A “Job” for Everyone

While catching up on some MJ reading, I thought it important to comment on J.B.’s “Editor’s note” at the end of Mr. [Dale] Lowdermilk‘s letter (“Drinking the California Kool-Aid,” MJ #24/23), in which J.B. wrote: “Mr. Sanders’s brilliant economic plan to give every U.S. resident $15,000 a year for doing… nothing.”

Excuse me, but where on Earth is this asserted?!

I just spent some Google search time and in no way found anything remotely asserting this. I find it irresponsible as a paper’s editor to state any such in particular when supposed “fact” cannot be easily supported.

What has been said from Mr. Sanders’s side is the simple observation that a person working 40 hours a week at the current (pre $15/hour rate, I’m supposing) would earn $15,000. Him making note that this is poverty level.

www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/starvation-wages among other links, articles, interviews wherein this is relayed. Not that the economic plan is that every citizen should be given that sum, for doing nothing.

Unless you can clearly cite that assertion from some reputable source.

Wow.

And I’m not necessarily a Sanders follower, just someone who wants the truth, and who wants the name-calling and the partisan BS to stop.

Suzanne Duffy
San Luis Obispo/Santa Barbara

(Editor’s note: Thank you for your letter. Senator Sanders has absolutely drunk the Soviet Union Kool-Aid, and while he hasn’t specifically suggested “giving” everyone $15,000 a year, he is about to propose a plan that would more than double that (this from The Washington Post): “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will announce a plan for the federal government to guarantee a job paying $15 an hour and health-care benefits to every American worker “who wants or needs one,” embracing the kind of large-scale government works project that Democrats have shied away from in recent decades.

“Sanders’s jobs guarantee would fund hundreds of projects throughout the United States aimed at addressing priorities such as infrastructure, care giving, the environment, education, and other goals. Under the job guarantee, every American would be entitled to a job under one of these projects or receive job training to be able to do so, according to an early draft of the proposal.

“A representative from Sanders’s office said they had not yet done a cost estimate for the plan or decided how it would be funded, saying they were still crafting the proposal.

“Sanders joins two other rumored 2020 Democratic presidential contenders who have expressed support for the idea of a jobs guarantee. The push reflects a leftward move in the party’s economic policy, away from president Barack Obama’s use of public-private partnerships or government incentives to reshape private markets and toward an unambiguous embrace of direct government intervention.”

Now, excuse me if I extrapolate, but a “guaranteed” $15-per-hour job would cost the government (that means you, sad taxpayer) $600 per week, or $31,200 per year, and that doesn’t include the cost of healthcare, which also comes with that “guarantee.” Since it is already virtually impossible to fire a government employee (they are more likely to die on the job than lose their job), each one of these designated $15-per-hour “employees” will not really have to perform or do anything to receive this taxpayer-funded bonanza. And, even if – after years of effort – you actually get to fire that person, since he is “guaranteed” and “entitled” to a job with the government, what then?

I don’t know if you can call this “partisan BS,” but it’s certainly a plan many of us could not and would not ever get behind. – J.B.)

Just A Quiet Dinner

All of life is now politicized. You can’t go out and spend $75 for dinner at a fine restaurant without first declaring your politics. If you don’t pass the owner’s litmus test, you’ll be refused service.

These left-wingers are breaking down the rules of etiquette and civility, as well as trampling on the humble, time-honored dictum that the customer is always right…

…For what? To embarrass and humiliate people who otherwise think well enough of your business to patronize it and embellish your bottom line. How crazy and insane is that?

Actions of this nature are tearing and ripping holes in the fabric of society. A simple commercial act of dining in public is now an adventure in partisan politics.

Of course, this only works if you’re white, Christian, Republican, and straight. It’s perfectly all right to discriminate against these “oppressors” of “minorities.”

A Gay Christian Republican (and there are many of them) could scream “Gay discrimination!” and probably have his/her complaint (at least) heard.

Here’s how you can fight back.

If you see that prominent right-wingers are refused service in the upscale restaurant in which you’ve been seated and are dining (a la presidential press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders), inform the owner/general manager through your server that your party is immediately vacating the premises and you are refusing to pay the bill.

All’s fair in love and war, and this is war. 

