Are the misleading ‘facts’ deliberate?
Thomas Sowell’s recent column regarding “voter fraud” is a perfect example of how pundits of both parties give carefully selected, incomplete information with the intention to mislead.
Sowell “accurately” cites a recent Old Dominion University survey published in the Washington Post blog that indicates massive voter fraud. However, he neglects to mention the Post’s follow-up entries that point out numerous problems with the survey’s methodology, assumptions and conclusions.
Later, in the same column, Sowell “accurately” notes that in the l960s, Republicans were much more favorable toward civil rights than were segregationist Southern Democrats. He again omits important relevant information: When President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, actively pushed through civil rights legislation, these very same segregationist Southern Democrats became the Republicans that made the Republican Party’s Southern voting block it is today.
Do you think that the “Mr. Sowells” of both parties are unaware their “accurate” facts mislead? Or do they feel they and their causes are so important that their deceit is acceptable?
Alan M. Kaufman
Pleasant Hill
Gov. Brown’s legacy is just too expensive
With his party — which describes itself as the champion of the working family and the poor — firmly in power, Gov. Jerry Brown wants to make high-speed rail part of his legacy.
Brown is not paying for it himself, but my grandchildren will, provided they can still afford to live in this state.
So here’s my input on this train to nowhere: Local sentiment seems to be against it; the farmers in the area are sure to fight the seizure of their lands.
Also, the environmental lawyers will have a field day, so lawsuits will consume millions of dollars.
Jay Moore
Rodeo
Obama prepares once again to annul the law
In 2011, President Barack Obama conceded he “can’t just suspend deportations through executive order,” that instead, he’s obligated constitutionally to “enforce and implement” existing law.
He’s made similar assertions before and since, acknowledging that he’s neither king nor emperor.
But even as Obama prepared once again to annul existing law — now to suspend deportations for at least 4 million illegal immigrants — he said, in answering reminders about his previous statements, that his “position hasn’t changed.”
One wonders what Obama’s been smoking now!
Claims of immigration-amnesty precedent under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush are false. Both Republican presidents implemented actions under 1986’s Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). There’s no such legislative antecedent now.
Further, as IRCA co-sponsors Alan Simpson and Romano Mazzoli recognized editorially in 2006, the bill’s required securing of America’s southern border didn’t happen.
Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley, recognizing Obama’s arrogations of executive power as the “very danger that the Framers sought to avoid in our Constitution,” has become GOP lead counsel in opposing Obama’s unilateral immigration edict.
Michael Arata
Danville
Consequences must always be addressed
God created physical laws as well as moral and spiritual laws that are absolute. Our society seems to imagine that moral laws can be revised and changed to suit our wants.
If you jump off the roof of your house, you will fall and possibly be injured. If you jump off the Empire State Building, you will likely die. The deeper and longer the fall, the heavier the consequences.
The adage “You reap what you sow” is still in effect, regardless what our naive and gullible society says.
Bill Nelson
Pacheco
