Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022

Indian Summer | Local Vendors | Tax Refund | MCHCD Meeting | Mac & Mo | Dem Club | ALRFD Event | Housing Workshop | Kids 1928 | Volunteers Needed | Ottoson Bobcat | Nayaran House | Centennial BBQ | Ed Notes | Merna Scott | She/Her | Yesterday's Catch | Hastings Case | Ross & Heeser | Parched Coalinga | Jean MacCallum | PSPS PS | Alder Campers | Faulty Comparison | Angela Lansbury | Peaceful Protests | Video Magazine | Liondrome | Dem Advice | Mayo 7 | Kunstler Dream | Rockwell Cover | West Sanctions | Last Tree

DRY AND WARM afternoon conditions are expected through the weekend across interior portions of Northwest California. Meanwhile, near the coast, low clouds and patchy fog will mostly clear by mid to late morning through the work week, with more persistent clouds returning by the weekend. (NWS)

MIDDLE CLASS TAX REFUND

To ease the impact of inflation, California will issue the Middle Class Tax Refund directly to eligible residents’ bank accounts and mailboxes between October 2022 and January 2023.

More info: ftb.ca.gov/about-ftb/newsroom/middle-class-tax-refund/index.html

SPECIAL MEETING OF COAST HEALTH CARE DISTRICT: OCT. 13 @ 6:15 PM

Please see the Agenda at: mchcd.org

Join Zoom Meeting: us06web.zoom.us/j/84297673525?pwd=OU9LS3pqWmtLU2NkejBIT1B1UER1Zz09

Norman de Vall, MCHCD Sec., <ndevall@mcn.org>, 707/357.5555

COAST DEMOCRATIC CLUB IN-PERSON MEETING

Jughandle Farm Meeting Room, Thursday, October 13, 5 - 7 PM (5 - 5:30 Social Time, 5:30 Program)

Masks are Optional

Mendocino Coast Healthcare District Board Candidates (Club Endorsed) Meet Lee Finney, Susan Savage and Jade Tippett Visit Their Website: https://www.future-vision-mchcd22.org/

Measure P (Club Endorsed) Sales Tax Allocation for Local Fire Districts, Fort Bragg and Mendocino Fire Chiefs

Measure O, Sales Tax to Support Mendocino County Libraries, Carolyn Schneider

Hold the House Thru California Postcard Project Report

Lee Finney will have packets of 10 postcards with stamps and materials to get out the vote in 4 targeted CA CD races

ALRFD OPEN HOUSE

We're having an OPEN HOUSE this Saturday from 11AM to 4PM at our Albion Station 810 behind the Albion Grocery Store and we'd love for you to join us! There will information on our new proposed fire station, our Fire Safe Council will be there, information on how YOU can volunteer, and what to know about Measure P. 

Our Auxiliary will be serving Tri Tip Sandwiches with chips and drink for $15 or hot dogs with chips and drink for $10 from Noon to 3PM. They will also have T-Shirts for Sale.

Don't miss it. We'll be looking for you!

POINT ARENA TO HOLD SECOND COMMUNITY WORKSHOP TO ADDRESS HOUSING CRISIS

October 18th at 6:00 PM via Zoom (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85831871309).

This workshop is the next step in the City's effort to update its Local Coastal Program to make it easier to develop housing in Point Arena.

At this workshop we will discuss preliminary results from the ongoing Community Housing Survey; report on discussions with California Coastal Commission staff; discuss potential changes to the City's policies regarding Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU); and discuss possible changes to zoning regulations to encourage more multi-family housing.

Community members are encouraged to attend the workshop and provide feedback.

For more information, please contact Linda Ruffing at North Coast Community Planning: linda@nccplanning.com 

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO SUPPORT YOUTH ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Local youth organizations in Ukiah, Hopland and Redwood Valley are teaming up on Wednesday, Oct. 26, to offer opportunities for interested community members to participate. Volunteers are needed to help guide youths on field trips and nature walks for environmental education. 

The UC Hopland Research and Extension Center (HREC), Redwood Valley Outdoor Education Project (RVOEP) and UC 4-H Youth Development Program will share details of their volunteer opportunities, the requirements to participate and dates on which volunteers are needed over the academic year.

“Volunteering with youth is a great way to support our young people and their futures, but also takes time, patience and commitment,” said Hannah Bird, HREC community educator. “We hope this event will allow interested volunteers to understand just what is required to support our environmental education programs, the kinds of skills, time commitment and the registration process - which includes fingerprinting and background checks for youth safety.”

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, school field trips were canceled, leading to a natural decline in volunteerism in these areas. RVOEP and HREC are now welcoming students back to their sites, with more than 3,000 students visiting for field trips annually. 

Volunteers support site staff in delivery of environmental education programs, guiding groups on nature walks and through programs such as being a nature detective, identifying the most diverse bird habitat, learning fire science and experiencing lambing time.

“Despite having well-developed and refined outdoor programs, we still rely heavily on volunteers. If we lack volunteers, the quality of our environmental education programs is diminished,” commented Erich Sommer, RVOEP outdoor education specialist.

Many of the volunteer opportunities with HREC and RVOEP are during the day in the work week, but the UC 4-H Youth Development Program also has opportunities for adult support on weekends and evenings. The organizations involved hope that by collaborating for this recruitment event, prospective volunteers will find the perfect volunteer opportunity that fits their interests and schedules.

Participants are requested to register online for the event at https://bit.ly/volunteerhrec. 

The volunteer event will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 26, at Shippey Hall, Hopland Research and Extension Center, 4070 University Road, Hopland. A simple free lunch will be provided.

For further information, email hbird@ucanr.edu or call Hannah at (707) 744 1424, ext. 105.

ATTENTION CRAIG STEHR

Events at the Nayaran House Oct-Dec. 2022, Yoga, Reiki, Dance, Bhagavad Gita, NVC and more!

Satnam folks,

Please join us for all, some, or one of these events happening at the Nayaran House in Fort Bragg downtown near the CV. Star Center. Once we meet you, you may drop in and/or call us to register and save your spot!

Relax! Learn! Share! Connect in a peaceful and compassionate environment. Please call for address or inquiry at 707-472-8212

October thru December 2022

Aquarian Sadhana (in the Sikh tradition as taught by Yogi Bhajan for these times), Mondays 5:00 am 7:15 am Free Come to hear ancient prayers and chanting, yoga for 40 min. and yogi tea afterwards.