Naturally, left-wing restaurateurs hope that as the word circulates they are making a stand for revolutionary politics with their business, like-minded leftists will flock to their eatery.

The problem is that sword dons two edges.

It gives motivation and great incentive for conservatives and right-wingers to avoid your restaurant like the plague.

I don’t choose the battles, folks, or the battlefields. 

Confederate general George Pickett didn’t wake up the morning of July 3, 1863, and plan on engaging the Union forces somewhere other than Gettysburg. “I don’t like Gettysburg. It’s not favorable to us. Let’s take on General Meade in Maryland, not Pennsylvania.”

I get up before dawn, and respond and react to the overnight foolishness and irrationality of my adversaries.

Not to respond and react? Well, that leads to the political obscurity inhabited by the Bush clan. By the way, George, George, and Jeb – how’s that policy of “remaining presidential” working out for ya?

None of these public gambits chosen by the left are going to work, if the right mobilizes to resist them, for the simple reason there are more right-wingers than left-wingers across the fruited plain.

I will take note where my local (far-left) Democrat congressman dines when he’s in town, and will not only refuse to patronize said establishment, but also tell anyone and everyone who may listen that he/she also shouldn’t go there.

Hey, I’m not the one who made up these new rules of engagement.

Maybe restaurateurs interested in profits as well as good old-fashioned American civility should place signs in their front windows saying they gladly welcome people of all political persuasions as paying customers.

Sadly, it’s come down to this.

David S. McCalmont
Santa Barbara

 (Editor’s note: Yes, it indeed has “come down to this,” but “this” isn’t new. Tactics such as these have been used for decades, though it is still sad. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, however, for restaurateurs to post in their windows who is welcome and who isn’t. Or, if that breaks certain “inclusivity” rules, how about simply stating one’s political persuasion in a great big sign above the door? A “Make America Great Again” or “We’re With Her” sign could immediately separate a business’s customers and save a lot of angst and aggravation for everyone. – J.B.)

Loves Lowenthal

To those who were there at this concert, “Congratulations”. To those who were not, you missed a genius at work. I have some piano training but am not a qualified critic. However, I know what i like and so did the sold-out audience who gave Mr. Jerome Lowenthal several standing ovations. I happened to see him walking with one other man after the concert and was able to personally express my admiration. I will always remember that moment.

Marv Bauer
Summerland

(Editor’s note: Just another excellent concert brought to you by Montecito’s famed Music Academy of the West! – J.B.)

Going with What Works

In response to four planes being hijacked on 9/11, we armed pilots and air marshals. Democrats opposed this. There has not been a single hijacking since, and not one passenger has been shot.

After mass school shootings, Democrats refuse to arm teachers and security guards, citing the same fears they did when pilots were armed. The same fears that never materialized after more than a decade of armed pilots.

So, who really wants to protect our kids? #WeKnowWhatWorks

Dale Lowdermilk
Santa Barbara

Know Your Kids

NRA – this three-letter combination has been the cause of a never-ending controversy. The sound of these three letters inspires some and drives others insane. The NRA is again at the center of attention and there is obviously a reason for it. Well, actually and sadly a few reasons: America’s recent mass shootings. Liberals across the board are screaming that guns must be banned. To me, that makes as much sense as banning cars because drunk drivers kill people. I believe that for all the reasonable people, it might make sense to dig a bit deeper.

Americans own a lot of guns, but we are not alone here. A few other civilized countries, such as Switzerland, have extremely pro-gun legislation and roughly half of that nation owns guns. But have you ever heard about mass shooting or any mass gun murders in that tranquil European country? Target shooting, rather than human killing, is a national sport there, as well as in other pro-gun countries.

So, what is the problem with the USA? Why do so many kids suddenly set out to kill other kids, and adults spray bullets at crowds of people? I clearly see two main problems: lack of basic morals and meager home education. Let’s look at the roots of the trouble that start in the family. These days, being a parent has very little to do with one-on-one parenting. All the “gadgets of pleasure” (iPads, iPhones, computers, video games) that modern society has allow parents to just leave the kids to deal one-on-one with the fancy device in their hands.

Leaving kids alone is now a “new normal”. And that would be somehow okay if it would affect only a short time here and there, but just look around! You see kids staring at the screens all the time everywhere and you can only imagine what they do at home. Guess what, sometimes kids get frustrated, confused, lost, bullied, or simply lonely. And there is no better solution to this than a heart-to-heart conversation with their parents.

