Mendocino County Today: Monday, Dec. 18, 2023

Rain | Rainbow | Cubbison Case | Holcomb Birthday | 90+ Club | LaMadrid/Woodchipper | Rod Cameron | Agaricus Flowers | Big River | Ocean Spume | Total Mess | Woods | Ed Notes | Hot Sauce | Stan Janiak | Old Ukiah | Hicksville | Borango Trees | 1930 Fire | Yesterday's Catch | Real Money | SF Ballpark | Niners Clinch | Original Fatburger | Khanna Interview | Job Stealer | Papal Invite | Working Class | After Midnight | Psychoanalysis | Caen/Biden | Larz Kristerz | Israel's Crimes | Dictatorships | Shunned USA | Almost Impossible | Nativity Scene | Death Sentence | Fourth Wiseman

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Leggett 1.84" - Willits 1.34" - Laytonville 1.31" - Boonville 1.08" - Yorkville 1.04" - Covelo 1.04" - Hopland 0.92" - Ukiah 0.88"

SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS will increase in coverage today. Widespread moderate to isolated heavy rainfall will develop, along with increasing southerly winds. Additional rainfall is forecast Tuesday into Wednesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): My "light rain will eventually develop later today" yesterday forecast is revised to moderate rain starting about 7am & lasting all day bringing a healthy 1.67" of rainfall in the last 24 hours. Whew, don't try this at home. Rain & wind today & tonight then more rain tomorrow. Dry Wednesday then scattered rain chances after that. The forecast models are still very fluid. Get it?...

CUBBISON DEMANDS JOB BACK

by Mike Geniella

A newly filed court writ seeks the immediate reinstatement of suspended Mendocino County Auditor Chamise Cubbison, and payment of all lost pay and benefits since her October ouster by the county Board of Supervisors.

County supervisors are accused of committing an “unlawful abuse of power,” and a violation of the elected Auditor’s right to due process. The petition for a petition for a writ of mandate was filed with the Mendocino County Superior Court and demands that Cubbison be returned to her job one day after any ruling.

Therese Cannata, a noted San Francisco labor law attorney, submitted the writ on Cubbison’s behalf. It names the County of Mendocino, the Board of Supervisors, and 20 unidentified individuals. It claims Cubbison’s personal and professional reputation has been damaged by the board action, and in addition to back pay and benefits she is entitled to “all interest due to her at the legal rate” and “other and further relief as the court deems proper.”

Cannata’s civil action stirs more public controversy swirling around the board’s decision to oust an elected official after criminal charges were filed Oct. 13 against Cubbison by District Attorney David Eyster. At issue is whether Eyster can fairly prosecute a fellow elected official given their past political run-ins over his spending of public asset forfeiture funds, and reimbursement requests for travel-related expenses. Now the situation appears to be further complicated because of the possibility the DA could be summoned as a witness if civil action is pursued against the county and the Board of Supervisors.

Chris Andrian, Cubbison’s defense attorney, said the new filing is one more reason why Eyster should voluntarily step aside and allow the criminal case to be independently reviewed for possible prosecution. Andrian will appear Tuesday before Mendocino County Judge Keith Faulder to formally argue for the DA’s recusal if Eyster doesn’t act before then. Depending on the outcome, Cubbison and co-defendant Paula June Kennedy may finally be able to enter expected not guilty pleas to a single felony charge of misappropriation of public funds each face. Their plea entries have been delayed since October because of legal wrangling over the DA’s role in the case.

 Kennedy is accused of receiving $68,100 in extra pay by using an obscure payroll code during the period from 2019 to 2022. There appears to be no arguments whether work was performed for the extra earnings, and or if Cubbison did not personally benefit. Who authorized the payments, however, is in dispute. Cubbison contends it was the result of a deal reached between Kennedy and now retired Auditor Lloyd Weer. DA Eyster, however, claims Kennedy and Weer blamed Cubbison when sheriff investigators questioned them.

No matter argued attorney Therese Cannata in the new civil action.

Cannata said county supervisors erred when they relied on a state government code cited by an outside county legal adviser as grounds to suspend Cubbison. The board acted four days after she was criminally charged in an Eyster-filed complaint that cites no specifics.

 Cubbison was summarily locked out of her office and escorted from the county administrative complex by Darcie Antle, county executive office, and the director of the county Human Resources department. The board acted to suspend Cubbison after agreeing to an off agenda item for its regularly scheduled Oct. 17 meeting.

Attorney Cannata that as a result Cubbison’s reputation “has been damaged and the citizens of Mendocino County have been unlawfully and summarily denied the right, without cause, to have their duly elected Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector serve in office.” 

Cannata is the managing partner of the law firm of Cannata O’Toole & Olson. She specializes in representing management level public employees statewide. Cannata has been ranked among ‘super lawyers’ by her peers.

Cannata said a court order for Cubbison’s immediate reinstatement is necessary because she has no other “plain, speedy, and adequate remedy.”

Cannata is especially critical of the Board of Supervisors, the District Attorney, and others involved in a mushrooming local political drama that now involves civil and criminal actions. It sets the stage for possibly prolonged and costly litigation at taxpayers’ expense.

Of primary concern for Cannata is the board’s reliance on government code section 27120 to justify its locally unprecedented removal of an elected official. Board members have blamed Cubbison for delays in financial reporting after they forced a consolidation of the county’s two independent financial oversight offices. The consolidation was opposed by Cubbison and other senior county officials, and local civic groups, all of whom warned of chaos that was sure to follow. Nevertheless, county supervisors, with the public support of DA Eyster, forged ahead in hopes the consolidation would lead the creation of a new county Department of Finance more closely aligned with the board and county administrators. 

Cannata said the board’s reliance on the disputed state code section was faulty despite being recommended by the county’s outside legal firm of Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, also of San Francisco.

Specifically, Cannata said in the Cubbison case, the state code is “inapplicable because it does not apply to the merged positions” that she was elected in 2022 to hold. The code only cites an elected county treasurer. The board has no legislative authority to suspend Cubbison since the alleged wrongdoing occurred in the Auditor’s Office, argued Cannata. 

Cannata said of equal importance are serious issues involving proper notice and due process for elected county officials.

Simply put, said Cannata, “The Board of Supervisors cannot suspend or remove a duly elected official … without notice or due process.”

Cannata also takes issue with DA Eyster’s criminal complaint against Cubbison, and how the board relied on that for justification of their decision to suspend the Auditor without notice. 

“The importance of an established procedure is demonstrated by the criminal complaint, which is silent on any facts supporting the violation,” said Cannata.

Cannata said, “It is impossible to tell from the criminal complaint exactly what facts (Cubbison) is charged with that may tie to her official duty.”  

Further, Cubbison’s co-defendant Kennedy for most of that time she received extra pay was “under the direction and authority of the prior-elected Auditor-Controller Lloyd Weer.”

Cannata noted that Weer is “curiously not referenced in the criminal complaint.”

Cubbison did not assume her elected role as head of the two departments until January 3, 2023, after the alleged illegal payments were made, said Cannata.

Cannata also noted that DA Eyster’s criminal complaint against Cubbison is “devoid of any factors or alleged conduct supporting the charge.”

“No meaningful evidentiary hearing – either pre-suspension or post-suspension – was held (by the Board of Supervisors) on the merits of the allegations in the criminal complaint,” said Cannata.

Cannata argued in conclusion that the board’s “lack of legal authority to suspend petitioner without pay coupled with a lack of a meaningful hearing on the sufficiency of the allegations at issue to warrant the removal of an elected official is both an unlawful abuse of power” by the county board and a violation of Cubbison’s right to due process.

It is unclear when Cannata’s petition for Cubbison’s immediate reinstatement will be heard, and before what judge.

BILL HOLCOMB DRAWS A PACKED HOUSE SATURDAY To Celebrate His 90th Birthday And To Honor Him.

SO YOU'RE 90; WHAT'S NEXT?

by Gregory Sims

What's next? It's not what you think. It's true I have picked out a plot at the local cemetery with plans for a Green Burial. But given that I've come this far, farther than I would've ever imagined, the statistical probability suggests I'll live several more years, which begs the question in the title: What's next? When I proposed doing an oldsters column to the AVA Editors I invoked the sacred name of Charmian, my version of what she did years ago: with one significant wrinkle. 

Though there are more of us living into our 90s, we're still a small part of even the oldsters, less than 5%. I'd like to change that, even though some folks want to pry us away from the steering wheel. I went to Bill Holcomb's 90th on Saturday night and had a hard time getting there. A tree fell down, blocked the road and knocked out the power. 