Baghavada Gita study group, weds. 5:00 pm, book $25 or bring your own. suggested donation $10

Kundalini Yoga & Meditation, weds. 6:30 PM - 8:00 pm, suggested donation, $20 Bring your mat, water bottle, and comfortable clothing.

Reiki (a Japanese healing method brought to the West by Takata. We follow the traditional Usui Way. Level 1 & 2, Sat. NOV. 5 & 26th, $75 all day event. Serves as a refresher or get certified with SoulHeartYoga Academy, an non profit organization based abroad. A chance to heal, practice, and connect with other practitioners.

Non-Violent Communication, Mondays 6:00 PM, starting Monday Oct. 17th, suggested donation $10 We'll have a brief introduction of the four components of NVC, Observation, Feelings, Needs, Request, and then we'll do hands-on exercises between us. Learn and Practice if you have done it before.

Dance Movement, Sat. Nov 12, 3 -5 PM, suggested donation $20 Experience your healing in a safe and comfortable group environment with a 5-rhythm type of movement. More info later on. We're hoping to bring a certified teacher from the Bay area four our first gathering. Snacks will be served.

Breathwork & Hypnotherapy, by arrangement, individual or group sessions. There's one group session on Friday, the 14th at 5 pm, limited to four people for a trial-out, suggested donation $10. Call Murali for your spot, and/or individual sessions 707-299-8207

With Love And In Service,

Atma Chanan & Muralidhara Ras, atmachanankaur@gmail.com, murali108@pm.me

ED NOTES

GOT MY BALLOT TODAY. Without going into detail, or revealing my flawed reasoning, I can say I'll be voting NO on the 13 state judges clogging up the November 8th exercise in futility. It's worse than insulting that incumbent judges, all of them appointed to life jobs at pay and emoluments most Americans can only dream of, don't deign to identify themselves beyond “incumbent,” but us saps out here have no idea how these hacks and hackettes render justice which, as we know, is routinely denied citizens who can't pay to get it. In the interests of justice and democracy, Vote NO on ALL of them. 

I'VE BEEN in the appellate courts a couple of times. Lost both times, although in one of them the late State Supreme Court Justice, Stanley Mosk, saw my case my way. In the other, after winning a jury trial in less than an hour in Mendo Superior Court, I got slam-dunked at the appellate level in a written rejection deficient in law, logic, and basic prose, the decision overall teetering on the border between moronic and cretinous. Cost me a lot of money I didn't have. I would have liked to have appealed the loss, but I couldn't afford to go on, and anyway I figured if the state supreme court judges might be as dumb as the decision the Frisco appellate featherbedders had rendered in my case. I got screwed.

OH YOU WERE, HUH? Yes, I'd say so, but judge for yourself, trusting my rendition of my claim which was simple enough. Ready? (Whine on, bro.) The Supervisors of the time, all “liberals” of course, had placed a legal ad in all the County papers except mine. Challenged, they lied, informing me that the ava was not on their list of approved publications. Which the ava was and had been for years. 

THE LIBS — led by Shoemaker and Colfax — were using public money to retaliate against me for unkind assessments of their functioning. As mentioned, a Mendo jury saw it my way in less than an hour. It wasn't a complicated beef, and the County attorney, Frank Zotter, a wonderfully comic figure of the County Counsel's office, was so passionate in his one-word defense, repeatedly describing me and my newspaper as “scurrilous,” sputtering the descriptive so many times that a couple of the jurors were laughing. That was it. The County position. The ava was “scurrilous,” therefore, the implication went, how could the County possibly advertise in such a publication? 

BUT THE COUNTY appealed, which they got to do free, courtesy of the taxpayers. I had to pay. Mightily. And I lost in a decision that wouldn't pass a freshman composition class. And I got sabbed by my lawyer. And about here I sound like one of those people who carry their cases around with them, “gunnysackers,” who, if you make the mistake of asking them how they're doing, they dump their whole big bag of grievances on you.

SO THE RECOMMENDED legal eagle who drafted my appeal, which I should have done myself or at least reviewed it before he sent it off, enclosed with my appeal a back copy of the ava which happened to feature the most inflammatory front page cartoon in the inflammatory history of the paper. By the brilliant Mary Miles of Potter Valley, now an attorney herself who has won big judgements against the City of San Francisco, the drawing, a pro-abortion argument, depicted the male, anti-abortion members (sic) of the Supreme Court as straining penises. I'm sure the judges said to themselves, “Well, golly, this here drawing of our black-robed big brothers as pricks in a newspaper is awfully insulting so bop moppa loo bop we find for the County of Mendo.” I should have known my lawyer was a lamebrain and probably hostile to me when I had to pass him questions when we were fending off Zotter the Scurrilous.

CAROLINE INSISTS SHE’S A SHE

Hello,

The Community Foundation just launched our 2023 Community Enrichment Grant Program. Please let me know if you have any questions. Have a great day!

Best,

Caroline Bethel (she/her)

Office Manager / Executive Assistant

The Community Foundation of Mendocino County

ED NOTE: Excuse me, but I don't understand the parenthetical gender identification. I assumed you were a she/her by your given name.

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 11, 2022

NICHOLAS BRITTON, Covelo. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

SARAH CLAYTON, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

CHELSEA HERBEL, Willits. Failure to appear.

ORLANDO MUNOZ, Ukiah. County parole violation.

SESARIO RIOS IV, Hopland. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, domestic battery, reckless driving.

KATTIE SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, reckless driving.

CHADLEY THAMES, Fort Bragg. Protective order violation.

ALYSSIA WHITE-OLSON, Laytonville. Robbery, controlled substance. 

UC HASTINGS’ NAME CHANGE spawned a potential $1.7 billion lawsuit. Will it hold up in court?

by Bob Egelko

In their challenge to California’s decision to remove the name of Serranus Hastings from the state’s law school in San Francisco, descendants of the school’s founder rely on an 1878 statute that declared the school “shall forever be known and designated as the Hastings College of the Law.”

That was a binding agreement that California has now violated with a law to rename the school UC College of the Law, San Francisco, his descendants argue in a lawsuit, which also indignantly disputes evidence that their ancestor commissioned militias to slaughter thousands of Native Americans in Mendocino County. They seek a refund of the $100,000 Hastings paid to the state to establish the school, plus interest — a total of about $1.7 billion, according to a Chronicle analysis — and also want to undo the name change.

But the central claim in the lawsuit — that California made a binding, contractual promise to Serranus Hastings and his successors to permanently name the school after him — appears to be based entirely on the law the Legislature passed in 1878. And the current state Legislature, like its predecessors, has the task and overall authority to change laws it considers unnecessary or unjust.

