Outgoing District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones and election denying acolytes at Tuesday’s meeting.
Against the wishes of the angry mob of election deniers they’ve nurtured on a diet of unadulterated ivermectin paste for the past two years, Shasta County Supervisors Patrick Jones, Kevin Crye and Chris Kelstrom gingerly voted to declare the 2024 election results certified at Tuesday’s board meeting.
Not that they necessarily agree with that, or had anything to do with it, or would recommend it to their friends and relatives.
We’re not certifying the results, Crye assured the board majority’s irritable fanbase at least twice. We’re declaring that someone else certified the results. We barely even know them, we think the results are bogus, just like you.
Then don’t certify them! someone yelled.
We’re not! Crye insisted. Someone else certified them.
Serious grumbles from the crowd.
Visions of pitchforks and torches danced in Crye’s head.
Supervisors Tim Garman and Mary Rickert, who have no such concerns because they’re not insane, happily voted to declare the results certified. R-7 passed 5-0, and the great Shasta County election fiasco of 2024 was finally over!
Rickert, who lost her District 3 seat to Corkey Harmon, had a year that would have floored many of us—plus she ran a competitive political campaign at the same time. Shasta County is going to miss her skill set; they don’t make public servants like Mary Rickert anymore. Third district residents can thank Supervisor Rickert for her service Thursday, Dec. 19 at 5:30 p.m., the final board meeting of the year.
At Tuesday’s board meeting Rickert looked more relaxed than she has in months, and why shouldn’t she? Just one more meeting in the madhouse the board chambers has become during the reign of Los Tres Pendejos.
District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert takes the mic during her second-to-the last board meeting to recognize Community Mental Health Worker Kyle Daniels (left), as Employee of the Month.
Did someone say madhouse? Consider the gimmick the tyrannical trio came up with to slide one past the Frankenstein monster of election fraudsters they’ve created. Suppose they claimed they were voting to declare the election results certified “under duress”? What then?
Here we almost had a teachable moment as the supervisors pondered the reasons they might be under duress. They conferred with County Counsel Joe Larmour, who didn’t think “under duress” was a legal term. He suggested Crye could just write “under duress” at the bottom of the page, sign it and see what happens.
Someone, I’m not sure if it was a supervisor, or the deniers speaking in unison, said we’ve done all these things and the election system is worse now than ever! For a split second, a frown crossed Crye’s face, as if he suddenly realized he was a prisoner in a cult of Patrick Jones’ making.
Then it was gone, and with it the teaching moment.
District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye thinking of pitchforks and torches.
Perhaps realizing the phone call was coming from inside the house, District 2 Supervisor Tim Garman beamed with pleasure when he realized he was under no duress whatsoever. Garman’s District 2 got redrawn, placing his residence inside District 5, so he’s on the way out too, and seems the better for it. In Garman’s next-to-last supervisor’s report, he spoke of meeting with Public Health Office Dr. James Mu, who warned Garman about the danger nitrous oxide poses to today’s youth.
It’s true but whippet culture is nothing new. Back in the ’70s, the kids used to go to the grocery store, load up the cart with aerosol whipped cream cans, suck the nitrous oxide off the top as they drove around the store, abandon the cart and get the heck out of there.
Youth of today: Don’t do this. With the price of whipped cream nowadays, a cart full of cans adds up to a serious felony. Plus, overdosing can cause neurological damage, per Dr. Mu.
But we digress. We haven’t forgotten that Garman voted to fire former Public Health Officer Dr. Susan Ramstrom after displacing Leonard Moty in the March 2022 recall election. It’s nice that you turned Tim, but it was a wee bit late lad.
So the thing is, big fella, I’m a journalist. Move, there’s a story right behind you.
In case you haven’t noticed, we’re changing gears a little bit here at A News Café.
For four years straight, A News Café publisher Doni Chamberlain has covered the Shasta County Board of Supervisors, ever since our world turned upside down when the COVID-19 pandemic came to town. For the past year, Chamberlain and comments moderator Barbara Rice have doubled down on board coverage. Rice has submitted epic board reports that chronicled every single thing that happened during every meeting.
Last month, Chamberlain was assaulted by a deputy while trying to cover a news event unfolding in the board chambers.
Last week she was voted Best of the North State’s top columnist/reporter of 2024.
Those two things are related. Having the honor bestowed upon her by the corporate newspaper that fired her 17 years ago made the award even sweeter. Well, maybe bitter-sweeter. There’s still the matter of Chamberlain’s missing columns from back in the day, a 10-year body of work that the RS scrubbed from its archives. We haven’t forgotten that, either.
Anyway, we — R.V. Scheide — will be handling the board chores for the time being. “We” isn’t one of those fancy transgender pronouns, it’s the infamous “editorial we” preferred by certain newspaper columnists, me and my proverbial tapeworm. We have been taking the politics a little too seriously, which is understandable considering the fascism thing and all but it’s time to somehow move on in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory.
