Keely Covello of America Unwon

[00:00:06] If you're a California conservative, a libertarian, a moderate Democrat, believe in common sense, or just the sane person, this is the political podcast for you. It's the California Underground Podcast.

[00:00:27] What's going on, everybody? Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the California Underground Podcast. I am your host, Phil, the most trusted political podcast, all things California politics. I'll get this tagline. I swear I'm gonna get this tagline. It's a new tagline. The most trusted podcast in all things California politics. I got it.

[00:00:45] As always with me, my trusted co-host, the best, the fastest researcher in the West. And tonight we have a special guest, which I'm very excited about, Keely Covello, who is the founder and author of America Unwon. It is a great site. I've been reading articles for the past couple days. Lots of information in there. Keely, welcome to the program. How are you? Keely Covello I'm doing well. Thank you guys for having me. Good to be here. Thanks for being here.

[00:01:11] Yeah. So before we hop in, obviously introduce yourself. Tell us what America Unwon is all about, how you got that started. Sure thing. Well, I'm Keely Covello. I'm also from California. Nice to be with some like-minded Californians for once. I'm in Orange County now, but I grew up in Mendocino County, which is about three hours north of San Francisco. Pretty remote.

[00:01:33] My town was just a little tiny rodeo town. Everybody had a ranch and worked outside. And that was my childhood until I went to college in LA and had a big culture shock. So I essentially went into journalism. I worked in DC for a minute. I worked at my hometown newspaper.

[00:01:50] And I really just fell in love with the stories. Basically, I was reporting back home in Northern California of working men and women that I felt were very undercovered. When I went to DC, my editors told me those stories aren't interesting. There's not enough material.

[00:02:06] And long story short, I proved them wrong over the course of my time there. Started basically an early form of Unwon and kind of blew them away just because nobody was covering these stories. They didn't know how much material was out in the American West and in working communities in the United States.

[00:02:22] So I kind of went the independent route. I started America Unwon as a side project. I was telling you guys before we hit live, it's kind of a masochistic passion project, but it's just something I really love to do, kind of focusing on these stories about ranchers and working people who have a hard time because of government overregulation, government overreach, and just sort of the globalist agenda that has made their lives increasingly difficult, especially here in California.

[00:02:52] And so I think of that. I talk to, I say the people who feed, build and protect a nation, really like the working people who make this country great and who we don't hear from enough. So a lot of my coverage is, you know, folks in the blue collar industries that we still rely on. And a lot of it ends up in the ranching world.

[00:03:10] Yeah, we had, um, well, before we hopped on, we were kind of talking about how we gave our best effort at trying to explain what's going on in point Reyes. And, um, I'm not sure we did that great of a job. I think we probably confused people more than we educated people. So when I found your account and I found what you were doing, I was like, okay, this is someone who actually knows what's going on. And there's several topics we're going to get to tonight.

[00:03:38] Um, maybe you can explain to listeners and viewers what's going on in point Reyes. Like we did our best to explain it, but I was actually reading your article about point Reyes before tonight. And there is so much more to the backstory than you'll see in like a normal publication where they just tell you, Oh, this is what happened. There was a settlement and now they have to move.

[00:04:01] But your reporting goes a little bit more in depth in terms of like what they're being told behind the scenes, um, what their experiences with the national park. So why don't you tell us what's going on in point Reyes?

[00:04:14] Yeah. Well, the fact that you shared it with your audience is amazing because this is not covered very well. People don't really know what's going on. And I think it's a big deal. It's a big story. Um, so point Reyes is about what, 30 miles out of San Francisco. Um, it's been in ranching. It's been an ag community for 150 years. I think before California was a state, it was just these little ranches and farms, largely dairy. Um, and I guess, you know, to,

[00:04:43] sort of start in the beginning of this story, I think it was probably in the thirties when some of those urban San Franciscans started to scout out maybe some recreational areas where they could enjoy nature outside of the city. And they settled on point Reyes. They really wanted to turn point Reyes into a park.

[00:05:03] And when I first started reporting on this story, my understanding was that the ranchers and the community were really on board with that. They were okay with selling their land to the federal government to turn it into a park because they wanted to protect their community and to keep it undeveloped and to keep it in agriculture.

[00:05:23] And that was the agreement with the park service in the beginning was that turning this into a national seashore, which is like a park, but a little bit different in some ways would, it would come with the promise that they could lease their ranches and farms back in perpetuity, long-term leases. So they could still do their farming and their agriculture on point Reyes. Um, and it wouldn't have the development pressure that they were already feeling in the thirties and forties and fifties.

[00:05:51] But when I started diving into the history of this park, this seashore, I read some of the accounts of the old timers who were there when the government took it over and they really never wanted to sell to the government. They never wanted to partner with the government. They never trusted the government. I read this one, you know, older woman who was a widow at that time of a dairy man. She went all the way to DC and spoke to Congress.

[00:06:17] And she just said, if you wanted to take my land for defense, I could understand that. But just to seize my, my farm that I've worked on, that my kids were born on, that my grandkids call home to seize it, to turn it into a recreational zone. I don't, she was an immigrant. She said, I just don't understand why you would take my farm away from me for recreation.

[00:06:37] But despite all their pleas, the government did essentially take the land by eminent domain, uh, forced them to sell and then promised we'll lease it back to you guys. We'll be good partners in the longterm. There will always be ranching and dairies on the park. Um, well, fast forward to last January, or just about a month and a half ago.

[00:07:00] And it was announced that these ranchers and farmers would be leaving forever. And while on its surface, this isn't a direct result of the national park pushing them off. In my opinion, and after all the reporting I've done, I think the national park did work behind the scenes to get these ranchers off.

[00:07:19] I do think that they worked with nonprofit environmental groups to sue the ranch, to sue the park over the presence of the ranchers. Um, really just putting the ranchers in limbo for years until finally they were forced to take a settlement and pack up and leave. So that's a lot, but that's kind of the overview of, of what happened to these guys and where they're at.