If Hastings’ family had a contract with the state, as shown in a document from 1878 with signatures from both sides, it might still be a binding agreement that could not be changed by future legislation, said David A. Carrillo, who is executive director of the California Constitution Center at UC Berkeley School of Law and is not involved in the court case.

But if there is no such document, Carrillo said, the Legislature that passed the 1878 law “cannot bind the hands of a future Legislature.”

Attorney Theodore Boutrous, who represents UC Hastings in the suit, said the California Legislature has complete authority to revise or repeal laws passed by their predecessors, as long as the new law is consistent with the state Constitution.

“That’s all it did here for a very important public purpose, acting well within its legislative authority,” Boutrous told The Chronicle. “The 1878 statute was a law, not a contract, and the Legislature has now simply changed the law.”

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court Oct. 4 by six descendants of Serranus Hastings and an alumni organization, contends the state Legislature’s commitment to Hastings in 1878 was more than just an ordinary law.

“The state of California entered into a complete contract with (Serranus C.) Hastings concerning the College’s establishment, name, funding, and governance,’’ the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. They said the legislation that wrote that agreement into law was “a complete and binding written agreement between the state of California and S.C. Hastings and his descendants.”

While North Coast Indian tribes and a number of researchers in recent years have reported increasing evidence of Hastings’ role in ordering mass killings of tribal members in the 1860s, the lawsuit said the state’s action was triggered by a front-page article in the New York Times last October based on interviews with tribal leaders and historians who agreed the school’s founder was to blame. Though it was a news story by the Times’ San Francisco bureau chief, the suit labeled it an “op-ed” and a “hit piece” and said the Legislature took the bait.

“There is no known evidence that S.C. Hastings desired, requested, or knowingly encouraged any atrocities against Native Americans,” the suit asserted, and neither Hastings nor his descendants have had “any opportunity for a judicial trial as to these horrific allegations,” the suit said. It said the state’s subsequent action “heaps scorn and punishment upon S.C. Hastings, his descendants, and indeed, by association, upon all of the tens of thousands of Hastings law graduates living and deceased.”

In response, another attorney for UC Hastings, Elizabeth McCloskey, said the school’s decision to change its name was “the result of a five-year deliberate and transparent process that included extensive research, public hearings and input from a wide range of community stakeholders and experts.” It included a researcher’s report to the school’s Legacy Review Committee that found “significant proof” that Serranus Hastings, formerly California’s chief justice and attorney general, was “responsible in part for fomenting violence and atrocity against California Indians” as a landowner who blamed tribes for attacking his cattle.

And some alumni argued that keeping the school's name in place would damage their standing more than keeping it.

“I’m glad that my law school has chosen not to associate itself with the name of a person who perpetuated genocide on native people,” said Christine Pelosi, a Democratic strategist, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a 1993 UC Hastings graduate. In an interview, she said the name change should not be viewed as an insult to the Hastings family, but simply an attempt “to reckon with our history,” a history of which she was unaware as a student.

“The school was named after a butcher and racist — how do we take pride in hanging our degrees on our office walls?” asked another Hastings alum, Christopher Darden, an attorney and legal commentator who was one of the unsuccessful prosecutors in O.J. Simpson’s murder case. But Darden, a 1980 graduate, said the new UC College of the Law name was “generic as any college could be,” and added, “I’m not sure of what to say when someone asks me where I went to law school.”

Asked why the 1878 law amounted to a contract that future Legislatures had no power to change, Gregory Michael, a lawyer for Hastings’ descendants, said the state had first entered a binding agreement with Serranus Hastings — permanently naming the school after him, in exchange for $100,000 — and then enacted that agreement as a law.

“The California and U.S. Constitutions do not, and have never, permitted state governments to shirk their contractual commitments under a false guise of setting public policy,” Michael said.

But attorney Boutrous said that even under the 1878 law, the descendants would not be entitled to any funds, because it required compensation only if the state failed to pay the family $7,000 a year — which it has done — or if the school “ceased to exist.”

Besides, asked Carrillo of UC Berkeley, “hasn't the Hastings family gotten its money's worth from having their name on the building for 144 years?”

A CALIFORNIA CITY'S WATER SUPPLY IS EXPECTED TO RUN OUT IN TWO MONTHS 

by Joshua Partlow 

COALINGA - The residents of this sun-scorched city feel California's endless drought when the dust lifts off the brown hills and flings grit into their living rooms. They see it when they drive past almond trees being ripped from the ground for lack of water and the new blinking sign at the corner of Elm and Cherry warning: “No watering front yard lawns.”

The fire chief noticed it when he tested hydrants in August - a rare occurrence as Coalinga desperately seeks to conserve water - and the first one shot out a foot-long block of compacted dirt. The second one ejected like a can of Axe body spray.

The schools superintendent could only think drought on the first day of school when a 4-year-old fell onto unwatered turf, breaking an arm; or when the chain saws dropped three coastal redwoods outside Henry F. Bishop Elementary that had withered and died. Superintendent Lori Villanueva even lost a portion of her own right lung last year from a drought-aggravated illness, valley fever, that's caused by breathing soil fungus whipped up off the dry ground.

But what lies ahead might be far worse for the 17,000 residents living amid the oil derricks and cattle farms on the western edge of the state's Central Valley. Coalinga has only one source of water - a shrinking allotment from an aqueduct managed by the federal government - and officials are projecting the city will use up that amount before the end of the year.

That looming threat has left city officials racing between meetings in Sacramento and phone calls to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation seeking to increase their water supply. Some residents have begun stockpiling five-gallon water jugs in their homes, while many expect major spikes in their water bills. If Coalinga can't find relief, it would be forced to buy additional water on the open market at exorbitant prices that could swamp the city's budget.

That was the grim scenario facing Mayor Ron Ramsey when he rapped his knuckles on the table and cursed at a City Council meeting in early August. Everyone but Ramsey had just voted to ban watering front yards and to ramp up penalties on overuse - measures they conceded would not save nearly what was needed. But it was more than Ramsey could stomach.

“It's too much. Too fast,” Ramsey told the room. On top of that, he said, it wasn't fair.

“Go to the state capitol and they got green grass, don't they?” he said. “They can do it, but why can't we?”

Coalinga, named for its history as a coal mining town, is a small Republican outpost in liberal California. The city had already defied state leadership in 2020, passing a resolution that declared all businesses essential to avoid mandatory pandemic closures. When it was time for the state to distribute covid-19 relief funds to municipalities, Coalinga didn't get any.

