I get this one the other day …

Mr. Lunch,

Are you kidding me? With all the stuff going on in the world, or (how about our board of Supervisors) you waste paper on extraordinary amounts of nothing. 10% worthy. GET UP TO SPEED.!!! If you have an audience, we’re not kindergartners needing Dr. Suess [sic] warm fuzzies. Let us know what’s going on so we can have an opinion of relevance. News part of newspaper.

The message was sent to the website with a fake name and number and no return address. Which I find puzzling. What are you afraid of? Why not just call? Hell, some weeks I’ll agree with you. This is the Great Resignation/high cost-of-living/temperamental labor/burnt-out boss moment we find ourselves in. 

Dude (and of course it’s a dude), look at the masthead. We are not Mammoth Lakes Tourism. We do not have six people available to help replace every lightbulb. Nor do we have a consultant on-call to help research which bulbs we should be buying, nor do we have a social media person to post the lightbulb replacement on Instagram. 

But paradoxically, we have a lot of great contributors right now. Jack Benham? A 21st century writer of import. Mark my words. Even though we’ll all be dead by the time those rankings are made. 

Speaking of Sheriff races, the Mono County one appears to have been conceded. In response to a Sheet query asking about the status of his candidacy, Mammoth Police Chief Al Davis responded: 

“I am on the ticket. But I will not be actively campaigning. Decided to stay with my team and the community until December, 2023. I may be able to get some things done for all of everyone [sic]. But I can’t pull name off the ballot.” 

Translation: Chief Davis finally spoke to people outside of his immediate circle, and realized that when The Sheet made the prediction that his over/under vote total in the race should be set at 38%, we were being generous.

But honestly, good on him for figuring it out. 

I sat in on the joint Mammoth Council/Recreation Commission meeting last week, and was surprised, almost dumbfounded, when they got to discussing youth sports funding. 

The current allocation, said Recreation manager Stu Brown, is $36,800/year. $28,800 comes from the Town and $8,000 comes from Mono County.

Brown said the funding allocation had been static for at least a decade, and was hoping Council would increase the Town’s share to $35,000 in its next budget cycle. 

He said the youth sports program serves about 1,200 kids per year. 

What’s crazy to me is that some Councilmember didn’t jump in right away and say yes, we know we’ve had a record-breaking year in terms of Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) revenue and of course, we’ll commit to that. 

Instead, crickets. 

A simple inflation calculator easily found online shows $36,800 in 2012 is the equivalent of $45,500 today. And probably doesn’t adequately account for the even greater surge in inflation we’ve had through the first quarter of this year. 

And that number in 2012 was established post-bankruptcy scare when the Town was largely broke. 

And from Crocetti’s desk … regarding some research she did this week on women-owned businesses (all part of the National Women’s Month theme – something our letter writer quoted at the outset assuredly views as a warm fuzzy).

 Research shows that there are significantly more challenges for female business owners in comparison to male business owners. These challenges include social and cultural stigmas, family and child-rearing responsibilities, maternity needs, educational background disparities, and lack of career experience and community support.

“Women-owned small businesses”, known as WOSB’s (or in some cases, economically-disadvantaged women-owned small businesses known as EDWOSB), have become a specific designation used by American government agencies and industry associations to set aside specific programs to encourage and empower female business owners.  

A WOSB is defined as a company that is at least 51% owned, operated and controlled on a daily basis by one or more female American citizens.

Such benefits from being recognized as a WOSB/EDWOSB includes receiving special consideration in a U.S. government contract. 

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Small Business Administration’s WOSB Federal Contracting Program is designed to provide greater access to federal contracting opportunities for WOSBs and EDWOSB’s by helping federal agencies achieve their goal of awarding 5% of their federal contracting dollars to these entities. 

Under this program, federal contracting officers may set aside federal contracts (or orders) for WOSB’s/EDWOSB’s in industries in which the Small Business Administration determines WOSB’s are substantially underrepresented in federal procurement. 

The Small Business Administration has identified 646 six-digit industry codes out of the 1,023 within the North American Industry Classification System where WOSB’s are substantially underrepresented, meaning that federal contracting officers may award set-aside and sole source contracts to WOSB’s in these industries. 

Wikipedia states: “According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Federal government of the United States gave $25.4 billion in federal contracts to women-owned businesses in 2017, [and] this was five percent of the total budget in the fiscal year. This was up from 3.25 percent of contracts in fiscal year 2008.”

And from Hartley … Tax season is upon us. Every year I sit in amazement at all the money I paid in taxes despite trying to hide in retirement investments, etc. Then as soon as I invest outside a retirement account and make some money, they want that, too. I have a degree in mathematics and still am amused by how they figure this stuff out. Welllll …  this is an exemption. But not for you. Gimme some more taxes. Oh, we handed out trillions of dollars for stimulus … nah. Not you. You’ve been successful and make too much. How about you pay me some more taxes we can use to give to the lazy ones who don’t wanna work. Thanks. Oh, your company gave you a bonus? I WILL HAVE A 36% CHUNK OF THAT. Then, after all that I file my taxes and … yeah, we didn’t take enough so … gimme a few grand more. It’s absurd. 

And these yearly deposits by folks I know only made $8,000 last year but are getting $5,000 tax refunds. What are they getting refunded on? They don ‘t make any money to pay taxes. I am glad I make good money, but the system of rewarding losers at MY expense is pissing me off.

Seems like Hartley was channeling Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger, who said last month in more delicate terms:

“What makes capitalism work is the fact that if you’re an able-bodied young person, if you refuse to work, you suffer a fair amount of agony, and because of that agony, the whole economic system works,” he said, adding effective, prospering economies have traditionally imposed hardship on young people who don’t want to work.

“You take away that hardship and say ‘you can stay home and get more than if you come in to work,’ that’s quite disruptive to an economic system like ours,” Munger added. “The next time we do this, I don’t think we ought to be so liberal.”