Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 5, 2013

17

OPINION

 
Mountain Views News Saturday, October 5, 2013 

STUART Tolchin..........On LIFE


HAIL Hamilton My Turn

Mountain 
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee 

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

BUSINESS EDITOR

LaQuetta Shamblee

SENIOR COMMUNITY 
EDITOR

Pat Birdsall

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Stuart Tolchin

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Hail Hamilton 

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Lori Koop

Rev. James Snyder

Tina Paul

Mary Carney

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Welborn

Renee Quenell

Ben Show

Sean Kayden

Jasmine Kelsey Williams

SOME BIG QUESTIONS!

ANOTHER BAD JOKE FOR 
CALIFORNIA’S YOUTH, POOR AND 
HOMELESS FROM JERRY BROWN!

 I remember my first “real” job working at Richfield gas station on the corner 
of Lincoln Avenue and Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena. It was in the 
summer of 1963, just after my 16th birthday. I remember I earned minimum 
wage -- a whopping $1.25 an hour! And I was glad to get it. A $1.25 an hour 
job working 4 hours a day 5 days a week after taxes and Social Security was a 
cool $20.00 a week, or a $80.00 a month. Compared to delivering newspapers, 
mowing lawns or washing cars this was real dough. 

 This kind of bread that could take you places, real places. You could take 
your favorite girl to a movie on Saturday night for $.85 each to one of the 
ornate 20s-style movie houses still in business back then in Pasadena. Does 
anybody remember the Crown? It was two blocks west of City Hall and still 
had an orchestra area up front, left over from the silent era. 

 And then you could catch a bite at Bob’s Big Boy Drive-in on East Colorado 
Blvd. It was on every teenager’s itinerary of places to go after a date, football 
game, party, you name it. Bob’s was definitely da place to hang out with 
friends, or to make new friends until curfew called it a night. 

 You could also pay the $1.00 admission into the old Pasadena Civic 
Auditorium to hang out with your buddies and dance the night away with 
some of the hottest chicks in Southern California to the electric tunes of the 
“King of the Surf Guitar,” Dick Dale and the Del Tones.

 A car and a full tank of gas gave my generation the freedom to go anywhere, 
almost anytime, and for us surfers taking a well-earned surf break from the 
boredom of high school was like a much needed student mental health day. 
A day at the beach surfing with your surf buds was reinvigorating and sure 
beat the heck of English class. Weekends were different because our parents 
understood our love of the sport. 

 Ditching school was another thing. Absence notes had to be forged (usually 
by a girl whose handwriting was more likely to pass as your mom’s). Extra 
care had to be taken to get home at the same time you would have arrived had 
you gone to school. And then there was always the need for a ready excuse for 
a sunburn. (“Mom, they couldn’t get a sub for English so we had two periods 
of P.E. today!)

 $1.25 was worth a whole lot more in 1963. For example, a new 1963 Ford 
Country Squire Station Wagon was $3,018; the price of a 17C1 ticket (behind 
the Dodger dugout) to the fourth game of the shut by the Dodgers over the 
Yankees at the 1963 World Series was $12.00; And World Series refreshments 
were even cheaper: Cokes were $.15, Popcorn was $.25 buttered to the max, 
and a Dodger Dog was $.45! And regular gasoline was $.30 a gallon!

 From 1963, when California’s minimum wage was $1.25 an hour until 2013 
when it is $8.00 an hour is a 50-year raise of $6.75, or $.14 a year increase! 
And raising it to $10.00 an hour by 2016 is a bad joke! Let’s see $8.75 divided 
by 53 years comes to about $.17 a year increase -- a $.03 a year more by 2016! 
Is it any wonder why so many “kids” live at home well into their 30s, and why 
there are some many more working poor and homeless people living on our 
streets?

