Page 4 - Reedley Exponent 5-2-19 E-edition

The Reedley Exponent A4 Thursday, May 2, 2019 Editorial & Opinions
Serving “The World’s Fruit Basket” since 1891
A Mid Valley Publishing Newspaper
Founded March 26, 1891, in a two-story building on the corner of 11th and F streets, by A.S. Jones
Fred Hall — Publisher
In my OPINION
Jon Earnest — Editor / Sports Juanita Adame — Panorama Editor Budd Brockett — Editor Emeritus
QUOTE
“When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country.
I make up for lost time when I come home.”
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Perhaps the best place to start here, be-
fore taking a deep dive into the political mad-
ness that seems to be sweeping our country, would be the recent threat by several states
to keep President Donald Trump off the 2020 ballot. The reason they cite as cause for their action? President Trump has not released his
tax and financial records. This one will prob-
ably have to play out in the courts with the
only winners being the lawyers. There is no legal requirement anywhere in federal law
for him to so — the decision is strictly his.
The only thing that this man did was win an election. Not liking a man does not disqualify him.
‘Safety first’ is the primary reason for all-way stop signs at G and 9th, 12th
Fred Hall
Earlier this week, your stops be- came more frequent when driving along G Street in downtown Reedley. That’s because on April 30, city work- ers installed all-way stop signs at the intersections of G and 9th Street and G and 12th Street.
Now, drivers will have outright stops or traffic controls at six con- secutive intersections — four of them all-way stop signs and traffic lights at 10th and 11th Streets.
The action received near-unan- imous City Council approval in late February. Mary Fast said she sup- ported the all-way stop signs at G and 9th streets but opposed the stop at G and 12th. She said business owners in the area expressed concern that commerce will be affected by the ad-
ditional traffic stops.
The ongoing concern appears to
be safety, and I agree with that senti- ment. As I often park in front of The Exponent offices, I’ve found plenty of hazards from northbound vehicles on G Street driving excessively fast for the street and parking conditions.
However, on the first day with the new signs at 12th Street, it became easier to back out with a bit of courage while dealing with oncoming traffic. Approaching vehicles were noticeably slower than in my past experiences. Often, I would watch the reflection in storefront windows to see if northbound vehicles quickly were approaching.
Now, there’s reassurance that traffic only will be starting to accel- erate (hopefully not too fast) from
12th Street. It also makes for an easier experience for mo- torists to make left turns off 12th Street in either direction. That tended to be an adventure with blind spots caused by the downtown buildings.
Jon Earnest
I believe it’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome — T.D.S.
Never before has the idiom about the inmates running the asy- lum been more appropriately applied than it is today. We have a group running the United States House of Representatives that is completely incapable of running any group or organization, much less occupying their current capacities as representatives of the American people. Have you ever taken a comprehensive look at some of what they are proposing?
One of them, a 29-year old former bartender from New York City, has offered her “Green New Deal” to save the planet which is questionably in danger in the first place. According to this young women, we have only 12 years to spend about $93 trillion and save us all.
Her suggestion would essentially eliminate all air travel and gasoline engines, require the re-fitting of all buildings in America, eliminate all petroleum based products, crush an economy, destroy jobs — and, would only cost taxpayers $600,000 per household. Not to be outdone by this young upstart from NYC, Bill De Blasio — the mayor of that city — has proposed the elimination of sky- scrapers, steel and glass in building, and demands the retrofitting of buildings and the elimination of hotdogs and processed meats.
Another member is a young female refugee from Somalia who, from her statements and positions, seems to hate the United States and everything about this country. One has to ask “how the hell can something like this happen” until one examines the demographic profile of her home state of Minnesota. Remember the discussions we’ve had about the tribalization of America? Frankly, Ilhan Omar is so anti-Semitic that she should have been forced to resign from Congress over her positions and uninformed brand of hate speech. Rashida Talib, another Muslim who hails from Michigan, is known for spouting opinions that are filled with profane speech and inane in their content.
