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It’s Everybody’s Fault

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Story 40 of 52

By M. Snarky

Another controversy and another peaceful protest that morphed into a riot in Los Angeles which looks remarkably similar to a Dodgers World Series championship celebration. Some things will never change.

This time, it’s about federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the sanctuary city of Los Angeles within the sanctuary state of California enforcing federal immigration law, the media narrative of which is labeled as “ICE Raids.”  When the citizens of L.A. got news of this, the peaceful protests began. Not soon afterward, the wolves amongst the peaceful protesters started vandalizing public and private property and then they started flying foreign flags and started burning American flags amongst many other things and then they started looting businesses and hurting people. This is the point at which the protesters completely lost my support for their cause, however noble it may have been.

President Trump, in his usual fascist bullying manner deployed the National Guard to support ICE allegedly without notifying Mayor Karen Bass or Governor Gavin Newsom. Mayor Bass blames Trump for the rioting yet resists cooperating with ICE. Governor Newsom blames Trump for the rioting yet resists cooperating with ICE. And then in Governor Newsom’s perpetual effort to both appear on national television and not let a crisis go to waste (right out of the Rahm Emanual playbook), thumbs his nose at Trump and promises to sue but does nothing to actually deescalate the violence. The idiocy of this is breathtaking.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” Well, here we are. Great job everyone.

For the record, I completely reject Trump dispatching military resources to my city – this is not 1930’s fascist Germany or Italy. People are going to get hurt and killed, and this blood will be on the hands of Trump, Newsom, and Bass, the trifecta of disastrous political leadership.

That being said, I don’t see this immigration issue as black-and-white at all; I see this as the culmination of failure of leadership at the federal, state, and city government levels for decades which has brought this city to another boiling point. The only black-and-white that I can discern from all of this chaos is that you have the open border advocates (typically Democrats) on the one side, and you have the law-and-order advocates (typically Republicans) on the other side, and on this illegal immigration issue, the two of these are mutually exclusive.

I am a U.S. citizen that was born right here in Los Angeles. I’m also a migrant every time I travel internationally, and not only do I have to prove who I am with my U.S. government issued passport, I also have to fill out a visa form, letting the foreign government know whether I’m there for business or leisure, where I’m going to, and where and for how long will I be staying. Sometimes they also want to know what my profession is and my annual income, whether I’m married or single, and so on and so forth. My face is scanned. My thumbprint is taken. This is all in an effort to validate that I am who I say I am. In the background, I’m sure that my information is checked with INTERPOL and FBI databases to assure that I am not a terrorist threat, or a criminal, or a person of interest. Only after getting clearance, will I be allowed into their country. Fair enough.

It’s a slight inconvenience, but not insanely difficult. I have no idea what actually happens to someone who is red flagged other than they are taken to a secure area, but it is probably very inconvenient and very likely to include incarceration and deportation, and maybe a strip search and a body cavity check and a beating or two, none of which I want to experience.

But here at the southern border of the U.S. we are not so vigorous as out international counterparts, and this is where things really start falling apart with our immigration policy and law enforcement, and I think that there is plenty of blame to go around.

I believe that the federal government is complicit (dare I say derelict?) when they elected to not vigorously enforce existing federal immigration laws at the porous southern border for decades, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

The state of California is complicit in its effort to ignore federal immigration laws by allowing undocumented migrants to work in the state without proper federal authority or approval, essentially ignoring appropriate lawful identification and immigrant status verification.

The Los Angeles City Council are complicit in their sanctuary city policy prohibiting city resources from being used to assist federal immigration enforcement. Was this actually approved by the voters in the city, or is this just a flex?

The California Democratic party is complicit for allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and for providing public services at the expense of the state taxpayers like in-state tuition discounts for universities, Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program) coverage, financial aid like Cash Assistance for Program for Immigrants (CAPI), food and nutrition assistance like California Food Assistance Program (CFAP), and not requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. This, I think, smacks of pandering to a group of vulnerable people for a voting bloc that will keep Democrats in power. These programs and services also make the state of California a magnet for illegal immigration.

The Republican party is complicit due to their “pro-business” platform (which really isn’t) and wanting cheap labor for their business constituency, so they turn a blind eye to the illegal immigration issue, allowing undocumented migrants to work in the U.S. without proper identification or authority, again, taking advantage of a group of vulnerable people.

The corruptible Mexican government is complicit for not enforcing international immigration law but being that remittances from the U.S. are a significant part of the Mexican economy (around 4%, or $64.75B), they have zero incentive to do so. By the way, this money is not spent stateside stimulating local economies; it is exported U.S. dollars. They are complicit for allowing the drug cartels to cross the U.S. border virtually unabated, providing access for them to sell their deadly drugs inside the U.S. Moreover, having an economy that is so terrible that its poorest citizens choose to leave for better opportunities in the U.S. speaks volumes about Mexico’s domestic economic problems that have been ongoing for generations.

