Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News   11/24/2015

                     Let’s be grateful for freedom

I’ve written numerous columns on the real Thanksgiving feast, a feast that showered the colonists and their guests with harvested abundance. The harvests followed the near-starvation of those same colonists under a utopian communal, collectivist system. I wrote, at the end of one column, that we needed to beware the attempt to implement “single payer,” collectivist health care. They mostly got what they wanted—now, failing Obamacare coops, massively subsidized premiums, ballooning deductibles and broken promises litter the health care landscape.

This column rarely dignifies critics just to prove that I’m right or my critics are wrong. Readers should consider various viewpoints, facts, and sources and arrive at what they believe to be the truth. I’m A-ok with that; other writers sometimes engage in back-and-forth disputes, which generally end up tiring and boring readers.

If I err on some point of verifiable fact, however rarely that occurs, I’m big enough to own up. The bulk of attacks boil down to one opinion vs. another, however sincerely or passionately held. It does strike me that—when critics can’t simply let a disagreement stand on the merits and resort to character insults and ad hominem low balls—they usually reveal the inherent weaknesses of their positions.

I was chagrined to see that I committed a mental math error: “1 percent of Obama’s intended 10,000 Syrians equals 10 potential jihadis.” Brain gas alone suffices to explain incorrect decimal point placement. However, I was no less chagrined to be misquoted, which readers also deserve to know. Critic: “Don Polson writes that 1 percent of 100,000 equals 10…The answer is 100.”

You can see we both were off by factors of 10: my erroneous division and the critic’s inability to properly quote me while also goofing on the math. Proving my prior point, the writer couldn’t resist a disingenuous cheap shot, “This is only the most obvious example of misinformation that we regularly receive from this source.” Hmmm. Shouldn’t readers also draw similar conclusions about my critics: They can’t quote me accurately and can’t do simple math.

Finally, I will respectfully push back against the criticism, lodged on this page, that having not served in uniform and having protested against the Vietnam War, I should be disgraced, ashamed of and intimidated over criticizing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on veterans issues. Well, I’m neither disgraced nor ashamed and I’m not intimidated; I’ll take any stand, on any issue, with truthful, necessary critiques of any politician or officeholder I feel deserves it. I could cite Hillary Clinton’s shrieking about not shutting up, about speaking up, against then-President Bush when Democrats had endless phony arguments on Iraq.

Using the critic’s standard, unless someone has been in law enforcement they have no right to criticize anyone on that issue; unless someone has a medical background they have no right to criticize health care positions; unless they own a gun or know someone who’s been a victim of gun violence they can’t opine about firearms policies; unless they own a home or property they shouldn’t weigh in on, nor should they even vote on, raising property taxes.

The reflexive response of the left is to shut critics up and I have seen every permutation of that response over the last 10+ years of writing columns. When someone only objects to my criticism of Democrats like Obama and Clinton, I sense a possible partisan hack in disguise.

I’ve reread my November 3 column, “Vets deserve better from Hillary,” and found not one single statement to be inaccurate or unfair. I cited the New York Daily News column by S.E. Cupp, “Clinton shrugs off the deaths of 300,000 veterans,” which anyone can enter in a search window and find numerous citations. Her figures came from VA Inspector General reports, I believe, and have not been refuted.

I recall polling of active and retired military going back decades, and I believe I’m right to say that Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and candidate John McCain all garnered very favorable approval numbers; Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and candidate Hillary Clinton have not. Someone who only attacks me when I criticize Democrats and, moreover, uses their military service as a cudgel against me, is not a fair-minded critic. They may be surprised to find that Hillary is not popular among 80 percent of active and retired military.

I also find that the generally favorable experiences of veterans using the VA system disproves none of the widely reported failures, including over 60,000 veterans on waiting lists that were kept hidden for better public reports. Consider the hypocrisy of citing 80+ percent satisfaction by veterans in VA health care; when Obamacare was being debated and proposed, polling consistently found between 80 and 90 percent of people satisfied with their health insurance. Back then, we were told to just shut up and accept that the whole system needing fixing; now, defenders and apologists say just shut up and accept that problems with VA health care are overblown.

Frankly, I’m a little tired of the left using whatever current iteration of “government knows best” to silence critics of that same government. I’m also more-than-a-little ticked off that we can’t have honest debates with verifiable data about the decidedly proven better results when problems are solved in the private sector with free will, free market ideas.