AS THE LIKUD FASCISTS resume their carpet bombing of the Gazan people, already having killed at least 15,000 men, women and children, with an unknown number of dead Gazans still buried in the rubble, count me in for the next big Frisco demo. Haven't swelled a mob since the big lie attack on Iraq, but this all-out blitz on Gaza is in a class of atrocity all by itself, and all of us Yanks are complicit, thanks to the Democratic Party.
THE RESUMPTION of the genocidal attacks on the civilian population of battered Gaza has left me today feeling nauseous, disgusted. As an American and, worse, a registered Democrat, I'm also responsible because I know, and we all know, that the Biden Administration could bring this criminal assault, this shocking every-night-live-at-five ethnic cleansing, to a permanent halt by simply refusing to send more arms to the Israelis. Biden is personally ga-ga and can't be held responsible for anything, but the Democrats, as the reigning political party, certainly can be held responsible by voting them out of office, beginning by tossing our own spineless congressman, Jared Huffman.
THE MONSTROUS ASSAULT on Gaza was described by an Israeli spokesman as “The mother of all thumpings,” as if the anonymous murders of innocent people without the means to defend themselves is something to joke about. A real joke is the Biden Administration's advice to the Israelis to avoid civilian casualties, as if that's possible during heavy shelling and carpet bombing.
THE WORLD became slightly less evil last week with the news that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has died at the age of 100.
BOB ABELES, local computer hotshot, comments on the Superior Court’s on-line access system: “The on-line court calendar is clunky AF, but as of right now it shows a schedule for today (Monday). That said, it looks like someone hastily stuffed a link to a PDF in last night to make it look like it’s working. As a bonus, it tried to sign me into a Microsoft account when I accessed it. Pure amateur hour, IMHO.”
FETCHING personals ad from the London Review of Books: “It was a dark and stormy night...Writer of utter pap, and proud of it, (male early fifties), seeks woman unable to take Gerald Kaufman seriously.”
AND “Astonishing man. Quite unique and somewhat entertaining. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll probably wonder why.”
GOT ARRESTED a few times in the showbiz demos during the Redwood Summer period, which I attended in my, ahem, professional capacity as journalist but managed nonetheless to be in custody for a few hours each time. The funnest one of all occurred at Stafford in HumCo where, in a ritualistic crossing of a line visible only to law enforcement, I found myself on the bust bus with Bonnie Raitt, a very pleasant person who told me she read the AVA. True or untrue, she won me over, which is all it takes, a verbal pat on the head, a jolly chuck under my chinny chin-chin. Incidentally, the HumCo cops played it just right. They herded all us recreational bustees onto buses and drove us up 101 and dumped us off under an isolated overpass. “But officer, I have no way of finding my ride.” Officer to the kid who complained, “Hah-hah. Bye.”
LYNDA MCLURE offered a workable strategy that might help you to avoid arrest in demos to come. Writing about an interesting explanation for why she and her fellow activists were thumped, bumped, flashed, banged and sprayed instead of being arrested during the WTO riots in Seattle. Protesters wore stickers on their outfits stating that they wanted to see a lawyer, that they pled not guilty, that they did not waive time, that they planned to exercise all their civil rights, and exercise them hard. According to McClure, these pre-emptive civil rights notices caused the cops to trade McClure and Company a squirt of mace or a welcome-to-Seattle thump with their fungo bats instead of jail time. Depending of course on one’s capacity to absorb a tax-funded punch in lieu of lock-up, I’d say McClure’s tactical option is at least worth considering the next time you exercise your rights of citizenship in hostile venues.
ON-LINE COMMENT: “This rapidly approaching county budget train wreck has been a long time coming, and only the willfully ignorant can feign surprise when the offal hits the fan. The same can be said about the proposal to remove the two dams on the Eel River, all done with the consent of our Democratic Party elected leaders beginning with Jared Huffman and ending with our Board of Supervisors. Of course when the offal hits the fan on that one, and the rivers are worse for fish, and Lake Mendocino is dry, who will recall why?"