The undocumented immigrants are complicit themselves in that many of them have been here in the U.S. for decades and either let their visitor or work visa expire or crossed the border illegally yet have not applied for a visa renewal or citizenship or a green card or amnesty. To me, this means that they want to remain a foreign national and have no desire to become a legal U.S. citizen or obtain legal permanent U.S. residency – which is fine – but that does not give them a pass to not have their legal documents in order. I’m not going to buy the media narrative that this is because they are afraid of deportation, or that they are poor, or illiterate, or ignorant – it’s paperwork, not rocket science. There are also plenty of free or low-cost public resources available to help them navigate the process, so there really aren’t any excuses not to do it, which begs the question; why haven’t they already done so?

The media are also complicit in changing the language of the narrative from “illegal alien” (a common term used in law) to “undocumented alien” then to “undocumented migrants” or “undocumented immigrants” and then to just using “immigrants” or “migrants,” intentionally blurring the line between legal and illegal status and conflating the significant differences between them and also downplaying the possibility of any criminals crossing the border into the U.S. illegally which may be a low number, like maybe, I don’t know, let’s say a few cartel members here or a few street gang members there or a few murderers and rapists trickling in across the border here and there, but it is definitely not zero. But the fact that we don’t really know this information should enrage Americans of all stripes.

My understanding is that if someone crosses the border of a sovereign country without going through the proper customs checkpoints and processes, they are violating the law. This is known as an illegal entry. If they are a foreigner, they are considered an alien (a term from the 14th century), ergo, illegal alien, the specific term of which has been around for about 100 years. It seems harsh and maybe sounds a little bit dehumanizing, but maybe it should be because they are actually breaking the law! Is breaking the law not a crime? It appears that it depends upon whom you ask.

Twisting a longstanding term like illegal alien into something more generic and friendly sounding like migrant is a serious dereliction of journalistic duty because there is a gulf of distinction between them. It’s like calling trespassing some squishy euphemism like unintentional intrusion. Would anyone call rape overly passionate hyper-sexual activity, or call murder sudden cessation of biological activity? No! Rape is rape, and murder is murder, and everyone knows what these words mean, both of which are heinous, serious crimes, but they are factually crimes. Trespassing is also a crime and so is illegal entry. But when facts are politically unpopular and get in the way of advancing a political narrative, the language is changed by the various factions in power to distract from the truth.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” and John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” In essence, facts are truth. Truth has meaning. Truth has weight. Truth cannot be altered. Truth actually matters.

But when truth becomes inconvenient and gets in the way of a political movement, truth must become the enemy. Truth must be entirely disregarded or distorted, dissected, parsed, and contorted into something that it isn’t. Through this process, truth becomes fiction, and an alternate definition (the untruth) is brought forward as a replacement. This is how illegal alien becomes immigrant. This is how the narrative is changed from someone who has factually entered the country illegally and violated the law (the truth) to someone who is just a poor, honest, hard-working person looking for a better life for their family (the replacement), which may have some truthiness to it, but it does not excuse the actual truth. My head truthfully hurts thinking about this.

I think our political leadership across the board need to grow up and deescalate the rhetoric and the finger pointing, and the name calling and take a step back and ask themselves this: How can we cooperatively reform this colossal failure of immigration policy in a fair, compassionate, humane manner? These politicians created this unbelievable quagmire and now it is time for them to clean it up.

 I have a few suggestions:

  • Discontinue the ICE raids. These appear to be too much like a Gestapo tactic. In political speech; bad optics.
  • Lock down the U.S. Mexico border. Might be hard, but it’s not impossible. Lots of other countries do it.
  • Allow for a temporary immigration law enforcement hiatus with a hard one-year deadline to allow undocumented immigrants already residing in the U.S. for more than one-year to file appropriate forms. This puts the onus of documentation on their shoulders while also giving them the opportunity to choose whether to stay or to leave.
  • Make it a felony for U.S. employers to knowingly hire undocumented workers. It’s not asking too much for job applicants to prove their immigration status if they want to work here.
  • Make it a felony to enter the U.S. illegally. Lots of other countries do this too.
  • Vigorously enforce immigration laws after the one-year hiatus expires. No more catch-and-release policies.

This, I think, will give undocumented immigrants the time and the space needed to get their legal affairs in order while also deterring illegal entry. If they intentionally choose not to do it, then the full force of the law should be applied to them. No more excuses.

These are not inhumane, unreasonable, or radical ideas, rather, I believe they are sensible and achievable.

Our spineless political leadership just needs to grow the backbone to do it.

Supporting links:

https://oag.ca.gov/immigrant/resources

Click to access 23-0243_misc_11-12-24.pdf

Click to access IssueBrief_Illegal-Alien-is-the-Correct-Term.pdf

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/punishment-for-illegally-entering-countries

https://www.cato.org/blog/illegal-alien-one-many-correct-legal-terms-illegal-immigrant

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/32621-facts-are-stubborn-things-and-whatever-may-be-our-wishes

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1745-everyone-is-entitled-to-his-own-opinion-but-not-to

Instagram: @m.snarky

Blog: https://msnarky.com

©2025. All rights reserved.

Ultimate Middlemen  

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Story 33 of 52

By M. Snarky

Politicians. They’re just built different. From what I can gather, their (he/him/his, she/her/hers) “job” consists of the following:

  • Convincing the people that they should be elected mostly because of some sort of affinity for something that the people care about (based on polling, of course): a strong military, American jobs, the economy, entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, etc.
  • Convincing the people that they need to be protected from some bogeyman du jour, often made up out of thin air, but generally some evil foreign entity.
  • Convincing the people that the opposing political party is to blame for everything bad that is happening while also engaging in bad things themselves.
  • Convincing the people that raising taxes (i.e., taking even more of your money) is a patriotic thing to do because it helps out our country, our sick, disabled, poor, and elderly in one form or another.
  • Convincing the people that they are getting the biggest slice of the tax dollar pie as possible (i.e., government handouts).

