Archive | November, 2023

Does the press manipulate free speech?

22 Nov
I saw this sign along an empty lot on Midway in South Chico. I travel this corridor regularly and I think it’s been posted within the last few weeks.

I don’t know who is responsible for the above sign, but I have to wonder if it has to do with Chico Enterprise Record Editor Mike Wolcott’s new letters policy. If so, this would not be the first person(s) to express dissatisfaction with the new policy, at least one person likening it to censorship.

While I was getting sick of the back and forth, ugly name-calling by people who were getting their jibes in on a fairly regular basis, I’m wary too. Wolcott has long practiced what I’d call censorship – questioning letters he didn’t agree, calling only some writers out on grammatical issues and asking them for confirmation of figures and quotes.

My husband wrote a letter about the proposed Simplicity Village – Wolcott objected to the use of the word “shed” and also my husband’s interpretation of “recycling metal”, asking for three rewrites before he was satisfied with the language and agreed to print the letter. Meanwhile, he allowed all-out assaults on Anthony Watts and Rob Berry.

Earlier this year, he questioned a piece of information I included in a letter about the Downtown Ice Rink – I had to inform him, I’d taken it from an article previously run in his newspaper. Joe Azzarito had a similar experience – Wolcott wasn’t going to run Joe’s letter, because he quoted a previous letter writer by name. Joe made no personal attack, he just disagreed with that person’s statement. The other writer, ironically, is one of the worst of the name-calling fly-baiters, but Wolcott took offense to Joe quoting him and politely disagreeing? Joe sent him a copy of the person’s letter, and Wolcott grudgingly ran Joe’s letter.

The media manipulates what we see and hear by simply printing what they want us to see and hear and not printing what they don’t. Of course they manipulate the “news” as well as our right to express our opinions. Wolcott runs his paper according to his agenda. When Evan Tuchinsky takes over the paper – I’m going to guess, within the next year – he’ll run it according to his agenda.

I’d say Dave Little, gawd blass his ornery hide, was the last good, fair, as un-biased-as-a-person-could-be type of editor that paper had. Sometimes we had fierce disagreements, but he ran my letters. People asked him to stop running my letters, but he told them he couldn’t do that as long as I was sticking to the long-agreed upon rules of the letters section.

Which used to go something like this: 250 words. No libel. No cussing. Try to keep a handle on your spelling, grammar and punctuation, but if you want to appear as an idiot in the paper we’re not stopping you.

Oh here’s an anecdote – one time I used the word “crap” in a letter. I thought that was nicer that saying “bullshit“. Dave Little wrote back, he said, “we don’t print crap in our paper…” Before I could get back to him on that little statement he was back to me with “I mean, we don’t print the word “crap” in our paper…”

Pete Wilson: don’t allow Gavin Newsom to disenfranchise more than one million voters who chose to put the Taxpayer Protection Act on the ballot – get involved!

13 Nov

Realizing we were about to be overcome with the holiday season, extreme weather, and taxes, my husband and I took a quick road trip to Oregon to refresh and take advantage of tax-free shopping. Every time I pay that Measure H penny in Chico I feel like I’m being shaken down, it’s demeaning to be over-taxed and then get nothing for it.

So I buy my sundry taxable items at in various Oregon towns, at the usual chain stores – Target/Walmart/Lowe’s/Tractor Store. Boring stuff maybe – clothes, personal hygiene, household goods, building supplies and a 35 lb bag of dry food and two cases of canned food for our rescue kitties. But there’s plenty of other stuff to buy in a state that still values farms and Ag at many farmer’s markets and “antique malls” – I got homemade goat milk soap, jam, apples, honey, and one last summer tomato about the size of a baby’s head. Ate the last of that yesterday with bacon, lettuce and some bread we picked up at a bakery in Medford.

In one town there was a lady selling WHOLE PIES at a gas station, blackberry, apple, peach – who could walk away from the Pie Lady? We got a blackberry pie, hacked out a whopping chunk with my husband’s pocket knife and ate it with our bare hands on the tailgate of our car. It’s the little things, you know, like licking blackberries off your fingers and picking seeds out of your teeth hours later to remind you how much you enjoyed it.

Friendly people, every where we went they fawned on our dog and offered him treats. Vendors gave us free stuff. And it’s not just the sales tax – stuff is just cheaper, the economy seems to be much stronger, and there are more people shopping and WORKING.

But I love California, so we came home. You won’t get rid of me that easy, get used to it.

I know California is a mess right now and people are angry. Colleen Jarvis (look it up) once told me, “you have to pick your battles Juanita!”. She was right. I got a battle for you – the battle for your right to have more to say about being taxed. Support the Taxpayer Protection Act – you’ll be in good company. Other supporters include the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, as well as groups like Reform California. Our former state senator Jim Nielsen just joined the board of HJTA.

