Mountain Views News          Saturday, May 10, 2014

OPINION Mountain Views News Saturday, May 10, 2014 
B5 
Mountain 
Views 
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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 
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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 
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SUSAN Henderson MOTHER’S DAY 2014 
HOWARD Hays As I See ItLEFT TURN/ 
Tomorrow 
m o s t 
Americans 
will take 
time to 
thank the 
person who 
p r o b a b lyis the most 
i mpor t a nt 
person in 
their lives, their Mother. And, although 
one day is certainly not adequate to 
thank Mom’s for all they do, it is greatly 
appreciated. I can honestly say that I am 
thankful to my children for all they do 
every day (well almost every day) and I am 
eternally grateful to have the priviledge of 
being both Mom and Grandmom. 
My children, Paul, Patricia, Fred and 
Doreen, don’t have to worry about taking 
me out to dinner, or buying flowers, or 
presents. They could give me the very best 
present if they joined the worldwide efforts 
to comfort those women who have no idea 
where their daughters are. I am speaking of 
the Mothers of the missing girls in Nigeria. 
You’ve heard it said so many times, how 
we as Americans take so much for granted, 
and no one will argue with that because we 
do. But there comes a time when we need 
to open our eyes and see the world as it 
really is, not just as it appears to be in our 
immediate environment. In most of this 
world, females, regardless of age, are not 
valued and it goes far beyond not having the 
right to vote. In most of the world, women 
would be happy just to be able to feel as if 
they had the right to live - the right to live 
without fear of being abused, mistreated, 
maimed, or murdered. 
Can you imagine armed men invading 
a school and taking 200 girls hostage and 
then have the news surpressed for weeks 
by the government? Can you imagine 
these girls being removed from the school 
because these men believe that women 
should not be educated and are better used 
as slaves or bartering chips? 
To those familiar with life outside of these 
United States the story isn’t that shocking. 
But I have no doubt that many of you 
reading this column have turned past pages 
in the news that talked about Women’s 
Rights in Africa or India or China because 
it didn’t impact your life. Maybe this 
incident will. 
I don’t know exactly what can be done to 
save those young women, but I do know 
that the knowledge of this atrocity should 
compel every right thinking adult to take 
an active role in fighting against such 
atrocities which are deeply rooted in hate. 
Wouldn’t it be the best Mother’s Day 
present if we all could commit to making 
a conscious effort to fight against the 
proliferation of hatred of others because of 
their race or gender or lifestyle? Whether 
it be in the form of donating to causes that 
fight to protect those who are not able 
to protect themselves, or it is refraining 
from supporting businesses and/or 
organizations that enable the inhumane 
treament of others we need to do more 
than just shake our heads in disbelief. I 
don’t have the answers on exactly what to 
do, but I am a firm believer that we all have 
a responsibility to do more than just take 
care of our own. 
And to my children and grandchildren, I 
love you dearly and I’m sure you know that. 
If you want to give me a present that will 
make me even more proud of you, don’t 
do anything for me. Do something to help 
someone else. 
Happy Mother’s Day To All 
“It may seem like a 
juicy story to have this 
confrontation between 
California and Texas, but 
that was not the case.” 
- Jim Lentz, Toyota 
North America CEO, on 
his company’s moving 3,000 
jobs from Torrance to Plano. 
Last week, Greg 
Welborn addressed Toyota’s move to Texas by 
explaining, “Tax rates and an insane regulatory 
environment were the cause.” Republican 
legislators and conservative commentators 
around California were saying the same thing. 
Toyota, however, wasn’t. They said it was 
simple geography. 
Thirty years ago, most Toyotas on our streets 
were Japanese imports, and it made sense 
to have Sales and Marketing near the ports. 
Today, the manufacturing of Toyotas sold in 
the U.S. is centered in Kentucky – with Plano 
being closer by two-thirds than Torrance. 
With effected jobs being white-collar rather 
than industrial, “insane regulations” wasn’t a 
factor. Nor, apparently, was Gov. Rick Perry’s 
$40 million in taxpayer-funded inducements. 
It’s true; Texas doesn’t have a state income tax. 
A lot of that is compensated for by having the 
third highest average property tax rate in the 
nation, at 1.81% of assessed value. (California, 
at 0.74%, ranks 32nd.) 