The water shortage felt to some like another kind of retaliation.

“How do you not give farmers water when they feed everybody unless you're trying to put them out of business?” asked Scott Netherton, owner of Coalinga's lone movie theater and executive director of its chamber of commerce.

“It feels like we're being singled out, small towns,” he said. “It's like they're trying to force them out to where you've got to move into the bigger cities.”

Coalinga's brackish groundwater has never been a reliable option. Before a canal was completed in the early 1970s that connected Coalinga to a major aqueduct, the city relied on water delivered by train. After a 1983 earthquake that destroyed some 300 homes in town and spread concerns about water contamination, residents resorted to donations; Anheuser-Busch sent drinking water to Coalinga in beer cans and bottles.

But the drought has made residents question the very survival of their city.

“We've never been this bad where they said we're going to run out of water,” Mayor Ramsey said.

* * *

A future with far less access to water

The most severe drought in the American West since the 9th century is now in its 23rd year. All across the region, communities are confronting shortages worse than they have ever known. The biggest reservoirs have fallen to record lows. Whole neighborhoods have lost their water supply as wells have gone dry. States along the dwindling Colorado River are negotiating water cuts that could bring dramatic disruptions to some of the country's most important agricultural belts.

The hotter and drier climate has forced California and other states to reckon with a future in which they will have access to far less water, even as populations continue to grow. In August, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) presented a 19-page plan to deal with the expected loss of 10 percent of the state's water supply by 2040.

 “The hots are getting a lot hotter. The dries are getting a lot drier,” Newsom told reporters at the time. “We have to adapt to that new reality, and we have to change our approach.”

California started the year with its driest four months on record. Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada this year was a small fraction of the historical average. Depleted reservoirs have led to restrictions on outdoor watering for millions of state residents.

 Coalinga's water comes from the San Luis Reservoir, about 90 miles to the north, and is delivered along a portion of the California Aqueduct that was built in the 1960s and helped fuel the region's agricultural growth. This is part of the Central Valley Project, a network of dams, reservoirs and canals now severely hobbled by drought.

Farmers received no allocation from that network this year; municipalities and industrial users were limited to what the Bureau of Reclamation calculates as their “public health and safety” needs - a first in the history of the Central Valley Project, which dates to the 1930s.

For Coalinga, that meant 1,920 acre-feet of water - a quarter of its historic allotment and just over half of what it expected to consume this year. Federal officials raised that in April to 2,500 acre-feet - a level that still fell more than 1,000 acre-feet short of what Coalinga needed. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, what it would take to cover an acre of land with one foot of water.

Over the summer, city officials calculated the city's supply would run out by mid-September.

Beyond that point, if Coalinga kept using water from the aqueduct, it would belong to someone else.

“You don't have the right to take that water,” was the message Sean Brewer, Coalinga's assistant city manager, said he got from Reclamation officials.

The bureau said in a statement that it had been working closely with Coalinga on its “unique water supply circumstances and challenges.” Brewer agreed that the bureau has been “extremely helpful” even as its “hands are tied.” Federal officials gave him names of vendors who might sell the city the extra water it needed. But as Brewer worked his way down the list of irrigation districts, farmers and other private interests, the news wasn't good.

 “Nobody has water to sell right now,” he said.

Those who do are not selling it cheap.

“I cringe when I say this,” Brewer told the City Council on Aug. 4, as he reported that water that normally cost the city $190 per acre-foot was being sold on the open market for as much as $2,500 per acre-foot. The city might need up to $2.5 million to buy enough water to last the year, he said. The city's entire budget is $10 million.

“We just don't have $2.5 million to buy water,” City Council member Adam Adkisson said in an interview, calling the water prices “criminal.”

“In a natural disaster, you can't increase the cost of bottled water 2,000 percent; you'd go to jail for that,” he said. “But somehow these people can increase it 2,000 percent and everything's just fine.”

Fear of that kind of “drought profiteering” prompted state Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D) to write Attorney General Merrick Garland in May asking for an investigation into the anti-competitive practices of hedge funds and other investors that “literally steal our most life dependent resource from ourselves and future generations in exchange for a profit.”

Hurtado talked to Adkisson in August as he was searching for a solution for Coalinga and found him “in panic mode.”

“The price of water, the cost of water, is increasing, but it's not just going to be to the Central Valley; it's going to be statewide,” Hurtado said. “We're in a crisis situation in a matter of weeks, I think.”

* * *

'What do you do when the water runs out?'

 In the High Times marijuana store - a burgeoning industry for Coalinga, which has two prominent dispensaries downtown and a pot farm run out of a defunct prison owned by Bob Marley's son Damian - manager Luis Zamora is just starting to register a new level of concern about the water crisis.

“Just in the last probably two days, I've had people asking me, like, what do you do when the water runs out?”

He laughed.

“Exactly. What do you do?”

Coalinga has tried to get tough on water waste. The city has code enforcers and even police officers patrolling for water violations. The city put a moratorium on building swimming pools, raised water rates several times and last year began imposing “drought fees” for overuse. But the city soon voted to refund the $277,000 it had raised in fees because water use wasn't declining enough.

“It was supposed to be a deterrent,” said Netherton, the chamber of commerce's executive director. “It wasn't deterring anybody.”

Zamora has been slowly stockpiling five-gallon water bottles at home - he's up to nine of them. He has stopped watering his lawn and watched as his neighbors' yards have also turned brown. But others' lawns in town are still green, and residents are keenly aware who is still watering.

“They encourage people to kind of rat each other out, out here,” Zamora said. “So if you water, people will be taking pictures of you.”

“I'm watching your yard,” Mary Jones, a Coalinga resident, told Mayor Ramsey at an Aug. 18 City Council meeting.

Ramsey, who had by then accepted the ban on watering front lawns, resorted to spraying on his own remedy to keep his lawn looking nice.

“Hey, you know why mine's green?” he asked Jones. “I painted it.”

“I would paint mine, too, but it's dirt,” she responded. “I can't fool anyone with dirt.”

A short-term reprieve

Coalinga's two biggest water users sit next to each other on a lonely two-lane road several miles outside of town. The Pleasant Valley State Prison and the Department of State Hospitals-Coalinga, a psychiatric hospital for sexually violent predators, together consume about 20 percent of the city's water allocation. And both institutions have told the city they can't conserve more water than they already do.

