p11, v6.02 — Left Turn / Right Turn

Left Turn / Right Turn

Mountain Views News Saturday, January 14, 2012

MVNews this week: Page 11

LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

Mountain Views News Saturday, January 14, 2012

GREG Welborn

HOWARD Hays As I See It

I ENJOY BEING ABLE TO FIRE PEOPLE…

“ALWAYS keep the gun
unloaded until ready for use
. . .

“Nothing can ever replace
safe gun handling . . .

“Store guns so they are not
accessible to unauthorized
persons . . . “

- National Rifle
Association

I try to maintain an
attitude of dispassionate
reason in approaching a new column, but this
time, after reading Susan Henderson’s front-
page story in last week’s MVN, I’m really
concerned.

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R) and I
probably don’t agree on much, but he represents
me in Sacramento,= and. like me, is a husband
and father, so reading that his very life has been
threatened by opponents instills a singular
desire to see the perpetrators of such crime
apprehended and brought to justice.

Years ago, I was a juror on a case where the
defendant was charged with having made a
“terrorist threat”. (A fellow warned his girlfriend
that if she leaves him for another guy, “I’m going
to kill you.”) The judge explained that two
findings were necessary for a guilty verdict; first,
the threat had indeed been made, and second,
that the victim believed the defendant capable of
carrying out that threat.

As to whether threats have been made,
Donnelly has repeated the charge in print
and broadcast media up and down the coast.
Regarding his belief there’d be an attempt to
carry it out, he says he packed heat as a safeguard,
and the fear apparently so unhinged his mind
that he handled the weapon in a reckless, illegal,
and just plain stupid manner.

After personnel at Ontario International
Airport found in Donnelly’s carry-on a
.45-caliber Colt Mark IV with four rounds
loaded, along with five rounds in a separate
magazine, his office explained that he “forgot”.
John Rabe asks in his KPCC blog, “Would the
Assemblyman care to tell us how he FORGOT
that he was carrying a loaded .45? Seriously, he
forgot to unload it last time he used it, forgot to
make sure it was unloaded before he put it in
the bag, then forgot where he put the gun . . .
“ He also forgot to obtain necessary permits as
required by law.

But the focus must be on tracking down those
who threatened the life of our assemblyman. I
wanted to know more, so I called Donnelly’s
offices – both in Hesperia and Sacramento.
The staffers therein were unable or unwilling
to provide an answer to my question: Did the
assemblyman contact the police about these
threats? I don’t think there’d be a reluctance to
answer if he did.

Presumably still at large are criminals who
issued the “terrorist threat”, but Donnelly didn’t
tell the police. He didn’t tell the Assembly
sergeant at arms, who provides security for
members. He didn’t tell the Highway Patrol,
which offers protection to legislators at public
events. Instead, he told John and Ken on KFI.

Political opponents are sometimes accused
of ignorance, faulty reasoning or self-serving
agendas, but Tim Donnelly accuses them of
threatening to kill him. He couldn’t just make
that up.

Could he?

At the aforementioned trial, much time was
spent assessing witness credibility. With that
in mind, I revisited an October, 2010 profile
of Tim Donnelly by Greg Maddaus in the L.A.
Weekly. It related the story of a 10-year-old boy
who inflicted a gross attack of potty-mouth on
a fourth-grade classmate. The school district’s
response became a cause celebre of Donnelly’s.
Answering those who noted the boy was the
son of Mexican immigrants and the classmate a
white girl, he wrote, “I am proud to be a ‘racist’
if the definition of racist means that you can
tolerate being called names in order to protect
children from sexual predators.” With no direct
involvement in the matter, he accused the boy of
having “molested and terrorized 11 girls.”

While volunteering with the Minutemen at
the Arizona border, Donnelly heard a resident
describe the cries of women being raped as they
crossed her property. He repeated the story in
an interview with the Washington Times, but
in this telling it was Donnelly himself, not the
woman, who’d heard the cries; “I thought the
wailings we heard at night were the coyotes
barking at the moon . . . It’s something you never
forget.”

In 2005, Donnelly wrote, “We are told that
raping young girls, marrying extremely young
girls, ogling women in an aggressive manner and
using a child as a human shield are all cultural
differences that we must learn to accept.” It’s not
clear who he imagines told him this, but hearing
such “voices” can be troubling – especially when
coupled with an obsession for guns (“I do tend
to always be armed.”).

Maddaus of the Weekly describes
an “apocalyptic despair” in Donnelly’s
observations, such as his warning that an
“illegal invasion” will “very probably wipe out
the freedoms we American Christians enjoy,
as Muslim Extremists blend in with the so-
called ‘innocent’ illegal aliens, and eventually
proselytize them.”

