A little note to praise the Tribune for a job well done. On May 27, my wife and I stopped by the Tribune to place a help wanted ad. It was to run (another call just came in) from the 28th of May to June 3rd.

The 28th came and there it was and the calls started pouring in. We must have received well over 40 calls the first two days, and they are still coming. They are coming from all age groups, starting from 15 years old and up.

Some left messages on the answering machine and wanted us to return the calls. Others we spoke to, and a few we interviewed to find the right person, and we did. This was a lot easier than we thought, and we thank the Tribune for the coverage.

We also want to thank those who responded to the ad, and also to apologize for not being able to respond to the callbacks. These two oldies (83 and 85) were just not able to.

Now a big demerit:

Because of the large numbers of calls received, and the fact we were able to decide by the 29th of May, we called the Tribune and canceled the ad. The young lady I talked to, assured me that the ad would cancel that day.

I don’t know what happened, but the ad is still out there, and a lot of Madera is seeing it, and calling with high hopes of finding even a part-time job.

You can imagine how disappointed a lot of people are when I tell them that the ad is over a week old and the position was filled. I lost count on the total calls received — over 70. Very good results, but a lot of disappointments because the ad was allowed to run on.

Ray and Barb Hogan,
Madera

All comments are edited for length and content. Due to content or space limitations some comments may not be published. More than one comment from the same person during the same week will normally not be published. Please limit calls to two minutes or less.

Several people called in regarding the air show and its coverage in the newspaper.

The gentleman also commented about garbage cans. “The reason garbage gets dumped out on the ground is because people overfill their garbage cans abundantly.”

A woman called about Workforce Development. “They really don’t do nothing for us,” she said. “They always give us the runaround. We have to do it all on a computer and the workers are always just chattering and talking. Not really what they are supposed to be doing. They don’t really help us. Even when you get training, they don’t even send you places to get a job.”

“A man, who said he represented Madera County homeless, read a lengthy, prepared statement to the Red Line. “If you have ever looked at the barnacles on the rocks at the edge of the sea you will notice that they appear as thousands of hungry mouths that continue to eat,” he said. “No matter what you place in front of them their mouths continue to reach out for food.”

“We could sure use (motorcycle officers) on north Pine Street,” said a woman. “They zoom around from Sunset (Avenue) and down Pine Street just as fast as they can go. Send some motorcycle police over here to put a stop to it.”

Two different readers commented online about the rise of middle school “promotions” — instead of graduations.

An Internet guest, self-identified as “Kat,” writes, “What happened to the traditional graduation at middle schools? It is very upsetting to find out my daughter gets to wear a T-shirt to her ‘promotion.’ How stupid is that? These kids have worked hard to get here and deserve the cap and gown.”

Two online visitors contradicted each other about what was torture.

“Tom Dopeth” writes, “To the people that think waterboarding is not torture: Since you think waterboarding is not torture as you define it, how about we have it done to you and you all can see how it feels. Then you can decide whether it is torture or not.”

An Internet reader, “Lynn Staab,” replied to a letter to the editor. She writes, “In his letter about grants, Bill Hoffrage asked about training sheep. No Bill, it is not saying that it is easier to train sheep than to get people into the fields. It is saying it is easier to train sheep than it is to get people on welfare and unemployment into the field!”

Another web guest, self-identified as “Thomas J. Fegette,” writes, “I was just reading this article about me and it is terribly misleading. (The article was published in) July 2004. Yes, I did shoot a boxer, one. The dog was on my property, aggressive, not allowing me in or out of my house. On several occasions it would try to bite me while I was mowing the lawn; it would chase my cat, dig holes in my lawn, and destroy my property. If people down the street value their dog, they should keep it at home … it seems that there are no laws protecting people, just livestock.”

A visitor to our site, “Ray McEdward,” writes, “On May 30th, the Tribune reported that the City of Madera ‘has adopted Stage 2 of the City Water-Shortage Contingency plan.’ Does this mean that the City is going to shut down the multiple, weekly car washes held throughout the city every weekend by various groups raising money for everything from funerals to cheerleader camps etc.?”

Thank you for your comments. Remember, the Red Line is open for your messages 24 hours a day by calling 674-4478, or by visiting www.maderatribuneredline .com.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

Now that the tobacco industry has fallen under the supervision of the Food and Drug Administration, thanks to a bill passed Thursday by the U.S. Senate, the biggest question to be resolved eventually will be: What will we tax now?

