Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson     Red Bluff Daily News 10/08/2024

         Does CA create Newsoms, Harrises?

You could say that California’s political class, the elites in government—as well as the high tech titans who are unaffected by, even oblivious to, crime, homeless encampments, drug culture, and an unaffordable cost of living—create the Newsom and Harris type of political figures. They could never succeed in “red” states like Idaho or Oklahoma, without shedding their radical leftist skin like snakes, to appear devoid of their quasi-Marxist, Alinsky-ite, power-grabbing ways.

What other states—beside the “left coast,” or Illinois, New York or maybe Vermont—would enable the kind of arrogant, despotic governor (speaking of Newsom), blatantly disregarding the First Amendment of the Constitution, signing a law making “parody” ads illegal. Ridicule is a potent, effective weapon against political, even cultural, opponents.

Newsom, Harris, Walz, et al freely espouse exceptions to Freedom of Speech for “hate speech” (defined by leftist authoritarians), and the nebulous category of “misinformation” (simply put, actual information inconvenient to narratives and positions of Democrat rulers). Hence, they have become so unmoored from the rights our Founders said come from God as to be literal threats to democratic self-rule.

When those in positions of legislative authority assume the power to indict, prosecute, and jail opponents for the “crime” of mockery of themselves, an informed citizenry is short-circuited and channeled into approved patterns of thought, denied freedom of choice.

Thankfully, a Constitution-upholding judge just stopped the law: “That Was Fast: Federal Judge Humiliates Power-Hungry Gavin Newsom, Slaps Injunction on Anti-Parody Law” (Redstate.com, Bob Hoge). Judge: “AB 2839 does not pass constitutional scrutiny…” Free speech, not censorship, is the solution to bad information.

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“California Democrats vote down ‘no tax on tips’ bill proposed by Republicans” (Breitbart.com). Possibly tens of millions of women receive tips in service industry jobs benefiting them and their families. However, many of these same women are so immersed in abortion propaganda that the less than one million who get abortions, out of some 65 million of “child-bearing” age, become more important than the economic benefits of tax-free income. Instead of “my body, my choice” it should be “my money, my choice.”

“Gavin Newsom signs bill banning local voter ID requirements,” showing the adamant, obsessive aversion to any efforts to guarantee that only legal citizens with proper ID determine the results of elections.

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Consider the life story of Kamala Harris’s time in California. She claims a “middle-class” upbringing. Yet, both of her parents were tenured professors at Berkeley University, current salary around $165,000. One such salary is well above the middle-class range of $40,440 to $121,320 (2023). Two such salaries, at over $330,000, is probably in the top 5 percent of incomes in America.

That was probably the case in the 1970s as well. Pictures of her neighborhood in Montreal that I saw were described as among the richest in Montreal, the richest city in Canada. Judging by her reported $62,000 necklace worn when being briefed by Border Patrol, she acquired a taste for finer things over the years. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

We can deduce, from Kamala’s 2008 public position, that she has no respect for the Second Amendment’s enshrining of Americans’ right to “keep and bear arms.” When the Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.’s ban on handguns as a violation of the Second Amendment (Heller decision), Kamala Harris was the San Francisco District Attorney; she was “disappointed” in the ruling and was “proud” to lead a group of District Attorneys in filing an amicus brief to persuade the Court to uphold D.C.’s gun ban.

In a May 2007 press conference, she said: “Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn't mean that we're not going to walk into that home and check to see if you're being responsible.” Just a candid admission that, to Kamala, your “castle” is subject to “violation” at the whim of the state.

Consider Kamala’s immigration positions prior to her current pretense over immigration law enforcement. During a 2018 parade in Los Angeles, she is recorded leading the chant “Down down with deportation” (Daily Mail). “She supports decriminalizing illegal crossings, supports taxpayer-funded health plans for illegal immigrants, and wanted to gut and replace ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)” (Guy Benson, 9/23). She compared ICE agents to the Ku Klux Klan (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/flashback-harris-compared-ice-kkk-said-images-border-patrol-agents-evoked-slavery).

“In the area of reparations for descendants of Africans enslaved — if you’re elected president, would you sign that bill if it came across your desk?” racial agitator and MSNBC personality Al Sharpton asked Harris during her 2020 run for the White House. “When I am elected president, I will sign that bill,” Harris proudly responded.

In 2012, then-California's Attorney General Harris supported a bid by an illegal alien, Sergio Garcia, to have a license to practice law—a move that the Obama Administration strongly opposed. I don’t doubt that there are those among Tehama County’s voters that find her past positions laudable; I’m not among them.