Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson    Red Bluff Daily News 1/07/2024

        Here come some welcome sunny days

For what it’s worth, count this writer among the “no New Year’s resolutions” crowd; priorities and goals don’t change with the turning of a calendar page. They are there for all 12 months, not just January. Can I get an “Amen”? May all tests and procedures bring good news, and may the scale continue its downward trend.

It’s a conundrum to have so much rain pooling in the grassy areas, making mowing impossible; fortunately, nothing has grown high enough to need mowing. Predictably, the weeds and stuff will shoot up while we are in Bend, Oregon, skiing and watching “white” precipitation cover that yard. In May, we’ll find tall foliage and dry ground for the riding mower; it needs a cup holder.

Local employment data must have a caveat; Tehama County’s numbers consign it to the lower tier of state job creation/unemployment data. If we are a reflection of national trends, there are very few full-time jobs being added; non-citizens have an out-sized share of jobs; government and “government-adjacent” (health care- and education-related) jobs exceed the wealth-producing private-sector; and “labor force dropouts” included in the unemployed category means a recession-level jobs situation.

Congressman Doug LaMalfa won about 66% of the local vote—congratulations. His slogan about being “one of us” resonates for this writer. Doug is part of the slim congressional Make America Great Again majority; he’ll be part of the federal solution to what has plagued our nation for the last four years.

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A Los Angeles Times opinion piece, “California ruled with great jobs and boom times. What happened?” by Joel Kotkin (Dec. 26), paints an accurate but disappointing picture of our not-so-fair state’s condition.

“Gov. Gavin Newsom’s constant reminders that California’s economy ‘leads the nation’ as well as being a model for social justice are delusional. To be sure, California has a huge GDP, paced largely by high real estate prices and the stock value of a handful of tech companies, but it is not widely seen as a place for class mobility, and it is slowly ceding its dominance, even in tech-related industries.”

Is this shocking, even surprising, given the literal one-party, Democrat/leftist domination in Sacramento? We are ruled by a political and cultural clique where any “progressive” idea, no matter how loony-tune or out-of-step with the average Californian, finds a warm reception.

California is: 1) banning local efforts to prevent vote fraud by demanding voter ID; 2) eliminating about 100,000 parking spaces throughout the state because they are within 20 feet of a crosswalk; San Francisco alone will lose about 14,000 spaces in a city so short on parking that it can cost $400 to $600 a month to access a parking space;

3) Giving free medical care to illegal residents/migrants; 4) Providing a “payback optional” (if the house is sold) $150,000 loan to those same people illegally residing here—adding to the estimated annual $450 billion cost of illegals to America;

5) Requiring cars (after 2030) to come equipped with the ability to “beep” when traveling 10 miles over the speed limit. As introduced by state Sen. Scott Wiener, the bill would make new vehicles, trucks, and busses incapable of driving more than 10 miles an hour over the speed limit;

6) With Biden’s EPA approval, “California will ban the sale of gas and diesel cars by 2035” (Washingtonexaminer.com, 12/18). “The EPA approved California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rule on Wednesday, which bans new gas vehicle sales after 2035.” It will “set up a clash between the state and the incoming Trump administration.”

7) In yet another “your children are all ours” example, “California is 1st state to ban school rules requiring parents get notified of child’s pronoun change” (AP, 7/15/2024). It’s the diabolical, perverse attitude that children—who can’t get tattoos, use a gun, drink alcohol, vote etc—can decide what “gender” they feel like each day, without a hint to their parents that they are having personal delusions.

8) “California Law Mandating Indoctrination Of Students On Climate Change Goes Into Effect This Year,” by Tristan Justice (Thefederalist.com, 7/4/2024). CA schools have failed to improve basic educational skills, but let’s scare kids over climate hysteria into advocates for “green” ideology and laws.

Finally, 9) “150 California high school students punished for wearing ‘Save Girls’ Sports’ shirts,” Hamilton Porter (Notthebee.com, November). Sophia Lorey posted: “150+ MLK HS students in Riverside, CA wore ‘Save Girls Sports’ shirts after 2 female athletes were compared by admin to wearing ‘swastikas in front of a Jewish student’ for wearing this shirt. There is a male on the girls cross country team. Admin DRESS CODED students, forced students to COVER UP their shirts, & those who didn’t spent several hours in the principal’s office.”

Me: They are administration lunatics, despots running the “woke” asylum called high school, favoring deranged “transsexual” ideology over First Amendment freedom of students.