Off the Record (February 8, 2023)

DORA BRILEY: Adventist Health is closing its women’s health office in Ukiah. A staffer told me at my visit earlier this month. There goes another preventative health care venue and having a choice of where to go. They will refer everyone to the Care For Her unit at the local clinic. Getting an appointment anywhere these days in a timely fashion is next to impossible and getting worse.

THERE ARE MILLIONS out there who fully expect any day now to be fending off roving bands of starving predators. This savvy on-line comment puts the unsupported fears that the collapse of the USA is imminent into proper perspective. “Repeating again, and again, and yet again that the sky is falling and the US is about to collapse, when, in fact, the sky never falls grows dull. How about just acknowledging that the US is a nation in decline, that has been declining for a long time, and continues to? Nothing is going to collapse tomorrow, or next week, or next year, but things will gradually continue to get worse, in a myriad of ways. Isn’t that a more sensible take on the state of things in the US right now?” (Yes.)

MIKE GENIELLA’S timely update last week on the new County Courthouse's slow but sure creep toward a brand new eyesore for Ukiah in the form of an indefensible new County Courthouse points out that this looming architectural crime is designed for our nine judges only, when the existing County Courthouse is perfectly — well, maybe imperfectly — serviceable for the simple task of processing the local working class into county and state prisons. Are you saying, you commie bastard, that justice is entirely a matter of social class? You don't have to be a commie to have figured that out. 

ANYWAY, no surprise that there's absolute silence from the Black Robes on the new County Courthouse. They're all for it although it will destroy what's left of Ukiah's depleted downtown, and cause innumerable logistical problems for the offices remaining in the old Courthouse, offices that include the DA. They will have to hump the public’s business up and down Perkins in all kinds of weather. A new Courthouse that leaves out all the ancillary business associated with the courts is… Well, only in Mendo. (The judges speak only through Ms. Turner of Marin, their court administrator.) Any attempt to communicate directly with their majesties is swatted back in one’s face as an “ex parte” attempt to talk to them. Funny, though, how on those rare occasions any of them actually have to run for election for their life sinecure, they're all, “Hey! Great to see you. Call me any time.”

SARAH KENNEDY OWEN: It is probably not a coincidence that Judge Ann Moorman is an advisor for the Judicial Committee of California, the one that decided that Ukiah was in desperate need of a new courthouse. The word is that the old courthouse is “dangerous,” but the only justification for that slur is that the prisoners have to enter and exit on the street, thus exposing the public to a view of their so-called criminal faces. However, as far as I know, there have been no escapes or attacks due to this only “danger.” It does sound pretty badly planned to build a super duper expensive new courthouse with no offices for the DA. What is up with that? Or are they waiting to add that on to the already bloated expense account?

THOSE “He Gets Us” ads that promoted Jesus Christ shown during the Niner's game Sunday will also be shown during the Super Bowl. They're funded by anonymous donors acting through a nonprofit linked to an array of fascist causes, as a useful confirming report by CNN's Tom Foreman informed us. Not that I dare speak for JC, but I doubt He'd approve of the Super Bowl, especially its licentious half-time show featuring half naked women mimicking sexual rhythms. It’s also doubtful Jesus would approve much about decadent modern life, but there are lots of wealthy swine who think they've got a ticket to ride.

RUSSIA'S WAR on Ukraine is almost a year old. As a pessimist, I thought it would have escalated beyond the two adversaries by now, but on it goes in a unique stalemate, with Ukraine holding off the invaders and putting the lie to the American dupes' claim that Ukraine isn't really a country but a natural part of Russia, as Ukraine holds off Putin's czarist fantasies, which are only slightly more fanciful than the bumbling Biden administration's apparent fantasy that somehow Ukraine will defeat the Russians on the battlefield to force them into a total withdrawal. Meanwhile, billions in arms and aid are sent to Ukraine while USA! USA! crumbles every which way, and not so much as a hint of an end plan from Biden's handlers, the president himself being obviously non compos. 

SUPERVISOR MULHEREN ASKS (facebook post): “Do you use the County YouTube page to watch meetings?”

“Goldie Locks” replied: “Absolutely! Every time I'm bored enough to pluck out my own eyes.”

