Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, June 20, 2023

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COOLING TRENDS WILL EASE as ridging sets in and warmer temperatures return. Clearer skies and milder weather patterns for the next few days are expected. Another round of showers and thunderstorms will be possible toward the end of the week and over the weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Another overcast 51F this Tuesday morning on the coast. I do not see any fog or clouds on satellite? Our forecast is for mostly clear skies with some scattered clouds & moderate wind. The current weather pattern looks to be sticking around for a while.

SAVANNAH LOGAN, 28, of Potter Valley and Philo, has been tentatively identified as the young woman who died Sunday in Boonville. Her cause of death is under investigation. 

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DAVID SEVERN: Dammit. It’s Sunday evening and I’m sitting here with a deep pain in my heart having just heard of a young woman who died beside her car in downtown Boonville. Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! May every billionaire, wannabe billionaire and the apologists for those self-interest asses go to hell. The degree to which we are battering the Earth we are also battering the human psyche and as our four legged, winged, swimmer and creepy crawly cousins die so do we — and far too often it is the young. Back in the Occupy Wall Street demos I carried a sign that said “Damn the source of trickle down greed.” And so it is that every single forever noxious chemical and exploitive practice at cause for our woes pours from the bowels of self-interest capital. Self-medication and drugs come out of imbalance and misery. Bad drugs come out of the greed that oozes and infects as a bad case of diarrhea — it’s a contagion that can’t be controlled with a Band-Aid or N95 mask. Greed is the worst of addictions and for certain the worst is yet to come — dammit. So with the thought of giving our young some tools to deal with the dark cloudy future maybe some guidance on how to be at peace with death might well be in order. 

LAYTONVILLE LEADS THE WAY: Car broke down? No gas money? As a rural community health center, we know that just getting to your LVHC appointments can sometimes be a challenge. That’s why we’re offering FREE transportation for you, our patient, to and from your appointments — even your specialist appointments in Willits or Santa Rosa. Transportation is offered by appointment only, and availability is limited, so please call LVHC at (707)984-6131 x1 to schedule your next ride.

REGARDING THE PENDING DUMPING OF THE OLD REDWOOD VALLEY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Adam Gaska: The old Redwood Valley school campus has a few issues. It has asbestos and lead paint. It also is limited on water availability with the equivalent of 3 domestic water hookups. Our district is currently on rationing of 55 gallons per person per day. We have been able to secure more water but need to repair our treatment plant in order to lift restrictions which should happen in a week or two. People looked at making it a community center years ago and were told tear down would cost $10 million because of the contamination.

Mark Scaramella: The County just awarded the demolition contract for the Whitmore Lane facility, a demolition that was over specified by the costly Sacto architect, to a Lake County outfit for under half a mil. Granted it’s smaller and apparently has no lead/asbestos, but $10 mil sounds pretty high. Back in the 1990s when the late Pete Richardson got in union trouble with another Ukiah school asbestos component of a demolition contract I don’t recall the cost of that being astronomical. How confident are you of the $10 mil estimate?

Gaska: I can ask Marvin Trotter. He was the one pushing to have the campus turned into a community center similar to the ARC in Ukiah. It did seem high to me but I am guessing that included disposal of all the material as well.

ED NOTES

THE ANDERSON VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY board will be hosting a festive gathering at the Little Red School House Museum on Sunday, July 9, 1:00 to 4:00 pm. This year we are pleased to have Eileen Pronsolino as our featured speaker. As many of you know, Eileen and her husband Angelo are lifelong residents of Anderson Valley. Eileen will focus on the history of vineyards/wine in Anderson Valley. The Pronsolino family still resides on Vinegar Hill, one of the earliest vineyard/wine regions in the valley. Eileen will be speaking at 2pm. The speaker and complimentary food and drinks will be set up in the Rose Room. All buildings on the museum grounds will be open for your wandering pleasure. Members and Non-members are welcome. A chance for all to get fed and feted while supporting the AV Historical Society.