[00:07:45] It's, um, yeah, the, the, the idea that the national park service was telling them one thing. And there was a part of one of your articles where an anonymous source said, uh, how they, they, for lack of a better term, they said they kiss your ass to get you to sign on the dotted line. And then as soon as you sign on the dotted line and sell your land to them, all of a sudden they jab a stick in your eye.

[00:08:10] And it's like the, the national park service and the government were quick to say, we'll protect you. We'll do X, Y, and Z. You can always farm here. We'll just keep doing leases. Um, and then all of a sudden, as soon as they get the, as soon as they get the property, they're like, okay, get out. Like we were trying to push you out as fast as possible, which seems like such a bait and switch for a lot of these poor ranchers and farmers. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's really sad.

[00:08:39] And you, I think you're quoting Al Vale. So in my reporting over, you know, months, weeks now, I guess it feels like it's been longer since I first heard about this from a local named Shalina, who alerted me to what was going on. Um, I don't know if you, did you guys hear about measure J last November in Sonoma County? It was an attempted ban on farms, basically that was on the ballot up there. It's kind of in the same area.

[00:09:03] So she, she runs an organization that was fighting back that essentially these nonprofit groups came in and forced measure J on the ballot. And it was billed as an anti-factory farm ban, but really it would have just banned all of these family farms and ranches in Sonoma County. And it was like slaughtered at the ballot box. It's like 80% voted no on measure J. Okay. But you can just see these groups really attacking like Marin County, Sonoma County, that area right outside San Francisco and Bay Area.

[00:09:31] Those guys are really sitting ducks for some of the most extreme activists. So anyways, Shalina alerted me to this story and I started reporting on it. And, you know, you kind of hear the surface level that these guys are leaving. And when you read in the media, they'll say, well, the farmers want this. They're happy. They're happy to take the buyout. This is voluntary. But all the farmers and ranchers are under a gag order. So they can't talk, which a little bit of a conflict there. If they were happy, why would they be gagged?

[00:09:58] And, yeah, it's just from what I've heard and from just public speeches they've made, you can see that this is not something that the farmers and ranchers want. You know, they don't want to leave their home of many generations. The settlement isn't disclosed, but it's not enough for them to relocate. So all that to say, I started hearing from other folks who've had this happen to them with the National Park Service. And Al Vale was one of those out on the Channel Islands. He was a rancher on Santa Rosa Island.

[00:10:25] And the Park Service, again, came in, all the promises in the world are just going to, you know, we'll take this island from you. It's going to belong to the government, but we'll lease it back. Don't worry. We're going to be good long-term partners. And exactly like you said, he, you know, they eventually turned on him. And before long, him and his family were completely off the island. Does it seem like this was always the goal to get rid of the ranchers and the farmers in Point Reyes?

[00:10:54] I was like, is that sort of the feeling of people on the ground there? Is that they kind of were always being pushed out? Or is it just recently they've been felt like they've been pushed out? I mean, now they're literally being pushed out. Yeah, it's a good question. I think for years they've been pushed out. So at least for a couple decades now, it's been trending this way. I don't know if in the 60s, the environmental groups seemed a little more pro-farming and less against them. So maybe things have changed.

[00:11:22] But at least for decades now, it's been this way. There was an oyster farm on Point Reyes as well called Drake's Bay Oyster Farm. And it was shut down, I think, in 2012. And at the time, the owner, Kevin Lunny, I mean, it was really heartbreaking. You know, they had all this junk science to say that oysters are bad, which is really silly because oysters actually filter the water. It's really good for marine life. And it was a very sustainable, positive farm. It supplied half the oysters in California.

[00:11:52] The government shut them down. Similar situation, lawsuits, environmental groups coming in. And Kevin Lenny ended up going to the White House and President Trump in his first term signed an executive order trying to eliminate this kind of attack on farmers. And Kevin spoke at the White House. He said he was worried about the ranchers. He said he felt like they were next. And Trump said, well, we got people in the White House looking out for you. This isn't going to happen again. But then Trump lost in 2020.

[00:12:20] And what's really interesting is the timing of all this, because after, you know, the election in November, this lawsuit just kind of hit and went into overdrive. And I've had really good sources say it's pretty obvious that they wanted this done and dusted before there was a new administration. So it was done just weeks before Trump came in. I think a week, actually, before he came in, they were forced to sign the settlement. Wow. Yeah.

[00:12:50] So they were they were they didn't want to have an ally in the White House. Yep. Camille, you were you were texting me today about the sort of irony and that like they want these elk, these too late. How do you pronounce it? Too late. Too late. Too late. Too late. They want more of those. They also want the cows grazing to continue grazing, keeping the grass down. Right. Camille. I'm paraphrasing. I'm paraphrasing.

[00:13:19] Keely's probably going to know way more about this, but I kind of just went down a road of the methane production that they're always crying about. And this is, you know, the cows are running the environment and the water and all that because they're methane. And so they have the ruminant digestive system, as do bison, which are protected class and the elk do as well. Now, elk are much smaller than cows. And so the argument is they produce less methane than the cows.

[00:13:43] But I guess part of this deal, if you can call it a deal, part of this action to get the farmers and the ranchers out of Point Reyes is that they want to get down to a maximum of 300 cows in Point Reyes. And but they want the elk to thrive. Now, again, elk are smaller and allegedly produce less methane than the larger cows.

[00:14:10] But still, if the elk are going to thrive, then I feel like the numbers are going to that's, you know, just increase the amount of methane. And so what what have we done now? We've just ousted our food sources to allow these other ruminant digestive tract animals to thrive. And I'm not against the elk's thriving, certainly.

[00:14:32] But, you know, there is this whole thing to push agriculture and cows out and, you know, vegan diets are the healthy. I live in like a carnivore household. My husband is a carnivore. We eat a ton of meat here. And we're like and my husband became a carnivore because he went down the road of the health.

[00:14:54] And then he like even like eight, 10 years ago was all into all the podcasts about how the cows are better for the environment and how they're helping the environment and the soil in which we grow the vegetables and everything. And then when I went on grok on a little bit of a tangent search, and this is a little bit silly, but basically humans, vegan humans produce more methane than carnivore humans.