FRANK HARTZELL WONDERS: It has been almost 2 years since I have been able to access Mendocino County court records online. They worked for like one month. when the new system was launched. I have worked over and over with the county, their tech support and the company that they hired to do this. I am informed that about 20 percent of people cannot access the online court public records system because of some bug that won’t work with my computer. Which is a MacBook Air. I have tried 5 different browsers, emptying caches, nothing works. I have missed countless stories for this. The publisher of the Mendocino Voice and other people I know can get in. What happens to me is I look things up and when I go to buy the documents (none are free to look at anymore) I cannot buy anything. This means I look ONLY at page one of all court files. Plus the awesome old file index that used to be online is no longer available. I would like to sue the county to get access. I don’t want any money, although this has cost me lots but I want it to work for me and everybody equally. I have tried 3 different credit cards, set up new email addresses, nothing works. Have others had this problem who would want to join in?

NORTHWESTERN PACIFIC TRAINS WERE DELAYED some hours north of this city Monday night and Tuesday owing to the heavy wind and rain storm. Wire communication between Willits and Eureka was cut off by the storm and Eureka was forced to resort to the use of the wireless to re-establish communication with the bay cities. A landslide at Scotia, twenty miles south of Eureka, was attributed to the earthquake of Monday morning. (Ukiah Republican Press, January 1923)

TOM WODETSKI WRITES: I asked Visit Mendocino County: How many tourists visit the Mendocino Coast every year? And got this reply:

Hi Tom, 

Our averages show roughly 900,000 visitors to the coast annually with an additional 600,000 to the inland/Anderson Valley.

Travis Scott, Executive Director, Visit Mendocino County

I then asked Travis if locals—STRs (short term rentals, i.e., vacation rentals) bookings are down this year because there is now an oversupply, and he answered:

Hi Tom, 

When looking at my AirDNA reporting it looks like there are on average about 60-70 more listings per month available now over last year. What we are reading the last 6ish months is that STRs are generally down as a lodging class. Consumers have reported that they are not as interested in STRs and are trending back to more traditional lodging to avoid the restrictions from STR platforms, property owners, neighbors, and municipalities. 

Travis Scott, Executive Director, Visit Mendocino County

MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: Around 900,000 people visit the Coast every year? And another 600,000 visit inland? Sounds pretty high. But then again, Mendo says they take in about $8.5 million in Transient Occupancy taxes each year (now). Which is supposed to be 10% of the total tourism bed charges (not including meals and drinks, etc.) Which translates to about $85 million in total taxable bed tax revenues. Which means $85 million divided by 1.5 million = about $55 per person. Which might be in the ballpark. But it’s still hard to believe that 900,000 people visit the coast each year. That would average 70,000 per month (higher in the summer/tourist season) or maybe 100,000 per month during the peak tourist season. If each person (or family?) stays three days, at say 2 room days per month (30 days) that means 50,000 room days divided by 30 = upwards of 2,000 rooms being occupied. 

AL SHARPTON'S EULOGY Wednesday in Memphis for the police murder of Tyre Nichols was quite moving, the old shakedown artist at his best. But the murder of a harmless, non-thug young guy raises questions about how urban police departments go about their daily business of policing neighborhoods dominated by violently estranged black people, adrift in a crumbling society that leaves lots of people scrambling for all the cool stuff they see other people enjoying.

THE MEMPHIS COPS who beat Nichols to death were a specialized unit called the Scorpions, and you can be sure the Scorpions had been knocking the crappola outta people since their inception, the implicit instruction given to them by department supervisors being, “Goddamit, get out there and do what you have to be to keep these punks from taking over. They're outta hand. The mayor and the city council are on my ass to do something about street crime.”

ALL CITIES have versions of the Scorpions, because when violent push comes to violent shove, large, violent men are required to deal with equivalently violent people. San Francisco has a unit like the Scorpions, so does Oakland, although neither city is likely to admit it. As it unravels, late stage capitalism is more and more dependent on overt violence to protect itself, correct?

SAN FRANCISCO'S VERSION of Memphis's Scorpions used to be called the Tac Squad, maybe thirty to forty large, badged psychos who truly relished beating people up, wielding hardwood fungo-like clubs to do it. Why, they almost converted me into a long fly ball several times when I was part of peaceful (mostly) demonstrations in Baghdad by the Bay. Men, women, elderly, handicapped demonstrators — didn't matter. If you didn't move fast you got clubbed, and often not even arrested. I saw an obvious tourist — suit and tie, camera around his neck — get it one night out in front of the posh Mark Hopkins Hotel when he came outside to watch the mayhem. Frisco paid a lotta claims for the excesses of the Tac Squad, which undoubtedly still exists under some harmless euphemism like “Community Harmony Unit.”