 Come on Jerry, California can do better than that, much better. Drop this 
whole bogus debate over minimum wage. It’s high time for you to be a leader. 
Show some political backbone and use the bully pulpit of the Governor’s 
Office to get Californians discussing something that can really help our 
youth, the poor and the homeless -- a minimum living wage! 

 Well, at least I’m still 
functioning, which is 
more that I can say for 
our government. As 
you might recall from 
last week’s article, I had been diagnosed 
as having suffered a silent heart attack 
and was scheduled for an angiogram 
on Wednesday. Well, it was all a false 
alarm. The machines were wrong; I 
suffered no heart attack -although I still 
have symptoms associated with atrial 
fibulation, congestive heart failure, 
hypertension, diabetes - oh there are 
more, but who cares? The real question 
facing me is what I am going to do with 
the rest of my life for however long I 
might be around.

 This same question faces all of us and 
I wonder how many of us give it much 
thought. I suppose there is another 
important question which concerns 
what to do after death. I never give this 
question much thought, as I am a kind of 
life-long atheist who has always accepted 
a conclusion that death is most like the 
turning out of lights-except that the 
lights can’t be turned on again.

 I haven’t changed my mind about this 
belief, but I was surprised at the number 
of friends, relatives, and acquaintances 
who let me know they were praying for 
me. I kind of liked the idea and now that 
things have turned out well, or better than 
I expected, I feel kind of strange about 
the whole thing. FIRST OF ALL, Thank 
you one and all for your prayers. It feels 
good to know that people have taken 
the time to think about me and direct 
positive energy towards me. (Why is it 
easier for me to accept vague terms like 
positive energy when I so fight the idea 
of prayers affecting physical outcomes?) 

 I know there is an infinite amount 
of writing about the merits of the 
Scientific View and the Religious or 
Spiritual View Different religions talk 
about hierarchical levels of spiritual 
attainment and understanding while 
science somewhat pretentiously, I think, 
pretends to know all the answers when 
it does not even know how to formulate 
the right questions. The militant atheist 
(I love that term) Richard Dawkins is 
speaking at Cal Tech in the near future 
but his hard-line position does not 
interest me very much. Really, I don’t 
care what people say they believe—it’s 
how they live their life that interests me.

 Over the weekend I had an interesting 
conversation with the relative of a 
German Scientist who had worked for 
Hitler and then was brought to the United 
States to work for NASA. For those of 
you who weren’t around at the time, 
the Arms Race was contemporaneously 
described as a battle between the 
American German Scientists and the 
Russian German Scientist. Tom Lehrer 
wrote a wonderful little ditty describing 
Werner Von Braun, formerly the head 
of Hitler’s Rocket Program who later 
became the Director of NASA. The ditty 
went:

 You too can become a big hero

 By Learning to Count Backwards 

 to Zero

 I just shoot the Rockets up

 Who Cares Where They Come Down

 And I’m Learning Chinese

 Says Werner von Braun

 I questioned a relative, a Scientist 
herself, about this attitude and she took 
some time to explain things to me. She 
said that when you are a research scientist 
trying to discover or create some solution 
that the world has never seen before, it 
erases almost everything else in your life. 
Practically, as an important researcher, 
you are well taken care of with food, a 
roof over your head, medical care, and 
whatever else you need. So what’s not to 
like?

 So is that the answer to all problems? 
Find some field that best utilizes your 
talents; learn all you can about it, 
approach your work creatively and forget 
everything else. Is that what Voltaire 
meant when he advised everyone to just 
cultivate their own gardens? Well, I hope 
not. Over the weekend my wife was 
driving along Huntington and we saw 
a car almost run over a little black dog. 
The driver stopped, got out of his car, put 
the dog on the sidewalk, returned to his 
car and took off. Almost immediately the 
dog went back into the street and almost 
got hit by another car. My wife stopped 
our car and my son picked up the dog 
and put him in our car. We looked at 
the dog’s collar, called the owner, and 
delivered the dog to its home.