Some of Donnelly’s warnings are transparent,
such as his move last year to “safeguard our
right to vote” by imposing further restrictions
at the voting booth. In this, he’s just parroting
talking points from the Koch-backed American
Legislative Exchange Council, part of their
nation-wide campaign to disenfranchise groups
such as seniors, students and the poor.

Maybe I’m wrong to be concerned by alleged
death threats against my assemblyman; others
seem to treat the matter as they would the
ramblings of a doddering old family member
whom they long ago stopped taking seriously.

Now I’m more concerned by the fact it’s still
a long time ‘til November, when we’ll be able to
elect someone without the guns and paranoia,
who’ll take seriously the unfinished business in
Sacramento.

The other day, I fired someone, and I am very
happy I did it. I’m even happier that I had the
freedom to do it. I imagine that most readers
have had similar experiences, but apparently
most of the contenders for the Republican nomination
have never appreciated this freedom we all
have to insure we’re getting the best service for
the money we spend. I would hope that such a
startling lack of understanding about what makes
our system great would disqualify the lot of them
from any other public service.

Competition is the quintessential ingredient
for keeping our economy vibrant. Without competition,
every one of us would eventually become
complacent and lazy. It is only the knowledge that
I might lose my job, my customers or my clients
if I don’t perform that keeps me on my toes. Mr.
Romney may have stated this truth ineloquently,
but that’s really all we can accuse him of doing.
The reality of what he was describing is something
each one of us has done in the past, will do
in the future and should recognize as key to our
success and happiness.

Mr. Romney’s full quote was, “I want individuals
to have their own insurance. That means the
insurance company will have an incentive to keep
you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what
they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire
people who provide services to me. You know,
if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I
need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone
else to provide that service to me.”

Because of that, Mr. Romney has been accused
of being the modern version of yesterday’s Robber
Barons. The quote is being taken out of context to
imply that he enjoys the act of firing people. He
said no such thing, of course. He simply pointed
out that he enjoys having the ability to fire people
who aren’t measuring up to what they’ve promised.
He enjoys having the freedom to spend his
money where it will generate the most benefit and
value for him. That’s exactly what each and every
one of us does every day of the week, month and
year.

Think about the decisions we make on a daily,
if not hourly basis. When we decide what restaurant
to visit, we’re deciding whether to give our
business to restaurant A or restaurant B. If we’ve
gone to restaurant B for awhile and decide to go
to restaurant A instead, we are in essence firing B.
The same holds true when we go the movies, use a
plumber, choose a doctor or buy clothes from one
store over another. We
are exercising the freedom
we have to spend
our money as we see fit.
This is what makes producers
and service providers
work hard to meet
our needs. If we were
forced to pick one, or to
stay with one once we’ve
picked them, they would
quickly lose the motivation to meet our needs.

I cannot imagine a single reader of this newspaper
disagreeing with this. Yet, when we change
the example from individuals deciding who to
buy from to companies deciding whom to buy
from, this simple economic freedom becomes a
scarlet letter of disgrace. Mr. Romney was the
head of Bain Capital, a company’s whose job was
to decide where to invest money. It specialized in
buying companies that had been badly managed,
replacing incompetent management and turning
them around into viable and growing enterprises.
Bain Capital was remarkably successful in doing
this, and as a result earned a tidy profit.

Sometimes Bain Capital had to fire some people
in order to keep others employed. Many of
the companies it bought were terribly inefficient.
Many were already facing bankruptcy. Instead
of criticizing Mr. Romney for taking the risk and
firing some, we should thank him for the thousands
of jobs he saved. Every company that was
saved or was started because of Bain Capital is
an example of hundreds and thousands of jobs
created.

Mr. Romney hasn’t done anything wrong except
to poorly explain why we all need to have the
freedom to fire those who aren’t performing in
order to employ those who will perform. If he’s
guilty, we’re all guilty. In reality, we’re all just doing
our part to keep the economy working as efficiently
and responsively as possible. Thank God
we can fire people.

Gregory J. Welborn is an independent opinion
columnist. He writes and speaks frequently on
political, economic and social issues. His columns
have appeared in publications such as The Los
Angeles Daily News, The Orange County Register,
The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. He can
be reached at gwelborn@mvobserver.com.

TINA Dupuy

THE GOP’S LONG SAD MARCH TO THE
INEVITABLE NOMINEE

Republicans have
a wide variety of
conservative white
males now vying to
be their nominee. No,
really. Bear with me.