[00:15:19] And so these vegan environmentalists are very hypocritical, if you ask me. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I haven't heard anyone say that specifically, but I love talking about cows and how good they are for the environment. It's like my favorite thing to talk about. Well, yeah, I mean, it's true. They're really trying to take these cows off the peninsula, but replace them with elk, which is in itself silly.

[00:15:42] But now the Nature Conservancy, which is the group that will be taking over the leases and is buying out the ranchers, they're planning to bring in grazing contractors. They've said that openly, that they're going to bring in cattle because people are starting to understand that we need animals grazing our fire fuel, especially in California. But really, all over the West, it just makes sense. So whether it's goats or sheep or cattle, I don't know, but they're planning on having a grazing program.

[00:16:09] So the only folks that aren't allowed to stay are just the families that have stewarded this place forever, which is another thing Al Vale said in that quote about Santa Rosa Island. He said, the reason the park wanted my island is because of how my family took care of this place for so long. We kept it pristine because we know it and we care about it. We understand it. And I think he said something like, why would we, you know, bleep where we eat? I don't know if I swear here. This is our home.

[00:16:36] This is where we, this is our legacy for our children. This is our livelihood. We have such an incentive to take care of this place. And they had, and that's why the park service was interested in it to begin with. So to then turn on those stewards and to say, you guys don't know what you're doing. We can do it better is really, really foolish. And I think you're, I think you're really addressing the core issue here, which is, it's kind of an anti-human mindset because what's really different about bison and elk and all these other ruminants than cattle.

[00:17:05] We eat cattle, you know, this is part of our self-sustaining food system. So why are cattle worse than all of the animals on the savannah in Africa? Should we eliminate them for their greenhouse gas emissions? We never have that conversation because it's really something about human beings that they have a problem with.

[00:17:23] Another ironic thing to me with the California government is that, you know, we just had those massive wildfires in LA and a lot of it had to do with, well, the vegetation wasn't taken care of. And so bringing in the, you know, the grazers, the goats or sheep would have been the smart thing to do. And now we're hearing claims that they're dumping a bunch of all this toxic fire waste into the ocean.

[00:17:47] And I know that that's point where they're complaining that the animals, the cattle specifically are contaminating the ocean area, the water around it. And yet they didn't have proper preventative stuff in place for the wildfires. And now they've just contaminated the ocean in a massive way. Yeah. Oh, that's so sad. Yeah.

[00:18:13] I just read an article yesterday about how San Francisco Bay has this raw sewage problem. They have like a huge percentage of raw sewage in the San Francisco Bay, but they're worried about the cows on Point Reyes. And that was another, in this long article, I just published it yesterday, but it's really interesting because the Channel Islands superintendent was this guy named Tim Setnicka. And he was there for all this. And there's just a long, dark history.

[00:18:40] I don't want to go too in the weeds here, but there is a, there is a dark history. We enjoy the weeds. So that's why we do a long form podcast. Don't be afraid of the weeds. Well, don't tell me with a good time here. This is like what I've been living in for, for weeks. But I mean, yeah, the, the Channel Island stuff is really interesting. I think someone, and I'm sure it's happened all over. I think there's quite a history with the Park Service.

[00:19:08] They have a real track record here, but there was on one of the islands on Santa Cruz Island. I did a whole article about how, you know, there was one lone holdout, 82 year old man named Francis Garini. He didn't want to sell, or at least he wanted to sell for a good price. And, you know, before long, first of all, they forced Congress to, or they had Congress force him off. So they ended up forcing the sale through.

[00:19:32] But even then he was dragging his feet a little bit, getting his, the hunting club that leased from him on Santa Cruz Island off. So lo and behold, the Park Service decided they were raiding Chumash Indian burial grounds and landed on the island with a Black Hawk helicopter and 20 armed officers to raid this little hunting camp. Turns out they conducted this two-year investigation. And the details are just, I read the whole appeal. It's just very shocking to me, very, very flimsy.

[00:20:02] They ended up charging one guy with a felony for shooting at a raven. And I guess having beads or something, or like picking up a piece of dirt in an area that was supposedly an archaeological site of Chumash Indians. They had these undercover parks rangers going on hunts with the hunting club to try to, you know, catch them in the act of disturbing Indian sites on Santa Cruz Island. It was just really, really, really shady and gross.

[00:20:33] So all that to say that that happened on Santa Cruz Island. You know, they, I mean, just imagine there was like a little 15-year-old girl in the house and they shackled her for hours, didn't say who they were searching the whole house for Indian burial remains or Indian artifacts. And all the while they just happened to really want these people off for their park that they have planned. So just stuff like that, really dirty.

[00:20:59] And then on Santa Cruz Island, or on Santa Rosa Island, rather, the superintendent of the islands wrote this expose in, I think, early 2000s. He had signed off on that raid on the Santa Cruz Island. He had been part of all of it. He'd seen all of it. This guy, Tim Setnica. And he went through some kind of change of heart and he wrote a three-part editorial for the Santa Barbara News Press,

[00:21:27] where he kind of blew the whistle on the park service and described everything they did. And he specifically got into the way that they did water samples in areas that they knew water didn't flow. So it would look really bad for the ranchers. They put them under a Clean Water Act, some kind of an order, an abatement order, so that they had to clean up the water. All of these little things designed ultimately to force the ranchers off.

[00:21:56] And he broke it down in great detail what had happened. So again, to your point about water samples and water pollutants, he described how he was there and he saw the way that the government manipulated those samples to get the goal that they always wanted, which was to get the cattle off the island, to get the ranchers off the island. And in their case, they also decided that the elk and deer should go too, because the elk and deer were not native to the island.

[00:22:24] And so all of the operations on Santa Rosa Island ended up with shipping the cattle off, shipping the horses off, and machine gunning wild pigs, elk, and deer from helicopters and just killing them because they were restoring it to its natural state without animals on it. So that's the Park Service. But yeah, just to... Sorry, again, restoring it, bringing a black helicopter. Right. Because we want to restore it to the natural state. Yeah.

