Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson       Red Bluff Daily News 4/08/2025

    CA: absurd, ludicrous, even grotesque

Before itemizing our not-so-fair state’s abnormalities, I’ll share comments on local items: Seeing the traffic focus south of town, I’d like to remind readers about traversing traffic circles (Bend’s 20+ circles provides much practice).

While there are no “Stop” signs, a “slow and go” traffic circle still needs you to come to a stop until there is a safe gap for you to enter. If drivers use their turn signal to indicate their exit before your entry point, you should be able to rely on their intention to exit; however, be sure they are exiting to avoid a collision.

That turn signal etiquette/law is your way of letting another driver, waiting to enter the circle, know your intentions so they can move into the circle. Don’t get aggressive and think you can speed into it before a car gets to your entry spot. It will only make for flared tempers; be safe, be courteous.

Next, I see an emphasis on our local economic prospects. While having no expertise on the subject, it behooves this 34-year resident to remind readers that, before we relocated from Los Angeles in 1991, our local lumber mills provided a decent income for many high school graduates; enough to pay rent or even save for college or learn a skill and advance in life.

Had Tehama County been the master of its own future, our own forests could have continued providing such economic livelihoods, feeding local businesses and charities, since replaced with government welfare, unemployment and, yes, homelessness.

You should thank, even resent, the legal, political and environmental busybodies that run this state for their deluded obsession with the Spotted Owl, which was found to utilize second growth just fine—and is now so threatened by the Barred Owl that they’re proposing to hunt and kill those owls. Forests regrow; harvested forests provide fire breaks; enviro-fanatics don’t care a whit for our economic well-being while they’re worshiping critters and nature.

Then, while it was controversial—mainly because big-bucks Bay-area lawyers on a jihad against industrial development scared the locals with tales of poisons emanating therefrom—the refusal to allow InEnTec to build a medical waste incineration plant south of town (with well-paying jobs) sent a message to other potential clean industries.

We’ll never know how many such businesses abandoned placing a facility in Tehama County and, like InEnTec, looked over the border to Nevada, or other states that valued their citizens’ jobs and economy.

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El Dorado’s sheriff is criticized over his cooperation w/ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to remove illegal alien criminals from their county. A judge in Boston is ludicrously attempting to hold an ICE officer in contempt for arresting an illegal criminal in a courtroom.

These addle-brained, soft-on-illegals local authorities would apparently rather have federal enforcement (which “trumps” local and state interference) risk collateral damage to people by going into neighborhoods to arrest such criminal aliens.

According to a poll, Huntington Beach is California’s best run city; it also has no liberals or Democrats on it’s city council. Co-inkey-dink? They also approved a non-sanctuary city initiative.

Absurd criminal punishment: A homeless man who murdered another sleeping homeless man in Santa Monica in 2023 by bashing his skull in with a metal pipe has been given diversion, and will see no prison time (Bill Melugin, 3/17/2025).

Both Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Agriculture Secretary Rollins are investigating California over its law prohibiting school officials from sharing a child’s “gender identity” with parents. The Newsom-signed law, putting teachers’ twisted priorities over parents’ rights, violates the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act, McMahon says.

A related note: “'Will You Side With the Truth?' Matt Walsh BLISTERS California Legislature on Trans Ideology” (Twitchy.com, 4/02). The truth is that there are only two, TWO, sexes: male and female. Denying girls and women their privacy and accomplishments in sports is ludicrous and bizarre.

“Department of Justice Opens an Investigation Into LA County’s Systemic Delays in Granting Carry Permits” (Shootingnewsweekly.com, 3/28). “Justice delayed” (in the form of foot-dragging on a citizen’s 2^nd Amendment rights) “is justice denied.”

Grotesque: A ballot initiative that would regulate health insurance reimbursements has been named in honor of Luigi Mangione, “accused of the cold-blooded murder of the United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson” (KTLA.com).

“CA lost 173,000 private jobs, added 181,000 government and largely part-time jobs” (thecentersquare.com, 3/27); “SoCal Job Creation Drops 33%” (Orange County Register, 4/02); “Study Confirms California Policies Ignited High Gas Prices in the Golden State” (Redstate.com, 4/01); “New San Francisco program backed by Newsom will issue speeding tickets based on income” (Nypost.com, 4/01).

Meanwhile, significant “Numbers of Californians are Open to Voting Republican in Next Year’s Election” (Townhall.com, 3/24). Cause and effect?

Good news: “Slow Demise of DEI: University of California System Stops Requiring Diversity Statements in Hiring” and “California-Mexico border, once overwhelmed, now nearly empty” (Latimes.com, 3/30).