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Off the Record (October 28, 2020)

AFTER A HALF-HOUR LOVE FEST last Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors agreed with State Senator Mike McGuire that they have no choice but to rubberstamp the $10.6 million from the state’s homelessness cash-stash to convert the Best Western Motel on Ukiah's Orchard Street to a permanent homeless facility for 50 or 60 people. McGuire said the Supes had to rubberstamp the project quickly or the money would go elsewhere. No questions arose about the high cost of the purchase, no mention of the cost of site prep; no alternatives considered. McGuire promised that he’d work with Mendo to develop “models” for operating these kinds of facilities (apparently Mendo has no idea) and that the state would continue to fund future support services for the facility, which just happens to be conveniently located next door to Camille Schraeder’s Community Services Empire Headquarters. 

AS THE PRESENTATION WOUND DOWN, Supervisor Ted Williams asked, “If we don’t approve this do we leave these people sleeping on the streets under bridges?”

PROJECT STAFFER Megan Van Zant replied: “That’s my assessment.”

YOU COULDN’T find a clearer admission that the County’s Homelessness Establishment (the 32-agency Continuum of Care) is another complete and utter failure. Here’s Official Mendo after decades of grant writing and meetings and planning and homeless person counts and consultant and they have no way to house people besides sitting around twiddling their well-paid thumbs in hope that the State will throw millions of dollars at them to provide $180k per person roofs over the heads of a small fraction of Mendo’s hundreds of marginal people. And they congratulate each other for their success. (Reminds me of that old joke about the relationship cat people have with their cats: On the one hand, the person feeds the cat. And in exchange the cat returns the favor and eats it.) Not only has the Continuum of Care done nothing but meet and spend years on homelessness plans that are required for more grants for themselves, but all the talk about second and third units, and housing elements, and homeless services, etc., has had literally zero impact on the people they’re supposed to help. But now they’re forced to take a perfectly good motel and convert it to housing for a few homeless people in Ukiah that’s not well-suited for it at a location which was only selected because it’s near the Schraeder community services offices. 

BEST WESTERN PURCHASE, by KC Meadows of the Ukiah Daily Journal: “Mendocino County has now decided to go ahead and buy the Best Western hotel on South Orchard Avenue to use it as transitional housing for the homeless. They will spend a little more than $10 million for it and the county will lose the property and TOT taxes the building used to bring in, as well as the 50 or so rooms for tourists. Why we are getting rid of tourism rooms at a time when the city of Ukiah is trying to lure another new hotel to town is beyond us.

We understand that the County took advantage of this situation as it got $9 million from the state for homeless housing which must be directed to refurbishing motels, hotels and apartment buildings. The money could not have been used to actually build some housing, which, ironically, would likely have been cheaper.

The other reason the County feels this particular motel is a good site is that it is next door to Redwood Community Services, which runs many of the county’s programs for the homeless and needy among us, but the idea that the homeless can simply walk across the parking lot for service at RCS is laughable. If you want services from RCS you need to fill out an application (on what computer we’re not sure) and submit it to them. We’re pretty sure RCS will not be inviting homeless from the Best Western motel to come on by for some coffee and advice.

Speaking of coffee, the Best Western site is also not anywhere near a place where these seriously low income people can shop or eat. No supermarkets, no soup kitchen, nothing.

We are also concerned that this housing plan brings together varied types of homeless, from families, to single men, people with serious medical conditions, seriously mentally ill and others. We think this is a recipe for problems and a plan that Dr. Robert Marbut in his advice to the county on homelessness recommended against. Mixing children into any shelter program with single adults “is very harmful to the future development of the children, and presents many unnecessary risks and liabilities to the service-providing agencies,” Marbut said.

Now that the county has decided to move forward with this project, we believe it must go public with a complete plan for operating this project, providing 24/7 security around it, how the residents will get the services they need and how they will protect the children living there.

And, perhaps it would be nice to know how they plan to replace the taxes they will lose in wiping this motel off the map.”

INTERESTING POINTS by one of our commenters: “The folks who first tried to paint Joe Biden as a doddering, addled, dementia-riddled incompetent are now trying to sell the idea that Biden is the head of a nefarious family of political gangsters deeply involved in Ukrainian corruption. The mind reels.

One another matter: The county’s purchase of the Best Western in Ukiah for unhoused citizens is a continuation of a trend since the 1980s of motels being converted to housing of some sort.

