Klickitat Jailhouse Blues
Living way outside the path of totality this time, I watched it on TV. Then had to get busy writing to my County Commissioners. The MAGAts are coming for them, and they need back up.
Fort Bend is not the only red county I’ve lived in that has ‘issues’. A little over a year ago I wrote about our Constitutional Sheriff Songer hiring his fellow Constitutional Sheriff, former GOP Senate and Gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp to mind the county jail. Well, the chickens have come home to roost so to speak, and the hen house is in really tough shape. The Commissioners had to call a special meeting, voted to Shut Down The Jail, and contract the jailing to the Northern Regional Correctional facility just across the Columbia in The Dalles. You know, the professionals. If you thought a rural county like Klickitat (population 23,000 or so) should be able to handle their law enforcement and holding facilities, you’d be wrong. Once Mr. Constitutional Sheriff Songer got a taste of national attention, I guess he couldn’t get enough. So here’s what got him more notice.
A year ago, a young Native American man going through fentanyl withdrawal was being held in the jail. No intake examination or medical screening. No medical treatment. No detox protocols. No mental health care. In a solitary cell with means for him to commit suicide. And so he did. Now his parents are suing. The only screening was a risk assessment by a corrections officer, who wrote that the man had no signs of mental health issues, was not acting strange or under the influence, not disoriented or confused, had never attempted suicide, no signs he was vulnerable. Yet other records show he was not fully conscious when he arrived, and his (available) county records showed past reports of attempted suicide. That’s ONE.
Then last fall, a woman who had been in the jail for two months (for a parole violation) ended up in the hospital in deteriorating condition, ”covered in bugs, potentially septic and smelled ‘like dead rotting flesh’ according to an on-scene officer”. She was treated and has since been released. If you dare, you can find more here, but it’s a tough read. You know these guys hate it when public tv and radio get on their case. And like all good MAGAts, Songer and Culp are blaming the State of Washington for their mess. That’s TWO.
Add to all this a great big bill from the hospital for treating people from the jail who are left to fester, and the Commissioners also have a budget crunch added to the tale of woe. That’s THREE STRIKES, you’re out. So good on them for doing the right thing and proposing to contract out to professionals who can deal with the prisoners humanely. But the blowback from the Sheriff, his posse, armed wanna be LEOs and the red hat crowd is huge. They are overflowing Commission meetings, snagging up all the spots on the zoom links, and scaring the bejeezus out of the rest of us citizens like the commissioners who are just trying to do a good job for the county and all of its citizens.
Damn, I was hoping for a rapture today. But they are still here.
Goldendale: where common sense goes to die.
btw, Wapato is a better place.
1I’ll wager that my local batshit crazy MAGAot politicians are more MAGAotty than yours, they’ve probably been at it much longer, and being deep in S TX they just have to be crazier.
Any of y’all still thinking that the Latino vote is sewed up for the Democrats are due for a very rude awakening if you don’t wake the F up.
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And for some continuing good news, DJT stock continues it’s cratering. DJT was almost into the $35 range earlier today in Pre-Market trading.
It’s apparently getting another slight dead cat bounce and is in the very low $37 range.
Still has a ridiculous market cap of just over $5 Billion, giving Komrade Donnei about $3B of paper yet to burn. Lots of MAGAots will be losing their asses too.
[now: Market Cap 5,081,160,670]
Nasdaq Listed
$37.17 -3.42 (-8.43%)
CLOSED AT APR 8, 2024 4:00 PM ET
$37.10 -0.07 (-0.19%)
Bid: $37.11 x 1
Ask: $37.24 x 20
Volume: 63,245
DJT Historical NOCP
5D 1M 3M 6M 1Y
Trade Date Nasdaq Closing Price
04/08/2024 $37.17
04/05/2024 $40.59
04/04/2024 $46.15
04/03/2024 $48.81
04/02/2024 $51.6
04/01/2024 $48.66
03/28/2024 $61.96
03/27/2024 $66.22
03/26/2024 $57.99
03/25/2024 $49.95
.
Somebody should do a ‘Biden’ startup shell company, and watch its stock blast by the DJT loser.
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2Yesterdays eclipse was cool, was just a few miles out of the band of full totality, but it still got very dark.
Thanks, Fran. This is exactly the kind of story (official malfeasance) that is in danger of sliding under the radar without robust, local news/journalism to catch it. We need to find a way to continuously fund local newshounds to keep the politicians honest–and to keep the citizenry safe.
Also, Thanks, Sandridge. I look to you for the latest on the Orange Defendant’s crashing stock prices.
3BarbinDC @3, Tks. And speaking of “NewsHounds”, y’all should follow the good peeps over at the NewsHounds website.
It’s one of the oldest political and media based websites in existence.
It goes back decades, was about the first political website that I visited.
And Ellen is still the prime mover.
Have a look:
NewsHounds
We watch Fox so you don’t have to!
http://www.newshounds.us
“About the News Hounds:
Like many projects, this one started out as something else. In early 2004, eight citizens from different backgrounds and locations around the USA teamed up via MoveOn.org and the internet (thank you, Al Gore!) to volunteer our services for OUTFOXED, a documentary film by Robert Greenwald regarding Fox News Channel. For approximately three months, each of us watched FNC conscientiously for five or more hours a week and posted our findings regarding Fox’s self-proclaimed mission of fair and balanced reporting.
Appalled by our results, we, who would not meet in person until months later, banded together in cyberspace in concern and outrage over the failure of American media, and Fox News in particular, to relate the news properly. Rather than serve as the public’s eyes and ears, Fox and other media conglomerates have become echo chambers for the rich and powerful with whom they have become all too cozy. This blog is an attempt to counter that alarming condition. We believe that a viable democracy depends upon viable media. We invite you to join us in our efforts here and elsewhere to make a difference in the future of our country.
