Mountain Views News          Saturday, April 12, 2014

Mountain Views News Saturday, April 12, 2014 
B5OPINION 
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 HaysPaul CarpenterStuart Tolchin 
Kim Clymer-KelleyChristopher NyergesPeter Dills 
Hail Hamilton 
Rich Johnson 
Merri Jill Finstrom 
Lori KoopRev. James SnyderTina Paul 
Mary CarneyKatie HopkinsDeanne Davis 
Despina ArouzmanGreg WelbornRenee Quenell 
Ben Show 
Sean KaydenMarc Garlett 
Mountain Views News 
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for the City of SierraMadre; in Court Case 
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Madre, California, 91024. 
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OUT TO PASTOR 
A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder 
HOWARD Hays As I See ItLEFT TURN / RIGHT TURN 
GREG Welborn 
WHY I AM HAPPY TO PAY MY TAXES 
AND OTHER MENDACITIES 
SUSAN Henderson 
HAD ENOUGH YET? 
Last week I was 
getting along just 
fine. Things were 
being accomplished 
and I was rather 
enjoying myself. Dutifully, I was checking 
off item after item on my "to-do-list." I love 
it when a plan comes together. However, 
at the top of my exuberance, the Gracious 
Mistress of the Parsonage stopped me dead 
in my tracks with a query. 
She is quite famous, or is it infamous, for 
pulling these kinds of things on Yours 
Truly. She has a question for just about 
every event. Most of her questions are 
beyond answering, at least for me. 
For instance, when we are traveling, she 
will wait for the right moment and then 
put to me this query. "Do you know where 
you're going?" 
A variety of ways to answer that question 
immediately suggests itself, not all of which 
would endear me to her. However, to be 
honest, and who doesn't want to be honest 
these days, the answer to that question is 
usually a mumbled "No." 
Just as we get into the car and get ready 
to go, she asks another question. "Do you 
have everything you need?" 
Invariably, I do not, and have to go back 
into the house and pick up what I leftbehind. I could do my own Left Behind 
series. 
Then there is the all time favorite question. 
"Does this dress make me look fat?" 
Just between you and me, one of these 
times, I am going to answer, "No, Honey, 
it's not the dress making you look fat." I am 
saving that one for a deathbed confession. 
However, this past week when I was flying 
high, she dropped me dead in my tracks 
with another question. "Have you filed our 
income tax yet?" 
It was at that moment my whole world 
came crashing down. I had not even given 
it a first thought, let alone a second thought. 
Why is it, although income tax filing day 
comes every year on the same day I always 
forget? I am getting either senile or moving 
towards going into politics. I am hoping for 
the former. 
Of all the things I love doing in this world, 
and there are plenty, paying my income tax 
each year does not rate number one. Do 
not get me wrong, I really enjoy shelling 
out my hard-earned money and sending it 
to politicians to invest in one of their pork 
projects. 
Every time I have a little extra cash in my 
pocket, I always wonder what that happy 
crowd in Washington DC could do with 
it. Usually I am tempted to send it to them 
along with a little note that says, "Spend it 
with my compliments." 
To be quite honest, there are few things I 
enjoy more than filing my income tax each 
year. 
One would be calling the telephone 
company to straighten out my telephone 
bill. This is good for an entire day of 
delightful conversation with idiots. Every 
time I think my life cannot get any lower 
and drabber than it is, I simply pick up the 
telephone and call customer service at my 
friendly telephone company. Within three 
minutes, (after I had been put on hold 
for 27 minutes) I recognize exactly how 
wonderful my life truly is. 
Probably the most magnificent thing about 
calling customer service is that you know 
somebody's going to get it all screwed up 
and you will have the pleasure of doing 
it all over again next week. A wonderful 
ongoing relationship that is priceless. 
Another activity I enjoyed doing more than 
filing my income tax is spending five whole 
days in bed with the flu. Nothing could be 
more delightfully entertaining. 