David Severn and I planned to hitchhike to Boonville. I went ahead and got a ride from Leonard who drives a retired CHP car and wouldn't take any money. The point is we both got there and got home in the dark as the power was still out. 

We had a great time at the party. I then got a ride to the Grange and listened to wonderful music. Every day presents a challenge and opportunities. The heart of my plan is to get some help and find out who are the 90-plus folks in Anderson Valley so we can have a 90s+ organization. Barbara Lamb is one, Bill Holcomb and myself. I'll bet there are a dozen or so more of us. We won't ignore the youngsters still in their 80s and other folks as well. If you see Bill Holcomb tell him the newest 90-year-old gets to be the leader of this pack. 

Hopefully I'll have some more news next week.

Keep me posted.

STILL LOOKING FOR KATHY LAMADRID

To the Editor: 

My name is Shelli LaMadrid. I have been searching for ex-girlfriend Kathy LaMadrid since Dec 17, 2004. I am needing some answers from the public on her still missing 19 yrs later. We are still asking for anyone that knows where Kathy’s remains can be found to call me directly so we can bring her home. Also something else that’s very important is a woodchipper that’s gone off a property on Pudding Creek Road. We want to find out if someone bought a woodchipper between the years of Oct 2013 — November 2014. If so I want them to call me direct at 707-969-7737. All tips will be kept confidential. We are still searching for her and have narrowed the area quite a bit with K9 Searches over the years to just one area we are still looking at. Thank you so much. 

Shelli LaMadrid

Fort Bragg 

LIZ HELENCHILD:

Dear Mendoland,

Rod Cameron musical tributes…

Confirmed: Rod Cameron is no longer physically with us.

This morning on KZYX, Tim Bray took musical note from 9-11am on his show ‘Oak and Thorn.’ Music shows are archived for two weeks on jukebox.kzyx.

Also on KZYX, his voice & music can be heard 10-noon Monday morning 12/18 on Bach Door Serenade, & on the Winter Solstice, this Thursday afternoon 1-3 Across the TuneIverse. kzyx.org, broadcast/livestreamed/on Facebook etc

Rod lives on in song, in the instruments he crafted, & in hearts worldwide.

With sorrow,

Liz

BIG RIVER: MENDOCINO TOWN WATER SOURCE?

by Christina Aranguren

Two days following the most comprehensive public lecture and tour of restoration efforts on Big River, the Mendocino City Community Services District held a board meeting on October 30 where they discussed potential sources of water to supply an anticipated community water system. 

At the time, their superintendent announced that GHD Engineering, the international firm hired by MCCSD in 2021 to assist with its water and wastewater challenges, had looked “at water sources up Big River and some of the potential gulches” (tributaries), reassuring him that, “They are very optimistic. They think there’a a way to make it work.” (minute 1:19:15) He did not identify any alternative potable water sources the firm would be investigating.

This news, and its timing, could not be more unfortunate - or pernicious. For one, not a single member of the MCCSD board, staff, or their engineers attended the highly publicized Big River outreach event to learn about the costly, ambitious restoration projects completed and planned for the basin. Even more troublesome, some months prior at a public meeting, the district’s president, Dennak Murphy, read a prepared statement announcing the district would not be targeting Big River for water. 

No information was provided on whether the statement was initiated by board action; there is nothing to be found in past agendas or minutes which records it.

This river system, currently in recovery from an unfortunate legacy of early, intensive logging practices begun in the 1860’s, is now, according to CDFW, “on the mend.” A 2006 assessment by leading state agencies concluded that future water diversions not only have the potential to significantly reduce surface water flows of the river and its tributaries, but the potential for land development and increase in demand for water from the river’s basin remains an issue of concern. Given their analyses, they contend the river has the potential to become a basin of high-quality fishery refugia: encouraging news, particularly for commercial and recreational fishing interests. 

Even more hopeful is 2022-23 data from NOAA showing a significant rise in returning CCC Coho salmon in Big River populations, unlike other North Coast streams; steelhead numbers are also trending positively, although not considered significant. While specifics were not provided during the meeting, GHD may be looking to punch wells and extract groundwater located at or near tributaries (or their headwaters) that it suspects may contain water to supply adequate source capacity for a public water system. 

This is certainly the case for an emergency water supply and storage project whose Subsequent Mitigated Negative Declaration was approved last June by the Mendocino Unified School District at a northeast corner of its property, where up to ten wells will be drilled in upcoming months at the headwaters of Slaughterhouse Gulch, a non-fishbearing stream that flows due west to the sea. 

Complicating matters, there is a concept circulating to expand the MCCSD’s jurisdictional boundaries to include areas beyond its single-square mile, meaning: far more water may be needed. While district staff described the state as being generally supportive of their intentions, they reported it had not yet “signed off” on them and a $400,000 feasibility study. In the past, Supervisor Ryan Rhoades has offered that LAFCO would love to see the district expand. He has also reported that the special district will be utilizing the services of the West Company which, oddly enough, assists with small business development. To date, district ratepayers have not been asked their position on either expansion or a public water system through benefit of a public hearing. 

They continue to ask questions, request details on district discussions, conversations, and intentions, meeting with the groundwater management standing committee (which has only met a single time this year nearly ten months ago), and the teleconferencing and posting of its public meetings. 

In the meantime, more and more ad hoc committees are being proposed and created by the current board which, by their very nature, effectively eliminates public participation. Whatever the outcome, it bears repeating: the surface water in the Big River system, whether the mainstem, the basin, its sub-basins, sub-watersheds, headwaters, streams, creeks, seeps, springs, alluvial channels, and perennial, intermittent, or ephemeral tributaries (“gulches”) is connected to underlying groundwater aquifers, and visa versa. 

Attention will need to be paid to the impacts future water diversions or groundwater extraction would cause to public trust resources, not only to protected fish and wildlife species, but navigable waters, groundwater dependent ecosystems, and plant communities as well, including diminishing pygmy and redwood forests of the greater Big River Hydrologic Region.

There are better, nature-based alternatives worth pursuing. Direct Potable Reuse is one and with the state poised to approve new, long-awaited regulations later this week to support it, coastal communities will benefit in particular from the new policies since they typically discharge wastewater into oceans and not rivers. While this avoids taking water away from fragile ecosystems or downstream users, even more critically, it takes pressure off sensitive and politically-contentious river systems like Big River. Balancing societal needs with those of the environment will be paramount in developing water resiliency. 

The overarching goal should be improving water supplies while protecting Big River. 

To this end, I encourage concerned residents, organizations, and reporters not to wait for the CEQA scoping process, but to become informed and involved now by submitting a request to be placed on the MCCSD notification list for public meeting notifications and any future developments affecting Big River watershed at: mccsd@mcn.org

Note: The MCCSD continues to stubbornly refuse to teleconference, post, and archive its public meetings. I urge you in also requesting the district begin to do so.

Christina Aranguren

President, The Institute for Conservation, Advocacy, Research, and Education

A NOD IS GOOD AS A WINK TO A BLIND HORSE

by Jim Shields

Last week, we discussed the Board of Supervisors December 5th meeting where a hearing was held on proposed fee increases brought forward by 18 different departments. 

According to CEO Darcie Antle, “The proposed fee changes reflect the ongoing efforts of all departments and offices to meet full cost recovery, per Board direction. The proposed changes are projected to bring an additional $3.2 million ($1.7 million in General Fund Revenue and $1.5 million in Non-General Fund) in revenues to the County.” 

Antle stated that the proposed increases are needed to close a deficit which, of course, at this time is an unknown but very fluid number that changes from meeting to meeting because the County has not completed the mandated audits of its books for the past two years. At different times the deficit has been estimated to range anywhere from $7 million to $15 million. 

As everyone is aware, and the Supes themselves admit, county finances are a total mess. At different times the deficit has been estimated to range anywhere from $7 million to $15 million. 

So while none of these proposed fee increases should have been approved, the Supes OK’d increases for 17 of the 18 departments. 

Supes John Haschak and Dan Gjerde took the lead fashioning a partial compromise motion approving 75 percent of the proposed increases for the Department of Planning and Building. 

Scott Ward, a long-time planning and building professional, who worked many years for the County’s P&B Department, and the past nine years as a planning consultant, commented that, “Based on my professional experience and my current experience as a consultant, it is my professional opinion that the current fees and the proposed Planning and Building Department fee increases exceed the reasonable cost of providing service.” 

But that expert advice was predictably ignored by the Board. 

Supervisor Ted Williams, to his credit, opposed any fee increases, categorizing them as anti-business, actions that would retard if not eliminate desperately needed affordable housing, and that most people would just ignore the licensing and permitting processes due to the sky-rocketing fee increases. 

