The Courier has found out the cost for Mayor Javier Lopez and Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra to attend the ICSC Conference in Las Vegas.

Mayor Lopez’s expenses came to $1,824.23 and Councilwoman Vierra’s came to $1690.94. The cost of attending the conference was $795 per person (except for Spade whose conference charge was $975.)

The council meeting of May 22 had to be cancelled owing in part to the absence of Lopez and Vierra who were attending the May 21-23 conference held at the Wynn and Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas.  ICSC stands for International Council of Shopping Centers, essentially a group that promotes shopping centers.

In my column on May 31 I noted how some residents were questioning why Lopez and Vierra went to the conference normally attended by staff.

To find out the total cost to taxpayers I had to file a records request since credit cards were used on the trip. The grand total for all four to attend (including Community Development Director Christopher Hoem and Economic Development Manager Tamra Spade), came to $7,229.

I don’t think taxpayers have a problem sending staff members who are paid to attract new businesses to Ceres but it’s questionable why the two elected officials felt the need to go. To my knowledge, no councilmembers during the Chris Vierra-led council went to the annual conference with Steve Hallam when he was the economic development director. Keep in mind that besides Hoem and Spade, the city also pays The Retail Coach to actively assist in marketing efforts to retailers, developers and brokers at retail industry conference and trade shows.

Having four from Ceres attend is overkill, unless one is just looking for a free trip to Vegas.

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The Fourth of July celebration has once again shown how utterly self-centered and inconsiderate a vast number of our fellow Americans have become.

As one fire official told me: “Fourth of July is the time that regular law-abiding citizens break the law.”

I enjoy fireworks at Disneyland and places like Mount Rushmore but it’s hard to enjoy the vast numbers of amateur pyrotechnicians blowing them off in neighborhoods because of the damage they often do. Causing fires is the chief reason and another is stressing out pets, veterans and the emotionally fragile.

We all saw the devastation to the community of Santa Rosa during the Tubbs fire in October 2017 when embers from a grass fire drifted into and burned down whole subdivisions. Don’t think it can’t happen with a mortar.

The number of explosive M-80s and mortar rockets that blew off in my neighborhood even after 10 p.m.  tells you all you need to know. Their desire for entertainment is supreme above all others – which had me thinking that their behavior is similar to those who are responsible for human trafficking. Let’s face it, 80-year-old grandmothers aren’t setting off those bottle rockets and small explosives. They are mostly men who don’t consider others – especially the effects of rocking your house after 11 p.m. while you hope their infantile behavior ends so you can get enough sleep to work the next day. Illegal fireworks and paying for sex are both illegal yet both industries are apparently thriving and some do it despite the damage it causes. (Yes, houses have been burned down because of illegal fireworks and people have lost property and body appendages.) Grass fires are routinely set by them because I can tell you my house filled with smoke on July 4 after the park near my home caught fire.

Likewise the quest for selfish pleasures through human trafficking leaves victims – many of them minors – in its wake.

It also occurred to me that Democrats should just stop talking about gun control altogether, because aside from the fact that we don’t have a problem with guns in this country (we have a problem with violent people), it’s apparent that folks only obey laws they feel like obeying and feel relatively sure of not being caught and punished – even despite the threat of a $2,500 fine!

This from Modesto Fire Department, which operates the fire service in Ceres:

“Last night was extremely busy for area fire crews. The Modesto Fire Department responded to two 274 calls for service between 7 a.m. on July 4 to 7 a.m. on July 5 in the communities of Modesto, Ceres, Salida and Oakdale. This includes 65 fires; eight structure / building fires, 41 vegetation/grass fires, and 16 trash/rubbish fires. There were many fires reported involving back yards, vacant fields, fences, treetops, and trash cans. Many of the fires were reported in areas of heavy illegal fireworks use. All fires remain under investigation currently with the Stanislaus Regional Fire Investigations Unit.”

Even the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department released a video before July 4 showing how their aircraft can track down violators from the air. No matter though. They did it anyway.

The problem for police is finding the responsible person who is lighting the fireworks. If there are 20 people in the middle of the street, how does an officer cite the culprit if that officer didn’t see it?

Aren’t we better than this? The answer is obviously no, we aren’t.

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Do you ever get the idea that politicians really don’t give a flip about their pet issues? Let me explain. The Democrats have been in this frenetic handwringing over the dire the climate change issue. We’ve all heard their failed predictions about “we only have 12 years left” and 22 years later they’re still pulling out the same old fear mongering line.

But what do the folks in Sacramento due when they manage to turn a $100 billion state budget surplus into and turn a $30 billion deficit from one year to the next? They slash their pet climate change projects for budget savings! So apparently the situation isn’t really dire like they portend it to be.

A multiyear commitment to fight “climate change” took a $2.9 billion hit in the final budget agreement between Newsom and the Legislature. Programs aimed at climate resilience — making the state capable of withstanding some of the impacts of changing conditions — took some of the biggest cuts, losing $964 million. Sustainable agriculture and drought and water resilience also saw cuts.

They could have completely reduced the deficit by trashing the $51.4 billion in climate projects they approved. Newsom himself wanted to cut his $10 billion in programs to push us all out of gas-burning cars like you saw en mass at the Graffiti Parade in Modesto.

The budget cut sent an agency known as Sunstone Strategies of Oakland sending out a press release in which they were bawling their eyes out. I visited their website and the fact that they included this on their website tells you all about what side of the political spectrum they are: “We’re based on Oakland, California on the unceded land of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe.” I guess they don’t truly want to turn their land over to the native Americans that bad.