A RETIRED SF policeman told me that he'd been invited to join the Tac Squad. “I turned them down. I didn't want to drive around all night with a bunch of fat guys beating people up.”

ESTHER MOBELY: In case you hadn’t heard, the wine industry is having a tough time attracting younger drinkers. In North Bay Business Journal, Jeff Quackenbush reports on two instances in which wine companies have successfully bucked this trend. One examples is Wente Vineyards in Livermore, which has expanded its customer base beyond just the boomer generation by changing its marketing strategy. Another wine counterfeiting operation has been brought down, reports Suzanne Mustacich in Wine Spectator. Law enforcement discovered more than 40,000 fake bottles of wines such as Penfolds and Chateau Lafite Rothschild in warehouses in China’s Fujian province.

MIKE GENIELLA lays out the widespread puzzlement over DA Eyster's mystifying inertia with police misconduct cases. With the connivance of Judge Moorman, the DA lets Ukiah rogue cop Murray slide on charges that would normally warrant state prison time. Following that rancid bit of legal chicanery, Eyster is now sitting on two more cop misconduct charges, both of them he said, she said matters which, even given his apparent love for badged bad boys, the DA could simply and plausibly dismiss because both lack evidence.

IT WOULD TAKE the bravest Mendocino County Grand Jury ever, to haul the DA in for a candid WTF? session, so that's not going to happen. The two women vics (alleged) will probably wind up suing Willits and Ukiah, which could probably get them each a quick half-mil or so if they went with outside lawyers. Both towns would probably settle rather than slug it out in court, which they've always done previously.

THIS IS WHERE we miss the Santa Rosa Press Democrat of yesteryear, circa 1990, well before telephones ate the international brain. The old PD could not be ignored by Mendo's authorities, who lived in fear of it and, for that matter, the rest of the outside media. The PD enjoyed total market penetration in Mendocino County, and local authorities tremble at being caught out by it. Today, you have, ahem, the Boonville weekly with fer shure wide circulation in the county, and you have Mendofever, Redheaded Blackbelt, both websites, and sometimes Sarah Reith of KZYX and Justine Fredrickson of the Ukiah Daily Journal, and all the time Jim Shields of the Mendo Observer, a diffuse media without the concentrated punching power of the old PD. Eyster, probably in his final term as DA before he shuffles off to a lush retirement guarding his lawn against dandelions, can simply blow off the gross injustices he's sponsoring, but if he continues to allow irresolution of serious allegations, it's certainly going to be an inglorious exit for the county's top lawman.

POLICE MISCONDUCT can't be tolerated. It's a tiresome cliche at this point in police misconduct sagas seemingly everywhere in the country, especially in the cities and 'burbs, that tolerating it libels cops everywhere, most of whom go about their work honorably. 

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE has been pretty good lately. For years, it's been maybe one in three editions that has some really, really good reporting, or readable fiction but in between we get didactic stuff that begins with versions of, “Zainab's friends always told her that her curry was too heavily spiced…” and the poetry is so bad that the mag makes a big deal out of appearances by that old fraud, John Ashbery. But the last couple of issues have run fascinating stories on Lula's inspirational comeback in Brazil; Murder and corruption in the infamous Murdaugh family of South Carolina; an  interesting lit-crit piece on Norman Mailer (the mag's always good on book reviews and literary essays); a story on civilian efforts to cut back on urban violence; and a compelling account  from the Ukraine tragedy called, ‘The Collaborators’ on how Ukranians deal with their neighbors who have cooperated with the Russians. The mag is so expensive I hate to recycle it without sharing, but until Bill Allen gets out of the hospital and stops in to resume scooping up the ava's dated periodicals into the bin it will go. (Anyone out there who wants The New Yorker, the comparably costly LRB and the New York Review of Books, they're yours for the asking.)

THE MOST DEPRESSING news of the week: A 60-ton whale that washed ashore in Hawaii on Saturday may have died because of trash and marine debris consumption. The whale — found on Lydgate Beach in Kauai County, Hawaii — had fishing traps, fishing nets, fishing line, plastic bags and other discarded materials in its stomach that created an intestinal blockage. The research team that did the autopsy on the whole concluded that  nothing appeared wrong with the whale’s other organs, though they have collected samples to further test for disease. The death marks the first known case of a sperm whale in Hawaiian waters consuming discarded fishing gear, according to Kristi West, director of the University of Hawaii’s Health and Stranding Lab.