I wasn’t aware until Williams brought it up that permits are required for replacing faulty electrical switches and outlets. Yikes, I’ve been a permit outlaw for decades. What a load of crap. So proposed electrical permit fees were increased from $188 to $246, plus an additional $132 for the first 22 switches/outlets installed, plus $104 for additional switches, etc. 

On the plumbing side, the proposed fee increase for a permit also went from $188 to $246, and again unbeknownst to me a permit is mandated for repairing/replacing water heaters. That’s two strikes. 

Williams also said permits are required “if you replace a rotten board on a deck.” That’s definitely the third strike, I’m prison bound. 

Interpretation Please… 

Speaking of County finances, the person selected by the Supes to replace on an “acting” basis suspended Auditor-Controller / Treasurer-Tax Collector Chemise Cubbison, is Sarah Pierce, formerly an analyst in the CEO’s department. 

Here’s an excerpt from Pierce’s finance report presented at the December 5th BOS meeting. If any of this makes any sense to you, please contact me and fill me in. 

“I would just like to remind everyone that the data in the ACFR [Annual Comprehensive Financial Report] is now a year and a half old, so please take this into consideration when reviewing. Please remember that the economic factors in 21-22 are vastly different than what we are seeing today. So just be cautious when relying on the data. Um, in regards to the 22-23 ACFR, we’re still a few months out. The auditor staff, along with RGS, is diligently working on trying to get the 21-22 adjusting entries into Munis so that we can begin utilizing Munis as a financial system instead of just a budgetary system. Um, we’re going to have to end up basically drawing a line in the sand, saying anything from 21-22 prior in Munis is not, cannot be fully reported out on, as we know that there’s information in different files. But going forward, the intent is that we would be able to use Munis to report, run reports, financial statements. This is, like I said, a few months out, because it’s going to take a little bit to get the adjusting entries in the system. Um, and so we are still trying to work through; so once those entries for 21-22 are entered, we can then fully begin closing out 22-23 and reviewing the data and seeing if there’s a likelihood of a carry forward. Right now, we’re not able to confirm that or review it. And then, so, and then I just also like to remind everyone that the data that is in Munis for 22-23 right now is likely to change because we are still entering activity.” 

* * *

Geiger’s Market Closes Its Doors In Laytonville 

Geiger’s Long Valley Market officially shuttered it doors Thursday, Nov. 30, coming as a surprise to no one. Geiger’s ownership “team” staying true to form, closed its operations without even the common courtesy of a public announcement or notice taped to the entry doors. This lame brain trust came up with the novel idea of operating a grocery store without groceries. 

Last Spring, the owners put out a letter-statement to the Laytonville community, essentially laying the blame of the store’s decline on the collapsed weed industry. While I have certainly spoken and written thousands of words about the failed County Cannabis Ordinance’s adverse impact in our rural areas, most of us business owners are surviving, albeit with reduced revenues. 

Local people were and are doing their best to support local businesses. Laytonville area folks would have continued supporting Geiger’s if they had not been driven away by an empty store and owners who seemingly don’t care or give a damn. 

People here in Laytonville supported Geiger’s Store for 80 years. They made it an institution in this community. A place where everybody shopped, stopped and talked to neighbors, renewed old acquaintances, and met new folks. It was definitely a happening place. 

None of that is happening anymore. 

I want everyone to know that for some time I’ve been working with other community members, and more recently with Supervisor John Haschak, to come up with a plan(s) to solve this problem. We’ll be discussing all of these things at our Town Council meetings, and I’ll keep you updated. 

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org.)

ED NOTES

DEPRESSING STORY IN THIS MORNING'S NYT: “As Frogs Disappear Wordwide, ‘There is no way to stop that killer’.”

THE DISAPPEARANCE of Anderson Valley's frogs coincided with the installation of industrial grape-growing, not that I have scientific confirmation of my simple observation near my old home on Anderson Valley Way. After a rain, thousands upon thousands of tiny amphibs, freshly emerged from lives as roadside tadpoles, filled the pavement to such an extent the squeamish were reluctant to drive until the young creatures got to where they were going. Not any more.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S unsupported-by-the-obvious-facts decision in the matter of Eyster vs. Cubbison is suspiciously lazy. DA Eyster has had it personally in for Cubbison prior to her being elected to County Auditor because she had the temerity to challenge the DA's chiseling on his reimbursements for, among other unseemly wheedling, Christmas parties passed off as staff trainings. Should a County bean counter approve publicly-funded staff drunks? Most taxpayers would probably say no. 

HAS the AG ever intervened in a Mendo matter referred to them? I can't remember one. I think someone in that office opens the mail, says, “Oh, it's Mendocino County again. Nobody cares anyway. Besides, who has ever dared check on us? I? Send the pathetic rubes a copy of Outback Denial 3x. Just put the correct names in the thing.”

CHECK THAT: We thought of two AG interventions, way, way back. 

ONE was in the late 1990s when the Coastal Commission and the Attorney General took up Fort Bragg's case against Dominic Affinito and his one-story too tall "North Cliff Motel," which illegally block that City's ocean view to this day. Ultimately, Mendo Judge Conrad Cox of course ruled against Fort Bragg and the Coastal Commission on grounds of “estoppel,” (essentially, what's' done is done) and the AG decided not to appeal it, even though lots of people thought they had a good case.

THE SECOND was a routine marijuana case in the early 2000s when Deputy DA Brian Newman, who had taken a job with the AG's office, took over a case that the local DA's office somehow had a conflict on. We don't recall the outcome of that case.

HOWEVER, WHEN THE JIVE AG was asked for an opinion on whether Mendocino Redwoods was subject to the nuisance provision of local Measure V (declaring their dead and dying hack&squirt trees a nuisance) a few years ago, it took the AG three years to ultimately declare that they had an unspecified “conflict of interest” (presumably with Mendocino Redwoods) before they copped out and grandly announced that they “declined to offer” an opinion.

PETIT TETON MONTHLY FARM REPORT - November 2023 Dear friends,

Here's wishing all of you the happiest and healthiest of holidays. And may your wishes for the coming year include taking some personal action to help the country and the planet from tipping into the abyss that's yawning.

Attached is a visual essay of Aaron, our chef, making fermented hot sauce. Read it like a book. 

The peppers are a mix of ghosts, Habeneros, Jalapenos, and super hots. It's a lot of work many steps of which are not shown...prepping ground, choosing seed, sowing, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting, sorting and finishing with setting up labels then printing, cutting, gluing them on and finally putting on the plastic seals. Some of our products are not as complicated to produce, but all follow the same general process. There are over 150 of them so we keep busy. It's one way to stay sane in insane times. The fact that we're making healthy food is one of our personal actions. Others we practice are writing letters and supporting causes that in our view are doing the "right thing". We believe that all of us should keep our eyes on preserving the most important things...our humanity and the rights of all living creatures to water, food and shelter, and the fact that everything on earth is connected to everything else.

 Here's hoping you're all curled up snoozing by your fireplaces listening to a good book read to you, like Tuxy.

Love, Nikki and Steve

THE FUTURE OF SHOES: CHEAP & UGLY

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

I have seen the future of footgear, and its name is Hey Dude. 

Despite the improbable brand label, Hey Dude shoes will soon sweep the country like hula hoops, Beanie Babies and Taylor Swift all rolled into one. 

Hey Dudes are perfect for people A) with feet, and B) who need shoes that are cheap, comfy, and ugly. 

But not as ugly as Crocs. Crocs are the cheesy rubber flip-flop sandals you wear to the shower, or maybe even working in the backyard if your backyard has a tall fence and no one can see your shoes. But then Crocs caught on and now people who ought to know better are wearing them in public. I’ve even seen ‘em in airports.

Hey Dudes sound like they’re hep, cool, and the groovy shoe for rock stars. They aren’t.

If you’ve seen my shabby shoes anytime in the last few months you will have assumed I’m hopeless, both financially and fashionably. They scream “CHEAP!” because they are, 

Hey Dude shoes look like what people in nursing homes wear, or prison inmates. They’re soft, flexible, shapeless collapsed pieces of canvas stitched together as if trying to imitate a really bad set of boat shoes.

But still, they’re better than Crocs. I should know, and I do. I’ve been wearing Crocs for more than 10 years and dozens of pairs, and have thanked Mercury, the fleet-footed God of swift travel, many times for the Crocs footgear that gave an old guy a new life in ramblin’ along that ol’ lonesome highway to nowhere. 

