If you aren’t mad at Gov. Newsom, you should be.
His leadership is ruining our state.
What am I mad about?
A governor destroying more businesses. He ushered in a second round of COVID related restrictions in our county again. We knew it was coming. He will shut down business on-again and off-again until Election Day, hoping the economy is so weakened that will be the campaign issue to bring down Trump.
Now the state DMV admits that about 1,500 people have been incorrectly registered between April 23 and Sept. 25 because of a “processing error.” It claims none of these are illegal aliens but I trust that as much as I can toss the DMV headquarters into the bay.
The state bureaucracy which licenses people to drive has no business registering people to vote. They’re careless and sloppy. We might as re-name it the DMV-VRSU for Department of Motor Vehicles & Voter Registration Screw-Ups.
Now the governor is using COVID-19 to usher homeless into privately-owned hotels. Proudly announcing his emergency Project Room Key is now being called Project Home Key, he extolled the virtues of a compassionate state while saying nothing about reversing the trend of high taxes and high costs of building new housing due to stringent environmental regulations that put people on the streets.
Newsom nearly broke his arm patting himself on the back as he bragged about passing a balanced budget yet failing to acknowledge the state is just kicking the can of financial indebtedness down the road by deferring billions in spending while doling out $1.3 billion to cities and counties to “fix” the homeless problem which the state helped to create. He also wants taxpayers in all other 49 states to chip in $11 billion in federal tax dollars to help overspending Californbia and I think Trump needs to tell Newsom: “You made your bed; now lie in it.”
Because of Newsom’s party, California is one of the most expensive states to live in and is an enemy of small business. Taxes are exorbitantly high, restrictions send businesses scurrying to other states, rents and mortgages are nosebleed sky high because not enough housing is being built because of ridiculous environmental restrictions. Not to mention how we pay excessively high gas prices compared to other states. So, in other words, instead of fixing the problem that fosters homelesses, Newsom treats the symptoms, not the cause. He heralds himself as a hero while failing to remove obstacles which cause people to fail, then advocates more social programs which the working stiffs have to finance through high taxes.
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We have homeless crapping in our streets, littering the sides of our freeways and under overpasses and the California State Legislature makes it a priority to pass a resolution calling for the John Wayne Airport to be renamed?
It was a move aimed at ticking off conservatives because they say the iconic, larger-than-life actor Wayne was a racist. In reality, Wayne spoke out against the rioting and burning of his day, much like black activist Candace Owens is today.
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Until a few weeks ago I didn’t know a single person who became infected with COVID-19. But my mother – who will be 80 in October and lives in an assisted living facility – tested positive on June 19. Three other residents have COVID-19 as well as two staff members.
I haven’t been allowed to see her since March 12.
Because of the gloom and doom news coverage of the virus, I believed she was a goner. After all, about 21 people in Turlock Nursing and Rehabilitation Center died from it, (or so we’re told and not just dying of old age.) But when I looked into what percentage of those in their 80s die from the coronavirus I was stunned that it wasn’t 90 to 99 percent but closer to 14 percent.
Not unlike flu – which we don’t shut down the economy for or require mask wearing or social distancing – COVID-19 is hardest on the elderly. Those 65 and older accounting for 80 percent of the U.S. deaths from the virus for which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released demographic data. But this is true of most illnesses: In 2018, 78 percent of all U.S. deaths from internal causes (that is, excluding accidents, murders, overdoses and the like) were among those 65 and older.
As of today, Mom and her fellow residents (including a 96-year-old) have shown no symptoms. No fever, nothing. They are about to be released after having been quarantined for 14 days in a special unit.
It seems to me that the smarter policy would be not to lock down business to healthy people but caution the elderly or people with compromised health to quarantine themselves.
Good for congressional candidate Ted Howze for shining the light of truth. On Thursday he aptly pointed out that COVID-19 cases are on the rise because of more testing yet the death rate is dropping. Herd immunity? Howze posted on Facebook: “There is no question that increased testing capability is behind the recent increase in Covid-19 numbers. Deaths continue to steadily decline, despite an increase in new cases. If there are other metrics that Gov. Newsom is basing his decisions on, he must immediately be far more transparent as to what they are. Otherwise, there is absolutely no justification for continued shutdowns and mask mandates as any further infringement on our freedoms looks purely political.”
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This is such an odd season of my life as a journalist. Why?
There were no Easter egg hunts and Easter gatherings were ruined.
Churches are meeting in strange ways.
No Ceres Street Faire.
No high school graduations.
No summer recreation program. No aquatics to cover.
Schools haven’t been meeting and won’t be normal.
Concerts in the Parks are cancelled.
No Stanislaus County Fair.
Most vacation plans have been ruined.
Disneyland and amusement parks are closed and losing millions of dollars.
You can’t eat inside a restaurant, once again.
You can, however, stay at home and go insane.
State leaders who are obsessed about controlling where you go and what you wear over your face don’t seem concerned about the psychological damage all of this locking people down is causing.
Angela Favaro, a professor of psychiatry at Padua University in Italy, said “What we expect is a steady growth in the number of patients who need psychiatric and physical therapy.”