Outside the psychiatric hospital, there is a long row of coastal redwoods that appear green and bushy, a landscaping flourish Coalinga residents view with increasing suspicion.

“Go look at our coastal redwoods in our medians; they're all dead. The ones at the school? Dead,” said Adkisson, the council member. “I think there's opportunities for them to conserve when it comes to landscaping.”

 The hospital has operated under a drought plan for the past eight years. The facility has removed most grass from “non-patient care areas,” has removed shrubs and plants, has resorted to controlled shower times, closely monitors leaks and “continues to make every effort” to use water efficiently, according to Ralph Montano, a spokesman for the Department of State Hospitals.

“Unfortunately, [the hospital's] coastal redwoods are brown and dying from lack of water also,” Montano said in a statement.

The prison did not respond to requests for comment.

City officials argued that the burden of saving water on behalf of the two state-run institutions was unfairly being borne by residents. In August, with Coalinga just weeks from running out of water, the Bureau of Reclamation responded by increasing the city's allotment by 531 acre-feet “to assist with meeting public health and safety needs,” the bureau said in a statement.

But Coalinga officials say they are still about 600 acre-feet short and that buying additional supplies remains extremely expensive. They now project they will run out of water sometime in early December.

When that happens, no one knows exactly what to expect.

“You don't want to say that they'll never turn the water off. I don't see how they could,” Mayor Ramsey said. “I hate to say this, but with the government we have right now, you never know.”

EVERYONE'S FAVE PSEUDO-PUBLIC UTILITY SAYS...

To make sure customers stay safe during planned wildfire safety outages, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) offers new and expanded customer resources in case Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) are needed this autumn. Because high winds may cause trees and debris to contact energized lines and possibly start a wildfire, PG&E may need to turn off power during dry, windy weather.

Each year, PG&E enhances the PSPS program by further refining the ability to identify and mitigate catastrophic wildfire risk. There was an 88% reduction in customers impacted by PSPS in 2021 compared to 2020, and a 43% reduction in the duration of outages during a PSPS in 2021 compared to 2019.

“System improvements and favorable weather meant that PSPS affected fewer customers last year than in 2020 and 2019,” said Mark Quinlan, Vice President of Electric System Operations at PG&E. “PG&E continues to use PSPS as a last resort to prevent catastrophic wildfires. Every day, PG&E is working hard to respond to the state’s changing climate, reduce wildfire risk across every part of the service territory and make the system safer.”

This year, PG&E is providing customers with several tools to help them prepare and stay safe during a planned power outage:

The Generator and Battery Rebate Program has expanded to provide a $300 rebate to customers located in Tier 2 or 3 High Fire-Threat Districts (HFTD) and/or served by an Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS)-protected circuit. If the customer is located outside of an HFTD but is served by an EPSS-capable circuit, they must have experienced two or more recent PSPS to qualify.

Hotel discounts are now available as a new resource for customers who are experiencing a PSPS. PG&E is teaming up with IHG Hotels & Resorts, Hyatt, Choice, and Wyndham Hotels to offer customers discounted rooms as a safe space during a power outage.

Transportation to Community Resource Centers (CRCs) has been expanded to provide accessible transportation to and from CRCs to customers in Shasta, El Dorado, Fresno, Marin, Sonoma, Solano, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Amador, Calaveras, and San Francisco Counties during a PSPS.

Customers who depend on power for medical devices or assistive technologies may qualify for the Disability Disaster Access and Resources (DDAR) Program, a collaboration between PG&E and the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers. The program assists those who have medical and independent living needs with:

Creating an emergency plan

Signing up for the Medical Baseline Program

Applying for a portable backup battery

Obtaining ADA-accessible car rides and/or hotel stays during a PSPS

Receiving food replacement during and after a PSPS

Customer Notifications

PG&E shares information in advance of and during PSPS outages as soon as possible. New this year, notifications will be sent both day and night, depending on when the dry, windy weather occurs and power will be out. PG&E understands this may mean customers are called at night and recognizes the inconvenience this may pose. In previous years, PG&E has not sent notifications between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. However, due to requirements from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the policy has been updated. Although weather conditions can be uncertain, PG&E aims to send notifications via calls, texts and emails two days ahead of a PSPS, one day ahead, just before shutting off power, once power is turned off and daily until power is restored. PG&E will also send notifications if a PSPS outage is no longer expected. Customers can ensure their contact information is current by visiting pge.com/myalerts.

Address Alerts

Customers can receive PSPS notifications for any important address such as their parents’ home, their children’s school or their business via text or phone call in 16 languages. Customers and non-account holders can sign up for Address Alerts at pge.com/addressalerts.

Wildfire Safety Video Hub

To help customers prepare for possible emergencies due to increasing wildfire risk, PG&E is expanding its wildfire safety and preparedness online toolkit. A new online Wildfire Safety Videos hub serves as a one-stop shop with easy-to-navigate videos about customer support and wildfire safety initiatives.

An in-depth look at customer resources before, during and after a PSPS is available at pge.com/pspsresources. Information about how PG&E is working every day to reduce wildfire risk can be found at pge.com/cwsp.

FAULTY COMPARISON

Editor,

While the Clintons took furnishings from the White House, the Washington Post reported in February 2001 that the Clintons returned $28,000 worth of furnishings to the National Park Service and earlier had paid the government $86,000 for other items they received as gifts in his last year in office. Also, according to a 2012 report by the Congressional Research Service, “Since the President is not flatly prohibited from accepting gifts from the general public, such a gift made to the President personally, and accepted, may be retained by him when he leaves office.”

As for Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser pleaded guilty to cutting up classified documents and paid a $10,000 fine.

The problem of the Clintons taking furniture at the end of his administration is laughable when compared to Donald Trump taking classified documents. Trying to compare the two is ridiculous.

Gordon Barbosa

Fort Bragg

JIMMY SHORT: I had the opportunity to meet Angela Lansbury a number of times when her TV series, “Murder, She Wrote”, was being filmed in Mendocino. I would drive up to the coast and spend the entire day watching her, and the crew. So interesting... and fascinating to watch her go from chatting with us fans to becoming Jessica Fletcher. Such fun times being in the presence of a true film legend. RIP.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

93% of the thousands of protests involving millions of people were peaceful. And a higher percentage were peaceful until night fell. More than a few acts of vandalism and arson have been attributed to right wing provocateurs. That said, here's the roster: excitement freaks, (I know, I used to be one); anarchists, who are anti-government--they come in Left wing and Right wing flavors; looters--people who like to steal other people's stuff. There isn't a shred of evidence that BLM was "pushed" by BLM--quite the opposite, it hurt their cause. As for "antifa," to the extent that it exists, there is huge overlap with the aforementioned antigovernment anarchists.