They have former
Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich summing up the worst of the ‘90s
GOP. Not only did he shut down the government
during his tenure, he attempted to oust a
president for doing what Gingrich was doing at
that very moment. The Speaker investigated Bill
Clinton for hanky panky with an intern (a paid
one – FYI – oh the ‘90s were a golden age) while
Gingrich was messing around with a Capitol
staffer; soon to be his third and current wife,
Callista.

I’ve stopped using the word “hypocrite” for
people like Gingrich. It’s a 75-cent word no one
cares about. A better term is “fraud.”

Gingrich enjoys going after people for the
things he’s guilty of, like when he said we should
lock up Congressman Barney Frank and Senator
Chris Dodd. Gingrich described them as “the
politicians who profited from the environment
and the politicians who put this country in
trouble.” This was before it was disclosed
Gingrich was paid $1.6 million by Freddie
Mac for what any reasonable person would
call lobbying. (He maintains it was anything
from being a celebrity to being a historian that
“earned” such a paycheck.)

He’s now attacking Mitt Romney for “making
people unemployed” at the leverage buyout firm
Bain Capital, while not mentioning Gingrich
was on the advisory board at a competing
leverage buyout firm Forstmann Little after his
stint as Speaker.

Fraud.

But don’t worry, Republicans also have a
sample of the worst of their party from ‘00s: Rick
Santorum. Now Santorum believes your uterus
doesn’t have a right to privacy. If Santorum has
his way, women’s private parts are up for public
scrutiny and federal regulation. He’s also bravely
stood up for states being able to ban birth control
and not wanting to make black/blah people’s
lives better by giving them someone else’s money.
But Santorum ranks among the worst of the
Bush Era because of a blah spot on the Grand
Old Party called: The Terri Schiavo case. In
2005, Schiavo was in a decades-long vegetative
state; her husband wanted to abide by her wishes
and not keep her alive by artificial means. Her
parents disagreed. They went to court. Then
Congress got involved. Then the President
of the United States at his home in Crawford
boarded Air Force One on Easter to fly to
Washington to sign legislation to “save Terri.”
Santorum was at the bedside of Terri Schiavo
(uninvited) to make a national spectacle of
himself. How’d he get there? Walmart corporate
jet. Why was this Pennsylvania senator in Florida?
Outback Steakhouse fundraiser. So an industry
toady uses his corporate favors to publically
moralize our most intimate issues? He’s pro-life,
with the caveat of being pro-er-big-big-business.
A few months later in that same year,
nearly 2,000 Americans died in Hurricane
Katrina without a special session from Congress
or a visit from Santorum. It’s hard to embrace
the sanctity of life while corpses float along the
streets of an American city. Santorum lost his
seat by 17 points the next fall.

So worst of the ‘90s, worst of the ‘00s and just
to add diversity - the cartoon of an absurd GOP
future: Rick Perry.

All that really needs to be said about Perry is
he was finally able to list all three agencies he’d
cut while president and got a nearlystanding
ovation from an otherwise subdued New
Hampshire crowd last Saturday at ABC’s debate.
As they say in Texas, Perry is all hat and no…

“Uh … I can’t … sorry … oops.”

Which leads us back to the 1 percent (tipper)
representing, Mitt Romney. Because all the other
candidates remind us of bygone ethics violations,
shameful hysterias, China or Ron Paul, the GOP
looks like they’re stuck with Romney. But they
do not love him.

His campaign has been like the rehearsal
dinner for an arranged marriage: kind of sad,
kind of inevitable – fun to watch from another
party.

-----

Tina Dupuy is an award-winning writer and
the managing editor of Crooks and Liars. Tina
can be reached at tinadupuy@yahoo.com.

This column has been edited by the author.
Representations of fact and opinions are solely
those of the author.

Independent’s Eye by

JOE Gandelman

SUICIDE BY TEA?

You’ve heard of
“suicide by cop”?
America is now
seemingly witnessing
political suicide by tea.

Tea Party, that is.
Only a few months
ago Republicans
seemed poised to
fulfill a dream: if the economy continued to
recover slowly or was barely on the mend, and if
President Barack Obama continued to appear to
be a nice guy who could give a terrific scripted
speech but was inept as a leader and problem-
solver, Republicans could capture control of the
Senate, Congress and White House. They could
then repeal “Obamacare” and complete the job of
taking over the Supreme Court, which petulant
Democrats trying to teach their own party a
lesson by staying home in various elections
helped the GOP nearly achieve.

But now it doesn’t seem to be in the tea leaves,
largely because catering to the powerful Tea Party
pushed the party so far to the right that it sparked
a new ideological purity war and threatens to
alienate the country’s center. When the Tea
Party burst on the scene in 2009 top GOPers
saw the conservative and libertarian movement’s
potential and moved in and tried to consolidate it
as part of the party’s base. Now the tail is wagging
the elephant (to the right).

