Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023

Clearing | Sunset Colors | River Watch | Christmas Dinners | Winter Camp | Crab Season | Gulls | Job Opening | Dimmick Guilty | Loose Pooch | Not-So Comprehensive | Transit Workshops | Tapping Away | Ask Santa | Illegal Abortions | Route 101 | Ed Notes | Motel Art | Eel River | Yesterday's Catch | Nowhere Train | Iwo Tannenbaum | Dem Strategy | Uncle Gaza | A Response | Cotton Picker | Red Ears | Magnificent Satchel | Ending/Beginning | T&T | Burton Interview | Seasonings Greeting | Noisome Neighbor | Just Stop

A PERIOD OF DRY WEATHER is expected today before another frontal system will bring additional light rain by early this weekend. Temperatures will lower over the course of the weekend while the chance for rainfall increases on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A partly cloudy 49F this shortest day of 2023 (at 7:27pm) morning on the coast. Yesterday's rain was a scant .05" in the morning. Dry skies today, maybe a shower Friday, mostly dry for the weekend, then Christmas week is looking wet.

RAINFALL AND NAVARRO RIVER TODAY

Here are my rainfall readings for the just concluded storm on Little River Airport Rd. 3 mi. from the coast at 622 ft. elevation:

12/17     1.32"      Sunday
12/18      . 80
12/19     1.01
12/20     1.36        Wednesday

Storm total 4.49"
Season total    15.80  (since July 1, 2023)

I know the water year starts Oct. 1.  If  you want that season total then subtract 0.79" (my total 7/1 thru 9/30)

The USGS Navarro Gage chart shows that the level dropped from 5.2 ft. before the breach on 12/13 down to 2.19 ft on 12/17 then jumped up to a high crest of 13.64 ft at 11 AM today, and is now falling back.

The river channel through the sandbar at Navarro State Beach remains open, so THERE IS NO DANGER OF FLOODING OR CLOSURE OF RTE. 128 AT CURRENT LEVELS.

Weather forecast shows a break in the rainy weather until next Tuesday, the day after Christmas.  Enjoy!

Useful links:
USGS Navarro Gage chart
NWS Navarro forecast chart
Weather Underground 10-day forecast

Happy winter holidaze!

Nick Wilson

ANDERSON VALLEY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Winter Camp Was Fun!

As part of the State’s requirement that school districts offer 30 supplemental days of instruction in order to qualify for the ELOP funding, AVUSD tasked Charlotte Triplett to work her magic for Winter Camp! 

Students attending the four-day session enjoyed winter-themed academics, gingerbread making, soccer camp, science and math activities, and much more! The free camps offered additional after care at no charge to the families.

Last summer, the district offered a six week summer school program but attendance waned in the last two weeks as families traveled for summer vacation. This year, the District is experimenting, under Charlotte’s creative leadership, with five Saturday camp schools and the four-day holiday camp.

A huge thank you to the staff and volunteers who worked hard to make this happen for kids! In addition to Charlotte Triplett, Winter Camp staff included Belma Rhoades, Tere Mafavon, Joanna Magana, Erika Damian, Monica Alvarez, Lucia Soto, Deleh Mayne, Cora Hubbert, Nate Hill, Gwen Brock, Yareli Malfavon, and volunteering Jr./Sr. High school students Brianna Gomez and high school soccer player Randal Ferreya.

Wishing you a happy holiday!

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson, Superintendent

AV Unified School District

COMMERCIAL CRAB FISHING SET TO REOPEN From the Mendocino Coast to the Oregon Border

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) will open the commercial Dungeness crab fishery from the Oregon state line to the Sonoma/Mendocino county line (Fishing Zones 1 and 2) under a Fleet Advisory beginning Jan. 5, 2024 at 12:01 a.m. with a 64-hour pre-soak to begin on Jan. 2, 2024 at 8:01 a.m. The commercial fishery will remain delayed from the Sonoma/Mendocino county line to the U.S./Mexico border (Fishing Zones 3, 4, 5 and 6) until at least the next risk assessment due to elevated numbers of humpback whales resulting in increased entanglement risk.

