Page 4 - Reedley Exponent 3-28-19 E-edition

The Reedley Exponent A4 Thursday, March 28, 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 We’re sad to say that one of this country’s greatest defenders of freedom, justice and con- stitutional guarantees passed away recently. His presence as a leading force in the struggles to keep America great were fought so predictably and quietly that the efforts went essentially un- appreciated in the main stream media and to- day’s “I want it right now and free” generation. Common Sense was seen as a basic part of the American experience until recently it wasn’t. Common Sense died of a broken heart, quietly and alone after a generation of poorly educated and spoiled Americans began to chip away at his very reason for existing. The following is a modified reprint of Common Sense’s obituary: Today, we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who had been with for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. Known affectionately to close friends as Horse Sense and Sound Thinking, he selflessly devoted himself to a life of service in homes, schools, hospitals and offices, helping folks get jobs done without a lot of fan,fare, whooping and hollering. Rules and regulations and petty, frivolous lawsuits held no power over C.S. A most reliable sage, he was credited with cultivating the ability to know when to come in out of the rain, the discovery that the early bird gets the worm and how to take the bitter with the sweet. C.S. Also developed sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you earn), reliable parenting strategies ( the adult is in charge, not the kid), and prudent dietary plans. A veteran of the industrial revolution, the Great Depression, the technological revolution and the Smoking Crusades, C.S. Survived sundry cultural and educational trends including disco, the men’s movement, body piercing, whole language and new math. C.S.’s health began to fail in the late 1960’s when he became infected with the If- It-Feels-Good, Do-It virus. In the following decades, his waning strength proved no match for the ravages of overbearing federal and state rules and regulations as well as an oppressive tax code. C.S. Was sapped of strength and the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband, criminals received better treatment than victims and judges stuck their noses in everything from Boy Scouts to professional sports. His deterioration accelerated as schools implemented zero-tol- erance policies. Reports of 6-year-old boys charged with sexual ha- rassment for kissing classmates, a teen suspended after using Scope mouthwash after lunch, girls suspended for possessing Midol and an honor student expelled for having a table knife in her school lunch were more than his heart could endure. As the end neared, doctors say C.S. drifted in and out of logic, but was kept informed of developments regarding regulations on low-flow toilets and mandatory air bags. Finally, upon hearing about a government plan to ban inhalers from 14 million asthmatics due to a trace of a pollutant that may be harmful to the environment, C.S. wasdeclaredcodeblue. Thefinalstrawcamewhena29-yearoldex- bartender, who the people of New York elected to the United States Congress, declared the world would end in 12-years unless we spent 93 trillion on asinine fixes, and Democrats throughout government joined her. Common Sense was preceded in death by his wife, Discretion, one daughter, Responsibility, and one son, Reason. He is survived by two step-brothers, Half-Wit and Dim-Wit. Memorial contributions may be sent to the institute for Rational Thought. Farewell, Common Sense. May you rest in peace. The preceding is a modified, excerpted version of an essay which was originally written by Lori Bergman back in 1998. It is a relatively easy extrapolation to see just how ridiculous this has become since it was first penned. Political correctness, gender identification and hundreds of other examples of liberal interpretations have so clouded the thinking of today’s society as to become patently dumb—there is no other description. Although, simply reflecting on the results of this shift in public attitude, it becomes even scarier for those of you reading this column here in California. California has become the very paradigm for stupid ideas across this entire nation.Want an example? Over the decades, California has passed more than $149 billion in water bonds and now the state is toy- ing with the idea of taxing our drinking water. Water is an essential in life. The state should have no control over it. We wonder what they will do when they discover the human body is, on average, about 60 percent water. Will that water contained in your body be another source of taxation? Your next question would be, what about the air we breathe? Too late! There already are 35 air districts in California, as well as the Department of Motor Vehicles and an unknown number of miscel- laneous others, who tax and control the air we rely on for life. People who are here illegally, according to the state, are entitled to drivers licenses, public welfare, medical care and, we believe, the ability to vote. Their presence costs California taxpayers about $25 billion a