Three women vying for political office in San Bernardino County this election cycle have been convincingly accused of phonying up their residential claims in order to qualify their candidacies for the offices they hold or seek, information and documentation provided to the Sentinel shows.
Despite the cases to be made that each violated the law and committed perjury by their actions, the prospect that any of them will be prosecuted is very light, individuals in a position to know have said, basically because the prosecutorial authority that will most logically oversee the enforcement relating to these matters are of the same political stripe as the alleged offenders or are politically affiliated with them in some way.
The three women under question are Palm Springs Councilwoman Christy Holstege, who is vying for Assemblywoman in the 47th District; Ontario Recreation and Park Commissioner Daisy Macias who is seeking election to the Ontario City Council representing that city’s Fourth District; and Tiffany Gaudin, who is seeking election to the Victorville City Council.
The case against Holstege is by far the most advanced, having proceeded to the stage where, according to prosecutors, “she would be convicted tomorrow” if the matter were to go to trial. The circumstances and attendant facts, the Sentinel was assured, have been examined thoroughly by investigators, and evidence against her, including photographs and around-the-clock videos, document that she is not living where she claims to live. Continue reading →

Having been repeatedly thwarted by state officials in Sacramento and judges in the courts in their previous attempts, the ruling coalition on the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees Thursday ventured forth with another creatively crafted parental notification policy with regard to students who are assuming different gender identifications in their home and school settings.

Continue reading →

Two years after Greg Wallis eked out a bare 85-vote victory over Christy Holstege to gain the position of Assemblyman in the 47th District, a rematch will determine whether the post will remain in Republican hands or switch to Democratic control.
Looking at the statistics, it would appear that the contest this year will be a dead heat, just as it was in 2022. In that race, both received very close to 50 percent of the vote, as Wallis polled 84,752 or 50.025 percent to Holstege’s 84,667 or 49.975 percent. Of the 315,361 voters in the district as of July 5, 2024, 125,532 or 39.81 percent were registered Democrats and 107,231 or 34 percent were registered Republicans. The remaining 10.9 percent are members of the American Independent, Green, Libertarian Peace & Freedom or other more obscure parties. The district straddles San Bernardino and Riverside counties, with the greater number of voters in the latter. Riverside County is home to 241,397 of the 47th Assembly District’s voters. The other 73,964 voters reside in San Bernardino County. Within the San Bernardino County portion of the 47th District, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats, 32,481 to 21,194. In Riverside County, however, Democrats outnumber Republicans 104,338 to 274,750. So, though the Democrats enjoy a numerical advantage in terms of registered voters, that edge will not necessarily translate into victory for Holstege, given that Republicans in general evince 7 percent to 8 percent greater voter turnout than do Democrats.
Holstege, nevertheless, has grounds to be confident about the November outcome, given that in the March Primary this year, Wallis did not garner a majority of the vote, as he received 48.6 percent of the vote – 58,312 voter endorsements, while Holstege was fending off another Democrat in the three-way race. She captured close to the number of votes that Wallis had, 55,677 or 46.4 percent, while Jamie Swain brought in 6,115 votes or 5.1 percent. In this way, in the March Primary match, voters showed a 51.5 percent to 48.6 percent preference for a Democrat over a Republican. Continue reading →

While in days gone past at places throughout the United States and particularly in the Old West, a common electioneering tactic used by those seeking office from U.S. Senator to Congressman to territorial governor right down to town mayor or sheriff was to offer men who had not yet voted on election day an incentive of some free whiskey in exchange for a ballot cast in endorsement of their candidacy.
San Bernardino County, the largest such jurisdiction in the Lower 48 States with a huge desert outback spread among its expansive 20,105 square miles, even in this postmodern era has invited comparisons to the Wild West. And while the subtle, or perhaps not so subtle, electioneering that the Town of Yucca Valley is engaged in doesn’t involve free whiskey, there is a question about whether town officials are not offering Yucca Valley’s citizenry something of an illicit inducement to get them to vote in favor of two tax initiatives in which city officials have a stake, those being Measure Y and Measure Z.
In the November 2016 statewide general election, Yucca Valley voters approved Measure Y establishing a one-half cent sales tax. Measure Y was represented to voters as the “Town of Yucca Valley Essential Services Transactions and Use Tax Ordinance.” Measure Y, as approved in 2016, included an expiration date for the tax of ten years after the date the tax was first imposed. With the half-cent sales tax override about to expire, the Yucca Valley Town Council earlier this year placed a measure on the November 5, 2024 general election ballot to eliminate the original ten-year expiration date and convert the tax imposed by the passage of Measure Y in 2016 to a “forever tax,” meaning the tax can be levied without expiration or until such time as voters take up a petition to put another measure on the ballot to end it and a majority of the voters pass that tax-cessation measure. As a courtesy to town officials, the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters designated the 2016 Measure Y continuation initiative as Measure Y for this year’s ballot. Continue reading →