Just think of it, five whole days to luxuriate 
in your bed and not have to get up and do 
a thing. Talk about a vacation! What with 
the sneezing and coughing, and your nose 
running like the mighty Mississippi, and 
your head thumping like an African bongo 
drum, what more could a person ask for? 
If somebody calls for you during that time 
all your wife has to say is, "He's in bed 
with the flu." Everybody understands that. 
Of course, if she said you are just in bed, 
people would not accept that and think a 
little poorly of you. 
But if you have diarrhea along with the flu, 
that is spectacular. Not only do you get to 
lie in bed, but also you get a little exercise, 
jumping up and running to the bathroom 
every 3 1/2 seconds. The side benefit of this 
is you lose some weight during that week. 
One more thing slightly more exciting 
than filing your income taxes, is poking 
yourselves in the eye. I must confess this 
a favorite of mine because every time I do 
it, I learn new dance steps. Alas, when the 
swelling dies down I cannot remember 
those dance steps. 
Therefore, paying my income tax each year 
is included in some of my favorite activities. 
Even Jesus got into the discussion of paying 
taxes. When queried on this subject he 
replied, "Render to Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's, and to God the things that are 
God's" (Mark 12:17). 
When I think of all the money wasted in 
our country, especially by our government, 
I grieve. Someone once said, "Money in 
the hands of a fool always goes for foolish 
things." 
How a person spends his or her money 
reveals a lot about that person. 
Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family 
of God Fellowship, Ocala, FL 
E-mail jamessnyder2@att.net. His web site 
is www.jamessnyderministries.com. 
“Here we are twenty years 
later and the issues are still 
resonating – in the workplace, 
in universities and in the 
military . . . clearly we haven’t 
eliminated the problem.” -
Anita Hill 
The concern Greg Welborn 
expressed in his column 
last week is one shared by 
me and millions of other dads – the condition 
of the job market as our sons head off into it. 
Greg offered a few reasons why he thinks it’s 
so bad. 
One he missed is that while we were losing and 
then struggling to regain private-sector jobs, 
state and local governments, especially those 
under Republican control, were massively 
laying off public employees. That only makes a 
recession worse, and sabotages a recovery. 
As of last month, we’ve regained all the private-
sector jobs lost during the Great Recession, 
while adding an extra hundred thousand. 
But we’re still short by 550,000 jobs lost in the 
public sector - and there are 2.8 million more 
Americans in the job market now than there 
were in January 2008. This means three job-
seekers for every opening. 
In an economy that’s 70% consumer-driven, 
if companies don’t have customers with 
spending money, they won’t be hiring at any 
wage or salary; no matter the training, skills, 
work ethic or fathers-with-connections-topublishers-
of-local-newspapers the job-seeker 
might have. 
An experience I’ve never had (I don’t know 
about Greg) is that of a father with a daughter 
entering the job market. Recent events relating 
to past, present and future brought the subject 
of women in the workforce to mind. 
I was reminded of the past with the release 
of a new documentary on Anita Hill, the law 
professor whom her former employer, Supreme 
Court Justice Clarence Thomas, referred to as 
his “most traitorous adversary”. 
“Can you believe it was just 22 years ago? It’s 
like ‘Mad Men’!” Hill said in a recent interview. 
The problem was not men committing sexual 
harassment in the workplace, but women who 
wouldn’t stay silent about it.
Hill says many of her students at Brandeis 
University don’t know who she is, and a lot of 
us have forgotten the basics; about how what 
she’d thought to be a confidential statement to 
investigators vetting the nomination of Thomas 
was leaked, followed by women in Congress 
urging her to publicly testify, and then how 
she, not Thomas, became the one vilified. 
I remember Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) up on 
the panel ridiculing “this sexual harassment 
crap”, patting the sides of his suit jacket 
claiming his pockets were full of notes saying, 
‘Watch out for this woman!’”. I remember 
hearing of the women waiting outside to 
corroborate Hill’s testimony and offer their 
own accounts of Thomas’ behavior – but how 
there wasn’t time; they had to get Thomas’ 
confirmation over and done with. 