Cost-of-living was a factor. What’s considered 
a half-million-dollar home here might be had 
for $200,000 around Plano. Other factors 
involved not so much a “confrontation between 
California and Texas”, but competition within 
Texas itself. 
Dallas was another community that fought 
to secure the Toyota headquarters. According 
to Mayor Mike Rawlings, “We don’t get Toyota 
in Dallas because of the school system. We’ve 
talked to them. They want to be in Plano.” He 
said it was made clear by Toyota’s real estate 
advisors that “one of the main criteria is K-12 
schools. It was clear that the Plano situation 
offered a better situation.” 
Mayor Rawlings went through the same 
thing last month when 7-Eleven moved their 
headquarters to nearby Irving; “The 7-Eleven 
CEO said, ‘I need to be where our families are 
sending their kids to school, and they are not 
sending them to (Dallas Independent School 
District)’”. “It shouldn’t be a big surprise”, the 
mayor explained, “that one of our barriers 
to recruiting a large corporation is our 
neighborhoods and our schools. The CEO of 
7-Eleven told me this very clearly.” 
Geography, affordability for employees and 
quality of the local schools were the major 
factors in this move. Lower taxes and lax 
regulation may benefit corporate officers and 
shareholders, but they don’t determine the 
communities that companies, their employees 
and families, decide to become a part of. 
Greg mentioned Pfizer “investing in Britain 
to reduce taxes”. Here it’s not a matter of 
moving factories, jobs, or corporate offices, 
but shopping around for the most tax-friendly 
place in which to declare your profits. 
Pfizer is still headquartered in NYC. Along 
gets substantial income from royalty payments 
for its “intellectual property”; patents, brands, 
recipes for mocha lattes, etc. Whether in 
Dublin or Amsterdam, foreign subsidiaries are 
set up not to take jobs from the USA, but to 
control these IP rights – so royalty income can 
be declared and taxed in the most favorable 
places. 
Britain just lowered their royalty tax rate and 
added another bonus: dividends are tax-free 
when transferred between units of the same 
company. This means a subsidiary in another 
country can transfer its royalty income to a 
British branch in the form of dividends, and it’s 
tax-free. 
They’ll still complain about our 35% top 
corporate tax rate – even though hardly 
anybody pays it. Pfizer, still a U.S. company, 
reported $15.7 billion in worldwide earnings 
last year, with a federal tax cost of $142 million. 
That works out to an effective rate of 0.9%. The 
year before, they figured we owed them a tax 
refund of $941 million. 
As Jia Lynn Yang points out in the 
Washington Post, what’s been happening in 
the U.S. is now played out between countries: 
A company threatens to leave and take a 
chunk of a community’s tax base with it, 
other communities compete trying to out-do 
each another in offering tax breaks and other 
inducements, and then, after all those breaks 
are figured in, when the company does move 
there’s really no additional tax base that comes 
with it – and the only winner is the company. 
Greg says he’d be the “first to argue against 
a system of government enforced rules which 
reward a chosen group of people at the expense 
of others.” That system of rules is called the tax 
code, and the “chosen group” consists of those 
who bankroll the lobby outfits that write the 
tax code and purchase the congressmen who 
push it through. 
Most of us don’t have the option of declaring 
our income in whatever state or country offers 
the best tax deal; we can’t write-off expenses 
on a corporate jet for personal travel. We pay 
taxes at the full rate on income we work for, not 
at half-rate on income from playing with other 
people’s money. 
Last month, House Republicans on the tax-
writing committee killed a bill costing $12 
million over ten years to address the problem of 
sex trafficking of kids from foster care, because 
it wasn’t paid for. They approved tax breaks for 
big business costing $310 billion over ten years, 
including a $20 billion break for companies 
like Pfizer to continue socking untaxed profits 
offshore. These breaks weren’t “paid for”, either 
– but the understanding is that the rest of us 
will somehow pick up the slack. 
We also pick up the slack for the progeny 
of Sam Walton. A House Committee report 
last year figured a 300-employee Walmart 
Supercenter costs us $904,000 a year in public 
assistance to subsidize low wages. 
It’s hard to know exactly what brings a 
company to set roots and become part of a 
community, as opposed to merely exploiting 
a workforce subsidized by public assistance or 
renting a mail drop in the Cayman Islands as a 
tax dodge. But, as Dallas Mayor Rawlings can 
testify, good schools and a nice neighborhood 
can’t hurt. 