THE ASSUMPTION of the dam and lake dismantlers seems to be that the Eel will again be lush with fish, that their magic return will revive the entire Northcoast fishing industry, which once thrived in places like Fort Bragg. Sodden thought: What if all the related damage to the river, its feeder streams, the ocean, what if all that damage moots whatever eco-benefits may come with a restored Eel?
POLLY GIRVIN on Buffy St. Marie: I feel sad and sorry for her. Her song Now that the Buffalo are Gone was inspirational for me. I can also vividly remember her singing on the beach in front of Ghirardelli Square in support of the occupiers of Alcatraz. She has been a part of advocacy for tribal rights and culture all of my adult life. I worked with her Cree woman attorney years back when working with the Assembly of First Nations in Canada. She is standing by her.
It is a very strange situation.
BOB ABELES: This AI stuff bores me to death. In its present state AI is far from anything approaching intelligence. It’s a transform, a system of convolutions, similar to the Fourier Transform or the Discrete Cosine Transform. In the case of those better known transforms, information is transformed between the spectral and the temporal domains, yielding such useful things as MP3 and MPEG codecs that digitize audio and video. In the case of DALL-E, it transforms its training data into a set of weights that can be loaded into a neural network. All it can do is play back the training data in various combinations, transforming it from the stored weights back into a digitized image. It’s a party trick, it’s not intelligence.
A READER WRITES: “My friends in the County Assessor’s Office have told me that there have been some “improprieties” going on there for quite a long time regarding how the property taxes and assessments are being calculated for the yearly assessments and raises. The average Joe has been getting their yearly raises and tax bills but there have been a large number of elite taxpayers who have not had their taxes raised. My friends have told me it is to the tune of many millions of dollars in uncollected revenue.”
ADAM GASKA: I am looking into having solar installed at our house. I looked at our usage, costs of a system, factored in getting a loan and the tax credits available. We should be able to pay off the loan in 3 years and break even on the project within 5 years with a ROI of 6% before the rate hike. The rate hike increases ROI to 7%.
I did take advantage of the wood fireplace replacement program through air quality and received a $5000 voucher. Soon Hometown store will be replacing our insert with an EPA compliant one that is more efficient and puts out less particulate matter. We will pay $1000 out of pocket that will also qualify for a tax credit.
AMONG this morning's NPR ledes (cool-o newspaper edit-speak), was the non-news that longtime Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charles Munger died Tuesday. He was 99. For more than five decades, Munger served as Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, stripping vulnerable companies of their assets like the vultures they and other hedge fund predators like Mitt Romney truly are. And these guys are celebrated!
SO, MR. BOONVILLE SOCIALIST, what would you do with our glorious capitalist system? Besides nationalizing its resource-based sectors like, for instance, the Mendo-based Mendocino Redwood Company owned by a private San Francisco family named Fisher fresh off their destruction of the Oakland A's? I'd nationalize the Fishers, PG&E, the banks, corporate farms, phone services and every other business that we're all dependent on.
IF, for instance, MRC were owned by this county's timber families — the gyppos, woods workers and mill workers — I'm confident these people who do the work of the woods, would log sustainably and manage a publicly-owned forest in the best long-term interests of themselves. As it is, the forests are owned by a family of people who do no work other than writing big checks to career officeholders to ensure nobody messes with them.
BUT until the glorious day Americans rise up to understand they're getting, and have gotten, majorly ripped off to where their children can look forward to lives of slow but steady desperation, I'd restore the 90 percent income tax on people like Buffett, Bezos, Musk and the rest of the oligarchy we suffer under our faux democracy to fund the basic standard of living (and hope) America enjoyed until the swine made their big move under Republicans like Reagan. A Biden-Trump re-run, senility vs. dementia, is shaping up as the final absurdity, and a coming apart really kicks off.
A LOOK BACK.....