BERNIE SANDERS, America's tame socialist, is charging up to $95 a ticket to an event promoting his new book about capitalism. The senator, 81, and a multi-millionaire, is hawking his latest book called, ‘It's Okay To Be Angry About Capitalism,’ which sells for $28. The Democratic Socialist is hosting an event following its release at the Anthem in Washington DC on March 1, with tickets ranging from $35 to $95. Tickets $55 and above come with a copy of the book. 

LOVER BOY NOT GUILTY

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations Friday to announce it had found the trial defendant not guilty as charged.

Thomas Patrick Houston, age 60, of Ukiah, was found not guilty of driving a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and not guilty of driving a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol .08 or greater.

Interestingly, the defense in the case was that Mr. Houston’s driving was an act of necessity, thus justified under the law.

Testimony was presented that Mr. Houston had been caught in flagrante delicto by his wife and his driving was necessary to allow him to escape two angry women.

While the prosecution argued the law of necessity is not intended and has never been applied to such a factual situation, the trial judge nevertheless allowed the jury to consider the necessity defense as possibly justifying the under-the-influence driving.

When a necessity defense is allowed by a trial judge, a defendant must prove that:

1. He acted in an emergency to prevent a significant bodily harm or evil to himself or someone else;

2. He had no adequate legal alternative;

3. The defendant’s driving under the influence and/or with a blood alcohol of .11/.11 did not create a greater danger than the one avoided;

4. When the defendant acted, he actually believed that the act of driving under the influence and/or with a blood alcohol of .11/.11 was necessary to prevent the threatened harm or evil;

5. A reasonable person would also have believed that driving under the influence and/or with a blood alcohol of .11/.11 was necessary under the circumstances; and

6. The defendant did not substantially contribute to the emergency.

The law enforcement agency that investigated the case was the California Highway Patrol and the California Department of Justice forensic laboratory.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury and argued the necessity defense was inapplicable was Deputy District Attorney Sean Phillips.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Carly Dolan was the trial judge who presided over the four-day trial.

(DA Press Release)

THE DA never mentions defense lawyers, but the defense attorney in the above Only In Mendo case was veteran Ukiah attorney, Al Kubanis, and darned if Al hasn’t managed to pull off the Mendo equivalent of Frisco’s infamous Twinkie Defense!

TWO COMMENTS on the Houston Verdict:

(1) I want more information! Where’s Paul Harvey?

Was he in a bed, or the back seat?

Did his wife pull up in a car, or did he pull out in a car?

Was it a drag race, or did she drag him out of the bed?

Was he stopped for speeding, or home-wreckless driving?

Was anyone else in the vehicle?

Did the CHP stop him coming around a bend?

So many questions!

(2) Carly Dolan, like most of the Mendo judges, is inept to the point of idiocy. How can it be said the defendant did not substantially contribute to the emergency? He created it! So the defense of necessity fails on its face and the judge should not have allowed it. But yes, kudos to the defense attorney who snookered the judge into allowing the defense and jury into buying it.

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Repeating again, and again, and yet again that the sky is falling and the US is about to collapse, when, in fact, the sky never falls grows dull. How about just acknowledging that the US is a nation in decline, that has been declining for a long time, and continues to? Nothing is going to collapse tomorrow, or next week, or next year, but things will gradually continue to get worse, in a myriad of ways. Isn’t that a more sensible take on the state of things in the US right now?

[2] What I’ve noticed over the years is the great decline in health and vigor. My parents’ generation, who lived through the Depression and WWII could do the same kind of work that Mexicans do today. Houses were built with hand tools, and basements and foundations were dug with a shovel. Many of the people who provided California’s California’s agricultural labor were regular old white people–generally Okies. Among the Boomer generation, the high school boys were still bucking hay during the summer. 

I don’t think many people in our younger generations could do that stuff. I think the main reason is the degradation of our diet. It’s well documented that modern vegetables have about half the nutritional value that they had in the 1950s. Modern short-stem wheat has a much higher glycemic index than the old tall-stemmed wheat. Modern wheat has a higher glycemic index than sugar. Meat and dairy products are likewise nutritionally degraded, because the stuff the animals eat is grown on the same depleted soils, and cattle are fattened on corn, which is very bad for them. 

