How’s your culture war going, America? Right against left! Rich against poor! White against (pick your color)! Smells like mean spirit, and the fight continues! So, who’s winning? Let’s take the local temperature.
Mmm, mmm, mmm! Unrepentant former SLO County supervisor candidate Michelle Marie Morrow is going to jail for 90 days followed by two years of felony probation. Why?
The write-in candidate who tried to capture Dawn Ortiz-Legg‘s 3rd District seat turned out to have lied about her address when filing her candidacy and voting. In other words, the registered Republican who was endorsed by the Republican Party of San Luis Obispo committed election fraud and perjury.
Interesting, amirite? The political party that’s been screaming about election fraud without a shred of evidence since their liar-in-thief “hero” Donald J. Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2016 endorsed a candidate that committed election fraud. Hypocrisy much? Slow clap to right wing SLO County District Attorney Dan Dow who didn’t let his MAGA bias stop his office from carrying out justice.
“I’ve seen better cabinets at IKEA!” “It’s not left or right! It’s right or wrong!” “They’re eating the checks. They’re eating the balances.” “Bad DOGE!” “Education not deportation!” “Nobody elected Elon.” “All in all, you’re just another prick with no wall.”
Wow! I wish I’d seen this much energy and chutzpa when it was time to campaign and vote against tRump.
SLO County turned out in force for the nationwide April 5 “Hands Off!” protests, one of the 1,400 rallies held across the U.S. with an estimated 3 million to 5.5 million participants. About 5,000 of those millions were in front of the SLO County Courthouse to make clear they are not OK with Trump and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk hijacking the federal government and its programs.
According to SLO County Democratic Party Chair Tom Fulks, who helped organize the local rally, the idea was to surround the courthouse to visually demonstrate “hands off our courts.”
“Our judiciary is the last standing branch of our government that’s able to put a check on the power of the executive, which, because the legislative branch, controlled by the Republicans, is just letting him do it,” Fulks said. “You know, they’re not checking his power, which is pretty much recognized as being unbridled with all of these executive orders that are just firing out of the White House.”
Trump’s not king, he’s just acting like one. The only thing standing between him and a total power grab are the courts. Since Trump’s stacked the deck on the U.S. Supreme Court and installed so many loyalists in lower courts, American democracy has never felt so imperiled. If we’re not in a constitutional crisis, we’re on the precipice. The question is what can we, you and me, do about it?
I’m all for citizens exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and peaceful assembly, but aside from making the participants feel like they’re doing something, anything, and aside from demonstrating to fellow citizens that there is resistance against Trusk, what did the “Hands Off!” protests accomplish? Maybe it’s too soon to tell. Maybe this is the start of a bigger movement. Maybe.
Did the Black Lives Matter protests change anything? One might argue they created the Blue Lives Matter backlash and the annihilation of the Defund the Police movement. Maybe they raised awareness and made it harder for the police to get away with naked brutality. Maybe they made it clear to local municipalities that they must hold local law enforcement accountable. The thing about street protests is it can take years and hindsight to determine if they moved the needle.
Now that Trump’s tariffs and mass layoffs are damaging the pocketbooks and 401k balances of regular Americans, not to mention threatening popular programs like Social Security and Medicare, the silent majority is finding its voice, and it’s mad as hell.
Capitalism is a cruel mistress. It’s a system disinterested in fairness or equity. Its singular goal is to amass wealth, even if that means collateral damage to an innocent party, in this case, Bang the Drum Brewery, which just discovered what it feels like to be discarded through an act of bureaucracy. The business has been evicted not by its building’s landlord, Laurel Creek LLC, but by the city of San Luis Obispo because Laurel Creek has failed to keep up with its renovation commitments, and now the SLO Community Development Department has declared the former warehouse unsafe for occupancy and “neglected” by the property owners.
You know, it’s one thing if a tenant doesn’t pay rent or refuses to maintain their business or creates a hazardous environment and is evicted. But what’s fair about a business that’s poured time and money into their location and serves a loyal and grateful cliental being kicked out on short notice because their deadbeat corporate overlords stopped renovating and maintaining their building, violating the conditional occupancy permits issued under the pretense that Laurel Creek would complete the promised work?
It’s not fair. Not one bit. Just like America. Sorry, world! Most of us don’t like what Trump is doing either! Δ
The Shredder is working on its “Insert Trump here” sign. Send your sign ideas to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Apr 10-20, 2025.
With all these tariffs/embargos, we’ll just end up like Cuba, isolated, poor, and creeping around on cars that barely run because parts aren’t available. A cottage industry will bloom with people in their garages with lathes trying to make new cam shafts for hondas and toyotas. Flat tires will be patched up with buckskin and if we still have public busses, you’ll just toss a dollar into an old cigar box next to the driver when you board. Great, just great. We’re totally screwed and best of luck trying get parts for any of the millions of products we deal with on a daily basis. Are we East Germany (GDR) now?
