Don’t miss our special section on the candidates in today’s edition.
Analyze their words.
Three candidates either snubbed the Courier’s request to answer questions about their candidacies or just plain forgot. Use that as a gauge of leadership abilities.
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A sign of a candidate in trouble? I just checked Javier Lopez’s GoFundMe campaign fundraising account and see that he was donated $240 of his $20,000 goal.
That might buy two large campaign signs.
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It’s imperative that the Democrats’ narrative of higher taxes and excessive regulation be pushed back on Nov. 3. For those reasons I urge all to vote No on Prop. 15 and Yes on Prop. 22.
Prop. 15 is a new assault on the landmark Jarvis-Gann Initiative (Proposition 13) which was passed in 1978 to keep our property taxes in check. Now Democrats want to chip away at those protections by passing Prop. 13. It would strip the Prop. 13 protections for commercial and industrial properties. It also affects farmland. It’s known as a split roll and a similar one was rejected in 1992. CalChamber said “a split roll property tax would be so damaging to the state’s small businesses and the investment climate …”
Xavier Becerra is a master at labeling ballot measures that sound innocuous and altruistic. He labeled Prop. 15 the “Tax on Commercial and Industrial Properties for Education and Local Government Funding Initiative.”
Don’t fall for the political BS. This initiative should be called the “Further Shakedown of California Business and Job Killers Measure.” It is opposed by just about every taxpayer and business groups!
The state of California taxes all of us too much already. Voting yes on 15 is just asking them to continue the plundering. The state has proven it cannot live within its means taxing the crap out of everyone. If you tax business more it will have a chilling effect on jobs at a horrible time. COVID or not, we shouldn’t be extorting business the way California does. In 2018 691,000 Californians fled the state because it’s unaffordable. Imagine what happens when more jobs are sacrificed on the altar of Big Government in California.
Now for Prop. 22. VOTE YES! We want people to be able to work part-time if they so choose! As you know Uber and Lyft decided they weren’t going to do business in California after the Democrats rammed through a bill saying there is no such thing as an independent contractor and that companies must pay all of the benefits required by law. That meant no profit for Uber and Lyft and they shut down all the jobs.
Of course liberals and labor unions and Democrats will be voting “no” because they believe in milking businesses for every dime they are worth – even if it means those who want to earn money giving rides won’t have jobs as a result.
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Well, well, well.
Caltrans has finally cleared up the trash and debris in the freeway oleanders south of the Hatch Road overpass left by the homeless. It’s only has been there all year.
Now if the Southern Pacific Railroad could sweep the homeless off its right of way. Such an eyesore – and a dangerous one for the homeless.
You get the idea that COVID is just an excuse for doing nothing.
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The rest of the nation looks at California and just laughs at who we elect to office. We have the biggest collection of liberal loons: Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and Xavier Becerra.
The laughter increases last week when our dear governor decided by himself that he wants to ban fracking in California and the sale of cars with internal combustion engines by 2035.
And why are we mandating such an action before the technology is ready to answer the call?
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I’m concerned about what is happening to our kids because of social media. Apps like TikTok are presenting sexualized images for young girls to emulate. It’s a monkey-see, monkey-do thing. Teens and older women find it gratifying that, by shaking their barely clad butt for the camera, they can get male attention, clicks and money. It’s a moral cesspool for our kids to see.
It’s little wonder that on Thursday I saw a posting made by a Keyes parent who drew attention to a class – third-grade, mind you – at Keyes Elementary where a young lady is twerking on the table at break time. The parent of a child in that class posted that the same little exhibitionist was “cussing and flipping off” her 8-year-old daughter for reporting the lewd actions to adults.
I’m not a Bible thumper but it contains a lot of wisdom about putting a rein on the tongue. (1 Peter 3:10: “ “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.” You adults who like to freely use obscene language in front of your kids are just contributing to the degradation of our society. You wouldn’t cuss in front of others’ kids so why do you do it in front of your own? Or maybe you do cuss in front of other kids, to which I would say, wow.
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That’s not the only thing that’s rotten in our public schools. There are some rotten apples teaching in the classroom too.
Portland elementary school teacher Rose Addis, 35, was arrested at the Antifa riot on Sept. 5. Police records say she tried to steal an officer’s baton. She was charged with felony riot, theft, disorderly conduct and more.
Things are probably worse in college. Janet Gulla, an adjunct professor at Suffolk County Community College in New York, was recorded actively telling students to not to vote for Trump while lying about his record. The college “reassigned” Gulla out of the classroom by the college, which said it encourages any open and diverse discussion and exchange of ideas but not condones “electioneering by faculty in the classroom.”
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The economic blood loss continues.
California’s Democrats keep driving businesses and good paying jobs out of state with their insane regulations and excessive taxes. And when confronted about it they just don’t care.
Incora, an aviation supply chain, is moving its headquarters from SoCal to Fort Worth, Texas. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott touted the move which calls for a $6 million capital investment at the new facility that could have up to 239 workers. The reason for the move is simple, according to the Abbott: “Texas has cultivated a strong economic climate with low taxes, reasonable regulations and a high-caliber workforce, which allows companies like Wesco to innovate and prosper.”