NewsHound Ellen, the only original member of the pack, has now taken over as editor and chief bottle washer. In addition to blogging for Newshounds, her work has also been published by CrooksAndLiars.com and AddictingInfo.org. She has a journalism degree from NYU.
NewsHound Priscilla joined NewsHounds after retiring from another profession. She brings to the blog a special interest in cultural and religious issues.
NewsHound Brian has a special interest in Fox’s so-called business shows.”
4Highly recommend this article that I just read, perhaps the best take on the whole situation yet:
White Rural Rage: The Secret Political Force Shaping America’s Future
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/4/8/2234090/-White-Rural-Rage-The-Secret-Political-Force-Shaping-America-s-Future
5Regular NASDAQ trading opens and DJT sinks in heavy volume [also with a lot of small trades, probably desperate MAGAots…].
It went down to 35.799 briefly.
Common Stock (DJT)
Nasdaq Listed
$36.48 -0.69 (-1.86%)
Bid: $36.45 x 1700 Ask: $36.54 x 1
Volume: 1,932,715
APR 9, 2024 10:27 AM ET
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/djt
6Sounds like the biggest criminals are on the wrong side of the bars.
7The link below gives up to the second movement on DJT stock including after hours trading. Basically flat today and a little down after hours. Just treading water right now. I read about 12% of stocks sold to investors betting it will drop. Duh.
https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+media+stocks+now&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
8Sandridge @ 5
I have my own views about white rural rage, but it has produced some very interesting pushback. I cannot find a long thumbsucker by a college prof from Maine who used lots of survey data, but here’s a lead-in, with links:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/white-rural-rage-criticism/677967/
A long anecdote:
I used to work at The Des Moines Register, which meant listening to the weird economic ideas of farmers. One year, it must have been 1983, we drove through Canada on our way to visit family in Boston and stayed at a B&B farm near Stratford (so we could take in the Shakespeare).
The farm was delightful. I spent some time hanging over the fence watching the hogs (no confinement on this farm) and talking farm economics. 1983 was a tough year for farmers.
After some time, I observed to the farmer, a young man in (I surmise) his mid-30s: “You know, my job involves listening to farmers about economics, and you are the first one I’ve ever encountered who made a lick of sense.”
And he said, “Besides the farm, I teach economics at Western Ontario Agricultural College.” The same school and job that Harvard recruited John Kenneth Galbraith from, although Galbraith had scathing things to say about the school in his memoirs.
People always surprise me.
9Harry Eagar @9, Down here it’s mostly ranching, although there’s quite a lot of sorghum and it’s the ‘peanut capital’.
They’re almost all raving RWNJs.
But I jes luvs to put out the links to the US Ag Dept ‘Agricultural Subsidies’ pages for our area when ‘interacting’ with them.
Those pages give names, addresses, and dollar amounts of the government handouts that those hypocrites are scarfing down. Dollars paid by everybody else in the country.
Millions of dollars in government subsidies in just one South Texas county. It shuts them up quick.
Before I started looking at the Ag subsidy pages, I always wondered how my neighbors could always have brand new pickup trucks*, and their wives be bragging about the latest Caribbean cruises that they took.
Then I figured it out, it’s gubmint tax subsidy money, ‘donated’ by the rest of us.. Nice scam if you can swing it.
* More Ford F-150, 250, 350s and huge Chevy, Dodge pickups per acre than you can imagine.
10Forgot that there’s quite a bit of cotton grown too.
11Y’all can look up your own local area US Government Agricultural Subsidies here, using many different parameters to search with :
https://farm.ewg.org/
12An example of one of the biggest local ag subsidy hogs in my county.
This one classification subsidy below was raked in by one recipient, from one program in 2020, almost a million bucks.
Others came from the following programs for 2020, 2021. :
“Coronavirus Food Assistance Program – Round 1 397 $726,417
2 Livestock Forage Disaster Program 266 $689,010
3 Price Loss Coverage Program (PLC) 168 $475,529
4 Coronavirus Food Assistance Program – Round 2 65 $402,789
5 Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP) 2 $10,951 ” programs.
One recipient :
132020 $0 $0 $904,705 $904,705
2021 $0 $0 $0 $0
Total $0 $0 $904,705 $904,705
Counties where payments were made from County Subsidy Payments 1995-2021
X County, Texas $904,705.00
Total $904,705
Gotta go pick up the gandkids, but I may have more to say about RWR later. Meantime, DJT down nearly another 10%.
14Thanks, Sandridge, for the “NewsHounds” suggestion. Maybe I can stand FOX better at second-hand, because I find them unbearable to watch–but it’s still important to have some idea what the right-wing is being fed by FOX.
15I remember when Maga Culp was running for governor. At the time he was the “police chief” of a one horse, one cop town and, as I recall, a high school dropout. You’d have to be some kind of stupid to think you had a chance against Jay Inslee.
16I wish I could find that thumbsucker from the Maine professor. Shorter him: It’s not rage but devotion to a sense of place.
The sense of place is real enough. as you’ll find out when tiny school districts are forced to consolidate. My favorite example comes from Iowa around 1980.
The towns of Truro, New Virginia and St. Charles had to consolidate the school district. The new school was settled in Truro, but no way were New Virginia and St. Charles kids going to play football for Truro High.
So they settled on the ONLY thing they had in common: Interstate 35 High School.
I kid you not.
But sense of place does not explain why the rural ignoranti chose one political party.
Karl Marx was wrong about most things, but he got one right: rural idiocy.
Cherry on top: I-35 High has only one distinguished alum. dull-witted governor Kim Reynolds.
17Watching DJT stock drop every day is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. There’s damned little to laugh at right now with our country’s political struggles, but that makes me smile every day.
18