Because I was the first in Ukiah brave and bold enough to wear Crocs in public I always considered myself their de facto inventor. But I never said so out loud because I knew Crocs had actually been invented by Congressman George Santos.

But now it’s time to toss Crocs aside for these new and improved Hey Dude models, assuming you can find a set. Back in my tiny sliver of a demographic that makes up a fly-speck of the Carolinas, Hey Dudes have caught on bigly.

Too bad Rod Johnson abandoned the retail footgear business just in time to miss the Hey Dude shoe craze. He could have opened Rod’s Hey Dude Outlets all over California, and maybe even let me run a shop here in the south.

I’d have made so much money I could have bought a pair of Hoka shoes.

May Peak Oil Never Stop

Peak oil is among the favorite scare tactics of our often honest leftwing friends.

Peak Oil is coming, they tell us, just like they’ve told us many times in the past. Make that “many, many times in the past.”

In 1914 the U.S. Bureau of Mines said oil reserves in the USA would be gone by the year 1924.

In 1939 The U.S. Interior Department said the entire world’s oil reserves would run out in 13 years.

In 1951 the Interior Department said the world had just 13 years of oil reserves. 

In 1970, world estimates were estimated at 612 billion barrels of proven reserves.

By 2006, after pumping out 767 billion barrels of oil, the proven reserves were at 1.2 trillion barrels, and growing. 

This won’t stop or even slow lefty “scientists” who insist a combination of carbon buildup, arctic melting, ozone holes, cow flatulence and your neighbor’s pickup truck means we’ll all be getting monthly half-cup rations of oil in 13 years. 

Look at our graph. Feel the science. 

Stan Janiak, R.I.P. 

Stan Janiak wasn’t feeling so good. He went to the doctor, took some tests, got the results and a few days later he died. To Stan it probably felt the time span was about as long as it took you to read that sentence.

No one saw it coming; how could we? The numb, hollow ache I’m feeling might have been diluted had the illness been extended and the pain drawn out. The shock might never have been. 

He was truly a wonderful guy. A list of the half dozen nicest people I’ve ever known would include Stan Janiak and I don’t know who the other five might be. He was thoughtful, studious, funny and easy to hang with. 

Stan was proudly Christian, quietly conservative and deeply concerned at the direction his country was headed. We took long walks through Ukiah neighborhoods and never parted without my having been impressed with his knowledge, insight, wit and kindness.

I miss Stan immensely, and the jagged hole in my heart is surely exacerbated by so abrupt a departure. 

ROBIN SUNBEAM:

I get two emails a day from Rusty Hicks announcing whoever endorsed him and asking for money. I haven't gotten a single email from Ariel Kelly, Chris Rogers or Ted Williams. Do they even have a chance against Hicks’ well-funded campaign? Hicks has the corporate backers to pay for his high profile campaign.

LOUISE SIMSON (Boonville School Superintendent): 

I loved the picture of the Garden Court tree [at the Palace Hotel, SF]. Long ago, when I was young, I used to manage shopping centers, and when my son was born, I went to work for a company called Barango. They are an old family firm located in South City, and they made the most exquisite industrial holiday decorations for large shopping malls, hotels, retailers, etc. We did the Neiman Marcus tree, created a carousel for a Sultan in the Middle East, decorated hundreds of malls and hotels, and everything was made in the factory by hand. I used to go all over the country with the lead designer and work in malls in the early winter months to design the decor packages, which would be made and shipped, and installed in November. Those trees are actually built with a metal base like a cone. The bottom is assembled and becomes the frame to work the way up and then the branches, which are fully lighted and decorated, are put into armature sleeves as the assemblers work their way from the top down. One of those trees could be put up by four men in a single night. Pretty wild times. Long ago. 

Look at the website, barango.com, it was very cool. Barrango had a showroom where they would wine and dine clients that would knock your socks off with old world antique reproductions and a full fairy land of 10,000 square feet of holiday decor. 

ON THIS DAY IN MENDOCINO HISTORY…

December 17, 1930 - Fire destroyed the laboratory in Dr. C. V. Whited’s dental office, located on the north side of Main Street in the building that currently houses the Mendocino Chocolate Company. Flames erupted around 2 pm, while no one was inside the building.

The dentist had been working in his office earlier in the afternoon, but had stepped across the street to the fire station, where he and Arthur Lemos were working on the fire engine. The two of them had just gone to the Mendocino Hotel to warm up by the stove, when the fire alarm sounded and they rushed back outside.

To Dr. Whited's disbelief, a passerby informed him that his office was on fire. Rushing to the scene, he made two attempts to enter the building but was driven back by intense heat and smoke. On his third attempt, he was able to hose down the burning walls, while the volunteer fire department poured water on the roof dousing the flames.

The Beacon described the damage, “One of the neatest and best appointed dental offices north of the bay was pretty nearly a total wreck. All the doctor's dental supplies, powder, pastes, filling material, teeth and many valuable tools were totally ruined. In the waiting room the paper hung in shreds from the ceiling where the water had run down from holes chopped in the roof. The floor was covered with broken glass, soot and water. Fortunately the front room containing the operating chair and electric drilling machine was barely touched by the flames, and his valuable X-ray machine was removed without damage.”

The office reopened three weeks later. “Dr. C. V. Whited's dental office recently damaged by fire, has been entirely repaired and renovated. The work was done by Charles Whited [Dr. Whited’s father, who was a builder in Willits]. A number of improvements have been made and with new coats of paint and new paper, the office is brighter than it was before the fire. In fact, it would really be a pleasure to have a tooth pulled in there now.”

(kelleyhousemuseum.org)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, December 17, 2023

JOEL BALANDRAN, Ukiah. DUI, disobeying court order.

ELAYNE CLARK, Clearlake/Ukiah. DUI, no license.

MATTHEW CLARK, Willits. DUI. 

LEWIS DISHMAN, Ukiah. Vandalilsm, brandishing, criminal threats.

ISMAEL GARCIA-CABADA, Ukiah. Pot cultivation.

LEONARD GIBSON, Fairfield/Ukiah. Domestic battery.

GARRIE HOAGLIN, Covelo. Parole violation.

WHITNEY HUGHES, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation violation.

WADE LOHN, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

DONALD MADRIGAL. Ukiah. Battery with serious injury.

RAUL MEDINA-ITZA, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

CELUI MUNOZ, San Francisco/Ukiah. DUI, no license.

KAYLA NEVAREZ, Redwood Valley. DUI.

RICHARD OLSTAD, Fort Bragg. Parole violation.

ADELAIDO ORTIZ, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

BRENDA POINDEXTER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

NATHANEAL SANCHEZ, Elk Grove/Ukiah. Unlawful sexual intercourse with minor when perpetrator is over 21 and victim is under 18, lewd/lascivioius upon child under 14.

BRIAN SOUTHERS, Fort Bragg. Assault with firearm.

ROBERTO TORRES JR., Lakeport/Ukiah. More than an ounce of pot.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation violation.

SUDDENLY, A DEFICIT

Editor: 

California’s $68 billion shortfall reminds me of an observation often attributed to the late Sen. Everett Dirksen: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” It’s no surprise how we got here. An irresponsible Legislature showers our taxes on innumerable boondoggles, and an irresponsible governor signs the bills. One example is paying reparations called equity grants to people who broke the law by growing marijuana when it was still illegal. A responsible state government would claw back such funds before the checks are issued, but a fool and his money are soon parted.

Craig S. Harrison

Santa Rosa

49ERS DELIVER FOOTBALL BEAUTY AS BROCK PURDY, CHRISTIAN MCCAFFREY OVERWHELM CARDINALS

by Ann Killion

This San Francisco 49ers team is conjuring up spirits of the past. Good memories, heady comparisons and lofty standards. 

On Sunday, the 49ers won their 11th game, their sixth in a row and, in the process, clinched the NFC West. That’s what the dynastic 49ers used to do on a regular basis. Clinch their division before Christmas, with plenty of games to spare. The 45-29 beatdown of Arizona was the 49ers’ 12th straight divisional victory, matching, something that Steve Young’s ’97-98 teams did.

The way the 49ers offense is operating is reminiscent of the dynasty days, when it seemed that Joe Montana and Jerry Rice and Roger Craig and John Taylor and Brent Jones could not be stopped.

Christian McCaffrey moved into the territory of legends: he scored three touchdowns, moving into a tie for most touchdowns in the NFL season (with Miami’s Raheem Mostert) and moved within three of Jerry Rice’s franchise season record of 23. Deebo Samuel had another multi-score day.

