We have yet to see if the Ceres City Council will decide to take a stand against the state’s unconstitutional sanctuary city law, SB 54. Is the matter pending as powers-at-be wait to see if there will be challengers for council, especially Linda Ryno and her District 2 seat?
* * * * *
Just got back from a week in Florida – my first time there – and I was impressed by the green colors, even in summer. Didn’t see but two homeless people there, unlike here in the Valley of the Poor. I also didn’t see a lot of trash.
Why is trash always a problem here? Even Councilwoman Linda Ryno noticed when she took her grandkids to the new play park in Marie Neel Park. She said at the July 9 council meeting: “There was so much trash … it was just very disheartening that people would go to this brand-new playground and they did that. We would up picking up all kinds of candy wrappers, water bottles, just junk.”
* * * * *
The way I see it, Republican Jeff Denham and Democrat Josh Harder may not be debating at all because Harder insists a live audience be present, which is just his way to stuff the halls with the raucous crowds that have dogged the congressman for months. Denham has agreed to debates but wants it live streamed without the possibility of the left disrupting things like they have so many times in the past.
Members of the so-called Resistance (anti-Trump Democrats) Movement have been rude, badgering, inconsiderate and unfair toward Denham at town hall meetings. No incumbent in their right mind would want those optics to occur at a political debate.
Give me a break, Josh Harder.
* * * * *
The way I see it, Trump is for Valley farmers getting all the water they need to farm while Jerry Brown and his cohorts in Sacramento are about grabbing our water.
We built our dams – long before state bureaucrats’ parents were born, I might add – to hold water for when it’s dry, like now. Now the state thinks we can flush 40 percent of that water down the river for the fish, farmers be damned (no pun intended). The true reason, of course, is they want to steal our water and send it south to LA where the state’s power base is. Being on the coast, Los Angeles has ample water – they need to desalinate it first.
All you need to know is that the environmentalists were out hounding the Republican lawmakers and Interior Secretary on a Friday visit to Don Pedro and New Melones. Restore the Delta, Sierra Club, Friends of the River and Save California Salmon were out to support the water grab and made the bold claim that Denham and Tom McClintock are “in favor of Delta in favor of big corporate almond growers.”
And who is in the back pocket of the Sierra Club? Well, it’s not Republicans.
They’re wacko, folks. Absolutely nuts.
* * * * *
Where, oh where, is our State Attorney General Xavier Becerra? I thought he was our chief law enforcer in California and yet he is silent as San Francisco has illegally struck out to allow illegal immigrants to vote in the school district race there.
We know the goal is to sneak this in slowly across the board, just as the Democrats snuck in giving drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens.
Here is the truth: in order to be eligible to vote in California, one must be a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years of age and not in prison or on parole for a felony conviction. So tell me again how somebody who is living here illegally and not a U.S. citizen can vote? Becerra, of course, won’t do anything because he favors such law-breaking just to usher in future Democrat voters, just as he supports the harboring of illegal aliens, his new support base.
* * * * *
There is a push back to the liberal wacko politics of Sacramento Democrats. Gaining ground is the movement to repeal the gas tax shoved down our throats last year. Gubernatorial hopeful John Cox has support because of his stand against the tax and the insane sanctuary state law.
Now Trump is attacking the state’s mandate for electric cars, as well as scaling back the fuel efficiency standards set by Obama. The White House wants to cap federal fuel economy requirements at the 2020 level, or 35-mile-per-gallon fleet average, rather than letting them rise to roughly 50 mpg by 2025.
To settle California overreach, the EPA will propose revoking the Clean Air Act waiver granted to the state that has allowed it to regulate carbon emissions from vehicle tailpipes and force carmakers to sell electric vehicles in California in higher numbers.
Also, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will charge that California cannot regulate greenhouse gas emissions from autos under the 1975 law that established the first federal fuel-efficiency requirements.
Expect the Deep State in Sacramento to fight tooth and nail.
* * * * *
The media in California is treating John Cox in the same way the national media treats Trump. The bias is loud and clear. For example, the media is trying to nail Cox on his views of climate change. To Democrats it’s their religion; Cox doesn’t believe it’s manmade and rejects all these draconian environmental laws that stifle business in the state. Like Trump, Cox wants to cut regulations like the California Environmental Quality Act to make construction easier and cheaper to help lower the cost of housing, which has contributed to the homeless problem.
Cox is trying to make an issue of excessive taxes and the sanctuary state policy – probably the biggest problems facing California, while the Democrats only want to play gotcha politics with Cox’s belief that abortion is murder and climate is changing independent of mankind activity. Playing right into that is McClatchy, which can’t get a Cox interview because he knows they only want to make hay over less important issues. So far Cox, like Trump, isn’t willing to fall into their game and has refused to talk to the Sacramento Bee. Instead campaign spokesman Matt Shupe emailed back that: “We have the highest poverty rate in the country and millions of forgotten Californians can’t afford food, utilities, gas or housing. We’re talking about issues Californians tell us they care about most. That is our prerogative.”