[00:22:54] It's not funny. Yep. I know, but it's kind of beyond belief, right? It just doesn't seem like... It's not common sense. Right. Yeah. And then... And Tim Setnico went on to have this meeting in 2014 at Point Reyes, and he said, you guys are next. They're going to come for you. The Park Service has no soul, and they're going to come for you. Like, you're not going to be able to stay in ranching. They're absolutely going to kick you off. And 10 years later, they did. Wow. Very sad.

[00:23:22] I keep saying that very sad, but it is very sad. It really is. This might be, like, too far out there. So feel free to just dismiss this, both of you. But with Trump firing a bunch of federal employees, we've heard about Park Services employees being let go. Do you think that will have any effect on this, or is it too late? Well, I think changing the Department of the Interior is good. Doug Burgum is the new head of the Department of the Interior.

[00:23:49] I have hopes that he will address this and bring in better people. I'm not sure who the head of the Park Services is, or if they've announced that yet. But Trump's been moving very fast, uncharacteristically fast. So it's, you know, it's really high turnover rate. And I do feel, you know, there's a lot of great rangers out there. I know there's tons of great people who work for the Park Service. This isn't to impugn all of them by any means. It's the brass, really. It's these people in the offices who have this agenda.

[00:24:16] So, yeah, I'm hopeful that they'll reverse course on their attitude toward agriculture, because some of my sources, all of which were really anonymous if they were talking about the Park Service, told me that this really goes deep. It's part of the culture and mindset of the Park Service that they hate ranchers, and they hate farmers, and they want all of that off public land. And when you look at how much land the federal government owns, that starts to be a problem. I'm not saying we should farm in Yosemite and Yellowstone and these really special jewels

[00:24:44] that we should all be able to enjoy in the United States, whatever. But when you have millions of acres of land that's designated federal land, if we want to be self-sufficient, feed ourselves, we do have to look at multi-use on public lands, and that's what these agencies are tasked to do. So, anyway, yeah, I really hope there's going to be change coming. I know people are appealing the Point Reyes thing to Trump and to Burgum, but it feels like kind of an uphill battle at this point.

[00:25:17] I haven't looked at it yet, but there was a Supreme Court ruling, and I thought maybe this is sort of like on the same lines. And, again, I'm just throwing this out there. I don't know. But there was something about they can't define what an end result is for pollutants, the EPA. And, you know, I probably should have read this before, and I'm sorry. No, that's so interesting. American 1, but I was looking at it, and I thought to myself,

[00:25:46] I was like, wait a second, the EPA can't say what the end result of pollutants is. So, for example, that ends up in water and air and stuff like that. Does that change the argument of, like, the Center for Biological Diversity, who sued the ranchers and saying, oh, they're violating the Clean Air and Water Act because the runoff from the cattle and their farming industry, like these aren't allowed. It might be interesting to look into a little bit more,

[00:26:14] maybe attorneys who are way smarter than me. But to your point, it sounds so evil when you hear that the government is almost rigging the game against the farmers and ranchers. Like, they're purposely taking water samples from places where the ranchers have no effect. And they're saying, oh, well, this is the end result. Look, the water is polluted over here. But they're not being completely honest. It's just some fish tanks or something. Right.

[00:26:44] Yeah, exactly. So, it's Goldfish Tank. And they're like, this is not clean water. See what you did? They're going home and, like, taking water out of their toilet or something. They're like, look, it's not clean. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, exactly. It is scary. And I'm not shocked. I am personally not shocked that the government is screwing people out of private ownership of their own property. Yeah. And I don't know what their end goal is. Maybe they just want the land. Maybe they just hate people being self-sustaining.

[00:27:11] And it's always funny to me that environmentalists go down this rabbit hole of like, or they go on this crusade of getting rid of farmers and ranchers, who I think are probably some of the best conservationists our country has. Like, they need the land to be productive so that they can do what they need to do. Like, and I don't understand why they don't grasp that.

[00:27:37] Like, they need the land and the water to be bountiful and conserved so that their cattle can grow strong and they can sell good beef and people come back and buy their beef. Or that they make good milk. Or that they grow good crops. Like, I don't understand that. Like, do you have any idea why there's that disconnect or why they think farmers are not good conservationists?

[00:28:01] Well, I don't want to get too black pill fringe here, but I don't know that they really believe that or that they just have a goal here of, you know, you look at the largest farm landowner in the U.S. is Bill Gates. He's also a big investor in fake meat companies. I think that our independent farmers and ranchers represent this sort of populist citizen sovereignty

[00:28:29] that I do think that there are, at the end of the day, some interests in our country that are totally opposed to that. You know, if you have people who can raise their own food and who can manage land and who own land, there's a lot of power in that. And I just don't think that these entities want us to have that kind of power. You know, if you look at Stalin attacking the farmers first, there's a pattern in history

[00:28:56] of oligarchs and dictators really going after the people who produce food. And there's an attitude of sovereignty. You know, Thomas Jefferson talked a lot about the ideal citizen being a farmer because he's like talked about his agrarian ideal, because you are sovereign in your own way. You produce something that's necessary for society and you're self-sufficient, you're self-reliant, and you don't want government interference.

[00:29:25] And he just thought that was the ideal American citizen, the ideal American politician. There's something to that. And the more we get disconnected from our agriculture, I think we lose some of our sovereignty and our self-sufficiency. And I do think that serves interests that are, I don't want to sound too conspiratorial, but I think that there are globalist interests that don't want us to have that kind of autonomy and freedom. So that's in the macro. I think that's really what it boils down to.

[00:29:55] And then you just look at who's the park service targeting. It's always these little ranchers and ranchers are not, you know, it's not a, this industry you get into to become super wealthy. I mean, that is not what ranching is. It's usually you inherited land. So you're probably cash poor and land rich. You have this land from your grandparents and you keep on the family business because you love it and it's a lifestyle choice. It's how you want to raise your kids. You believe in it, but you're not getting wealthy doing it for the most part.