One can always count on California when there is such “a gath- ering of eagles” as our representatives in the U.S. House. Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Kamala Harris, Eric Swal- well and Dianne Feinstein supply plenty of material for those who identify California as the land of nuts, fruits and flakes. One of the great things about it, we here in California can almost always count on left-wing politicos ranging from here in the state to federal levels to do and say really dumb things.
Two of these judgment-impaired politicians have offered to share their expertise with the entire country by running for presi- dent. I’ve examined their records for accomplishments, and while finding nothing that Swalwell has done beyond threatening the Sec- ond Amendment or Donald Trump every time he opens his mouth; Kamala Harris has distinguished herself by having an affair with Willie Brown who was another font of corrupt politics; and Adam Schiff features his own brand of idiocy.
A true representation of their thoughts involving the “For The People Act of 2019” which is nothing more than a goodie basket of newly-discovered rights and privileges being extended to illegal immigrants. This bit of chicanery with its traditionally soft title is anything but what that title implies. It’s framed to provide voting rights to illegal immigrants and, as if the voting process hasn’t already become corrupt, moves parts of the American election to the internet. Now, we’re all aware of just how secure that would make the entire scheme.
Even after being demonstrably shown that the Russians changed no votes and had little to do with the outcome of Ameri- can elections in 2016 beyond running a few ads on Facebook, denial of results continues. It’s already been passed by the House but should have no hope in the Senate. The effort in reading this piece of garbage is well worth one’s time. It should provide conclusive evidence of where this new group would like to take this country.
The election is still somewhat distant, but now is the time to become actively involved. One political party has roughly a score of candidates who all trying to outdo each other with the leftward lurch lunacy. Some in the other party are doing everything they can to assure this strong economy and low unemployment con- tinues beyond the 2020 election. However, there are a few in that second party — Mitt Romney comes to mind — who, for whatever reason, refuse to support the president and his precedent-setting administration. We only can assume it’s because they want the media to like them, want to be invited to all the parties in Wash- ington, have no spine or principals or are just downright jealous. We suspect it just might be a combination.
But, as always, that’s only one man’s opinion.
There’s one thing everyone can agree with is assuring the safety of the many pedestrians young and old walking the downtown streets. This especially is true during the school year when a large number of Reed- ley High School students walk south toward their home neighborhoods.
Well done, city leaders.
The shameless exploitation of Greta Thunberg
By Mark Hendrickson
Guest columnist
In case you haven’t heard of her yet, Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old Swedish girl who has been manufactured into the new face of climate change. Credited with being the founder of the Youth Strike for Climate move- ment (a publicity-seeking strategy whereby students skip school to urge govern- ments to do more about cli- mate change), Greta was recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and has her own TED Talk video.
Let me emphasize at the outset that I have zero criticism of Greta herself. I believe her to be a sincere, well-intentioned young per- son who has much broader horizons than the typical teenager. She obviously cares about the world, which is admirable. What is not admirable is how adults are exploiting this innocent child.
Adults are using Greta as a puppet and mouth- piece to advance their own agenda. Here is a sample of Greta’s rhetoric: “Some people — some companies and some decision-makers in particular — have known exactly what priceless val- ues they are sacrificing to continue making unimagi- nable amounts of money. I want to challenge them
A crisis at our borders
We now have a real crisis at our borders; causing overcrowding with excessive illegal immigrants be- ing held in custody. We do not have enough accommodations to house them all. Thousands are arriving weekly, encroaching our borders. Ma- ny have criminal backgrounds. Some are from the Middle East, with pos- sible terrorist ties. Many have been diagnosed as having diseases such as tuberculosis.
Thousands are creeping through and crossing over into this country, undetected. We need a border wall fence, built from California to Texas. There are many open areas with no border protection with easy access into this country. Supposedly, there are over a million people from all over the world awaiting legal access into this country. These people will
how emotionally affecting is the sight of this petite teenager standing alone on stage — she seems so fragile, so vulnerable, that we must help her! And it is more than a little ironic that a “peace” prize might go to someone represent- ing an agenda of waging economic warfare against both the poor people of the world, whose escape from poverty depends on access to affordable energy, and the American middle class who are expected to pay tens of trillions of dollars to pay for a Green New Deal.