Almost all of the older motor court hotels that line State Street in Ukiah have been converted into permanent housing (I wouldn’t call them apartments).

The first ones I remember being converted was the Thunderbird and Marty’s Motel in the 1980s.

Now, a drive down State Street shows almost every old motor court type motel full of permanent residents.

The Woodlands Court, the Rose, the La Salle, the Travelers Inn, the Regency Inn, the Rancho Siesta, the National 8, the Royal Motel, part of the Discovery Inn, the Sunrise Inn, one right across from the BLM office on North State whose name I’ve forgotten, and a few others near the Forks such as the TopLak.

Everyone seems to have looked the other way as the lack of housing strained the community for years. Out of sight out of mind. Now that most of the old motels are full, there are few places for people without the means for a first/last/deposit to go.”

YES, there’s a county-wide housing shortage and, as the commenter points out, that shortage has been with us for years. Exacerbating it is the conversion of so many homes to tourist rentals. Much of the complaint about the Best Western buy arises from the term “homeless.” It’s become, to many, synonymous with a stereotypical free-range bum, psychotic, drug addicted when he isn’t drunk, or everything at once in one reeling, shopping cart package. But there are more and more people out there who have been put out there by unhappy circumstance, not sloth or career deadbeatism. At least some of the currently homeless have HUD vouchers and income (low) but still can’t find shelter. If they get Best Western priority over the nightmare people, the purchase, inflated price and all, won’t be the neighborhood wrecker lots of people assume it will be. 

THIS BEST WESTERN BOONDOGGLE was soon followed by the Sheriff who said that the state prisoners who are being off-loaded to County Jails are costing the county up to $7k per week for higher than budgeted medical support. 

Sheriff Kendall: “This morning we had 47 inmates that have been sentenced to state prison that are in the County Jail because the state is not accepting prisoners from us. That’s just the state prison sentences. We’ve got roughly another 30 or so that were released from state prison and are under post-release community supervision. We receive about $94 per inmate. That doesn’t cover the needs that we have, especially medical needs. We have one subject who has some serious medical needs. We get about $650 per week per inmate and it’s costing us almost $7,000 per week. Plus, the state prison inmates often require much more supervision than your standard county jail inmates. Further, the inmates who were recently released due to AB 109 and are now coming back to us for supervision also require much more supervision. Therefore we’ve been working very hard. We’ve met with Assemblyman Wood regarding this issue because I feel like the state is pushing their responsibilities back on us and not adequately funding it at this point. 

RESPONSE from Supervisors? On to the next subject.

MAYBE THE SUPES could have asked Senator McGuire to help make up the diff. But by the time the Sheriff made the his observation McGuire the Magnificent, Champion of the Down & Out, had logged out of the meeting: (Mark Scaramella)

I WROTE LAST WEEK: "The New Yorker has suspended writer and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin for exposing himself during a work Zoom call. As an admirer of Toobin's work, I find it hard to believe this was anything but inadvertent, an accident. A person of his standing is hardly likely to engage in this kind of low rent pervery. But a lot of the Gotcha reporting on the episode is positively jubilant, compelling Toobin to apologize in a statement to Vice News, explaining that he thought he had turned his Zoom camera off. Not surprised that the chickenbleep New Yorker has suspended him.”

TURNS OUT Toobin has now admitted that he was masturbating on camera but assumed no one could see him. Unbelievable that he'd do such a thing, but he did, and has now forever expanded the definition of multi-tasking. Still and all, I say Toobin's large talent moots what was a weird but not all that big a deal, esp. in this totally kinked-out country.

MEME OF THE WEEK: “I'm a little confused. Are we liberal, latte-drinking snowflakes or a violent raging mob? I need to know which role to dress for on November 4th.”

GLENN GREENWALD of The Intercept isn't the only one on the lib-left wondering about the mainstream media's “cone of silence” regarding Hunter Biden's and his pop's overseas business dealings. “Is there a single journalist willing to say with a straight face they believe the emails relating to the Bidens are either fabricated or otherwise fraudulently altered, but the Bidens just aren't saying so? There has to be some limits to your willingness to go to bat for them.” 

