Super Tuesday 

While Hillary and The Donald were sweeping the floor with their rivals in New York on their slow Bataan Death March to the White House, here in SLO County the wheels of government were turning their wise little turns, guided by our duly elected leaders.

At the SLO City Council meeting, a super brilliant idea put forth by the Neighborhood Wellness/Community Civility group to create a “keg registration” system was sadly squelched. For God’s sake, council people! How in the hell are we going to continue to micromanage and vilify college students if we can’t track their every movement? We need to go further still and register every beer can, wine cooler, or handle of cheap vodka sold to those binge-drinking reprobates!

Sadly, the SLO Police Department noted the proposed system was unnecessary since Alcohol Beverage Control already requires stores selling kegs to collect info. I guess the logical next step—tattooed numbers on students’ arms—isn’t going to happen. I would suggest some sort of symbol sewn onto college students’ clothing, but we can already tell who’s a student by the guys’ backwards baseball caps and gals’ pink short-shorts and Ugg boots. We’re watching you, punks!

The council had more important fish to fry than beer-battered college kids. They had the status quo to protect! Led by “leader” Vice Mayor Dan “Mary Lou Retton” Carpenter, the SLO City Council had the good sense to do a back flip with a half twist and jettison the idea of “democracy vouchers,” a public financing option and path to get money out of politics. 

First Carpenter voted to have city staff look into the idea, but after hearing from “concerned citizens” (read big campaign donors who want to buy elections), he flipped positions and totally stuck the landing! If you actually make changes to the current campaign finance system, the next thing you know you might have regular citizens without big money connections thinking they have some sort of God-given right to run for public office. 

That’s an outrage! 

I don’t know what in the hell farmer, Citizens Congress director, and 24th District congressional candidate William Ostrander was thinking when he came up with the cockamamie plan to publicly fund local elections. I mean, yes, he did mention that currently just “192 people fund all our candidates.” What’s wrong with that, Bill? We certainly wouldn’t want the entire SLO Town population to have a way to further participate in democracy, would we? Some of these residents are drunk students, for God’s sake, and others might be against the wishes of the 192 “real” citizens with money who get to decide who can run and who can’t by holding the purse strings to local elections.

Yep, the last thing we’d want is to make democracy work for the dumb people, especially if it will cost the dumb people tax money. We’d much rather let the 192 Richie Riches decide who gets to run things around here.

Meanwhile over at the county Board of Supervisors meeting, the evil triad of tax-and-spend supes—3rd District Supervisor Adam Hill, 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson, and 1st District Supervisor Frank Mecham—voted to authorize the SLO Council of Governments (SLOCOG) to figure out how to spend $225 million they don’t yet have. These big spenders want to add another half-cent sales tax to our already sky-high taxes so they can generate that $225 million to spend like drunken sailors on liquor and whores! Hmm? What’s that? They want to spend it on transportation and road projects? Even worse! Who wants good roads? Buy four-wheel drives and get on with your lives! Freedom!

Luckily, the sensible supes—4th District Supervisor Lynn Compton and 5th District Supervisor Debbie Arnold—at least tried to stop the madness, pointing out that instead of more taxes we need to hold state government responsible for squandering transportation funds on dumb stuff like high-speed rail! We don’t need to be self-reliant! The state should fix our roads.

Lynn and Deb get it. Why would we want SLO County to join the 20 most populous counties in the state, counties in which 80 percent of the population lives, as another “self-help” county with its own dedicated transportation funding? I mean it’s not like SLO County depends on tourism or anything. 

Driving on nice roads is overrated anyway. Have you been on the new overpass on Los Osos Valley Road? Personally, I miss the impacted traffic and long waits. That was my “me” time. Filling potholes, improving infrastructure—it all sounds like a socialist plot!

No, as private citizens, the best thing we can do is turn on the TV, heat up our processed food-like products, and not think about encroaching oligarchy, crumbling infrastructure, our poisoned environment, our under-funded public school system, and our endless wars.

Just distract yourself with the presidential race between the rich blowhard from New York and the extra trustworthy career politician, neither of whom are running to protect a corrupt system they both benefit from, right? Right?

The Shredder will fight the power after he finds the remote control. Send ideas and comments to [email protected].