It’s unfortunate that there are so many scam artists in the world.

I went to a local CVS store on Wednesday to buy an Amazon gift card for a stepdaughter’s birthday. I took the gift card to the register to pay for it and the clerk said she should open the cardboard packaging around it and check to see if it had been tampered with. She wanted to peel off the sticker covering the numbers to make sure they were intact.

I was confused and asked why and was told that people have been stealing gift cards, taking them home to steam open the packaging, remove the gray tape covering the numbers, write down the number, scratch off part of the number and take it back down to the store all back nice and neat like. The unsuspecting customer buys it a little bit later, which activates the card but you won’t be able to see the entire code to redeem it online. The crook then gets what you paid for.

The clerk’s suspicions were spot on. She proceeded to peel off the backs of five cards and they were all missing parts of the code. I would have been screwed out of $100.

She apologized as we shared how sad it is that dishonest folks do this kind of scam. With all the technological advances in our world you would think there is a better way to end this scam and maybe allow law enforcement to track the crooks down for an arrest. Either that or lock up the gift cards like Target stores are locking up not just high priced electronics but socks! How sad is it that they have to lock up socks to keep them from being stolen!

* * * * *

Speaking of thieves, there’s a den of them in Sacramento. You know this gang because they victimize all of us in the form of taxation beyond what is reasonable.

I’m talking the Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature. They haven’t learned to scale back spending so they plot ways to work around Prop 13.

According to state Assemblyman Carl DeMaio – all Californians should be grateful he is up there fighting their tax-and-spend ways – the Democrats want to increase the property transfer tax, which is paid when you sell your home.

Currently the tax is $1.10 per $1,000 of sale price. For a home selling for $1 million home that tax is $1,100. LA (through Measure ULA) charges six percent, or $60,000 on the same sale! A house costing $1 million can be a modest home in the suburbs so it’s really not a wealth tax. If you only owned a home for five years, the tax they want could steal all of your equity!

As you can guess, Measure ULA dampened any enthusiasm to sell a home and get out of the state. Measure ULA caused home sales to plummet in half after it went into effect according to UCLA Lewis Center. Imagine that. You tax the hell out of something and it curtails that activity. Who would’ve thunk?

If you guessed that other cities and counties across the state are copying LA and the cancer of over-taxation is spreading you’d be right. At the end of your life, when you want to cash out or downsize, the greedy state plans to rob your equity like a thief in the night.

Prop 13 was supposed to stop this but Democrats have found a way around it. The liberals on the California State Supreme Court they appointed ruled in the Upland decision that punched a loophole in Prop 13. Upland argued that a voter approval tax increase – by a mere simple majority and not the two-thirds majority under Prop 13 – is hunky dory.

Help is on the way with the Save Prop 13 initiative to ban property transfer taxes statewide – period. It also bans the required two-thirds majority to get local tax increase measures passed. Let’s all get behind it.

It’s not a mansion or millionaire tax. It’s a Screw the Middle Income Folks tax. 

* * * * *

Cesar Chavez was a flawed man.

Shock, not shocked! What human being doesn’t have flaws?

But it seems like the liberals are in a bit of a quandary now that Dolores Huerta has exposed the alleged sexual misdeeds of the late Cesar Chavez. He, of course, was the founder of the UFW or United Farm Workers.

Her claims come at age 95 and he’s been dead for nearly 33 years.

The liberals have lionized Chavez for decades as a champion of the Mexican farm laborers who flooded the fields of the Central Valley and Arizona. They named community centers, streets, parks and schools after him.

They are faced with how to respond now that Chavez has been accused of messing with two minors and other women outside of his marriage. After all, progressives do this kind of thing. They removed the name of the first elected California Governor Peter Burnett from a school named when it suddenly dawned on him that had racist policies. (Apparently they didn’t research him before they slapped his name on the school).

They also wanted to rid the south of every statue of a Confederate general and get rid of Father Junipero Serra in the state Capitol in their PC quest to cleanse history.

Now, are Huerta’s accusations true? Chavez, of course, isn’t around to defend himself either. You can’t resurrect him as another Harvey Weinstein who can be paraded as a perv and locked up.

Who can be sure? I suppose DNA can prove the paternity claims but she gave the children up. But why would Mrs. Huerta lie? Still ex-Marine Frank Curiel who was Chavez’s driver and bodyguard for nearly two decades beginning in the early 1970s, solidly disputed claims that Chavez was ever a pedophile.

But let’s assume that Chavez was guilty. Does that erase all the accomplishments for which he was lionized in the first place, advancing the rights and working conditions of farm workers? I think not.

Oh, and what to do with the Cesar Chavez National Monument in Keene which President Barack Obama helped to dedicate in 2012 and where Chavez is at rest? Close it?

Ceres Unified School District now has the dilemma of what to do with the Cesar Chavez name on its third junior high school now that his name is tarnished. Does the district pull the name or leave it? How will a decision either way settle with the community?

This whole conundrum wouldn’t have been an issue had the CUSD board back in 2009 had stuck to the district’s policy of naming schools after local people. Chavez was not local. He may have marched through Ceres and Modesto but he was headquartered in Delano area. 