Hill says testifying was bad enough, but not 
as much as dealing with those trying to get 
her fired, getting her friends fired, and the 
death threats after returning to her job at the 
University of Oklahoma.
Republicans refused to allow Sandra Fluke, 
then a Georgetown Law student (now active 
supporting victims of domestic abuse and child 
trafficking), from testifying against allowing 
employers to dictate preventive healthcare 
options to the women who work for them. 
She spoke out anyway, so Rush Limbaugh 
went nation-wide declaring, “She’s having so 
much sex she can’t afford the contraception. 
She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay 
her to have sex.” 
The first bill signed into law by President 
Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. 
Ledbetter had filed a pay discrimination 
complaint, but court rulings were mixed. The 
5-4 conservative majority on the Supreme 
Court decided the issue: though Ledbetter had 
just become aware of the gender discrimination 
by comparing paychecks, the pay rates had 
been set some time before. Ledbetter had a 
six-month window to file her lawsuit from the 
time the pay policy was established, not when 
she became aware of it – and she missed the 
deadline. 
The new law fixed that. Now, it’s six months 
to file from the time the discrimination is 
discovered – regardless of how long it’d been 
going on. Republicans complained it was 
all about more opportunities for “frivolous 
lawsuits”. 
Today, women still make on average 77% of 
what a man makes. According to the American 
Association of University Women, for women 
fresh out of college, with background, skills, 
education level all being equal, there’s still an 
8-9% gender gap – and it widens during the 
course of a career. 
This past week, President Obama signed 
an executive order instructing the Labor 
Department to draft rules requiring federal 
contractors to report wage data tied to gender 
and race. Another, following up on the 
Ledbetter Act, prohibits them from retaliating 
against employees who share pay information 
with each other. 
There was a move to expand this protection 
nation-wide with the Paycheck Fairness Act. 
Senate Republicans blocked it from even 
coming to the floor for debate. 
Looking to the future, I was heartened to read 
about Olivia McConnell, an eight-year-old in 
South Carolina who was intrigued by the fact 
that one of the earliest fossil discoveries in 
North America was woolly mammoth teeth 
dug up by slaves on a South Carolina plantation 
in 1725. She learned hers was one of seven 
states without an official state fossil (ours is the 
saber-tooth cat), and wrote to state legislatures 
proposing the honor go to the Columbian 
Mammoth, “because fossils tell us about our 
past.” 
She made progress, until a Republican state 
legislator objected for “religious reasons”, 
one proposed adding passages from Genesis 
on “Biblical creation”, and the Republican 
lieutenant governor proposed language 
explaining the mammoth was “created on the 
Sixth Day with the beasts of the field.” That 
pretty much killed it. 
I predict a great future for third-grader Olivia 
and girls like her, in the sciences or whatever 
career they choose. As for the men who 
blocked her efforts, they should find a different 
line of work. 
Admittedly, this title is an exaggeration, 
but only in order of magnitude not 
in principle. Last week’s sacking of 
Mozilla CEO, Brendan Eich, should 
demonstrate without any possible 
confusion to all Americans – the 
danger facing this country from the 
Left. 
The scurrilous libel, accepted as 
common wisdom, is that conservatives 
are the intolerant ones, the fascists, the 
ones who threaten the existence of the 
republic. Nothing could be further 
from the truth. Conservatives believe 
in freedom: freedom of speech, belief, 
the press and assembly. We also believe 
that products, services and companies 
should be judged on the basis of 
their consumer benefits, not on the 
personal, religious or political views of 
management or the owners. I would 
imagine that most leaders of Silicon 
Valley tech companies are liberal, yet I 
buy and use without reservation many 
software and cloud solutions they offer 
because they’re good products and 
services. Steve Jobs was a genius; so is 
Steven Spielberg. Both are liberal, but I 
use Apple products and certainly enjoy 
Spielberg’s movies. 
This is what makes me, and other 
conservatives, different than liberals,
who are indistinguishable today from 
leftists. Liberals don’t just want to win 
the arguments on political and social 
issues. They make it personal and 
want to destroy the individuals and/or 
companies that dared to disagree with 
them in the first place. 
