Page 3 - Sanger Herald 3-29-18 E-edition

SANGER HERALD 3A THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2018 EDITORIAL & OPINION
Happy Easter and Happy Passover
Random thoughts It's the season to renew efforts to work together as a team ...
By Dick Sheppard
Best wishes for a happy and blessed Passover, Good Friday and Easter to you and your family from our family at the Sanger Herald.
I feel constrained because
of the holy holidays to limit
my comments today to ones
that are less curmudgeonly than usual.
In fact, even though it makes my brain cramp, I won't allow myself to make any snarky comment about the cognitive disso- nance created by Easter falling on April Fool's Day.
•••
But as long as we're on the subject of cogni-
tive dissonance, last Sunday morning, before my second cup of coffee, I drove down Church Avenue and stopped at the intersection with Bethel Avenue. I was on autopilot, preoccupied, thinking about the reason why I had to be out driving so early, before my coffee kicked in.
There is both a stop sign and a traffic signal at that intersection. The traffic signal has been there for months. It's not operational and no one seems to be sure when it will be.
Not sure how long I sat there, thinking about something else, before it dawned on me - the traffic signal light was not going to change.
That must be how people who don't drink coffee function all the time.
•••
Maybe for the very first time I enjoyed attending a planning commission meeting.
That was last week when a consultant managed to make sense of the way the city's general plan is being created and several young people from SAM Academy showed up to talk about visions they have for brighten- ing the city.
Most of the time at planning commission meetings is usually taken up with picking nits, dealing with details - how many feet for this and how many inches for that - kind of stuff.
The consultant and the very smart and very sincere youngsters talked about con- cepts.
I'm better with concepts than I am with details.
I liked Julian Navarrete's idea for painting traffic boxes and maybe a few of the down- town sidewalks.
But as usual, every silver lining comes with a dark cloud when people who are good with concepts share ideas with people who aregoodwithdetails.
Who would take care of the upkeep of the painted traffic boxes? When would they be repainted and who would pay for the paint?
As far as the sidewalks are concerned, having tripped over more than one pothole, crack or raised or missing section of down- town sidewalk even I - not a detail person
- could see there might be problems to be addressed before the painting could begin.
It would, in my opinion, take about the same amount of Bondo to get one of the los- ing cars in a destruction derby ready for a paint job as it would to get a few feet of many of the downtown sidewalks ready for a coat of bright paint.
Dr. Jerry Valadez, SAM Academy CEO, and planning commission chairperson Johnny Perez praised Navarrete's concept and urged him to figure out the steps necessary to turn it into a reality.
•••
I am not a big fan of "man buns," a hair-
style in which the hair is drawn back into a tight coil at the back or top of the head, even though I have been told they are very stylish these days. I became even less of a fan when within a period of a few days I saw a couple of strutting, portly guys sporting man buns and skin tight yoga pants.
Skin tight.
Certainly hope that is not a new fashion trend. That's worse than a garishly painted broken, cracked and chipped downtown side- walk. Idon'tknowanyguyexceptmaybea Mikhail Baryshnikov lookalike who could pull off that look. So, guys, if you're not a world class ballet dancer please, please don't wear
yoga pants in public, even if your pajamas are in the wash.
Not even at Walmart.
I think the man bun was wound too tight.
•••
I pray the spirit of Easter, a festival of renewal, will spark the same spirit among members of the city administration, city council and Measure S Citizens Oversight Committee.
The majority of recent very public misun- derstandings among administration, council and committee, in my opinion, are primarily a result of mistrust and miscommunications. Better communication and more transpar- ency might help make the mistrust go away - as long as no one is wearing yoga pants.
Let's make it the season to renew efforts to work together as a team for the greater good of the City of Sanger.
"The only thing necessary for evil men to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
Edmund Burke
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Dick Sheppard
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right of privacy under the Constitution it appears there is little we can do to stop such idiocy but we shouldn't be called upon to pay for it.
Increased social programs, champi-
oned by Democrats and accepted by their Republicans in the deep state should not be used to pay for legal defense, social security andhealthbenefitsforillegals. Norshould funding continue to flow into sanctuary cities to provide cover for illegal criminals and cer- tainly it should not come from the toil of hard working, taxpaying American citizens.
With a budget that exceeds 2,000 pages, which obviously no one read, it's impossible insuchasmallabout ofspacetotrulyjustice to all the prolific spending contained therein especially when it calls for a $1.3 trillion defi- cit. Wedidnote,however,withonlylipser- vice being paid to border security in our own country, this bunch of “rocket scientists” we elected to govern managed to include copi- ous amounts of money for walls and border securityinMiddleEasterncountries. Don't askwhy. Congressjustseemsabletodoas theypleaseandgetawaywithit. Anyway
it makes them feel better because it's their wayofshowingTrumpwho'stheboss. Our President should have vetoed the mess and made Congress come back to the cesspool of their creation and fix the mess!
But, as always, that's only one man's opin- ion.
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In my OPINION
Just when you think it couldn't get any worse ...
By Fred Hall
It never fails that
whenever one feels that
politicians and their big
money donors have broken
through the threshold of
“worst ever” they manage
to surpass anything done
before. Wonderwhatit
took to bring me to this con-
clusion? IjustwatchedthePresidentsign the “Omnibus Bill” which is a budget that betrays everyone who voted for a Republican majority in government.
Democrats are the big winners in this mess! Theygotvirtuallyeverythingthey wantandthey'retheminorityparty. Why should we waste our votes on vacant prom- isesbyRepublicans? Atleastweknowwhat liberalDemocratsaregoingtodo. They might as well have written this budget with little or no resistance from weak-kneed Republicans and their sorry excuse for lead- ership in both the House and the Senate!
Granted the president got the money which was so sorely needed to build our mili- tarytopre-Obamalevels. Sincetheprimary objective of our federal government is to protect the people the president delivered on his campaign promise but fell pitifully short on his promise to construct a wall across our southwest border to stem the flow of illegals anddrugsintoourcountry. Thankstoboth political parties that border was essentially left open.
Between 1970 and 2014, 44.5 million babies were aborted in America chiefly through the publicly funded Planned Parenthood
which is nothing more than an abortion
mill. Theunnecessarydeathofmorethan
44 million children is a stain on any civilized society. Howandwhycansuchanobvious misuse of taxpayer money become the very heartbeat of Democrat candidates? Although the rate of such occurrences are down, the last reporting year indicated there were
well over 700,000 children who will never be allowed to enjoy the American way of life.
Although a tremendous tragedy, how can the deaths of 17 children in Florida raise such a public furor when compared to millions
of babies who receive no attention whatso- ever? Remember,thankstothisnewbudget Planned Parenthood received additional fund- ing to do their sordid work.
As long as it's legal under a newly found
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