Mountain Views News          Saturday, January 23, 2016

15

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, January 23, 2016 

WILL Durst

NEW YORKIE VALUES

To taunt his rival and sow seeds of evangelical 
doubt, Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz informed 
Donald Trump that the rest of the country 
was concerned about his alarming New York 
Values, totally ignoring the greater danger of 
the real estate developer’s aerodynamic coif 
toppling over and knocking innocent supporters 
unconscious with its hard candy shell.

 The jibe was designed as a sly, wink-wink, 
nudge-nudge attack resurrecting deeply buried 
stereotypes about urban areas that also managed to carry a faint whiff 
of racism and anti-Semitism. It’s a dog-whistle the size of the Louisiana 
Purchase on steroids.

 This geographic schism has been celebrated in literature for centuries 
and elevated to a hoary trope by politicians in order to highlight their 
imagined connection to real rural folk. But if Cruz is the country mouse 
and Trump the city mouse, a lot of people are rooting for large herds of 
feral cats to make a speedy entrance.

 It’s an age-old rivalry. The difference between paths and sidewalks. 
Simplicity and glamor. Open spaces or 24-hour supermarkets. Porches 
versus high-rises. Red and blue. Mosquitoes and muggers. Meadows and 
low-fat caramel macchiatos.

 But is it fair to make sweeping generalizations solely based on longitude 
and latitude? Well, yes, it is. So, besides New York, what other clichés and 
prejudices do our little minds instantly make when presented with specific 
locales? Glad you asked. 

 New Yorkie Values involve a lot of yipping and the sound of toenails 
scratching on linoleum.

 New Jersey Values are almost exactly like New Yorkie Values but with 
bigger hair.

 New Mexico Values boil every question down to whether it goes better 
with red or green chilies.

 New Orleans Values mean partying like there’s no tomorrow and 
encourages yesterday to bleed into tomorrow and the next day.

New Hampshire Values believe in not just the electric chair, but electric 
bleachers.

 New England Patriots Values mean doing anything and everything to 
win, including the blurring of boundaries that lesser competitors might 
consider “the rules.”

 New Balance Values take into account sneakers and sneaker accessories.

 New Zealand Values revolve around sheep and sheep accessories 
including effluvium. 

 New Caledonia Values indicate the matrix that occurs when French 
culture meets the remote South Pacific. Think Tahiti without all the hustle 
and bustle.

 New Delhi Values include not just the hustle and bustle but also cows 
and cow effluvium where you least expect them.

Washington DC Values are a mix of New Yorkie Values, New England 
Patriots Values and New Delhi Values.

 Hollywood Values are reduced to, “Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.” 

Florida Values are indicative of folks who think just plain crazy is not 
giving it your all.

 Texas Values mostly have to do with barbecue, guns and executing 
people, not necessarily in that order.

 Wisconsin Values are totally measured by how the Green Bay Packers 
are doing. And cheese.

 Arkansas Values are more family oriented, and totally understand that 
fathers can be uncles at the same time.

 San Francisco Values are indicative of a tolerance for almost anything, 
except the intolerant. That we cannot abide.

 Berkeley Values are not as restrictive as San Francisco Values.

Madison Values are similar to Berkeley Values but mitigated by snow and 
cheese and the Packers.

 Maine Values are none of your business.

DICK Polman

TED CRUZ MADE DONALD 
TRUMP LOOK GOOD

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 

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WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

CONTRIBUTORS

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

Pat Birdsall (retired)


There’s 
no point in parsing all the 
verbal volleys in the latest 
Republican debate, which 
one again was the equivalent 
of a Michael Bay action flick, 
a blustering bludgeoning 
macho entertainment that 
pummeled the cognitive intellect and reduced one’s 
brain to the consistency of mixed nuts.

So I’ll simply focus on the Ted Cruz’s hypocrisy-
laced outburst about the alleged evils of “New York 
values.” It was so egregiously mindless, and so 
stereotypically insulting, that it wound up making 
Donald Trump look good. Which tells you plenty 
about Cruz.

Cruz birthed this riff on Tuesday, when he said, in 
radio and later on Fox News, that Trump “comes 
from New York and embodies New York values .... 
The rest of the country knows exactly what New 
York values are, and, I gotta say, they’re not Iowa 
values and they’re not New Hampshire values.”

I get that Cruz is trying to supplant Trump at the top 
of the heap, but come on, what he said in Thursday 
night’s debate just reeks. 