 I felt great about participating in this 
dog’s rescue. It felt something like prayer, 
I think and I am glad to have been given 
the opportunity by I don’t know Whom 
to enjoy this life that was miraculously 
given to me. I hope our Congressmen 
can reach out and do whatever else 
they are supposed to be doing without 
dropping bombs on people and walking 
away.

Mountain Views News 
has been adjudicated as 
a newspaper of General 
Circulation for the County 
of Los Angeles in Court 
Case number GS004724: 
for the City of Sierra 
Madre; in Court Case 
GS005940 and for the 
City of Monrovia in Court 
Case No. GS006989 and 
is published every Saturday 
at 55 W. Sierra Madre 
Blvd., No. 302, Sierra 
Madre, California, 91024. 
All contents are copyrighted 
and may not be 
reproduced without the 
express written consent of 
the publisher. All rights 
reserved. All submissions 
to this newspaper become 
the property of the Mountain 
Views News and may 
be published in part or 
whole. 

Opinions and views 
expressed by the writers 
printed in this paper do 
not necessarily express 
the views and opinions 
of the publisher or staff 
of the Mountain Views 
News. 

Mountain Views News is 
wholly owned by Grace 
Lorraine Publications, 
Inc. and reserves the right 
to refuse publication of 
advertisements and other 
materials submitted for 
publication. 

Letters to the editor and 
correspondence should 
be sent to: 

Mountain Views News

80 W. Sierra Madre Bl. 
#327

Sierra Madre, Ca. 
91024

Phone: 626-355-2737

Fax: 626-609-3285

email: 

mtnviewsnews@aol.com

 

LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

HOWARD Hays As I See It


GREG Welborn


ARE CONSERVATIVES CRAZY?

“The Republican budget . . . would repeal the guarantee of health care 
for poor children, people with disabilities, pregnant women, and older 
Americans . . . deny quality health coverage to nearly eight million people, 
deny meaningful health care to over a million people with disabilities, even 
to 150,000 veterans . . . “ -President Bill Clinton - December, 1995

 

 “This shutdown is about rolling back our efforts to provide health 
insurance to folks who don’t have it. This, more than anything else, seems 
to be what the Republican Party stands for these days.” President Barack 
Obama – Oct. 2013

 Not just “these days”, 
but also eighteen years ago prior to our last 
government shutdown. The difference is that 
then Republicans were insisting on cutting 
$163 billion from Medicaid to address 
the budget deficit (which was on track to 
being eliminated by the end of Clinton’s 
term, anyway). Today, it has nothing 
to do with government spending or the 
(already declining) deficit. It’s all about the 
determination of those bankrolling House 
tea-baggers to cripple the Affordable Care 
Act – with millions having already applied 
on its roll-out last Tuesday (5 million logging 
into Covered California by 3PM on its first 
day).

 As for the budget, the CBO informed House 
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) last July that 
eliminating the ACA would add $109 billion 
to the deficit through 2022. Democrats had 
already acceded to Republican demands 
to maintain the recovery-stalling sequester 
cuts that kicked in last March. (Remember 
the “fiscal cliff”?) The CBO says these cuts 
will take 1.2% off the GDP through the 
end of next year, and cost 1.6 million jobs. 
Democrats went along anyway, wanting a 
bill that could pass both houses. But it wasn’t 
enough – because it didn’t gut the ACA. 
There’s scoffing on the right that, aside from 
inconveniencing some tourists, a government 
shutdown has no real effect – and might even 
be a good thing. The impact is real, though, 
on 800,000 furloughed federal workers, with 
$1 billion a week in lost pay taken from the 
economy (and this time they’re unlikely to be 
reimbursed). Courts will start sending home 
workers if the shutdown lasts another couple 
weeks. Kids with cancer will be turned away 
from clinical research projects at the NIH. 
The ability of the Center for Disease Control 
to detect and respond to outbreaks will be 
curtailed.

