Mountain Views News          Saturday, August 30, 2014

B4

OPINION

Mountain Views-News Saturday, August 30, 2014 

 

Mountain 
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee 

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

BUSINESS EDITOR

LaQuetta Shamblee

PRODUCTION

Richard Garcia

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

CONTRIBUTORS

CoCo Lasalle

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Dr. Tina Paul

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

Marc Garlett

 LEFT TURN AND MORE 

HOWARD Hays As I See It

RICH Johnson

POLITICS 2014, VOL. ONE


I realize it may be a bit premature to comment on the upcoming 
elections but hey, I promised I would try to tickle and entertain 
you this week. What could be a better venue?

 I wonder how many of us will turn out to vote in November? 
After all, it is just what we would call “The Midterm Elections”. 
It’s not like picking a President or anything. And there aren’t 
even Senators running for re-election. Ms. Boxer gets to spend 
millions in 2016 and Ms. Feinstein gets to spend millions in 
2018 running for re-election. We do have a Governor’s race.

 In that race we have Jerry Brown running for re-election 
against Republican challenger Neel Kashkari. I wonder how many times a day Mr. 
Cashcarry, I mean Mr. Kashkari has to put up with that obvious play on his name? He 
is Indian, not to be confused with Native American, and his parent are from Kashmir, 
not to be confused with cashmere. He is also a Hindu American. There is another 
Hindu American in California politics: Ami Bera is our Congress person from 
the 7th District (that’s Eastern Sacramento County). Two other Hindu Americans 
are challenging Mike Honda, not to be confused with Hindu, in California’s 17th 
District (that’s South San Francisco Bay area and into parts of the Silicon Valley). 
Democrat Ro Khanna, and Republican Vanila (never mind) Mathur Singh. 

 Since we are on the issue of Congress let’s revisit my favorite political commentator, 
Will Rogers. Let’s see what he had to say about our distinguished bi-cameral body of 
legislators.

 As to why there are two bodies of legislators Mr. Rogers said,

 “You see, in Washington they have two of these bodies, Senate and the House of 
Representatives. That is for the convenience of visitors. If there is nothing funny 
happening in one, there is sure to be in the other, and in case one body passes a good 
bill, why, the other can see it in time and kill it.”

 “If we took Congress serious, we would be worrying all the time.”

 “Our Senate always opens with a prayer, followed by an investigation.

 “A foreigner coming here and reading the Congressional Record would say that the 
President of the United States was elected solely for the purpose of giving Senators 
somebody to call a horse thief.”

 As to pork barrel spending, Mr. Rogers said, “The height of statesmanship is to 
come home with a dam, even if you have nowhere to put it.”

 On lobbyists, “California had a bill in to investigate lobbying, and the lobbyists 
bought off all the votes and now they can’t even find the bill. Putting a lobbyist out of 
business is like a hired man trying to fire his boss.”

 “Hurray! Congress is to adjourn! Only four more days of the Congressional 
burglary of the Treasury!”

 “Every newspaper in the United States runs what you say, even if you don’t say 
anything. Look at the President. Every paper was full of what he didn’t say.” 

 It’s amazing to this reporter the perception of the people toward our elected officials 
hasn’t changed in all these years. The only shift has been the ever increasing invasion 
in our lives of the media. 

 I have a thought: Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a law where the candidates could 
only discuss what they individually would do if elected and had to keep mum about 
their opponent? 

 I particularly like that last quote. Might lessen the level of finger pointing and 
nastiness dominating cable and the social media. 

 “What does labor 
want? We want more 
schoolhouses and less 
jails; more books and 
less arsenals; more 
learning and less vice; 
more leisure and less 
greed; more justice 
and less revenge; 
in fact, more of the 
opportunities to cultivate our better 
natures.”

- Samuel Gompers, 1915

 I opened a column earlier this year 
with that quote, but realized there are 
probably a number of readers who 
don’t really know It’s apropos for this 
weekend. When I was a kid, Labor Day 
was the last big summer blast before 
heading back to school. For many now, 
it’s the first holiday of the school year, 
which has already begun.

 Back then, rather than (or in addition 
to) a “Business Section” with news of 
mergers, acquisitions, and stock and 
commodity prices, the local paper had a 
section called “Labor News”. 

 This was a time when, whether blue-
collar assembly-line worker or white-
collar aircraft designer, one-in-five 
American workers were union members. 
The dominant class in America was the 
middle-class, where the single income of 
a blue-collar worker could buy a home, 
send a kid to college and take the family 
on summer vacations with the promise 
of a secure pension for a comfortable 
retirement. They read the Labor News 
to follow the efforts of their and others’ 
unions to help maintain and raise that 
standard – with the American economy 
the envy of the world.

