Kudos to Vice Mayor Couper Condit for asking the Ceres City Council to discuss the idea of allowing city employees to choose whether or not they wish to be vaccinated against COVID. As you know, lots of government entities are trying to strip rights away from citizens. Nobody should be forced to choose between keeping their job and being vaccinated against a virus that is overwhelmingly not a problem for many to deal with.
The council will be taking up the matter at an upcoming meeting.
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I can’t remember a recent election – local, state or federal – where I liked the outcome.
That especially holds true of all the statewide races for the past decade and last week’s recall election. I have resigned myself to the fact that two-thirds of the voters are under the spell that government giveaways (and the controls) are the answer, that accommodating lawbreakers is okay, that forests are okay to burn, it’s awesome that homeless are crapping in our streets and that we don’t need dams for water because we can conserve our way out of dry spells.
It’s like Ryan Fournier said: “There’s nothing more Democrat than driving down half the roads in California, seeing miles of homelessness/crime/drugs, and still voting for the same s***.”
No, you can’t blame the problems all on the Democrat stranglehold on policy but they crafted a lot of the legislation that contributes to those problems.
MSN carried an opinion piece by a liberal from the Middle East named Ahmed Twaji who suggests that Republicans should pay for the costs of the recall election. Well, that’s not the way it works. We don’t charge a political party to hold elections that were brought about by over a million citizens of all parties who signed the petition to get rid of Newsom.
You see, a recall is the people’s recourse to remove failed leadership. We did that to Gray Davis when California was less divisive.
He suggests that the $300 million was a waste of money. Not really. It proved, since Larry Elder received 47.4 percent of the vote, that the mostly Republican electorate is the farthest thing from being a racist. It takes away the Democrats’ narrative.
Was it really a waste if the state and counties have to spend money so that people who saw a huge problem with their leader attempt to remove him? Was it a waste to signal a dictatorial leader that you can’t shut down small businesses and schools and life as we know it? I could argue that is a better use of taxpayer than when he decided to sign AB 133 to take over a billion dollars of our tax money to pay for the healthcare of people who are illegally living here.
Twaji said we could have better spent that money on housing the homeless. How many millions of dollars have been thrown at the homeless problem and yet it continues to worsen?
I can’t help that 66 percent of Californians see no correlation between our state’s growing problems and the policies enacted by the single party in charge.
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Remember when Bush and Trump won the presidency and the liberals were steaming over the fact that both won after losing the popular vote while winning the Electoral College? They called for an end to the Electoral College.
Lots of folks who snoozed through their history classes in high school failed to catch that the founding fathers wanted the Electoral College system so that larger cities couldn’t run roughshod over smaller states. The Electoral College helps give rural states with lower populations an equal voice. If popular vote alone decided the presidential pick, the candidates would rarely visit those states or consider the needs of rural residents in their policy platforms.
While it will never happen, California is so large that it should choose officials based on a similar Electoral College system whereby smaller counties get a say. As it is now, the city folks run roughshod over the will of the rural folks. If you look at California county by county, it’s a predominantly red state.
As far as the recall goes, what the media hasn’t reported is that it was the Bay Area and Los Angeles and coastal areas who saved Newsom’s hide. The voters in 28 counties all voted to give Newsom the boot. They are the counties of Stanislaus, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Fresno, Glenn, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Lassen, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Modoc, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Tulare, Tuolumne and Yuba.
So now you know why we are the flyover part of California who is treated like a Third World country. We are the ones who don’t matter because we don’t support the regime in Sacramento. They don’t need to address our concerns such as water storage. They just have to make sure that Southern California voters are appeased.
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In 2003 California voters recalled Democrat Gray Davis in a 55.39 percent to 44.61 percent outcome and his leadership was far less divisive as Newsom’s. We recalled Davis even though the state was in better shape.
Not all states allow recalls. In fact California is one of 19. Don’t be surprised to see Democrats try to get rid of the ability to recall governors in the future.
California was a more conservative state when Davis was around. People were upset at him because he blocked the enactment of Proposition 187, which called for California to use English only. He also signed two restrictive gun-control laws; plus voters were angry about ongoing electrical shortages and brownouts.
