Don’t ever think that a teacher’s union must be worthy because they represent the teacher. They are socialist organizations. Want proof? The American Federation of Teachers just endorsed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders for president. Sanders, who has heart issues and would be 83 by the end of his first term, won’t say how he’d pay for his Medicare-for-All scheme but the assumption is he’d raise taxes faster than a jack rabbit on a date.
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Only in Gavin Newsom’s California would you ever think that statues of long-respected historical figures and symbols be dismantled while, at the same time, things like a 7-foot-tall statue of a disheveled homeless bum goes up in front of a Santa Monica bank.
People are frankly getting tired of putting up with bums – that’s what we used to call homeless – in California so it’s a little more than irritating to see such an expression.
I have a heart for the homeless but the bigger part of me says most enjoy living the life of a vagabond if it means they get to check out of life whether by drugs or alcohol addiction or just plain laziness. Sure, there’s a lot of mental illness and they need a place for treatment. And I am okay with government having programs and housing for those who are salvageable to get people off the streets. But there’s also an old saying that talks about people having to hit bottom in order to see the need for change.
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As evidence of how pathetically short of housing units Stanislaus County is, I noted how a project that broke ground in Turlock has 500 families on the waiting list for 60 units. Turlock approved the second phase of Avena Bella at 500 Linwood which will offer subsidized housing.
Ceres, as you know, has approved only one apartment complex in like the last 15 years. It, however, will not be for low-income.
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You know you’re in trouble as governor when the San Jose Mercury News starts bagging on you. An editorial in the newspaper took Gavin Newsom to task for a crisis that he doesn’t seem to want to fix. An editorial that ran on Oct. 25 said how Newsom will deal with the PG&E dilemma will “determine whether you walk away with a legacy of having reshaped the state’s electricity delivery system — or face the fate of Gray Davis, the governor ignominiously recalled in 2003 after the state’s energy crisis.” The piece suggests PG&E needs to be broken up or taken over publicly with no interest in that by the governor.
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“We are creating a society of people waiting to be offended.”
I’ll agree with that statement Tweeted by Charlie Kirk recently after some of the skulls of mush at Starbucks approved the use of gender pronouns. They want “they/them” pronounced because a female with female parts could be offended because she identifies as a male and vice versa.
Why is this happening in America? I think you can blame social media for the spread of mass confusion. “The rise of social media means that cultural transformations can happen faster and disseminate more broadly than in earlier eras,” said sociologist Carla Pfeffer. Yeah, and add to that spreading perversions and bald-faced lies and confusion faster than before. That explains why there is a foaming-at-the-mouth hatred for our president on the left.
When you have your belief system rooted solidly in time-tested tradition, you don’t fall whim to societal trends that defy logic, common sense or the truths of basic human biology.
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In time we’ll learm how pot is destroying people.
A new study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry argues that while changes in state’s marijuana laws have provided “important social benefits, particularly around issues of equity in criminal justice,” the climb in conditions like cannabis use disorder are a “potential public health concern.” Specifically, cannabis use disorder is where a person’s use of pot negatively affects their life over the course of 12 months. They might use pot so much it makes it hard to work or fulfill responsibilities in the home.
The team looked at data from states where cannabis had been legalized by 2016 – Colorado,Washington, Alaska, and Oregon – and noted cannabis use has climbed by 23 percent when compared with states where recreational use isn’t allowed. Problematic cannabis use rose by 37 percent after recreational marijuana legalization.
While minors may not legally smoke pot in any state, cannabis use disorder has risen 25 percent among the 12- to 17-year-olds compared with those in the same group in other states.
So if you herald pot smoking as a good thing, remember it’s crippling lots of people, robbing them of ambition and productivity and making them dependent upon others.
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I had trouble stomaching Gov. Newsom’s remarks made in Fresno at the Nov. 8 California Economic Summit. His arrogance and condescension is off-putting. In talking about the so-called “California Dream,” he makes fun of Alabama, you know, because it’s a red state that voted for Trump. I have a step-sister who not only loves Huntsville but talks about the intelligence, class and southern culture there. We know Newsom and his ilk belittle the people there because they are conservative.