[00:30:24] And it's always those folks that the government goes after. You never hear of eminent domain cases against billionaires that own tons of acreage or, you know, this Marin County hobby farms that are popping up everywhere. They seem safe. It's like the productive, the little guys that, that don't have all this disposable income and power who end up losing their home. So, and when you step back and see how often it's happening, not just in California, but all over the West, it's, it's pretty scary. What's going on everybody.

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[00:31:45] If they go to stopbox.com forward slash California underground, they'll get that discount. Support the show. You can support Stopbox. And this is proudly made in the good old US of eggs. So go to stopbox.com forward slash California underground for your discount. And let's get back to the show. A few years ago. Go ahead. Oh, no, I was just going to comment. Feel free to go be blackpilled. We're fine with that.

[00:32:13] Again, we like getting in the weeds. We like being honest. And sometimes we drop a black pill every once in a while. My kind of people. Do not hold back. You know, otherwise we'd be all fluff and no substance if that was the case. Camille, you were going to say something. I was going to talk about chickens for a moment. In 2019, across several counties, there was an outbreak of a chicken disease called Newcastle disease that is horrific and has no cure for.

[00:32:41] And it was there was no cases in Orange County, but Orange County is landlocked between Los Angeles and Riverside and San Bernardino and San Diego. And they had cases in those counties. And so if you had a backyard flock, even if you weren't tested, like if your chickens didn't have Newcastle and you know if your chickens have Newcastle, your chicken. It's a it's a whole thing. I won't go into that. But the government was coming in and quite literally just killing the flocks, just slaughtering them.

[00:33:09] And like they if they showed up at your door and they were like, we know you have chickens that were coming back to to end their lives. If you move them, we're charging you tens of thousands of dollars. If you dare bring any chicken breeds over county lines, we're charging you like thirty thousand per per bird and stuff like that. And I know people who their flocks did not have Newcastle, but the government just came in and slaughtered their flocks because they were like, we got to prevent this.

[00:33:37] And but yet somehow it never went over county lines in Orange County. I don't think that any form of bird flu or bird disease understands county lines and stays away. I don't think they were like, oh, no, we don't go there. So it's just and I don't even think there were that many cases. I just I'm a chicken owner. And so I was following this because at the time I couldn't get new chicks unless I somehow found some in Orange County. But I don't think we have any hatcheries in Orange County.

[00:34:04] It's it's just if I could get some from people who were like back or breeding chickens, then I could get more. This whole thing. So, yeah, we're actually quarantined right before we were quarantined in 2020. Oh, no. Yeah. Where are the animal rights activists with that, too, with all this bird flu stuff, too? They don't seem to be upset about all of the chickens getting killed unnecessarily. It's very weird. Very weird.

[00:34:33] They pick and choose what their their agendas are. Going back to your line of thinking about conspiratorial. And I don't think it's conspiratorial at all. I think especially here in California, going off of that idea that our government, Sacramento hates people. They hate localization. And they hate people governing themselves to a certain degree. And I think they want a top down mentality.

[00:35:03] And of course, California and Sacramento, I think, is an extension or at least the testing ground where we're like the laboratory for a lot bigger interest. And whether that's the federal government, the state is, you know, in D.C. or the globalists, it is this idea of like they want top down control and they do it through California. And they don't like, you know, local governments. They don't like local representation. They don't like local school boards. They don't like you being self-sufficient.

[00:35:33] They don't want you to be able to take care of yourself. They want you to rely on the government. It's like this constant like, no, we're going to take this stuff away from you so that you can't be self-sufficient. Because if the people are self-sufficient, then they don't need us. They don't need the government to solve their problems. And therefore, they won't be willing to pay more taxes or give us more power over them. So I don't think it's conspiratorial at all. I think it's exactly what they're doing is they just they want a top down approach.

[00:36:02] They don't want localities to be independent and self-sufficient. Right. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think it's hard to say that out loud because I don't think any of us think that way. It's so foreign. It seems so strange and bizarre to want control over other people's lives like that. I think you're right because, I mean, even looking at COVID and how they've acted in the recent past, there's definitely a pattern where any type of self-sufficiency is targeted.

[00:36:31] And yeah, you're right. I don't think they want local control and local sovereignty at all. And I think food is an important part of that. If they can control the food, they can control the people. And there's definitely a push for these fake meat factories and more factory food, more processed food,

[00:36:51] which puts a lot of power in the hands of a few who can produce mass quantities of food in cities and control the food that way. And it's much harder to control when you have thousands of diversified farmers and ranchers in the U.S., which is why I think, you know, I like what RFK is doing and I like this new trend of returning to health. But sometimes I worry we are missing the first thing, which is we have to protect our farmers and ranchers.

[00:37:19] We can talk about, you know, we can talk about additives and pesticides and fertilizers. We can have all those conversations. We can figure out what's in our food that's hurting us. But first and foremost, we have to protect the ranchers and farmers we have left and support them. And we are losing so many farmers and ranchers. We lost, I think, 15,000 last year in just one year. Less than 2% of Americans work in production ag now. And the average farmer is 60 years old.

[00:37:49] We're going to have a massive crisis coming up soon if we don't stop the bleed and get more young people involved and make it more accessible because right now getting into ag is almost impossible. Wow. Yeah, everyone's worried about whether their fries are fried in beef tallow, but no one wonders or worries about where the beef tallow is coming from. If we have enough ranchers to provide the beef tallow. My husband was a guy a guy a day ago and I kind of wanted to grab him

[00:38:18] only because he has been down this soil cattle rancher, like I said, for like 8 or 10 years. He has just gone down this trail. And he will give you all the arguments for why cattle are better for the soil, for the soil that grows our vegetables. And our vegetables are less nutrient because the soil is so bad. But we need the cows to produce the good soil. And like you were talking about this whole government control thing. I just want to be left alone.