year and the Democrat party wants the border open to al- low even more access to the freebies that citizens are expected to provide. Where in the world is the common sense in that? But, as always, that’s only one man’s opinion. Jon Earnest — Editor / Sports Juanita Adame — Panorama Editor Budd Brockett — Editor Emeritus QUOTE “Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.” Joseph Heller (1923-1999), “Catch-22” Fred Hall By Harold Pease Guest columnist This column is my 500th pub- lished column on liberty and the Constitution. I taught the Constitu- tion and Current Events for 40 years at the college level and therefore am qualified to pose the following ques- tion — “What if fake news is not the only thing that is fake?” What if things are not as they seem, that we not only have fake news but fake history, education, sci- ence, and more? That our world is far more Orwellian than presumed. Let’s begin with a not so fake his- tory. What if after the Civil War certain enterprising and gifted men, such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carn- egie, and J. P. Morgan, used the free market philosophy to gain great wealth and monopolistic power over oil, steel, railroads and banking? These men then funding the politicians that would pro- tect their interests from “real” legisla- tive control over their monopolies. What if they saw even greater wealth and power in expanding their influence to the world arena and fi- nanced a president, William McKin- ley, who with a little help from “yellow journalism,” enticed the United States into war against Spain, which win, netted America rich, lush, and lavish colonial colonies? These possessions never benefited average America who had to provide the brawn, blood and money to keep the Philippines under subjection while the capitalists reaped huge benefits and profits. What if these moneyed elite saw the need to create an influence orga- nization, the Council on Foreign Rela- tions (CFR), to make certain that they never lost their new found power to guide foreign policy and future pres- idents? For almost a hundred years this organization seated a third of the cabinets of all presidents yet it is never mentioned on globalist media outlets. This they did by infiltrating with CFR members the Republican Other Opinions and Democratic Parties and ignor- ing all other parties. J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller purchased all major media streams of news (infor- mation) so that the internationalist view alone dominated. ... What if these moneyed inter- ests came to the conclusion that to properly manage the world a type of world governance needed to be cre- ated which resulted in the League of Nations? But the Constitution, if in- terpreted as written, would allow no government over it and their efforts, accepted and implemented by inter- nationalists in Europe, was rejected in the United States. Our failure to join eventually ended the League. What if the globalists used World War II to reignite their world govern- ment effort with a United Nations, the Rockefeller’s even providing the property for it? Its function and pur- pose they knew would be enlarged with time until it would be the only real government. U.S. wars thereaf- ter, the Korean and Vietnamese Wars, were UN — not U.S. — initiated wars. But America was still resisting allow- ing the UN total government. Failing this, what if the new plan became to instead unite nations of Eu- rope into the European Union and the nations of North American (Canada, Mexico and the U.S.), using the model of the EU, into the North American Union and likewise for 20 other regions of the globe into what is called regional government? Nationalism would be de- stroyed and these regions later would surrender sovereignty to the world government of the United Nations. The plan required fake history, or at least history that did not link the above. Textbooks and history classes must be made to show the benefits of global union and the UN as a benevolent organization. No one should ever accept that we had been led by the moneyed elite to lose our Constitution as the supreme docu- ment of the land, as well as our free- dom, sovereignty and independence, for a global government that guaran- teed none of these things. What if the plan required fake science, first global warming, which could not be confirmed over time, and thus was changed by advo- cates to climate change, which does change seasonally and over time, but still lacks clear documentation that man actually is the agent of that change? ... The plan required fake education at least in the above categories and pe- ripheral areas of sociology and political science as well. As world government requires total control, first mind con- trol through education then force for those not “properly” educated. A phi- losophy opposite limited government is the only government that could work. Socialism, which never worked in the USSR, China, North Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela or any other place on earth, must be made to be a part of the intended new world order. World socialism would allow no com- peting ideologies; no place to flee. This philosophy permeates university cam- puses today. The plan required