California is in a colossal mess and John Cox knows it. I think most Californians know it. I think Gavin Newsom does and has any intent to fix any of its ails because remember, Democrats desire to keep people victims because they offer the platitudes that government is their savior. Cox, like Trump, believes government hinders progress and personal advancement.
Will the sheep go back to the pen or decide to break free?
* * * * *
I can’t be the only noticing that the national media is hell-bent on taking out a U.S. president because they don’t like him. It’s getting nauseous in their rush to utter impeachment for everything – Stormy Daniels, the false Russian collusion charge, words spoken at a press conference and immigration policy. They’re really demeaning their profession and it’s backfirng on them. Zero credibility.
* * * * *
The headline in the July 12 USA Today caught my eye: “Cops pulled back; violent crime rose.” It was an article about how Baltimore police are afraid to take on suspects of color in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray case. You remember the liberal media firestorm about these so-called brutal cops who mishandled the suspect and they insisted he died from brutality. You remember the case because the DA in Baltimore fired from the hip and judged the officers to be suffering from “depraved hearts.” You know, so depraved that all officers were acquitted in court.
What the witch hunt against the cops by Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby did was to make them turn a blind eye to everyday violations. As retired Lt. Victor Gearhart said: “Officers no longer put themselves on the firing line. These guys aren’t stupid. They realize that if they do something wrong, they’re going to get their head bit off.”
So because of the liberal narrative that all white cops are racists, and the effective neutering of police, the Baltimore murder rate reached an all-time high last year – 342. The city is become another casualty of liberal politicians – like Chicago – who rush to condemn police without ever casting blame on the criminals.
What Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last May is true: “If you want crime to go up, let the ACLU run the police department.”
* * * * *
The politically correct radical leftists are so intent on scrubbing history that they have attacked Laura Ingalls Wilder.
The Association of Library Services voted to strip the name of Wilder from its legacy award. Why? Because she wrote about attitudes toward blacks and Indians that were prevalent at the time. So apropos for a world that offers safe rooms on college campuses. And she’s been in print and died how long ago?
One Facebook user captured my feelings: “As a black woman, I see this a little too much for me. All we need to do make sure children understand that past to get into the future – and learn from it.”
Wilder was hardly a racist but the left finds a few passages as offensive, for example this one: “There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no people. Only Indians lived there.”
Wilder was mortified when, before her death in 1957, a reader pointed out the passage to her and she wrote her publisher back: “You are perfectly right about the fault in ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and have my permission to make the correction as you suggest. It was a stupid blunder of mine. Of course Indians are people and I did not intend to imply they were not.”
Thus the word “people” was replaced with the word “settlers.”
Other Wilder passages included characters who defended Indians, such as Pa who spoke this through her pen: “They would be as peaceable as anybody else if they were let alone. On the other hand, they had been moved west so many times that naturally they hated white folks.”
It’s dangerous to cleanse our past and our great literary works because someone might be offended, and that goes for Mark Twain using the n-word.
* * * * *
There’s screaming going on in Miami where Miami Dolphins’ owner Stephen Ross enacted a new policy penalizing any player who does not come out on the field for the National Anthem with a four-game suspension policy.
Who is screaming about not showing respect to the American flag? Color Of Change, the nation’s largest so-called online racial justice organization.
Players don’t have a right to dictate the terms on their protests. Do it on your own free time, not on your boss’ dime. Or find a job that pays far less than pro football.
Listen at this rabid rhetoric coming from Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change who said of Ross, who is actually co-founded RISE – an organization that claims to be improving race relations within the NFL and other sports organizations: “He and other billionaire enablers chose to side with their white supremacist president as he defended neo-Nazis in the aftermath of Charlottesville. Ross and his team have also prioritized silencing black players and million-dollar profits over punishing players for beating their pregnant girlfriends.”
They conclude that “white supremacy underscores many of our country’s institutions, including the National Football League.”
Um, have you taken a look at the ethnic makeup of pro football teams? Robinson cannot say that with a straight face.
* * * * *
Do you ever notice how much “news” comes our way that really isn’t news? I mean, back in the 1970s when the only news source was what Walter Cronkite gave you over 30 minutes at 6 p.m., we didn’t get these stories that clog the bandwidth that are truly insignificant in the scheme of things. Here are a few examples: “Woman claims man who assaulted her on Delta flight walked away.” I get that having a stranger on a plane putting his hands between your legs is upsetting, but is it “world news” such as posted on Fox? Then over on CNN is this story: “Women say train worker called them porn stars.” It seems the women went into the bathroom together at the same time, against policy. Real news, huh?
Ever get the feeling the world tries to fill so much time with trivial matters?
How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
