Solid

Guest column

It’s time for national soulsearching

After the attacks on our nation on Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush took to the airways to address the American people.

Speaking to a nation in shock, he cast what had occurred in the framework of good and evil. STAR PARKER

“Today, our nation saw evil,” the president said.

And he o ered up solace in Psalm 23, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for you are with me.”

Several days later, a number of evangelical pastors, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell Sr., picked up on the theme of good and evil, reward and punishment, and suggested we must look inside of our nation as well as outside. We must check ourselves.

Pat Robertson issued a press release, as was reported in The New York Times, stating, “In a country rampant with materialism, internet pornography and lack of prayer, ‘God Almighty is lifting his protection from us.’”

These pastors got major pushback in the country for suggesting that this horrible occasion provided good reason for self-examination and Bush, himself a born-again Christian, disavowed the pastors.

The White House issued a statement saying: “The president believes that terrorists are responsible for these acts. ... He does not share those views, and believes that those remarks are inappropriate.”

Of course, no pastor questioned who actually committed the acts of terror. They suggested that, along with the actions we take against the terrorists, we must also check our own moral state of a airs to try to understand why such a horrible act of violence could have been successfully carried out on our own soil.

We might recall that the pilots who fl ew those planes, transforming commercial airliners into lethal weapons, trained in our country.

And while these preparations in our own backyard for what occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, were taking place, the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, was preoccupied committing adultery in the Oval O ce.

Now here we are, 20 years later, having spent more than $2 trillion in our operations in Afghanistan, with a loss of some 2,400 American lives. The Taliban, against whom we launched hostilities in 2001, is back in power. By some estimates, their control in Afghanistan is broader than it was in 2001.

Maybe today, as the United States withdraws from Afghanistan in despair, shame and confusion, and as we note 20 years since the loss of 2,977 American lives to terror in our homeland, there will be greater appreciation for doing some national soulsearching.

We needn’t just turn back to the admonitions of

■ See PARKER, page A5

Letters to the Editor

Recall impracticality

EDITOR:

Regarding a gubernatorial recall election mid-term, mid-pandemic, mid-pandemic uptick with variant, amid other local crises: I am a practical person. It seems to me that to create upheaval in our state government to change governors at this point is expensive and pointless. There will be an election anyway soon. Voters who want change can work on change then.

The current recall e ort feels like grandstanding and Monday morning quarterbacking about the handling of what was, is and will still be a very di cult situation.

This last 18 months has required handling the COVID-19 pandemic when not much was known, handling homelessness when it is growing for many reasons and handling safety decisions in education in the midst of all our crises. These are all di cult for whomever is in charge and so easy to criticize. Causing chaos and expense right now, even potentially health dangers, by recalling and changing state administration in the midst of crises is totally illogical in my view. MARGARET VANDERKAR Placerville

Recall election

EDITOR:

The California governor recall election is a travesty. It is a disgrace that the Republican hounds baying at the Capitol are squandering $81 million to recall a progressive governor who has the overwhelming support of the voters of California. This recall e ort is the worst case of disaster profi teering: blaming the messenger and fi rst responder who has e ectively steered us through a deadly pandemic.

Shame on these vultures looking to feast on the misdirected rage of frustrated voters. This ship of state is still at sea, battered by ongoing catastrophic storms, which is the worst time to mutiny.

I say we maintain stability and reject the recall of Gov. Newsom. In waiting 15 months for the normal gubernatorial election, perhaps the fi eld of challengers could be winnowed to some with real qualifi cations.

LYNN SCHARDT Garden Valley

Advancement

EDITOR:

From the day Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, America has been an unstoppable force of technological amelioration. This hasn’t even slowed despite the hardships that have befallen the American people.

Innovation is the bedrock of American dominance in the world. We are, and must remain, the hub of advancement. In the last century and a half all the greatest inventions — telephones, vaccines and even the internet — have been American made. These three breakthroughs also have one other characteristic in common. They were created by private citizens or corporations. Nothing has ever matched the spirit of private enterprise that has allowed America to grow to a global superpower, accruing nearly 30% of the world’s wealth.

