PASS THE DUTCHIE
With Klusmire on vacation (in Chicago in February – just take a moment to let that sink in), someone around here has gotta stare at their navel and make some pithy observations. And that someone is me!
I was listening to the Tom Petty channel yesterday on SiriusXM and they had this interview clip from Mike Campbell, who was Petty’s longtime guitarist and frequent collaborator.
Campbell was a senior in high school. And he gets called to the school office.
He doesn’t know why he’s being called to the school office, but being called to the school office is rarely a good sign.
When he gets there, it turns out they’ve summoned the wrong Mike Campbell.
Because the other Mike Campbell was failing out, and this Mike Campbell was a straight A student.
So the school counselor asks Campbell what his plans are post-graduation.
And Campbell says, well, my parents recently divorced and I’m helping my mom pay the bills and I just figured I’d maybe get a job, pump gas, enroll at the local community college …
No, no says the counselor. We’re gonna figure this out.
She begins dialing.
She finds him a student loan through one program, and a scholarship from another program (since his father was serving in the Air Force). And after a final call, she tells Mike Campbell he’ll be attending the University of Florida the next fall.
How can I ever thank you? he asks.
Follow your dreams, she replies.
He arrives on campus in Gainesville and sometime that fall, attends a Mudcrutch concert. That was Petty’s first band before the Heartbreakers. Soon thereafter, he learns Mudcrutch needs a new guitarist. He and Petty bond over a mutual fondness for Chuck Berry records.
He joins the band and they spend the next half century making music together.
All thanks to a simple twist of fate.
Same day. Later. In the car (again). Listening to Nina Totenberg on NPR. Totenberg covers the Supreme Court, and she’s really good at distilling complex legal issues.
So she lays out a tax foreclosure case (bear with me – it’s pretty interesting).
“At issue is whether a county can seize a homeowner’s residence for unpaid property taxes and sell the house at auction for less than what the homeowners would get if they put their home on the market themselves.”
As Totenberg explained, in 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that when a government entity forecloses on a home, it has to give whatever leftover money there is to the homeowner after the back taxes are collected.
In the case this week, plaintiffs tried to go one step further, arguing that the government should have to collect “fair market value” on its foreclosure sales.
This week’s case was brought by the estate of a family where the owner had died in 2012.
They just decided to live there for the next decade, without settling the estate or paying a $2,000 delinquent tax bill.
So the government forecloses on the place and sells it for $76,000.
Two years later, it sells again for $194,000.
The family whines that the government should’ve sold the property for $194,000 in the first place and that’s what they’re entitled to.
How convenient. You don’t pay your taxes and the government steps in to act as your realtor and then you get a guarantee of fair value.
If this is how far we’re willing to stoop in order to coddle the stoopid, we are confirmed as a nation of blithering idiots.
U-S-A! U-S-A!
Totenberg ends her piece with a quote from Assistant Solicitor General Frederick Liu.
He said if the court sides with the tax deadbeats, “It would spell the end of [foreclosure] tax sales in America. And at the end of the day, who does it hurt? It hurts other taxpayers who are actually paying their taxes because the shortfall has to come from real taxpayers.”
From SFGate:
The La Onda music festival in Napa was canceled this week.
“The event, slated to take place on May 30 and 31, was organized by the team behind another major Napa festival, BottleRock. This would have been the third year of the festival, and in 2024, the event drew 70,000 people to Napa.”
General admission tickets began at $218.
As the story observes, “It’s not a good sign for the broader music festival ecosystem, which has fallen on tough times post-pandemic due to lagging ticket sales and rising costs.”
This led me to call Rich Sherman of Omega Events, which owns Mammoth’s Bluesapalooza and Festival of Beers. What’s the status of this year’s 30th anniversary event, given the Woodsite has gone away?
Currently, the Bluesapalooza website simply states, “New Home Awaits in 2026.”
That new home, says Sherman, will be at Canyon Lodge, if the show goes on, which Sherman thinks it will. He’s had meetings with Mammoth Lakes Tourism, the Town and MMSA this week to hammer out a deal.
Which will involve some sort of public support.
Sherman says the festival has lost money the last few years. And that the past two years overall have been some of the softest he’s seen in his career (in terms of disposable income for events).
While the big pop artists are doing very well and commanding top prices, indie festivals have suffered.
The High Sierra Music Festival, formerly held in Quincy, has moved to Grass Valley after being off more than 40% last year.
The Telluride Blues Festival, said Sherman, was down 25% in 2025.
Last year, the Town of Mammoth and Mammoth Lakes Tourism gave Bluesapalooza a total of $50,000 in support. $25,000 of that was from the $350,000 pot for special event funding with another $25,000 from MLT to support marketing efforts.
The Town is expected to announce its 2026 special event funding awards tomorrow.
“We’re a little behind schedule” this year, acknowledged Sherman, “but I think it’ll come together soon.”
So why is Jose Garcia praying?
It would seem as though he’s praying for the A-Frame building at the City Park, which has served as Bishop’s Visitor Center for many years, to go away.
The latest. At Bishop’s Council meeting on Monday, Council voted to appoint a two-member committee (Bam. Decisive!) to speak to/negotiate/snuggle with the Chamber of Commerce.
In a perfect world, the two parties would gather ‘round a hookah, mend their differences, and the Chamber would ultimately move back into a restored building at the Park, restoring equilibrium to a broad array of visiting tchotke buyers and triple XL souvenir t-shirt enthusiasts.
Alas, the Chamber is in the process of moving into its new digs on Main Street near the brewery, and as we all know, once you’ve moved once, it would take an Act of God to voluntarily move again.
Then again, with Lynette McIntosh praying for you, one can never discount Acts of God.
Clearly, the committee (which will consist of Mayor Stephen Muchovej and Councilmember Karen Schwartz) was apppointed to placate the A-Framers.
Not to be confused with the local Save the Gophers society out at Millpond.
They would be the A-Holes.
Garcia prayed before abstaining from the vote. He was undoubtedly praying that his fellow councilmembers would just end the torture and close the book on the A-Frame’s illustrious 55-year history.
For comparison, the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was built from the ground up starting in 1163.
New York, London, Paris, Bishop.
And finally, the “Heard on the Street” column in the Feb. 19 issue of the Wall Street Journal tackled the proposed Billionaire Tax initiative which will likely make the November ballot in California.
The initiative proposes a one-time 5% levy on the wealth of any resident California billionaire.
The column outlines the argument for the tax, which is that “billionaires have ways to lower their tax bills that aren’t available to most Americans. A common strategy is to avoid salaries, which are heavily taxed.”
Instead, get paid in shares, and then borrow money against those shares to fund one’s lifestyle. “The interest on the debt is much lower than a capital gains tax would be.”
“One working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the effective tax rate for the U.S.’s 400 wealthiest individuals is 24% – compared with 45% for top labor income earners.”
On the flip side, “the ultra rich can simply leave if they don’t like where a state’s tax policies are headed.” And “one-time” taxes very rarely remain one-time taxes.