”To the People of Fort Bragg”
(Fort Bragg Advocate-News, December 16, 1999)
”For many years now I have been a businessman on the Mendocino Coast. I have had both successes and failures. Throughout this time I have had some very simple objectives in mind. I have set out to support my family and enhance my community.
Late last year, in a moment of anger and frustration, my actions at Fort Bragg City Hall made me realize that my objectives had been obscured. I don’t know what came over me, but I do know that it was terrible. No matter what rebukes I have had to endure from a few people in positions of power in City Government, anger or hostility is never right. Regardless of what injustice I perceived was being done to me, I should never have allowed it to become so personal.
But my love for this community has always been intensely personal. Seeing the splendor of this region and knowing the difficulties of our economy, I thought I could be a positive force. I’ve invested heavily in my community and worked very hard to satisfy the objectives that inspired me. I know that, at least on that afternoon at City Hall, I failed to remember those objectives. And I certainly embarrassed and hurt the community I wanted to help. The revenue and tax dollars that I’ve generated and the jobs that I’ve created are not adequate rationale to excuse my outburst. Indeed, nothing would excuse that. My only purpose here is to say to all the people of this community that means so much to me, whether they be my adversary or my advocate, I’m sorry,
Dominic Affinito
Fort Bragg."
AFFINITO should have done some jail time for his assault on then councilman, Dan Gjerde, but given the class givens of Mendocino County — nobody with money ever goes to jail — the guy got community service, which he did not serve at the Fort Bragg Food Bank, and he had to write a public letter of apology for attacking Gjerde, which this letter is not. (At the Food Bank, Affinito would check in and check out a few minutes later.)
THE REST OF THE STORY: Fort Bragg and the County of Mendocino don't owe this cry baby a dime. He owes us. Not only did Fort Bragg go into hock to allow Affinito to profit mightily from the Glass Beach development, the County handed him a 30-year contract at inflated rates for his tin building housing the Coast offices of the Social Services Department.
NOBODY in a position of authority ever rebuked Affinito. What's he talking about? Former City Manager Gary ‘Middle Man’ Milliman first handed Affinito the keys to Fort Bragg then handed him the keys to the city treasury. Affinito assaulted Gjerde about 1pm in Fort Bragg City Hall in front of a dozen witnesses, all of whom testified unanimously as to what they saw. Affinito was not arrested at the time. He was cited at his own convenience and eventually convicted of simple battery, placed on probation and ordered to perform community service and publish an apology to Gjerde in the local paper. He did not abide by either condition of probation.
RECOMMENDED READING: I recently discovered an old copy of a book I never knew existed — John Brown by W.E.B. Du Bois. It's a truly great biography about a truly great man typically represented in the official bios I've tried to read as a fanatic and all-round nut case. The copy I have was published by International, the defunct press of the Communist Party USA. I'm not sure the book otherwise exists.
LIKE MOST lib labs, the only Du Bois I'd read was The Souls of Black Folk, which seemed to me so abstract as to defy this particular racist dog pig's understanding. Some enterprising someone ought to re-issue Du Bois's John Brown if for no other reason than it seems to be the only sympathetic picture of this important American we're likely to get. I'm told Du Bois also wrote a book on Reconstruction, another period of American history one has a very difficult time getting an accurate picture of.
I ALSO RECOMMEND J.M. Coetzee's novel called Disgrace. I don't know about you, but I rely almost entirely on good fiction to find out about places poorly covered by American media or not covered at all in a way that one can get some idea of the realities of the place. Coetzee, I've found, is a reliable guide to South Africa. I also recommend the journalism of a South African named R.W. Johnson, but I've never seen his work anywhere but the London Review of Books. And I highly recommend Roger Kahn's A Flame of Pure Fire, Jack Dempsey and the Roaring '20s. It's more a sort of anecdotal social history of the times with the remarkable Dempsey as its central figure than it is a biography, but it's a fascinating look not only at a very unusual man, but at a period of American history that isn't often vividly conveyed in prose.