EUREKA VIDEO MAGAZINE, volume 27: https://youtu.be/mJJRSxfaIks

DEMS: BROADEN YOUR CAMPAIGN MESSAGES & STRATEGIES

by Ralph Nader

With just over four weeks to Election Day, the Democratic Party still has time to realize its limitations, which have led to them losing winnable races, or barely squeaking by at the federal and state levels. Imagine the worst, most corrupt, lying, dictatorial GOP since its creation in 1854 having their most dangerous and extreme candidates win elections.

To liberate the many policies, messages, strategies, rebuttals and ground-level ways to get out more votes, Democrats need to escape the controls of their incarcerating political/media consultants, who are too often conflicted by their ongoing corporate clients and their 15% commissions received from placing repetitive, vacuous video ads.

With their ample funds, the Democrats have to aggregate the case against the GOP’s morbid opposition to humanity and contrast it with the Democratic Party’s own lawmaking, votes and positions. For example, the Dems need to compare all their pro-children work with the GOP’s ugly record of cruelty to the little ones once they are born. (See my column: Big Campaign 2022 Issue: GOP’s Cruelty to Children). Trump’s GOP went out of its way to keep federal Medicaid funds from insuring children in GOP-dominated states, lunged to revoke an Obama rule to ban a pesticide, especially deadly to young children, and blocked all attempts to enact paid sick leave, family leave and daycare. In 2017 the Republicans also slashed the already low tax rates for their Rich and Powerful paymasters.

Dems should move fast with a winning “Protect and Nurture ALL Our Children” platform.

The GOP is chronically antagonistic to freedom and equality for women. Republican opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, equal pay mandates, corporate marketplace discriminations and reproductive choice, and other serious biases can form the basis for a Democratic “Freedom for Women” platform plank.

With lives and public infrastructure being regularly destroyed by floods, ocean surges, winds, and wildfires from Global Warming, GOP candidates respond with a curled lip: NO! Republicans voted against, or successfully blocked the public works bills backed by Congressional Democrats, costing lives, jobs, community stability and using tax dollars not to benefit the people, but to the corporate greed hounds of Wall Street and its plutocrats.

Most Democrats have been reluctant to take on the 800 lb. gorilla in the political arena – the widely despised, by both liberal and conservative voters, Big Business controls coercions, bailouts and exploitations over people’s livelihoods. Over 70% of people, regardless of political labels, bear the brunt of abuses by corporate barons every day where they live, work and raise their children. Plenty of press reports, pointed studies, and litigation data make the case that Democratic candidates who commit to All the parents, All the workers, and All the consumers to make giant companies our servants, not our masters, will garner large majority voter support. People are tired of double standards. They want corporate crooks to go to jail. They want runaway CEOs to be held accountable. Such stands would immediately contrast with the GOP’s coverups of Wall Street, the big banks, insurance companies, and avaricious drug and health insurance companies. Many Democrats can point to their pending legislation holding these Goliaths to account that the Republicans have stifled.

The central point of these proposals – among others available – is to energize Democratic candidates and enliven their repetitive daily campaign routines and rhetoric. It is time for the Dems to go on the offensive against the GOP’s made-up fake accusations and give a hungry media compelling substance. Reporters are tired of covering campaigns as horse races, and mainly reporting on campaign contributions and polling results.

Headlines could emerge by injecting fresh issues and slogans to grab more of the 120 million eligible voters who are expected to stay at home. Some examples follow.

“Go vote for a raise to $15 per hour, you’ve earned it and it’s long overdue.” The GOP hates the very idea of a minimum wage and has frozen the federal minimum at $7.25 per hour, while letting the likes of Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, make $833 per MINUTE with low tax rates! Raising the minimum wage will help over 25 million voters.

“Go vote to extend the $300 a month child tax credit that reached 58 million children and cut the child poverty rates by a third, until the Congressional GOP blocked its extension in January 2022.”

Democrats who show they mean what they say, stay on the offensive, and hone debating skills to provide memorable contrasts with the GOP can win a working majority in the legislatures to get things done. Moreover, exposing the GOP’s Death Cult that can’t help opposing the concrete existing and proposed health, safety and economic rights of American families, will motivate voters.

GOP Florida Senator Rick Scott, in charge of electing Republican Senators, wants to sunset laws, including Social Security and Medicare as indicated in his “An 11 Point Plan to Rescue America” (https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017f-1cf5-d281-a7ff-3ffd5f4a0000). Run against this outrage daily.

These contrasts can be summarized on a single-sheet Voter Self-Help Guides distributed in the tens of millions everywhere on paper (and online). One side can poll the voters on a dozen positions. The other side can show that the Democratic candidate is “On Their Side” and the GOP candidate is not (supported by the facts and their record).

Together with civic leader Mark Green and two dozen experienced and accomplished civic advocates, we compiled a collection of such policies, strategies and messaging to attract voters and retire GOP candidates who follow their leader, Herr Trump, in further wrecking our fragile climate, democratic institutions, voting procedures and public health with their early denial of the Covid pandemic.

The Winning America effort has been endorsed by Senator Edward Markey, Reps. Hakim Jeffries, John Larson, Jim McGovern, Peter DeFazio, Jamie Raskin, and Carolyn Maloney, among others.

There is still time for candidates to listen, learn and self-galvanize electoral energies. The question is: Will Democrats in the close House, Senate and state legislative races be willing to break out of their managed cocoons and become Winning Monarch Butterflies on November 8, 2022?

Will the Democratic Party stop the GOP Party of Anxiety, Dread, and Fear from anointing Trump lackey Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House and the corporatist Mitch McConnell (“The Guardian of Gridlock” who says he “will tell you what we’re doing to do AFTER we win the Election”) to resume his control of the Senate?

Voter turnout will decide which future awaits America.

See https://winningamerica.net/.

YOU CAN ALWAYS DREAM

by James Kunstler

Last night I had a dream. In the dream I woke up to the banner headline: BIDEN ARRESTED. It was only a dream, but was most satisfying, as it made vivid and emphatic what must happen to correct the dreadful tendings of the criminally psychopathic enterprise that our government has become.

The gang behind the shabby and absurd pretend-president — a figure as comically macabre as the plastic effigies of the undead who crowd American front yards this time of year — is not content with running the country into a ditch. Lately these rogues and degenerates are making noises about blowing up the world.