Being that most politicians started out as lawyers, they are highly skilled at this convincing business. Maybe there is some truthiness to some of this convincing, but the jury is still out regarding actual truth. In reality, much of it are noble lies.

What politicians avoid talking about is their cut, er, I mean the cost of running the government, whom, apparently by design, have made themselves the ultimate middlemen because nothing happens unless they get their cut first.

You work. The government takes some (too much, actually) of your money in the form of taxation. The government divvies up the tax money amongst the various departments. In the meantime, throughout this entire divvying process, they always get their cut, and they always take their cut.

Now I’m going to use some very simple math here to prove my point because I’m fairly good at simple math. I also like to use infographics to support a topic, so here we go…

I think this is how most people think the government works:

The tax dollars flow in and are distributed to the various programs. The various programs assure that the recipients get their money.

But this is how the government actually works:

You see, the tax dollars flow in and are distributed to the various departments who then distribute it to the various programs, with each level of government taking their cut along the way before the money finally gets to the recipient who, by the way, is not always a sick, disabled, poor, or elderly person as you have been led to believe. Recipients also include multi-million dollar incorporated farms and billion-dollar industries, like Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the automotive industry, the aerospace industry, and various military industrial complex companies to name a few. I abhor this last point because I cannot stand the thought of my tax dollars going into the coffers and pockets of wealthy businessmen.

The politicians will tell you that those companies need the tax money to keep Americans working, stay competitive, and “create jobs,” as the popular political speech goes. This also happens to go directly against free-market principles and the government should not be meddling in this space – let the market (i.e., the people) figure out who the winners and losers should be – not the politicians receiving massive donations from these large corporations. But they do, and this meddling skews basic economics so much so that a rocket scientist can’t even figure out the math.

Many (too many, in my opinion) of your tax dollars get consumed by the black hole of bureaucracy itself and, to me, it appears to be an inverted Ponzi scheme. Or maybe an organized crime syndicate.

The actual percentage of the government cut are hard to track because the black hole of bureaucracy is also really good at obfuscating this kind of information, but it appears to be somewhere “estimated at about 5%,” according to the Cato Institute. I know what you’re thinking, “Shut the hell up, Snarky, it’s only 5%!” To which my reply is, 5% of the annual U.S. government budget of $6.75T (that’s trillion, with a “T”) is $337.5B, some of which, by the way, has to be borrowed because the government has a spending problem – oops – I meant to say because of budget deficits. Hmm, the last time I was in a budget deficit I ended up in bankruptcy court.

So, $337.5B divided by the 2025 U.S. population of 348M (rounding up) is $970 (rounding up again) for every man, woman, and child in this country. Okay, so I’ll just write out a $970 check for everyone in my household to the IRS and I’m done for the year, right? Not so fast, Snarky: this math is much, much too simple – you’ll need to use the official U.S. government math to get it right or you risk having your assets seized and going to prison. You see, you’ll have to apply the 6,871-page U.S. tax code (75,000 pages after the U.S. Treasury’s official interpretation of the tax code) to figure out who actually pays what, plus file your annual tax return. This is absolutely ridiculous and borders on insanity. This is all in an attempt to make sure that you pay your ever increasing “fair share” of taxes which never actually feels fair at all.

In the meantime, city, county, state, and federal politicians are all perpetually scheming on how to take even more of your money for more government jobs programs which will also cost more money in and of themselves. Stuff like increased or new sewer taxes, refuse taxes, energy taxes, toilet taxes, storm water runoff taxes (yes, Los Angeles taxes us for rainwater), ad infinitum. Us taxpayers are perpetually under attack and will die a death of a thousand taxes. Keep in mind that these are also the same people that can vote to give themselves raises. Try to do that that at your job.

In reality, it is glaringly apparent that we can’t afford ourselves anymore, so maybe it’s time to apply some basic economic principles to the government, like cutting a lot of unnecessary expenses, for example. But we will get convinced that this can’t be done because government math is obviously different than all other mathematics combined – including rocket science.

One last point here is who do you think those millions of city, county, state, and federal government workers are going to vote for; the politician talking about cutting the size, scope, expense, and power of government, or the politician championing government jobs and how they must be protected and even expanded? Unfortunately, it’s the latter, not the former. Obviously.

Don’t get me started on government employee labor unions and collective bargaining agreements where the taxpayer is virtually powerless. This, however, is simple math: They demand a raise and/or more benefits or threaten to go on strike, the politicians capitulate, and in the end, you’re going to pay more taxes.

If “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” how is representation with ever increasing taxation not outright theft/coercion? How about some representation with less taxation? Just asking questions.

Maybe the politicians should just be called Ultimate Meddlemen?

Instagram: @m.snarky

Blog: https://msnarky.com

©2025. All rights reserved.