 The Food and Drug Administration 
will suspend safety inspections. The 
Supplemental Nutrition Program for 
Women, Infants and Children (WIC) could 
close down. Thousands of kids will be 
turned away from Head Start programs. 
The IRS will suspend audits and close down 
help lines. The FHA won’t be backing new 
home loans (it now backs a third of them), 
and no more government-backed loans to 
small businesses. OSHA will halt workplace 
inspections. Veterans appealing denials of 
disability benefits will have to wait. The EPA 
can’t proceed with the clean-up of two-thirds 
of the Superfund sites, and would “effectively 
shut down.”

 Testifying Wednesday before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, Director of National 
Intelligence James Clapper warned that 
with 70% of NSA personnel on furlough, 
“The damage will be insidious . . . This is a 
dreamland for foreign intelligence services”.

 Republicans respond that it’s not their 
fault. If only the president and Democratic 
Senators would “negotiate”, they might work 
a deal not only on the ACA but on other items 
from their wish list: privatizing Medicare, 
expanded oil drilling offshore and on public 
lands, defunding Planned Parenthood and 
allowing employers to decide what preventive 
care coverage women can be offered, gutting 
Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, etc.

 Senate Budget Committee chair Sen. Patty 
Murray (D-WA) reminds that Democrats 
asked Republicans eighteen times over the 
past six months to appoint members to a 
conference committee to work out differences 
on the budget, and each time Republican 
leaders refused. These are the folks who 
likened negotiation and compromise with 
the president and Democrats to capitulation 
and treason. Now, as the government was 
shutting down and they were suddenly calling 
for negotiations, Sen. Murray responded, “. . . 
we’re not going to do it with a gun to our head 
that says we’re shutting government down 
and we’re going to conference over a short 
little six-week” continuing resolution.

 Most in Congress, both Republicans and 
Democrats, “get it”. If the “clean” resolution 
leaving the ACA alone and simply keeping 
the government open were given a vote in the 
Republican-controlled House, it would pass. 
The problem is that the tea-baggers won’t let 
House Speaker Boehner bring it to the floor. 

 These are the progeny of the Karl Rove 
– engineered gerrymandering of districts 
coming out of the 2010 census – safe for 
Republicans, except for those showing a 
willingness to “compromise” or a desire to 
actually “govern” . There are eighty of them – 
over 75% white males. They comprise a third 
of House Republicans, and 18% of all house 
members. Conservative columnist Charles 
Krauthammer calls them the “suicide caucus”. 
Their constituency comprises 18% of our 
nation’s population, yet they’re positioned to 
hold our nation hostage.

 House Speaker Boehner would love to 
get this “clean” resolution passed, get the 
government running again, and tackle the 
ACA some other day. He’s afraid, though, that 
if he were to send it to the floor in defiance of 
the tea-baggers, they have enough influence 
to dump him and anoint a replacement 
Speaker more to their liking. His own job is 
more important to him than the jobs of those 
800,000 furloughed workers.

 As reality sets in, more grown-up 
Republicans are defecting from the sphere of 
the “suicide caucus” and putting the nation’s 
interest above the interests of The Heritage 
Foundation and the Koch Brothers. The real 
test will come in a couple weeks when the 
tea-baggers threaten to smear the full faith 
and credit of the United States unless they get 
their way – with consequences exponentially 
more serious than the current shutdown, 
both here and abroad. Then we’ll truly see 
“what the Republican party stands for these 
days”.

 I can’t tell you what the Republicans are up to; I’m not 
part of the leadership and certainly don’t get the “talking 
points”, if there are such things. But I can tell you what 
conservatives in Congress are up to, and I can relieve 
everyone of any concern that the current government 
slim down isn’t going to kill the economy or relegate the 
U.S. to third world status. In fact, despite the rabid name 
calling and doom-saying, the current impasse might 
actually be good for the economy.