I would draw your attention to the plural form of the word “parent” because this, to my mind, is very important. About 99 percent of all mass shooters were from a family with a single parent. Sadly, most of the parents these days cannot or simply don’t want to handle this “problem” and hardly ever sit and talk to their kids and guide them through what’s important and literally vital for them.

There is nothing more important than the strong bond between a child and his family, and there is nothing more important than the home itself coupled with that bonding. Home – the place we all are looking for, the place that is comforting us and giving us the feeling of safety and foundation. Does this “shelter of peace” exist in modern America? Let’s go back to my previous thought: a kid is upset, introverted, does not want to talk? Easy solution! Call the doctor, to whom the kid is just a number and a chart. For the kid this is the moment where the connection with mom and dad is severed.

Doctors follow their protocols, which in in the U.S. in most cases leads to the drugstore. Have you known that they prescribe mind-altering drugs to kids about three years of age? If your child is simply rowdy and rambunctious, they can diagnose him with ADD and set him up on drugs while he can barely speak. Now, lonely and drugged, the kid has more emotional problems that he ever had before and now is a “ticking bomb” that needs just a tiny spark to blow up.

It is not hard to find that spark. American society is overloaded with sparks. I am a mother of five, and it’s scary to observe the degradation that modern kids without healthy parents’ supervision are going through beginning at about the age of five. All cartoons made for kids after the age of five do not correlate with normal kids’ health and attitude. All characters move hysterically fast, they talk fast (when do they have time to think? And why do they act like this in the first place?), they yell, scream, and act like psychos under the influence chopping off heads and murdering each other by the pound every few seconds.

Any normal person with a balanced nervous system will find such cartoon characters extremely unhealthy. So, what do the kids do with those cartoons? They copy them, they project them on their own lives. Fast, “crazy,” no-time-to-think-lonely-drugged kid is getting a PlayStation for his big birthday! Guess what will happen next? Violence from those “cool” games continues to contribute to the still fragile brain of the little one, exasperates, and blows up in real-life violence.

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of this story. There is TV, where guns are for “cool gangsters” not for “cool cops.” Imagine if TV banned guns as means of aggression and showed them only as means of protection for five to seven years! I am sure that would help the kids understand the real purpose of a weapon. There are also music videos where “cool” rappers show their power with violence and shortcuts to wealth and pleasure through primitive narratives. It is almost impossible to describe the mix of feelings that a young mind would go through at such an age alone and under pressure of all the poisonous crap spilling out of TV, movies, and video games.

Add to that poor parenting, indifferent, underfunded, and politicized schools where they teach about transgender problems but often omit basic morals and manners, and you get the perfect petri dish for violent insanity. Frustrated and shocked, overwhelmed with hidden emotions and extra doses of mind-altering drugs and sugar from his fifth can of Coke, he goes to school where reality hits this child in the face: his imaginary world and twisted self-awareness are not compatible with the daily routine. This kid needs to put up with the others, deal with the school and new social problems by himself with no support from the parents whom he “lost” a while ago.

Where should he run? What should he do? That’s where that one little spark can ignite the time bomb. Whether it is rebellion against life by the rules of reality or simply rejection by parents to get him another video game, the kid crosses the line. He gets his gun and shoots. He might kill himself, but that would be a scream into a pillow (do you know how big gun violence is in the USA in the form of suicides?) and he wants to be noticed. Finally, everybody will notice him: parents, his school pals, that girl who did not reply to his love letter… 

I remember attending a TED speech given by a mother of one U.S. mass shooter. She was standing in front of a big audience, crying. She told the listeners that she had no idea her son was like this, that he would be able to kill and be such a monster. And I am sure she was not lying. She simply did not know her son.

 Knowing your kids is a key to a happy future; knowing your kids gives you a huge chance to predict or stop the catastrophic events that drag America down; knowing your kids is simply being a parent.

Guns are not the problem. Guns are just one class of weapons, and in the hands of a mentally unstable person even a golf club or a car can become an assault weapon. So, let’s focus on our families, schools, morals, and other basic building blocks of a healthy society that we still can preserve and protect.

Lidia Zinchenko 
Montecito