By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Pay heed: Running from police is very risky
Opinion

I hope all the lawless people out there who think they are so privileged that they can run away from police take heed to what happened on Saturday at Hatch and Central. Monica Arias, 36, of Modesto, decided to flee Officer Eric Souza and blew through a red light and sheered the top of her car off and lost her life. Was it a suicide mission? I doubt it but you never know what some desperate people will do.

She’s not getting much sympathy considering that she is believed to be the one who shot a woman on July 11 just a few miles away. 


* * * * *

I have never been to the dedication of a city park site that looked like a dirt lot – until Friday. The city held a half-hour ceremony with mariachi band and free tacos for the dedication of Guillermo Ochoa Park, which had been Eastgate Park for over a decade. The park site only has children’s playground equipment and no trees and not a single blade of grass.

Seems like the ceremony should have been waited for when the park is actually a park and not a dirt site. I’ve seen more desertscape cemeteries look more inviting.

Now the big question is what does the city do with the $3,000 concrete Eastgate monument sign that was bought until Channce Condit decided he wanted a different park name?


* * * * *

Don’t ever underestimate the ability of Sacramento Democrats to come up with ludicrous ways to spend your tax dollars.

If you don’t know the name of Scott Wiener, who is a San Francisco liberal (sadly) occupying a seat in the State Senate, keep it in your memory. He comes up with a lot of harebrained ideas. 

His Senate Bill 110 wants to pay meth addicts to stay sober. You read that correctly. State Medicaid programs have stayed away from so-called “contingency management” because payments are illegal under federal law. But no mind, Wiener’s bill takes care of that by authorizing “therapy” by allocating taxpayer funds to said addict by adding it to the list of drug treatment services offered through Medi-Cal. Weiner said: “It can be as simple as every Saturday you pee in a cup and if your meth test is negative you get a $20 gift card.”

Is using tax dollars to pay people to stay off drugs a legitimate role of government? I don’t believe so. Aside from that, $20 gift cards are no incentive to someone who is ADDICTED and STEALS to SUPPORT their drug HABIT! What junkie needs a $20 gift card once a week when they can walk into the local drug store, steal whatever they want up to $950, and walk right out of the door and expect the CVS or Rite Aid or Walgreen’s to take a hit to the bottom line?

The plan is as ridiculous as back when then state Assemblyman Sal Cannella supported a bill to pay young women to not get pregnant.

Wiener is the moral reprobate who last year authored SB145 which gives judges discretion over homo sex-offender registration in all cases involving voluntary intercourse between teenagers 14 to 17 and adults who are less than 10 years older. Newsom signed it into law. So now your 14-year-old son or daughter can have sex with a 23-year-old gay adult and it’s not necessarily a sex offender. And the cheers up in the LGBQRTUVWXYZ community. Brilliant.

Voters, please quit rewarding legislators with BS idea like this one with your vote. Stop electing fools to state and national office.


* * * * *

Our office staff was treated to an inspiring meeting about new retirement investment opportunities for us. We were handed a book that talks about what “suckers” most people are in handling money. Most of us are “suckers” because we don’t have the knowledge in how to invest to where we are financially secure at retirement. We run up credit debt we cannot handle. In fact, 65 percent of Americans don’t even have $1,000 in the bank for emergencies. We become pawns of the banks and credit card companies.

We learned that a $10,000 investment at a child’s life can turn into $4 million at retirement by compound interest. How many people know that?

While the presenters did not get into politics, they signaled their beliefs that our national leaders are outright fools for the massive debt spending in the power game. They enslave us, they rescue us, we depend on them, they maintain power.

It’s time we empowered ourselves. We shouldn’t need any assistance from the behemoth government.


* * * * *

Congressman Josh Harder’s office long ago removed me from the email list of press releases because I’d use them to expose what he’s doing is wrong. So I checked up on his House website to see what he was up to.

I’m convinced that the Democrat is truly interested in catering to the “suckers” of his district. The latest release is titled, “Harder urges Valley families who don’t file taxes to use new child tax credit tool.” First sentence reads: “Today, Representative Josh Harder (CA-10) is encouraging Central Valley families who don’t normally file taxes to use the IRS’ new non-filer tool to claim the benefits they deserve.”

