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Real problems ignored as Trump haters rule
Opinion

One of the punks who tried to get cop killer and illegal alien Paulo Virgen Mendoza back to Mexico in 2018 has been sentenced with a lightweight sentence – 21 months in federal prison.

Mendoza, the murderer of Newman police Corporal Ronil Singh, was harbored for two days by seven people who were shielding him from arrest for days and planning to get him out of the country to escape consequences.

Erik Razo-Quiroz, illegally in the country and living in Merced, got rid of the accused killer’s loaded gun, helped him hide his truck, and drove him to various places while a brother collected money and reached out to a smuggler to get him across the border to Mexico. A jury acquitted Razo-Quiroz on a gun possession charge, but found him guilty of conspiring to aid and abet in flight to avoid prosecution. He only will spend 21 months in federal prison and then be deported.


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Fox News reported last week that counties are playing games with giving homeless people bus tokens to San Francisco.

For years there’s been suspicion about other counties doing the same to Stanislaus County. The increase in homeless on the streets of Stanislaus County could be coming directly from the Bay Area. Lonnie Davis of Davis Guest Home in Ceres has personal knowledge of instances where that has been done. To what extent who knows? It’s not right, of course, but since San Francisco prides itself in being a sanctuary city for illegal aliens, they might as well harbor the state’s homeless too, not the other way around.


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Isn’t it sad when the Hollywood leftist community is so rabidly anti Trump that they want to ruin the career of actor Vince Vaughn because he dared to speak to the president during the national championship college football game in New Orleans?

Twitter exploded last week when people suggested that Vaughn be blackballed from future acting jobs because he civilly engaged with Trump.

Vaughn is a libertarian, not a Hollywood liberal.

Morals in Hollywood are as rare as gnats in a windstorm so why should anyone be surprised in their lack of civility? Still, it would be nice if grown-ups acted like grown-ups.


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So our governor had to go to Fresno and other communities last week to demonstrate that homelessness is not just an urban problem but a statewide problem? Thanks, Captain Obvious. But you fail to ask the question: “Why does this state have more homeless than any other state? What are we – we as in Democrats since we hold a supermajority to the state Legislature and dominate all other state offices – doing wrong?”

Well, Governor, your party is killing California. Your far left laws are destroying the once Golden State and yet you continue about your destructive ways. Instead of find ways to reduce taxes, they find ways to get more. Instead of backing off on regulations, they ratchet them up. Instead of encouraging people to be self-sufficient they promote dependency on government. Instead getting hard of criminals, they get soft. Instead of enforce immigration laws, they go out of their way to trample on them. It’s sickening.

California Democrats own this problem of rampant homeless problem which is affecting the hinterland. No place is immune, whether it’s the homeless burrowed in the oleanders just feet from traffic zipping by at 80 mph; or digging burrows into the base of levees in Lathrop designed to hold back the San Joaquin River at high water levels. And in some cases those “holes” lead to large rooms.

Homeless creating caves in levees was cited last year by San Joaquin County officials as an urgent public safety concern in clearing out encampments around rivers, sloughs, and creeks elsewhere in the county. In several instances county officials said the homeless were compromising support structures for bridges on some rural roads based on how they were building makeshift shelters. Just wait until they erode the banks and they breach a levee.

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We all know there is radical left bias in MSNBC and CNN. But even the Bernie Sanders progressives jumped onto CNN for their dishonesty and dismissing things they don’t want to hear.

At the Jan. 14 Iowa debate between the Democrats, CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip asked Bernie Sanders, “You’re saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election?” After Sanders denied ever saying it, Phillip totally disregarded his answer and turned right to Warren to ask: ““What did you think when Senator Sanders told you that a woman could not win an election?”

The Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, wrote the next day that the moment was “stunning it its ineptness, and stunning in its unprofessionalism.”

Now you see why Republicans have long said national media people are jerks. They are.


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When did this country become such a wimpy place? You can’t go a day in the news where somebody doesn’t propose another government solution that should fall to the individual.

Millions of kids as young as kindergarten have and continue to walk to school every day without one problem. Yet, Nevada U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto claims that high schoolers are not receiving the education or federal funding to keep them safe walking and biking to and from school. Twelve of the more than 20 Washoe County School District students who have been hit by cars this school year were high schoolers. She suggests infrastructure is the answer.

I’ve seen teenagers walking and it scares me. They normally have their head down in their cell phones and not looking where they’re going so no wonder some are getting killed. And of course there are people driving around distracted by their cell phones. So here’s a free advice that won’t cost the taxpayers millions.: Resist the urge to check Instagram when you leave campus, remain alert and if possible walk toward traffic so you can see what’s coming and get out of the way if a vehicle comes at you.

You didn’t have to tell me what party Cortez Masto belongs to. I just knew. There is a D behind her name.


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I’m sure by now you’ve heard that Bernie Sanders campaign field organizer Kyle Jurek predicted “cities [will] burn” if President Trump is reelected and called for the reeducation of Trump voters if Mr. Sanders wins. Jurek calls himself an “anarcho-Communist” and “as far to the Left as you can possibly get” in an undercover new video made public by watchdog group Project Veritas.