Brock Purdy continued to put up numbers that are reminiscent of Joe Montana and Steve Young. Against Arizona he had a four-touchdown, zero-interception day for the third time this season, passing for 242 yards with a passer rating of 135.3. He’s operating in a stratospheric realm and should be finally making believers of the last remaining skeptics.

It wasn’t a perfect day. The 49ers defense was gashed for 234 yards on the ground, the most they’d given up since 2017, when the franchise was still recovering from the barren days of the Jim Tomsula/Chip Kelly eras. That alarming statistic served to underscore the importance of Arik Armstead and Javon Hargrave — both out due to injury — to the team’s interior defense. Arizona was, once again, a tough out, at least for the defense. And a reminder that health will very much determine how far this team goes in January.

Health was very much on the minds of the 49ers in the second quarter. McCaffrey hurdled a Cardinals player and quickly began grabbing his right knee. Two plays later, Purdy was smacked by a defensive lineman and remained flat on his back on the field. All those dreams of finally raising a sixth Lombardi field seemed very much in jeopardy. Sam Darnold came in, Purdy went into the blue tent and McCaffrey had his knee rewrapped on the sideline.

But a few plays later, Purdy was back and found McCaffrey for a touchdown. The gush of wind you might have felt was the entire 49ers organization and its fans exhaling.

The offense shared the wealth so much that Jake Moody even got to kick a field goal for the first time in three weeks. And if you’re looking for things to worry about on offense, Moody’s lack of pressure kicks is one of the few things that might keep you up at night.

The 49ers clinched a playoff berth last Monday night when the Green Bay Packers lost to the New York Giants. By winning their 12th straight divisional game on Sunday — tying those ’97-98 49ers as well as the Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf in 1999-2000 — they put a bow on the NFC West for the second straight season.

Sunday they also distanced themselves from one of their main competitors — if they needed any more distancing after blowing out the Cowboys in October. While the 49ers were romping in Arizona, Dallas was self-destructing in Buffalo. When the Cowboys are on the road, especially against a good team, they look helpless. The awful performance, coming at a critical time of the year, likely removes Dak Prescott from the MVP conversation.

Purdy, however, looks like a front runner. That was the case that the CBS commentators made, as they showed photos of a young Purdy (who looks exactly like the 23-year old Purdy). Sunday’s game added to his legend. It was a homecoming to his home state of Arizona, on the field where he had won the Fiesta Bowl as a junior at Iowa State. His family, friends, former classmates and neighbors packed the stands. And you could hear the chants of “Purdy, Purdy” at times when he took the field.

CBS commentator Boomer Esiason compared the 49ers to a great Broadway play, where everyone knows that part, everyone is executing their role, everyone is in sync. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.

That’s what it used to be like back in the old days. During the 49ers dynasty, NFL Sundays were a day of beauty, like seeing a great work of art. 

This team is conjuring up memories of the past.

CONGRESSMAN RO KHANNA

Interviewed by David Marchese

For a relatively green, relatively unheralded (but very ambitious) member of Congress, Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, has managed to position himself squarely at the intersection of competing, if not outright contradictory, interests and ideas that could shape his party’s future. The 47-year-old, whose district includes parts of Silicon Valley and who served in the Department of Commerce under President Barack Obama and later as a co-chairman of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, is trying to cast progressivism in a more economically focused light. He calls his approach “progressive capitalism” and “new economic patriotism,” and he believes it is the key to broadening the progressive coalition to include the struggling middle of the country and those who might otherwise associate progressivism with economic redistribution rather than growth. That shift in emphasis is also what he thinks is crucial to President Biden’s re-election chances. “We can’t just have a triumphant ‘Look at all the great things we’ve done’ message,” says Khanna, who is often mentioned as a possible 2028 presidential candidate. “Meet people where they are. They don’t think we’re in a great place.”

Where do you see the greatest tension between the two parts of a term like “progressive capitalism”? 

The core progressive animating idea has largely been redistribution: We’ve got to tax the wealthy. There are challenges that I would pose to that. I’m for taxing the rich more, but there has to be a focus on economic production — on how do we grow the pie? Not just redistribution, but giving more people the opportunity to create wealth. That has to be part of the progressive vision, and that has to involve the private sector. You can’t build new steel factories in this country in Ashtabula, Ohio, or Johnstown, Pa., if you don’t work with the private sector. So on challenging the progressive side: Have a focus on production, and be open to a partnership with the private sector. On the capitalism side: You have to care about place. You can’t just say let’s have all this macroeconomic growth and not focus on every district in America. Make sure that you understand that it is a bad thing for America that my district has $10 trillion of company value and other districts are totally in despair.

When you talk about manufacturing and economic concerns, do those ideas resonate for voters who feel culturally alienated from the Democratic Party? Joe Biden talks about those things, and if you look at polling, it doesn’t seem like voters give him credit.

Where is the disconnect? I’d say two things: One, we have to start by acknowledging people’s anger, a sense that the system is not working for them. The president can say: “Look, for years we’ve had this offshoring globalization debacle. We’ve had working-class wages decline. We’ve had communities hollowed out.” Don’t try to tell them that they should think that we’re in a great place. The second thing is: Let’s ask people in these communities what they want. I’m proud of having co-authored the CHIPS Act,2 but if you go to Johnstown or Warren, Ohio, they’re not saying, “We want semiconductor factories.” They’re open to it, but they want steel. Can you imagine if Joe Biden was in Warren, Ohio, saying, “I’m the president who’s bringing back steel to America”? So the two things are: recognizing people’s anger, and doing it on a bigger scale in every district.

And your feeling is that Biden is not doing that? 

I think he could do more. He won South Carolina.

Why not convene a summit in South Carolina and invite the H.B.C.U. leaders and every tech leader in America. They’d all show up! Have an economic summit and say: “Only 1 percent of venture capital is going to Black business leaders, and Black women and men are underrepresented in tech. I want you to pledge to have technology jobs created for this state.” Every person in D.C. loves Lyndon Johnson’s record, right? They’re always like, “He did Medicare, Medicaid; he did the Voting Rights Act; he did the Immigration Reform Act.” But every street in this country is named after John F. Kennedy,4 because Kennedy captured the public imagination. What we have to do as Democrats is not just think legislatively, but think, How do we capture the public imagination?

I want to stick with the idea of how progressives might capture imaginations. Your messaging is pretty different from high-profile progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ilhan Omar.

I respect them.

It’s inarguable that they have captured people’s imaginations. How do you think about what you’re trying to do in the context of what they do? 

My aspiration is to inspire not just progressives but a majority of this country. My argument is that the central concern people have, including progressives, is that the American dream has slipped away, that people don’t think that their lives or their kids’ lives are going to be as good as the lives of their parents. So how do we capture the economic imagination of the country to believe that their prospects are going to be better? Having a perpetual economic-development council at the White House — which we don’t have — is important. Then doing things in communities that have lost steel; say, look, we’re going to put up new steel plants in these communities. That would go a huge way in capturing the imagination and getting the working class that has been left out to say, “We’re going to be part of this economy.” The downside is, OK, this is not necessarily going to speak right away to maybe the emotional sense of the traditional progressive, the progressive slogans. But it is a way of framing the goals that we all share in a way that can attract majoritarian support.

Do you think the majoritarian aspirations that you have are possible if the more fiery members of the progressive caucus remain its face? 

You have a way of asking very provocative questions in a very sober — like, “What did you eat for breakfast?” [Laughs.] I think you can’t have a majoritarian progressive coalition without the fire and without some of the extraordinary members of Congress who are reaching young people and mobilizing them. But it has to be broader than that.

You got your start in politics on Obama’s State Senate campaign. From Barack Obama to Bernie Sanders:8 That’s a path that moves left. Have your fundamental ideas about politics also moved? 

I think that Barack Obama is the greatest modern political figure. He changed the definition of political leadership in this country and what the face of leadership looks like. That said, I have become increasingly aware of the challenges of wealth disparity, income inequality, the sense that we need much stronger progressive policies. We need higher taxes on the very wealthy. We need Medicare for All and free public college. These are ideas that are much more progressive than where President Obama was. I believe that we now have a mobilized constituency in this country that makes those things much more plausible to achieve than when Obama was president. So I’d say my politics are probably in between Obama’s and Bernie Sanders’s.

Is that just sophisticated triangulation? 

When you look at my record, it is deeply progressive, but I also believe that we have to understand the importance of the multiracial coalition that President Obama built and have humility as we are talking to Black and brown voters. Too often they have not been sufficiently part of the progressive coalition. There’s not going to be anyone who’s going to articulate the blueprint of a multiracial, multiethnic democracy better than Obama, but to get there maybe we start with the economics. Say we can build things together: immigrants and people who trace their heritage back to the Mayflower, people of color and people of the white working class. Americans love money. They love economic opportunity. Maybe economics is one way of starting to unify this country.