Thanks Shredder for covering the Truth!
Power only respects power
Remember the protests during Floyd, one side was left unmolested, the other was beaten and killed by police.
The difference was not the color of those skin.
Rewatch all the protests and see if u can spot why one protest movement was left alone, while the other protest movement was rolled up hard.
TOSHOGU:
Last I checked, during the BLM protests, America saw Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress kneel while wearing African Kente cloth, we saw the officers involved in George Floyd’s murder get prosecuted and sent to prison, and major corporations issue statements of solidarity with the BLM movement. How is this being “rolled up hard” or “beaten and killed by the police??”
If you are referring to BLM protestors run over and killed by White supremacists, those individuals were apprehended and prosecuted.
Id like to know what your point is, you’re rather hesitant to just come out and say it though I already know where you are going with it.
Are America’s many institutions racist? Absolutely. Rather than look at the state’s response as a racist response, look at it as a political response. A conservative government who, by it’s very nature is rightwing, responding to a leftwing movement composed of numerous people of color AND Caucasians.
During the Jan 6th occupation of Congress by the mobs of retired, Caucasian car and boat salesmen from that hotbed of rightwing extremism, Des Moines, Iowa or Topeka, Kansas, an actual protester was shot and killed by the police.
Further, you’re probably of an age where you remember Chicago Mayor Daly sending out his uniformed goons to crack the heads the protesters at the Democratic Convention in ’68 I believe. All the photos I see of that event show a bunch of long haired, Caucasian hippies running around covered in blood. The police were Caucasian as were the recipients of state violence. Where does this leave your lazy argument?
I’ll tell you, money. These political parties and their conventions are nothing but theatre and the hippies at that one in 68′ were just actors playing their part, because for the most part, that generation now sits in the lap of luxury, protected by wealth their PARENTS created by fighting and dying in WWII and creating the Post War Boom. Each one of those bleeding hippies were only able to raise hell at that convention because they didn’t have to work two jobs to survive or to pay back odious student loans.
It’s a different and auster world now. All caused in large part by the voting patterns and policies your generation engaged in and enacted. Do I need to go down the list, sir?
There’s people from your generation who dodged the draft and literally scooped ice cream but who, through the good fortune of being born at a particular time when the dollar actually had value and whose political representatives hadn’t yet destroyed it by printing it into obscurity (a type of generational bailout), were able to see their household wealth explode.
So basically, take your faux indignation and that of your well fed peers, and shove it. I’m not impressed. You know what would impress me? A robust social safety net funded by taxing people like you right into oblivion. Until then, it’s all B.S.
This is why FDR was reelected THREE TIMES. He actually saved America and improved people’s lives, all at the expense of his social class. Now, your generational buddy, Donald J. Trump, is closing it all down. That’s right, he’s your best friend. When I look at Trump, I don’t see a man, I see you.
What’s it really matter if social security and Medicare gets looted, you’re well insulated from the consequences. Which is the point. The value of everything you may have is based on my hard earned tax money. You are robbing me to state capitalized.
The best you can do is feign solidarity with this country’s expansive underclass by writing lame quips in small-town gazette’s like this one while chewing your steak or swilling your wine.
It’s the last hurrah of your generation, pulling yet again, another rabbit out of a hat but at its core is nothing more than trying to concentrate and protect your generation’s wealth. All at everyone else’s expense. The theft of the money used for Medicare and social security will be used and diverted to the private interests whose investments are tied up in real estate i.e banks and homeowners. This has nothing to do with the majority of people who don’t own property. How does this benefit any of us? We need Medicare. We need social security. But again, you people aren’t effected by the disappearance of these institutions. You are however effected by property values and in the end, aside from your egos, that’s your only concern. So pretty much, f… off.
How many times a day do you stand in front of the mirror and tell yourself just how well you’ve done? 10, 20, 50 times? I hate to break it to you, you didn’t do nothin.’ Your parents, my grandparents, did. They ate shoe leather or grass soup during the Great Depression. You people are nothin’ but trust fund babies who mismanaged what they created and what belonged to all Americans, so badly, people are resorting buying their groceries on installment plans.
Bravo, sir. Bravo. Well done, take a bow. It took a lot to destroy this country, but you did it (all in one generation ) and we owe you a debt of gratitude. We will no longer be harangued by social security checks. No longer will we suffer through the indignity of government paying for our medical care via Medicare. God bless you and Tiny Tim Cratchit too. Can you spare a farthing?
About the only thing your contemptible generation left us (aside from the destruction of our society and record setting divorce rates) is “Street fighting man” by the Stones or “Ohio” from Crosby Still Nash and Young.
Your entire generation is full of it and is responsible for what is happening. You people did this. Think about it while getting in your Tesla on your way to the golf course (if you can still walk).