Page 4 - Dinuba Sentinel 1-3-19 E-edition

Opinion
A4 | Thursday, Janauary 3,, 2019
In My Opinion
Fight against the unacceptable
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their trail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight. And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
FredHall
Mr. Mueller indicted but will never see
the inside of an American courtroom.
This--yes I am going to use the word--witch hunt has gone so far afield that anyone who ever knew the President or had any
Fred Hall - Publisher Rick Curiel - Editor
For decades, left-leaning politicians, special interest groups and even our
judicial system seem to have done everything in their power to alter
our Constitution with claims that
it is a malleable document which should be open to interpretation to moderndaystandards. Weevenhad
a recent President who served two terms running on the platform that he was going to fundamentally change America. Nevermindthateverything, especially the economy, went to “hell in a hand basket” our mainstream media obediently and lovingly worshipped him. No one can cite anything he did to strengthen America or make life better but that seems to be beside the point.
This Dylan Thomas poem—which is open to interpretation—always reminds me that everyone should fight against the unacceptable, even when it appears inevitable. It seems to me that we’ve ceded the battle to those who would weaken America for far too long. Thank Heaven we finally have a leader who
is willing to take on tough tasks and
is willing to fight even when it’s not politicallycorrect. Perhapsthetime
has come for us to join our leader in
the struggle to save this great Republic! People need to begin to realize that simply hating someone doesn’t mean that they are right and he’s wrong.
One can’t help but have ambivalent thoughts about the year of 2018 as it drawstoaclose. It’sbeenoneofthose years which has blessed Americans with the best of economic times and, yet,
has been offset by an irrational hatred on the part of about half of Americans and our institutions for the man who is helping produce and deliver the good news.
Growth in a once stagnant economy has reached numbers one hasn’t seen in years; poverty is down; unemployment numbers are at all time lows for everyone including traditionally underemployed minorities; America has returned to its status as a world leader; we have a President whose word actually means something and the world has become a safer place over the past two years.
Contrary to those indisputable facts, The Mueller investigation has gone into another year of its controversial hunt for Russian trolls who, according to the media and Democrats, stole the election for Mr. Trump against their terribly weakcandidate. Ashardasitmaybe to believe, we fully expect Ms. Clinton to mount a drive for the nomination in2020. Atthispointtheonlypeople even remotely associated with that “crime” are a group of Russians who
Guest Column
--Dylan Thomas 1914 – 1953
dealings with him is in danger from the assembled team of Democrat operatives and risks having their life ruined over past tax issues or a whole litany of problems which have no connection to the original cause for action given the Independent
Council’soffice. The“well”used for funding runs extremely deep with taxpayers being the often unwilling provider for the Independent Council.
The only other indictments we’ve seen to this point involve what is called a process crime. That usually amounts to being caught in a perjury trap by the Council’s staff of Democrat donors and has little or nothing to do with what was originally charged. If I were a friend of the President, at this point, I would be worried about whether or not my dog has the appropriate license. It seems
a pretty sure bet that Mueller and his merry band are rifling through records all the way from Washington to the local courthouse.
Meanwhile, in the feverish hunt for non-existent collusion, everyone seems to ignore all the wrong-doing which poured forth from the Clinton campaign and the Clinton foundation. We’re talking phony dossiers which were prepared by foreign agents and used
by Obama officials and a really biased layer of management at Justice and the FBI to obtain FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign—a sorry episode never witnessed before.
What happens when government officials can no longer be trusted to administer the law on a basis of a blind justice? What happens when election results can no longer be trusted because illegal foreign nationals are allowed to vote in places like California? What happens when Democrats want an open border, furthering the expansion of their available voter pool?
It seems the time has come for anyone who has ever had a cognitive thought to examine the evidence of where this new wave of politics is taking this great country and fight back.
But, as always, that’s only one man’s opinion.
Fred Hall is publisher of the Dinuba Sentinel.
Guest Column
Both sides agree, the Pentagon is guilty of gross waste of federal funds
In this season of (hoped for) peace and goodwill, it’s worth looking for things our divided country can agree on. And since all of us want to be able to trust government to spend wisely, we might find common cause in a surprising place: the Pentagon budget.