OUT TO PASTOR 
A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder 
RIGHT TURN 
GREG WelbornWHAT DIFFERENCE DOES 
IT MAKE? 
MY MOTHER’S DAY CARD QUANDRYAnother year has 
gone by and I find 
myself facing the 
same quandary I 
faced last year. I was 
hoping somehow 
this year would be different, but, alas, it 
is not. Many people complain about how 
fast things are changing, I complain about 
those things that do not change at all. 
Interestingly, the things you want to 
change refuse to do so and the things you 
want to stay the same never do. I wish 
someone would figure out how to reverse 
this tedious trend of life. I have worked on 
it but to no success. 
I am referring to the annual Mother's Day 
card fetish. I am not sure where this started 
or why, but I have my suspicions. I think 
we can safely rule out husbands and men 
as suspects. 
I could see a man doing it one year, but to 
do it year after year is not within the scope 
of a man's ability. If a man does something 
one time and it is successful he never 
chances doing it the second time when it 
may be a failure. 
Now we have on our hands tremendous 
pressure to purchase a yearly Mother's 
Day card. When it comes to card buying, 
I simply do not know where to go. Oh, I 
know where to get them; I simply do not 
know which one to purchase. 
If it was up to me, and let me point out very 
quickly, it is not, I would have one card 
for sale each year. Maybe I would modify 
the card each year and perhaps write 
something different in it, but how many 
ways can you say "Happy Mother's Day?" 
To be efficient the choice would only be one 
Mother's Day card per year. 
As it stands (and I wish it would sit down 
and rest for a while), there are more 
Mother's Day cards than stars in the 
heavens. It is virtually impossible to pick 
out the right Mother's Day card. Since I do 
not keep up with the latest trends in this 
regard I am at quite a disadvantage. 
One year I tried to remedy my Mother's 
Day card-buying dilemma by buying a 
box of 50 cards that were on sale right 
after Mother's Day. I thought I had hit the 
mother lode, so to speak. 
With this purchase, I had enough Mother's 
Day cards to last my entire lifetime. Unless, 
of course, I live to be 129. 
This lasted for two years. 
The first year I presented my Mother's 
Day card to my wife and she gave me all 
kinds of smiles and hugs. I was relieved to 
have solved a big problem in my home. I 
now could rest and focus on solving other 
problems in my life, of which there are 
many. 
It was the second year that kicked me in the 
teeth. 
As usual, that year, I presented my wife 
with her Mother's Day card. Trust me; I 
was not fully geared up for the response I 
got. I was expecting smiles and hugs like 
the year before. What I got was a glare and 
a shrug. 
She looked at me and said something I 
shall never forget. "Isn't this the same card 
you gave me last year?" 
How do wives remember these things? The 
only reason I knew it was the same card as 
last year is I had more just like it in the box 
it came from. 
Apparently, good protocol rules out giving 
the same card two years in a row. Who 
knew? I didn't. 
To have a problem unsolved is a very nerve-
racking experience, to be sure. Now I must 
go back and start the whole Mother's Day 
card buying process over again. 
This brings me to the second part of my 
quandary. 
When did it become necessary for 
husbands to buy their wives Mother's Day 
cards? 
Sure, she washes my clothes, cooks my 
meals and bosses me about. She still is not 
my mother. 
It starts out rather innocently enough as 
most things do. Then, in my opinion, it gets 
out of hand. 
When the children start coming into the 
home it is quite natural, because they 
are too young to make such important 
decisions, for the father to buy the Mother's 
Day card on behalf of the children. 
I still remember that first Mother's Day 
card. Our first baby was only seven months 
old and had no idea what was going on in 
the world or even in the home. 
I gave my wife her first Mother's Day 
card. She was so excited. Because she was 
excited, so was I. This is where the whole 
nonsense starts. 
What I want to know is when do husbands 
stop buying Mother's Day cards for their 
wives? Looking back over my experience, 
I can see no way where I can opt out of this 
annual event. 
The last child in our home left more than 
15 years ago and still I find myself under 
the awesome pressure of purchasing a 
Mother's Day card for my wife. When do 
the children take control of this yearly 
responsibility? 
In spite of my quandary, it is important to 
honor both fathers and mothers. 
"Honour thy father and mother; (which 
is the first commandment with promise;) 
That it may be well with thee, and thou 
mayest live long on the earth" (Ephesians 
6:2-3). 
