Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson     Red Bluff Daily News 12/10/2024

   Door-to-door sales; dead career criminal

Among the vacation-held Daily News issues, several July editions’ obituary sections noted Susie Mustaine’s death, which sparked a memory from the 90s, when a knock on our door introduced us to the first ever British-accented person we’d met in Tehama County. It was Ms. Mustaine introducing herself for her financial planning services and business, as an Edward Jones agent.

Lacking any pressing need for said services—though in hindsight we might have benefited—the doorway exchange might have been as forgotten as numerous other door-knocking solicitations, but for the chirpy, confident accent we’ve come to love in our Britbox streaming programs. God rest her soul.

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It reminded me of my own door-to-door sales experiences in the 1970s, as a 20-something in Southern California: Decorative candles, Fuller Brush products (the most lucrative commissions at about $100 a week, $700 today), and offering to paint home address numbers on curbs. Then there were the “bird-dogging” rounds (generating leads for sales reps) for gold coins, exterior siding, “texture coating” etc.

That last one took me to inland towns like Desert Hot Springs and Indio Hills, where I saw the sales reps ply their techniques of persuasion over kitchen tables, including an occasional kick to my shin for uninvited input. I learned about disreputable practices like “spiking” a house the next day after a contract signing—where workers would show up and dig the dirt away from the foundation as prep for the “coating” or siding.

If the unsuspecting homeowner had second thoughts about their purchase, they were pressured to either pay an excessive fee for the “work” performed, or agree to obligate themselves to the “home improvement” contract. Since they were unlikely to know about the “3-day right of rescission,” some were brow-beaten into acquiescence.

The disreputable company practicing said subterfuge made the mistake of trying that on a state senator in Palm Springs, prompting legal attention that didn’t work out well for them. I then found out, upon asking for my final paycheck, that they considered the costs of hotel room and food to be deductible, leaving me “owing” them more than my wages.

Their receptionist was basically a financial slave for having the bad judgment of borrowing money secured by her home mortgage. It could have been a costly “job” had I not had an honest face and asserted that I was in the right to demand my fair pay. The company met its demise.

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While the school shooting south of Oroville—“Palermo school shooter had meeting set...schools open after Seventh-day Adventist school shooting”—is subject to new revelations from the investigation, readers noted a Red Bluff connection. “The man who shot two students...had targeted a second school, the Red Bluff School of Seventh-day Adventists.” I pray for the recovery of those two precious boys from that vile attack.

As this is the “Opinion” page, here’s “the way I see it.” Beyond the extensive criminal and mental health issues, there’s a pretty obvious anti-Christian angle, given the deceased (by his own hand) suspect’s focus on religious schools. While we may never know exactly how that hatred factored into his many twisted thoughts and motivations, there is—among the cesspools of online hatred—fanatical and irrational anathema for western religion, specifically America’s Christians.

While deranged psychopaths obsess over numerous imagined causes, I’ll refer to the cited, typed note stating that the shooter “carried out countermeasure in necessitated response to Americas involvement with the Genocide and Oppression of Palestinians along with attacks towards Yemen.” His claimed position as a “Lieutenant” in what appears to be an imaginary “The International Alliance” only contributes to the merging of mental derangement and current political controversy over the Middle East, which is motivating masses of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli activists to violence.

All of that aside, there remains the astoundingly extensive criminal history of the shooter, extending to much of California over decades, including this year. How is it that a conviction on 12 counts in 2003 only kept this abominable human in jail for 3 years? A federal conviction in 2015, with his extensive record, still allowed him out, “free as a bird” to pursue his criminal intents. He acquired a drug store job in Phoenix, AZ, in March of this year, where theft of cash on his second day of work again resulted in no jail.

The “coup de grace”—which should have put him behind bars for many years, instead of getting his hands on weapons and shooting up a religious school—was when just last month he apparently 1) stole a rental truck, 2) was picked up by SFPD with 3) a forged license, false ID, and 4) had an outstanding warrant for burglary out of San Bernardino County, for which he was “released by the court in his own recognizance” on November 24.

Is it any mystery why voters gave 69 percent approval for toughening punishment of criminality (Prop 36), this school shooter’s chosen career?