Don's Tuesday Column

        THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   7/16/2024

The sky’s the limit; limits on camping

This column was completed on Friday. Regarding the assassination attempt on President Trump: Any leftist, progressive and/or Democrat who has demonized Trump as Hitler, a Nazi, or fascist “threat to democracy” has blood on their hands. Biden: “It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.” (Politico.com) ‘Nuff said.

Ironically, the crystal clear, azure skies over Stanley Lake (“Dark Sky Reserve” with zero “light pollution”), had smoke from Oregon fires in addition to California fires. Decamping to our Bend, OR, home, we see amber tint at the local 4,000-foot elevation; the web cams at Mt. Bachelor reveal smoke up to 8,000 feet. The Sawtooth Mountains and lakes were a breathtaking way to start summer travels.

It was a treat waking up in the middle of the night, looking out our motorhome windows and seeing bands of stars on horizons; the first quarter phase of the moon rose a nearly white shade, not yellow or orange. The Milky Way was a river of sparkling points of light.

Crossing Oregon from east to west required a safety break from driving to let the glaring sun drop below the horizon. Then, a rest stop about a hundred miles from Bend allowed for sleep to avoid driving fatigue.

As the skies showed first light to the east, we had a “curvature of the earth” view of the Cascades. You may have seen the horizontal surface of the ocean show a slight bulge when viewed at the coast, or in Hawaii. At Lake Tahoe, looking from the north end to the south with binoculars, you don’t see the shore but rather almost a hundred feet up from the shore, into the pine trees.

Imagine that! Proof that the Earth isn’t flat. Well, driving in the morning dawn, we saw these three little bumps on the western horizon. The further we drove, we realized that they were the Three Sisters peaks and, at over 115 miles looking through smoke-free air, the below-tree-line bulk of the mountains was hidden by the “not-so-flat earth” between us and them. Every 10 or 15 miles we saw more of the Sisters’ flanks and snow, pink in the rising sun.

Our magnificent earth is full of such visual treats if you know where to go and which direction to look. From the Summit at Bachelor on a clear day, to the south is a white bump, Mount Shasta. Now, from the 9,000-foot top of Bachelor, looking over the 7,000-foot ridges of southern Oregon, were it not for the Earth’s curvature, we would see the forested lower flanks just above the city of Mount Shasta.

However, only the snowy fields halfway between the tree line and the 14,000-foot peak are visible. The earth “drops” thousands of feet over those 170 “as the crow flies” miles.

***

With home wi-fi comes local news, including the front-page report on the PATH navigation facility for homeless folks wanting such services. The numbers served may hopefully deliver Red Bluff from some of the unfortunate impacts of the misguided court-ordered tolerance of public camping. The Ninth Circuit ludicrously ruled that cities cannot outlaw such “occupation” of public spaces; it’s been thankfully overturned by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Grants Pass case.

The majority’s common sense prevailed over a misguided analysis by the court’s liberal justices who agonized over whether legal sanctions against “conduct” (using parks for bedrooms, bathrooms, drug dens, etc.) are unfairly penalizing the personal “status” of “being” an “unhoused” person. Such liberal illogic upends civil, law-based proscriptions against offensive public activity.

Thankfully, conservative decisions and the twisted liberal dissents—such as what came down over public homeless camping—should show voters that leftist thinking undermines the quality of life, civil propriety, and the enjoyment of parks and public spaces that citizens are entitled to take for granted.

Red Bluff, Chico, Redding, and towns and cities across the land can now enforce laws written for the common good, while compassionately offering to shepherd those open to changing their lifestyle and reentering responsible “paths” of integration to education, work and housing.

***

Articles informed us that California, among several Democrat-run states, have suffered self-imposed departures of income-producing citizens. It turns out that just as tolerance of homelessness befouling city sidewalks and parks drives the “normals” away—so too do the degradations of retail theft, gang violence, drug culture and wanton crime send workers and businesses to “red states” like Utah, Idaho, Arizona and Texas.

“Thanks to a mass exodus of prosperous citizens and in-migration of poorer individuals (especially illegal aliens), woke California has seen a drop of $24 billion in personal income. Ah, another wonderful success for Marxist socialism!” (pjmedia.com, July 9)

The Center Square reported that Calif. lost 144,203 tax filers, representing $24 billion in lost personal adjusted gross income. Those coming in had nearly 20 percent less income than those leaving. Democrats willfully impose miserable conditions; Californians respond by fleeing; budgets foreseeably reflect declining revenue, furthering citizens’ discomfiture. Rinse, repeat.