When you think of politicians railing against the Pentagon (if you can think of any) it might be someone
on the left, like Senator Bernie Sanders. That’s why I was gratified to see Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley take on the Pentagon budget in a recent op-ed in The New York Times.
It’s a relatively rare occurrence for a politician of any persuasion to criticize the Pentagon — but especially for a conservative Republican like Grassley. (That said, the late Senator John McCain, when he was in the right mood, could do it with the best of them. And it’s not Grassley’s first rodeo, either.)
The Pentagon deserves the criticism. Nearly 30 years ago, Congress asked the Pentagon to complete an audit that could show military leaders knew where our money was going. This year, the Pentagon finally delivered a result: After waiting nearly 30 years, the Pentagon failed its first-ever audit.
Even more disturbing is that Pentagon leaders aren’t the least bit disturbed about this. Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, the number two official at the Pentagon, told reporters, “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it.”
There’s every reason for Pentagon leaders from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis on down to be ashamed of this result.
Every other major government agency has completed and passed an audit during that time, often many times. If the Pentagon doesn’t know where its money is going, how can they assure us it’s being put to good use? With a Pentagon budget of $647 billion this year — not even counting war costs — the potential for waste and fraud is sky-high.
We know about a lot of examples of waste — Grassley cited a $14,000 toilet seat as a picture-perfect example — but there are no doubt countless more that we don’t know
Lindsay Koshgarian
about. This is nobody’s idea of good management.
Grassley suggests that Pentagon leaders need to step up and earn the trust we give them. But if they haven’t done it in 30 years, what’s going to change now?
Pentagon leaders haven’t seen any consequences from their disregard for our nation’s budget. If there’s one thing that could get Pentagon leadership’s attention, it would be
requiring them to pass an audit before they get one more dollar from public coffers.
Instead, the opposite seems to be happening. Congress keeps rewarding the Pentagon with ever-bigger budgets. The U.S. military budget is more than $200 billion higher than it was 30 years ago.
And it continues. Less than a week after calling our current Pentagon budget “crazy,” President Trump agreed with military leaders that we need an even larger military budget. And just one day before the failed audit was announced, a committee tasked by Congress announced that the nation needs an almost $1 trillion military budget by 2024.
If we keep going this way, we’re going to waste precious resources that could be used any number of other ways: creating jobs, fighting the opioid epidemic, building a health care system that works for all of us, fixing our crumbling roads and bridges, etc.
Until they can show they know what they’re doing, the Pentagon should be cut off from further increases so we can focus resources elsewhere.
So, if most of the news seems too dicey to talk about over stale Christmas cookies, try the Pentagon’s failed audit. You might be surprised who you’ll agree with.
Lindsay Koshgarian directs the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
U.S. Post O ce worth saving
This spring, President Trump created an inter-agency federal task force to propose structural reforms in the U.S. Postal Service.
In only two months, the task force (comprised entirely of top Trump officials) zapped out a down-and-dirty report with this key recommendation: “Prepare [USPS] for future conversion from a government agency into a privately-held corporation.”
Privatization! Are they not aware that our public postal agency is enormously popular and important to... well, to the public?
A February Pew Research poll finds that an astonishing 88 percent of Americans give the Postal Service a thumbs up. Even the president’s executive order setting up the task force conceded that the post office “is regularly cited as the Federal agency with the highest public approval rating.”
The 640,000 middle-class postal workers and letter carriers merit such kudos because they literally deliver for us. Working from 31,585 local offices, they trundle 150 billion pieces of mail a year, 4 million miles a day, to 157 million addresses across the land — from inner-city neighborhoods to back roads — delivering all with
Jim Hightower
remarkable speed. USPS does this
without taking a dime in taxpayer funds, financing its operations entirely from its sales and services to customers. This is a genuine public good linking all of America’s people together.
For decades, though, anti- government propagandists have pushed the narrative that government is inherently incompetent, wasteful, and a social evil that must to be eliminated. But the problem for these ideologues is that USPS is not only a government agency that works, but millions of folks see it working for them daily.
Therefore, to maintain the negative political narrative about public entities, the far-right corporatists
are desperate to kill our public post offices. To help save them, go to: USMailNotForSale.org.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker.
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