Something I’ve noticed over the past ten years or so is that many prepared foods that used to be reasonably tasty are now inedible. I used to get Campbell’s chicken noodle soup when I (or someone else) was sick. It was pretty good. The last time I bought it, about ten years ago, it was so bad I threw it out. 

It also appears that the manufacturers have eliminated tomatoes from canned past products, like spaghetti and ravioli–another purchase I made when I was sick and didn’t feel like cooking. 

A couple of years ago, I bought whole chickens at Walmart to make chicken broth from scratch. The broth tasted like water. So I now buy chickens from the health food stores. While I don’t recall that canned chicken broth was ever very good, I stopped buying it years ago, because it tasted like canned water. 

There are quite a number of other issues, such a GMOs and hormones, and the use of highly processed seed oils. But I think diet is the main thing that’s wrong with people these days.

[3] A few numbers for Phoenix and Tucson.

Forty percent of the water needed, right now, comes from the CAP, the ditch that comes from the Colorado River. If Lake Mead goes dead pool, forty percent of the two cities' water will be gone.

Huge areas of growth east and west of Phoenix are now stopped by state edict, a lot of real estate money is in big trouble. 2 million people were planned for these areas.

The government, especially the governors, Ducey for a start, have been feeding the people horseshit for thirty years. We have tons of groundwater in aquifers, do not worry the rains will return. 

Everyone says that climate change and drought are to fault. BS. We have a very strong monsoon this year and it has hardly made a dent. It is decades of overpopulation in the cities that has drained the reservoir, not drought. 

Another water war that is about to erupt is California's, the other six states and even more so, the farmers against the cities. Water rights belong to the farms as they have been there the longest. So if the laws are followed, the farmers will get the water and the developers will pound sand.

Uh huh, and I believe in the Tooth Fairy too. The farmers here in the SW provide a quarter of the produce to the rest of the US. So if the farmers get ousted from their water, who is going to feed those folks moving back east?

This is not as simple as just send the folks east.

BTW, proposals to pipe water from reservoirs in the East, including the Great Lakes into the Colorado River system have been made and roundly dismissed.

Okay, folks, no more Snowbirding and better figure out where to get that 25% of your produce. You cannot share water, we cannot let you use our resources.

[4] MARIJUANA, ON-LINE COMMENTS:

(a) The truth be told is that Humboldt and Mendocino Counties waged a 50 year cultural genocide against the back to the land movement and cannabis cultivators exclusively. How many crying babies were ripped from their mothers arms, how many children were stolen away from their parents and placed in the local pedophile foster cares programs by social services just because their parents grew a little cannabis. How many people had their doors busted down by paramilitary predators who would point guns at children and families and our local elderly. How many peoples constitutional rights were violated by these same paramilitary forces who would break down our doors and steal our money and valuables, rob us of our safe’s, cut up our water lines and drain our water tanks in the middle of a drought. How many times their helicopters scared and spooked our livestock, scared our children and left our hearts racing. They are predators. They are violent aggressors. They are child abusers and abusers of elderly and animals. They have no morals, scruples or real community values. They do not care about our community, their only goal was to rob and steal and fill their pockets with our hard earned money which they would steal from our houses during their raids. How many people had the aggressors drain their diesel tanks on the ground contaminating the soil and streams then they were charged with environmental crimes, and these aggressors will lie in reports, lie to the judge for search warrants, and lie in court under oath. The politicians who deep deep down hate cannabis and hated cannabis culture and hated the back to the landers all had their hand in this aggression. They gave the men with guns badges, they gave these low life thieves badges to protect them while they stole and looted from our families and destroyed our local economy. They ended the war on cannabis? No, they just found administrative means to harm the community more and extract every last dollar they could out of the people they persecuted for 50 years. The Humboldt County Government and the Mendocino County government are pure evil and purely out to rob our local cannabis farmers and cannabis community. They don’t give a damn about us, and even more they hate us and want to destroy our culture economy and to force us out of the hills from the subdivisions in the mountains they never wanted us to live in to begin with. The Supervisors are the worst kind of cruel, now they are doing the same thing to our areas poor and financially disadvantaged, look at that shit show at Creekside Cabins north of Willits, they County chose the most expensive way with no heart or love to handle an emergency situation, then they are now going after the natural disaster victims property. 

These Supervisors are scum and there is a special place in hell for people like them.

(b) Cultural genocide? You mean the culture where ex-cons, meth addicts and wannabe marijuana millionaires flocked to the Emerald Triangle to grow as much weed as they could while trashing the environment? Or the culture where wage theft, sex trafficking and murder were all ignored or covered up? The original back to the landers had an environmental and community ethic that was often not shared by succeeding generations and newcomers.