Sunstone Strategies said the so-called “climate equity” programs that were cut (including the Community Resilience Centers and Transformative Climate Communities programs) “were top priorities for environmental justice advocates”  and “will disproportionately impact the most climate-vulnerable and pollution-burdened communities in our state.”

You must understand that the biggest swill of hogwash coming from the progressive community is that the downtrodden of our society are more climate vulnerable than others. It’s an ingenious ploy to shake down corporations and the rest of us.

Their press release quoted a bunch of folks who were on the receiving end of the state’s dispensation of cash taken from your pockets.

One came from Zach Lou of the California Green New Deal Coalition. Lou expressed his remorse at the loss of money and “bitter blow” to “our communities, and marks a failure by the state to prioritize funding that would protect and invest in the most vulnerable communities in the state. He also bemoaned the fact that the state isn’t committed to “equity standards that ensure our investments repair the longstanding legacy of racist infrastructure policies and systemic community disinvestment.”

Because it’s worked so well to call anybody a racist to avoid some consequence – and in this case the loss of billions – they resort to using the term in a reckless and patently false fashion.

Alexis Sutterman of the California Environmental Justice Alliance made this absurd claim: “Low-income Californians will continue to see funding gaps in programs designed to help them through energy and climate crises. Let’s be clear, these are mostly communities of color that get left out of the budget. Cutting off their funding is environmental racism.”

Anybody who claims infrastructure can be racist or cutting off funding is “environmental racism” doesn’t deserve another dime of taxpayer money.

A word to voters: vote against any bond measure to backfill these cuts for the so-called climate change measures.

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I spend time on YouTube and stumbled across Ronald Reagan’s March 1975 appearance on the Johnny Carson show. He spoke of the need to cap government spending to a certain percentage relating to Americans’ income. Reagan told Carson “When you and I were boys back in the Midwest, governments – federal, state and local – were only taking 15 cents out of every dollar earned. Today they’re taking almost half of every dollar earned in the United States.”

That was 1975. Now we have socialists like newly-elected socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggesting that the wealthiest pay 75 cents out of every dollar.

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Democrats in the California State Senate are enemies of parents everywhere in the state. You need to be outraged.

AB 665 was passed which allows the state to remove children age 12 and up from their parents’ home without a court order. The bill was authored by two folks: Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo and moral reprobate Scott Wiener, the San Francisco Democrat in the California State Senate. The bill essentially is designed to allow kids to be removed from parents who refuse to allow said kid to surgically alter themselves sexually or parents who want get their kids therapy if they are confused about their gender.

Reform California’s Carl DeMaio, who is leading a campaign to block AB 665 from becoming law.

“It’s part of that larger far left agenda that is anti-parent and trying to advance some bizarre social agenda at the expense of our kids,” said DeMaio.

There is ample law on the book to remove kids from abusive homes where actual abuse is taking place, but AB 665 removes the standard that a psychologist or a therapist make a finding of credible fear or threat. They also must make the determination that a kid is mature enough to make such a decision and live on their own in a residential shelter.

This bill also allows a non-professional trainee or intern to make the finding.

Democrats see parents as cruel and bad and threats to their children.

Think back to your time as a kid in your adolescent years and tell me you had all the answers to life and were all wise and all knowing. The teen years have to be the most tumultuous years as the body changes and immature thoughts are entertained. Couple that with the societal obsession that boys can be girls and you can see how more kids may be messed up. According to DeMaio, 80 percent of kids who have gender identity questions won’t proceed with gender reassignment surgery. Any parent who embraces a kid making the decision as a juvenile is not only cruel but irresponsible.

Most gay and lesbians are offended by this crap and we all should be outraged.

Voters need to clear the house, including state Senator Anna Caballero who voted for this crap!

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 Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher of Yuba City is tired of the delays to build more water storage in California. On Monday he issued the following statement applauding the signing of legislation to streamline construction of water and energy infrastructure projects: “I’m tired of watching infrastructure projects like Sites Reservoir get tied up for years, while Californians are left to suffer the consequences. For years, Republicans have been trying to cut red-tape that holds up these critical projects. I’m glad Gov. Newsom and our Democrat colleagues have finally joined us. 

“While this legislation is a major step in the right direction, we still have more work to do – Democrats sided with special interests to leave housing and wildfire prevention projects out of this package, ensuring the state’s affordability crisis will continue to worsen.”

Republican bills to reform California’s permitting process that were killed by Democrats include:

• AB 311 (2015-16) which would have streamlined approvals for water surface storage projects.

• AB 1273 (2017-18) which would have renewed streamlining provisions for levee repairs.

• AB 394 (2019-20) which would have expedited road projects for wildfire ingress/egress routes. 

• AB 1774 (2021-22) which would have streamlined review for water storage and conveyance projects.

• AB 1488 (2023-24) which would have expedited water infrastructure projects.

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This next part might be a random and trivial observation but as a newspaper man, I’ve noticed an trend of young women – even teachers who have yet to hit 40 – that when they pose for a head-to-toe group photo, without cue they’ll angle sideways Rockette style, pivot their foot on the ball of their foot and pull the knee up. The reason? I’m sure to make the lower half appear slimmer. They’re partially hiding one leg behind another to reduce their straight-on profile. Is this is a phenomenon of the social media conscious generation? A “monkey-see, monkey-do” thing in an age which everyone is image obsessed with cameras on phones as opposed to the days when cameras were less common to own?

I’ve seen a lot of old school photos and never have seen the ladies do this in the 1940s and 1950s or even the 1960s. Can you imagine Mae Hensley or Virginia Parks posing like that? Me either.

It seems like plain silly vanity. Men don’t strike the three-quarters pose. Maybe they’re just more comfortable with themselves and care far less about image.

This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation.  How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com