The autumn days dwindle down to signal events that will overturn this wicked enterprise. The yellow-and-blue flag of Ukraine can’t compete on the lawn with tableaux vivants of werewolves, skeletons hung with rotting flesh, radioactive burn victims, hooded demons from hell escaping their graves, and tortured souls shrieking from the various zones between this world and perdition. America is expressing itself with stunning verisimilitude to the onrush of reality: maybe we’ve had enough of romancing death.

That’s the developing lesson of our fiasco in Ukraine. The past three weeks, the US and its vacillating NATO cohorts issued a set of challenging insults aimed at Russia, the designated “villain” in the concocted Ukraine melodrama produced-and-directed by the Party of Chaos as a diversion from our own acute problems at home.

First, the sabotage of Nord Streams One and Two. Maybe a US op, maybe UK, maybe Poland in the mix somewhere. Obviously not Russia, despite all the clumsy propaganda on CNN. What was the idea there, exactly? To deprive Russia of a natgas export market? Guess what? The destruction of the Nord Streams leaves plenty of natgas for the other 70-percent of the world that’s not Europe. And plenty of natgas for Russia itself to develop industries in an import-replacement program to offset the idiotic economic sanctions recklessly imposed on it by “Joe Biden” & Company.

Not such a good outcome for Germany and the EU, though. They will, first, freeze through the winter with idle furnaces and, second, starve in 2023-24 from a lack of fertilizer (made from natgas in the Haber-Bosch process). Oh, and no more industry for you, Euroland. It’s back to the jolly rigors of the Twelfth Century, planting barley and peasecods with pointed sticks while wolves roam the streets of your depopulated cities.

Next, days ago, the attempted destruction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait in the Black Sea, connecting the Crimean Peninsula to mainland Russia. Nice try. Didn’t work. Both the railroad lanes and the motor lanes are operational again. Who did it? We’ll know soon enough.

Note also: the ongoing shelling and bombing of Ukraine’s giant nuclear power generation plant at Zaporizhzhia — admitted by US officials to be a Ukraine operation in a September 13 New York Times report. Yes, that was the bright idea of America’s advisors to NATO and Ukraine: lob explosives into the biggest nuke plant in Europe. See what happens….

Note also that the main human object of all this US, NATO, and Ukraine mischief is the leader of Russia. That’d be Vladimir Putin. One must admire Mr. Putin’s prudence and fortitude in the face of such provocative effrontery. So far anyway. Now, it appears that he has had enough of these shenanigans. For seven months, the strategy behind Russia’s Special Military Operation has puzzled the West. Why so tentative? Why not just use Russia’s manifest superiority, air power especially, to go in and bust the whole joint up? Do what the US has done in places like Libya and Syria?

Forgive me for repeating what I’ve written more than once before: Russia will not benefit from having a broken, failed state on its doorstep. Such a situation would clearly just invite more international hugger-mugger. Rather, Russia will benefit hugely from having a neutral, functioning Ukraine next door, a state with ample agricultural resources that could plausibly feed its people and live in peace, perhaps even enjoy special trade privileges with its bigger neighbor to the east… a Ukraine that would be a geographical buffer between Russia and what is apt to be a very disorderly and distressed Western Europe on the other side.

The Ukrainian leader, Mr. Zelenskyy, capped off the weeks of sabotage by appealing to the US and NATO to conduct “preemptive nuclear strikes” against Russia proper. That’ll work in Ukraine’s favor, I’m sure. He promised to call German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and make the pitch for NATO jumping into the action on the ground. (And with whose army would that be?) Such cheek from this desperado! Going mad-dog is probably not a sign of confidence.

As of Monday, October 10, Russia began delivering some disciplinary actions against Mr. Zelenskyy’s insolent regime. Russia sent missiles into at least 10 Ukrainian cities, targeting electric power generation, water, central heating, and other “key services” in Kiev and elsewhere. Message: if you think we’re fucking around, consider this an attitude adjustment opportunity.

The action is an overture to a strategic shift. Russia aims to speed up the game clock, consolidate its ownership of the Donbas provinces, destroy Ukraine’s remaining military capability, bust up enough stuff to perhaps prompt the Ukrainian people to ask whether continuing to follow Mr. Zelenskyy’s gang is a good idea, and leave no alternative to talks that will leave Ukraine neutralized. Mr. Putin is calling “Joe Biden’s” bluff. All of this could have been avoided, of course, if the maniacs of America’s deep state had simply abided by the promise made thirty years ago to not expand NATO. What part of that deal didn’t we understand? Apparently, all of it. On purpose. Because we have acted with conscious and arrogant dishonor.

Of course, our “president” could commence that nuclear war he affects to be so avid for. It would be a fitting career-capper for the Ol’ Dawg. The show-runner behind all this needless mayhem, former President Barack Obama, reminded us a while back: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” Roger that, BHO! Which gets back to that dream I had of the headline: BIDEN ARRESTED. It was good, but not enough. How about : BIDEN, OBAMA, AND 639 FEDERAL OFFICIALS IN NINE AGENCIES ARRESTED. What a strange moment in our long and steadfast history as an orderly Republic that would be. And yet, what a perfect ending to these years of perfidy and travail.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

HOW THE WEST’S SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA BOOMERANGED

by Patrick Cockburn

When President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February, he began two very different wars. One was a military conflict in which the Russian armed forces have suffered repeated defeats, from the failure of the initial invasion to the successes of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.

But the Ukrainian conflict also saw the start of an economic war waged against Russia by the West whose outcome is far more uncertain. The US, UK, EU and their allies have sought to impose a tight economic siege on Russia, focusing primarily on its oil and gas exports, to weaken it and compel it to give up its assault on Ukraine.

This second war, in contrast to the situation on the battlefield, has not been going well and the West suffered a serious setback this week when the Opec+ group, which includes Russia, decided to cut its crude exports by two million barrels a day in order to force up prices. The decision came despite intense lobbying of Saudi Arabia by the US where President Joe Biden is desperate to prevent the price Americans pay for petrol at the pump going up just before the midterm congressional elections in November. Reacting furiously to the news, the White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that it was “clear” that Opec+ was “aligning with Russia”.

Embarrassing aspect of oil sanctions

The desire among Democrats to keep oil prices low is so intense that they have led to a little-noticed and – from the point of view of the US and many of its Nato allies – embarrassing aspect of oil sanctions on Russia. It is only because the sanctions have largely failed that the price of benchmark Brent crude fell 24 per cent from $123 a barrel in mid-June to $93.50 a barrel earlier this week.

