Nobody loses it worse than when they can’t get what they want and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Just look at the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting on Oct. 31, where Santa Ynez Valley residents threw a collective conniption over the county’s agreement regarding Camp 4, the land owned by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians that was placed into fee to trust by the feds. The board listened to hours of public comment on the matter from plenty of supporters of the agreement, tribal members, and many angry valley residents.
Some commenters pointed to campaign contributions to supervisors Das Williams and Larry Lavagnino as a conflict of interest, but there was also plenty of anger directed at Joan Hartmann. Happy Halloween, supes!
The Sun reported last week that Hartmann’s failed opponent from last year’s election, Karen Jones, was considering a recall petition against Hartmann if she voted for the Camp 4 agreement. Well, Karen’s son, Alex Jones (not be confused with Alex “they’re turning the freakin’ frogs gay” Jones of Infowars), didn’t mince words like his momma. He straight-up threatened Hartmann with recall to her face.
If the sight of Alex pointing his finger at Hartmann wasn’t enough, Karen gave comment right after her boy. That’s when she said the supervisors were committing an act of racial discrimination against people like her. Why should the Chumash be treated differently than her, a “sovereign born citizen” of the valley, because of their “DNA”?
Anybody else floored by the irony of a large group of landowning, mostly white people complaining that a Native American tribe is stealing their land? I guess the irony’s lost on Karen “let them build huts” Jones and her ilk.
To be fair, not everyone was that extreme. Some just thought the county should get more money from the Chumash in the agreement. Well, as I said last week, the Chumash offered the county $1 million a year for 10 years when they first approached the county about Camp 4 in 2013.
How did the county respond? Silence. The U.S. Congress had to order Santa Barbara County to sit down with the Chumash. It sure seems like the anti-Chumash thinking was present in county government, and that’s what led to this “bad deal.”
No one freaking out about the agreement now, whether filing lawsuits or restraining orders or pointing fingers and threatening supervisors, can do anything about it. It’s out of their control; it’s a federal matter now. The county squandered its chance to do anything about it, and that’s why the agreement passed.
They can keep trying though, because even the feds have checks on power. Just ask, you guessed it, President Donald Trump, whose house of cards is beginning to tumble after Robert Mueller delivered the first indictments as special council in charge of the Trump/Russia investigation. Mueller indicted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, and Trump is not happy.
Trump tweeted on Oct. 30, calling reports on the matter “fake news” as usual, and made clear that, “there is NO COLLUSION!”
Well, the investigation is out of Trump’s control, there’s nothing he can do about it, and maybe that’s exactly what has him so mad.
The Canary knows too much. Send your thoughts to [email protected].