For decades, tobacco has been the truck that carried many of the “sin” taxes of federal, state and even local governments.

It has been a good and reliable truck, because 45 million Americans still smoke cigarettes, willing to fork over more than $2 a pack in taxes, on average in the U.S., for the privilege of indulging in their favorite (or hardest to break) habit. (In Kazkhstan, on the other hand, you can buy a pack of cigarettes for a mere 32 cents, according to the World Health Organization.)

Since most Americans don’t smoke, there was no hue and cry from anybody except smokers and the tobacco industry when these taxes were levied. There was no hue and cry (except, again, from smokers) when billions were assessed against future tobacco company earnings due to lawsuits that went against the tobacco firms.

With the new law, which will result in cutbacks on nicotine, more people probably will stop or reduce smoking.

When that happens, governments will start having cutback problems of their own — money cutbacks — and will look around for new ways to impose taxes on sin.

Many wonder whether marijuana will step in to fill the bill. Of course, you would have to legalize it first, but that could happen as governments find themselves increasingly tapped out.

Cigarettes in New York City now are $9.25 a pack, a price due mostly to local and state taxes. It’s inconceivable, but people still smoke in that town.

The golden goose is going to be defeathered.

With the economy the way it is, it now affects the middle class and the upper middle class, who once had the means to live comfortably, some would say “high on the hog.”

You get the idea, and people that were well to do a while back — now a few are having to do without and go without. Now these people have to make sure their kids wear out their clothes, shoes too, plus fewer toys. They’re not eating out a lot and are starting to shop at Wal-Mart and Food-4-Less. One sees them, and they seem to be in shock, and disbelief.

Folks, take some advice: Don’t panic. Just learn to live like poor people live. It’s not that bad, folks; things will fall into place.

Remember — poor not poverty. I have always said that in this country one can live where the rich live and eat like them, and drive what they do. You can do it.

Joe L. Ureña,
Madera

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

We were fortunate in Madera that none of our car dealerships wound up on the chopping block when Chrysler and General Motors decided to “save money” by closing some of their dealerships — in Chrysler’s case almost 25 percent of them.

That’s because, when you buy a car from a dealer, you don’t just buy the car — you buy the dealer who sold it to you.

That dealer agrees, explicitly and implicitly, to keep your rig on the road.

Dealerships aren’t just parking lots and showrooms full of cars. They also are big, expensively-equipped service agencies, the employees of which are supposed to have the skill to handle virtually any problem with your car once it has been on the highway a while.

It’s hard for me to see how Chrysler or General Motors will benefit by disenfranchising all those dealerships.

Most of those closed down were smaller operations that may not have moved that many cars. But it doesn’t seem like being small necessarily puts the automaker at risk. The capitalist at most dealerships is the person at risk — not the automaker, but the dealership’s owner, whether an individual or a partnership.

Dealerships may or may not bear the names of their owners, but the owners, especially in the smaller operations, are usually the ones who write the checks to the car manufacturers and banks, participate in their communities, make the payrolls, pay the taxes, and if they are lucky sock away a little profit at the end of the year.

The automakers may have certain covenants the dealers are required to fulfill, such as maintaining top-notch service departments, maintaining cleanliness on the premises and participating in promotional events. If dealers fail to fulfill those covenants, the automaker doesn’t have to go bankrupt to enforce them.

But it seems as though closing dealerships is just another way to sell fewer cars, not a way to save money or emerge from a bad economic patch.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

Now that it turns out the Obama administration has been sitting on most of the stimulus money — they’ve handed out about $44 billion of the roughly $750 billion requested — it makes me wonder what he is saving it for.

Maybe he has put the $700 billion or so he has left in a sock and buried it out behind the White House, near Mrs. Obama’s organic garden.

That is what a lot of people are doing these days, because they still aren’t too sure what is going to happen.

That can cause a lot of problems, though. If I bury something in the back yard, pretty soon I forget where I put it. That is even true with rose bushes. If I plant a rose bush, I’m likely to forget it’s there, and after it grows awhile, I am likely to say, “Hey, where did that rose bush come from?”

I imagine $700 billion can be like that, even when you’re trying to save the economy with it. It’s easy to forget about it if you’re busy with other things.

Did you ever have a bank send you a new credit card, one you’ve never had before? You call the number on the card from your home phone and activate the card, and then forget you have it. All it does is make your wallet bulge more. You keep using your old credit card because that’s the one you’re used to, and pretty soon the bank that sent you the new one writes you a letter and wants to know what the heck’s going on. Come on, spend, the bank says.

