Six Independent Stories Worth Revisiting; Good News About a Skin Cancer Vaccine

Indy Digest: Dec. 28, 2023

This is the final Indy Digest of 2023 (unless something huge and unforeseen happens between now and Sunday), so I’ve decided to share six Independent stories from the past year that are worth a second look.

• “A PPP Mystery: Desert Payroll Solutions Received a $1.37 Million Loan Based on 185 Employees. A LinkedIn Search for the Company Shows Zero Results” (Jan. 18): This piece, which took months of off-and-on work by staff writer Kevin Fitzgerald, presented something of a mystery: A local company called Desert Payroll Solutions, “a cannabis payroll company with cannabis payroll software and cannabis HR services,” received a $1,370,560 Paycheck Protection Program loan in June 2020, based on having 185 employees, according to public PPP databases. However, we could not find one employee of the company on LinkedIn, or, well, anywhere else. Local businesswoman Lauri Kibby, listed as the sole manager on the company’s statement of information filing, wouldn’t return our calls to answer our questions. Since this story’s publication … we’ve heard nothing. Crickets. Look for a follow-up in 2024.

• “Bridging the Coachella Valley: Flooding Frequently Closes Vital Roadways Like Indian Canyon Drive—but Solutions Are Finally on the Way” (Feb. 17): Here’s another piece by Kevin—and another piece you can expect to see an update on here soon. Little did we know when we published this piece that we’d see Indian Canyon Drive closed for weeks after an honest-to-goodness tropical storm trounced the area six months later—making it clear yet again how badly bridges are needed on the area’s major roadways that traverse washes. We were told back in February that a bridge over Vista Chino and a widening of the Ramon Road bridge were funded, and we’ve learned since then that the state was chipping to get bridges built on Indian Canyon. So … now what? Stay tuned.

• “Desert Rock Pilgrimage: Kyuss Fans From Around the World Make an Annual Journey to the ‘Welcome to Sky Valley’ Sign” (Aug. 30): Did you know that a collection of desert-rock fans from around the world make a pilgrimage ever year to take a picture next to a road sign in Sky Valley, near Desert Hot Springs? If you read Matt King’s excellent story, you did—and if you didn’t read this story, you really should, because it illustrates how much of an impact local musicians have had on the world of rock over the last 30 years.

• “Power Trip 2023: The Hefty Admission Price Kept Many Fans Away—but Many Attendees Who Paid Up Have No Regrets” (Oct. 10): This story, also by Matt, went viral on social media in the days following Goldenvoice’s big metal-fest in October. He simply posed a question to some fans of the participating bands (Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Judas Priest, Metallica and Tool): Was the festival worth the starting ticket price of $599? Well, that question touched a nerve—and raised questions about the skyrocketing costs of concerts and other events.

• “Unpredictable Arrivals: A Look at How Riverside County Deals With the Tens of Thousands of Asylum-Seekers Who Pass Through Each Year” (Nov. 24): Nearly 100,000 asylum-seekers have arrived in Riverside County since March 2021. I had no idea this was happening—and it’s likely you didn’t, either, until you read Kevin’s story on how the county, with local help from the nonprofit Galilee Center, was handling this influx.

• “Privacy vs. Public Safety: Eight of the Nine Coachella Valley Cities Use Automated License Plate Recognition Cameras—and This Concerns Civil-Liberties Advocates” (Dec. 18): Yeah, we just published this piece, which is the cover story in our January print edition—but if you haven’t yet given it a read, put that on your end-of-year to-do list. Staff writer Haleemon Anderson’s look at automated license plate recognition cameras, which are now ubiquitous throughout the Coachella Valley (except for in the city of Coachella), shows how modern technology may be keeping us safer—but we’re giving up a lot of privacy in exchange for this safety.

Thanks, everyone, for reading the Independent throughout 2023—and Happy New Year!

