We are a nation that will always describe a job in terms more grandiose than the job itself.

I remember a time when janitors were called just that — janitors. But now many of them are called maintenance personnel, sanitation technicians, cleanliness engineers. However, I never thought anything was wrong about describing janitors as janitors. They do necessary and important work, keeping our workplaces, and in some cases the places where we live, clean. Let’s hear it for janitors.

And let’s also hear it for prep cooks. Prep cooks aren’t chefs, but they make it possible for chefs to run their restaurants. Prep cooks keep the kitchen clean. They also chop foods, prepare ingredients for use in dishes the chefs prepare, and in some restaurants they also make sure the coolers and freezers are stocked, that the stoves are working, that the hot trays are hot enough and the cold trays are cold enough. They also make salads.

At least, they used to.

Now, in at least one San Francisco cooking school, prep cooks are becoming salad arrangers. They are learning to put the salad ingredients on the plate artistically, and make the salad look like a little work of art.

I don’t know about you, but I think that might be going a little too far in the hoity-toity department. You can spend a lot of time arranging a salad, but when you get it done, somebody is just going to wolf it down. The customer won’t care if the tomatoes are positioned just so on the plate. He or she will stick a fork in them, and in the lettuce, and maybe in the olives and onions on the plate, and stir them around a bit before eating, and that will be it for the arrangement on the plate.

I’m of the old school. I’m a believer in salad that has been tossed, and in lettuce that isn’t in pieces so big you have to cut them before you can get them into your mouth. Otherwise, you will be dropping bits of your salad on the floor, making work for — you guessed it — the janitors.

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A woman asked, “Do you remember when the teachers took all those furlough days? That means they don’t work and they don’t get paid? Just like the reason the lines are so long at DMV.

“I took my granddaughter her lunch pail and I’m finding the size for students in a classroom is 34, some are 32. It’s not 28-to-1. Boy, we’ve all been lied to and so have the teachers. I don’t know what’s going on with the school district, but it’s a mess.”

(Editor’s note: The 28:1 student-to-teacher ratio was for K-3 classrooms, not for all grade levels. This was reported when the Madera Unified Teachers Association and the school district reached their agreement in June.)

“They are getting money to hire a lot of teachers back,” said a woman. “Madera Unified School District needs to add all five days they took away from the kids.”

(Editor’s note: The $1.2 billion that the federal government gave to California for schools may be used by Democratic state legislators to reduce the massive state budget. If that happens, MUSD will receive no extra money. Regardless, the state plans to start issuing 90-day IOUs to schools and counties in September, a month earlier than expected, because of its tardiness in passing a balanced budget.)

A woman responded to a message last week “in regards to Alice and CSEA (California State Employees Association). What I’m concerned with is: she was president of CSEA and quit three times. Why do we want her again?”

Another lady said, concerning the layoffs, “It looks like we are going by the merit system. If we didn’t have that merit system we probably wouldn’t have people going where they shouldn’t be (within the district).”

A man’s “kids play sports at Madera High. I recently learned from them that coaching positions were being cut. Specifically at junior high, frosh, and JV levels. I can’t believe it. There is more direct contact with kids than coaches.

“I’m ashamed to learn that Madera would do such foolishness because of the hundreds of employees in the district that don’t have any contact with the children. I can’t understand cutting coaches in a city filled with gang violence, tagging, and pregnancy problems.” He said, “Madera should not be second class.”

A woman said, “As a Madera resident, I would like to see more stories about Madera wineries; how they got started, etc.”

A man responded to the woman who said that at a county office “they would not give her a pen to write a check.” This week’s caller suggested, “Go in and pay them with pennies and I bet you things will change. Pay them with pennies. I will.”

On the same subject, a caller said, “That person has been writing checks for 30 or 40 years and still can’t remember to carry a pen in her purse?”

A man replied to last week’s caller who said he was against the casino. “Almost everyone I know is in favor of the casino. We think it will bring jobs. It will bring transients here, transients being people who have money and can spend it here. I hope the person isn’t narrow-minded and sees what the casino is going to do.”

A woman said, “Supervisors should think about a Target or Kohls instead of a casino. Money goes into gambling interests, not Madera. It just pulls money out.”

“I enjoyed the article of Aug. 23 on police checkpoints,” said a man. “But can you tell your readers where north Yosemite (Avenue) is?”

(Editor’s note: Good catch. Yosemite Avenue nominally runs west to east, although in truth it is more like southwest to northeast. So the northern part of it would be more properly known as East Yosemite Avenue.)

A woman “wanted to comment on the Pee Wee football teams. They are so cute and they practice at Thomas Jefferson. They try so hard and the coaches are doing a really great job.”

A man said, “Jefferson, against his better judgment, purchased Louisiana for $5 million. We have spent to upwards of a hundred billion dollars trying to take care of New Orleans. There is something wrong here.” (Editor’s note: Actually President Jefferson bought the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 for $15 million, which would be the equivalent of $211.7 million in today’s dollars.)