“I think most people know exactly what New York 
values are,” Cruz said. “Everyone understands that 
the values in New York City are socially liberal 
or pro-abortion or pro-gay-marriage, and focus 
around money and the media.”

First of all, San Francisco is surely happy to be 
off the hook. A generation ago, the typical GOP 
tactic was to tar-brush the opposition as “San 
Francisco Democrats,” to thus insinuate that all 
Dems were amoral hedonists with no ties to the 
stars n’ stripes. Now we have Cruz taking the game 
eastward. Perhaps he’s irked that Saturday Night 
Live described him as having “a punchable face,” 
but, clearly, he just thinks that his blanket smear 
will resonate, at Trump’s expense, with parochial 
denizens of the Republican base.

However, there’s a big reason why Cruz is hated by 
so many in his own party. It’s his brazen hypocrisy.

On the one hand, he condemns what he calls New 
York’s “focus around money.” On the other hand, 
he happily pockets New York money. One of his 
biggest benefactors is New York hedge fund mogul 
Robert Mercer, who has reportedly pumped $11 
million into Cruzworld. Another is the New York-
based Sullivan & Cromwell law firm. Another is 
New York-based Goldman Sachs, which loaned a 
million bucks to his successful ‘12 Senate bid (this is 
the money that Cruz failed to disclose because of a 
so-called paperwork error).

And the next time he cruises New York to shill for 
money, perhaps he should roll down the window 
of his limo and soak in the obvious info that refutes 
his stereotypical insult. Yeah, there are people in 
New York who support the constitutional right to 
an abortion (as elsewhere in the country), as well 
as those who support gay marriage (a stance that’s 
now American mainstream). But New York is also 
the cops who live on Staten Island, the working 
stiffs in Queens, the firefighters who couldn’t care 
less about politics but who would risk their lives 
to save his.

Cruz’s yammering pejoratives about “New York 
values” prompted Trump to say this:

“When the World Trade Center came down, I 
saw something that no place on Earth could have 
handled more beautifully, more humanely than 
New York .... You had two 110-story buildings 
come crashing down. I saw them come down. 
Thousands of people killed, and the cleanup 
started the next day, and it was the most horrific 
cleanup, probably in the history of doing this, and 
in construction. I was down there, and I’ve never 
seen anything like it.

“And the people in New York fought and fought 
and fought, and we saw more death, and even the 
smell of death — nobody understood it. And it 
was with us for months, the smell, the air. And 
we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody 
in the world watched, and everybody in the 
world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. 
And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting 
statement that Ted made.”

By that point, even Cruz was compelled to clap. 
This guy is supposedly so bright, yet he couldn’t 
see that he was walking into the 9/11 buzz saw? 
It takes a lot to put Trump on the high road, to 
make him sound like Cicero, but somehow Cruz 
pulled it off. And by the end of the 150-minute 
marathon, Trump stood taller as a candidate. 
Thanks a lot, Ted.

But hey, no worries. Because when Ted Cruz is 
president, he’ll use any international incident 
— like the American sailors’ encounter with 
Iran, a crisis that was snuffed within 10 hours 
— to unleash the dogs of war: “Any nation that 
captures our fighting men will feel the full force 
and fury of the United States of America!” Yeah, 
baby. Carpet-bomb that water, make it glow.

Welcome to “Ted Cruz values.” I’ll take his New 
York stereotype any day.

Dick Polman is the national political columnist at 
NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia

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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN 


HOWARD Hays As I See It


“I think the coffee in the 
morning tastes different.”

 - General Motors retiree Dale 
Radford of Flint, Michigan – 
January 2015

One of my more dumb 
moments came fifteen years 
ago when I asked myself, 
“What’s the worst that could happen?” I’d voted 
with the majority of Americans for Al Gore, was 
dismayed as the Supreme Court reversed our 
decision and handed the office to George W. Bush, 
but consoled myself with, “What’s the worst that 
could happen?” (‘Nuf said.) Some might have 
asked themselves that question ten years later, 
when tea-baggers swept into office at the mid-first-
term of the Obama presidency.

 Among those elected was Republican Gov. 
Rick Snyder of Michigan. He spent $11.6 million 
appealing to voters wanting to rid government 
of those “career politicians”; who’d prefer to see 
government fall to a hostile takeover by a multi-
millionaire CEO of a venture capital firm.

 Snyder started off by cutting taxes on 
corporations and raising them on pensioners. 
He was into union-busting “right-to-work” laws 
(which President Obama termed “right-to-work-
for-less-pay”), and extending visas for thousands 
of skilled foreigners happy to undercut the wages 
of Michigan workers.