There is some hope out there. Hat tip to the reader who reminded me Amy Siskind is back with a new The Weekly List called “The Return.” Item 1 on her most recent list informs us that “A POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found that 87% of Trump supporters were very or somewhat worried about voter fraud before the election. After he won, that number dropped to just 36%.”
WTH?! Suppose election denial is wearing off now that their guy won?
Now all we have to do is wait for it to trickle down to Shasta County.
Good luck with that.
Give him credit, Supervisor Patrick Jones is going down fighting.
There’s no question our election-denial cult worships District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones as their dear leader. What happens when Jones walks away from the board at the end of the year is an open question. Will Crye be willing to take the role of lead fraudster? Will incoming board members Allen Long, Corkey Harmon and Matt Plummer put up with such crap? Believe it or not, it seems unlikely. We may have to cancel the sobriquet Los Tres Pendejos if these three guys turn out not to be election denying freaks.
But Tuesday, Jones was on election denial like a dog on your pant leg, sponsoring two measures, R-5 and R-6, calling for letters to be written to the U.S. Dept. of Justice requesting investigations into issues related to time stamps on the audit log from the March 5 Primary and the overspray issues in the November general election.
We’ve learned not to pay attention to what the election deniers say because they make stuff up out of thin air. Their treatment of freshly appointed ROV Tom Toller is so abysmal we almost forgot Crye plucked Toller out of retirement to take Joanna Francescut’s rightful place as the heir to Cathy Darling Allen’s throne. Some throne! The MAGA board damned near killed Darling Allen, and they’re working hard to kill Toller, who, to his credit, is standing in the breach and defending his elections crew with valor.
ROV Tom Toller bring it.
At one point, it appeared County Counsel advised Toller to rephrase his statement because he was accusing the board majority of a crime. We’re not certain, but North State Breakdown’s Benjamin Nowain found an election code that indicates not declaring that the vote has been legally certified with the Secretary of State is a crime. Which might explain why Jones, Crye and Kelstrom suddenly voted for R-7, the declaration that the election had been certified, “under duress.”
Is reality setting in? Jones stumbled when one of the cult members mentioned Trump’s pick for U.S. Attorney General won’t be sworn in till February or March, long after Jones has left the board. If Jones sent the letter now, the Biden administration would surely turn the request down, since it’s well known that President Joe Biden keeps a close eye on Shasta County current events.
Could Jones make a motion to send the letter in the future? Send two letters, someone said helpfully. That may have been what the board decided, we were pretty bleary-eyed at this point, and the transcription didn’t come out so hot.
Shasta County Elections Commissioner Patty Plumb, crosstalk fan.
We can’t go on like this. Stacking R-6, R-7 and R-8 together meant the same group of 20 or so election deniers spoke three times for two minutes each time in a mind-numbing mélange of misinformation and mendacity, with Shasta County Election Commissioner Patty Plumb yelling “Right!” in encouragement for every speaker. Apparently, crosstalk is legal in New California State, the secessionist twilight zone where Plumb parks her flying saucer.
The rest of the meeting offered yet more evidence that Jones, Crye and Kelstrom can’t get anything done. Kelstrom, who’s slotted to be board chair in 2025, was looking for a win and thought he had one lined up with R-3, a proposal to pony up $100,000 to aid the City of Redding’s effort to bring United Airlines service to Denver to the Redding Regional Airport. Kelstrom’s deep baritone pitch for the donation was actually quite persuasive, until his supposed buddy Jones butt in.
“These are kinds of things that give me heartburn,” Jones began, and just like that, the proposal was torpedoed, with everybody agreeing with Jones that we can hardly be sending $100,000 to an airline when we can’t even keep our own people safe.
This is where we remind you that Jones ran in 2020 promising to build a new jail during his first term and solve Shasta County’s perpetual crime problem. Promises not kept.
Kelstrom was very much not digging it, giving childhood-friend Jones the stink-eye. He really needed that win.
District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom gives his buddy Jones some neck.
It gets worse with R-4. Keeping with the tourism theme, Support Services announced the winner of its search for a Tourism, Marketing and Branding firm for Shasta County. Some 18 proposals were subjected to a rigorous scoring system which obviously required a lot of work by county staff and the organizations submitting the proposals. The Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce came out on top with a score of 83.8; the Shasta County Chamber of Commerce, whose founding director Nigel Skeet is a close friend and promotional colleague of Crye’s, placed fourth with a score of 68.3.
If you’ve been following this issue, you know what happened next.
For months, people have been complaining that the proposal to search for a Tourism, Marketing and Branding firm was simply a ploy by Crye to hire his good friend and business associate Skeet. Fourth out of 18 is pretty good, but its not first. The nod went to the Greater Redding Chamber of Commerce. Except it didn’t.
“I’m going to say I want to put this on hold,” Crye said. So the board voted to call for brand new proposals next year.
Poof! Just like that, all that work by staff and vendors up in smoke.
Nope, we can’t go on like this. Change is coming, guaranteed.