This fall in prices, which is now going into reverse so the price may reach $100 by Christmas, happened in large part because Russia was able to reroute two-thirds of its lost sales to the West to countries such as India and China through which it entered the world oil market. This has been hugely convenient to the US because the slide in the oil price has prevented the rise in the cost of living being even higher.

The link between falling oil prices over the summer and the successful Russian evasion of sanctions on its oil exports should be obvious, but apparently eluded Liz Truss when she met President Joe Biden in New York on the margins of a UN General Assembly meeting last month.

An account of the meeting by my brother Andrew Cockburn, the Washington editor of Harper’s magazine, reveals that Truss asked Biden for two things: a strong effort to bring down world energy prices and a total embargo on Russian oil exports. Biden was surprised that Truss did not understand that her requests contradicted each other, since taking Russian crude off the market would inevitably raise the price of oil. After the meeting, Biden told his aides that he found the new British prime minister to be “really dumb”, and not to be taken seriously.

Electricity blackouts

Truss is not alone among European leaders in demanding that Russia be treated as an economic pariah, but without taking on board the degree to which the policy has already boomeranged. It may have hurt Russian consumers, but primarily the professional classes in the big cities which bought Western-made goods and took foreign holidays. But the purpose of sanctions is to deny the Russian state the revenues needed to fight the war in Ukraine and in this it has completely failed.

Russia’s economy ministry, as reported by Reuters citing government documents, says that expected Russian energy export revenues will reach $338bn in 2022 which is nearly $100bn or a third more than the $244bn figure for last year. The rise in export earnings will be even higher after the Opec+ production cut. The ministry had expected the Russian economy to contract by as much as 12 per cent, but has revised this down to 4.5 per cent. The Russian military debacle in Ukraine has many causes, but lack of money is not one of them.

If the damage inflicted by sanctions on the regime in Moscow is less than expected, the self-harm to the rest of Europe and to a lesser degree the US, has been far greater. Every country faces a cost of living crisis. Manufacturing industry is buckling, particularly sectors producing metals, fertiliser, paper, glass and anything requiring a high input of gas and electricity. The National Grid in Britain warned this week of the risk of electricity blackouts.

Economic and social disruption is justified publicly by Western governments claiming that this is the necessary price of resistance to Putin in Ukraine. By-and-large, the public has accepted this argument, though sanctions have little to do with Russian failures and Ukrainian successes. Liz Truss and her ministers keep saying that the worldwide cost of living crisis is the result of “Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine”. But it would be truer to say that the economic turmoil is the result of an ill-considered decision to wage economic warfare against Russia which was never likely to work.

Greatest miscalculation in European history

Because of governmental and popular outrage against Putin and Russia, the policy of sanctions has been surprisingly little debated, despite its tremendous impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Critics of sanctions are dismissed as weak-willed in opposing Putin, if not his secret proxies.

The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said this summer that “initially, I thought we [the Europeans] had only shot ourselves in the foot, but now it is clear that the European economy has shot itself in the lungs, and it is gasping for air”. But Orbán is widely denounced as a right-wing populist nationalist sympathetic to Putin, whose views can be safely ignored.

Yet an embargo on Russia was always a dubious policy. Sanctions on much smaller countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria have failed to change regimes or behaviour. They had never been tried against a country with a surplus of oil and gas and capable of feeding itself, like Russia. Governments and public opinion prefer economic sanctions to shooting wars as more humane and less risky than an outright military conflict, but they seldom grasp that embargoes usually fail to achieve their objectives.

When this happens, the official explanation is always that the sanctions are not tight enough. This is happening now with Russia. One idea is to deny insurance to tankers carrying Russian crude but this would raise oil prices. Another US-backed plan is for a price cap to be put on Russian oil so it would continue to flow, but at a much reduced profit to the Kremlin. A drawback in this piece of wishful thinking is that it would require Russian co-operation – and the Russians say they will cease to supply anybody trying to implement such a scheme.

Putin made one of the greatest miscalculations in European history by invading Ukraine, but Western leaders were almost equally unwise to opt for economic warfare as one way of stopping him.

Further Thoughts

Liz Truss has vetoed a public information campaign in Britain advising people how to save on energy use in their homes during the coming winter when there may be blackouts, according to the National Grid. The campaign would have advised on simple measures such as turning down heat in the boiler and not wasting heat and light in unused rooms.

Truss was reported to be “ideologically opposed” to the campaign as unwarranted government interference, though it was proposed by that great radical, the business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg.

One government source was quoted as saying that the scheme should have been “a no-brainer”, adding: “It’s a stupid decision. The campaign was entirely practical, it was about saving people money. It was not about lecturing them.” This view coincides with that of President Joe Biden, mentioned in my column above.

The episode reminded me of the story of a German general some time before the Second World War, who said that he divided officers being considered for promotion to senior rank into four categories. Those he deemed clever and energetic were suitable for positions on the general staff. The clever but lazy got the top job because they would focus on taking the important decisions and leave others alone to get on with their work. The stupid but lazy might yet be useful when forced to fight in the front line. But the stupid and energetic officer was a menace to the whole army and must be sacked immediately.

If the German general had been miraculously resurrected and dispatched to the Conservative Party conference just concluded, he might be pleased to find that the categories into which he had divided his officers is equally applicable to British political leaders. Truss specialises in a sort of frenetic zealotry and tunnel vision which amounts to stupidity and much the same is true of her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng and Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

It is sad that Britain, so full of able and intelligent people, should end with what is probably the worst national leadership in its history. The only positive outcome from Truss’s first weeks in power is that it may well be, as with Boris Johnson, that her inability to do the job is so gross as to be self-destructive.

Beneath the Radar

Did Republican scepticism about vaccination against Covid-19 lead to a higher death toll among Republicans than Democrats in the US during the pandemic? This study appears to show that the excess death rate for Republicans was 76 per cent, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats. After the start of vaccination, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened to 153 per cent. The gap in excess death rates is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only becomes fully apparent after vaccines became widely available.

Cockburn’s Picks

Here is a cautious but convincing interview with Russian academic Andrei Kortunov in Moscow about the outlook for the war in Ukraine. Well worth listening to.

Focus is all on Russian defeats in Ukraine, but this piece is interesting because it explains how Moscow’s grip on states and statelets beyond or just within its borders is also loosening. They see that Russian power is much reduced, and was probably always less than they had imagined.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of War in the Age of Trump (Verso).