MY LATE BROTHER sat on Ukiah's Planning Commission. Ordinarily a mellow kinda dude, he'd become quite testy when I said stuff like, “Ukiah has planning? Show me the evidence.” He'd say all the un-planning happened before discerning persons like him assumed the reins. I suppose. My theory is that beginning in the early 1960s the town's money people withdrew from the civic caring that drove small town pride prior to World War Two. Hard to imagine now, but Ukiah, and even Willits, were once pretty, coherent little towns, as were towns of all sizes everywhere in the land. Then, The Fall. Today's elected people grew up in today's architectural squalor. They're used to it, think it's normal, and seem genuinely puzzled when someone says, “Jeezus, you'd think Ukiah would at least get some trees going on State Street!” Even the few visual saves in Ukiah were the work of rare, persistent persons of elementary old school consciousness like, for instance, the late Judy Pruden, who I think of fondly every time I go to Safeway. If it weren't for her agitation, that huge structure on South State would be a matching eyesore to the mammoth Rite Aid directly across the street, seemingly erected as an answer to the attempt by Safeway to spiff up the neighborhood. But thanks to Ms. P., often dismissed as a  mere busybody, that Ukiah Safeway is more or less consistent with traditional California mission architecture and a reminder that big doesn't have to be ugly. What things look like directly affect mental well-being hence, perhaps, the high incidence of mental illness in the county seat and, in the country, a link zillions of people have already made.

BUT HERE we go again. Does Ukiah need another gas station? Of course not, but another gas station is being installed on the site of the old Water Trough bar on South State, a kind of blasphemy given the years and vivid history of the old watering hole. That lot ought to be a memorial pocket park. But there it will soon be,  another filling station, a redundant multi-pump eyesore adjacent to a school and immediately next door to the old water wheel market. 

THE PAUL MCCARTHY SCHOLARSHIP

For those who have asked about contributing in Paul's memory a Paul McCarthy Scholarship Fund has been set up. Paul would be very proud of this.

You can donate to the Paul McCarthy Scholarship Fund here.

https://mendocino-club-cardinal-gear.company.site/Paul-McCarthy-Scholarship-p244244618

(Shane McCarthy)

I COUNT MY BLESSINGS: If I hadn't listened to NPR last Thursday morning I wouldn't have known that today is Kim Kardashian's birthday. Then my old friend Gordon Black, the ancient mariner of Mendo's quasi-public radio club, comes on to quaver in his fading bass, that he's been with KZYX from birth — its, not his — and by golly we should all get on board. 

RADIO, seems to me, especially of the NPR type, faces the same mega-prob as newspapers in paper form: the young don't get their information from newspapers or radio. They get what they need from the gizmo they carry around with them and undoubtedly already knew it was Kim's birthday. KZYX subscribers are on average about 60, at least, same as the newspaper demographic. How to attract the young? Like, uh, kinda, frankly, to be honest, uh, like slap 'em upside the head like you would a balky pinball machine?

THERE WAS A LGBTQIA-+ demo in Fort Bragg last weekend, and if an aged white hetero male rural newspaper editor might be indulged as he asks for a clarification, what do all these letters mean? (No pictures necessary, thank you all the same)  I think I get the first four, but what is Q, what is I, what is A, and for the goddess's sake what the hell does the plus sign represent? Excuse the impertinence but seriously, what's the certification process? Honor system, or some kind of clearinghouse where  a committee examines the applicant and places him/her in the appropriate category? How is fraud handled? Age limits?

WHENEVER this or that career officeholder pops into town or, these plague days, zooms in, as State Senator Mike ‘Little Mikey’ McGuire did to the Supervisor's meeting Tuesday, the Supes and or assembled libs, react as if it's a celestial visitation, and immediately assume the prone position. McGuire got salaamed by the Supes because he'd arranged the tax money for our county's 32 helping agencies to buy the Best Western motel on Orchard Street in Ukiah, conveniently just down the street from Camille Schraeder's headquarters where she and her husband spend over $20 million local tax dollars annually to do good in many unmonitored ways for the local underclass and their children. 

THE MOTEL will be converted to housing for the homeless after extensive remodeling by Mendocino County, with a promise from McGuire for more money to do it. The surrounding neighborhood of non-tax supported working people is opposed to the conversion of the Best Western but their opinions apparently don't count, and anyway weren't solicited.

IS IT HARD to imagine the reaction from Healdsburg if McGuire had arranged to buy a motel for the homeless in his preciously tidy little hometown? Or if he'd bought property for the homeless on the Westside of Ukiah? Or in the hills above Potter Valley where the Schraeders make their regal home, far, far from the homeless?