However, more and more, the government has tried to seize power from businesses and corporations by creating bureaucracies that hinder the ability to conduct business and research. These rules and regulations discourage creativity or advancement. They have also led to a higher fi nancial burden on companies, leading them to operate in other countries and take money and jobs away from Americans.

In California, which has the sixth largest economy in the world, companies are shipping jobs overseas due to massive taxes and regulations put in place by elected o cials and unelected bureaucrats.

We could reverse this quite easily.

California’s oppressive taxes take from small business owners on two fronts. It imposes both business and personal taxes on small business owners — one of the few states to do so. Should one of these be repealed, small businesses would have more of an incentive to start up and stay in the state.

When it comes to large corporations, the solution is even simpler. Lower taxes or o er better tax incentives. Since 2010, more than 50 large corporations have left California and we have lost one-third of our small businesses.

These numbers are glaring and send one very clear message. As long as businesses continue to be oppressed by unfair burdens we cannot progress as a state or as a country. Our status as the world’s

■ See LETTERS, page A5

The Rural Life

Thoughts on dogs and cats and pigs and calves

Great Britain prides itself on being a nation of animal lovers. A new bill moving through parliament would require all branches of government to consider, when formulating policies and regulations, an animal’s ability to experience pain and su ering.

And by “animal” they mean not just dogs and cats and livestock, but all other vertebrates as well.

Known as the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, the legislation would further raise standards in a country already considered the world leader in animal welfare.

California may just be challenging that title. A consequential provision of 2018’s Proposition 12 on Farm Animal Confi nement goes into e ect in January. It requires any pork sold in the state to come from pigs kept in an enclosure that’s at least 24 square feet in size. (Sows nationwide are

commonly kept in cages so small they can’t turn around or extend their limbs.) The Golden State already bans such cages, but this provision will mean pork producers in other states must improve how they care for pigs if they want JENNIFER FORSBERG to sell into the biggest market: California. MEYER Prop. 12 will have a similar e ect for laying hens and calves, as it also prohibits the sale of eggs and veal from facilities that confi ne animals in cruel cages. So far lawsuits by various meatindustry trade groups have failed, with the U.S. Supreme Court declining to take up a Prop. 12 challenge in June. Conspiracy theorists claim the law is part of a secret national agenda to force people to “go vegan.” In reality, many meat-eaters — myself included — see it simply as a way to evolve beyond the factory-farming methods that would horrify most people if only they knew more about them.

In reality, many meat-eaters — myself included — see it simply as a way to evolve beyond the factory-farming methods that would horrify most people …

A recent blog post by pundit Andrew Sullivan clarifi ed the issue.

“I’m not a vegan and couldn’t survive as one,” he wrote. “I’m hopelessly addicted to bacon. And it’s because I love eating pork and bacon that I want to know I am not complicit in torture when I eat it.”

Studies have found pigs to be smarter than dogs, capable of playing video games better than chimpanzees and even able to discern the feelings of other pigs.

In a perfect world “cultured meat” (real meat grown without the slaughter of an animal) would provide all the animal protein we want or need. Though such products are in development now, the acceptance of cultured meat is a long way o .

In the meantime, meat and animal products will continue to be consumed — that’s just a reality. But it doesn’t have to mean animals su er misery their entire lives as a result. California’s Prop. 12 provisions are a step in that direction.

Of course, they’ll mean increased prices for meat. Sullivan puts it in perspective.

“Retrofi tting hog farms so that they are not torture-fi lled concentration camps could add 15% to the price of bringing a single pig to market. The horror!”

Actually, the horror is how food animals are typically kept. An estimated 99% of U.S. farmed animals live in factory farms, according to analysis by the nonprofi t think tank Sentience Institute. Another term for these farms is CAFOs, or “concentrated animal feeding operations.” In CAFOs, animals live in cramped, overcrowded and often disease-ridden conditions, treated more like widgets than the living, breathing, sentient creatures.