8 p.m. Monday Editor’s note: Late this afternoon District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye suddenly canceled the improtu unofficial meeting he organized to take place 9:30 a.m. tomorrow on the Shasta County Administration Center steps. In posts created by Silence DoGood and Benjamin Nowain, both addressed Crye’s meeting in their recent posts. To recap, first Crye canceled tomorrow’s official board meeting for lack of enough agenda items, then he called for his own special meeting on the county building’s steps, and now he’s canceled it. Stay tuned for any changes.
So there’s an option to sign up and be notified of Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting agendas and such. The most recent update reported that the meeting scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday, October 8, 2024, has been canceled by the board chair (Kevin Wayne Crye) due to “a lack of agenda items.”
Here is our barely-elected (by 90 votes) and barely-not-recalled (by 50 votes) current Shasta County Board of Supervisors chair, Kevin Crye. Maybe tell your friends to register to vote.
The Board of Supervisors meeting calendar online doesn’t reflect the cancellation, so some regular attendees might just assume the meeting is still on. But here’s a quick screen grab so you guys know I’m not just speculating.
See? I try not to just make stuff up. Reverge Anselmo’s bank accounts can be “marked safe” from me.
Now please try to imagine my surprise to find out that megalomaniac Kevin Wayne Crye decided to engage in a stream of consciousness on his most recent Sunday KCNR radio show and talk all about how he’s going to be there anyway, on the steps in front of 1450 Court Street to talk to constituents.
I surmise that he and his fellow board members, with their clear history of utmost respect for the Brown Act and fully aware of the significant enforcement history given past violations, intend to conduct a Patrick Jones-style outdoor meeting similar to the one that Jones held back in 2022 while the Moty recall was ongoing.
January 18, 2022: a surge of recall supporters swarm outside 1450 Court Street in lieu of the typical in-person government meeting.
Put simply, we can all expect a taste of desperately-melting GOP chaos this coming Tuesday. If you are a regular meeting attendee—WEAR A BODY CAMERA. Heck, have a backup recording device.
I don’t mean to sound like a doomsayer, but the extremists will likely be out in force, and they will be desperate. No doubt you’ve heard them parroting stories about an imaginary “Mesa Pattern of Fraud.”
So let’s talk Tina Peters. You know that “Mesa Pattern of Fraud?” That was her progeny. She was the Mesa County, Colorado, clerk serving a similar role to our Shasta County Clerk/Registrar of Voters.
She took a badge, snuck a civilian named Conan Hayes into the elections office after she managed to stop the office surveillance cameras during his visit to the office. She used another employee’s badge to cover Hayes’ tracks. Hayes was given access to a Dominion Voting machine, and their efforts resulted in leaked information, which even before it was shared by Mike Lindell was interestingly published on Telegram by CodeMonkeyZ—that’s Ron Watkins, who is also one of the key tech players who brought you 8chan and QAnon. I don’t want to get into a whole tangent about exactly who Ron Watkins is, there are already some pretty wild documentaries you can/should watch about his mark on this country and the world, but suffice to say that chain of events should be about as comforting as finding a tracking device on your car with your banking credentials scribbled on the surface of the box.
This is Ron Watkins, who is actually in this political race for a seat in Congress in Arizona. He has claimed somewhat unconvincingly that he’s not Q, doesn’t know who Q is…remember the sign held by ‘QAnon Shaman’ Jacob Chansley at the January 6th insurrection? Remember what it said? “QAnon sent me.” Let’s hope the votes don’t send Watkins anywhere.
Tina Peters has been chasing fame and prominence in the election-denying Trump circles for years. She’s enjoyed traveling on private jets along with other expenses provided by Mike Lindell. (I suppose his check to Shasta County got lost in the mail.)
Douglas Frank showed up as a character witness to ask for a lenient sentence and plug his conspiracies on a televised platform. When Tina Peters’ lawyer started calling character witnesses, he first called up Pastor Dave Bryan, who seriously suggested that the judge remand her to Dave Bryan’s custody so he could take her to—get this—Northern California. Gee, I wonder what she would have gotten up to around here?
In case you think I’m being paranoid, here’s that same “Pastor Dave Bryan” of the Church of Glad Tidings, resident of Live Oak, CA and the man who tried to convince a judge to let him adopt Tina Peters into our neck of the woods. He can be seen talking behind a podium, cheering in the wake of the infamous “blood in the streets” speech, and showing off his connections to the Rapozas and their “State of Jefferson” movement back in 2016.