More DOGE Please

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Story 24 of 52

By M. Snarky

I’m an unabashed Libertarian and have bones to pick with both the Democrats and the Republicans for all sorts of anti-freedom and anti-liberty policies. See my Politically Homeless post for some background on this.

Unless you have been living under a rock or are perhaps in solitary confinement in a foreign prison somewhere outside of the United States, you’ve heard of DOGE: The Department of Government Efficiency, which I’ll summarize thusly:

  • DOGE was created by an executive order from Donald Trump, a polarizing figure.
  • DOGE is managed by Elon Musk, a controversial super-genius level billionaire.
  • DOGE is acting as a consultancy to the Trump administration.
  • DOGE is reviled by many pundits, politicos, and media types.

Meme coin and Shiba Inu references aside, DOGE has become a lightning rod of controversy right out of the gate. Elon Musk is notable for his pragmatic approach to solving problems and distilling them down to their essential components, and stripping away any unnecessary elements. He’s very good at it. So, why not take this same practical approach to government spending to uncover any potential corruption, wasteful spending, fraud, overspending, ineptitude, redundancy, etc.? So what if he’s an outsider without any political experience? DOGE is about efficiency, not glad-handing or bashing the opposing political party and their policies and supporters at every opportunity.

Granted, Musk’s approach may seem as if the tool of choice is a machete instead of a scalpel, but I would argue that there is room for both and maybe a chainsaw too. For example, maybe use a scalpel for entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare, and the Department of Defense, but use a machete (or a chainsaw!) for everything else.

Have you ever looked at how many US government programs and agencies that there are? According to usa.gov, which, inconveniently, does not summarize how many there are on the landing page, so you have to count through them manually from A-Z, there are approximately 607 of them. SIX HUNDRED AND SEVEN! I’m no expert here, but that seems like a lot and is probably too many. Do we really need the National Gallery of Art whose statement is, “The National Gallery of Art collects, preserves and exhibits art works, and works to promote the understanding of art through research and educational programs.” Seems like museums, universities, or the private sector can handle that, you know, the super wealthy people that collect and sell art. Or perhaps Sotheby’s.

How about the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), whose statement is, “The United States Fire Administration (USFA), part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, works to prepare for, prevent, respond to all hazards.” Respond to all hazards seems like a stretch. Do we actually need federal fire fighters? I’m thinking absolutely not because firefighting is a very local state, county, and city service, some of which are voluntary, and so the feds should not be involved at all unless they want to donate a firetruck.

For the sake of argument, out of those 607 federal departments and agencies that spend nearly $7 trillion tax dollars per year, can’t we all agree that they should at least be audited like what Deloitte or PricewaterhouseCoopers do for Fortune 500 companies to ensure that the books are on the up and up and nothing fishy is going on? Oh, that’s right, best practice accounting is anathema to government. But it does seem that Mr. Musk is highly likely to find all kinds of efficiencies to be had across the board. But maybe the politicians really don’t care about efficiency at all and categorically do not want him to be checking the books or poking around for fraud, corruption, and waste (the evil trinity of the federal government) because the truth might slip out. Truth like the American taxpayers have been fooled into trusting the politicians with their hard-earned money, and the politicians have known about the fraud, corruption, and waste the entire time. “Nothing to see here!” Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

My intuition tells me that the nervous pants-on-fire politicians who aren’t positive that they’ll survive the scrutiny of an audit and their big media sycophants will portray Musk as evil and will stonewall him at every turn and clog up the judicial system with lawsuits challenging everything that Musk wants to do which will grind DOGE to a halt. Unfortunately, it’s all part of the dog-eared political playbook.

If the collective belief of the American taxpayer is that we’re all getting ripped off by the government all of the time and at all levels and it is absolutely corrupt (which should be the default attitude anyway), and the government provides sub-par services to the people they, ah, serve, doesn’t the government have the obligation to prove otherwise in the spirit of transparency? Well, I think so…but they won’t do it voluntarily, so someone needs to force their hand. That’s why we need DOGE.

I also want to see DOGE applied to the state, county, and city government levels too. I’m pretty sure taxpayers are getting ripped off left-and-right there too, especially here in Los Angeles where city hall is a cesspool of corruption and contempt.

I’m going to take the opportunity here to float out my six-step idea called FERRET:

Freeze the program budget.

Examine the program from the top down.

Reform the program.

Restrain the program.

Eject and prosecute anyone that is guilty of corruption or fraud.  

Transparency across the board in perpetuity.

I say we FERRET governments everywhere all of the time.

I also strongly recommend that we put governments on the blockchain so anyone can see all of the transactions at any time. Yeah, I know – wishful thinking – but it would be the closest thing to a truth machine that we can get without it being science fiction.

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2025. All rights reserved.

Mulholland Drive

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Mulholland Drive between Coldwater Canyon to the west and Laurel Canyon to the right.

By M. Snarky

Story 20 of 52

A mecca for car and motorcycle enthusiasts, Mulholland Drive between Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Laurel Canyon Boulevard was a place to test your driving or motorcycle riding skills. It was also a place where death was always possible at every turn.