Two girls shot themselves to death in Oakdale after life was shutdown. Older people are suffering from the isolation as well. I’ve been deprived from seeing my mom and can’t take her on lunch outings that she so looks forward to. But our governor could care less about that toll on people’s emotional health.
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A friend of mine, a fellow classmate from the 1970s, posted on social media: “For America to be such a horrible racist county, there sure seems to be an awful lot of very rich and successful black athletes, musician, actors, businesspeople, religious leaders, and elected officials. Not to mention we had a black president for eight whole years, a man who held the highest and most powerful position in the whole country – if not the world. Eight years which should have been more than enough time to stamp out this systemic racism – had it actually existed.”
True.
I also like what Senator Ted Cruz posted on Monday: “Democrats are so terrified of offending the angry Left that they can’t celebrate Independence Day; recognize champions for liberty; condemn mob violence tearing apart the fabric of our country.”
Now they’re attacking George Washington. For crying out loud!
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I bag on public education a lot because it’s responsible for turning out these little armies of socialist crusaders who endorse burning down America’s great system and removing statues and throwing rocks at police cars at huge expense to those who work and pay taxes.
Congressional candidate Ted Howze pointed out who organized the coordinated verbal attack on Ceres Mayor Chris Vierra and Turlock Mayor Amy Bublak merely for endorsing Howze. The list of mostly women was eye-opening. The “Be The Change – Turlock” group that organized the going-for-the-jugular-vein of Bublak includes Pitman High School English teacher Monica Flanders Cooke, Cal Poly grad Janet Smith, Donna Endsley (whose bizarre and aggressive behavior I wrote about last week), and Ann Strahm, a sociology professor at CSU Stanislaus. Socialists in academia is part of America’s problem.
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As you know, I spend hours researching and writing this column every week. We post this column on our website and then tease it on our Facebook page with an excerpt of my column. Usually a simple-minded troll will post an insult to raise my ire because they can’t offer anything logical in rebuttal.
Take the case from last week when this excerpt went on Facebook: “Folks, you realize what this tearing down of statues and renaming cities and products is really all about, don’t you? It’s really about the Left’s attempt to dismantle the greatest country on earth and reassembling it into the socialist utopia that Venezuela is. Why else would you dismiss great leaders like Washington and Jefferson?”
Instead of explaining why he differed with me, a Randy Rivera taps out: “Jeff, with all due respect. Get off the crack guy. There’s help out there for you.”
A response from Andy Constantinou further underscores the faulty reasons for removing statues. He suggested “statues being taken down are statues of slave owners.” He suggested I have some kind of mythical marching orders (from whom I have no idea) because, God knows, any red-blooded American couldn’t come up with the concept that tearing up the country and erasing its history is wrong. Only problem with Constantinou’s logic is if he knew history he would know that Abraham Lincoln never owned slaves and was appalled by it and yet the Left is targeting Old Abe too. But I guess I’m just “foaming at the mouth” as Andy puts it. Mount Rushmore is a target now even though two of our honored presidents whose mugs are carved in stone had nothing to do with slavery. The other two did own slaves but were genuises who helped craft our great country.
Did the Left ever consider that some people value history very much and actually enjoy statues, regardless of the faults of the people portrayed in that statue? To me it’s as repulsive as tipping over headstones in a cemetery.
Matt Bennett cornered Constantinou who was confronted with the reality that the ignoramuses tearing down statues are tearing down ones of abolitionists too like Hans Christian Heg. Instead of admitting he was wrong, Andy deflected with some other nonsense. It’s as futile as nailing Jell-O to the wall.
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It’s interesting that CNN and MSNBC ignored coverage of the heavily armed black militants who showed up at Stone Mountain, Georgia over the weekend. The menacing group got a free pass to make their threats as they demanded the stone carving of Confederate generals be removed. Meanwhile Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the white couple who protected their sprawling St. Louis mansion which had been invaded by a Black Lives Matter mob that broke down their gate may face charges by black leftist Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner who said she was alarmed because “peaceful protesters were met by guns and a violent assault.” It was such an irresponsible and imbecilic statement coming from a disaster of an activist prosecutor. The angry mob broke down their gate, came onto their property and threatened to harm the couple, their house and kill their dog!
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Attorney General Xavier Becerra apparently isn’t all that concerned about COVID-19. While he is in lockstep with Newsom over shutting down our economy and preventing people from gathering, he’s more than open to letting more people sneak across the border. He’s been fighting Trump on building the southern wall between California and Mexico.
Becerra heralded the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals – the liberal’s dream of a left wing court – which decided that the president can’t divert $2.5 billion in defense dollars to build a wall. Let’s get something straight here, Becerra doesn’t care about National Guard funding. Nor does he and Newsom care about where the people’s “hard-earned dollars are going where the law intended” because they didn’t bat an eye when the governor signed SB 104 to allocate $98 million of tax dollars extracted from the pocketbooks of legal residents to be spent on free healthcare for 138,000 illegal aliens.
Besides, Democrat leaders in California would never call on the National Guard to defend California homes and businesses from rioters and looters like we saw recently in Los Angeles, Oakland and Santa Monica. No, the dream of Becerra and Newsom would be pull down every mile of wall and flood the nation with illegal aliens his party could care for in exchange for lifelong votes.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