LAST WEEK, somehow or other, a couple of notes I’d written to myself on my untamed computer got printed as items. I’ll spare myself the embarrassment of identifying which ones, but the two of them were probably obvious to close readers. They were true enough but blunter than I’d had in mind. I read what I wrote and, often, wince as I go. In this business, you write fast and hope it’s true, and if it turns out not to be true, amusing.

AND we’re liberals, too! No, the AVA didn’t know Juneteenth was a federal holiday until we went to the post office Monday only to find it closed.

STILL no identification of the young woman who died in Boonville yesterday afternoon. She was not inside the Rastafarian event but outside near the Fairgrounds parking lot when she collapsed and, despite the usual fast response from our emergency crew, she could not be revived.

AS A NEWSPAPER PERSON, I’m on the receiving end of a lot of insults. The insults don’t bother me. In fact, I enjoy them if they’re creatively abusive. But the cliches get to me. “Yellow journalism” is a cliche and is inevitably inaccurately applied to some perceived offense by the AVA. When the term arose around the turn of the century as Hearst and Pulitzer battled for readers on the East Coast, yellow journalism included to some very good writing about the real life struggles of ordinary people. Today, deep into the post literate age, your generic college grad, barely literate in many cases, thinks he’s really getting off a sophisticated zinger when he calls the AVA up and invokes yellow journalism. “Objectivity” — lack of, is another naive knock. If you think a writer’s class origins, his education, his innate intelligence, his life experience and, most importantly, his employer, don’t influence what appears in print, well, you’re…. well…. uh…. unprepared for the discussion. 

THE GOOD NEWS. A local marijuana guy reports he just sold two pounds for a thou each.

IS THIS a racist joke or funny, or both: How do you know Adam and Eve weren’t Chinese? They didn’t eat the snake. 

HAVE TO AGREE with Sarah Kennedy Owen that the Buddhists at Talmage are a “public benefit,” but my colleague, The Major, peevish generally, and specifically peevish whenever his “facts” are challenged, didn’t cite any “facts” in his comment, only an opinion. Myself, I think the restaurant the Buddhists operate on their Talmage campus is a major public benefit all by itself.

WATER. It’s getting scarce in Mendocino County, but all the relevant elected bodies are entirely in the hands of the exploiters and the developers. As the degradation of the Russian River becomes evident even to the unseeing and the self-interested, the state reacts by studying what is obvious — that the 110 miles of the Russian River is now almost fish free, wineries are taking even more of its depleted waters (which in any case mostly derive from the diverted Eel), gravel extractions have seriously damaged the Russian in the Healdsburg area, and that the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, rather than force developers to slow down for lack of water and sewage infrastructure, have further damaged the Russian by using it as an impromptu leech field. Community water boards the length of the Russian River are in the hands of large scale ag and development interests, the two often being interchangeable. 

IT COULD HAPPEN HERE! From the San Rafael Independent Journal: “Everyone is invited to attend a ‘Clown Worship’ at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer at 10 a.m. tomorrow in San Rafael. Wally the Coach, the Rev. C.H. ‘Skip’ Fotch, will mime the story of Jesus and the Last Supper. The liturgy allows each individual to focus on their unique spirituality.”

IT’S TRUE that working people are priced out of much of the Mendo housing market, but working people are priced out everywhere else, too, given all the givens of contemporary capitalism. Present zoning in the county gives us lots of open space but also has created a situation where only the wealthy can buy, say, the typical available forty acres then build on it. 

IN THE EARLY 1970s, better funded people, many of them back-to-the-landers, were able to buy logged over parcels with water on them very cheap. $20k on generous terms from the usurers could get you 40 acres in the hills. That unique market prevailed until the end of the 70s. Since, the only new housing built in Anderson Valley has been up-market fastnesses on large parcels. 

SIGHT sure to fill locals with dread is that young mother with two small children riding bikes on 128 near Jack’s Valley Store. That’s not a family outing, Mom. That’s roulette.