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Did you hear that the state wants to spend $200 each for “No Smoking” signs for state parks? The grand total came to $2 million to comply with Senate Bill 8, in response to a new ban on smoking and vaping at state parks and beaches.

The funding request called for $1.1 million on 5,600 signs (at a cost of $200 per sign), with an additional $900,000 spent on California Coastal Commission and California Environmental Quality Act permits. Read that: the state needs permits from itself to put up no smoking signs its own Legislature mandated. Insanity!

The state Assembly Republicans issued this suggestion: buy them on Amazon for $5.75 apiece.


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Few libs would ever call rangers or the U.S. Forest Service “mean spirited” because they tell you not to feed the bears. If you’re reasonable you’ll realize that by feeding bears you create a dependency on you to feed them. If supplied free food, they get lazy and won’t fend for themselves like they were intended in nature.

So … this is kind of why people rail against the welfare state. It’s created a dependence on government to feed people instead of people pushing themselves to better their lives and afford the things of life, including food. I’m not against the church or even government helping people for a short time while they get their act together but honestly some people spend their entire lives being fed out of the hand of the taxpayer.

So here we are in 2020 and we have a state Attorney General in Xavier Becerra – perhaps one of the worst state officials in our state’s history – pulling out the worn-out disgusting race card in answer to the federal government trying to scale back on how much taxpayers fork out on food stamps (SNAP program) to feed people who could be feeding themselves.

Trump wants to enact a rule saying food stamps will be given only to those who work at least a measly 20 hours a week. Sounds reasonable to me. (Even the Bible says if you don’t work, you don’t eat).

I’m going to quote directly from Becerra’s press release: “…the coalition argues that the rule places arbitrary and capricious restrictions on the ability of states to administer food assistance programs for able-bodied adults without dependents and disproportionately harms people of color.”

Able-bodied adults need the government to feed them? Ok, we’ll cut some slack for those who are mentally or physically handicapped. But what about the vast majority who are milking the system?

And for crying out loud, are they saying people of color are less able to feed themselves? I would take that as a supreme insult from a typical liberal.

Becerra goes on, saying: “No one should have to choose between a hot meal and paying their rent.” My answer to that is, that’s exactly what Democrats have done in California by creating a problem of stifling the development and construction of more rental units because of their burdensome regulations like CEQA. So your party created this problem, Mr. Becerra! If only those starving people of color would realize they could get themselves out of this mess by electing Republicans to state office who would undo all of this mess!


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This kind of askew liberal thinking is replete in California.

Last week a Racheal Robinson commented that she thought it was “sad” that Modesto officials did a sweep to round up shopping carts from the homeless people. Never mind those carts were stolen from grocery and department stores and cost those businesses lots of money! It’s illegal to wheel them past the store parking lot! How dare anyone think the homeless have the right to steal from a store!

I’m going out on a limb here to say Racheal is probably votes Democrat – if she votes at all.

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The Trump obsessed Becerra, by the way, is against Californians having cheaper fuel. As you know, the goal of his party is to make gas expensive so you won’t drive and have the masses to depend on mass transit. He filed yet another expensive lawsuit against Trump on fracking on federal lands.

So many millions of California taxpayer dollars has Becerra spent in his lawsuits against Trump? As of last September he had sued the Administration 62 times – battling for the rights of illegal aliens over taxpayers among them – at a cost of $21 million. I wholeheartedly agree with San Francisco attorney Harmeet Dhillon who condemned Becerra’s behavior when she said: “The attorney general’s job should be protecting the rank-and-file citizens and dealing with issues unique to the state, not being some sort of caped crusader.”

It’s too bad the Democrats are not as focused on real problems like homelessness and rents spiraling out of control. California is in a huge mess. 


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Democrats were talking impeachment days after Trump took office so spare me the acting by Speaker Nancy Pelossi in pretending like she’s so sad to be impeaching Trump. When Russian collusion turned out to be a joke, they quickly jumped on Ukraine. The likes of Josh Harder advocate for impeachment while the Republicans say there is no high crimes or treason to warrant such a move.

The average American with his nose to the grinding stone could probably care less. The economy is going like gangbusters. Just look at these numbers of the average unemployment rate for each president’s first 35 months in office:

• Reagan, 9 percent;

• George H.W. Bush, 5.9 percent;

• Bill Clinton, 6.2 percent;

• George W. Bush, 5.5 percent;

• Barack Obama, 9.3 percent;

• Donald Trump, 3.9 percent.

Need we say more about Trump’s prospects of being re-elected in November?


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Nothing raised the ire more last week than our posting of the story about a grown Ceres man, 37, living with mommy, and stealing her car after he manhandled her. Then he disrespected the officer trying to get the car back.

I’m sure I can speak for all of Ceres when I say I hope mom presses charges and the judge throws the book at him. To let him get away with this will only encourage him to keep being the societal leach that he appears to be. 


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