories were almost lost, amidst reports of people hit by trains, and our relocation confusion returning to Red Bluff. Accumulated newspapers being sorted, the newest editions are often last read.

A May 25 news item, “The sheriff’s office strikes back—Kain responds to Hydrick”: more than budgetary brew-ha-ha? The way I see it, law enforcement dollars, while fungible among various expenditures, have a pretty direct impact on the safety and quality of life in our fair town.

Chief Administrator Hydrick asserted that the RBPD budget is benefiting from a million-dollar increase; that vanishes against Sheriff Kain’s stated $3.5 million in increased costs which include inflation (meaning the cumulative 20+ percent inflation since, ahem, Jan. 2021). Unless I missed something, we will get a great deal less public safety in town. I’m all for well compensated public servants elsewhere in the city payroll but shortages in the police budget have got to be corrected lest we suffer.

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A March article, “Voters drum out supervisor who led right-wing shift,” was sourced to the Los Angeles Times. Odd that Shasta County is next door, but it’s not part of local reporters’ beat.

What offended me was the condescending, sneering perspective of the writers in that Southern megalopolis, where I lived—breathing the liberal air, drinking the leftist water and consuming the leftwing LA Times—for over 15 years. It was a refreshing, transforming move to Red Bluff in 1988, where I rediscovered my conservative roots, seeing the progressive SoCal hell-hole for what it was (Tehama County’s 2020 vote: Trump 66 percent).

From the article’s title through the first three paragraphs, you had “right-wing,” “hard-right (2x),” “far-right” and “ultraconservative” to describe defeated Shasta County Supervisor Patrick Jones, and narrowly retained Supervisor Kevin Crye. Pardon my cynicism when I say that, to hard-left LA Times reporters, anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders and “the squad” are “right-wing”; Republicans who happily let progressive socialists do anything they want are reasonable, “moderate” and “mainstream.”

From the first reports of the recall directed at Kevin Crye, I saw the public-employee, and outside liberal, money that targeted and demonized an opponent, ala Saul Alinsky, partly for the result and partly to dissuade others from following a path they oppose. I don’t have another explanation when you consider that Shasta County also voted 66 percent for President Trump.

The obsession by the Democrats over voting machines, mail-in ballots, and keeping voters from using paper ballots is mind-boggling. In the Dominion Machine case, the machines were hacked in real time in at least two public settings or hearings. That’s not a conspiracy but a fact. It troubles me that generally conservative voters can be persuaded by well-funded leftist campaigns to vote in favor of liberal causes.

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Reading January editions, it’s a weather warp of cold snaps and high water while we enter the “outdoor sauna” of a 100+ degree Red Bluff June. By the time you read this, we’ll be camped next to Odell Lake by the Willamette Pass in Oregon’s Cascades, looking to cross the state and eventually land in Stanley, Idaho, also in a lakeside campground. It’s a pattern culminating in coastal RV, and state, parks.

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Welcome and hopes for a full recovery for columnist Allan Stellar after a lengthy absence. Opine on, young man; share your thoughts on local and state events. Syndicated columnist Dick Polman is (bite my tongue) providing readers with iterations of Trump Derangement Syndrome; and twisted, obfuscated, inaccurate and slanted opinion on President Donald J. Trump. No need for more of that.

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I’ll echo former gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder’s Townhall column title: “California: Where Common Sense Goes to Die.” It’s what writers call an “ever green” topic providing “low hanging fruit” for ridicule.

“A Progressive Cal. Senator absolutely torches her party on its tolerance of child prostitution” (Aaron Walker, twitchy.com). I brought this issue—Sacramento Democrats’ tolerance of, and complicity in, child trafficking and abuse—to readers attention previously.

State Senator Talamantes is leaving the Democrat Party. “She claims her party was protecting people who abused children—meaning the ‘Johns’ in this case—and the ‘Democratic Party of California says it's okay’ that children are being abused.” Some Democrats on committees wanted 16- and 17-year-olds excluded from the law—meaning they wanted those legal minors to be allowed to have sex with adults.

Sacramento Democrats’ obsession with sex and kids is further explained in “California Considers Legislation Concealing Students’ Gender Transitions From Parents” (Dailysignal.com). Silly, un-woke parents.

From the Wall Street Journal: “California’s $25-an-Hour Minimum-Wage Boomerang—Gov. Newsom now says the law he signed last October would add to the state’s fiscal woes. He ignored warnings at the time.” The curse of good intentions: 10,000+ unemployed restaurant workers, hundreds of closed restaurants; and now the costs for $25-an-hour minimum wages for healthcare workers gets passed onto taxpayers via a $45 billion budget deficit.

More to come.