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What happens when you flush values down the toilet? You get a bunch of insolent disrespectful individuals who create chaos in American streets.
In response to another police shooting, “protesters” in Pittsburgh began their march down to the mayor’s house – when did it become acceptable to accost officials at their private residences? – and they interrupted themselves at a restaurant to harass diners while screaming racist obscenities at them over a bullhorn.” What did they say? “F - - - the white people that built the system.” They mean the system that created a country so great that foreigners try to risk life and limb getting into; the land of plenty for those willing to work for it. But I understand hard work is not a virtue owned by many demanding everything handed to them from the government while expecting others to pay for it. You may have seen the incident on social media but you didn’t see it on cable news because the ones accosted were white and the confronters were black. That doesn’t work well into the CNN or MSNBC narrative.
By the way, the same guy with the bullhorn slugged a white bicyclist in the head just before the assault on the elderly white diners.
Who raises punks like this anyway?
The energy spent being angry and vile and mean and taunting innocent people – including the black manager of McDonald’s they were baiting into a fight – would be better spent to educate one’s self to learn how to raise one’s economic status.
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There’s an interesting piece on Facebook written by a lesbian named Amanda Kapes, hashtagged walkaway. She starts out saying how she “spent nearly the last four years LOATHING Donald Trump to my core.” In her second sentence she faults the mainstream media for “falsely depicting a man as someone who represented all things I had no tolerance for. You know the names: racist, homophobic, xenophobic; whatever other phobic you can tie on to a minority group.” Keep in mind that this master’s prepared licensed social worker admits that she once thought “most conservatives were bigoted, judgmental, narrow-minded, and uneducated” and that she hated them.
She’s done an about-face. She said it was after watching I watched Trump’s COVID-19 task force briefings without fail. She began noticing, for the first time, that MSN was twisting Trump’s words “so badly and so frequently” that she said, “Woah wait that is NOT what he said!”
The protests are what cemented her desire to leave the Democrat Party.
I’ll let Amanda speak: “I watched as law-abiding citizens were being criminalized for protesting shut downs in the name of public health. What happened to our Constitution? I stood in awe watching the riots as the media forgot COVID existed for weeks only to blame a spike on Memorial Day cookouts (ummm okay). I watched as tens of thousands, if not more, gathered in protests/riots as small businesses remained closed or shut their doors forever. Why are violent criminals going free? Why are people protecting their property as per the second amendment being persecuted? (I was all for gun reform. NOW I see quite clearly why we need them and am in the process of purchasing my own).
“I have been lied to. We have been lied to. Walking away feels like a second closet I never thought I’d have to step out of. I worry close friends will become distant, but it’s time to get to the truth. There’s too much at stake.”
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Xavier Becerra never lets up attacking the president. I didn’t realize that when you (I didn’t vote for him) elected him you were electing a full-time antagonist of the president, did you?
On Friday he sent out a presser railing on Trump for selling seven oil and gas leases on 4,000 acres in Kern County. More than 95 percent of federal drilling in California already occurs in Kern County.
Becerra always frames issues in terms of race and poverty so he wants you to know that fracking occurs “often in close proximity to California’s most vulnerable communities.”
Newsom ramped up the rhetoric saying “Climate change is real, and California will not stand idly by as the president tries to drive this country off a climate cliff.”
For the love of God, a climate cliff?
If fracking is so bad for humanity why do Democrats consistently use the “economic justice communities” argument? I mean, if it’s bad then it’s bad for the millionaire on his 100-acre spread nearby too but only the poor down-and-out people living in shanty towns are mentioned. It’s typical liberal class warfare which may appeal to the helpless masses who vote Democratic but is despicable to those like me who see what a sham it is.
Becerra claims fracking also heightens the risk of well cracks that can contaminate underground sources of drinking water and creates millions of gallons of wastewater contaminated with heavy metals and chemicals. Really? The National Academy of Sciences at Yale University in 2015 said: “We have found no evidence for direct communication with shallow drinking water wells due to upward migration from shale horizons. This result is encouraging, because it implies there is some degree of temporal and spatial separation between injected fluids and drinking water supply.”
The U.S. District Court in Wyoming said in 2015: “Experts and government regulators have repeatedly acknowledged a lack of evidence linking the hydraulic fracturing process to groundwater contamination.”
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in 2012: “Regulatory officials we met with from eight states – Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas – told us that, based on state investigations, the hydraulic fracturing process has not been identified as a cause of groundwater contamination within their states.”
They want total control.Their goal is to eliminate the car (I refer you to Newsom’s dictatorial move last week), and make people dependent on mass transit. And the sheeple bleeted “Baa baa baa.”
No wonder people are fleeing California. A word of note though to those who do move out: Don’t take your leftist policies with you and ruin other states.
There’s an old story that circus elephants are shackled to a tiny stake that can’t compete with their strength because that’s how they are conditioned since young. Little does the elephant know that its strength could rip the stake right out of the ground and he’s free to roam.
Voters, you are that elephant. You could free yourself by pulling up that stake which represents the Democrat party.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
