SOUNDING OFF:

Having lived here for 16 years I have come to understand that Newport Beach is a bastion of the fat cats of the Republican Party and that the Daily Pilot has never been accused of being anything other than an undisguised mouthpiece for their propaganda.

However, one would expect even the dutiful Daily Pilot to allow an occasional contrarian view to slip in, some crumbs to be thrown at the 40% of the residents, equally patriotic and deserving Americans who do not share Republican viewpoints or values. Week after week, we see columns by Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and John Campbell and other Republican elected officials, ostensibly addressing and debating (with no opposing view being offered an opportunity) issues of grave importance to the nation, with the same hackneyed mantra, blaming every conceivable ill in the nation on the “tax and spend” liberals.

This in spite of the fact that the current “cut taxes and spend your children’s inheritance” crowd (I don’t call them conservatives, I call them charlatans, and I am being charitable at that) has brought our once robust economy to its knees during its unfettered reign of plundering the national treasury, over the past 7 ½ years.

And in its April 3 issue, the Pilot piles it on even more, by allowing a tongue-in-cheek free advertisement in support of “McCain for President” to be published and paraded as a thoughtful “forum” piece by recently anointed “pundit,” Barbara Venezia.

Will similar pieces on Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama get equal time in the Pilot, or will that upset the Republican fat cats?

JAMSHED H. DASTUR lives in Newport Beach.