As most readers know, Mozilla, the 
provider of the web browser, Firefox, 
forced the resignation of its CEO 
because he had contributed $1,000 
to the campaign for California’s 
Proposition 8 which would have 
defined marriage as the union of one 
man and one woman. Mind you, this is 
a position which has been held by every 
major world religion over the last 2,000 
years. It is a mainstream position – or 
at least it was. 
The Left has decided that the stance 
on gay marriage is a litmus test, not 
just for determining political support 
- which I wholeheartedly believe they 
have a right to do - but for determining 
whether someone can hold any public 
office or even earn a living. Several 
judges have been forced to renounce 
their affiliation with the Boy Scouts. 
Boy Scout troops (which ban gay 
leaders) can’t use public facilities, while 
Muslim groups (which tolerate honor 
killings) have never to my knowledge 
been denied use of a public meeting 
hall. 
The hypocrisy is the most blatant I’ve 
ever seen. The Left preaches tolerance 
title of most-
tolerant, even while 
d e m o n s t r a t i n gthe opposite. 
“Tolerance” is 
encouraged, or 
on campusesdemanded, in 
matters of sex, 
race, and economic 
status. But there is no tolerance 
of diversity of opinion. If you are 
woman, black or Hispanic who 
espouses conservative values, you are 
inauthentic (or a bitch, Uncle Tom, or 
a host of other words I shouldn’t write). 
If you are a college student professing 
Christian faith, you’re subject to 
discrimination and sometimes 
expulsion (please see the list of such 
occurrences at the end of the movie 
“God’s Not Dead”). And now, if you 
are an employee who participates on 
the wrong side in elections, you can be 
deprived of a job. 
The reality of this last statement may 
take many of you by surprise, but it 
is the most significant aspect of last 
week’s events. Because Brendan Eich 
was an executive and probably is a 
member of the 1%, people forget he 
was also an employee. The Board of 
Directors employed him. He was their 
employee, whom they forced out for his 
political stance. That is the principle 
and the most important issue; the 
Left’s hypocrisy is just theatre. 
If an employee can be fired for 
supporting traditional marriage, then 
an employee can be fired for supporting 
anything: pro-life positions, gun 
ownership, or eventually for supporting 
any major religion which claims that 
only its adherents will enter Heaven. 
The principle is the important thing, 
not the specific circumstances. 
The Left’s tactics are destroying this 
country in two primary ways. First, 
they are eliminating our political 
freedoms. If you aren’t allowed to 
earn a living because of your political 
beliefs, then you really have no political 
freedom. Second, they are pushing 
the country toward civil unrest. Our 
founders anticipated sharp divisions 
on important issues. In their wisdom, 
they provided a mechanism to resolve 
them politically – through open debate 
– so nobody would feel the need to 
reach for a gun. The process failed 
once, and we had a civil war. Since 
then, we’ve worked it out, but Leftism 
threatens the social contract. If debate 
is outlawed because holding the wrong 
position deprives you of a livelihood, 
we’ll have less debate, but we’ll 
have more civil unrest and perhaps 
eventually reach a breaking point. At 
that point, agree-with-me-or-die may 
not be an exaggeration. 
“Just because 
somethingisn’t a lie 
does not 
mean that 
it isn’t 
deceptive. Aliar knows 
that he is a 
liar, but one 
who speaks mere portions of truth in order 
to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.” 
-
Sierra Madre is almost done with another 
election cycle, and while all of the candidates 
acted with grace and dignity, many along 
the sidelines did not. In fact, I thought 
things could not get any worse than they did 
in 2008 during the Campaign for Measure 
V. I was wrong.
During this election cycle we had the 
unprecedented exploiting of personal 
photos taken by one candidate’s wife 
while they were on vacation; we had 
mean spirited, anonymous letters prior 
to the start of the campaign mailed out to 
discourage people from running; we had 
a daily barage of childish name calling on 
the blog against anyone who wasn’t of the 
same political persuasion; we also had non 
stop character assassination of anyone who 
dared to express their positions that John 
Crawford did not agree with on his blog; 
we no doubt had trolling on the blog that 
incites nothing but anger and hatred; and, 
we had the outrageous anonymous postcard 
defaming Gene Goss and Noah Green. 