[00:38:48] Like I'm a homeschool mom. I've got my backyard chickens and some fruit trees. I'm like, I want to just wake up and just educate my children and enjoy my chickens and be left alone. And I am not, I'm not like MAGA and I'm not a Trump sympathizer. And I'm not saying like, yay Trump. But when he won the election and then was sworn in, I swear I woke up more rusted.

[00:39:15] Like I was just like, they're gonna, they're gonna have to back off now. All of a sudden it just felt less exhausting to, to live in the United States. Totally. Yeah. Boot off your neck a little bit. Yeah. Um, I do want to switch gears from beef tallow and French fries to another really important topic. Although beef tallow and French fries are a very important topic. If you haven't had French fries cooked in beef tallow, they are delicious.

[00:39:44] Um, the Potter Valley project, which is again, a story I had not heard of. And Camille knows we share so many stories back and forth. I mean, I don't know anybody else who follows California news as much as we do, but I had not heard about this story. You guys are masochists too. Ugh. We, we, we wallow in it. We, we go all the local news sites. We are just immersed in it.

[00:40:12] But, uh, tell us about what's going on with the Potter Valley project and explain, you know, tell everyone what's happening there and why it's important. Yeah. Well, long story short, brief, brief version of this. There's two dams in Northern California that supply 600,000 residents with water that are slated for destruction to be demolished to commission taken out. So the water supply for 600,000 people, um, will be compromised.

[00:40:41] So the backstory of that is, is the Potter Valley project. It's a hundred years old, um, in this rural part of the state. I really know about it because it's where I grew up, you know, in that little tiny town up there, but we've had some massive fires in the past few years, kind of year after year. We had a million acre fire and I think 2020, the August complex and this water system, these lakes were really the reason that we have towns left.

[00:41:08] I mean, some of the communities in Lake County, Mendocino County, they were saved because of water from these lakes. So I think the LA fires highlights for some folks who aren't as familiar with the wildfire problem. That's been an issue in rural California for a minute now, uh, just how, uh, broken our water system is and how much we need more water infrastructure and more water storage. It's just a huge, huge, huge problem. Trump's highlighted that.

[00:41:33] Um, but I feel like everyone has missed this really obvious story about these dams that are going to be destroyed. So we're, we're trying to push for more water storage, more water in the hydrants when we need it. And Gavin Newsom's administration is relining, not just not making more water storage and infrastructure, but destroying infrastructure. We already have, and we've relied on for over a hundred years. What is the reason?

[00:42:00] Not that they have logic, so I don't want to say logic, but what is the reason behind that? Yeah. It's owned by Pacific Gas and Electric. PG&E has the licensing. It's a hydroelectric plant and it went offline in 2021, but even before that, they decided it wasn't profitable for them to keep running the dam, running the hydroelectric plant anymore. So they did not want to renew their license. Um, and they were again, sued by these environmental groups, which seems to be a pattern here, uh,

[00:42:30] to, if they're not going to run the hydroelectric plant, they need to take the dams out because they're impeding the salmon runs. Which I can go into detail about why that is not true and why the salmon aren't damaged by these dams. Um, but that's, that's sort of the top line reason you'll read is that this is going to improve salmon runs. And it's also going to restore water to the river that, so it diverts about 2% of the Eel River to the Russian River. Um, so it'll restore the Eel River.

[00:42:59] I can tell you why that's not true as well, but those are the, those are the top line. That's the positive side of this. And I think Gavin Newsom's made it clear that he wants to go down as the most green governor in the state. I think he wants to run for president. I think it's pretty obvious. Um, so he's happy to demolish our town and our, our dam because it gives him this talking point that he is a green governor who restored the free flowing Eel River.

[00:43:28] Well, I'm just going to say it, uh, please do explain about the salmon run. I don't know. And I'm sure our listeners would love to hear the logic and, or explain to the, about the salmon runs and the water as well. Totally. Um, so the salmon, you know, historically, uh, had obviously much better populations in the Eel River and the Russian river. Um, and I have talked to old timers who told me back in the thirties and forties were the

[00:43:57] best recorded salmon runs, um, that we in recorded history. So that was well after the dams were in place, but a lot's changed since then. Um, we've had a lot more logging, which not all the logging practices were ideal back in the day up in Northern California. So deforestation, um, logging roads built, um, the government introduced a predator fish called the pike minnow that eats salmon.

[00:44:23] So that didn't help either a whole host of reasons, global overfishing. You know, I don't know if you guys have seen this footage of off the coast of Argentina, these massive Chinese fishing fleets. You can see from space that have just fished everything in sight. You know, there's a lot of, uh, global actions that lead, have downstream effects, no pun intended. So our salmon populations have suffered for a host of reasons. The dams are, are not the reason why our salmon have suffered.

[00:44:53] I wrote a whole article or actually I, I've written about this and I also shared from one of the old timers who kind of wrote this op-ed for me of eight reasons why the salmon populations won't be restored, um, by the dam removal. But, you know, we also have to think about what's going to happen when these dams are taken out. That's going to be so much silt and dirt and toxic materials swept down the river. That's obviously going to impact our, our salmon populations.

[00:45:22] Um, yeah, I'm looking at his article now. I mean, it's just, it's, it's kind of nonsensical because we've had salmon runs until the recent history. So blaming the dams is, is very, very short-sighted floods in the fifties and sixties. We saw a huge, um, decrease in salmon populations after these weather events. There was a government egg harvesting station at Van Arsdale dam. So they were actually taking millions of salmon eggs and shipping them to hatcheries all over the world, millions of them.

[00:45:51] So that hurt our salmon population. Um, we have a pretty severe illegal cannabis issue in Mendocino County and I've covered that. I did a documentary on that last year. A lot of them are cartel run and then a lot of them are in the national forest and a lot of them siphon water out of the river and they leave pesticides, insecticides, really nasty chemicals in the river. That doesn't help either. Um, there's a seal and sea otter population off the North coast of California, which has

[00:46:19] an, a big impact on salmon and steelhead recovery. Um, and even like the, the thing I mentioned earlier about raw sewage in the San Francisco Bay, the fish have to swim through that to, to go to their spawning grounds. So we, we have a lot we could do for our rivers. I have ideas of how we could improve our rivers. I mean, we have an old railroad system that's been abandoned. We could rip that out and restore all this river, like hundreds of miles of river for the salmon to swim in and spawn in.