An online reader, self-identified as Tara Brown, wrote, “Why is it that the City of Madera never hires African-Americans? Three of my friends and I all put applications in at the same time. My two Hispanic friends both were called for interviews. I was not. We all had the same qualifications for the job but I never even received a phone call. … I know several other African-Americans that have applied and the same thing has happen to them.”

Another Internet visitor, responding to a previous Red Line comment that criticized the public use of Spanish, wrote, “This country still does not have an official language. This means that you can speak whatever language that you want to.”

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Thank you for your calls. Remember, the Red Line is open for your messages 24 hours a day by calling 674-4478 or by visiting maderatribuneredline.com on the Internet.

It is getting so that getting the Nobel Prize may be a little like being featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. You might say: How is that? Well, occasionally when an athlete would be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, that person would break a leg, or get fired from a team, or be exposed as a child molester. Something like that.

Now, we have two Nobel prizewinners being embarrassed by not quite living up to why the prize was given.

First, you may remember, President Obama got the Nobel Prize for Peace last year, before he had barely been president for nine months. His nomination had been made before he was inaugurated. The Nobel committee said the prize was given for Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

It did not say what those extraordinary efforts were, but he did go around and shake a lot of hands and bow, so if that’s what gets you a Nobel Peace Prize, a lot of international Rotarians should be up for the prize next year.

In his speech Tuesday, he took credit for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq, but that withdrawal already had been scheduled by the time he took office. It was made possible, you may remember, by the “surge,” which Obama opposed.

Another Nobel Prize winner taking some heat (if you’ll excuse the pun) is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which with Al Gore got the Nobel Peace Prize three years ago.

According to The Wall Street Journal, an independent investigation of the panel’s pronouncements on global warming has concluded it’s time for “fundamental reform” of the organization, especially of the assertions it has made about whether the warming of the earth’s climate is as much caused by human activity as the panel claims that it is.

Some critics, says the Journal, are calling for the chair of the panel, Rajendra Pachauri, to resign. Pachauri says he doesn’t want to.

The next Nobel Peace Prize winner probably should refuse the award to avoid the embarrassment.

Our city is richer and our children more aware of the world around them because we can come together to share our common values and the diverse ways we honor and express them.

We therefore deplore the recent attack on our community’s mosque and the hate and intolerance it represents.

Since this attack made world news, we want the world to know that the ignorant people who carried it out do not represent the citizens of Madera. If we allow Muslims to be attacked today, which of us will be next? That is not America, and that is not Madera.

We welcome our Muslim brothers and sisters as part of our community and want to make clear that this attack was not in our name.

Raquel Rodarte, Board president,
Madera Coalition for Community Justice

I remember Jackson Hole, Wyo., before it became a playground for the rich. It was (and still is) a beautiful place, and most of the tourism there was the result of hunters, fishermen and sightseers passing through and sometimes staying at one of the several motels. Then, the Rockefeller family built a big resort there, and the neighborhood turned blue-blood.

So blue, in fact, that the Federal Reserve board held its meeting with world financial policymakers there last weekend. While they were there, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chair, made it a point to tell everyone that the Fed still had plenty of cards up its sleeve to goose the U.S. economy into action again.

This in spite of the fact that a lot of people are saying the Fed has basically run out of cards.
The Fed can’t lower interest rates much further than they are right now. If they keep lowering them, the next thing you know, the Fed will be paying us interest to borrow money, instead of the other way around.

The Fed can invest money in U.S. Treasury notes or can buy up mortgage debt, but if that happens again, and keeps happening, it may not be long before the Fed owns everything.

The government is continuing to plow money into the economy in various ways, but most of that money is borrowed. Therefore, if that borrowed money has a stimulating effect on the economy, the expectation will be that the money will be paid back. But the question is: What with, and when?

Those companies and individuals who have cash are sitting on it. The reason for that behavior, even though the prices of things they could be buying are low, is that inflation has been a no-show. They expect prices to go down even further. More people are starting to worry about deflation — a general drop in prices and values — than are worrying about inflation.

It is good to know the Fed, glowing in the beauty of Jackson Hole, has confidence in its powers to save us.

Two years are gone and we still don’t have a plan. In fact, there is some evidence that we’re going in the wrong direction. In July 2010, we imported 388 million barrels of oil. That’s the single largest import month since President Obama was inaugurated.

The NAT GAS Act will create jobs, clean up the environment and improve our national security by providing tax incentives to organizations that operate fleets of vehicles … fueled with imported oil to be replaced with vehicles that run on domestic natural gas.

Election Day will soon be here. Those who are running for office — be it open seats, incumbents or challengers — need to take a look at this legislation and make promising to reduce our need for OPEC oil a central part of their campaigns.

