Wow, a tiny masterpiece! Thank you. You smartly answered your own question why local reporters don't question local banks with equal veracity...the banks own them! So, what keeps HSU's student reporters and journalism teachers from poking their heads behind HSU's curtain? Another of life's disturbing ironies....
EPIC didn't ring our bay in toxic industries that cut and run or a timber industry that cuts and runs, in a nation that gutted Tariffs to reinvent child labor, pay zero taxes, and get the bigs bailed out for the trouble of building big profitable homes and cars few could afford. If there were a right-wing group fighting to clean up this mess and change direction, I would have joined it too.
Re: “Railroad!”
"....left with thousands of acres of logged land, timber baron descendants began the next harvest of easy-money familiar to the rest of the state for decades; maintaining control of local politics ensuring access to the public's infrastructure to accommodate subdivisions of high-profit, large homes, miles from downtown."
No sooner had the world economy stumbled from millions of distressed home loans bundled and marketed as solid investments, Humboldt County's development community, on behalf of the largest land owners, doubled-down on their investments in local politics to maintain the windfall of public infrastructure subsidies to begin the 3rd housing bubble since the 1980's. Rex Bohn, Virginia Bass, Ryan Sundberg, among many others, owe their campaigns to a tiny cabal of development special-interests, a corrupt political legacy unchanged in Humboldt County's history." "Ancient Forests, Stumps and Chumps", Pacific Coast Environmental Newsletter, December 10, 2011.