I have driven on this section of Mulholland drive more times than I can remember, sometimes as a driver or motorcycle rider, and sometimes as a passenger. It is an infamous 2.25 mile stretch of road for many reasons. It is a road where you might test out the new suspension mods you just installed on your car. It is a road where you might take your significant other to view the city lights from one of the many fantastic lookouts. However, this is an unforgiving stretch of road and if you make a mistake, you may find yourself plunging hundreds of feet down a steep hillside and you are not likely to survive.

Some of the turns even have names, like Deadman’s Turn, Carl’s Curve and Grandstands, all of which have proven to be fatal at one time or another over the decades. This is part of the allure of Mulholland Drive; to push the driving envelope and beat death by hitting every twisting turn as fast as possible. Or not.

At the bottom of the gully at Car’s Curve you can find cars from all of the decades piled up. It is rumored that this part of Mulholland Drive is haunted by the drivers who were killed there. I came close to crashing there a few times myself.

I almost crashed on Alan Flaata’s café style 1973 Yamaha RD350 on Dead Man’s Curve – a nasty, almost 90-degree turn. If you’re coming from Laurel Canyon Boulevard, it turns hard to the left and comes up right after about a one-eighth mile straight section where you can pick up a lot of speed…if you’re willing…and I was. I came into that turn going much too fast and as I was downshifting and braking hard and leaning hard and trying to pull the motorcycle hard to the left, the left side foot peg scraped the asphalt and almost high-sided me right over the edge of the curve and down into the canyon. I barely pulled it off. I also almost soiled my new 501’s.

When I thought I was a great driver in my late teens and early twenties – like all young men that age believe – I was always pushing the envelope on Mulholland Drive in whatever car I was driving, which translates into I was almost always crashing all of the time…but I got lucky and never did actually crash, although I came very close. This is why that road is so dangerous; you build up a false sense of world-class driving skills when you’re driving hard and don’t crash, and so you keep on pushing the limit. It is a vicious circle.

Here’s my list of all the spinout survivor cars that I almost crashed on that stretch of road:

  • 1973 BMW 2002 with a 4-speed manual transmission and a heavily modified engine with dual, side draft Weber carburetors, headers, and a lowered suspension kit with anti-sway bars and Koni shocks and springs, and flared fenders with fat Pirelli tires. A true Eurocar experience. This car belonged to Frenchman Robert Gabbay, one of my old European Motor Connection bosses.
  • 1978 Fiat X1/9, stock, with a 5-speed manual transmission. A lightweight mid-engine car that handled pretty good and was fun to drive. This was a European Motor Connection customer car that I had for the weekend.
  • 1982 Chevy Citation X-11 5-speed coupe, stock. This was mine. It had decent power and handled well, but the front-wheel-drive transverse transaxle drivetrain was a little heavy to steer.
  • 1976 Jensen Interceptor III, stock. Another European Motor Connection customer car that I thrashed a few times.
  • 1969 Chevy Chevelle Super Sport 396, this was my $400 beater car that I bought from Keith Doran. Primer gray, no heater, no AC, no frills – just a shell of its former self. Somewhere along the line, someone swapped out the 396 for a 350! What a knucklehead.

Out of all of these cars, the Chevelle was the dumbest car to race around on Mulholland Drive because it simply was not built for handling and was notorious for massive understeer and crappy braking. It also only had a 2-speed “Slip ‘n’ Slide” PowerGlide transmission. Ah, youthful exuberance!

Some of these spinouts happened during the day, and some happened at nighttime, which is a very different experience when you’re spinning out; one second you see the rocky face of the road cut, and the next second you see the oncoming traffic, and the next second you see the city lights. With sweaty palms and an adrenaline surge, you drive off as if nothing had happened.

Around the summer of 1979 or so, my crazy friend Mark Flaata, Alan Flaata’s older brother, borrowed his mom’s dark green fake wood paneled 1972 Chrysler Town and Country station wagon one night and picked me up. As we were driving up to Mulholland Drive from Coldwater Canyon, we smoked a little bit of weed and were blasting Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love on 95.5 KLOS. We were feeling alright, and when Mark turned left onto Mulholland Drive, he apparently started channeling Björn Waldegård, the 1979 World Rally champion, and opened up the 4-barrel carburetor on the 383 cubic inch engine and got that massive station wagon a little bit sideways. Mark drove like a maniac, sliding around the curves, and flooring it every chance he could. We were laughing our asses off as Mark was thrashing his mom’s poor car.

Up ahead, Mark saw a hitchhiker and decided to stop and give him a ride. I was thinking that picking up a hitchhiker on Mulholland Drive at night might be a really bad idea, but the guy from Reno turned out to be pretty cool and was trying to get to Hollywood and Vine. Mark said, “No problem; I’ll drive you there!” Then Mark drove off like a nut job, spinning his wheels in the dirt and speeding off and sliding around more turns. I looked back at the guy from Reno, and he looked like he wanted to barf or maybe jump out of the car. Well, as Mark sped into one of the unnamed right-hand curves near Laurel Pass Avenue, he lost control, and we slid sideways left off of the pavement and into the slightly bermed dirt hillside – almost rolling that gigantic mass of Detroit steel in the process – as it stalled and came to rest on top of a huge hard-packed mound of dirt.

Approximate crash site.