fake news. All the globalist news outlets are owned by the moneyed elite and promote the fake history, fake science, fake edu- cation scenario as described above. Today parents send their young adults to college to be educated but instead they are largely propagan- dized and return home advocates of something their parents oppose. Per- haps it is time to drop the “what if” in the above scenario. Harold Pease is a syndicated col- umnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He taught history and political science from this per- spective for over 30 years at Taft Col- lege in Kern County. What if fake news not only thing fake? Jon Earnest’s column will return. Immigration and the Democratic hopefuls By Andrew Moss Guest columnist To date, Democrats have largely failed to lay out a comprehensive vi- sion of what our immigra- tion policy should be. Some of the announced presiden- tial candidates have, over time, staked out positions on specific issues, such as the status of the Dream- ers or the abolition of ICE, but they’ve largely left it to Donald Trump and his allies to set the broader terms of the debate. If the candidates hope to offer a genuine alterna- tive to the administration’s policies, it’s imperative that they shift the debate from sloganeering about the wall and “open borders” to a con- sideration of an underlying question: what priorities and values will guide our immigration policy in the coming years? Will we con- tinue along the present path of increased militarization and incarceration, or will we forge policies guided by a vi- sion of a more just society? No challenger will suc- ceed in this project unless he or she can begin to coun- ter Trump’s greatest politi- cal weapon: fear. Right from the start, candidate Trump began stoking people’s anxi- eties about their job security, their physical safety, and the Other Opinions cohesion of American soci- ety itself. Since his election as president, he has used the enormous power of his of- fice to amplify his message, supported by Fox News and other conservative outlets. If Democratic challengers are to succeed, they’ll need to employ facts and narratives skillfully to align the main- stream debates to reality. For the facts, they’ll need to draw on extensive research, includ- ing a recent report of the Na- tional Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, that documents the positive overall effects of immigra- tion on U.S. economic growth. They’ll need to show that Trump is wrong on crime and immigration. A number of recent, large- scale studies of metropoli- tan areas throughout the U.S. have shown no corre- lation between crime and the growth of immigrant communities. If anything, crime in those areas has decreased. Moreover, chal- lengers to Trump must show that his repeated characterizations of mi- grants as constituting a destabilizing “invasion” are dangerously distorted. Although news reports have focused on recent migrations to our southern border of people fleeing violence and destitution in Central America, the great- est percentage of people coming to the U.S. since 2010 is from Asian coun- tries, and many of these immigrants are college educated. The percentage of foreign-born persons in the U.S. — 13.7 percent as of 2017 — is still lower than the peak percentage of around 15 percent at the turn of the 20th century. But in addition to neu- tralizing the weapon of fear, successful challengers to Trump must show in stark terms the tragic failures of the present policies. They must remind voters how Trump’s harsher policies on asylum, prosecution, and detention have failed to deter migrants from coming to our southern bor- der (a record 76,000 came this past February). They must keep before the pub- lic mind those images of cruelty that have repelled people of all political per- suasions: the separation of migrant children from their parents, the caging of children in make-shift facilities, the teargassing of migrant families by U.S. agents at the border, the deaths of both adults and children in detention. The challengers must call out the racist discourse animating these policies — and the white supremacist logic that moves inexora- bly to greater and greater cruelty. They must show their skill in using facts and stories to remind us of our common humanity — not only in the suffering expe- rienced as a result of injus- tice, but also in the count- less gifts and contributions that flow from centuries of immigrant experience. Will the Democratic hopefuls speak forcefully about the choices facing our communities? Will they suf- ficiently highlight the fail- ures and abuses of the cur- rent policies as Trump seeks a record-breaking $51.7 bil- lion for the Department of Homeland Security? The challengers wishing to replace Donald Trump in the White House have a tall order if they want to dis- play genuine leadership on the issues of immigration. At the very least, voters de- serve a higher standard (i.e. than heretofore employed) on which to evaluate that leadership. Andrew Moss, syndi- cated by PeaceVoice, is an emeritus professor at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he taught in Nonviolence Studies for 10 years. 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.