Tina Peters bemoaned the idea of a prison-issue mattress that didn’t have the comforting medical benefits of her current magnetic mattress she’s slept on for years. The judge listened and then let her have it—called her a charlatan, pointed out that she’d do everything she did all over again, that she was the most defiant person and probation would do nothing to rehabilitate her. He ultimately handed down a sentence of 9 years in prison, including an initial 6 months in the Mesa jail. Tina Peters is 69 years old now, so her path back to that magnetic mattress is going to rely heavily on her ability to find humility and navigate a prison environment despite her recent years spent developing habits that are all too familiar to those who have noticed the climate of Shasta County politics.
Like Shasta County, Mesa County is a decidedly red county in a blue state. These are places where, if you’re a Democrat, you tend to downplay or hide your political opinions in favor of a peaceful life—and when you see people defy this practice, they immediately get harassed. More recently, even being a Republican who doesn’t fall in lock-step with the MAGA extremists will get you misleadingly characterized on what you stand for, called a “RINO” or “Republican In Name Only,” subjected to intense and invasive intimidation tactics, or all three. The Mary Rickerts and Stephanie Bridgetts and Tim Garmans of our region can probably relate—they’re some of the few Republicans around here brave enough to choose human decency and fairness over the MAGA insanity.
So when members of the Mesa County community stood up and engaged the familiar practice of avoiding politically-charged commentary that would give the court of public opinion opportunities to character-assassinate them, simply to say that Tina Peters had broken the law and hurt the community and deserved punishment, Tina Peters described their statements as “vile.” The judge who sentenced her, along with the judge’s clerk, have already received threats.
Peters made her non-magnetic bed, and now this country is watching what happens when you think the consequences don’t apply as long as “MAGA” and Jesus are invoked. So what do Mike Lindell, Douglas Frank, QAnon, Dominion Voting Systems, and Tina Peters’ recent sentencing have to do with the Shasta County local political MAGA screechers?
Those with even a modicum of self-preservation instinct must be realizing … they could be next. And in true MAGA fashion, I think they’ll say absolutely nothing about Tina Peters, learn zero lessons from her story, and double down. Maybe they’ll ramp up the content creation and this coming Tuesday could be a chance to end up in Red, White, and Blueprint 2: MAGA Boogaloo. Maybe Laura Hobbs will seek an infinite public comment so that she doesn’t have to pass out speeches to random volunteers and she can brag all about how she’s fighting the “good fight” in her now-lost appeal. She’s now trying to un-lose the appeal with a petition to review the dismissal. That will make the fourth time she’s been told “no thanks” by the public and the authorities. Maybe we need to get a county-wide friendly pool going called “When Will Laura Hobbs Finally Either Run Out Of Money Or Get Sick of Embarrassing Herself?”
Those of you who pay attention like I do may have noticed that a local named Steven King has been outspoken about how certain people in this community are “going to prison.” King is by no means perfect, but the way things are going, he may be on to something. Now imagine what that is doing to the psyche of those around here who have paralleled Tina Peters’ trajectory up until now.
As comforting as it would be for karma to finally kick in and stop this chaos in its tracks, my warning to all of you is this: don’t become the reason one of these local MAGA lunatics gets sentenced to prison. Most of these people really are just bluster, but justice cannot heal all wounds. So if you are thinking of popping by the charade of a “Tuesday meeting” and listening as Kevin Wayne Crye incessantly bloviates about his own perceived greatness, do me this great favor and be careful.
Don’t pack heat, pack cameras. Keep those cameras charged, running, and recording unobstructed. Don’t go directly to your vehicle after you leave the “meeting.” Don’t let your exasperation make you reckless. Don’t be too scared to speak up, just be a bit extra vigilant until we see how our local MAGA circles handle the news from Mesa, Colorado, that I doubt they will actually talk about, but we know they’ve certainly been hearing about.
The idea that actions have consequences even if you’re MAGA now has a face, and that face is Tina Peters.
Either (1) they’ll realize they don’t want to risk a prison sentence of their very own and act accordingly, or (2) they will think themselves even more untouchable and impervious to consequences than Tina Peters seemed to think as she turned her own sentencing into a spectacle eerily reminiscent of a Tuesday meeting, and go deeper into chaos.
We’ll just have to see what happens.