(c) An old hippie who has been here since the 70’s once told me something funny. He said that as a weed grower, you will always encounter haters, even if you’re the nicest, most giving person in the world. Do you know why? Because they hate our lifestyle. They hate our freedom. They are jealous whether they know it or not. Once you have your own land, you grow your own food, provide your own living, and do what you want when you want, then you are free. They are stuck in their 9-5 as a cog in society and despise our freedom. So be careful who you tell things to, you don’t know when a hater will drop a dime. 

[5] The American food system is based on manufactured microwavable cheese snacks, chicken nuggets, and frozen pizzas produced by giant companies. These items can’t be grown in home gardens. Many Americans don’t know the first thing about growing their own food, or what to do with it after it’s harvested.

Young twenty something to garden center manager: “Hi there! The wife and I are “going green” and starting our first garden this year, and we’d like to put in a few rows of frozen pizzas and chicken nuggets to diversify our harvest and tide us over the winter. You wouldn’t happen to have seeds for those and any growing tip books or advice to offer, would you?”

Manager: “Yes sir, but as you can probably guess, those are both high demand items and we’re all out of stock right now. I can take your order for delivery when they come in, but because they are in high demand and prices are rapidly escalating, we do require 100% pre-payment up front. Will that be check, cash, debit card, or your first born?”

Manager: “Oh, by the way sir, do you want to grow those pre-packaged in the box, or au natural? Sorry, but as you can imagine, the pre-packaged varieties sell for an even higher premium and the wait times are considerably longer, but they’re virtually pest-free during the growing cycle.”

[6] ROBINS, FOUR ON-LINE COMMENTS:

I’m in mid central Wisconsin, the really cold spell that our host can expect tonight & tomorrow just departed. With wind chill we expect -11. Last week I had 40 robins in the BY, it was cold!! News Flash, not all Robins migrate. Per Audubon Soc. Robins have been seen in January in every state and lower Canadian Prov.

* * *

Robins are acting weird this year. I didn’t see any the past 2 winters, but this year there are massive flocks everywhere, and they are getting drunk on fermented berries and flying into windows and cars. It’s really freakish.

* * *

This is the first winter I’ve noticed them too. About mid-December I saw roughly 60, it was hard to count because they were all agitated, flying short distances and engaging each other constantly. They all disappeared only to re-emerge last week.

* * *

I had to look for images of American robins, as I knew they were different from ours, but had never seen one.  Ours don’t flock – they are solitary, very territorial birds, which only live about 14 months, so not only do you only ever see one coming to your bird feeders, but you rarely see the same one two winters running. Ours beat yours for cuteness, though. 

[7] DOOR DASH FOR WHO?  Door Dashing at the schools in Ukiah. 

As a dasher we are often asked to make deliveries to the classrooms during school hours. It is against our policies and school policies to deliver direct to the classroom. In spite of this, students have been rating dashers negatively because they did not receive their order as they requested. This has a detrimental impact on our dashers. The negative ratings affect the dashers livelihood, and their position to continue working Door Dash. As you know many Dashers are working for extra cash to care for their families. Please be kind to the Dasher Nation and pick up your order from the office. Again please do not negatively rate Dashers for following the rules, they are just doing their job.

(b) 3/4 of the negative reviews come from lazy teens that have no idea of how hard your job (or any job is for that matter) is as dashers nor do they care, their reviews are a joke, but affects the hard work of people such as my sisters, friends and even spouse, that are just trying to make ends meet in our economy! 

Rules! That's a joke, door dash shouldn't accept reviews from teens PERIOD.., too lazy to get a job or their own food! The ones making negative reviews wouldn't like it if their mom or dad came home saying they lost their job because people were giving bad reviews, now we have to move because we can't pay the bills..

[8] It was a Balloooooon!!! WTF is up with this unbelievable media blitz about a helium gas bag at 60,000 ft. ? Talking head warmonger General Keane says congrats to the brave men of the USAF for shooting it down. An F22 Raptor at $200,000,000.00 per plane and already 25 years old shoots down a huge nylon bag with a 2 million dollar missile as the 150 ft. dia. target is drifting slowly over the South Carolina coast. Good got damn shootin! Well done. I can hit a quarter at 100 yards with a 22-250 for a buck a shot.