Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson     Red Bluff Daily News 10/22/2024

        Your vote can make a difference

I’ve neglected to mention the Republican headquarters for a couple of weeks. It’s in the former Ramsey Jewelers location at 748 Main Street. Stop and visit, even volunteer.

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“Ballot recommendations,” from Congressman Doug LaMalfa: At the top of the list are, of course, the candidates for President and U.S. Senator: Donald Trump and Steve Garvey. The last thing the U.S. Senate needs is to reward “shifty” Adam Schiff, whose career has been immersed in fruitless and deceptive campaigns against his political enemies. For Assembly District 1, he recommends Tenessa Audette; District 3, James Gallagher; for State Senate, Megan Dahle,

Republicans in Sacramento might be effective “speed bumps” keeping the more delusional and lunatic efforts by Democrats in check. Regarding propositions, Doug’s sensible positions are: Vote “NO” on Props 2 through 6, as well as 32 and 33.

I share Doug’s skepticism, and oppose school bonds (Prop 2), which only encourage the wasteful status quo of the nation’s near-highest per pupil spending, for which California reaps little to no improvement in test scores or work force preparation. High interest rates and a poor credit rating make it a bad idea, for which Democrats will inevitably complain that taxes must be raised—sending the tax-targeted to other states—perpetuating a vicious budgetary cycle.

Similar irrefutable logic suggests a “NO” vote on “Park Bonds” (Prop 4) and “Reducing the threshold for passing local bonds” (Prop 5). The voracious appetite for more funding for “under-managed parks, fake and expensive ‘green energy’ and environmental spending” must be countered with greater efficiencies and cuts to wasteful projects, not endlessly higher budgets.

Likewise, making it easier to pass bonds and increase indebtedness locally only encourages those with little “skin in the game,” i.e. renters, to vote to ultimately hike taxes on property owners (hint: they’ll end up raising rents).

Similarly, Prop 33, “Rent control,” is the exact opposite of a solution to “the rent’s too damn high” complaints. Make it easier to expedite housing projects by “greasing” the approval process and quashing nuisance litigation and silly environmental concerns. When I worked in Santa Monica in the 1980s, that city’s “rent control” rules resulted in moving vans being followed by those desperate for a vacated apartment due to the extreme shortage of housing—you really don’t want that statewide.

Prop 6, banning “Involuntary Servitude” as a component of punishment, is yet another ill-conceived effort to make incarceration free of consequences. “Prison should be a corrective experience that makes criminals never want to return; work programs can help them learn responsibility—being ‘soft on criminals’ never benefits society.”

Prop 3 is yet another attempt to dilute the will of voters who passed Propositions 8 and 22, defining marriage as the traditional union of a man and a woman. This ill-conceived measure “is so poorly written it may legalize polygamy, child marriage, incestuous marriage, and even allow parents to marry their children for tax purposes.”

Prop 32, “Increasing the minimum wage,” should be voted against for the simple reason that those with little to no job skills won’t get hired to begin with; they are not worth the cost of their labor. It will only further exacerbate the closing of restaurants and other entry-level businesses, increasing unemployment, and dependency on public benefits.

Vote “YES” on Props 34 (Stop taxpayer funds from being used for politics), 35 (Keep Sacramento from stealing hospital money), and especially 36 (Make crime illegal again). Prop 36 will reapply felony charges to massive retail theft; it will also apply the threat of jail to force drug addicts into treatment and, hopefully, set them on a much-needed path to reenter the workforce and a responsible life.

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Other nonsense: “Everyone loves rooftop solar panels. But there’s a problem” (Washington Post). In California, rooftop solar has shifted electricity costs such that poor residents (and anyone not getting the solar subsidies) are paying an estimated $6.5 billion more for their electricity.

“California moves to provide surrogates to gay male couples in the name of ‘fertility equality’—Democrat (of course) Senator Menjivar said the bill ‘will ensure that queer couples no longer have to pay more out of pocket to start families than non-queer families.’” (thepostmillenial.com)

There’s a slight problem with Kamala Harris’ claim that she prosecuted the Guadalajara Cartel, since it dissolved in the 1980s, years before she became a prosecutor. Also, her support for taxpayer-funded sex changes for transgender inmates has resulted in John Jacobson Jr., known as the “Yacht Killer,” getting just that: sex change surgery at taxpayer expense.

Gov. Newsom deserves credit, for once, for opposing the rabidly leftist California Coastal Commission’s rejection of Elon Musk’s SpaceX launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Naked partisanship has no place in denying permission for such advances in America’s space program.

Gallup polling found that only 31 percent of Americans have trust or confidence in mass media “reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly;” 69 percent have little or no trust in the news media.