The optics of Ceres, being a Tree City USA, cutting down 39 mature trees around the city’s only baseball complex to remedy a lighting issue is not a good one.
The judgment of City Hall is colliding with the practical experiences of two men who are close to the ground in terms of overseeing the youth baseball program. CYB leaders Ismael Ontiveras and Jorge Guerrero are adamant that the trees surrounding the George Costa baseball complex are not the problem yet the city appears to be committed about ripping them out. The City Council will make a final decision on March 9 as the start of CYB nears on March 28.
City Engineer Mike Beltran – who has respectable knowledge in the field of engineering but not necessarily lighting – is adamant that cutting down the trees will cure the problems of spots on the field.
Cutting down the trees at a cost of $57,000 – apparently there is money and it’s not coming from the General Fund – comes at a time when the city is getting blasted about plans to cancel the summer aquatics program in the interests of saving more than $40,000.
Planning Commission Chairman Gary M. Condit, obviously with design on being mayor, confronted the council with a good point is to why the council finds it necessary to have taxpayers continue funding the medical benefits of three members. Last year the council voted 3-2 to continue the practice with Mayor Javier Lopez, Vice Mayor Daniel Martinez and Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra benefitting from taxpayer funded medical and dental coverage. Only James Casey and Cerina Otero supported ending the council benefits package. Casey is a businessman who has his own insurance and Otero works for the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department.
It’s puzzling why Vierra – who works from Modesto Junior College which offers benefits – needs city paid bennies. The same goes for Martinez who has a solid job in the private sector with bennies. The mayor, we understand, is self-employed.
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A person anonymously sent an email to be read at the last Ceres City Council meeting. I’m always amused by those who hide behind anonymity to express their political views.
This person – perhaps a young person by the way it’s worded – wrote: “What is the city of Ceres doing or plan to do in preparation for the potential of an ICE presence? And two, speaking of an unwanted presence in the data from the new surveillance cameras that are just about every intersection and plaza be presented and explained at the moment, if not, why.”
Apparently this person wants criminals to hide in the shadows too.
In case the anonymous letter writer is reading, ICE is most welcome to us American citizens who value the rule of law and national sovereignty. The escalation of ICE is an issue because: a). Biden allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens across the border and Trump is now cleaning up his mess and; b). because the national media is obsessed with using it as a divisive tool in their unrelenting attempt to tear down Trump and prevent the GOP from hanging onto its majority at the midterms.
ICE agents enforce immigration laws passed by Congress long before Donald Trump ever had dreams of being president. The federal government has a right to determine which foreigners can live here as legal citizens or not. Congress could choose to further restrict or even stop all immigration – something within its power.
And about those license plate reader cameras placed at some intersections in Ceres. They have been helping police catch criminals! If you are out in public, you are constantly being recorded by surveillance cameras on private houses, on commercial buildings and on light poles owned by the city. Unless a person is out committing crimes or speeding through red lights, why care if there is a license plate reading camera on a pole?
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You’ve probably heard leftists like Katie Curic attack ICE for suggesting they are ridding the streets of criminals. Curic and others have stated that ONLY 14 percent of those being deported are violent offenders.
What they won’t tell you is that some crimes are not considered “violent,” such as child molesters, drug dealers who sell fentanyl, child pornographers, thieves and others.
So the 14 percent number is not accurate in terms of how many criminal aliens are being deported.
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Some law firms are blood sucking opportunists. I heard a radio commercial placed by a Chicago law firm trolling for parents who believe that their children became addicted to platforms like Instagram and Facebook and YouTube to contact their law firm for a lawsuit against those platforms because they “knew that their products were addictive and didn’t do anything about it.”
Who is really responsible for their children being addicted to social media? Don’t parents have control over devices?
How is the platform responsible if someone becomes addicted to it? The individuals are responsible for their own behavior.
I know life isn’t all that cut and dried but why are these platforms being targeted when the real culprit are the parents. The funny thing is that the law firm wants “victims” to text the word “parents” to their number. How ironic.