Newsom talked about how the rest of the country marvels at how Californians “live, advance and prosper together.” Excuse me, governor, but the rest of the country thinks California is a national circus and you’re the head ringmaster.
I know he hasn’t traveled from Sacramento to Modesto to see the huddled masses sleeping in makeshift tents where they are “prospering” under the Ninth Street Bridge but he did boast that he spent time (hours) “Sanger, Ceres, the Monterey Park Tract (he incorrectly said Monterey Tract Park) not just like the big cities like Fresno, Bakersfield, Merced.” It’s so big of him to head on down where the little people live. All we got out of his visit to rural Ceres was a proposal to tax ALL of our water.
When I saw this cocky liberal running for governor at a 2017 Salida appearance he spoke about the horrible poverty in the state and how it happened on the Democrat’s watch (he admitted that!). Now he’s bragging about a budget surplus. If George Deukemejian were governor, he would say that’s a sign that the state has taxed too much and needs to give it back from whence it came – you and me.
Why Newsom fails to see the poverty abound in the dust bowl of the state – our Valley – explains who he is. Newsom reeks of playboy arrogance.
After saying our biggest problem is how we are “so damned divided,” he goes on to taunt President Trump with soundbites of “Donald Trump eat your heart out” while he brags of a huge surplus – the only way you can get a surplus is by overtaxing people – while the federal government continues to be in deficit mode. Didn’t President Obama hand Trump a national debt that was $9 trillion higher than when he found it?
Newsom also bragged about his blue state leaders using surplus taxpayer money to the tune of $9 billion to pay down pension obligations. No talk of public pension reform and busting labor’s stranglehold on local governments.
Newsom is no uniter. He continues to divide and he has an attorney general to further the divide with partisan lawsuits.
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Last week the California State Supreme Court slapped both the governor and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra silly. Newsom signed SB 27 that attempted to keep Trump off the ballot in March unless he released his tax returns (which he is not obliged to do). It was an unconstitutional action and both of those boobs knew it. As such, I think they both deserve removal from office.
Schwarzenegger appointed Chief Justice Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye suggested lawmakers just make up laws without regard for the Constitution. She’s absolutely right when she stated: “We’ve searched the record to determine whether or not the California Legislature even considered the California constitution in the drafting of SB 27. We didn’t find anything. Did you?” What a burn!
Pete Wilson appointed Justice Ming Chin asked: “Where does it end? Do we get all high school report cards?”
The two vow to keep fighting for an unconstitutional law. They deserve recall.
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Has Newsom been to his beloved City by the Bay lately? He openly brags about record jobs growth in California but the San Francisco Chronicle just reported that “Vacant storefronts mar nearly every shopping district in San Francisco — from North Beach to Union Street.” What is the plan of the Board of Supervisors to fill those storefronts? (Okay, let me give you a hint: They’re all Democrats and what do Democrats like to do?) They want to tax landlords who leave their storefronts empty for more than six months!
If you are a landlord what you don’t want is a vacant building with no rental income. But it’s just like a liberal to cause a problem of a business exodus and add insult by exacerbating the problem by adding yet more taxes! If supervisors want business to flourish, get rid of the city’s arduous permitting processes and the high cost of doing business in San Francisco with the socialist taxes to make businesses pay for healthcare.
I couldn’t disagree more with Supervisor Aaron Peskin’s assertion that his harebrained idea is a “long overdue common-sense policy … “about changing certain bad actor landlords’ behavior.” The Chronicle said it investigated the shuttered sites to conclude that small businesses are impacted by the high cost of labor, rent and a city permitting process that can take up to a year and a half.
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Do you ever wonder why there is such a hard push of the Democrats to legalize marijuana use at the federal level? Maybe they see a stoned electorate as their best hope to retain voters?
At the Democrat debate last week Sen. Cory Booker put down Biden after alleging Biden said he didn’t want to legalize pot. Booker’s response to Biden was: “I thought you might have been ‘high’ when you said it.’ (Ha ha ha. Audience laughs at Biden’s expense.) I find it more than sad that a U.S. senator would make fun of someone who second-guesses that marijuana is a good thing to legalize.