 Since we’re now in the midst of a government slim 
down, let’s address that issue first. I’ve purposely used 
the term “slim down” instead of the more popular and alarmist phrase, “shut down” 
because it’s more accurate. Not even the most radical leftie can argue that the 
government has shut down. By definition, all essential services relating to public 
health, safety, national defense, social security, Medicare, etc. are operating and 
being funded at full levels. What’s being cut back are those services deemed non-
essential, and they’re being tailored to levels that will help make expenditures 
come closer to available revenues. In a sense, it’s a forced balancing of the public 
budget. That’s not a bad thing in its won right.

 Beyond the theory (and it’s a pretty good theory that we ought not spend more 
than we bring in), let’s consider the practical affects of the slim down. The world 
won’t end, the economy won’t crater, and gramma won’t have to fight the cat 
for food. If you don’t believe me, or your own eyes (we are still functioning as a 
society right now), let the historical record inform your opinion. 

 This is the 18th time the federal government has been slimmed down due to an 
impasse between the Congress and the President. President Carter actually went 
through 5 (in only 4 years), one lasting two full weeks; President Reagan put up 
with 8 of them; and President Clinton actually holds the record for the longest 
one at three weeks. 

 We went through all 17 of these. In total, they encompassed 110 days, and 
there was a slight recession during 6 of those days. Considering the fact that 
we’ve been in a recession 20% of the time from 1976 to the present, it’s clear 
that government slim downs don’t cause recessions or the end of civilization as 
we know it.

 There’s an interesting element to the press reaction to these. President Reagan 
actually “blinked” during one of the threatened shut downs. He actually addressed 
the nation to explain that he was going accept the several thousand page budget 
presented by Congress even though he thought it a terrible idea. He even had 
all the pages stacked up on his desk to give a visual. The reason he blinked and 
signed this budget is partly in response to the press coverage which portrayed 
him as the bad guy even though it was the Congress which threatened to let the 
government shut down. Somehow when it’s a Democratic Congress refusing to 
negotiate, it’s the Republican president’s fault, while today it’s the Republican 
Congress’s fault when the Democractic president won’t negotiate. Rule one for 
those in journalism: it’s always the Republican’s fault.

 So, let’s consider what those “wascally ‘publicans” are up to. Again, I 
don’t know what Republican leadership would like to do because there is some 
dissention there. It’s been conservatives in the party who have driven this process 
forward and gained enough votes in the Republican caucus to push forward the 
radical idea that we have to get serious about balancing this budget. Obamacare 
isn’t just a poorly crafted assault on the nation’s healthcare system, which, by the 
way, has garnered overwhelming public opposition. That should be more than 
enough to justify elected representatives in their efforts to get this thing revised. 
Obamacare is also a massive new entitlement program. When the subsidies kick 
in, the amount of extra government spending has been projected to top another $1 
trillion. No matter how good you think this program is going to be, you have to 
find some other programs to cut in order to move resources to this new program. 
We can’t fund everything.

 Making the hard calls – deciding which programs to fund and which programs 
to cut – is what the Congress is supposed to do. All of us have to balance our 
budgets by trimming in some areas in order to spend in others. The Liberals who 
just want to keep spending more don’t understand we’re at the end of the rope. 

 At some point, this impasse will be solved. Let’s hope that we’re witnessing 
the early stages of massive entitlement reform so that the programs which are 
important and actually work can be funded but the ones that don’t work, or are 
obsolete, can finally be shuttered.

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn is a freelance writer and has spoken 
to several civic and religious organizations on cultural and moral issues. He 
lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and 3 children and is active in the 
community. He can be reached gregwelborn2@gmail.com 

Mountain Views News

Mission Statement

The traditions of

community news-
papers and the 
concerns of our readers 
are this newspaper’s 
top priorities. We 
support a prosperous 
community of well-
informed citizens. 
We hold in high 
regard the values 
of the exceptional 
quality of life in our 
community, including 
the magnificence of 
our natural resources. 
Integrity will be our 
guide.