 At least by high school we would’ve 
learned about John L. Lewis and 
the United Mine Workers, the Flint, 
Michigan auto workers’ strike, Harry 
Bridges and west-coast longshoremen, 
the AFL-CIO and Samuel Gompers.

 Gompers and his family came to 
America from London at the time of 
the Civil War, and settled in the Lower 
East Side of NYC. He was pulled out of 
school shortly after turning ten and put 
to work, like his Dad, in a cigar factory.

 As he later put it, it took some doing, 
learning the proper way to roll a tobacco 
leaf. But once you got the hang of it, it 
became sort of automatic - allowing one 
to use the time to think, listen, sing, 
and talk about new ideas circulating as 
America adjusted to its post- (Civil) war 
economy. 

 He joined the Cigarmakers’ union 
at fourteen, and in his mid-twenties 
became head of their International 
Union. With the financial crises of 
the 1870s, he helped put together a 
system for using union dues to fund 
out-of-work, sick and death benefits for 
members. His goal was that “in time we 
may secure for every person in the trade 
an existence worthy of human beings.”

 This was a time when much of the labor 
movement was taken with imported 
European ideas like socialism and class 
warfare. When in the 1880s Gompers, 
then in his thirties, helped found and 
became the first head of the American 
Federation of Labor, he made it clear the 
purpose was not to combat capitalism. 
As he put it, “The worst crime against 
working people is a company which fails 
to operate at a profit.”

 It was a means to improve workers’ 
lives, and he fought to protect non-violent 
options like strikes and boycotts in the 
face of violent attacks by mercenaries 
(“private detective bureaus”) hired by 
employers.

 The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car 
Porters became the first major black-led 
union to receive a charter from the AFL 
in 1925 – the year after Gompers died. It 
was founded by A. Philip Randolph, who 
forty years later organized the March on 
Washington, featuring the Rev. Martin 
Luther King, Jr.

 The union was formed by employees of 
the Pullman Car Company, which back 
in the 1890s had created a “company 
town” for employees in what is now 
part of Chicago. The homes workers 
lived in and the stores they shopped at 
were owned by the company. During 
the “Panic of 1893” wages dropped but 
living expenses and store prices stayed 
the same - and Pullman refused to meet 
with workers to discuss the low wages 
and 12-hour work days. Employees went 
on strike, and soon railroad workers 
throughout the country were refusing to 
handle trains pulling Pullman cars.

 Pullman responded by having Pullman 
cars attached to trains carrying the U.S. 
Mail, forcing the federal government 
to step in. President Grover Cleveland 
dispatched 12,000 U.S. Army troops, 
and days later the strike ended with 13 
strikers killed and 57 wounded. Partially 
in atonement and partially because of 
the political need to stay on the good 
side of the growing labor movement, 
President Cleveland latched onto an 
annual observance held by the Central 
Labor Union of New York (the first 
major integrated union), and six days 
after the strike ended pushed through 
a measure to make that observance a 
national holiday, “Labor Day”.

 For most of the hundred years since 
Samuel Gompers, the strength of unions 
helped grow the middle class by helping 
those in the lower classes rise into it. As 
union membership dropped In the first 
decade of the present century, however, 
census figures show that the median 
household net worth of the top 20% grew 
by 11% between 2000 and 2010, while 
the median net worth for all Americans 
dropped by 7%.

 The question used to be how to grow 
and strengthen the middle class. Now 
it’s how to keep those at the bottom from 
getting an increase in the minimum 
wage; even with a Goldman Sachs study 
showing states that increased their 
minimum wages as of last January 1 
experiencing faster job growth than 
those that didn’t.

 

Years ago, we aimed higher: “. . . to 
establish a normal work-day, to take the 
children from the factory and workshop 
and give them the opportunity of the 
school and the play-ground. In a word, 
our unions strive to lighten toil, educate 
their members, make their homes more 
cheerful, and in every way contribute 
an earnest effort toward making life the 
better worth living.”

 

- Samuel Gompers, 1912

 Enjoy the Labor Day weekend


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 80 W. Sierra Madre 
Blvd., No. 327, 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


What did the bugs do before I came?

The Gracious 
Mistress of the 
Parsonage and 
Yours Truly finally 
exercised our right 
to a vacation and 
planned for a whole 
week to spend with our son and his family. 
Preparing for a week vacation takes about 
six weeks prior to the vacation and then six 
weeks after the vacation to get caught up. I 
do not know how people take vacations all 
the time.