A READER WRITES: "One of the citizens around here caught me reading the AVA yesterday, asked me what I was reading, I said it's a political weekly that tells the truth. He asked me what that means and I quoted you: Stick a fork in us, we're done. He nodded and said, Yup. Later I was remembering Robert Penn Warren's ‘All The King's Men’ and some lines from The Kingfish who was asking his aide to dig up some dirt on his political opponent. His aide said something to the effect that the guy was cleaner than a laundered bedsheet, there's nothing to dig up. The Kingfish replied, and I can only paraphrase, ‘Hey dummy, we're conceived in sin and born in corruption. We go from the stink of the diddy to the stench of the shroud. There's ALWAYS something.’ Bukowski was right. The truth is a dog from hell.”

IF RBG had retired when Obama was president, as she should have done given her age and condition, ACB would not soon be a Supreme Court Justice. All the weeping and gnashing of teeth re ACB is Ginsburg's fault, which the forces of darkness merely took advantage of. If the Republicans Lite take power they should indeed pack the Supreme Court, but they won't, and the bad people will continue to kick sand in their faces. 

ENJOYED a visit from Sheriff Kendall last week. As any media slime will confirm, cops, if you can get them talking, have the best stories. Next best? Emergency room doctors. Sheriff Kendall, being a Mendo native whose roots go all the way back to when Boonville was called Kendall City, knows people in every area of Mendo's vastness, not only from being a home boy but from his days as a line deputy. Mention a name and the Sheriff is apt to rattle off the whole family tree complete with anecdotes about its various members. The only real question I had for him was, “Any militia groups in Mendo?” The Sheriff said that some proud boy types exiting prison where they've ganged up along ethnic lines simply as a survival strategy might briefly hook up with one or two other like-minded prison grads out here in the free world, but the distractions of liberation soon divert their attentions from disciplined ethnic nationalism. He said the dope business is highly organized these days, and that there are a million marijuana plants growing on the valley floor of the Covelo area alone. “It's true that a lot of outlaw growers have moved their operations from Southern Humboldt to Northeast Mendocino County,” added Kendall, remarking that both Humboldt's enforcement and licensing practices are much more effective than Mendo's. Sheriff Kendall has appealed to the Supervisors for more help in beating back outta control pot ops but, and this is the ava's opinion here, the Supes have responded by expanding the areas where marijuana can be legally grown. (!)

WE HAVE WATCHED from our dusty remove the flailing and fighting and dithering of Mendocino County’s “Measure B” committee, and feel grateful to have its example to “lead” us. We are appreciative of the “patient” reporting by Messrs. Macdonald and Scaramella, leaving us perpetually aghast that functional and accountable public servants have not done even the most basic work to counter the inadequacy of our tax-payer funded, so-called “services.” It is understandable that many outsiders view our slough of despond as fertile ground for illegal and immoral exploitation of our fragile natural resources and easily plunderable governance systems. The “Peoples Temple” indeed. — Betsy Cawn

NOTED THE FOLLOWING COMMENT FROM DeeLynn Carpenter: ”I remember 30 years ago where I, as City Clerk with the City of Fort Bragg, issued 100+ press passes in a 48 hour period for the Redwood Summer demonstrations in July 1990. I was in awe of how civil the press members were in submitting their qualifications and waiting in line for the passes. I am equally proud that we were able to offer a press room where both sides of the issue could have information tables so it was a one stop for the press before they attended the two separate rallies on different sites in the community.”

AND I REMEMBER how surprised I was at not only DeeLynn's efficient graciousness, but at how well she had everything organized at City Hall. That was quite a weekend, largest demo of any kind in county history. I still have the credential she gave me, and if I do say so myself the mighty ava's coverage beat hell outta everyone else's.

AT THE NAPA STATE HOSPITAL, a former medical director coined the term “Lake County Syndrome,” for the number of cases sent to the asylum with “co-occurring mental health and substance abuse” manifestations (not ever including natural enhancements of biologically-concurrent “cognitive impairment” from a variety of aging illness — compounding the medically diagnosable “mental” illnesses which, in any case must be proven to be “severe” in order to receive treatment — usually during an “involuntary hold” in a licensed psychiatric facility, which determines the fate of the individual based, we think, mostly on whether they are adequately categorizable in a DSM-defined mental health illness that is “billable”). 

— Betsy Cawn

AS HERB CAEN used to write, “Bumpersnicker” spotted in San Anselmo: “Senior voter not dead yet.”