Former Governor Pete Wilson has sent an “amicus letter”, correctly pointing out that ” Nothing in the Petitioners’ brief constitutes an emergency, especially one that would require this Court to take the extraordinary step to grant preelection review, ” and that Newsom’s lawsuit would “disenfranchise more than one million voters who chose to put the TPA on the ballot.” Thanks Pete!

I just received a notice about a Southern California group called “The Two Hundred for Home Ownership”, saying they “filed an amicus letter opposed to the governor and Legislature’s lawsuit to disqualify the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act from the November 2024 ballot.” THFHO is “a statewide coalition of founders of civil rights organizations, community and business leaders, housing advocates, former state legislators, and cabinet members dedicated to mitigating the growing wealth gap in California through homeownership” I don’t know much about this group, but I know California has a tremendous wealth gap and that’s not a strong economy.

What is an “amicus letter”? From Wikipedia, “An amicus curiae is an individual or organization who is not a party to a legal case, but who is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. Whether an amicus brief [letter] will be considered is typically under the court’s discretion.” These letters can have a lot of impact on a case. I’ve signed similar letters, like the one that stopped the city of Chico from instituting an illegal Pension Obligation Bond.

Get involved, it does pay off. Go to https://taxpayerprotection.com/ to learn more about the TPA and brazen efforts to stop it from making the ballot – stopping the voters from having any say-so. Don’t just sit there gaping while they take your rights – if my husband and I and other members of the community had just sat on our hands, you’d be paying a monthly City of Chico tax on your cell phone (a percentage of your bill!) and a Chico Area Recreation District parcel tax on your house (a tax that would have gone up annually with the Cost of Living Index).

If you live in Chico, you are a member of the Chico Taxpayers Association. Exercise your rights. Send letters to the local papers, speak to your friends, don’t be shy. This is too important.

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Why would Gavin Newsom sue to stop the Taxpayer Protection Act?

6 Nov

Well, Happy Anniversary Chico Taxpayers Association – today I paid the annual fee for the blog, and as of January, this blog has been running for 11 years. And there’s been a lot of people who have contributed over the years, thankyouverymuch (say it like Elvis).

I started this blog when the city of Chico floated the cell phone tax – Measure J – onto the ballot, like a big turd. With the efforts of the Chico Tea Party (now defunct), Butte County Libertarians, Chico Republican Women, and many individuals, that measure was defeated. All it took was getting out there and informing the public of the details. Ann Schwab, then mayor and lead proponent of the tax, tried to tell people that the measure would actually lower the utility tax. They will say whatever they want, it takes research and a lot of push back to get the truth out there.

We faced the same kind of misinformation campaign from Chico Area Recreation District Measure A, a parcel tax. We attended meetings and heard CARD director Ann Willman, well, dropping some little fibs. Like when she tried to tell a group at an “informative” meeting that CARD had no debt, insinuating all the parcel tax money would go to expanding services instead of shoring up poor fiscal management. Dave called her on that one, and she had to admit her error – at that time, the pension deficit for an agency of about 35 employees had reached over $1.7 million.

It’s always shocking to me how the government will lie to get the voters to pass taxes on themselves, but that’s the way it is, and we have to push back. This is what we’re facing with the Taxpayer Protection Act – opponents, led by Governor Gavin Newson, are trying to stop the TPA from being on the 2024 ballot. Newsom himself has mounted a lawsuit, claiming the TPA “represents an illegal attempt to revise the state constitution” and “Administrative agencies would lose the power to do much of the work they do today under legislatively delegated authority.”

If you believe we should have more to say about taxing ourselves, find out more about supporting the Taxpayer Protection Act at https://taxpayerprotection.com/

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Tom van Overbeek thinks Downtown is more important than the rest of Chico’s “strip malls” – do you agree?

5 Nov

Council member Tom van Overbeek has agendized a discussion for this week’s Internal Affairs meeting –

Agendize a discussion about changing the references to Downtown Chico in Chico’s public
documents and signage to “Historic Downtown Chico”.
Downtown are what define a city. When you think of Chico you think of Downtown, not one of
the strip malls. When you respect and preserve the history of a town, you are preserving and
respecting its personality and character. Downtown Chico has a unique personality due in large
part to its’ rich and interesting history and our numerous historical buildings. Referring to
Downtown as Historic Downtown Chico will bring attention to the uniqueness of the Downtown
district.
Councilmember van Overbeek
District 6

https://chico.ca.us/sites/main/files/file-attachments/11-06-23_internal_affairs_agenda_packet.pdf?1699026767

I believe this will pass without argument and money will be spent to “rebrand” Downtown Chico. It’s really a desperate attempt to save Downtown Chico, which has suffered from one bad council decision after another over the last 10 or so years. And lack of decision – like, when will they make much needed repairs on the sewer lines? Is that part of the “historic” designation? Historic sewer lines that are leaking into ground water and threatening our drinking water supply? Yeah, let’s all get cholera, that’s historic!

I wish local business owners would sue the city, or better yet – sue the city run Chico Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Business Association for collecting fees from local businesses without really doing anything for them. These people are running our city right down the toilet, quite literally.