Editorial

EDITORIAL: College Line Canceled by Madera Metro Because of Bad Management

EDITORIAL – The City of Madera receives federal grant monies to provide an hourly bus route to the Madera Community College. You would think students would have no issues getting to the college campus that the powers that be decided to build two miles outside Madera. Unfortunately, you would be wrong, as already two weeks into the school year, and the city has failed to staff the bus for the college route.

Now when I say the city has failed, I mean that a vendor out of Dallas, Texas (MV Transportation) has not only been unable to hire enough drivers to cover the scheduled bus routes and dial-a-ride service, their offices in Dallas are closed. No one is there to answer questions. In addition, the local bus office is also closed to the general public, and the city employee who oversees the contract with MVT and compliance for the grants, David Huff, refuses to leave his house and work out of his office in city hall because of the pandemic.

EDITORIAL: No One Ever Accused Tom Wheeler of Being Politically Correct

EDITORIAL - There are always two sides to every story. This past Friday afternoon my phone was blowing up because apparently, Madera County Supervisor Tom Wheeler (78) stepped in another big patty of cow dung. This time with a female reporter from the Fresno Bee seeking what she believes to be “public records”. Did Mr. Wheeler respond to a request for public records with an insult towards the reporter? Yes, he did. Did Mr. Wheeler intend for his opinion of the reporter to make it back to her and be public? I do not think so. I think it was just Tom being Tom.

For the last month, Fresno Bee reporter Yesenia Amaro has been seeking information about the July 2020 murder of Calley Jean Garay (32) at the hands of her husband, and a lawsuit filed by the victim’s family against the county. According to Wheeler, this Fresno Bee reporter kept pushing the supervisor for information about what the Madera County Supervisors had talked about in the closed session portions of their meetings.

EDITORIAL: Madera County Facing Open Defiance of Governors Mandate and Demands for Firing of County Health Director – OPEN MADERA RESTAURANTS AND CHURCHES NOW

EDITORIAL – Just when we thought we would see a way out of California Governor Gavin Newsome’s PURPLE covid-19 tier, Madera County has been pushed back down again with several more weeks or months of businesses in our county being forced into bankruptcy and permanent closures. All the while our neighboring counties to the north, south, and east have been allowed into the RED tier where gyms, churches, and indoor restaurants are free to operate under safe conditions (as of today they are also back in purple). Our community has already been locked down since March; 36 weeks of our economy shut down and some lady (Our County Health Director, who happens to live in Fresno County) wants it to be even longer?

A few weeks ago Madera County met the arbitrary number set by the state on positivity rates and should have moved into the RED tier, and then Madera County Health Director Sara Bosse pulled the rug out from under our county’s economic base yet again saying our Covid-19 numbers doubled and our county’s businesses are put on hold for two more weeks. At the same time, she was upset with the Madera County Board of Supervisors for releasing county numbers before our state’s governor got to do it on his nearly daily television hour. The health department director scolded the board because the information she shared was “embargoed” until Governor Newsome released it.

EDITORIAL: Spoiler Salter Sends ‘Socialist’ Santos to the Madera Mayors Seat

Local News

EDITORIAL - Madera will have a new mayor in December, Mr. Santos Garcia. Our new mayor accepted money from the socialist arm of the Democratic Party and owes his entire success to Republican spoiler-candidate Steve Salter for splitting the vote. Madera City Councilman Santos Garcia beat sitting mayor Andy Medellin by less than 500 votes with 4587 of the total 11,103 votes cast, But Salter scored 2416 votes, splitting the votes available in the westside of Madera with Medellin who scored 4097 votes. In short, of the total votes, over 6500 of the electorate voted against Garcia denying him any clear mandate.

Garcia, who raised $55k mostly from union sources, raised $13k in just the last three days. He also took thousands of dollars from the Central California Progressive Political Action Committee and the city council campaign fund for Fresno City Councilmember Esmerelda Sorin, the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (A.O.C.) of the west coast. I wonder how the conservative Salter will sleep at night knowing that it's possible he caused the beginnings of socialism on the city council?

EDITORIAL: A Second Look at 'Wag the Dog', A Barry Levinson Film (1997)

EDITORIAL - What do you do if you’re an aide to a United States President who has recklessly self-sabotaged his chances for the second-term just eleven days before Election Day? You call in a political spin-doctor (fixer) to get your President and his campaign out of trouble and back on track. This is the two-sentence treatment for the 1997 political-satire film ‘Wag the Dog’ directed by Barry Levinson based on the 1993 Larry Beinhart book, ‘American Hero’.

The original novel by Beinhart tells the story of how Operation Desert Storm was a scripted and choreographed plot to secure President George H.W. Bush a second term. In ‘American Hero’ real-life characters are used in this “fictional” telling of the first Gulf War. The book starts with Lee Atwater, a Republican political consultant for both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, on his death bed laying out a plan to have the war professionally produced by Hollywood. The film adaptation of the book has very little to do with that plot other than the Hollywood connection and deceiving the public.

EDITORIAL: Montoya’s Tilting at Windmills Comparing Apples to Oranges in MUSD Coaching

EDITORIAL – Madera’s Ron Montoya is back on the attack. This time he is attacking Madera Unified School District Athletic Director and CIF President Marty Bitter. He has already harassed the school board, city council, school site councils, and our mayor. Now he is taking on a school administrator who is only trying to provide an equal playing field to all students throughout the district. He is attacking another good man with false accusations.

Montoya’s latest ill-informed rant is comparing full-time district employees to walk-on coaches. He seems upset that Madera South Varsity Football Coach Matt Johnson is a full-time employee for the district with a job unrelated to his football duties. Coach Johnson was hired by the district to operate a program at Madera Unified for at-risk boys. This is the same successful program he ran at Edison High School for Fresno Unified a few years back. For that job, Johnson receives a salary from the district.

EDITORIAL: Cutting the Cord on Comcast’s $200 Cable Bills - Streaming Apps and Roof-top Antennas Can Save You Hundreds

EDITORIAL - What happens when your Xfinity/Comcast Cable-TV bill tops $200 a month? You learn new (and relearn older) ways to save money on your television entertainment expenses. Over the last year, we have done everything we could think of to cut our cable bill but found the only way to really save money with Xfinity/Comcast is to forget about cutting the bill and just Cut the Cord. So that is what we did and now we have more great TV than ever before.

First thing we did was return all of our cable boxes to Xfinity/Comcast. These were costing us between $10 and $15 each per month. We replaced them with Roku streaming devices that have access to the Xfinity app. The Roku Xfinity/Comcast’s app gives you another way of watching the cable company's programming without the expensive cable box rentals. By doing this we started to save about $45 a month.