PLEASE ask the governor to calm down, and while you're writing to him, ask him to appear less frequently on television. Talk about over-exposed. So here's Nanny Newsom with how to do Thanksgiving: “Must be held outside; Guests may use bathrm inside if sanitized (Like who does the certifying?); Masks on while not eating; Singing strongly discouraged (Group song? At Thanksgiving?) Max of two hours together; 6 feet mandated in all directions b/twn all at table & otherwise. 

PG&E is a privately-owned “public utility” that should have been publicly-owned at inception given our dependence on it, so here we are this weekend with much of NorCal going dark to spare PG&E's private shareholders liability if PG&E's haphazardly maintained lines spark off another killer fire. 

BORAT 2 is consistently funny even with his usual detours into gross vulgarity mixed in with the inspired stuff. Maria Bakalova, an heretofore unknown Bulgarian actress plucked from obscurity by Borat/Cohen, is wonderful as Borat's daughter in the funniest performance you'll ever see by an actress.

EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT the Borat 2 scene with Rudy Giuliani, a painfully memorable bit of grotesquerie that made me (and millions of others) wonder how Borat and his daughter penetrated Giuliani's inner sanctum, and will wonder indefinitely if Giuliani indeed hoped to penetrate Borat's "daughter," as he appeared poised to do as she posed as a bimbo reporter and they retreated together to a bedroom of the big shot's suite, Giuliani delivering an overly familiar dirty old man's pat to the actress's lower back. 

GIULIANI: “The Borat video is a complete fabrication. I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment. At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar.” 

COHEN: “I would say that if the President’s lawyer found what he did there appropriate behavior, then heaven knows what he’s done with other female journalists in hotel rooms. I just urge everyone to watch the movie. It is what it is. He did what he did. And make your own mind up. It was pretty clear to us.”

I'D SAY COHEN is more correct. I don't know about you boys but I've never had to lie down on a bed to tuck my shirt in, and do the tucking with both hands down to the lower-pills area of my anatomy.

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

 [1] It’s only fair that in The Greatest Nation on Earth that is being kept alive by fake money conjuring and ongoing institutionalized corruption that we should have our political parties joining along in all the fun.

The Greatest Nation on Earth teaches its young that it is the best and greatest of all things. Well, as is abundantly clear to anyone who actually cares to look, ineptitude and corruption is on that list as well. Serving as a Great City on the Hill and Shining Example to the World of how being privileged with a great land mass and great natural resources and people who built great factories and railroads from empty prairie lands and sand dunes along lakes is no guarantee of survival or prosperity when internal rot fully takes over. We shouldn’t have worried so much about those nasty Sputnik launchers. We should have been paying much greater attention to the decay from within. A decay of institutions in many forms and in personal conduct and character. We may not be the Titanic but we might be like the poor souls who realize that the plane they’re on is going down, the pilot can’t gain back control and likely doesn’t know what he’s doing anyway, and the solid nasty ground is getting ever closer in our uncontrolled descent.

The Bidens are a mess. They – and many others – are poster children for our times and our era.

[2] When you are standing atop the gallows with a noose around your neck the best you can hope for is that it is a new rope. 

Did you go along to get along your whole life?

“You’re the low information voter everyone is worried about.”

Are you OK with holding the world’s population hostage with the threat of being “bombed back to the middle ages” and pissed off about the Iranian hostage incident?

“You’re the low information voter everyone is worried about.”

Did you ever speak the phrase “creative destruction” in glowing terms?

“You’re the low information voter everyone is worried about.”

Do you believe your DNA is radically different to that of a Bonobo?

“You’re the low information voter everyone is worried about.”

Do you still use Facebook for any purpose”

Do you believe Oliver North is a noble and honorable purveyor of the truth?

Do you believe that Sarah Palin brought a valuable truth or insight into the United States political discussion?

Fifty six years after the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication do you still believe you have been told the truth about U.S. foreign policy?

Do you feel that Quantum Mechanics is B.S.?

no need to repeat the obvious

Luckily my name is not everyone, I am not worried.

Look!….. it’s mourning in America

[3] I remember posting here in 2016 that Hillary was going to win (I wasn’t happy about that), so my track record in elections isn’t good. All I know is that no matter who wins, we will not be happy with the near- and intermediate- term results.