At the time of choosing a name for the new junior high school, many Ceres folks suggested the name of Wayne Salter for his 12 years of service as board member just as Sinclear Elementary was named for a father and son who both served on the School Board at different times. Pushing the name of Chavez were Latino board members Lourdes Perez, Edgar Romo and Teresa Guerrero who were supported by retired teachers Jim Kinard and Betty Davis and retired school employee Faye Lane. Trustees Eric Ingwerson and Mike Welsh recognized that Chavez was not exactly adored by the farming community and tried to get fellow trustees to stick to the policy of naming schools after local figures.

Hear me out. I’m certainly not defending Chavez’s past transgressions but if he was worthy of being heralded as the farmworkers’ hero like the Left has done, then have the internal fortitude and stick to it in his death. He was honored for how he lifted up the downtrodden farmworkers.

Consider that all sorts of wild sexual accusations came out about MLK being a womanizer but there was no knee-jerk reaction to erase the name Martin Luther King from street sign, schools, parks and centers. The imperfections of the men – every person has flaws – do not negate any accomplishments in life. You cannot cleanse history as the Left so often does.

So now politicians like Gavin Newsom are between a rock and hard place. Newsom – the guy who slept with his best friend’s wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk in 2005 – feigned shock and outrage over Chavez’s alleged actions while straddling the fence as he hemmed and hawed over what to do about the Cesar Chavez statew holiday so as to not offend Latino voters or women who will accuse them of not standing with victims.

We’ll see how this pans out.

Meanwhile the Trump haters are out there saying Trump’s name should be removed from any existing schools or buildings because he is what they call a pedophile. Problem is, nobody has come forth to say he sexually abused minors or impregnated them. Oh it must be sad living with Trump Derangement Syndrome since it clouds the ability to think logically.

* * * * *

A fellow named Justin Rains posted a comment to my column about Democrats at the state house willing to let convicted child molesters over the age of 50 out of prison.

His comment deserves a response.

Rains started out with an immature LMFAOROTF, which to those of you don’t know means Laughing My F******g A** Off Rolling On the Floor. Rocket scientists use that term all the time, don’t ’ya know.

Rains goes on: “Republicans have literally started a war to distract from the fact the most highest office in the land is controlled by a Republican pedophile and since republicans literally control everything and they have literally tried to hide and protect a child rapist in the land Republicans don’t have room to try and act morally superior.”

Hold on. My column was about STATE lawmakers of the Democratic Party favoring early releases of convicted pedophiles, which is not the stance of the minority party.

And Trump’s attack on Iran was about taking out a regime that has been hell-bent on destroying Americans for decades. It was about self-defense, not an Epstein smokescreen.

Rains also makes a baseless claim that Trump is a pedophile. No woman has ever come forward to say Trump had visited Epstein Island as they have Prince Andrew. Until then, lay off the nonsensical claim that Trump is a pedo protecting pedos. It’s just more Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Justin goes on: “Again your bias is ridiculous! Also proves Ceres Courier will take up and distract from their own folks they elected that rape children and only care when they can point their fingers at democrats. Your morality is lacking and selective!!”

Stay focused, Mr. Rains, for I was focused on a policy enacted by Democrats to assist convicted child molesters the ability to get free from prison at age 50. So if Rains truly believes his next statement – that “All pedophiles need to be arrested and dealt with, the greater or severity of the crime the more severe the punishment up to and including death!” – then why is his argument not with the Democrats? It is the GOP lawmakers who are proposing to delay release any offender for another 15 years.

* * * * *

Karen Bass proves once again that she should be removed from office for being one of the most inept and misguided mayors in the country.

She and the LA City Council (it was a 12-3 vote) signed onto the Olympic Wage Ordinance, a $30 per hour wage for hotel workers, a 56 percent raise over three years. The ordinance covers hotels with 60 or more rooms, airport workers, and tourism concessions. It includes yearly increases, starting with $22.50 per hour on July 1, 2025, and includes mandatory family healthcare benefits.

As a result, hotels have cut 650 jobs. Six percent of hotel jobs have disappeared even in the first year of increases!

A similar “Olympic and Paralympic wage” proposal was under consideration in Long Beach, California, for airport and hospitality workers, with a target of $29.50 per hour by 2028.

Let’s walk through this. Under this local law, the fully burdened cost of a housekeeper would be $80,000 per year. If a hotel has 200 employees, that’s $16 million per year in payroll. The hotels only have three choices – jack up room rates, lay off employees or close.

But wait, there is more. When LA won the bid to host the Olympics, there was a clause that room rates would be capped.

The Four Points Sheraton near LAX has closed with its 191 jobs gone.

Kind of reminds you of the 20,000 fast-food workers that are gone – replaced by kiosks – following the increase of the minimum wage to $20 per hour. And some fast-food places have gotten rid of their dining rooms because, you guessed it, it costs too much to maintain.

See the insanity of progressive policies?

* * * * *

Wow, Mrs. Newsom said some things that really show her contempt for people of faith. She pandered to the gay community in a recent interview in which she stated: “The folks on the far right, they’re missing is, um, just this they’re they’re living in this silo, this evangelical conservative silo that ultimately is it’s it’s just pulling us back as a country to a time and a place where we don’t deserve to be and we’re not going to be because honestly young women and fathers of daughters are awake now and they’re woke and they’re not going to let us go back and so I have so much hope because of that.”

She’s way off base and so very wrong.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom identifies as a Christian? She’s a great fit for a man who was raised as Roman Catholic but is out of sync with the church’s values and should be expelled for his pro-abortion stance.

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