The Desert Healthcare District’s CEO Is ‘Removed’; Why Gas Prices Are So High

Indy Digest: Sept. 25, 2023

Dr. Conrado Bárzaga, the Desert Healthcare District CEO, is out—rather suddenly, and nobody is saying why.

We first learned that a change had taken place on Saturday, when a frequent DHCD critic emailed various media sources and elected officials, and pointed out that Tuesday’s DHCD board agenda included an item regarding the “appointment of Chris Christensen as Interim Chief Executive Officer.” We reached out to the DHCD’s public information officer to ask what was going on, and did not get a response.

Today, the district released this brief statement: “Desert Healthcare District (DHCD) is announcing that Dr. Conrado Bárzaga will be leaving his position as CEO. Please join the district in expressing gratitude to Dr. Bárzaga for his contributions and leadership over the past four years. The DHCD Board has named Chris Christensen, Chief Administration Officer, as interim CEO.”

The figurative plot thickened, however, when county Supervisor V. Manuel Perez’s office issued a statement speaking out against what he called Bárzaga’s “removal” from his job:

Supervisor V. Manuel Perez is speaking out in strong and urgent disagreement over a decision by the Desert Healthcare District Board of Directors to relieve its Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Conrado Bárzaga, of his duties. Supervisor Perez became aware of the decision today and will be writing a letter to the Desert Healthcare District for its meeting on Tuesday evening.

“This was very shocking to learn of this morning, that Dr. Bárzaga, an experienced and capable administrator of the Desert Healthcare District, was suddenly removed from his position. In his tenure over the past four years, working with the Board, Dr. Bárzaga helped the district serve the entire Coachella Valley, bring equity and address health disparities and the health crises of COVID-19, monkeypox, mental health, opioid overdose and homelessness.

“It doesn’t appear that there was any reason given for the change in Dr. Bárzaga’s employment with the Desert Healthcare District. We would have to gather information to make sure it was truly a matter of performance, and not on some unfair grounds. In my opinion, Dr. Bárzaga was the best CEO and his positive impact on the district was noticeable. I am hoping the Desert Healthcare District Board will reverse this decision.”

Bárzaga became the DHCD CEO on July 31, 2019, and led the district through the difficult times of the COVID-19 pandemic and last summer’s mpox crisis. He was unafraid to speak out on potentially controversial issues; in 2020, for example, he issued a statement linking systemic racism to the subpar public-health outcomes of minority populations.

We’re working to learn more about what led to Bárzaga’s dismissal. As always, we’ll keep you posted.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Why are gas prices so crazy high? This is what the state’s new Division of Petroleum Market Oversight has to say, according to The Sacramento Bee: “Lawmakers created the division to watch over oil markets for possible illegal activity and granted its recently appointed director, Tai Milder, access to new internal market information. Based on that data, Milder pinned the recent price spike on three factors: An increase in global crude oil prices due primarily to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; decreased oil supply due to in-state refinery outages and maintenance; a single, isolated trade on California’s real-time ‘spot market’ for gasoline that quickly caused a 50-cent-per-gallon price spike. In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, Milder called the single transaction ‘unusual’ and said it may be a result of the underlying structure of California’s gasoline market. He also criticized refiners for failing to maintain adequate inventories of refined gasoline.” If a single, isolated trade can cause that much chaos, something is very wrong, no?

• The Hill reports on ever-worsening COVID-19 conspiracy theories: “‘We’re only at the tip of the iceberg for how bad this is going to get,’ said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher. Fear that another COVID-19 lockdown is imminent have circulated online in recent weeks as cases spiked. Hospitalizations caused by the virus have been steadily rising each week since early July, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The claim originated on conspiracist Alex Jones’ InfoWars in an Aug. 18 ‘exclusive’ claiming whistleblowers from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Border Patrol told them the strict precautions put in place at the start of the pandemic are making a return. The website then speculated without evidence that those purported lockdowns are perfectly timed to assist with ‘the greatest election meddling in history.’ Right-wing online spaces quickly glommed onto the narrative, which was then amplified by conservative publications and some GOP lawmakers, including Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.” Ugh.