Today Democrats have passed a plethora of restrictive gun and ammunition measures, as they blame the forest fires on climate change and not the state’s failure to clean up the fuels in our forests. Our homeless population is appallingly out of control. We are running out of water because, as then state Senator Anthony Cannella said years ago, there seems to be a holy ji-had against water storage projects. And we’re not talking about the huge issue of the state shutting down life in California and killing small businesses, shielding illegal immigrants from ICE, the lack of affordable housing and the high cost of living. And yet 63.8 percent of California voters (mostly all Democrats) think Newsom should keep his job? This is why the rest of the country laughs at us as the land of fruits and nuts. One thing we know: at least 3,336,480 of us Californians who voted yes on the recall have our eyes open and can see that change is desperately needed.
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Well, if you haven’t been to Squaw Valley, you can never go now.
Oh, sure, yeah, the ski resort near Tahoe is still there, it’s just that the PC crowd has removed the name because squaw was suddenly offensive. It’s now called Palisades Tahoe.
Everything is being sanitized.
In this age where liberals are calling women “birthing people” or “menstruating people,” somebody decided squaw was bad and they wanted to be offended over the term.
The resort issued a statement deserving of an eye roll: “More than one year ago, we came to the conclusion that it was time to change our name. The reasons were clear – the old name was derogatory and offensive. It did not stand for who we are or what we represent. And we could not in good conscience continue to use it.”
Well, the word squaw was derived from the Algonquin language, believed to have once meant “woman.” Somewhere along the line the new enlightened generation perverted its use into a “misogynistic and racist term used to disparage Indigenous women.” According to Dr. Marge Bruchac, an Abenaki historical consultant, Squaw means the totality of being female and the Algonquin version of the word “esqua,” “squa” “skwa” does not translate to a woman’s female anatomy.
In an article titled, “Reclaiming the word ‘Squaw’ in the Name of the Ancestors,” Dr. Bruchac wrote that squaw “has been interpreted by modern activists as a slanderous assault against Native American women.” Traditional Algonkian speakers still say words like “nidobaskwa” (which means a female friend), “manigebeskwa” which means a woman of the woods; or “Squaw Sachem” which means female chief. When Abenaki people sing the “Birth Song,” they address “nuncksquassis” which means “little woman baby.”
Dr. Bruchac urged native Americans to “reclaim our language rather than let it be taken over.”
So perhaps this is all just corporate America falling in line with the notion that there is no such thing as a woman and no such thing as a man? Gender is as fluid as hair dye, after all, they believe.
Progressives mess everything up.
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Not everything you see making its way into social media is true but apparently this one is true, according to Snopes. A Dr. Starner Jones did write a letter to the editor in August 2009 to the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion Ledger. Jones specializes in emergency medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Dr. Jones’ letter read as follows:
“During my last night’s shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite tune for a ring tone.
“Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to purchase beer.
“And our president expects me to pay for this woman’s health care?
“Our nation’s health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture – a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.
“A culture than thinks I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me. Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.
Starner Jones, MD
Jackson, MS”
The letter is 12 years old but is just as true today, probably more so. Government has expanded the Nanny State, paying for rents now.
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Lee Brandt complained last week at the Ceres City Council meeting that he’s appalled that his water bill was $205 and that it took him by surprise.
I checked with the city and that was his total bill of water, sewer and garbage combined. To be clear, his water bill portion was $114 not $205. The month prior his water cost him $99.
In 2017, the council passed a five-year series of water rate increases to pay for water infrastructure upgrades as well as begin financing the surface water plant which will be going into service in 2023. The last of the increases takes effect on Jan. 1, 2022. Of course, if you use more water your bill will go up because there is a base rate and a metric rate per thousand gallons used. Plus if you go crazy with water use you’ll be subject to an additional charge for going over your water target.
It’s not cheap living in California.
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Not only is government taking more of your money but low life thieves are out to take what belongs to you. Tammi Lopez reported on the Ceres Neighborhood Watch Facebook page that catalytic concrete thieves are on the prowl. (They really never stopped.) Her Stonum Road neighbors’ catalytic converter was stolen in his driveway on Sept. 9. Imagine that, he gets to sacrifice $1,500 to replace it so that a thief gets to sell it for $200 – probably for drugs. How much do you want to bet that the thief has been in jail or prison before for theft and drugs? He may have even been one of the lucky inmates released early for reasons of COVID. Our state leaders are so kind and compassionate for those poor inmates.
Keep an eye out or report suspicious activity in your neighborhood.
Instead of crafting laws to tell stores they can’t have girls and boys items separately displayed, why aren’t lawmakers tackling real issues like the catalytic converter black market?
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