NOTE FROM A READER: “When are you going to lobby for new trees in front of the Fairgrounds?” Right now. Fairgrounds, plant some trees where once those marvellous old cedars stood. I’m for elms myself but I’ll settle for almost any long, green growth in that spot.

PICKED UP one of those Good Housekeeping-type mags the other day in a waiting room out of desperation for something to read and came across a piece by, of all people, the novelist Jay McInerney (Big City, Bright Lights), called “What Goes with Turkey?” Mac says, “Good companions for turkey include burgundy, champagne, zinfandel, Pinot Noir, Gewurztraminer, and rose champagne,” which seems a roundabout way of saying any liquid with alcohol in it.

THE INDEPENDENCE PARADE in Point Arena is on July 2 this year. The goal is to have the biggest and best parade ever. If you're in a dog group, a bird-watching group, a vintage car club group, a service club, or a business that you would like to advertise on the South Coast - this is your chance. Simply send in your entry form and be part of this fun parade!

STEPHEN DUNLAP: My harbor webcam is free for anyone to use anytime & can be found at: pacificblue.biz/noyo-harbor-webcam.htm. I am half owner of Pacific Blue Vacation Rentals among other things. Feel free to use anytime you like. The camera is located on the front deck of this tiny home I own: pacificblue.biz/vacation-rental-home.asp?PageDataID=140958 (you can see the camera upper right on deck post).

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, June 19, 2023

JASON BACCHI, Willits. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

CURTIS BETTENCOURT, Fort Bragg. Under influence, paraphernalia.

JUSTIN FLEGEL, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%.

DENA MORRIS, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

SAMUEL SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs. (Frequent flyer.)

BRIAN STRONG, Sacramento/Fort Bragg. DUI, contempt of court, resisting.

JOHN REDDING:

Let the historical record show that adolescents were hardest hit by disastrous Covid policies and defunding the police. When the national bout with insanity passes, this will be important information to direct sound public health and law enforcement policies. 

The CDC published the graph below and reported that in 2020 suicide was the second, and homicide the fourth, leading cause of death among adolescents aged 10 to 14.

Covid wasn’t in the top 10. 

Homicides? Yes. Prisons were emptied because of covid concerns and gang violence and lawlessness in general increased. 

Every thinking person, the number of which is admittedly declining, knew this. But were bullied into keeping quiet. My gratitude is for those who didn't keep quiet. Heroes in my book.

BILL KIMBERLIN: I worked with John Lasseter when he was hired to do animations for our Computer Graphics department at ILM. He built Pixar into a multi-billion dollar company for Steve Jobs and then Disney. The fools at Pixar fired John during the "MeToo" uproar. John was smeared but now is trouncing Disney in box-office. 

Pixar is damaged as a big-screen brand. That was one of the rather glum takeaways from the weekend box office, which found “Elemental,” a $200 million-plus Pixar original, arriving to a disastrous $29.5 million in domestic ticket sales. “The Flash,” a Warner Bros. superhero spectacle that cost about $200 million, also struggled, taking in a lethargic $55.1 million, according to Comscore, which compiles ticketing data. “Hard to sugarcoat this,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers.

NYTimes

CELEBRATING JUNETEENTH

Editor: 

I am excited to celebrate Juneteenth this year, remembering the freeing of slaves from the Democrat-controlled state of Texas by the Republican-led Union Army. I am proud to be a Republican — the party of Lincoln and the Union Army. Let us remember our country’s history and celebrate the Republican-led victory over the slave states primarily run by Democrats.

Jeff O’Brien

Petaluma

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Like, why use the word only once in a sentence when you can use it twice?

Or adjectives?

Why use one or two when you can use three, four, five or six?

Yay!

And why do I use “Like,” “totally,” and “actually” so much?

I think it has to do with a movie in the early 1980s called “Valley Girl” (which I didn’t actually particularly like) and a song by the same name.

I have never been to California, but hey, I don’t hate everything about America.