[00:46:49] But it seems that the only solution that's acceptable is removing water storage for rural counties that rely on it. Wow. So it's like, there's like a dozen reasons before the dam of that effect, the salmon run and aren't dam supposed to be like hydro electricity. Aren't they supposed to be kind of green energy? Why, why do we want to get rid of something that's supposedly green energy?

[00:47:18] It's so funny you say that I, for some reason, hydroelectric energy or hydroelectric plants producing energy, it's not classified as green energy, which makes no sense to me. I don't understand why that is. I know. I just learned that you would think that water moving and creating energy is pretty green, I guess. Right? It has to be, yeah. It has to not work for it to be green. Yeah. Yeah. I know. So there's some reason why it's not that's right. It's one of the most natural ways to move a, like a turbine. It's just water in it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:47:48] So the fact that it's, that they're taking out the hydroelectric plant is really silly because we have power shortages too. We don't just have water storages. We get our power shut off all the time in Northern California. But beyond that, you know, at the end of the day, I think people are more important than fish. So maybe the dams should never have gone up. You can make that argument. You can make the argument that it caused some damage to the salmon runs back in 1904 when they built these dams, but this is the ecosystem we have now.

[00:48:16] Those Tule elk that they're trying to save on Point Reyes. We have so many Tule elk at Lake Pillsbury, which is created by the dam. It's like a little Tule elk heaven up there. All the locals know about it. We have black bear. We have bald eagles. We've all these beautiful animals in this beautiful, extremely remote, pristine forest that's just been built around these lakes for the past hundred years. And that's, you have to take that into consideration. This is the place we inherited and people have a footprint.

[00:48:45] You know, we, I don't think Gavin Newsom is going to give up his home to nature. And I don't think we should have to do it either just because we don't have as much money as him. Yeah. Yeah. He took the words out of my mouth. It's like they, their goal is to almost restore it to as if humans don't exist here, but humans do exist here. And you have to deal with the fact that we live here and like, well, what's the solution? Do you want us to just disappear and go away?

[00:49:15] That seems to be their only salute, which is not logical at all for them to just, we want to restore it to as if you were not here. Well, too bad. We are here. We've been here for 200 years. I don't know what to tell you now. Um, real quick, we're coming up on the hour. I did want to get into this, uh, the illegal cannabis up in Mendocino County, because again, this is something that like I, I, another story we had Jorge Ventura on a couple of weeks ago. He did some news on this as well.

[00:49:44] This is something that's not really talked about in California about the, the sort of illicit activities that are going on around cannabis and these illegal grows right under our nose. And Rob Bonta is out there, you know, parading around San Francisco, talking about Trump proofing California. It's like, Oh, we got bigger fish to fry. We got cartels operating in our backyard, Chinese and Mexican. Like we should probably look into that. Um, tell us a little bit about the, these illegal grows up in Mendocino County. Yeah.

[00:50:13] I'm a depressing guest. I'm just telling you all this terrible stuff. This stuff is fascinating. We love when we have guests who educate us. So, well, and, and if you're guests, I don't, I, I can't see the live stream, but if they have any questions about the Potter Valley project, I do want to make sure that like they can go to my website to look at that up or I'm happy to address it. Whatever. I know there are some common misconceptions I keep seeing. So I want to address it because I think it really, it does impact California. And I think we all have stake in it.

[00:50:42] So, um, but to, to shift gears quickly, uh, the cannabis issue, I, I did a documentary last year because we actually lost a member of our community. Um, an elderly rancher named Dick Drury, who was shot in the head, uh, 85 years old, right outside his ranch and his murder was unsolved. So we went home to look into it. The common belief in our community was that it was a cartel hit because that's what it looked like. And, um, that's what it, it seemed to be.

[00:51:11] And he was in an area that was pretty hot for cartel grows for organized crime grows. And that's just really become, unfortunately, part of the culture of the North coast, the Emerald triangle, Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties. Um, we have an enormous influx of organized crime, drug trafficking organizations who have really put down roots and are operating in, you know, uh, with, without really any checks and balances or any attention from the state government.

[00:51:40] Um, I interviewed Mendocino County, Matt Kendall, who is an amazing guy. He'd be a great guest for you. Um, he is just the real deal. This like cowboy sheriff who is very understaffed for the amount of land that he has to cover out there in Mendocino County. Um, and he told me Gavin Newsom has never returned his phone calls. I mean, he's been shot at multiple times. He comes into these cartel grows all the time and it's scary. I've, I've ridden my horse into the middle of a cartel grow.

[00:52:08] I assume it's a cartel grow because they're massive and they're in the middle of the national forest. So I might be out hunting or hiking or on my horse or whatever. And he just come into a huge grow in the middle of our public land, our shared, you know, this resource that's supposed to belong to us there. They've got drip systems. I know people are watching it. I know they're armed. Um, you'll see dead animals just around the outskirts of the grow. They, they kill anything that they see. Um, these are scary people.

[00:52:36] So we've had, you know, not just from South and Central America, but also from Eastern Europe, Bulgaria. And I guess what I spoke to one sheriff in Humboldt County who told me the, the group that's winning the cartel wars in Northern California right now, believe it or not, are the Chinese. They have the biggest presence. So they have these huge industrial grows in Siskiyou, Trinity counties, um, where they're just producing black market weed that does end up in our legal dispensaries. They've run tests.

[00:53:02] A lot of this black market stuff is still ending up in your legal dispensary and it has nasty chemicals in it. So I do think just from a consumer standpoint, if people smoke or they use weed, they should know that a lot of this stuff is really unsafe and, um, it's being produced on the black market using human labor. That's a whole other aspect of this. There's a lot of people coming across our formerly pretty open border and getting put into indentured servitude on these grow sites.

