CULTURE WARRIOR-IN-CHIEF

The best explanation for it, I suppose, is seasonal mood disorder. 

How else to explain Inyo County Board of Supervisors Chair Jennifer Roeser being reasonably reasonable and competent the majority of the year, but heading off the rails every winter/early spring. 

On Tuesday, Inyo’s Culture Warrior in Chief, on behalf of unnamed constituents, pulled a consent agenda item regarding a request by a group to rent the entire Tinnemaha Creek campground for a full moon celebration in June. 

Roeser said emergency services personnel are concerned that the group, called Moontribe, will stretch county resources. The implication is that they’re a bunch of hippies who will irresponsibly set off a whole bunch of wildfires. And they’re gonna require ambulance services because of, you know, all the drugs they’ll be doing. 

Roeser also said that because of the big snow year, we really need to protect these Moonies from themselves, because they might get swept away in a flash flood!

And … psst. Say this to yourself in a whisper … some of these hippies might … psst … pair off in the woods. And they might not even be married. And they might … psst … fornicate!

Inyo County Counsel John-Carl Vallejo reminded Supervisors that county code already contains prohibitions regarding campfires outside of certain areas – so that’s already regulated. 

And campgrounds also have designated quiet hours, though why one would need to enforce quiet hours if a group had reserved the entire campground is beyond me. 

Deputy Director of Public Works John Pinckney said the group will be paying full price for all campsites ($600-700/night). And also said the Moontribe has proven to be good stewards in the past. 

Vallejo admonished that it’s important to treat all groups the same. 

Supes agreed that Pinckney would be charged with passing along their concerns to the Moontribe group. 

But I’m not even sure the above was the Roeser highlight from Tuesday. 

That came later during a presentation by Lauren Prehoda of the California Department of Transportation. 

Prehoda introduced Supes to the concept being floated in Sacramento of a “Road Charge” to augment/replace the state gasoline tax. 

The thinking being all those electric vehicles don’t buy gas, so they’re not participating in helping to fix/pay for the roads their vehicles drive on. 

So Prehoda said the state is trying to come up with formulas to address that inequality. 

Which freaked out poor Ms. Roeser. 

Because government is by definition bad and out to get her – even though she ran for office just so she could join one. 

Roeser said “it feels like we’re turning our paid for roads into toll roads.” 

She also thought it would be a whole lot simpler to even things up by jacking registration fees for electric vehicles.

I just laughed because when you look at the slides which were presented by Prehoda (see page 15), the Road Charge program would benefit gas-guzzling pickup trucks and treat the various driver groups the same. 

Further, when you look at the states which have actually adopted such programs (Oregon, Utah, Virginia), these are states which are fairly centrist, with Utah more right of center. 

But a kneejerk reaction is what you get, I suppose, when you’re running low on serotonin. 

I ran into the inimitable Jon Eisert this week, who told me a large group gathered at Chair 2 on Tuesday afternoon to make some Turns for Tony in honor of the late Tony Colasardo. We followed up with Andrea Colasardo afterwards. 

She wrote, “We are doing a fundraiser for the [Turns for] Tony Scholarship Fund until the 15th. [There’s a] GoFundMe on Facebook, and we’re also selling merchandise at the store, too. This Friday the 10th, Footloose will donate a percentage of its sales for anyone who shops. It is really gaining momentum and I’m pretty humbled by it all. I am the last person to ask anyone to donate anything but so many people truly care. We chose the date because it was on the 10th that we had that amazing torchlight run and it was something to celebrate! 

Volunteer Eastern Sierra dropped off a check for $1,000 today!! And our family is doing a 100% match until the 15th. 

A few additional odds and ends. 

First, I had one gadfly asking me how long Scott Marcellin was going to pull double-duty, working at Rollins Electric while also serving as an Inyo County Supervisor. 

Marcellin told me it’s gonna take about a year to finish off the commitments at Rollins before he can devote himself full-time to politics. 

I also spoke Mammoth Lakes Tourism Executive Director John Urdi to get an update on how MLT planned to handle the sales tax on TBID wrinkle covered in the paper last week. 

He said his Board decided the simplest and best way to do it will be to maintain the TBID at 1.5%. Businesses, however, will only be required to remit 1.38% to the Town moving forward, and can keep 0.12% of its collections to cover the tax liability. 

Urdi said the hit to MLT’s bottom line as a result will be about $230,000/year.

Hartley’s Super Bowl prediction …

Eagles are favored by 1.5 points. The Eagles look tough but I don’t think they have really played a great offense all year. The one thing that bothers me is the injuries to the KC WR corps. But when it comes down to it, I think the Chiefs will win this game because they have the Alien at QB in Patrick Mahomes. The Bucs were able to stifle him with their pass rush in the Super Bowl a couple years ago, but I think Reid will learn from that mistake and with 2 weeks to prepare he will get Mahomes opportunities to get rid of the ball quicker. I am rolling with the Alien Mahomes to pull it out. 

Finally, I’m driving the other day and new music plays on the radio from Peter Gabriel. And I haven’t heard new music from Peter Gabriel since last century. The song is called Panopticom, and I’m like hell, of course Peter Gabriel’s gonna send me runnign for the dictionary just to figure out what he’s talking about. 

Panopticon is defined as a circular prison with cells arranged around a central point, from which prisoners could be observed at all times.

Okay. Panopticom as a play on words. We’re all imprisoned by the internet and social media. Clever. And Gabriel’s voice sounds exactly the same. 

It all harkened back to a time when rockers would often infuse social commentary into their work. Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming … 

And then the next song that played was my current least favorite – Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift. 

When I mentioned this to my teen daughter, that Anti-Hero had replaced Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up as most annoying song of all time, she immediately texted me back an Anti-Hero lyric. 

“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.”

And that’s really the crux of it. The reason current music culture sucks is because they can’t sing about anything other than themselves.