I was quite keen on the affectation.

Or rather, still am.

WHEN Random House asked Cormac McCarthy whether he had any connections who could help sell his third novel, “Child of God,” about a necrophiliac serial killer, he replied in a letter, “Ed McMahon (of ‘The Tonight Show’) is an acquaintance. We went fishing off Bimini together back in the spring and went partying together at Cat Cay (until he fell off the dock and had to be flown to Lauderdale to the hospital). You might try to place a copy in his hands. He does read. (Not like he drinks, of course, but some.)” 

— NYT

A RISING GENERATION of Republican politicians is more skeptical of the free market and more comfortable using government power to regulate the economy than the party has traditionally been. Consider:

• Senator J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive, have collaborated on a bill to claw back executive pay at failed banks. The two worked through the details through in-person conversations, weekend phone calls and late-night texts.
• Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has signed a public letter calling for the reinvigoration of collective bargaining and praising the German approach, in which labor unions play a larger role in the economy. Rubio this month published a book, “Decades of Decadence,” that criticizes the past 30 years of globalization.
• Senator Todd Young of Indiana has helped write a bipartisan bill to restrict noncompete agreements, which companies use to prevent their employees from leaving for jobs at a competitor.
• Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who began pushing a few years ago for federal subsidies to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing. President Biden signed a version of the policy last year.

Tomorrow afternoon, these four Republican senators — Cotton, Rubio, Vance and Young — will speak at an event on Capitol Hill that’s meant to highlight the emergence of a populist conservative movement in economics. The event is organized around a policy manifesto, called “Rebuilding American Capitalism: A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers.”

“We really like capitalism, but we recognize it’s not working right now,” said Oren Cass, a former aide to Mitt Romney and the executive director of American Compass, a think tank that published the manifesto.

Cass is right about that: Income growth for most families has been sluggish for decades, trailing well behind economic growth. Life expectancy stagnated even before Covid. And polls show that Americans of all ideological stripes are frustrated with the country’s direction.

“Capitalism is a complex system dependent on rules and institutions,” Cass told me. “And conservatism calls for building and maintaining institutions that work well.”

I recognize that many liberals will be skeptical of the new breed of Republicans. For one thing, they really are conservative; they’re not disaffected right-wingers who have become moderates without admitting it. They support abortion restrictions and oppose gun laws. They make excuses for Donald Trump’s anti-democratic behavior or even spread his falsehoods.

But the preference for a different kind of economic policy than one Republicans have long supported is nonetheless significant. It is a sign that the consensus in Washington is moving away from the neoliberal, laissez-faire approach that has dominated since the 1980s. These new conservatives are trying to separate themselves from anti-government Republicans like Paul Ryan — and, although they won’t say so, Ronald Reagan.

One major reason is the class inversion of American politics. Most professionals now vote for Democrats, which is a stark change from past decades. Most working-class voters vote Republican, partly because they see Democrats as an elite party dominated by socially liberal and secular college graduates.

Yet the Republican Party still has a major vulnerability with working-class voters. The party has long pushed the laissez-faire agenda that has hurt those voters, and polls show the country to be left of center on economic policy. Most Americans favor a higher minimum wage, higher taxes on the rich, expanded government health insurance and subsidies for well-paying jobs.

When Democrats can flip the script on elitism and paint a Republican candidate as an out-of-touch protector of the rich, the Democratic candidate can often draw enough blue-collar support to win. John Fetterman used this approach to beat Mehmet Oz last year in Pennsylvania, the only state where a Senate seat switched parties.

Politically, the new conservative populism is an effort to show that Republicans understand Americans’ struggles and want to help. Economically, the new approach offers a glimpse of a Republican Party that’s starting to grapple with the economy’s true challenges.

The manifesto rejects the idea that free trade is inherently good and argues for policies to ensure the U.S. has a thriving, well-paying manufacturing sector that makes strategically important goods like semiconductors. “The idea that trade would lead to liberalization and a happy world was wildly wrong,” Cass said.