This is when the guy from Reno said, “Hey man, thanks for the ride, but I think I’ll walk the rest of the way.” Mark replied, “Don’t worry, dude, I’ll get you to Hollywood!” as he quickly restarted the Chrysler and tried to drive it off the mound of dirt that it found itself sitting on, but all that happened was spinning wheels – the massive, 4,735 lb., 121-inch-long wheelbase station wagon was stuck, looking something like a beached mechanical whale. We got out of the car to assess the situation. The frame of the station wagon was sitting on the crest of the hard-packed dirt mound and was practically teetering. We knew our only option was to bumper jack it up from the front until the back wheels were firmly touching the ground for traction, and then reverse it out as the car would, theoretically anyway, gracefully roll backwards off of the jack.

This is when we noticed that the man from Reno was gone; he had pulled off a proper Irish Goodbye and we never saw him again. Hopefully he got to Hollywood in one piece. I’m 100% sure Mark left an impression.

Being that the car was on a slight slope, it took a few attempts to get the bumper jack to stabilize using some strategically placed rocks, but it actually worked on the fist attempt. By the time we were done, we were covered in dust, dirt and sweat but remarkably, aside from the layer of dust and dirt also on the station wagon, it was unscathed: no dents, no scratches, no flat tires, no cracked windshield, proving once again that the car was pretty much invincible. In retrospect, it could have been a massively worse crash and we were lucky that we didn’t get hurt or killed.

There are many spots along that stretch of Mulholland Drive that you can pull off and park and watch the motorcycle riders and car enthusiasts – even the boneheaded ones that borrowed their mothers station wagon, ahem – test their mettle. On any given weekend, you’d see early and late model European cars like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Alpha-Romeo, and my personal favorite, Porsche. Most of these cars looked original, but many of them were modified for road racing. Occasionally you would witness a spinout or someone driving off the asphalt and onto the soft dirt shoulder kicking up a huge cloud of dust.

Less crazy Alan Flaata had a heavily modified 1972 Ford Capri that he raced around on Mulholland Drive too, but Alan definitely had much better driving skills than Mark. I know this because I was a passenger in that car when he drove through Griffith Park as fast as he could on Mt Hollywood Drive, colloquially known as Trash Truck Hill. Alan spent many weekends wrenching on his beloved Capri road racer, and I think he spent most of the money he earned from working at Oroweat Bakery on aftermarket parts. Alan was an early adopter of the “Built not bought” movement. His friend Mauricio Zotto followed suit, but “Zotto” built a badass 1970 Boss 302 Mustang that he could pull a slight wheelie with that he raced on Van Nuys Boulevard in the heyday of Wednesday night cruising. But that’s another story.

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2025. All rights reserved.

$3,600 Car Bumpers?

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Typical modern bumper.

Story 19 of 52

By M. Snarky

Wrap-around plastic skins

Foam cores

Fake chrome accents

Integrated electronics

Expensive to repair

I’m not talking about trophy wife robots here; I’m talking about modern-day car bumpers.

A few years back I was rear-ended on the eternally godawful I-405 south. It was 5-MPH bumper-to-bumper morning traffic. I was driving a 2012 Honda Ridgeline. She was driving a BMW 3-Series. There was more damage to her car than my truck. The young woman who hit me was very apologetic and polite. The rear bumper had a few scrapes and a gouge and was slightly dented inward. We pulled over to the right shoulder and exchanged information and went about our business.

I took my truck to a well-respected repair shop – the kind where they replace broken parts with OEM parts – for an estimate. They told me they had to break down the bumper to check for internal damage, so I had to leave it for a day. Bumpers with internal damage already concerned me.

The $3,600 cost for the repair left me gasping for air. This was basically 2-months’ of mortgage payments! The short, line-item estimate went something like this:

  • Bumper skin
  • Foam core
  • Mounting brackets
  • Mounting clips
  • Primer paint
  • OEM color matched paint
  • Clear coat
  • Labor

Why does it cost almost four grand to replace what is seemingly a cheap plastic-skinned styrofoam-cored bumper? Manufacturing the replacement parts can’t be that expensive! And why does it wrap around from wheel well to wheel well anyway? The car manufacturers will tell you that it’s a safety feature; that the bumpers are essentially sacrificial to prevent further, more expensive damage to the frame, radiator, etc. I think they intentionally integrated the headlights, electronics, and grille into the entire assembly too so that a minor fender bender has a major repair cost.

But what if the manufacturers actually conspired with the sacrificial wrap around bumper design to maximize minor collision repair costs and the “safety feature” language is just a steaming pile of PR BS?

OR is it that the car manufacturers are sticking it to the insurance companies who ultimately pay for the repairs?

Either way, we are getting royally screwed.

I believe that we are being duped by BIG CARMA and I demand Congress to investigate!

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2025. All rights reserved.

Dissection of a Missive With a Retort

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Story 17 of 52

By M. Snarky

I don’t like passive-aggressive people at all because of their indirect and often murky communication methods that are often rife with thinly veiled threats. They also think that they are cleverer than they actually are. With this in mind, I found the preceding note on my windshield this week while parked on a public street in front of a public building (power distribution substation) without any posted parking restrictions, of which I will intensely dissect.

First of all, writing in all caps is the equivalent to YELLING AT THE READER. This is a trigger from the start. It is also an extremely juvenile way to communicate with people. Calm down a pop a Prozac which I bet you have in abundance.