—Jimmy Boegle

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More News

• We may have an actual working vaccine for at least one form of cancer. Fox News (because this announcement received shockingly little news coverage) reports: “New hope may be on the horizon for melanoma patients in the form of a novel skin cancer vaccine. This week, Moderna announced that its new vaccine has shown promising results in clinical trials. Among 157 patients with advanced melanoma, the vaccine led to ‘statistically significant improvement in survival before the cancer returned,’ according to a statement from Hackensack Meridian John Theurer Cancer Center in New Jersey, which has been participating in the clinical trials. … The patients who took the experimental mRNA vaccine along with Keytruda—all of whom previously had surgery to remove their cancer—saw a 44% reduction in the risk of death or recurring disease compared to those who did not take the vaccine, the companies said. ‘This is truly game-changing, groundbreaking stuff,’ said Dr. Andrew Pecora, an oncologist and researcher at the Hackensack Meridian John Theurer Cancer Center, who has been involved in the clinical trials since they began.”

• As someone who just got over a gnarly cold, this Los Angeles Times headline speaks to me: “Everyone in California seems to be sick with respiratory illness. Here’s why.” Some details: “Respiratory illness season is in full swing in California and across much of the nation. In Los Angeles County, about 23% of people participating in a weekly text-message-based survey reported having a cough or shortness of breath for the week that ended Dec. 10, higher than the total reported during a late summer peak in respiratory illnesses, when 21% said they had those symptoms. Early summer brought a lull, with only 10% of survey respondents saying they had a cough or shortness of breath. Meanwhile, coronavirus levels in wastewater in L.A. County are at their highest since summer.”

• Related: Indio’s Valley Sanitary District, which has been testing wastewater for SARS-CoV-2, influenza and RSV, in recent weeks has been reporting that levels of most those viruses have been decreasing … until the Dec. 26 update, which shows all of these levels are now ticking up. Face masks, anyone?

• A sad and frustrating headline from Time magazine: “Biden, Who Vowed to Stop For-Profit Detention Centers, Uses Them More Than Ever.” The headline is completely accurate—but you need to read a little deeper to get the complete context: “Some 90% of people held in immigration detention are in facilities run by private companies, according to an analysis by the ACLU. Since (President Joe) Biden came into office in January 2021, those held in immigration custody has more than doubled from 14,195 on Jan. 22, 2021 to 36,755 on Dec. 3, 2023, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research institution at Syracuse University that collects and analyzes federal immigration data. While those figures are less than the peak immigration detention figures at 55,000 hit under the Trump administration in 2019, the trajectory reflects the spike in migration rates in the Biden era, after slowing during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the administration holding more immigrants in custody while their asylum cases play out. Biden is under pressure from Republicans in Congress to shut down legal asylum and parole pathways in ongoing negotiations over funding for border security, making it unlikely Biden will be able to change course before next year’s election on his administration’s reliance on private companies in immigration detention.”

• Prepare yourself for more increases in streaming-TV subscription prices—and more ads, too. The Washington Post has news on the latest announced price hike: “Months after announcing it would include advertisements in its streaming movies and shows, Amazon revealed Tuesday that the ads will begin Jan. 29. ‘This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers,’ Amazon said in an email announcing the date to subscribers. The company will offer to let viewers watch ad-free for $2.99 a month. … The service currently costs $9 per month, so the ad-free version would seemingly cost about $12 per month. But the video service is included in an Amazon Prime subscription, which carries the company’s two-day shipping deals at $15 per month or $139 per year. It isn’t clear how the pricing will work in other countries.”

• And finally … the man credited for creating a restaurant-menu item that became ubiquitous—and then was frequently mocked—has passed away. We’ll again turn to The Washington Post: “Australian chef and restaurateur Bill Granger, who pioneered Aussie brunch culture and elevated avocado toast to widespread popularity, died Dec. 25 at a hospital in London. He was 54. The Melbourne-born chef died peacefully on Christmas Day, with his wife and three daughters by his side, the family said in a statement posted on Instagram. A cause of death was not given. His family said he would be remembered as the ‘King of Breakfast.’ He made ‘unpretentious food into something special,’ the statement read, and spurred ‘the growth of Australian informal and communal eating around the world.’ Mr. Granger was a prolific producer of cookbooks and television shows, but his most well-known contribution may be his popularization of a simple dish that went global and became associated with the millennial generation: avocado toast, or ‘smashed avo,’ as it is likely to be titled on a menu in his home country.”

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