The document also calls for:

• a guaranteed right for workers to organize and industrywide bargaining, which could increase the number of union contracts — and raise wages.
• a financial transaction tax, meant to reduce Wall Street trading that makes people rich without making the economy more productive.
• a monthly child benefit of around $300, as well as changes to Medicare and Social Security to recognize the work done by stay-at-home parents.
• an easing of government regulations, to encourage new construction.
• Progressives will raise principled objections to some ideas — such as a ban on unions’ campaign donations. And that’s how a democracy should function. The country’s two political parties are not on the verge of agreeing about most economic issues.

But something is changing. More politicians are recognizing that the policies of the past several decades have failed to create a broadly prosperous economy. From that emerging consensus may eventually come a longer list of bipartisan legislation designed to lift living standards.

— David Leonhardt, The New York Times

IT SEEMS LIKE a lot of the inertia and self-defeating hopelessness that people have about fighting the machine comes from knowing the political awakenings of the sixties fizzled out, but I don't think that would be the case if people understood just how much hard work the machine had to put into making them fizzle.

I mean, we all get that the death of activist movements didn't just happen on its own, right? We all know about COINTELPRO? Known instances where one out of every six activists was actually a federal infiltrator? The roll-out of the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed?

The amount of energy the western empire has poured into killing all leftist and antiwar movement is staggering, but people just think the acid wore off and the hippies turned into yuppies and the Reagan administration happened on its own. It didn't. They had to work hard at that.

The revolution didn't organically fizzle out, it was actively strangled to death. And what's left in its place is this defeatist attitude where people want a healthy society but believe it can't be attained, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We COINTELPRO ourselves now.

People think we can't use the power of our numbers to force the emergence of a healthy society, and we don't deserve one because we dropped the ball. But we didn't knowingly drop the ball, we were manipulated out of it. And the manipulators had to work very, very hard to do so. Those movements died out because the machine understood very clearly that it needed to stomp them out with extreme aggression and knew exactly what it needed to do to accomplish this, while ordinary people did not. It's not a fair fight if only one party knows it's a fight.

The machine won one battle and everyone's acting like they won the war. They didn't. We can absolutely pick up the fight again, and we can overwhelm them with our numbers. If we had any idea how hard they had to work to win that one battle, this would be clear to everybody.

— Caitlin Johnstone

‘ANYONE NOT JUMPING IS A COMMUNIST’

by Alessio Perrone

At Berlusconi’s funeral — The woman next to me started crying when the hearse carrying Silvio Berlusconi’s corpse arrived in Milan’s Piazza Duomo just before three o’clock last Wednesday afternoon. She was dressed in black from head to toe, with a black bag and black sunglasses. Giant red and black AC Milan flags – Berlusconi owned the football club for thirty years – waved over us, providing some shade from the scorching sun. Football chants briefly broke out: ‘Silvio! Silvio! Silvio!’; ‘Anyone not jumping is a communist!’; ‘There’s only one president!’ Journalists zig-zagged through the crowd and confused tourists wondered why they couldn’t get near the cathedral. ‘It’s the funeral of a former prime minister,’ someone explained to them, in English. ‘A complex personality.’

I grew up in Berlusconi’s Italy. I used to imagine that when he died, half the country would be plunged in mourning, while the other half erupted in spontaneous street parties. For more than twenty years, with the help of his media empire, he made everything in Italian politics about him. To his supporters, he was the charismatic leader who could miraculously do it all, or would have been able to if he hadn’t been thwarted by his ‘communist’ adversaries: prosecuting magistrates, the media he didn’t own and his political opponents, who used sex scandals, allegations of mafia ties and corruption investigations to try to bring him down. From TV discussions to family scuffles at the dinner table, most political arguments weren’t about policy – they were about Berlusconi himself. If you were for him, you loved him viscerally; if you were against him, the resentment ran deep.

