Logical guidelines 

Looks like Darcia Stebbens is triumphant in her fight with the San Luis Obispo County Clerk-Recorder's Office over the total cost of the 2nd District recount in 2022.

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The quibble over about $5,000 that was remaining of a more than $50,000 bill landed both in small claims court last year and in a Superior Court hearing that ended in late December. In a recently issued ruling, Judge Rita Federman makes it sound like the county might actually owe Stebbens money!

Which is awesome for Stebbens—so I'm not sure why she hung up on New Times when called for comment. I'm shocked and appalled! But at least she picked up. She normally doesn't. That's progress!

Maybe it's all the shredding she's been through over the last two years, or perhaps it's all the "negative" coverage she's received for being an extremely vocal election denier. Either way, she's finally triumphant with one of the many little bones she had to pick with the county! If I was her, I'd be crowing.

It wasn't her "brilliant" legal arguments against the recount process, which she attempted to reargue in this court case over money, or her weirdly detailed dispute with whether county staffers actually put in overtime to work on the recount that won the day. Federman made a logical ruling.

She ruled that salaried employees don't get paid for overtime, whether they work it or not. Therefore, the county shouldn't be charging Stebbens for overtime.

See, logic.

It really is an amazing thing if you've got it. And maybe Michelle Morrow, who really wants to challenge Dawn Ortiz-Legg for 3rd District supervisor, is missing a little bit of it. The Grover Beach resident had been living in the 3rd District for less than 30 days when she filed paperwork to run as a write-in candidate against Ortiz-Legg.

But the SLO County Clerk-Recorder's Office said no dice, today. Maybe toMorrow (see what I did there?). She won't be eligible to run in the race until after Valentine's Day—aka Feb. 14. And she has to file paperwork, again, before Feb. 19.

I guess we'll see whether Ortiz-Legg gets a legal challenger in the primary election. So far, it's not looking promising for Morrow.

Can you believe you only have to live in a supervisorial district for 30 days before being eligible to run for office? That's wild. Also, did she move just so she could run?

I have so many questions for this Morrow, but she declined to speak to New Times, so they may never get answered. But Morrow declared her candidacy in a Facebook post, so at least it's Facebook official, even if it's not official official, you know?

"I was one of many who were considered to be recruited to run for District 3 San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors," she wrote on Jan. 28. "I was the one who stepped up to the plate, despite the fact that I'm busy, as I own and operate a business and produce a live, local event."

Looks like it might be a little late for that plate, judging from the residency requirements and the whole deadline thing (plus she needs to turn signatures in, too). But requirements are more like guidelines anyway, right?

For instance, what are the guidelines for getting kicked out of a town hall hosted by a congressional representative? Talking over (well, yelling, really) an elected official for five minutes? Because that's what it took for Arroyo Grande police to escort a pro-Palestinian protester out of U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal's (D-Santa Barbara) town hall on Jan. 22.

Even if protesting is "democracy in action" as Carbajal and fellow Dem. 4th District SLO County Supervisor Jimmy Paulding proudly called it at the beginning of that town hall, I guess we only tolerate a certain amount of disruption.

Carbajal disagreed with what those protesters wanted: him to demand a cease-fire in the Israel-Palestinian conflict and name what Israel is doing in Palestine a "genocide." And he wasn't telling them what they wanted to hear, so they told him he "lacked moral courage." Democracy in action.

"Hamas initiated and started this particular conflict by killing over 1,200 innocent civilians," he told New Times after the town hall, adding that Israel should start abiding by international law. If this same "reckless loss of life" continues, it could reach a point where he would push for a cease-fire.

Hamas did start it—violently. So I guess that means we're going to let Israel finish them off, even if it means continuing to recklessly kill Palestinian civilians. Carbajal's cool with a little illegal activity but didn't really say where his stop button was. He also said that he didn't believe it was genocide, pointing to the numbers.

The thing about genocides is as tolerance builds for the "reckless loss of life," so does the killing. As Carbajal puts it, 26,000 dead Palestinians isn't the same as the Holocaust. And it isn't. Not even close. But numbers don't define genocide.

The United Nations defines genocide as about intent. The intent to eradicate a population, something that's extremely hard to prove. So when is the call for revenge avenged?

It appears that most of the world's tolerance for avenging is greater than 26,000 Arabs—Palestinian Arabs. Would it be the same for Americans? Δ

The Shredder thinks revenge can be a dangerous excuse. Send angry rants to [email protected].