Sentence 1: DEAR ________ EMPLOYEES, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

For one thing, I am not an employee of the redacted company name, so there’s that little nugget. Also, writing “Happy Holidays” is code for not wanting to offend any non-Christian people. The last time I checked my Gregorian calendar, December 25 still says “Christmas Day,” not, “Happy Holiday Day” which would be ridiculously redundant and meaningless. And idiotic.

Sentence 2: THIS IS A FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO PARK IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD STREETS.

Actually, this is a not so friendly reminder because you are still yelling at me, and according to the parking signage on the street, I do not need a permit. Also, I think you meant to write, “…TO PARK ON OUR NEIGHBORHOOD STREETS.” Parking in your neighborhood street would mean that my car is encased in asphalt. Preposition choice matters! Writing “…our neighborhood streets” is a possessive statement, as if you own the street, which you don’t because it belongs to the public. In other words, the public paid for it, so the public may use it. Facts.

Sentence 3: WE ARE GOOD NEIGHBORS, HOWEVER, WE HAVE WORKERS AND OUR OWN NEIGHBORS THAT PARK IN OUR COMMUNITY.

At this point, I’m not sold on the good neighbors declaration. It also appears that they are implying that I am a bad neighbor. Additionally, and I’m not claiming to be an English expert here, but I’m pretty sure there should be a semicolon after NEIGHBORS not a comma, at least according to my word processor. Oh, and I too have workers and my own neighbors parking in my community – so what? It’s a public street. I have no beef against anyone parking on it.

Sentence 4: WE HAVE TAKEN PHOTOS OF YOUR CAR AND LICENSE PLATE, AND WE KINDLY ASK YOU TO NOT PARK HERE OR WE WILL REPORT YOU TO __________________ AND THE MANHATTAN BEACH POLICE DEPARTMENT.

So, you’re going to call 9-1-1 and SWAT me for legally parking my car? Wow! This is not a thinly veiled threat; it is an actual threat. “We” also implies that there is more than one person involved in the photo shoot, but I’m thinking this is a solo effort. This is also creepy and probably illegal. Is this person a run-of-the-mill nosey neighborhood busybody or a wannabe lawyer? Also, I don’t know the redacted person’s name you are threatening to report me to but reporting me to anybody feels so high-schoolish. I’m still not sure whether this is a Karen or a Brad who wrote this note, but I’m pretty sure you have better things to do with your apparently ample spare time than walking around the neighborhood and putting your little missives on the windshields of random cars. Or is it the only the cars that are more than 3-years old? Oh, and the police department cannot do anything to a car that is parked legally with current registration tags nor to the person with a driver’s license in good standing that parked it, whether you like it or not. Get over yourself.

Sentence 5: KIND REGARDS, YOUR MANHATTAN BEACH NEIGHBORS.

This is how you sign off with an unkindly threatening note? No name, phone number, or email address to respond to? What a chickenshit. Now I will look at everyone in this neighborhood with suspicion. I do love the tony neighborhood of Manhattan Beach, but I’m better off not being your actual neighbor because I don’t believe we would get along very well. And are you really speaking for all of the Manhattan Beach Neighbors? How many neighbors are we talking about anyway? A thousand? Ten? One? You?

The Retort

DEAR KAREN OR BRAD,

I RECEIVED YOUR NASTYGRAM…

Wait, let me start over without the yelling. I’ll use my internal NPR host voice…

Dear Karen or Brad,

I received your note on my car windshield yesterday. At first, I thought it was a parking ticket. I was relieved to find out that it wasn’t because at the time my car was certainly lawfully parked and intentionally parked in front of a public building because I am mindful not to park in front any of the multi-million-dollar houses, one of which you apparently live in. Good for you!

After reading the overtly hostile note, I immediately looked around and noticed that there were many, many other available parking spots up and down the block of the public street in question, so it’s not as if I was taking the last parking spot on the block that you may have needed to park your Tesla, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Aston Martin, Ferrari, or Lamborghini that I often see excessively speeding up and down your neighborhood streets and running the stop signs. Same goes for the spoiled rich kids on their $5,000 e-bikes.

Threatening to report a person to anybody – especially the police – who has not committed any crime whatsoever is beyond ludicrous; it smacks of elitist localism of which it appears that you are gleefully engaged in. I’m pretty sure there is a lawyer somewhere amongst your ilk that would inform you that you cannot prevent anyone from parking on a public street, posted parking restrictions notwithstanding. They would also likely advise you that threatening to call the police on a law-abiding citizen that has not committed a crime a serious waste of public resources and that you may be cited and fined.

Anyway, Karen, or Brad, I will continue to park my classic 1972 Winnebago Indian RV anywhere I want to on your street. One day, if I get lucky, maybe you’ll find it parked directly in front of your house and block your view of the ocean. Lawfully parked, of course, but for no more than 72-hours at a time.

Maybe I’ll drain my black water tank while I’m there, you know, like what cousin Eddie did in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2024. All rights reserved.

Politically Homeless

~ msnarky ~ 1 Comment
Still standing.