A READER asks for audio tape recommendations. I certainly recommend the unabridged Lolita perfectly rendered by Jeremy Irons. It's not only one of the funniest novels ever written, it recreates the American 1950s in all their stifling nuttiness, as does the audio version of Phillip Roth's I Married A Communist. I've also enjoyed the audio presentations of Nelson Mandela's autobiography read by the actor Danny Glover. The late, omni-gifted Mandela was also a very good writer who managed to make even the complicated politics of his complicated country very clear. I liked Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, a witty account of his trek on the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. I've listened to Russian short stories, a collection of short stories by Cheever, Updike and Carver. But for audio tapes, I'm too often dependent on my associate Major Scaramella's, uh, shall we say, overly catholic literary impulses, which include a few too many crackpot tomes by implausible espionage agents about their secret missions behind Muslim lines. The Major picks up his books and tapes from the back pages of the Hamilton remainder catalogs.
ONE MIGHT PROFITABLY invest $20 in Moby Dick or The Brothers Karamazov if one is driving from here to New York, the best deal for books on tape — your local public library.
ABOUT TIME. Hed from the Daily Mail: How the college degree lost its value: Nearly half of US companies plan to ax Bachelor's degree requirements - after Walmart, Accenture and IBM led the charge. Nearly half of US companies intend to eliminate bachelor degree requirements for some job positions next year, a new survey has revealed.
JOHN SAKOWICZ is circulating documents that Sako says prove that Supervisor Mo Mulheren took money from pot growers. I will defer to my colleague Jim Shields of the Mendocino Observer for the rebuttal: “How much money do you think the Pot People have given to all five supervisors over the years, going way back? If that constitutes a Fair Political Practices Act violation, the Supes could never take action on any weed issue, including that failure of all failures, the Pot Ordinance.”
MENDO has run for years on the dual intoxicants of marijuana and wine. Ho hum on supervisorial links to the pot industry. The true reason Mulheren should not be re-elected is the same reason none of the supervisors should be re-elected — their records, an unparalleled accumulation of fiscal irresponsibility and a shameless, shameful capitulation to their own unhinged CEO Angelo as she pursued ruinous policies and her personal enemies list. Add to their long list of malfeasance, their insulting false accusation that former Supervisor McCowen was a thief as he left office, and the recent illegal removal of Chamise Cubbison from her office instigated by a vindictive DA Eyster because Cubbison refused to pay his laughably inflated reimbursement demands. The Cubbison fiasco will cost Mendocino County taxpayers big time when all the legal dust settles.
WE PRESENTLY SUFFER a board of supervisors not competent to hold public office. Fortunately, the first and fourth district supervisors are not running for re-election.
JACOB BROWN, a combat veteran of the Marine Corps, should replace Mulheren as Second District supervisor. He is a smart guy who has previously met the most crucial responsibility of all, the lives of his fellow Marines. Mulheren, a nice person, is simply in over her head as supervisor.
IN THE SECOND DISTRICT, we think either Carrie Shattuck or Adam Gaska would make good supervisors because both have already demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the looted County budget, and both have regularly attended meetings of the supervisors and are thoroughly prepared to assume the responsibilities of the office.
THE FOURTH DISTRICT? By acclamation, Fort Bragg mayor, Bernie Norvell, who can justly point to his record as mayor of Mendocino County's sole model of civic functioning. (Check that: Willits is also well-managed. Ukiah is a management mess, Point Arena is so small it manages itself.) Norvell's Fort Bragg experience has prepped him for the supervisor's job.
MALCOLM MACDONALD: Nothing says the holidays more than children, and what better read than the “Tire Baby” chapter of my book, Mendocino History Exposed, about little known stories of our county's history. You can pick this book up at almost any independent bookstore throughout Mendocino County. An easy online order is available through the good folks at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino: gallerybookshop.com.
