Last Tuesday night the Marysville City Council rejected a proposal by rice farmer Charlie Mathews and former City Councilmember Dale Whitmore to once again pump fresh Yuba River water to Ellis Lake. Mathews was to contribute $10,000 and Whitmore $1,500 along with collaborating with all entities (Yuba Water Agency, State Water Resources, PG and E and the city) to make the lake clean once again.

CalPERS, (California’s Public Employment Retirement System), the largest pension plan in the nation ($370 billion in assets), is in the news every week somewhere. It’s a fiasco, but that is California these days.

You pay more than 100 different taxes each year with the understanding that government will take care of business.  In the post war 1950s through the 1970’s amazing modern cities, airports, roadways and water projects were developed preparing us for the future. The world was in awe of America.

In 2016, Marysville, CA., 12,000 plus in population and 3.6 sq. mi. in size, was going bankrupt following decades of businesses leaving the city. In spite of shouldering millions of dollars in devastating long-term real estate debt the city council determined to continue funding its own police and fire departments rather than contracting out for services.

Yuba County Administrator Robert Bendorf and his County Supervisors wanted their cake and eat it too when it came to the Measure K Sale Tax. Their private lobbying, town hall meetings, mailers, social media postings and signage sold the Measure as a Public Safety Special Tax that would be restricted to a special fund.

In June 2018, the Sutter County Grand Jury (GJ) refused to sign a severely edited version of their work and resigned. Therefore, no GJ report was available for the public. 

Americans often see a problem; get the cause wrong, and then the solution as well. Years ago, China could not feed its population due to centralized control of business and agriculture. Slow Americans concurred with China’s forced abortion one-child policy because Americans thought the problem was too many people rather than a lack of productivity.

When it comes to voter fraud and stealing elections democrats certainly have the reputation for it. Dogs and dead people voting, slogans like vote early and vote often, and ballot box stuffing are infamously remembered along with the Chicago Democratic Machine and New York’s Tammany Hall. 

In 1922 there were 12 million cars in the United States, and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that the country would run out of oil by 1942. But in 2016, there were 268.8 million US vehicles burning oil and gas. Was the U.S.G.S. off-base or what! The reason they were clueless was that they didn’t take into account new discovery and extraction solutions to come.

The left is feigning a hissy-fit over President Trump’s remarks that if the four congresswomen hate America so intensely, they could always return to their homeland. What’s wrong with that?

Under President “we don’t have a strategy yet” Obama Isis was allowed to burn and destroy historic landmarks, museums pieces, artifacts and anything else of the past. Isis wanted to eradicate all that was not Islamic. The evil crusade was extreme, deranged and nonsensical, like liberals.

Frequently those seeking political office portray themselves as they want people to see them rather than who they really are. It’s called hypocrisy. 

A local juvenile, when asked why he “held-up” a convenience store, said he needed money because he was living on the street having left his family. When asked why he didn’t go to work he said he needed money right away and the store “could afford it.” The boy was an addict.

Burgess Owens, former Oakland Raider Super Bowl XV Champion, entrepreneur, bestselling author and speaker said, “I used to be a Democrat until I did my history and found out the misery that that party brought to my race.”

In 1836, Noah Webster, often considered “The Father of American Education,” believed that the purpose of schools was to advance the Christian faith. “In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed…No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”

The newest lawless territory in Marysville is Camp Popeye behind the abandoned Popeye’s Restaurant on Tenth. Anything goes -- drug deals,  ‘tweakers’ screaming at one another all night as their dog joins in, garbage everywhere, a guy sits in an upholstered chair like a throne in the parking lot surrounded by stray mattresses.

Who do you believe in government?  Officials tout how transparent they are and then it takes months to answer a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and years to investigate wrongdoing. Getting the facts is like extracting an impacted wisdom tooth.

How humans have survived and thrived is amazing when you have the curiosity to look closely. It’s a shame the teaching of history comes off so boring.

When certain black-Americans blame their unemployment, lack of success, educational underachievement and incarceration on events happening to Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries, can anyone think of other ethnic groups suffering injustice and then later generations getting a free pass by society? 

California liberal legislators want to create citizen committees to rule over and supervise sheriffs elected in the state’s 58 counties. The ultimate goal is to see sheriffs appointed like Chiefs of Police, rather than elected.