You said that Black and brown voters have not sufficiently been part of the progressive coalition. People have noted minorities moving to the right. What needs to change about the progressive message to those voters? 

We can’t have people going down to the Black South and telling them what it means to be progressive. So one is to pay appropriate deference and understand where those communities are coming from, and not just go there with our message and say, “We figured it out.” We need to have more of an effort to listen organically to the Black community, to the members of the Congressional Black Caucus. There’s got to be a humility about it. Going to the right? There I think we need an economic message. OK, wonderful, we’ve appointed one of the best Supreme Court justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson. What are we doing for the economic empowerment of these communities? Are we funding small businesses? Are we providing tangible relief on student loans? We have to deliver on the economics.

When people have asked you recently about the lack of a Democratic challenger to Biden, you’ve pointed to the power of incumbency and the fact that no challenger is going to have the name recognition that he has. I don’t hear you making arguments that have to do with enthusiasm for Biden’s ideas or achievements. Is that telling? 

The president has done a good job. It’s a challenge, because we have to say he has done a good job while acknowledging that people don’t feel good about the economy. That’s hard. But when you look at what he promised when he ran, he has delivered a lot of that. On foreign policy, I think he has restored the NATO alliance; he stood up to Putin. He has, in my view, gotten China policy pretty right. I would push a little heavier on reducing trade deficits, but he is standing up to China while not pushing us into a cold war. He has a lot of experience for the volatile times we’re in. I guess there’s no one in our party right now — in the absence of Barack Obama — who I would say, “Put that person in,” and they would do a better job to lead this nation.

I was reading your first book and saw a blurb from Elon Musk. I suspect that you didn’t send him your most recent book for a blurb. What do you make of his political turn? 

Well, I still keep in touch with Elon, so here’s what I say: As an entrepreneur and innovator, he is unparalleled in genius. The fact is, he thought about electric vehicles and made that work. He figured out how to get rocket launches to be far cheaper. He figured out how to get Starlink into places of conflict. If you spend 15 minutes talking to him, you’ll realize his brilliance. But I wish he would pay more attention to issues of the role of the government that enabled him, and I wish we had insisted, when the government gave the loan to Elon for Tesla,13 that it have labor neutrality for unionization. I wish he realized that there has to be a more inclusive benefit to innovation. That’s where we have philosophical differences. He can be schizophrenic, as a lot of entrepreneurs are. I had an hourlong conversation with him, with Mike Gallagher, chairman of the China committee, on A.I., and he was incredibly thoughtful. Then you see his tweet that’s like a seventh grader. It’s a lot that you can’t defend.

Did you read “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” by Marc Andreessen?

I did. I know Marc.

He and guys like him have a pretty unadulterated belief that government has to get out of the way. What are the counterarguments that you can discuss with him, or thinkers like him, that suggest common ground? 

I make two arguments to tech leaders. The first one is that Silicon Valley emerged because of government investment in ARPA, in DARPA, in the N.S.F. 

Thoughtful folks realize the role that government investment had in making Silicon Valley possible. They realize it today in defense technology, how much the decisions of the Pentagon are going to matter in terms of the adoption of some of the new technology. So as a base line, I say, “Look, government investment was critical.” The second point I make is, I know everyone in Silicon Valley thinks they’re self-made. But most of them didn’t have to worry about health care. Most of them never had to worry about massive credit-card debt. They got to go to the dentist. They had enormous advantages. I say, “Why can’t we have that for everyone?” The third point I make, which is probably the most compelling to them, is: “You don’t need me to make more money. You need me to tell a story of America so there is not a massive populist backlash in this country. It is not sustainable in this country for my district to have $10 trillion and places in the rest of America saying, ‘What’s going on with the American dream?’ If we don’t solve this, the tech backlash is only going to increase.”

Is it possible that a little more populist backlash in that regard might be helpful? If you look at the polling on Amazon, on Google, on Apple, they’re much more popular than Congress.

It doesn’t take much. But they’re actually pretty high approval brands. I think that there needs to be pushback on technology in terms of taxing the wealth, in terms of requiring labor standards, in terms of making sure they aren’t violating antitrust law. But I don’t think a reflexive “We hate everything about tech” is going to create the economic opportunities in places that are left out.

How do you understand the aggrieved sense that seems to emanate from people like Musk or Andreessen? 

Society’s winners railing against how broken everything is. It seems profoundly blindered. It can be offensive to people in the working class who are actually struggling. I have no patience or tolerance for it, but I explain it by saying that a lot of these folks had a chip on their shoulder. They weren’t accepted by the San Francisco bankers and the lawyers and the standard finance companies. These folks were outsiders and underdogs in the ’80s and ’90s, and they took huge risks, and some of them don’t realize that they’ve won. The introspection that needs to happen is to say: “OK, now you’ve become the system. You’re no longer fighting the system. Look at the people who are really struggling in this country. It’s not you.”

If Andreessen is a supporter, if you’re able to have conversations in Silicon Valley, if you keep getting re-elected in Silicon Valley, might that suggest that people see you as fundamentally nonthreatening or malleable? 

Look, I’ve taken them on with the Internet Bill of Rights. I supported Senator Amy Klobuchar’s antitrust legislation that some of them had issues with. I would point to my labor record. Then you start adding it up, and you say, “Why are they supporting you?” I think one of the reasons they’re supporting me is that I am a technology optimist. I do believe that we can use technology in ways that are important to reindustrialize the country and create economic opportunities. So they like the work I’ve done in co-authoring the CHIPS and Science Act. They like the fact that I understand and take the effort to be curious about technology.

The notion of you as someone willing and even eager to find compromises is notable. 

We’re in this political moment where compromising is seen as weakness. I mean, there are two different frames for me. The more positive frame is: I’m very consistent in my progressive values, but I want to build a majoritarian coalition for these progressive values, and I want to do so with a hopeful, unifying vision and the recognition that I don’t have a monopoly on the truth. We need this temperament to make progressivism not just 20 to 30 percent of the party but a majoritarian part. The negative spin would be: This is opportunistic or not pure enough. I may end up upsetting both the progressives and the moderates, or I may succeed. That remains to be seen.

(New York Times Magazine)

THE INVITATION said “black dress for Ladies.” “You’re not allowed to be whiter than him,” my husband, Jason, instructs. “He has to be the whitest. And you cannot wear a hat because that is his thing.” 

We are discussing the pope, who has woken one morning, at the age of 86, with a sudden craving to meet artists. An event has been proposed: a celebration in the Sistine Chapel on June 23 with the pope and 200 honored guests, to mark the 50th anniversary of thc contemporary and modern art collection at the Vatican Museums. I am somehow one of these 200; either that, or it is a trap. “I think if you’re invited to meet the pope, you go,” Jason tells me. “It will make a perfect ending.” For what? 

Uneasily, I pack a suitcase. My black dress for Ladies might be a swimsuit cover-up; it doesn’t matter. It looks like what a nun who is also a widow would wear to the Y; who cares? Everything has gone wrong, is going wrong. I wake at 6 a.m. on Monday, the day I’m supposed to fly to Rome, and find that Jason has gone to the ER. He has been hospitalized for ileus twice in the past month. Twice in the past week he has got lost on his way home and said strange things like he could feel his brain burning. “No, I’m not going,” I say, when he returns from the hospital with antibiotics, having just drunk something called a “GI cocktail.” But he tells me I have to, in the strongest possible terms. He says: “I will be upset if you don’t.” 

“Maybe the pope can cure me,” he says, not entirely joking. The pope, it turns out, is a Bowel Guy. In 2021, he had a hemi-colectomy — the same surgery Jason had last August after a caecal flop. Two weeks ago, he was hospitalized with complications. There is some question over whether he’ll even be able to meet us, but apparently the way to get the pope to do something is to tell him not to do it, or vice versa. Jason is very much the same. He is perhaps the person, alone on earth, who would be unaffected by a papal audience. “Yeah,” he says reflectively, “if I were there, I would just he like ‘Hey.’” Not that he’s immune to celebrity. The actor Bob Balaban once asked him how to use the curl machine at the gym, and he talked about nothing else for the next two years. But the way to get me to do something is to tell me you’ll be upset if I don’t. He tucks his own treasured fanny pack into my bag. “All right,” I say. Perfect ending. I’ll go. 

— Patricia Lockwood (London Review of Books)

ENGELS ON THE ENGLISH WORKING-CLASS

"The Condition of the Working Class in England" is a profoundly important book because it reveals the raw empirical data that confronted the young Engels. Out of the panorama of misery and class oppression that he observed in England in the 1840s, he came to the conclusion that proletarian revolution was necessary.

“Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns; usually one-or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses of three or four rooms and a kitchens form, throughout England, some parts of London excepted, the general dwellings of the working-class. The streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad, confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails in these working-men’s quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the streets serve as drying grounds in fine weather; lines are stretched across from house to house, and hung with wet clothing. Let us investigate some of the slums in their order. London comes first,xvii and in London the famous rookery of St. Giles which is now, at last, about to be penetrated by a couple of broad streets. St. Giles is in the midst of the most populous part of the town, surrounded by broad, splendid avenues in which the gay world of London idles about, in the immediate neighbourhood of Oxford Street, Regent Street, of Trafalgar Square and the Strand. It is a disorderly collection of tall, three-or four-storied houses, with narrow, crooked, filthy streets, in which there is quite as much life as in the great thoroughfares of the town, except that, here, people of the working-class only are to be seen. A vegetable market is held in the street, baskets with vegetables and fruits, naturally all bad and hardly fit to use obstruct the sidewalk still further, and from these, as well as from the fish-dealers’ stalls, arises a horrible smell. The houses are occupied from cellar to garret, filthy within and without, and their appearance is such that no human being could possibly wish to live in them. But all this is nothing in comparison with the dwellings in the narrow courts and alleys between the streets, entered by covered passages between the houses, in which the filth and tottering ruin surpass all description. Scarcely a whole window-pane can be found, the walls are crumbling, door-posts and window-frames loose and broken, doors of old boards nailed together, or altogether wanting in this thieves’ quarter, where no doors are needed, there being nothing to steal. Heaps of garbage and ashes lie in all directions, and the foul liquids emptied before the doors gather in stinking pools. Here live the poorest of the poor, the worst paid workers with thieves and the victims of prostitution indiscriminately huddled together, the majority Irish, or of Irish extraction, and those who have not yet sunk in the whirlpool of moral ruin which surrounds them, sinking daily deeper, losing daily more and more of their power to resist the demoralising influence of want, filth, and evil surroundings.”

— Friederich Engels “Condition of the Working Class in England” (1844)

I'D RATHER DIE than go to an analyst, because it's my view that something fundamentally wrong happens there. If you harshly light every last corner of the house, the house will be uninhabitable. It's like that with your soul; if you light it up, shadows and darkness and all, people will become "uninhabitable." I am convinced that it's psychoanalysis — along with quite a few other mistakes — that has made the twentieth century so terrible. 

— Werner Herzog

JEFF GOLL:

Bruce, AVA, another good remembrance of Herb Caen. Back in the early 1990's I would get my mail and a SF Chronicle from the newsbox next to the post office. I would often miss issues and often when I returned, the newsbox person would frequently leave the unsold issues in the bottom section of the box. It was great to find many unread Chronicle's with Herb's daily diary of the city. I used to read Mike Ryko when I lived in the Chicago area and he and Herb Caen (especially Herb) had a pizazz that no longer exists in the large dailies anymore.

Jeffrey Blankfort, in his "Joe Biden: In Israel's Service" forgot to mention that it wasn't only the Pres and vice Pres that absolutely supports Israel, but the entire 535 members of Congress had to take a signed pledge to vote for supporting the military superiority of Israel. On that pledge, Jerusalem was the capital city. Former US lawmaker Cynthia McKinney said that after she made the pledge issue public, the tactic changed. They now have to write a paragraph which basically says the same thing. So it's not really Biden's fault, he entered into a contract.

BACK AT YA, MARSHALL

Response to Marshall Newman from Dec.13

Editor,

Marshall Newman began his reply to my pointed critique of his comments in the December 6 AVA regarding Israel’s ongoing war on the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza and its intentional destruction of every building required for their existence, from homes to hospitals, saying, “Lots of semantics” in my response, and accusing me of “name calling, versus a discussion of our differing opinions…”

Since it appears he and I don’t speak the same language, I turned to Google for an update on the meaning of semantics and its response confirmed my understanding of the term:

"'It's just semantics' is a common retort people use when arguing their point. What they mean is that their argument or opinion is more valid than the other person's. It's a way to be dismissive of language itself as carrier for ideas.”

Clearly, that’s what Newman meant, beginning with my suggestion that he was a “sayan” for Israel, a unique word, existing only in Hebrew and only since Israel became a state, that assumes that every Jew not living in Israel can be called upon to do any service for Israel that would be less effective or even illegal if done by an official of Israel. I would suggest that Newman’s correspondence with the AVA defending Israel’s unprecedented criminal actions, condemned by the entire world, with the exception of the US and Israel, is prima facie evidence that he is indeed doing the work of a sayan (which is invariably done out of allegiance to Israel and has no financial rewards).

To emphasize my point I would challenge him or anyone else to find a letter or letters in the American media from any non-Jewish US citizen defending the actions of any country, other than Israel, to which they have or believe they have family connections. So much for the issue of “name calling.”

I have some years behind me as a journalist, particularly on this issue, and am more interested in facts, including those observed from my own experiences in the Middle East, than opinions from those who respect neither. And as for using semantics, what does it tell us about Newman when he sums up as “antagonism,” the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by European Jews 75 years ago and the continuing expropriation of Palestinian land and, in the case of Gaza, whose inhabitants have been confined in what has been widely described as both “the world’s largest prison” and “the world’s largest concentration camp?” When the overall relationship between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs has been depicted by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the world’s most respected human rights organizations, as one of apartheid, which Israeli critics of their own racist society were saying in the Israeli press and to me when I was first in Israel in 1983.

In the fall of that year, I interviewed a number of Israeli reservists who either had been part of Israel’s 80,000 man invasion of Lebanon a year earlier or had refused to go to that war in the first place and who had formed an organization, Yesh G’vul, (“There is a border” and “there is a line” in Hebrew) opposing the war which eventually drew 2600 members, a number of whom were sentenced to short terms in prison. The former described in moving detail the Israeli army’s shelling for hours of Palestinian refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut and of Beirut itself in terms that could have been applied to what the IDF has been doing in Gaza since the first week of October, only the latter has been far, far worse.

It should be pointed out that is only due to the power of the Israel Lobby (Let’s call it the Sayanim Establishment) that the Biden White House, the House and Senate, and both US political parties are eagerly and unapologetically continuing to resupply the weapons for Israel’s killing fields. I suspect the world will not soon forget that.

The Gazans will probably not be the last victims of the same criminal state that forced the Palestinians into Lebanon in 1948 — that’s the connection, Mr. Newman — it’s happening in a different manner at a different pace at this moment in the West Bank.

What is required but sadly, unlikely, is that the countries of the world unite to punish Israel’s unapologetic sadism with sanctions so devastating that its Jewish citizens, individually and collectively, in increasing numbers, will choose to abandon the land that wasn’t theirs for grassier fields. When they find themselves unwelcome wherever they travel abroad, as they surely will, their eventual goal may be the United States, which, as noted above, is already under their control. Some might say, it is what, with our silence all these years of funding Israel's crimes and silencing its critics, what we deserve.

Jeff Blankfort 

Ukiah

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Imagine that earth is high school. USA had a rich dad. USA entered Grade 9 with his incineration of approx. 200,000 Japanese in 1945.

USA was “boss.” USA was “cool.” USA was popular. All the guy states wanted to be like USA while all the girl states dreamed of someday birthing his little republics.

Then people started seeing how greedy and selfish the USA was. USA would make promises that it would reap the benefit of and then renege upon (“Indian giver”). USA would regularly beat some poor kid up for whatever he wanted. Plus it became commonly known that USA was a sick pornographer.

USA “had the world by the tail” in Grade 9 but, by the start of Grade 12, he is now shunned as everyone in school knows that he’s a total asshole.

IN RESPONSE to the destruction of Gaza, it seems to be becoming almost impossible to lament more than one people at a time. When I signed Artists for Palestine’s statement last month, I looked for mention of the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli Jews on October 7, and then decided to settle for the unambiguous condemnation of “every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them.” At Independent Jewish Voices, the network of UK dissident Jews, of which I was one of the founding signatories in 2007, we opened our statement on the disaster being inflicted on Gaza by specifically mentioning the assault by Hamas. But why, I find myself asking, does it seem to be so hard for those who deplore the Israeli invasion of Gaza to mention Hamas by name or show any sympathy for the anguish of its victims? Why should grief for the death of Israeli Jews be seen to undermine the argument that the long-standing and increasingly wretched oppression of the Palestinian people is the key factor behind what unfolded, so brutally and inexcusably, on that day? And why is any attempt to understand the history of Hamas as part of an insurgency and resistance movement against occupation so easily characterized as dispensing with moral judgment? When Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, suggested that the events of October 7 needed to be placed against their historical and political backdrop, he was immediately accused of fueling antisemitism across the world. A mere whiff of understanding, and he was condemned.