Well, you ignore that letter, and before too many months go by, the bank sends you another letter, and tells you to throw the card away, it has been cancelled, and that the cancellation will be reported to the credit bureaus. I guess that’s why nobody ever accuses banks of having a sense of humor.

Anyway, Mr. President — get spending or we’ll cancel your card.

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

At the unveiling of his statue in the Rotunda of the nation’s Capitol last, Ronald Reagan was hailed as a “principled pragmatist” who would take a position he believed was right, push hard for it, compromise if needed, “declare victory” and move on.

That is how he is viewed in retrospect, and it is probably how any successful president is viewed, but it was not how Reagan was regarded by many Democrats and even by many independents when he was first elected president. First impressions aren’t always accurate.

On the contrary, he was regarded as a right-wing war-monger, portrayed in cartoons and by television comedians as “Ronald Raygun” and an irresponsible saber-rattler.

He was regarded by his critics as an economic imbecile. His administration began by presiding over a recession that in many ways was worse than the present one, and from which many didn’t recover until after his presidency.

Yet, his critics generally wound up eating their words.

The “war-monger” brought peace by forcing an end to the Cold War from a position of strength the communists couldn’t match.

The “Reagan Recession” was hard on a lot of people, but he also oversaw a period of economic expansion that for many was unprecedented.

Elected as a person who would reduce government, he made it grow, paying for that growth through borrowing instead of through taxes.

Under his administration, Social Security and Medicare funding was improved, primarily through the imposition of higher taxes.

When he was elected, many thought he would be like Coolidge or Hoover, but he turned out to be a populist, more in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt. He believed in America and the American people, and they wound up believing in him.

This past week we have had two situations that required medical assistance for our mother, Lois (Murray) Richardson.

Our sincere appreciation and thanks to the 911 dispatchers, emergency medical technicians, Madera Community Hospital, the emergency room there and the hospital staff, including Dr. Hernandez, for providing excellent care, compassion and kindness to mom and to her family.

Shirley A. Richardson and Marlene J. Richardson,
Madera

By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune

The so-called “cap-and-trade” proposal being floated in Congress for cutting back on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is meant to punish businesses that pollute and reward businesses that don’t pollute. The net effect is supposed to be the slowing of global warming.

Without getting into whether the whole idea is something that actually will work, or whether it is just a scam for raising taxes, we need to point out a couple of major items that were left out.

First, there is no way in the legislation to compensate farmers and timber growers, even though they are responsible for more carbon sequestration than anybody else. Carbon sequestration, in case you don’t know, is what happens when plants use carbon dioxide to grow. Just as animals use oxygen and throw off carbon dioxide, so plants use carbon dioxide and throw off oxygen.

All the privately owned ranches, farms, woodlots and forests are sucking up carbon dioxide right and left and giving off oxygen. But they have been left out of any proposals for compensation. That just doesn’t seem right.

Carbon-sequestration payments could help farmers keep farming and help foresters and woodlot owners keep growing their trees instead of resorting to selling to developers.

Second, the San Joaquin Valley is a pollution “sink.” Some 40 percent of all the air pollution with which we have to deal floats over from the coast, much of it a product of impacted traffic from the big cities. It would seem only fair that gasoline sold on the coast would carry a tax which would be sent to San Joaquin Valley communities which must deal with pollution they didn’t cause. The money could be used to help our local drivers and industries pollute less.

That would be capping and trading that actually could have an effect.

It made me angry when I opened up the other newspaper on May 31 and saw the words on the front page saying, “We have a right to marry.” Excuse me, you have no right to call your relationships marriage.

How dare you try and impose your behavior on the rest of us. Marriage is between a man and a woman, as it was in the beginning, is now and always will be.

My children will never, and I mean never, be taught about gay lifestyles. I will keep my children out of school before they learn any of that.

We are a Roman Catholic family, and maybe our priests screwed up at times, but we believe in our sacred marriage vows. Marriage is to produce a family and live in God’s image.

The whole problem with this world is that they have taken the main man — God — out of the picture. That is the problem with this world today.

When schools stopped teaching religion and teaching about condoms and sex education instead, they produced a new generation of future nobodies. When abortions became legal all responsibilities went out the window. Kids think its okay to have sex and abort a baby — a human life.

This world is so screwed up, all because we leave out a word everyday in our lives — God. You can call it a reunion, a ceremony, or whatever, but you cannot call it “marriage.”

Lucille Guttierrez,
Madera