Class action lawsuits are all about lining the pockets of law firms.
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Left wing commentators like Vitus Spehar, commonly known as V on TikTok, are putting patently false spins on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. It passed last week in the House of Representatives, 218 to 213. Only one Democrat voted for it. By the way, local congressman Adam Gray didn’t support the SAFE Act, which is designed to prevent voter fraud and stop non-citizens from voting – which is already illegal but happens anyway for the sloppy system we have in place.
Spehar claims that it would block 21 million eligible voters from voting. Lie.
She suggests that those who don’t have their birth certificate won’t be able to vote. Not true.
She also claims married women who changed their last name won’t be able to vote. Not true.
Here’s the deal: if a woman gets married and uses her husband’s last name, federal and state law already requires them to alert the Social Security Administration by filling out Form SS-5. Then the state driver’s license or state ID must be changed too, most often within 10 to 30 or 60 days of the name change. That act requires showing the old driver’s license and the marriage certificate – no birth certificate!
The SAVE Act would only require voters to show a driver’s license or state issued ID card at the polls, not a birth certificate!
The left is only trying to confuse the issue because they like unvetted voters. Ask yourself why that’s the case? Is it really about disenfranchising voters or is it because the Democratic Party is benefitting from people who have no right to vote?
“V” likened the act to a return to the days of fascistic “show your papers.” It’s pure propaganda. Face it, we “show our papers” to get the right to drive a car, fly on a plane, buy alcohol, open a bank account, apply for work, buy a firearm or even buy Sudafed at the local drug store. But yet we’re not supposed to ensure that the prized right to cast ballots to govern ourselves is legitimately carried out? Nonsense.
Owen Bacskai of the left wing Brennan Center also took to social media to influence the skulls full of mush with more falsehoods. He stated: “If the SAVE Act becomes law, when you register to vote you will be required to show a document proving your U.S. citizenship. For most Americans that means producing a passport or a birth certificate every time they register to vote.”
Not true. As of mid-2025, 160 million Americans were issued Real IDs issued as a time when 160 million were registered to vote! Real IDs are verification from the DMV that you are a U.S. citizen! The reason the government began Real ID is because 9/11 terrorists obtained driver’s licenses from some states (California started giving driver’s licenses to illegal aliens).
Democrats are totally out of step with the American people on this issue.
A Pew Research Center survey revealed that Americans overwhelmingly support voter ID laws, with 95 percent of Republicans in support of the requirement to show a photo ID to vote and 71 percent of Democrats!
Time for the Democrats to follow their constituents for a change.
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You and I know that insurance costs have spiked in recent years, particularly home and health. My health insurance premiums nearly doubled between 2025 and 2026.
But is Assemblyman Carl DeMaio being an alarmist when he declares that health insurance in California will jump 65 percent? The freshman San Diego Republican claims the problem is the two-third super majority lock the Democrats have on the state Legislature. Newsom would have you believe it’s because the Trump White House is withdrawing federal subsidies and thus the state is now on the hook to cover all of covering health costs for illegal aliens. DeMaio says insurance costs are high because that’s what the medical community and doctors are charging. He feels the state needs to enact reforms, slash the red tape and get rid of mandates on doctors and hospitals.
Republicans in Sacramento want to see an end to the $13 billion of state taxpayer money being used to give illegal immigrants free health insurance, and take $2.5 billion to offset the increase in insurance to the rest of us which is coming.
DeMaio claims it is the state’s overregulation for exorbitant medical costs. Case in point: the average visit to an emergency room in California costs $3,238 but in Maryland its $682. An average ambulance ride in California costs $2,407 and in North Carolina $661.
Something has to happen soon. Californians cannot afford to live here as it is.
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Republicans have every reason to be suspicious of the dubious claims of Democrats who say they are only studying a mileage tax but not implanting one. Yeah, r-r-r-r-r-ight!
Assemblywoman Lori Wilson said 1421 is to help lawmakers in the future make an informed decision as the state moves forward with their devious plans to get us all to drive electric cars and thus not buying gas and paying the exorbitant tax of 61 cents per gallon.