Michael G. Springer,
Mariposa

I did not know about this until reading about it over the weekend, but there is a field of study out there called evolutionary psychology. Those who are doing the studying say evolution tends to favor those with the most moral outlooks.

There’s basically no evidence to support this other than the assumptions of psychologists who have not found paying jobs in any other research. In fact, most evidence points the other way. The cave people who killed the most animals and also killed the most cave people were the ones who seemed to survive, rather than the ones who wanted to sit around the campfire and sing “Kum bay ya.” The Roman Empire was built at the point of a sword, not by community organizing.

Religion and philosophy prospered only after armies and navies made it possible.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t religionists and philosophers who were operating independently of the armies and navies, but there is nothing to suggest that those noncombatants were favored by evolution. In fact, they probably got themselves slapped around a lot if they attempted to interfere.

Eric Feline, writing in The Wall Street Journal, tells the story of a Harvard scientist, Marco Hauser, who was found guilty of misconduct in his study of the morality of nature. He wrote the book “Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.” After they read it, some scientists got aboard that train and began writing that morality was strictly an evolutionary survival mechanism.

But Hauser faked some of his research, and thus some of his conclusions. It appears he, himself, missed the evolutionary-morality bus, and instead threw himself under it.

Religion and philosophy keep us reminded of what is right and wrong, because as humans, we know right and wrong often are in flux. That is especially true when Congress and the Legislature are in session.

Cats, on the other hand, are born knowing what is right and wrong. Having lunch is always right. Not having lunch is always wrong. Everything else is commentary.

The efforts by local doctors who are from Pakistan to raise money for flood relief in that unfortunate country is well worth supporting.

These folks could quietly have given on their own, and let it go at that, but they are aware of the vast extent of the disaster.

Imagine — 1,600 people dead and 875,000 homes lost. On top of that, crops have been washed away, infrastructure has been destroyed, and the flooding has created a rich breeding ground for all kinds of disease.

Right now, news outlets are talking about the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. That catastrophic storm killed 1,836, and destroyed some 276,000 homes in New Orleans and along the coasts of Alabama.

The flooding has affected a fifth of the land area of Pakistan. Homes and businesses are still being destroyed in some areas as rains continue, and many more people will die due to disease and injuries.

About $1 billion in aid has been pledged by other countries to help Pakistan, but think of this: Almost $200 billion has been spent over the past five years repairing the damage from Katrina, and the spending hasn’t stopped. Where will Pakistan get $200 billion to repair what is now far more damage than Katrina caused?

Some donors are waiting to give until they can be assured that the Pakistani government will use the money wisely, or that the Taliban won’t confiscate it.

However, the money being collected here won’t be going to the government, and certainly not to the Taliban, but rather to trusted organizations known to the local doctors.

If you want to know how to donate, call Dr. Mohammad Ashraf, 673-2259. They have formed a 501(c) 3 corporation to administer the money, and to make it completely tax deductible for any donor.

We have been reading and hearing a lot lately about the fear of deflation — and I don’t mean a flat tire.

For years — for the lifetimes of most of those now living — prices and wages have been going up. If they go up without a commensurate increase in productivity, that is inflation, and the result of inflation is that money becomes gradually worth less over time.

When deflation occurs, prices and wages go the other way. Prices go down and wages go down — but the value of money, almost miraculously goes up.

Although the idea of deflation scares the Armani underwear off the big money people on Wall street, a little bit of deflation might do some good on Main Street.

Wall Street investors like the companies in which they own stock to raise their prices. When they do, profits go up, at least until inflation catches up with the increases. That is called the inflationary spiral. When prices go up, people want higher wages, and when they get them, prices go up again, and there you go.

But on Main Street, when prices go down — and that doesn’t happen too much any more — then local people are more likely to flock to local stores, because their dollars will be worth more.

You might ask, “How can they do that if wages go down, too?” Well, that’s because of the deflationary spiral. It is easier for companies to drop their prices in response to competition than it is for small firms to quickly drop their wages. Wages would first have to stabilize, and then fall gradually.

But in both cases, the value of the dollar would rise.

According to some economists, Japan is experiencing a minor deflation.

In the U.S., we are seeing a deflation in housing prices, both for used houses and new. There are other signs of deflation, too. If they continue, this could be an interesting time.

How many people have $50 for a tag in these hard times, especially seniors? We the people of Madera County need to get together and protest this law. I had two dogs die on the operating table in the past 10 years from surgery, and all of the ones that are spayed are overweight and not as healthy.

It’s wrong to be forced to spay your animal. The people come over illegally and never vaccinate or tag their dogs and that’s where the problem is — all the dogs running all over loose and having puppies that no one wants.

Most people and seniors have their dogs tagged and vaccinated. They take care of their dogs and don’t let them run loose, and they should not be forced to pay for people who don’t tag their dogs.

This should not be allowed to pass until it’s in the paper and the people have their say. This price is ridiculous and wrong until the people know and can protest this.

Anna Parksion,
Madera