— Jacqueline Rose (London Review of Books)

THE DEATH OF ISRAEL

Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception.

by Chris Hedges

Israel will appear triumphant after it finishes its genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank. Backed by the United States, it will achieve its demented goal. Its murderous rampages and genocidal violence will exterminate or ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Its dream of a state exclusively for Jews, with any Palestinians who remain stripped of basic rights, will be realized. It will revel in its blood-soaked victory. It will celebrate its war criminals. Its genocide will be erased from public consciousness and tossed into Israel’s huge black hole of historical amnesia. Those with a conscience in Israel will be silenced and persecuted.

But by the time Israel achieves its decimation of Gaza — Israel is talking about months of warfare — it will have signed its own death sentence. Its facade of civility, its supposed vaunted respect for the rule of law and democracy, its mythical story of the courageous Israeli military and miraculous birth of the Jewish nation, will lie in ash heaps. Israel’s social capital will be spent. It will be revealed as an ugly, repressive, hate-filled apartheid regime, alienating younger generations of American Jews. Its patron, the United States, as new generations come into power, will distance itself from Israel the way it is distancing itself from Ukraine. Its popular support, already eroded in the U.S., will come from America’s Christianized fascists who see Israel’s domination of ancient Biblical land as a harbinger of the Second Coming and in its subjugation of Arabs a kindred racism and white supremacy.

Palestinian blood and suffering — 10 times the number of children have been killed in Gaza as in two years of war in Ukraine — will pave the road to Israel’s oblivion. The tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of ghosts will have their revenge. Israel will become synonymous with its victims the way Turks are synonymous with the Armenians, Germans are with the Namibians and later the Jews, and Serbs are with the Bosniaks. Israel’s cultural, artistic, journalistic and intellectual life will be exterminated. Israel will be a stagnant nation where the religious fanatics, bigots and Jewish extremists who have seized power will dominate public discourse. It will find its allies among other despotic regimes. Israel’s repugnant racial and religious supremacy will be its defining attribute, which is why the most retrograde white supremists in the U.S. and Europe, including philo-semites such as John Hagee, Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, fervently back Israel. The vaunted fight against anti-Semitism is a thinly disguised celebration of White Power.

Despotisms can exist long after their past due date. But they are terminal. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to see that Israel’s lust for rivers of blood is antithetical to the core values of Judaism. The cynical weaponization of the Holocaust, including branding Palestinians as Nazis, has little efficacy when you carry out a live streamed genocide against 2.3 million people trapped in a concentration camp.

Nations need more than force to survive. They need a mystique. This mystique provides purpose, civility and even nobility to inspire citizens to sacrifice for the nation. The mystique offers hope for the future. It provides meaning. It provides national identity.

When mystiques implode, when they are exposed as lies, a central foundation of state power collapses. I reported on the death of the communist mystiques in 1989 during the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. The police and the military decided there was nothing left to defend. Israel’s decay will engender the same lassitude and apathy. It will not be able to recruit indigenous collaborators, such as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority — reviled by most Palestinians — to do the bidding of the colonizers. The historian Ronald Robinson cites the inability to recruit indigenous allies by the British Empire as the point at which collaboration inverted into noncooperation, a defining moment for the start of decolonization. Once noncooperation by native elites morphs into active opposition, Robinson explains, the Empire’s “rapid retreat” is assured.

All Israel has left is escalating violence, including torture, which accelerates the decline. This wholesale violence works in the short term, as it did in the war waged by the French in Algeria, the Dirty War waged by Argentina’s military dictatorship and during Britain’s conflict in Northern Ireland. But in the long term it is suicidal.

“You might say that the battle of Algiers was won through the use of torture,” the British historian Alistair Horne observed, “but that the war, the Algerian war, was lost.”

The genocide in Gaza has turned Hamas fighters into heroes in the Muslim world and the Global South. Israel may wipe out the Hamas leadership. But the past — and current — assassinations of scores of Palestinian leaders has done little to blunt resistance. The siege and genocide in Gaza has produced a new generation of deeply traumatized and enraged young men and women whose families have been killed and whose communities have been obliterated. They are prepared to take the place of martyred leaders. Israel has sent the stock of its adversary into the stratosphere.

Israel was at war with itself before Oct. 7. Israelis were protesting to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s abolition of judicial independence. Its religious bigots and fanatics, currently in power, had mounted a determined attack on Israeli secularism. Israel’s unity since the attacks is precarious. It is a negative unity. It is held together by hatred. And even this hatred is not enough to keep protestors from decrying the government’s abandonment of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Hatred is a dangerous political commodity. Once finished with one enemy, those who stoke hatred go in search of another. The Palestinian “human animals,” when eradicated or subdued, will be replaced by Jewish apostates and traitors. The demonized group can never be redeemed or cured. A politics of hatred creates a permanent instability that is exploited by those seeking the destruction of civil society.

Israel was far down this road on Oct. 7 when it promulgated a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that resemble the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law permits exclusively Jewish settlements to bar applicants for residency on the basis of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.”

Many of Israel’s best educated and young have left the country to places like Canada, Australia and the U.K., with as many as one million moving to the United States. Even Germany has seen an influx of around 20,000 Israelis in the first two decades of this century. Around 470,000 Israelis have left the country since Oct. 7. Within Israel, human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists — Israeli and Palestinian — are attacked as traitors in government-sponsored smear campaigns, placed under state surveillance and subjected to arbitrary arrests. The Israeli educational system is an indoctrination machine for the military.

The Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned that if Israel did not separate church and state and end its occupation of the Palestinians, it would give rise to a corrupt Rabbinate that would warp Judaism into a fascistic cult. “Israel,” he said, “would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it.”

The global mystique of the U.S., after two decades of disastrous wars in the Middle East and the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, is as contaminated as its Israeli ally. The Biden administration, in its fervor to unconditionally support Israel and appease the powerful Israel lobby, has bypassed the congressional review process with the Department of State to approve the transfer of 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken argued that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale.” At the same time he has cynically called on Israel to minimize civilian casualties.

Israel has no intention of minimizing civilian casualties. It has already killed 18,800 Palestinians, 0.82 percent of the Gazan population — the equivalent of around 2.7 million Americans. Another 51,000 have been wounded. Half of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the U.N. All Palestinian institutions and services that sustain life — hospitals (only 11 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are still “partially functioning”), water treatment plants, power grids, sewer systems, housing, schools, government buildings, cultural centers, telecommunications systems, mosques, churches, U.N. food distribution points — have been destroyed. Israel has assassinated at least 80 Palestinian journalists alongside dozens of their family members and over 130 U.N. aid workers along with members of their families. Civilian casualties are the point. This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinians. The objective is to kill or remove 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza.

The shooting dead of three Israeli hostages who apparently escaped their captors and approached Israeli forces with their shirts off, waving a white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew is not only tragic, but a glimpse of Israel’s rules of engagement in Gaza. These rules are — kill anything that moves.

As the retired Israeli Major General Giora Eiland, who formerly headed the Israeli National Security Council, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, “[T]he State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in…Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal.” “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” he wrote. Major General Ghassan Alian declared that in Gaza, “there will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.”

Settler colonial states that endure, including the United States, exterminate through diseases and violence nearly the entirety of their indigenous populations. Old World plagues brought by the colonizers to the Americas, such as smallpox, killed an estimated 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America. By 1600 less than a tenth of the original population remained. Israel cannot kill on this scale, with nearly 5.5 million Palestinians living under occupation and another 9 million in the diaspora.

The Biden presidency, which ironically may have signed its own political death certificate, is tethered to Israel’s genocide. It will try to distance itself rhetorically, but at the same time it will funnel the billions of dollars of weapons demanded by Israel — including $14.3 billion in supplemental military aid to augment the $3.8 billion in annual aid — to “finish the job.” It is a full partner in Israel’s genocide project.

Israel is a pariah state. This was publically on display on Dec. 12 when 153 member states at the U.N. General Assembly voted for a ceasefire, with only 10 — including the U.S. and Israel — opposed and 23 abstaining. Israel’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza means there will be no peace. There will be no two state solution. Apartheid and genocide will define Israel. This presages a long, long conflict, one the Jewish State cannot ultimately win.

(chrishedges.substack.com)