MONTGOMERY WOODS State Nature Preserve is a 1,323-acre (535 ha) state park located in the Coast Range in Mendocino County. The Preserve occupies the headwaters of Montgomery Creek, a tributary of the Big River, which flows into the Pacific Ocean at Mendocino Headlands State Park . The virgin groves of Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in Montgomery Woods are examples of a now rare upland riparian meadow habitat; most other preserved redwood groves are on broad floodplains. A moderately steep trail from the parking area climbs along Montgomery Creek about three-quarters of a mile. Once in the woods, the trail makes a winding 3-mile loop, with substantial use of boardwalks to protect the fragile forest floor. The preserve was started by a donation of 9 acres (3.6 ha) from Robert T. Orr in 1945, with 765 acres (310 hectares) donated since 1947 by the Save the Redwoods League.
WHATEVER happened to Funk Shui, pronounced FunkShway, the musical group that their flier said played "sounds of the tropics and the heart." I remember them appearing at the Hill House in Mendocino long ago, but then they disappeared. About the same time I suffered through a few tense encounters with a grim social worker who called herself Feng Shui. When she answered her phone I ordered beef chow mein to go, hold the msg. She wasn't amused.
THE STATE is looking at a major budget deficit, and Mendo's school districts, never flush, are worried that they'll be hit with proportionately major funding cuts.
ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] “American treasure.” That’s a laughable term. There is no treasure. Federal Debt is $32 trillion. Private debt is even more. The money is gone. The USA is broke, busted, cashed out, whatever you want to call it. The credit card is maxed out. The interest mongers are calling. It's only a matter of time.
Personally, I am thankful that the end is coming. I’m sick of sacrificing the blood and sanity of our young men and women for ridiculous and illegal wars in foreign nations that have never posed any legitimate threat to America. See: Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Ukraine. I’m sick of it all.
[2] The new Ukiah downtown streetscape certainly is a stark contrast to and accentuates the vacant storefronts, the desperate advertising using sandwich signs to clutter the sidewalk, the unabated graffiti everywhere, the mentally ill and bums walking the streets intimidating women and kids, the dilapidated tottering Palace Hotel, the older hotels being used for prostitution and junkie gatherings, shootings on Observatory Street, and on and on. Why would anyone want to spend their tourist dollars in inland Mendocino County? This rapidly approaching county budget train wreck has been a long time coming, and only the willfully ignorant can feign surprise when the offal hits the fan.
[3] The DA’s dinners at the Broiler cost about $35 each ($1,470 divided by 42 diners). That means the remaining amount Eyster thought was owed him was 25 (number of “public” at dinner) x $35 = $875. The travel expenses were all under $1,000 and most were under $500. So the grand total of these “contested” expenses is in the ballpark of $875 + $1,500 = approximately $2,375. Eyster’s salary is most likely in the $200,000 range, or more. So he was willing to create a stink over this piddling amount, which he could probably have written off on his taxes as “losses.” Then he went further to create a major kerfuffle over this personal affront he felt Cubbison was guilty of. My question is how dare he use our tax money to settle his petty infighting? I think when the dust settles our county is entitled to reimbursement by withholding from his salary!
[4] As a curious person, I somehow became a conspiracist against the government. This is incorrect. I have met with no one to “conspire.”
My large extended family gathered at Thanksgiving (+40) and only 3 of us have accusations against the gov’t for management of Covid. The others seem to think the government did what it could and the problem has now thankfully gone away.
They do not want to talk about it. And the three of us want to talk about nothing else but we demur to keep the peace. We do love our family.
What can change this? Our family has had no bad outcomes from vaccines (that we know of) or in my case, know of friends who have been vaccine injured. So the Reality I inhabit, being twice jabbed, argues against the term ‘slow kill bioweapon.’
[5] Someone referenced the word ‘shitweasel’ recently. Just FYI the word shitweasel was invented by Stephen King in one of his novels. He named it for alien invaders which ended up in people’s digestive tracks. They were disgusting.
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