McKinleyville’s Dennis Mayo — a director of the local community services district and the person who takes the most delight in playing cowboy in all of Humboldt County, Allen McCloskey aside — saddled up the hosses and vamoosed to the nation’s capital last week, there to stamp his brand on that annual roundup known as the Conservative Political Action Conference. (That’s CPAC to you, pardner!)

He seems to have had a great time! Longtime Facebook friends got to follow along as he shmoozed the halls of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center wearing his Ben Shapiro button, meeting celebrity after celebrity. And Dennis being Dennis, he made a whole slew of new friends, too — including CNN personality Van Jones, a person who many of the conservative persuasion eschew!

Here’s Dennis on the Van Jones show! He talks about how “P.O.’d” he was about the Michael Cohen hearings in the House of Representatives, which were going on at the time — a distraction, he says, from the “bootstrap” issues that we need to focus on, and which he says President Trump has been pretty good about.

Skip forward to about 4:45 if you only want to hear our man:

These “bootstrap issues” seem to be the main thing Mayo was pitching last week. (He talks about them more in this low-res video interview with QAnonist, Pizzagater and “SteelTruth” host Ann Vandersteel.)

But what are the “bootstrap issues”? Mayo describes them in greater detail on the old Watch Paul blog, which seems to have been resuscitated for the purposes of chronicling his trip:

Several issues that didn’t get on the air: we talked in detail about my vision of ‘bootstrap’ issues, things that the public wants done and that Congress is not doing, that the people want done and dissension is keeping us from focusing on. 

Some of those issues are equity issues - meaningful equity issues. Credit rating reforms, honest auto and home loan criteria, veteran home loan reforms. All things being equal minorities home loan applicants are not approved in a disproportionately high level. Home ownership is, for most Americans, the number one way to a increase their wealth and their credit rating and security. We need to rip out the imbedded racial obstacles in that process. Criminal sentencing reforms Which is what Van Jones was there to address) and many other issues. We both agreed we don’t want a color blind society, we want a society that accepts, honors and relishes our differences and our diversity. 

We talked about other issues like dredging Humboldt Harbor, paving our streets, California water infrastructure issues - you know - lots of the bootstrap issues.

The “bootstrap issues,” it seems, are programs that help Americans to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” and in some cases seem to involve big government spending. But that’s OK! Though there are undoubtedly some gaucheries that one simply does not commit amongst the faithful, CPAC seems to be a big tent. If Jones accepts Dennis’ invitation to join him in a cowboy ride around the Capitol Building later this year, then we know that the mustachioed McKinleyvillan will have achieved something of substance.