Story 12 of 52

By M. Snarky

That divisive 2024 presidential election cycle was pretty wild, wasn’t it? We went from old man Biden falling behind old man Trump in the polls to younger woman Harris surging past Trump in the polls. Some polls showed Harris ahead in this state and Trump ahead in that state and vice-versa. Women favored Harris and men favored Trump. Duh. Projections from the pundits, pollsters, politicos, and pinheads were for a tight election – not chad checking tight like in the 2000 presidential election, but tight, nonetheless. When the dust settled, we got ourselves another old white man, but also a misogynist, a womanizer, and a convict. Good job, America – you just elected the first Convict-in-Chief.

Was this a “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” vote? Perhaps it was, but we can do so much better than this.

Again, as a solid Libertarian (I voted for Chase Oliver and I encourage you to read about him), I find myself politically homeless. Being a social liberal and fiscal conservative makes me an outlier in today’s corrosive Team Red or Team Blue political duopoly.

Also, there is a misrepresentation of libertarians in that all we want to do is legalize drugs and prostitution. This is the bastardized version of the libertarian party. The libertarian party is about much more than decriminalization of drug use and sex workers. It’s also about personal freedom, minimizing government force and government interference in your life, free markets, sound money policy, etc. I recommend that you read all about it over at lp.org before making any judgment.

The best definition of liberty I ever heard was from Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor in-chief of Reason, the magazine of “free minds and free markets,” which, to paraphrase, was, “Liberty is the total absence of government coercion.” Yes!

I was a double-hater from the beginning for many reasons. Neither candidate had a coherent foreign, domestic, trade, or monetary policy. Both Harris and Trump were floating out off-the-cuff ideas here and there (most of them terrible) I think mostly to see what might stick in the news-cycle, but there was zero substance in my opinion. No tax on tips was the best idea they could agree on. Wow. Talk about weak sauce. Instead, how an adult conversation about a simple flat minimum tax rate coupled with a value added tax (VAT) plan like what 175 other countries do? Just floating out an idea here. Also, we don’t need a new Department of the Politically Homeless, thank you.

Neither candidate spoke about reigning in the size and scope and power of the government. It was essentially more of the same – more spending, more government jobs programs, more debt. So much debt that tens of trillions of dollars of it doesn’t even move the needle anymore. I think this is because most people just don’t understand that one trillion dollars has twelve zeros (for a visual reference, that is $1,000,000,000,000) and is too big of a number for the average person to comprehend let alone talk about.

No talk about federal government program reform, or departmental or agency audits, like maybe audit the Federal Reserve, Department of Education, Postal Service, Social Security, Medicare, IRS, ad infinitum. Do we really need the Commission of Fine Arts? Probably not. No talk about shrinking the military budget or de-tangling our very messy foreign entanglements. Balancing the budget? Forget about it! Sorry, Senator Rand Paul: Your Six Penny Plan to balance the federal budget in 5-years is a great idea but is also a non-starter because Congress is addicted to pork. What we need here is an intervention.

It has been said that a government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have, which is something that we are flirting with. This is why further expansion of any existing or creation of any new government program or “service” needs to be curtailed by any means possible, including some old school filibustering.

Also, the voting bloc of unionized government workers is probably going to vote for the candidate that is not talking about reform or cuts, because reform or cuts may cost them their jobs, so there’s that. Essentially, they vote for job security.

Oddly, neither candidate talked about the ever-increasing tax burden placed on the shoulders of the American people because of the federal government’s spending problem. Instead, Harris supports an unrealized gains tax and Trump supports massive tariffs, both of which are unbelievably bad ideas and would increase the tax burden and the cost of goods for Americans across the board, not just the millionaires and billionaires.

To drive this idea home, I’ll flip the script from talking about income to talking about tax burdens. For example, “I make $100,000 per year,” changes to, “My tax burden is $24,000 per year,” which is an entirely different conversation. This is only a 24% tax rate on gross earnings example, so it’s not a crazy high number that I’m hypothesizing with here. Work with me. In some places in the world, that $24K is a fortune.

Can I get a show of hands from people who like having $2,000 a month stolen from them? Oops! What I meant was, can I get a show of hands from people that like making a “voluntary” $2,000 per month contribution to the IRS? Oh, and if you don’t voluntarily give up your money to the government, it will be taken by force. That force being the confiscation of your cash and assets and possible jail time.

Also, that pesky 6,871-page U.S. tax code (75,000 pages after tax regulations and official tax guidelines from the IRS are included) is just too unwieldy for casual political conversation. Let’s be honest here; the U.S. tax code is a bloated tome of the greatest cradle to grave taxation scheme ever imposed upon the public. I say we burn it and start over with a single page tax return.

The only more that I want from the government is more freedom, more personal liberty, more reform, and more contraction. Anything less is anathema to a free society.

Instagram: @m.snarky

© 2024. All rights reserved.

Supporting Links

A-Z index of U.S. government departments and agencies: https://www.usa.gov/agency-index

Chase Oliver: https://votechaseoliver.com/

Libertarian Platform: https://www.lp.org/platform/

Reason Magazine: https://reason.com/

Senator Rand Paul Six Penny Plan: https://www.paul.senate.gov/dr-rand-paul-introduces-six-penny-plan-to-balance-the-federal-budget-in-five-years/

Tax code, regulations and official guidance: https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/tax-code-regulations-and-official-guidance

Value-Added Tax (VAT): https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueaddedtax.asp