 It was to be a great week of relaxing and 
spending time with our son and his family 
in the state of Ohio. Ohio is remarkable 
for a lot of things but when my wife and 
I think of Ohio we think of one thing: our 
grandchildren.

 Someone once remarked that 
grandchildren was God’s way of 
apologizing for our children. Maybe that 
is so, I do not know. If so, I gladly accept 
His apology. All I know is it is wonderful 
to spend time with grandchildren. The 
important thing about being a grandparent 
is discovering the skills necessary to 
adequately spoil your grandchildren 
within a week’s time frame. Secretly, my 
plan is to get back at my children for their 
childhood in my home by spoiling my 
grandchildren in their home.

 Revenge is sweet and wonderful.

 It was about the middle of the week and 
my wife and I were sitting outside enjoying 
the cool weather. All of the grandchildren 
had been snuggled down into their beds 
for the night. It certainly is tiring to spend 
the day with grandchildren who have no 
shortage of energy and whose tongue is 
a well oiled machine and does not know 
how to be quiet.

 Our ears were still tingling from the 
day’s childish verbiage extravaganza.

 We were sitting in the backyard sipping 
some hot coffee, enjoying the quiet 
evening when I heard this buzzing sound 
on the left side of my head. Automatically 
my hand swatted in that area and I went 
on drinking my coffee as though nothing 
had happened. I thought perhaps the kids 
were still up or maybe it was a flashback 
from the afternoon.

 My wife looked at me as though 
something weird happened, but 
we continued enjoying the evening 
atmosphere with only the soothing sounds 
of sipping coffee.

 Then I heard the buzzing sound again. 
This time it was on the other side of my 
head and as I swatted I began to realize 
what was happening. All of the bugs in 
the state of Ohio had received a memo 
that I was vacationing in the state. In 
well organized shifts they began the 
welcoming process. Within a short time I 
was swatting bugs with both hands which 
did not seem to change the situation at 
hand.

 I know I am a sweet person, but this was 
becoming ridiculous. I would like to retain 
my sweetness for something other than 
bugs.

 I am not quite sure how many bug bites 
I received that night, I stopped counting at 
2,973,442 bites. I am not quite certain, but 
it was feeling more like it had exceeded 3 
million bites. If I had a penny for every bug 
bite I would buy some very expensive bug 
repellent.

 It seemed like they were working in 
shifts and it got to the point where my 
mind shifted into a murder scenario. Is it 
a crime to murder a bug who has bitten 
me so many times? Of course the real 
question is, is it really murder? Could it be 
considered a mercy killing?

 And if it is murder, what is the penalty 
for murdering a bug? I was at the point 
that I would gladly have paid handsomely 
for the privilege of putting some bugs to 
rest.

 As a spiritually minded person, I 
wondered if bugs go to heaven when they 
die? If they go to heaven, do they continue 
to bite? And, would it be proper for an 
angel to swat a bug in heaven?

 The mood I was in, after being bitten so 
many times by these lousy bugs, I had an 
opposite destination in mind. Since they 
like fire so much and are attracted to it, 
I would be glad to accommodate them. I 
know a place that would fit the situation 
quite well.

 After two hours of fighting these 
stinking bugs, my sanity, as fragile as it is, 
was on the brink of collapsing. Once my 
sanity collapses I am not responsible for 
what I will do or say. It was hard to find a 
place on my body one finger wide where 
a bug had not tasted the delicacy of my 
sweet skin.

 One question I reflected on was simply, 
what did the bugs do before I arrived? 
Did they save up all their energy for when 
I would come and visit? This is not the 
kind of celebrity status I am seeking. My 
preference is to be anonymous to all the 
bugs in Ohio.

 All of these insects, whatever they were, 
were simply bugging me to death.

 When I regained some composure, I 
thought about what it must have been 
like for Jesus to come into this world. The 
writer of Hebrews puts it this way, ”So 
Christ was once offered to bear the sins 
of many; and unto them that look for him 
shall he appear the second time without 
sin unto salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).

 So many things in this world bug me, 
but I have something greater to look 
forward to, a place called heaven.

 

 Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of 
the Family of God Fellowship, PO Box 
831313, Ocala, FL 34483. He lives with 
his wife, Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. 
Call him at 1-866-552-2543 or e-mail 
jamessnyder2@att.net or website www.
jamessnyderministries.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. 

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