Justice is just a human construct. The universe doesn’t care about justice, IMO. Stars explode and annihilate entire species without warning; space rocks slam into the Earth and dinosaurs die; dark energy pervades the universe such that it eventually suffers a heat death. That’s not justice.

So whatever happens in and after the election happens. Apparently there’s no logic nor fairness to it. Let’s discuss it after November 3rd.

In the meantime, buy food and other necessities and hope for the best.

[4] So long as half the country thinks that the Democratic Party provides a valid and valuable public service, Deep State actors who act on behalf of monied interests have the political cover they need. 

So, no worries for Hillary, Comey, Brennan, Clapper and their ilk, they stand straight and tall, real marines all of them, because in the estimation of the fools that vote status quo they are the best of the best of the best, patriots one and all, fighting for what’s just and right, in defense of Democracy and the Constitution of the United States of America.

What a joke. It’s hard to believe that so many people are so delusional, especially racial minorities – the most stalwart Democrat voters – who really think the Democrats act in the interest of the downtrodden when the opposite is true. How long will it take before these people see what’s right under their noses? 

I was just reading some of Orwell’s stuff on the nature of British society, and in certain passages he refers to monied interests and to permanent members of the governing bureaucracy and the military who he sez would rebel if real economic and democratic reforms were enacted, in other words the Deep State, such as it existed at the time. And what we’ve seen is that very same rebellion in the United States at the election of Donald Trump by that very same class of people that Orwell was talking about.

Why so? Not that Trump threatened to reform governing institutions, but rather he threatened existing economic and trade and investment arrangements, that is, he spoke in favor of the interests of the American working class, those formerly employed in that huge swathe of America that used to be home to vast industrial operations that have been moved to China and Mexico and other places to the great detriment of those millions of American workers.

Of course Trump also spoke in favor of America’s interest generally, something not done in polite and enlightened society where talk of national interest is regarded as retrograde, redolent of past times when gays and Blacks were persecuted and moms were under the thumb of abusive and authoritarian husbands. 

See, depictions as in Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet you see were made-for-TV propaganda designed to distract from the oppressive reality of everyday life. This is according to a certain set of academics and ideologues. 

But I was there and I saw up close when Dad had a job and Mom could depend on him and could stay home and take care of us. And there were many, many millions just like me. Were things better for most of us back then? You bet they were. Have things gone to shit since then? You bet they have. And the Democrats were NO less guilty in what took place than their political counterparts. 

[5] NOW, WHEN/IF BIDEN LOSES or has the election stolen, I would like to point out just a few of the reasons that it’s not my fault or Russia’s or Ralph Nader’s or the Green Party’s.

1) There is no evidence that Russia has had any influence over the 2020 (or 2016) U.S. election. (But please do send me hundreds of angry evidence-free denunciations of the supposed lunacy of saying so.) (I would much rather you blame me than Russia because I don’t have any nuclear weapons.)

2) The Green Party got a teeny tiny bit of the vote and probably gained Biden as many votes in Maine and places that have ranked choice voting as it cost him elsewhere, and is the most likely party to challenge any of Trump’s election-related crimes.

3) I supported Bernie.

4) I didn’t advise campaigning on a promise to keep fracking. I didn’t even pretend that campaign was a mistake driven by ignorance of polling rather than subservience to funders.

5) I didn’t declare “The Party c’est moi!” and run screaming from every popular position.

6) I live in a non-swing state.

7) The notion that I decided the election through my failure to push scheme #2 above aggressively enough is exposed by my utter inability to advance scheme #1.

8) I didn’t create the electoral college — I’m trying to abolish it.

9) I don’t run the corporate media outlets that bow before Trump — I’m trying to break them up and regulate them.

10) I didn’t tolerate Trump’s hateful instigation of violence and intimidation. I’ve been trying to get him impeached, removed, and prosecuted for it since before his first inauguration — but a certain political party preferred a bunch of dangerous lies about Russia and a Ukraine story that made their own guy look bad.

11) I didn’t lie about voting by mail, strip names off rolls, create long lines, or utilize unverifiable machines and scanners. That was your elected officials.

12) I didn’t kneel down and let Trump put a George W. Bush election thief on the Supreme Court. I proposed impeaching Trump for a legitimate offense from the long list of indisputable public outrages, and forcing the Senate to deal with it. Now, if you want to spend the next couple of weeks telling everyone for the 10 millionth time to vote for Biden, knock yourself out. I’ve had a job doing that for months.  

– David Swanson

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