‘Support the farmers!’ – Elon Musk (his post on X, January 8, 2024)
I tried to tune into the Elon Musk interview with Donald Trump on Monday but my phone turned purple, and the words ‘Unable to fetch Space’ filled my screen, along with an emoji of a monkey covering its ears.
Apparently, Trump and Musk broke the internet or something silly like that. In actuality, Elon posted this on his X account when listeners were blocked: “There appears to be a massive DDoS attack on X. Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.”
DDoS stands for ‘Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack’ and is a cybercrime in which the attacker floods a server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected services. In other words, too many people tried to listen all at once or someone purposely targeted the server. Who really knows?
I finally caught a few sound bites later that evening because I’m interested in Elon’s thoughts on how to fix our broken economy, end inflation and restore financial stability in this country.
“A lot of people just don’t understand where inflation comes from,” explains Musk. “Inflation comes from government overspending because the checks never bounce…which increases the money supply. And if the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services, that’s inflation.
“We need a government efficiency committee…and we need to live within our means. The interest payments on our national debt have now exceeded the defense budget…it’s over a trillion dollars.”
I bring this up because the local economy in Tehama County is struggling mightily. Despite this, multiple government entities want to pass more spending in the form of taxes onto our citizens.
Take Supervisor Matt Hansen’s idea in January to form a public safety tax initiative. He claimed that if the tax were to be placed on the ballot in November, it would generate over a million dollars for Tehama County each year. I think Mr. Hansen gave up on this idea because the public can see how bad the county is at managing its money.
The Corning Union Elementary School District is asking homeowners to continue paying on a bond for 30 more years (I believe) even though the Corning real estate market is heavily based on rental properties, which will be passed on in the form of increased rent.
Our Flood Control board is taxing landowners .29 cents per acre and the case – known as the Garst Case – is headed to Department 4 in Tehama County Superior Court at 1:30 p.m. on August 28.
Just yesterday, the Flood Control kicked the well ordinance ‘aka’ moratorium idea back to the Groundwater Commission. Those folks are tasked with adding even more regulation and financial burden onto landowners who might want to replace an existing well or drill a new one.
Here’s a quick newsflash for our elected officials who vote for salary and benefit increases to county administrators and department heads: Agriculture is standing on one, wobbly leg right now. The last thing farmers are doing is drilling new wells. Commodity prices have been trending down since the P-word in 2020.
Ag land has for sale signs all over Tehama County and across this state. Young, productive orchards in this county have been abandoned and left to die because Big Ag understands its bottom line isn’t being met. They have no family legacy or moral obligation to try and weather the storm.
And now for a real gut punch. Andersen and Sons, a family-run business in the quaint town of Vina for generations, is not even on life support. According to the Corning Chamber of Commerce, 320 of the employees laid off just before the busy harvest season live right here in Corning. They have rent to pay, home mortgages, school clothes to buy, car payments to make and food to put on their family table.
In the words of Elon Musk, support the farmers. Support those who create goods and services and keep our local economy moving. The City of Corning has a link to help those recently affected by the untimely events at the hulling and shelling plant in Vina. Please follow the link at: city-of-corning.10web.me. There is another link to access layoff services at: jobtrainingcenter.org. Friends and family of those who lost their jobs and read this newspaper can share these links and find the Andersen & Sons Intake Questionnaire so the Job Training Center can connect them with future employers.
Audience insights from the Trump, Musk conversation say 46 percent of the audience was female compared to 54 percent male. Out of a reported 94 million listeners, more than 70 percent were between 25 to 34 years of age. Less than one percent of listeners were older than 54.
I guess I belong to the one percent club. Let’s hope these young listeners are the future to government accountability, especially in times of economic uncertainty.
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