On the latter, I cannot get over the blatantly 
calling Gene Goss a liar regarding campaign 
contributions when it was a well known 
public fact that Gene never solicited a 
contribution from the Teachers Union and 
when they sent him one, he returned it 
and stated that fact over and over again in 
public. What does Criss Jami say, “ …. one 
who speaks mere portions of truth in order to 
deceive is a craftsman of destruction.” 
We are not facing a freedom of speech issue, 
we are facing a growing societal problem 
that has and will continue to seriously 
impair our ability to encourage people to 
participate in public service. Then what 
will happen? 
Sierra Madre now has a new council who 
are elected to represent ALL of the residents 
in Sierra Madre. It is not an easy task but 
those who have stepped up to the plate 
deserve our support. We can disagree 
with civility. We can speak our minds via 
whatever method we choose, however, we 
have to reject those platforms that are just a 
cesspool of hatred. 
Sierra Madre has a lot of challenges to deal 
with. Should the UUT remain defeated, we 
have to figure out how to keep our town the 
pristine village that it is. We can’t do that if 
we have councilmembers who refrain from 
doing the right thing for fear of being on ‘the 
blog’ or dressed down in council meeting. 
We need our representatives to stand up for 
what is right, and we need to support them 
and do the same. 
Several years ago, Joe Mosca was elected to 
the council along with Kurt Zimmerman 
and Don Watts. At the time, the feeling 
was that there was a majority voting block 
that would take care of the business of the 
city. One of the first votes that came up 
however, caused Joe to break ranks with 
his other newly elected associates. The 
issue was whether or not to accept the 
Metropolitan Water District’s offer to install 
an emergency water connection while 
MWD was working on their pipeline that 
runs under Grandview Avenue. To accept 
the offer meant that in an emergency, the 
Sierra Madre would be able to connect to 
the MWD pipeline immediately without 
the time consuming process and expense of 
building a connector. 
Joe voted along with John Buchanan and 
Enid Joffe to accept the offer from MWD 
and from that point on, Joe became the 
permanent object of a vocal minority’s 
mean spirited, hateful attacks. 
Fast forward to recent months. Because 
of Joe’s vote, when our wells went dry and 
we had to start importing water, we didn’t 
have to go into reserves to build a new 
connection. It was already in place. We also 
had immediate access to that water (albeit 
yellow), and Joe is still the subject of unjust 
attacks. 
The point is, that demonstrates how our 
city council and government should work. 
Their focus has got to be to find what’s in the 
best interest of the entire community. Not 
just a particular segment of the community, 
and not out of fear of being attacked on the 
internet or in the media. 
In order for that to happen, as citizens, we 
need to stand up to the bullying. Don’t 
be a passive supporter of hatred, be an 
active supporter of working together as a 
community with diverse ideas, respectfully. 
Given the underhanded tactics in this 
election residents should be ready to shout 
from the rooftops, “Im as mad as hell and I’m 
not going to take this anymore”…..Peter Finch 
in the movie Network, 1976. As Finch said 
at the beginning of his tirade, “I don’t have 
to tell you things are bad, everybody knows 
things are bad”. And so it is in Sierra Madre 
today. (Watch the entire clip at http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmEor better yet, rent the movie. It’s eerily 
prophetic in many ways. 
Had enough yet or shall we wait until that 
kind of cancerous behavior completely 
destroys our town? 
and of course claims for itself the 
Mountain Views News 
Mission Statement 
The traditions of 
community newspapers 
and the 
concerns of our readers 
are this newspaper’s 
top priorities. We 
support a prosperouscommunity of well-
informed citizens. 
We hold in highregard the values 
of the exceptionalquality of life in our 
community, includingthe magnificence of 
our natural resources. 
Integrity will be our 
guide. 
It was only two years ago that House 

Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com