Republicans like Assemblyman Heath Flora, who represents Hughson, asks if there were no plans to move forward with a mileage tax, why did the Legislature reject a constitutional amendment that would have guaranteed voters the right to approve or reject any new mileage tax?
“We’ve had a declining gas tax revenue for decades and yet we still haven’t figure out how to solve it,” Assemblywoman Wilson told KCRA.
How to solve it? Reduce corresponding expenditures! When struggling California households receive salary and pay cuts, they curb spending. Maybe that’s a great idea for California state government too!
California roads and bridges need repairs so it would be a great idea to end sanctuary state practice, let ICE do their sweeps, and quit providing the $13 billion in health care services to illegal immigrants. Assist President Trump in deporting them instead of harboring them and taking on their financial burden. It may sound harsh but we cannot afford to take on the world’s poor without the state turning into a Third World cesspool. Or has it already?
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The law requires California courts to forward abstract convictions of traffic-related offenses to the DMV within five days of sentencing or upon the court order. This ensures the DMV has the most up-to-date information on drivers’ records for purposes such as points, license suspension, and traffic offender status.
But according to CalMatters, California courts have failed to report hundreds of vehicular manslaughter convictions to the DMV over the past five years, which of course allows dangerous drivers to maintain their licenses to drive. CalMatters identified roughly 400 cases from 2019 to 2024, where driver convictions were not listed on their records due to the courts’ reporting failures. Republican members of the state Assembly are demanding to know why there has been a failed coordination effort between the judicial system and the DMV which have left California drivers vulnerable. They fired off a letter to John Harabedian, chairman of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, to ask for an audit to “address errors that have allowed drivers convicted of vehicular manslaughter or other fatal-crash offenses to maintain their driving privileges.”
Doesn’t that make you feel safer out there? That’s on top of the foreigners who are driving big-rigs who don’t know how to read English road signs.
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The obscene waste of your tax dollars continues under Newsom.
The California Department of Government Efficiency, or CAL DOGE, last week announced it has untangled a web of funding from the Prop 64 authorized California Cannabis Tax Fund (CCTF) - supposed to be used for substance abuse prevention - that instead is building the Democrat political machine in California.
One of the groups, Elevate Youth California, received $370 million from the cannabis tax. What did that group do with the money? Educate against marijuana use? No, it distributed 517 micro-grants, with an average grant size of $700K, to multiple organizations that do nothing related to substance abuse and instead build the Democrat voter base. These organizations explicitly fund “social justice youth development”, “civic engagement”, and “power building.”
Groups getting the pot tax money include the Jakara Movement. One million dollars used for Sikh youth empowerment and voter registration. Receiving $800,000 was Asian Refugees United for LGBTQ+ Asian storytelling – zero connection to substance abuse prevention.
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Actor John Schneider of the Dukes of Hazzard TV series had some very strong words for the Super Bowl halftime show of Bad Bunny.
Last week Schneider posted on his Facebook page: “Every time I read something that pouts the ‘brilliance and nationalism and family, friendly nature’ of this ‘entertainer’ I have got to respond in some way.
“If after you research and read the actual lyrics of this ‘entertainer’s’ songs, you don’t think it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of the Super Bowl then I’d like to know why.
“Other than the only quote in the entire show that was in English… “The only thing stronger than hate is love,” everything else was pure miss misogynistic narcissistic nonsense.
“If you don’t know that, then you obviously have not translated the words.
“Don’t be fooled by the left and they’re ever increasing attempt to take over the minds, souls and future of your children. If they had been in English, the FCC would’ve shut the show down after about 30 seconds.”
Schneider is right. I looked up the translation of his song, “El Apagón.” He sang these lyrics:
“Puerto Rico’s f---ing great, hey, it’s f---ing great.”
Let’s go to the bleachers to light up a blunt
Before Pipo gets a slap in the face
“I like the p---y of Puerto Rico” over and over and over.
How many of you knew that he was allowed to demean women in his celebrated performance?
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