• Related, and appalling: A number of GOP politicians are working to undermine research into misinformation. The Washington Post explains: “Academics, universities and government agencies are overhauling or ending research programs designed to counter the spread of online misinformation amid a legal campaign from conservative politicians and activists who accuse them of colluding with tech companies to censor right-wing views. The escalating campaign—led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government—has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of medical information online. Facing litigation, Stanford University officials are discussing how they can continue tracking election-related misinformation through the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a prominent consortium that flagged social media conspiracies about voting in 2020 and 2022, several participants told The Washington Post. The coalition of disinformation researchers may shrink and also may stop communicating with X and Facebook about their findings. The National Institutes of Health froze a $150 million program intended to advance the communication of medical information, citing regulatory and legal threats.”

• Another possible government shutdown looms. Time magazine explains how that can effect us: “During a shutdown, the government can only spend money on essential services, such as those related to law enforcement and public safety. That means hundreds of thousands of federal workers won’t receive a timely paycheck, while others will be furloughed, which could inflict severe financial hardships on some American families at a time when many are still struggling with elevated prices due to inflation and impending student loan repayments. … Recreational facilities funded by the federal government would be forced to close, meaning travelers and tourists may be unable to visit national park facilities or the Smithsonian museums in Washington during a shutdown. The National Park Service estimated that a 2013 government shutdown led to a $500 million loss in visitor spending nationwide.”

• ProPublica takes a look at how extreme gerrymandering in Wisconsin shows the lengths GOP leaders there are going to in order to stay in power, democracy be damned: “The new maps have given Wisconsin Republicans the leeway to move aggressively on perceived threats to their power. The GOP-controlled Senate recently voted to fire the state’s nonpartisan elections chief, Meagan Wolfe, blaming her for pandemic-era voting rules that they claim helped Joe Biden win the state in 2020. A legal battle over Wolfe’s firing now looms. The future of a newly elected state supreme court justice, Janet Protasiewicz, also is in doubt. Her election in April shifted the balance of the court to the left and put the Wisconsin maps in peril. Republican leaders have threatened to impeach her if she does not recuse herself from a case that seeks to invalidate the maps drawn by the GOP. They argue that she’s biased because during her campaign she told voters the maps are ‘rigged.’”

• A discovery in Zambia has scientists re-thinking the entire timeline of humanity’s development. CNN reports: “Archaeologists have unearthed the oldest known wooden structure, and it’s almost half a million years old. The simple structure—found along a riverbank in Zambia—is made up of two interlocking logs, with a notch deliberately crafted into the upper piece to allow them to fit together at right angles, according to a new study of cut marks made by stone tools. Geoff Duller, a professor of geography and Earth sciences at the University of Aberystwyth in the United Kingdom, was part of the team that made the discovery in 2019. He said the structure, excavated upstream of Kalambo Falls near Zambia’s border with Tanzania, probably would have been part of a wooden platform used as a walkway, to keep food or firewood dry or perhaps as a base on which to build a dwelling. A digging stick and other wooden tools were found at the same site. … The discovery challenges the prevailing view that Stone Age humans led a nomadic lifestyle, Duller said.”

• And finally … this Wired magazine story is a crazy must-read. The headline: “The Bizarre Cottage Industry of YouTube Obituary Pirates: If you Google someone who recently died, you might see a flood of near-identical videos of men reading obits. Here’s why.” A little more: “Obituary pirating, where people scrape and republish obituaries from funeral homes and websites like Legacy.com, has been an ethically dubious business for years. … The flood of YouTube obituary videos is a janky update on this practice. Some of these channels upload dozens of death notice summaries every hour, abandoning any pretense of looking like an official source of information in an effort to churn out as many videos as they can. … The more prolific channels upload new videos every few minutes. Many look nearly identical and feature men sitting alone and speaking directly to the camera. They often appear to be lounging at home. (It’s hard to verify exactly where they are; I reached out to the proprietors of several accounts, but none responded.) Others narrate obituaries over corny slideshows of candles and photos of the deceased sourced from social media. Their subscriber numbers are modest, making it all even more puzzling; on the higher end, channels will have a few thousand subscribers and millions of overall views. The highest follower count I found was slightly over 26,000; the page with the highest views had a grand total of around 1.7 million.” What a world …

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