 He was especially into Emergency Managers. 
It was originally a way for outsiders to come 
and straighten things out in financially strapped 
municipalities and school boards. But under 
this new administration, power was given the 
governor’s office to toss local elected leaders and 
send in his own people to take over. 

 Under “financial martial law”, those outsiders 
could fire elected members of local boards and 
councils, void union contracts, sell public assets 
and impose taxes on residents. All the while, 
state funding for municipal services was slashed – 
ensuring there’d be more hard-hit places where the 
governor could come in and take over. Eventually, 
the majority of blacks in Michigan was under this 
“financial martial law”, rather than governed by 
elected leaders.

 A couple years ago there was Gov. Snyder’s 
appointment of Kevin Orr as Emergency Manager 
for Detroit. Pensions were slashed, as well as 
funding for schools, hospitals and public safety, 
and there were threats to sell off priceless artworks 
from Detroit museums. Meanwhile, Snyder and 
Orr were having Detroit taxpayers chip in $400 
million to help the billionaire owner of Little 
Caesar’s build a new $650 million arena for his 
NHL Red Wings.

 Then there was Flint, and an example of what’s 
the worst that could happen. Gov. Snyder’s 
Emergency Managers in Detroit and Flint dealt 
with clean water not as a government responsibility, 
but as a business deal. Flint’s EM thought Detroit’s 
water was too expensive, so decided to move ahead 
with plans to get its own water from Lake Huron. 
But that project wouldn’t be ready for a couple of 
years, so rather than continuing to pay Detroit’s 
price in the meantime, the EM decided to switch 
over to water from the Flint River in order to save 
$5 million. The switch was made in April 2014. 

 Within days, residents were complaining about 
the color, smell and taste of the water. “Boil First” 
warnings went out with evidence of E-coli and 
other bacteria, which led to pumping in more 
disinfectants. The following October, General 
Motors announced it could no longer use the water 
because it was corroding engine parts.

 Maybe too corrosive for GM, but Flint residents 
were assured they had nothing to worry about - as 
long as there were no infants, elderly or anyone 
with bad immune systems in the household. There 
might be liver, kidney, nervous system and cancer 
risks, but that would be over a period of years – so 
nothing to worry about now.

 But that wasn’t the worst that could happen. 
Last January, Dr. Joan Rose of MSU told a citizen’s 
meeting the cause of the murky water was stuff 
flaking off from inside the city’s old pipes. There 
was talk of hooking back up with Detroit’s water, 
but Gov. Snyder’s Emergency Manager decided 
the $12 million cost to do so was too high.

 Last August, researchers confirmed that flaking 
was a sign of dangerous amounts of lead in the 
water. Flint pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha 
explained this lead is “a neurotoxin, it affects your 
brain, it affects your development, it drops your IQ. 
It also causes problems with behavior - increases 
the incidence or likelihood of violent offenses, 
aggressive behavior.” And, it’s irreversible. At 
the time this finding was made, kids in Flint had 
already been drinking and bathing in this water for 
over a year.

 A study in September found lead levels in kids 
2-3 times higher than they were before the water 
source was switched. A Virginia Tech researcher 
found the water 19 times more corrosive than 
before. It later came out that state officials had 
been made aware of concerns at least since July, 
but Gov. Snyder’s office continued insisting 
changes were “seasonal” and Emergency Managers 
determined it would be too expensive to switch 
back to Detroit water, anyway. And who wants to 
pay higher water rates?

 State officials charged with protecting the 
public instead were determined to protect their 
administration by stonewalling researchers’ 
requests for the state’s own data and spinning 
whatever results were out there, assuring 
communities it was safe to drink the water that 
was poisoning their kids – poisoning one in ten of 
them, in some areas.

 Finally, last October Gov. Snyder signed the 
measure switching Flint’s water source back to 
Detroit – though the contamination in the pipes 
would remain for another six months. He deemed 
the water unsafe for Flint’s children fully a year 
after GM deemed it unsafe for their engine parts. 

 Earlier this month, President Obama signed an 
emergency declaration to help Flint. It wasn’t the 
disaster declaration Gov. Snyder wanted, because 
those are reserved for natural catastrophes. This 
one was man-made.

 In deciding who to vote for, or whether just to 
stay home on Election Day, we might ask, “What’s 
the worst that could happen?” If the irreversible 
neurological poisoning of thousands of our kids 
isn’t the answer, then what is?


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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