[00:53:32] And they really don't have a choice and they're forced to do it. Um, so it's a human rights issue as well. Um, so all that to say, we, we went home to kind of look into the case, see what we could find out. Um, we did a short documentary, my sister, Michaela, my, who's my co-director. And then our, our crew, um, Graham Kelly and Ryan Francis, just the four of us went home and just kind of, we wanted to raise awareness so people could see at least a little glimpse into what's going on in Northern California and how bad the problem has gotten.

[00:54:01] Um, and also just bring justice to this man who was a really wonderful pillar of our community and who didn't deserve this and, uh, did not have any answers and still doesn't have justice. No one's been arrested to this day. Yeah. It's a, it's fascinating that they kind of bring it full circle. They want to push the ranchers and farmers who were on point Reyes for over a hundred years who've been taking care of the land, keeping it pristine, making it a beautiful place to go visit.

[00:54:30] They want to push them out. Meanwhile, there are cartels who are armed. Okay. California hates the second amendment. They hate people having guns. They are polluting the land by dropping a bunch of chemicals into it. Okay. So they're supposedly against pollution. They're wasting water, which is a big deal that they supposedly care about. Um, and they're selling bad products to consumers. It's all the stuff that California says they stand against.

[00:55:00] It's happening in their backyard and they could not be bothered to like do anything about it. That's just fascinating to me. Well, 10 hours ago, California governor Gavin Newsom shared on social media that in 2024, 534 million and illegal cannabis was seized. Okay. So I had posted something similar on a much smaller scale last week or the week before, and I made a little reel off of it.

[00:55:24] And I think people, I probably didn't explain well what I was, my point was he only cares because California didn't get its cut, you know, its fair share of taxes. I am not for, uh, illegal cannabis farms. Um, I've never even little Miss Goody Two Shoes here has never even tried pot marijuana edibles in any form, shape, whatever I have. I've never once. So I'm not even like, which I'm not telling anybody else not to, I'm just saying like,

[00:55:54] there was nothing in me that was like defending this. It was just, I know they're just like, we didn't get our share from that. Therefore we're going to seize this. But you also know they probably went in and like, I don't know, chopped up a bunch of plants and then like, they'll probably like just leave them alone for another two or three years. And I'll be like, well, it's time to make some political movement and let's go in there and seize again. But yet they're not shutting down these farms.

[00:56:22] Like you said, they're not, they're probably not even investigating that man's death. They probably were just leaving it unsolved and leaving the area alone. And they just walked away from it. We seized some plants. We can make this headline and now we'll carry on. Yeah. For the doc, I interviewed some legal growers who've made the transition. They were kind of back to the landers and they used to grow illegally and they've made that transition. And they were saying this is almost impossible. California over-regulated this so much.

[00:56:51] It's barely lucrative to go legal, which really incentivizes people to stay on the black market. They've been there for a minute and their competitors are murderers from other countries who have a lot of muscle. So it's, yeah, I think you're probably totally right. I imagine much of the illegal weed that was seized was probably smaller farmers who didn't do all of the

[00:57:17] necessary steps or didn't sign all the paperwork and they got their crop seized. Meanwhile, there's, the last estimate I heard was 6,000 illegal grows on public land in the U.S. and nobody's doing anything about that. So, yeah. Yeah. It was promised to us as a new green rush or a new gold rush, green rush. And I remember I was getting out of law school and I thought this has got to be a great area of law to get into because it's going to be so lucrative.

[00:57:48] I think I, once I got barred, I tried out for two months and I looked at it, the regulations and taxes and said, there is no way this is profitable for anybody. And I gave up on it. And now here we are. I think the black market has tripled in size since we've instituted legal and recreational marijuana. Like it's now tripled like black market marijuana. California, you know, it just can't help itself.

[00:58:14] It has to overregulate and overtax a good thing and like kill the golden goose before it laid one, like one golden egg. They already killed the goose before it laid one golden egg. All right. Well, we're coming up on an hour and I feel like we could keep talking for probably another hour. But I don't want to take up more of your time. You've been an incredible guest. Why don't you share with us some final thoughts where people can find and read more of your stuff. Watch your documentary, all that stuff. Just kind of dive in and learn more about this stuff.

[00:58:44] Well, thank you guys again for having me. I really appreciate it. You have a great platform and it's just gives me hope to talk to other Californians with common sense. So thank you guys. You can find me at AmericaUnwon.com and on Instagram and X and a brand new TikTok account right after it was banned. So let's see how long that lasts. But I'm late to the game. But yeah, all the socials, America Unwon.

[00:59:13] And you can watch the doc there too. It's under my film tab on the website. Awesome. Well, yeah, Keely, thank you for coming on. And I think you did a million time better job explaining this stuff than we tried to. I didn't get a headache this time. I actually enjoyed this. I did not get like a migraine trying to figure this all out. You did much better. You saved me the asshole of migraine. Honestly. Oh, good. I'm glad it dominated this.

[00:59:44] No, no, no, no. Like we say, you come on. It's your platform. That's what we're here for is for you to chat and for us to sit back and enjoy and learn. Like I said, I always enjoy guests who come on and educate me because, you know, I don't know everything in the world, but it's nice to sit and chat. And whenever I walk away from a podcast and I go, I go tell my wife, I'm like all excited. Like, you have to hear what we talked about on this podcast. You know, it's a good podcast. Like, you know, the guest was pretty good.

[01:00:14] They'll be like, you have to hear all this stuff we talked about. But yeah, thank you for coming on. And as you, you know, feel free whenever there's a big story about this stuff that's not being covered, please reach out to us and let us know. We'll have you back on. I will take you up on that. Watch out. Thank you guys. Appreciate you. And with that, make sure you like, share, subscribe, review, comment. All that stuff helps with the algorithm.

[01:00:37] And the best way you can support this show that is 100% free is you can go ahead and share it with someone else. So with that, we'll see you on the next one. Later. Thank you for listening to another episode of California Underground. If you like what you heard, remember to subscribe, like, and review it.

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