I’ve rebutted the im- passioned assertions of the climate change narrative of the global political elite repeatedly (see here, here, here, here, here, and here if you are viewing this on- line).
The idea that CO2 is the regulator of Earth’s tem- perature is counterfactual, yet the narrative that hu- man emissions of CO2 will produce a climate disaster is routinely drummed into our children.
Greta Thunberg has been indoctrinated with climate alarmism, and so have American students. The National Environmen- tal Education Act of 1990 mandated that our public schools’ environmental cur- riculum be cleared through the Office for Environmen-
tal Education at the EPA. This means that warnings of global warming have been pounded into our kids for many years. There is even a famous recording of Al Gore telling children a decade ago to pay atten- tion to what their schools teach them about climate change, because schools have the latest “scientific” information and their par- ents don’t.
What we know with cer- tainty is this: 1) It is impos- sible to predict the climate (the U.N.’s Inter-govern- mental Panel on Climate Change correctly stated this) and 2) Natural disas- ters and horrific weather events are unavoidable, but the more prosperous hu- man societies become, the better able we are to cope with and survive nature’s fury, and that is good news indeed.
The climate-change cabal has succeeded in making Greta Thunberg a poster child for their move- ment. Inadvertently, they also have made her a poster child for the cynical exploi- tation of innocent children. Shame on them.
Mark W. Hendrickson is an adjunct faculty member, economist, and fellow for economic and social policy with the Institute for Faith & Freedom at Grove City (Pa.) College.
Other Opinions
into real and bold climate action, to set their eco- nomic goals aside and to safeguard the future living conditions for humankind. I ask you to stand on the right side of history.”
Clearly, there’s little original thought here. This sounds like a robotic recita- tion of typical anti-capital- ist boilerplate. “The right side of history” is well- known Marxist dogma and rhetoric, as any student of Marx knows. Whatever adults got their hooks into Greta Thunberg have in- doctrinated her with stale leftist clichés.
If there is one com- pliment I can pay to the climate change cabal, it is how well it coordinates public relations tactics. The Nobel Committee and the TED Talk organization wasted no time in lending their prestige to amplify Greta’s message. These or- ganizations have disgraced themselves by such cynical opportunism. TED Talks advertises itself as offering “videos from expert speak- ers.”
With all due respect to Greta, who may well be a brilliant young stu- dent, she is no “expert” on the complicated science, politics, and economics of climate change. But, oh,
Letters from readers
have earned their way to becoming legal citizen. Not those who demand and enter illegally into this country.
The progressive left, is blaming President Trump for what is happen- ing on our borders. Instead, blame the corrupted, dysfunctional socialistic leaders of these countries that care very little what happens to their citi- zens. These shady government lead- ers have mismanaged and mishandled their countries’ wealth and national resources. Besides Latin America, we get illegal immigrants from the Far East, the Middle East and other parts of the world. We are not equipped and lack the resources to handle such enormous amount of people who are trying to illegally sneak in.
History has proven that socialism is not the answer in making and es- tablishing a free democracy. That is why you have “people exodus” from
many parts of the world heading for this great republic of ours. Without a strong built border wall, expect disas- trous results. I pray not.
Manuel Madrid Reedley
A special ‘thank you’
This is a prayer for and a thank you to a very special lady in Reedley, Nancy Petinak!
Thank you for all the love you have given to the Sierra Views Homes residents — 40-plus years — to your friends at the church, to your friends at the Historical Society and to all your friends at Kings River Mobile Home Park.
You are a sweet and loving per- son. May the blessings you have giv- en be returned to you a hundred fold.
Sharon Liston Reedley
Letters Policy
THE REEDLEY EXPONENT invites letters from the public on any topic of local relevance. We reserve the right to edit letters for clar- ity or brevity, and we reserve the right to NOT publish them if they could be deemed libelous or profane. Letters should be 300 words or less, and bear the author's name, address, and phone number. Letters can be mailed, emailed (jon@midvalleypublishing.com),
or personally delivered to: Editor, Reedley Exponent, 1130 G St, Reedley CA 93654.