Would anybody want to buy a box of 48 
Mother's Day cards, cheap?
Those are the words with which former 
Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, hoped 
to dismiss any and all inquiries into 
the Benghazi attack as just so much 
political muck-raking. The words make 
a good, tight sound-bite, but they convey 
volumes about her fitness for the position 
she seeks. How someone reacts to the 
deaths of innocent victims demonstrates 
their moral legitimacy and qualifications 
to lead a great nation. 
There is a time for politics and time to put 
politics aside for the good of the nation. 
A true leader, a person morally qualified 
to hold the most powerful position 
in the country, understands this and 
makes the right hard decisions. They do 
not standby when subordinates who’ve 
trusted them are pleading for help to save 
their lives, they do not lie about their 
own actions, and they do not purposely 
wrongly cast blame onto someone else. 
Those are the actions of a coward, of 
a heartless calloused soul, of a person 
grown so cynically manipulative that 
they’ve forfeited any right to leadership. 
So, it is important that we get to the truth 
of the Benghazi attacks because a sitting 
president seeks to retain the legitimate 
moral mantel to lead, and an aspiring 
candidate claims she possesses the same. 
So, we must investigate all the facts to 
determine whether this was an accidental 
calamity or callous indifference to the 
suffering of others because of a political 
agenda. What we know now mandates 
further investigation and does not bode 
well for two of the most powerful public 
servants in our country. Thanks to the 
work of Peter Kirsanow of the National 
Review, here is what we know. 
April 19 – July 9, 2012: Ambassador 
Stevens twice asks State Department 
for more security, and is twice rejected. 
August 8, 2012: The number of security 
personnel at Benghazi reduced by State 
Department. 
September 11, 2012 3:40 p.m. (D.C. 
time): Stevens alerts the deputy chief in 
Tripoli that the consulate in Benghazi is 
under attack. 4:00 p.m.: The White House 
is advised that the consulate is under 
attack. 6:00 p.m.: U.S. Embassy in Tripoli 
advises the White House and the State 
Department that al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar 
al-Sharia has claimed responsibility. 
10:00 p.m.: Clinton & Obama talk. 
She does not request, he does not 
authorize, military aid for the consulate. 
10:30 p.m.: Clinton issues a statement 
linking the attack to an inflammatory 
video. 
11:00–11:30 p.m.: American personnel in 
Benghazi are killed. 
September 13, 2012: A State Department 
attack on terrorists. 
September 13, 
2012: Clinton 
contradicts State 
Department and 
condemns violence 
due to a video. Jay 
Carney condemns 
attack due to a video. 
September 14, 2012: Obama and Clinton 
receive the families of the fallen; blame 
the attack on a video. Clinton tells Ty 
Woods’s father, Charles, that they will 
“get” the producer of the video. 
September 14, 2012, 8:00 p.m.: Deputy 
national-security adviser Ben Rhodes 
sends an e-mail regarding preparation 
for the Sunday talk shows underscoring 
the video rather than “a broader failure of 
policy.” 
September 15 - 24, 2012: Obama, Clinton 
& Rice appear on air collectively 10 
times blaming the video. Clinton and 
Obama specifically run a Pakistani T.V. ad 
apologizing for the video. 
August 2013: The House Committee 
on Oversight and Government Reform 
requests Benghazi e-mails. The Ben 
Rhodes e-mail is not among those 
produced. 
April 18, 2014: Federal court orders 
administration to release documents to 
Judicial Watch, wherein the hidden Ben 
Rhodes e-mail is found and the cover-up 
is shown. 
May 5, 2014: Jay Carney will not say 
whether White House will cooperate with 
the Congressional investigation. 
Four Americans were murdered. They 
put themselves in harm’s way at the 
administration’s request with the belief 
they would be protected when needed. 
That administration refused to help 
them, blamed their deaths on an innocent 
film-maker, has yet to punish the real 
perpetrators, and attempted to cover-up 
their culpability. 
Such actions (or inactions) are beneath 
callous, beneath heartless, beneath vile 
and contemptible, and certainly beneath 
any standard of leadership of a civilized 
society. Are Liberals so committed to 
their politics that they will allow Obama 
or Clinton to lead them anywhere? I 
shouldn’t have to ask this question. That’s 
why Benghazi matters. 
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 
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with companies like Apple and Starbucks, it memo and DIA independently blame the 

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