My family and most of my friends fell fiercely on the against side. One day my grandmother, who was the same age as Berlusconi, came back delighted from the card reader. The fortune teller had told her she would die after the death of a ‘great dictator’, which she decided couldn’t be anyone but Berlusconi. ‘He dies, I can go in peace,’ she would say. (She died ten years ago.)

Today, Berlusconi’s influence seems diminished, as do the passions it fueled. Few international politicians attended his funeral: Victor Orbán was the only European head of government there. The UK, France and Germany sent their ambassadors. There were few dissenting voices when the Italian government declared three days of national mourning. Rosy Bindi, an opposition politician whose physical appearance Berlusconi had joked about, protested at the beatification of a man who had ‘split’ Italy. The rector of a university in Siena refused to fly the flags at half-mast. Marco Travaglio, a journalist and vocal critic of Berlusconi for much of his career, reminded reporters that Berlusconi had insulted his adversaries, criminalized magistrates and didn’t care to follow the rules. Giuseppe Conte, the leader of the Five Star Movement and former prime minister, didn’t go to the funeral. But Elly Schlein, the new left-wing leader of the opposition Democratic Party was there in the duomo, as well as Berlusconi’s coalition partners Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini.

I roamed the crowd while listening to Milan’s archbishop remember Berlusconi as an intrepid businessman and notoriety-seeking politician. ‘There are those who glorify him and those who can’t stand him,’ he said. ‘A politician is always a partisan.’ A young man in a suit was holding a sign that celebrated him as ‘the most Italian of Italians’, which I felt a little insulted by. A couple nearby were preparing a sign that said: ‘Welcome back to hell.’ A teary-eyed woman in her fifties told me Berlusconi had always been part of her life, and it would be ‘surreal’ without him.

His similarities to the other politicians he was often compared to, such as Boris Johnson or Donald Trump, only go so far, but Berlusconi paved the way for a brand of personalized politics that has since spread to several liberal democracies. He prided himself on having legitimized the post-fascist far right. The increasing role of celebrity and fandom in politics, cronyism and the trivialization of politicians’ mistakes are all staples of Berlusconi’s brand. ‘Silvio Berlusconi as a political figure may be transitory,’ Alexander Stille wrote in 2006, in The Sack of Rome. ‘But the Berlusconi phenomenon is in all likelihood a reality that will not vanish so easily.’

The intensity of the disagreement over Berlusconi himself is subdued today compared to when he was at the peak of his power; the forces he helped to unleash left the transitory man behind even before he died. His last government collapsed in 2011, during the global financial crisis, and he was consigned to an inescapable decline and an ill-fitting sidekick role for more than a decade. New politicians to his right, like Salvini and Meloni, captured the imagination of his former supporters long before his death, using social media to overshadow his TV popularity. Even his football club all but crumbled, with richer men pouring more money than he could into the sport, until he sold it.

The service ended, the hearse left, there were more chants, more flag waving, a round of applause, then people began to drift away. I went back in the evening and there was little trace of the day’s events. Tourists and pigeons had reclaimed the piazza, and workers were taking down the screens and looking to head home. Two, I overheard, were talking about tomorrow’s job.

(London Review of Books)

UKRAINE, MONDAY 19 JUNE

A senior Ukrainian official said Monday that Kyiv's forces have recaptured eight southern settlements from the invading Russians over the past two weeks.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said the toughest fighting is on the southern front and praised Kyiv's forces for repelling Russian assaults in the east.

Meanwhile, Russia claims that a Ukrainian stronghold was destroyed by a remotely-controlled tank packed with a huge amount of explosives, in what appears to be a new battlefield tactic.

The UN condemned Russia for denying humanitarian aid access to occupied areas affected by the Nova Kakhovka dam collapse. The flood carried filthy water downstream and off the southern coast, posing serious health risks.

IF PEOPLE bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. 

— Ernest Hemingway

ENGLAND IN 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,—
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring,—
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,—
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,—
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A Senate,—Time's worst statute unrepealed,—
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley