Mountain Views News          Saturday, June 4, 2016

B3

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, June 4, 2016 

JOHN L. Micek

H. SUSAN Henderson

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

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)

TUESDAY, JUNE 7TH 


WHAT IS PAUL RYAN 
THINKING?

This is the kind of behavior from a likely nominee for the 
presidency that U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has endorsed 
with his announcement Thursday that he’ll be voting for 
Donald Trump:

 A candidate who tosses the cherished concept of judicial 
independence to the wind with his brash suggestion that 
someone “ought to look into” the federal judge who is hearing a 
civil case against him.

 A candidate who believes that a private corporation, the 
PGA, that has chosen to move a tournament from a Trump-owned golf club in Miami 
to Mexico City in 2017, should face sanctions for making what appears to be a purely 
market-driven decision.

 A candidate who believes that journalists are sleazy and “dishonest” for doing the 
standard vetting of a man who could well be the next president of the United States.

 A candidate who subscribes to widely debunked conspiracy theories about, among 
other things, the current president’s citizenship and the tragic death of White House aide 
Vincent Foster that have rightly been consigned to the fringes of civilized conversation.

 And, perhaps, worst of all, a candidate whose radioactive rhetoric about Latinos 
and other minorities has forced an otherwise capable and talented employee of the 
Republican National Committee, who happens to be Hispanic, to resign her position.

 With his announcement, Speaker Ryan has also endorsed a travel ban on Muslims, 
the construction of a fanciful border wall on the southern border with Mexico, and a 
fantasy tax cut plan that would add $10 trillion to the deficit.

 “I’ll be voting for @realDonaldTrump this fall. I’m confident he will help turn the 
House GOP’s agenda into laws,” Ryan tweeted on Thursday, after Hamlet-ing around 
for a month on whether to back the real estate mogul and presumptive GOP presidential 
nominee.

 Ryan told his hometown newspaper Thursday that he and Trump had spoken at 
length about “how, by focusing on issues that unite Republicans, we can work together 
to heal the fissures developed through the primary.”

 “Through these conversations, I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this 
agenda into laws to help improve people’s lives. That’s why I’ll be voting for him this 
fall,” Ryan said.

 But not all Republicans are backing Trump - notably 2012 GOP presidential nominee 
Mitt Romney.

 And the prospect of a unified GOP coalescing around his candidacy, either before 
the party’s national convention in Cleveland in July, or in its wake, seems optimistic, at 
best.

And it would be one thing if Ryan were just some rank-and-file member of Congress.

 But he is not.

 In addition to being the head of House Republicans, Ryan is chairman of the 
Republican National Convention. And he is a man who sits second in line, behind only 
Vice President Joe Biden, to the presidency of the United States of America.

 The Wisconsin Republican speaks with an outsized voice.

 So Ryan’s singular act of appeasement in the face of the Trump juggernaut sends a 
loud and clear message about the kind of rhetoric that Republicans are willing to accept 
in trade for hanging onto the House of Representatives and securing their thin margin 
in the United States Senate.

 Instead of breaking with other establishment Republicans, Ryan, threw in with a man 
who has pushed what used to be racist, dog-whistle language from the darkness where 
it belongs, to the center of our civil debate.

 Ryan has thrown in with a man who, with his support for a travel ban on the 
members of one of world’s largest religions, has cast aside the very religious freedoms 
that Republicans claim to staunchly defend.

 And he has thrown in with a candidate who believes the separation 
of powers enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, are merely a suggestion.

 And all this for the chimera that is party unity?

 Paul Ryan, what were you thinking?

——

An award-winning political journalist, Micek is the Opinion Editor and 
Political Columnist for PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. 
Readers may follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek and email him at 
jmicek@pennlive.com.

 It’s time for California Voters to weigh in on their choice 
for Presidential Nominees along with nominees for a host 
of other offices including at least 7 judicial offices and 
selection of your party’s County Central Committee. I 
spoke of the Central Committee’s last week. These are the 
volunteers who represent you at your party’s conventions 
and help develop your county, state and federal rules 
for things like the process for selecting delegates to the 
National Convention. You probably don’t know any of the 
candidates but you can ask around. Talk to a politically 
active friend. They will know. Now, the Judicial races, in my 
opinion, should not even be on the ballot. In this country, 
judicial officers should be shielded from the cesspool of 
politics. The people who are chosen to administer the laws 
of this State should not be selected by voters who generally do not have any idea 
who they are, not chosen randomly or by persuasive campaigns, but that is a 
topic for another column. 

 Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us who is eligible 
to vote. If you have not already cast your ballot, please go to the polls on Tuesday. 
Act as if your life depends on it because in fact, the quality of your life does.

 Every election the Mountain Views News shares with readers the candidates 
that we support in their bid for public office. The selection is not the choice of just 
one individual, but the consensus of this newspapers ’editorial think tank’. We 
don’t always agree, but what you see below is what our ’majority’ thinks:

 PRESIDENT: Hillary Clinton

 U.S. SENATE: Kamala Harris

 U.S. REP. 27th DIST. Judy Chu

 CA. SENATOR (25th) Chris Chahanian

 CA ASSEMBLY (41st) Chris Holden

 LA CNTY SUP (5th Dist) Kathryn Barger

 LA CNTY DIST. ATTY Jackie Lacey (Unopposed)

County Central Committee - Democratic - Karen Suarez and/or Karen Wingard

 Susan Henderson,

 Publisher/Editor

PROPOSITION 50: SUSPENSION OF LEGISLATORS 

The Question: Should the state Constitution be amended to authorize the 
Legislature to suspend its members, with or without salary and benefits?

The state Legislature consists of two houses: the Senate and the Assembly. The 
state Constitution provides that each house of the Legislature may expel one of its 
members who is accused of wrongdoing by a 2/3 vote of that house’s membership. 
The Constitution does not provide for suspension; however, each house of the 
Legislature may, by majority vote, suspend one of its members. In 2014, three 
Senators were accused of felonies, and the Senate voted to suspend them. Under 
this suspension, they were not allowed to vote on bills or take other legislative 
actions, but continued to receive their salaries and benefits while suspended, 
because there was no mechanism to prevent this.

The Proposal: 

The Constitution would be amended to authorize the suspension of a member of 
a house of the Legislature, with or without salary and benefits, by a 2/3 vote of 
the members of that house. The reasons for the suspension and rules for when the 
suspension would end would have to be set forth. The rules would require that 
either the suspension end on a specific date, or that a vote be taken in the future 
to end it.

A YES vote on this measure means: The State Constitution would be amended to 
require a two-thirds vote of the Senate or Assembly in order to suspend a 
state legislator. The Senate or Assembly could eliminate that legislator’s 
salary and benefits during the suspension.

A NO vote on this measure means: the Senate or Assembly could still 
suspend a legislator with a majority vote. The suspended legislator, 
however, would continure to receive a state salary and benefits.

https://cavotes.org/vote/elections/ballot-measures/proposition-50-suspension-
legislators#sthash.ojf8qbLs.dpuf The Situation: 

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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN 

 MAKING SENSE by Michael Reagan

DICK Polman


TRUMP HITS NEW LOW 

WITH ATTACK ON 
‘MEXICAN’ JUDGE

Predictably, America’s Troll is still attacking the federal 
judge who’s handling the lawsuit against Trump University. 

 On Memorial Day, Donald Trump twice tweeted that 
the judge he derided last week as “Mexican” (Gonzalo 
Curiel was born, raised, and educated in Indiana) is “totally 
biased” against the inherent greatness of Der Leader.

 All because Judge Curiel has declined to dismiss the lawsuit and thinks the 
students who paid up to $35,000 for tuition, and got nothing in return, should at 
least have their day in court. As an officer of an independent branch of government, 
Curiel simply wants the judicial process to play out. In Trump’s words, all this is 
“negative, negative, negative.”

 There’s something way worse going on here than just tagging Curiel as “Mexican” 
(the latest of Trump’s serial lies). If you read the full text of Trump’s remarks on the 
stump (courtesy of Josh Blackman, an assistant law professor), you’ll get the full 
flavor of his authoritarian spirit and his utter contempt for constitutional democracy 
and the separation of powers. Especially this: 

 “I am getting railroaded by a legal system, and frankly they should be ashamed.....
It is a disgrace. It is a rigged system....This court system, the judges in this court 
system, federal court.”

 Attacking the credibility and legitimacy of the judiciary is a tyrant’s timeworn 
tactic. It is designed to erode checks and balances, and is an open invitation to mob 
intimidation. As legal ethics expert Charles Geyh tells Reuters, “He has impugned 
the honesty of the judge in a pending case, and has done so in the context of a 
political rally that seems calculation to intimidate by inciting anger among his 
supporters.”

 What aspiring tyrant Trump instinctively believes (if he believes anything) is that 
he is the law. And that if a public servant in an independent branch of government 
dares suggest otherwise, then clearly the system is “rigged,” and any public servant 
who refuses to bow down should be investigated.

 Or, as Trump put it on the stump, the system “ought to look into Judge Curiel.”

 So are Trump’s followers so deaf and blind that they truly don’t realize what is 
happening here? Has their faith in our democratic institutions eroded to the point 
that they’re happy to feed a junkyard dog who would treat our institutions as his 
personal chew toy? Are they so ignorant of world history that they can’t see the 
danger of a leader cult? And can the complicit Republican party sink any lower?

 David Frum, the conservative analyst and former George W. Bush speechwriter 
(who coined the term “axis of evil”), has nothing but contempt for the voters and 
leaders in his party who are indulging Trump’s trampling of democracy.

“They knew that Trump was ignorant, and coarse, and boastful, and cruel. They 
knew he habitually sympathized with dictators and kleptocrats - and that his instinct 
when confronted with criticism of himself was to attack, vilify, and suppress,” Frum 
wrote recently in The Atlantic. “They knew his disrespect for women, the disabled, 
and ethnic and religious minorities. They knew that he wished to unravel NATO 
and other U.S.-led alliances, and that he speculated aloud about partial default on 
American financial obligations. None of that dissuaded or deterred them…”

 According to Frum, regardless of the outcome of the election, “conservatives and 
Republicans will have brought a catastrophe upon themselves, in violation of their 
own stated principles and best judgment.” 

 I can’t say I disagree. 

 The real question for November, prompted anew by Trump’s attack on the courts, 
is whether there will be enough voters - patriots with common sense - to save this 
constitutional democracy from what the Republicans have so disgracefully wrought.

——-

 Dick Polman is the national political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in 
Philadelphia (newsworks.org/polman) and a “Writer in Residence” at the University 
of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com

TRUMP HITS ON THE MEDIA

Donald Trump is still no conservative and never will be.

 He still hasn’t figured out that the mix of insults, bluster and 
off-the-cuff political statements that won him the Republican 
Party primary won’t work in the general election.

 But a lot of us conservatives enjoyed watching him attack the 
news media for the way they’ve questioned his handling of the 
$6 million donation he raised for veterans organizations.

 For decades we’ve watched the unfair and unbalanced mainstream news media 
spew its liberal bias and wanted to throw a brick through the TV screen.

Trump symbolically did just that when he called that press conference on Tuesday. 

 He went overboard in his attack, of course, because he’s Donald Trump. But his 
media rage was justified. The news media questioned him like a war criminal about 
the details of the $6 million he raised for the vets, acting as if he had never really 
raised the money or never intended to disburse it.

 Trump is hopelessly naive if he really thought he was going to be given a standing 
ovation by the news media for raising money for the vets or anyone else.

 But the liberal media wolf pack nitpicked at every part of Trump’s charitable effort.

Some of the checks had not been sent out yet! It was only $5.6 million that was 
raised, not $6 million! And look! Trump hadn’t yet paid the million bucks he 
promised to chip in!

 Everyone knows it was a PR stunt for Trump to skip Republican Debate No. 37 
and go on TV and pander to military veterans. And it’s true that it was way back in 
January when he was bragging he raised the $6 million. But come on. Did anyone 
– other than the biased reporters in the news media -- really think the checks were 
going to be mailed out the next day or next week? To any vets group that sent in an 
email asking for money? The organizations clamoring for a share of the money 
had to be carefully vetted by someone on Trump’s staff.

 Imagine what the news media would have done to Trump if some wacko 
paramilitary group ended up spending $100,000 on hate billboards or worse.

 And really, did anyone – other than the media dumbos -- think Trump was 
planning to never pay his million or pocket all the money himself? Trump’s 
message was valid. He just didn’t deliver it well. He shouldn’t have singled out 
individual reporters, and he should have taken a more lighthearted, sarcastic, 
mocking approach, not an angry one. He should have said he was sorry the liberal 
news media thought the process was taking too long, but that raising and responsibly 
handing out $6 million takes time. He should have explained that he had his small 
staff working on it, but that they were also busy trying to help him become president 
of the U.S.

 At his press conference Trump also should have asked something like, “I was 
wondering. When will the Washington Post’s crack investigative team and the rest 
of you so-called journalists show the same level of interest in exposing the shady 
fund-raising techniques of the Clinton Foundation?”

 It’d be a major accomplishment if the Washington press corps merely asked 
Hillary a few tough questions about the lucrative international influence-peddling 
racket she and Bill are running. 

 But of course Hillary doesn’t do press conferences. She hides from the press -- and 
the press is so biased it barely complains.

 I’m not a big fan of Trump, but he was right to attack the Washington media. 
The trouble is, the way he did it was not even close to being presidential. And in 
November that could prove to be his Achilles Heel.

——-

 Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and 
the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). He is the founder of 
the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit 
his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to 
Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter. 

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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