A new Gallup poll underscores Republican
perils. It finds 40 percent of the electorate
now describe themselves as independents, up
a percentage point from the previous year –
but it’s a record high. Thirty-seven percent
self-identify as Democrats and 25 percent as
Republicans. Democrats made gains at the
expense of Republicans. Another finding: many
independent voters lean Republican.

This fits in with what I found during a three
month tour last year of the mid-west and East
Coast. I ran into many people who said they had
been Republicans but they a) were independent
now because their party was too far right for
them, b) were turned off by demonizing rhetoric,
c) felt Republicans need to work with Democrats,
and, e) felt their party was now too far to the right
on social issues.

The frenzied scramble to please the Tea Party
and conservative base has been particularly tough
for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and
former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Both
were politicos who occasionally had worked with
and compromised with those on the other side.
Both in previous incarnations were center right.
And they have been in a battle over who is the
biggest hypocrite in terms of being conservative.

Romney all but obliterated Gingrich in Iowa
with millions of dollars in TV ads paid for by a
friendly PAC. And if you believe Romney didn’t
know about the ads, then let me tell you about a
little furry bunny who’ll sneak into your house
and hide painted eggs this Easter. Gingrich had
enough of Romney’s painting himself as just
a modest businessman who merely dabbles in
politics because of a sense of public service and
said enough with the “pious baloney.” Which
was ironic: over the years Gingrich has generated
enough pious baloney to supply all of Hebrew
National’s orders for the next two years. Except
Gingrich’s baloney isn’t Kosher.

To get the nomination, Romney and others have
to jump through hoops. Romney did it clumsily
and is getting stuck in some of them. If he gets the
nomination he’ll likely be damaged goods and it’s
a pity: if this had been 10 or 15 years ago he’d be
the perfect big tent establishment Republican to
head the ticket and capitalize on Obama’s and the
Democrats’ weaknesses.

Few pundits now predict the GOP will sweep
the House, Senate and the White House. Exiled
Republican moderates, centrist Democrats,
moderates in the general electorate, independents
and centrists may be unhappy with Obama but
they could feel they have limited options on
voting day.

Voters will sometimes choose for President
someone inept but predictable over someone who
appears batty. And my betting is that if trending
continues, the least repulsive option won’t be one
where they see they also have to swallow a big
gulp of tea.

-----

Copyright 2012 Joe Gandelman, distributed
exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Joe Gandelman is a veteran journalist who wrote
for newspapers overseas and in the United States.
He has appeared on cable news show political
panels and is Editor-in-Chief of The Moderate
Voice, an Internet hub for independents, centrists
and moderates. CNN’s John Avlon named him
as one of the top 25 Centrists Columnists and
Commentators. He can be reached at jgandelman@
themoderatevoice.com and can be booked to speak
at your event at www.mavenproductions.com.
This column has been edited by the author.
Representations of fact and opinions are solely
those of the author.

CURBING BAD BEHAVIOR

Listen At Your Own Risk

Curbing Bad Behavior/

Several years ago,
I was watching Jim
Cramer, TV personality
and host of CNBC
Financial Show “Mad
Money,” on television.
On this particular
night, Mr. Cramer was
advocating to his viewers
to buy Conoco Phillips (COP) stock. He was
bullish on COP and enthused it would rise from
its current price (lower $80s’ at the time) to
$125.00 in a short while. Oil stocks he raved was
hot and this one (COP) was going to be a good
investment. The next day, I did some research
on COP and was impressed with the dividends
the stock paid, moreover, Jim Cramer said it
was going to rise to $125.00. So, I bought several
hundred shares of COP. Several weeks later, to
my chagrin COP fell to the low $50s’ and I lost
thousands of dollars. Rightfully, Jim Cramer
was ridiculed in the media and thousands of his
viewers lost faith in his stock predictions. Many
investors were infuriated, yours truly included.
If you mentioned Jim Cramer’s name in the
same breath as COP to any stock investor during
this period, you would have heard a few explicit
words (which cannot be reported in this blog)
describing him. Even the ratings for his show fell
a few points.

In 2009, TheStreet.com, the financial Web
site founded by Cramer, was investigated by the
Securities and Exchange Commission. Presently,
Cramer is on television giving stock advice to his
ardent fans. I have noticed that he has not said a
word about COP’s bullishness during his recent
television rants. Maybe it’s because COP has not
been higher than $82.00 in the last year. And,
Cramer’s prediction of COP rising to $125.00
remains a pipe dream.

I learned a valuable lesson listening to Jim
Cramer; listen to the stock experts’ advice at
your own risk.

Ron Carter

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