Microcosm or Macrocosm

Posted almost two years ago and still relevant to Victorville politics.

Letter to the Editor

Daily Press

P.O. Box 1389

Victorville, Ca. 92393

April 23, 2009

A request for facts from our city politicians.

Microcosm or macrocosm, the two or the many are strikingly similar. Let’s forget the dictionary and just use examples in the macrocosm of politics. There are national politicians in their own little world, state politicians in theirs, county politicians and those city political studs. Where are the good guys?

The Victorville guy’s are whining because their hometown newspaper wants facts. Sob! Sob! Get a life Mr. Rothschild and Mr. Caldwell, your elected service to the city is always open to a potentially embarrassing question. Whether or not you choose to answer is your decision but lately the facts have been in retirement.

Who do you think you are? You need not answer but let’s judge by your actions. Secret meetings, county ethical inquiry’s, overdue financial reports, loose financial controls, a rubber stamp city council, billion dollar schemes which have a downside only to the taxpayer, a plummeting credit rating, a trip to China for a financial rescue, bailouts to business on main street, selling green cards, and blaming the Daily Press for doing it’s job.

We the taxpayers fear this is but the tip of the iceberg. Please give us the facts not spin. Your responses to date qualify as a cover up. Cover ups seem to be in vogue, microcosm or macrocosm.

G. Goslaw

Victorville, Ca.

Luke

"Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us," (St. Luke’s Gospel, Chapter One, verse one)

Twenty one hundred years ago the world was watching and recording the happenings in the backwater of Palestine. The focus of all the hubbub was on an obscure peasant named Jesus. Something so extraordinary happened at this moment that many observers were driven to write about the events surrounding this man. Each written record was different yet the same. Each writer had a unique view of these events. Through the subsequent hundreds of years, what came to be known as the Gospel of Luke is only one such account.

No history, at any time, is absolute history. Each attempt is colored by perspectives and prejudices that give a partial picture of past events. There are the accounts of Mathew, Luke and John of our traditional Bible, each with it’s own slant on the Jesus event. In addition there were the primitive gospels or the really first gospels. Luke probably was referring to them as the “many undertakings” of others. Then there are the other gospel histories that have only been recently unearthed. Add to these those only mentioned in ancient texts and small fragments of other gospels. At one time there may have been upwards of forty to fifty gospels. No one really knows how many gospels actually existed or how many are lost forever.

The point being that this writing furor indicates the magnitude of the Jesus event. It was and is the game changer of human history. Something must have happened beyond human explanation. Luke conveys for us the enormity of the events when he names them the “things accomplished”. Was he referring to a human exercise to organize a new religion? Could Luke have believed the events to be a result of the efforts of the Great Instigator? Was Luke misguided? Read on, let us find out where we stand.

G.Goslaw

Victorville, Ca

March 28, 2011

The Donald

Letter to the Editor

Daily Press

Victorville, Ca. 92392

Fox News this day, March 24 of 2011, is bashing the prospects of Donald Trump running for president in 2012. Citing only in house polling they are attempting to portray him as an arrogant clown whose motives are selfish. Fox News, what are your motives? Could the truth be that you dislike most of what he is saying? Could his distaste for the stock market and one way trade deals be inflaming your polls? You are the business network but it would seem that you prefer a most narrow definition of the word business. This political observer and lover of America, even in this time of crisis, is ready to listen to The Donald.

G.Goslaw

Victorville, Ca

Safety

Letter to the Editor

Daily Press

Victorville, California

We Californians are a strange breed. Common sense has nothing to do with how we treat each other. The latest example is the split vote by the Victorville City Council to hire seven more deputies for the Sheriff’s Department. Capt. Cliff Raynolds, department commander, seems not to be pushing for more deputies beyond current levels. So why the push to hire, why only the seven and not the missing eleven? Council, what don’t you understand about being broke?

Safety is a code word for union influence in politics. When our politicians cry “safety” the taxpayer is being manipulated. The unions and their politicians must think we are defenseless scaredy cats. They are playing to this new American culture of victimhood. Life is so dangerous that we will say anything or pay anything, or even surrender to a lobotomy to feel more safe. There was a time not so long ago when we Californians were better than this.

The newly elected, Miss. Valles is the chief union pusher in residence on the City Council. According to her, we, the city, must fill more union billets “even if it means cutting other services (Daily Press, March 3, 2011)”. Please let me rephrase, “even if it means cutting the jobs of nonunion city workers”. The rephrasing is more truthful about her intent and priority. Nonunion city workers have suffered repeated cutbacks and setbacks in the wake of the irrational votes of the City Council and the mismanagement within City Hall. These are not just city services, they are people. The selfishness of this union priority in these times is beyond any semblance of fairness.

G.Goslaw

Victorville, Ca

we the fringe ( a revision)

Mr. Editor

Enclosed is a revision of a letter previously submitted. You are the editor and make the decision on what to print but this letter is better than 99% of those you do print. Is not your editorial philosophy to “stir up the stew”? You do a lot of stirring. Only one person has commented to me personally about any of my letters but I welcome all comments, positive or especially negative. Generally, the average American and your readers are timidly uninformed. I welcome the opportunity to stir also, regardless.

Letter to the Editor

Daily Press

Re: “History repeats itself”, Alex Varga; “Second coming”, Tom Freeman. Letters to the editor, Daily Press, Monday, February 28, 2011.

Steve Williams, this reader is mad at you too. Where do you find these people? The only positive thing to say about these folk is that they have the courage to crawl out of there progressive cocoons and speak up. And what do we see and hear? Politically progressive octopuses whose arms are most adept at picking the pockets of the American taxpayer to further their big government agenda. Wikipedia informs us that the octopus is a very intelligent creature but two thirds of it’s neurons are located in their eight arms instead of their brains. The shoe seems to fit.

When a progressive talks about protecting jobs it is about public sector union jobs. The fate of the unemployed, the underemployed and those who have given up hopes for employment, are of no real concern. Our California experience is that the teacher, police, firefighter and correctional unions have been defrauding the taxpayers for the last thirty years. The theft has been dishonest because the unions give money to support the campaigns of the politicians sitting across the bargaining table. How can that be called bargaining? Would not the term “conflict of interest” be more appropriate?

Not only is the dollar their primary focus but they negatively intrude into the management of the various organizations they claim to serve. Intrusions that prevent the success of these organization. The failure of the California public school system with it’s monopolistic teacher tenure priority seem to be obvious. Full blown collective bargaining as defined by the Wisconsin and California unions, is not an American right nor is it the American norm.

Thankfully, right to work states that include the public sector in their legislation are doing better in this depressed economy. Their more business friendly climates works for the American worker. The painful truth for the progressive is that if you are unemployed, the best advice is to cross the state line and live in a right to work state. Our families have been forced to separate because the young folk understandably need a job. And if a government job is not their thing, they have to go to a business friendly state, which is not California.

That brings us to that “fringe conservative”, Californian, Ronald Reagan. He was not intimidated by anyone throwing around intended slurs like fringe. President Reagan knew that he was right and knew it would tick off the less informed (a gentle term). Maybe that is why so may of us relate and honor this man. Calling a spade a spade whether Republican or Democratic was his most admirable character trait. That is not to say that the second best president in our American history was a perfect president. Mr. Freeman correctly points that out for us. However, as a political philosopher and communicator, he was so very close to perfection.

If Ronald Reagan were president in our America, what would he say to the full blown public sector unions?

“Fire them all!” And we the fringe agree.

G.Goslaw

Victorville, Ca