With the possibility of fall rains looming, San Bernardino County Public Works Director Noel Castillo has detailed crews to various areas burned out by the Bridge and Line fires to assess the damage, determine the impact the loss of scrub and vegetation will have on the sheet flow of water during rainstorms and clear natural waterways and existing channels and storm drains of any debris that will obstruct water runoff or exacerbate flooding and uncontrollable waves of mud impacting roads or inundating nearby populated areas.
According to a statement put out by the county on October 16, the “fires have left areas vulnerable to flooding, prompting the department to proactively implement risk mitigation measures.”
Both the Line Fire, which began on September 5, and the Bridge Fires, which first ignited on September 8, have resisted for more than six weeks 100 percent containment, resulting, respectively in the charring of 43,978 acres in the Sn Bernardino Mountains entirely in San Bernardino County and 55,118 acres in the Angeles National Forest and its environs in both Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. The burn areas created by those conflagrations, denuded of vegetation in large areas or swaths, can, in the event of a deluge, turn into pathways of irresistible torrents which will sweep what in normal conditions are immovable objects, such as machinery, vehicles and houses, in a cascade as the water, pushed by gravity, rushes to lower ground. Continue reading →

By Wallace Stevens

By Ernest Hemingway

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid.

“What should we drink?” the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.

“It’s pretty hot,” the man said.

“Let’s drink beer.”

“Dos cervezas,” the man said into the curtain.

“Big ones?” a woman asked from the doorway.

“Yes. Two big ones.”

The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.

10

“They look like white elephants,” she said.

“I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer.

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

“I might have,” the man said. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.”

The girl looked at the bead curtain. “They’ve painted something on it,” she said. “What does it say?”

“Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.”

“Could we try it?”

The man called “Listen” through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.

“Four reales.”

“We want two Anis del Toro.”

“With water?”

“Do you want it with water?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “Is it good with water?”

“It’s all right.”

“You want them with water?” asked the woman.

“Yes, with water.”

“It tastes like licorice,” the girl said and put the glass down.

“That’s the way with everything.”

“Yes,” said the girl. “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.”

“Oh, cut it out.”

“You started it,” the girl said. “I was being amused. I was having a fine time.”

“Well, let’s try and have a fine time.”

“All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?”

“That was bright.”

“I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks?”

“I guess so.”

The girl looked across at the hills.

“They’re lovely hills,” she said. “They don’t really11look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.”

“Should we have another drink?”

“All right.”

The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.

“The beer’s nice and cool,” the man said.

“It’s lovely,” the girl said.

“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”

The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.

“I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.”

The girl did not say anything.

“I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.”

“Then what will we do afterward?”

“We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.”

“What makes you think so?”

“That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.”

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.

“And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”

“I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.”

“So have I,” said the girl. “And afterward they were all so happy.”

“Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”

“And you really want to?”

“I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to.”

“And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”

“I love you now. You know I love you.”

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“I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”

“I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.”

“If I do it you won’t ever worry?”

“I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”

“Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t care about me.”

“Well, I care about you.”

“Oh, yes. But I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine.”

“I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way.”

The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.

“And we could have all this,” she said. “And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.”

“What did you say?”

“I said we could have everything.”

“We can have everything.”

“No, we can’t.”

“We can have the whole world.”

“No, we can’t.”

“We can go everywhere.”

“No, we can’t. It isn’t ours any more.”

“It’s ours.”

“No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.”

“But they haven’t taken it away.”

“We’ll wait and see.”

“Come on back in the shade,” he said. “You mustn’t feel that way.”

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“I don’t feel any way,” the girl said. “I just know things.”

“I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do——”

“Nor that isn’t good for me,” she said. “I know. Could we have another beer?”

“All right. But you’ve got to realize——”

“I realize,” the girl said. “Can’t we maybe stop talking?”

They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table.

“You’ve got to realize,” he said, “that I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to. I’m perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you.”

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you? We could get along.”

“Of course it does. But I don’t want anybody but you. I don’t want any one else. And I know it’s perfectly simple.”

“Yes, you know it’s perfectly simple.”

“It’s all right for you to say that, but I do know it.”

“Would you do something for me now?”

“I’d do anything for you.”

“Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”

He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights.

“But I don’t want you to,” he said, “I don’t care anything about it.”

“I’ll scream,” the girl said.

The woman came out through the curtains with two glasses of beer and put them down on the damp felt pads. “The train comes in five minutes,” she said.

“What did she say?” asked the girl.

14

“That the train is coming in five minutes.”

The girl smiled brightly at the woman, to thank her.

“I’d better take the bags over to the other side of the station,” the man said. She smiled at him.

“All right. Then come back and we’ll finish the beer.”

He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to the other tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the train. Coming back, he walked through the barroom, where people waiting for the train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train. He went out through the bead curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him.

“Do you feel better?” he asked.

“I feel fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”