Let that sink in: “benefits they deserve.” The congressman doesn’t explain why someone who doesn’t pay ANY taxes deserves money from taxpayers who do pay taxes. It’s called s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-m, or more appropriately the “2021 Congressmen Bribing the Permanent Underclass Voters Act.”

Almost laughable is this line from Harder: “The Child Tax Credit will send help to almost 200,000 kids in the Valley and directly lift more than 10,000 out of poverty.”

Surely Harder doesn’t believe his own swill that this brings children out of poverty. Come on, dude, we weren’t born yesterday.

Harder supports the continued printing of money to dole out cash to Americans while our national debt has now grown to $28.5 trillion. That’s a number so monstrous that few can wrap their mind around it. A trillion is one million million dollars, or one thousand billion dollars!

The national debt when Obama came into office was $11.9 trillion. When he left it was $20.2 trillion. The media didn’t sneeze over it. Trump added another $6.8 trillion which the Connecticut Mirror proclaimed it was a “financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt.” No similar outrage when Obama ran up debt. We should be outraged at all debt accumulation but Americans are addicted to their “free” handouts.

Under Biden’s six months in office, the national debt has risen from $26.9 trillion and is now at $28.5 trillion. The Democrats have recently announced a plan to spend another $3.5 trillion last week.  On top of that, there’s another trillion dollar infrastructure package in the works and earlier this year there was a $1.9 trillion package that was passed. If you don’t think that will affect your taxes and inflation, you are a sucker.


* * * * *

What a rich irony. Gavin Newsom signs into a law that he apparently couldn’t follow himself and then wanted an exception.

Californians will be voting on whether or not to recall the governor on Sept. 14. Newsom forgot to list himself as a Democrat on the ballot. Newsom attorney Thomas Willis argued on July 9 before a judge to let the governor bends the rules because he just made a mistake. The judge said, tough.

If voters don’t know this guy is a Democrat then that explains why we get people like him elected to office.

Democrats claim that the recall is being led by far-right extremists and white nationalists. That prompted black GOP candidate and talk show host Larry Edler to ask, ”Do I look like a white nationalist?” We all know the Democrats are full of it anyway.

Make no mistake, this recall is not race based at all. It’s about trying to eradicate failed leadership in the governor’s office. There are a lot of great candidates to consider, including former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer who has an ambitious plan to deal with the homeless problem created under decades of Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom.


* * * * *

Things are slow for now in Ceres development. The last two meetings of the Ceres Planning Commission have been cancelled for a lack of applications for projects.


* * * * *

Typically Newsom doesn’t care about the flyover part of California – that would be us in the Valley which he flies over between Sacramento and LA. He has shown he doesn’t give a flip about creating more water storage for farmers or releasing criminals out onto our streets, otherwise he’d be building more dams and more prisons. Newsom can say he’s not scared of a recall but with the recall in motion for Sept. 14, he’s shown he doesn’t want to upset enough people to end up out office.

Early last week the governor dictated that said kids must return to school campuses masked or not attend. The outcry was palpable and for good reason. Children are the least susceptible to the virus and parents are tired of the dictatorial demands on families. So what did the governor do? He said local districts can deal with the mask issue on their own.

A bunch of citizens attended the wrong meeting last week when voicing their displeasure in the state once again ordering mask use at school. They showed up at the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors meeting when they should be rattling the board meeting room of the Stanislaus County Office of Education.

Nothing makes sense about government’s reaction to the pandemic, as noted by teacher Melissa Cortinas who asked why she can take her unmasked child to Disney World in Florida – a Republican led state – and stand in line with thousands but not in a room of 30 kids.

Hughson student Grace Curry put it in more human terms: “I want to see smiles on people’s faces.”

There is something to be said about not living in fear and wanting to enjoy the simple things of life like seeing a person’s whole face – not just their eyes and forehead.

We are humans and desire human contact.

One county supervisor – Terry Withrow – deserves kudos for being critical of the schools dragging their feet in getting students in the classroom earlier this year.

More people need to stand up to the tyranny of our governor. We all can on Sept. 14. It’s called a recall.


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