But Booker made pot a racial thing, saying “marijuana in our country is already legal for privileged people.” Privileged as in every adult living in California, Nevada, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Vermont and the District of Columbia? That kind of privilege, senator?
Booker pulled the worn-out race card when he charged that because there are more blacks in prison than any other race, that the war on drugs is a “war on black and brown people.” And I was under the impression that people of any color are in prison because they were convicted of committing crimes.
Never fear, Democrats don’t believe in consequences for bad actions. Biden kowtowed and said, “I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period. And I think anyone who has a record should be let out of jail, their records expunged, completely zeroed out.”
Great. Let’s let people out of jail who only know drugs, addiction and peddling drugs. We know the crime resulting from Democrats in California letting the thieves and corner pot dealers out of prisons.
At least Biden wants to study long-term effects of pot use before changing federal law.
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California is at war with Christian organizations.
A 250-acre Christian boarding school in Northern California – River View Christian Academy (RVCA) in rural Shasta and operated as a ministry of Teen Rescue, a religious non-profit – won a reprieve in court on Nov. 20 against the state’s ideologically-driven efforts to shut it down. The dispute centers on the state’s unilaterally re-labeling of RVCA as a “community care facility” which would force the school into heavy regulation by the California Department of Social Services, including mandates that would violate the school’s religious beliefs.
Judge Tamara Woods of the Shasta County Superior Court issued a ruling denying the state’s motion seeking to force the school’s closure. The judge expressed concern with the First Amendment implications of the state’s demands. The school is represented by Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) and insurance defense counsel. In briefing, PJI has emphasized the unconstitutional overreach of the State’s actions.
The state raided RVCA in January with 16 armed CHP officers, two canines, and 17 social workers to investigate internet rumors that the school housed illegal drugs, stockpiled weapons for an end-times apocalypse. They found nothing of the sort.
Instead of retreating from its blunder, the state doubled down and began imposing daily fines against the school for allegedly operating as an “unlicensed community care facility” despite that RVCA has actually operated as a private school for the past 25 years, filing an annual affidavit with the California Department of Education as do other private schools and homeschools in California.
The state now insists that the school is an illegal, unlicensed community care facility. RVCA officials have never thought of the facility as such. They claim licensing would be an administrative headache and would require the Christian school to relinquish its moral standards. For instance, the state requires that licensed facilities allow students to have the right to engage in spiritual and sexual exploration, which contradicts the beliefs of many parents who enroll their kids in RVCA.
Last month I wrote about how your state Legislature – governed by a Democrat supermajority – has waged war on the Christian church, as hard as that is to believe.
The Legislature passed ACR 99 which is a direct affront on the Biblical teachings pertaining to sexuality and the need for repentance, blames “religious groups” for the “disproportionately high rates” of suicide among homosexuals and so-called transgenders.”
The resolution, written by Assemblyman Evan Low, a big-city openly gay Democrat, formally declares that homosexuality and transgenderism are “part of natural variations that occur in sexual orientation and gender identity” and condemns the counseling of individuals to change from living homosexual or transgender lifestyles, citing that such actions have resulted in suicides.”
Low – with the help of Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced – thinks the church should be silent on moral issues, which is an affront to Christianity.
Since California liberals already outlawed “conversion therapy” for minors in 2012, “it’s clear this resolution is meant to pave the way for penalizing religious communities in California, for standing up for what they believe in, a direct violation of their First Amendment rights,” wrote Nicole Russell in the Washington Examiner.
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Young socialists are not interested in civility or freedom of expression. They try to shut down people they don’t like. Rudeness is what they are.
So when Ann Coulter was booked to speak at UC Berkeley, what did they do? Try to shout her down and disrupt her speech. Protesters surrounded Wheeler Hall where Coulter spoke. Chants of «No Coulter, No ICE, Berkeley is a sanctuary,» «Ann Coulter wants ethnic cleansing, we say no,» «racists go home,» as well as calls to «shut down» Coulter broke out. In one video posted to social media, an individual is heard shouting, “Get the f**k out of here, bitch!”
Weren’t these people taught any manners? Were they ever spanked for disrespect? Or were their parents just really keen at being their “friend”? Makes you wonder.
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