CDFW is also continuing the temporary recreational crab trap restriction from the Sonoma/Mendocino county line to Lopez Point, Monterey County, (Fishing Zones 3 and 4) due to the presence of humpback whales and the potential for entanglement with crab traps. The recreational trap restriction will be in effect until at least the next risk assessment. The use of recreational crab traps in Fishing Zones 1, 2 and 5 will be allowed. A Fleet Advisory remains in effect for the recreational fishery for all Fishing Zones (1-6). CDFW reminds recreational crabbers that take of Dungeness crab by other methods, including hoop nets and crab snares, is allowed during a temporary trap restriction. CDFW also encourages recreational crabbers to implement best practices, as described in the Best Practices Guide.

CDFW anticipates the next risk assessment will take place on or around Jan. 11, 2024, at which time Director Charlton H. Bonham will re-evaluate available data to inform the potential for a commercial fishery opener in Fishing Zones 3-6 and modification of the recreational trap restriction. For more information related to the risk assessment process, please visit CDFW’s Whale Safe Fisheries page. For more information on the Dungeness crab fishery, please visit www.wildlife.ca.gov/crab.

BOONVILLE JOB OPENING! Pennyroyal Farm is seeking a cheese-loving chef to join our team - please share! This position in our Estate Kitchen will serve up beautiful cheese and charcuterie boards and other farmstead snacks using produce from our culinary garden and estate-raised meats. Email resume to hr@navarrowine.com or mail PO Box 47, Philo CA 95466.

This culinary team position would begin immediately and work with the Manager, and other staff to prepare cheese tastings, charcuterie and cheese boards, and other farmstead fare, and maintain a clean and organized kitchen. They would also be required to deliver and articulately explain the cheese plates to customers on our patio. In addition to preparing and serving our tasting room Farm Fare menu, the chef will help plan special menus focusing on estate meats, garden produce, cheese and wine, and then carry out those menus. Hourly rate for Culinary Team Member is $19.00 - $24.00 per hour. This is a full-time position and offers medical, dental, and life insurance coverage, paid holidays, and paid vacations. All employees are eligible for generous product discounts.

DIMMICK GUILTY IN ARSON CASE

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations Wednesday to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty as charged.

Defendant Benjamin Ervin James Dimmick, age 27, of Eureka, was found guilty of committing the arson of a commercial business structure, a felony, in a business park just north of Ukiah on February 17th of this year; he was also found guilty of burglary (in the second degree), also a felony, of the same business office on that same date.

The jury also found true a special allegation alleging that the arson was committed while one or more fire-related, Governor-initiated "state of emergency" declarations had been issued and was/were still in effect here in Mendocino County.

The referral of the defendant and his convictions to the Adult Probation Department for a background study and sentencing recommendation was deferred until a second felony trial involving the defendant – now scheduled for the middle of January – is either resolved by agreement of the parties or tried before another jury.

The law enforcement agency that investigated the burglary and arson was the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, with trial preparation assistance provided by the District Attorney’s own investigators.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence to the jury was District Attorney David Eyster.

Significant fire investigation work that began in February was followed up with fire expert testimony being presented to the jury Tuesday by Ukiah Valley Fire Authority Battalion Chief Justin Buckingham. Chief Buckingham also sat second chair to the DA throughout the trial and the reading of the verdicts.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the three-day trial and will continue to preside over all upcoming proceedings in this case and the defendant’s other two pending cases.

MENDO’S NOT-SO COMPREHENSIVE FINANCIAL REPORT

by Mark Scaramella

Following up further on the recent release of the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) for Fiscal Year 21-22 (July of 2021 to June of 2022). The release of this long-delayed report was met with approval from at least two supervisors who implied that it was connected with their ouster of Auditor-Controller / Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison who was replaced as Acting ACTTC by Deputy CEO Sara Pierce.

But we doubt if any of the officials who claimed that this was some kind of major accomplishment actually read it. It’s purpose is more of a sop to outside credit and granting agencies than any kind of informational or management document.

We checked a few random topics, such as the Prop 172 funds that are supposed to go to Law Enforcement and Emergency Services and discovered that Prop 172 isn’t even mentioned. 

Nor is there’s any mention of asset forfeiture funds. 

There’s no mention of tax liens and associated tax delinquency sales revenues. 

The Teeter Plan fund is only mentioned in passing with no indication of its status besides the ending balance in June of 2022. (“The County maintains 25% of the total delinquent secured taxes for participating entities in the County, as calculated at the end of the fiscal year, in the tax loss reserve fund. The balance in the [Teeter] fund was approximately $1,262,715 at year-end.”) 

There’s no mention of the fund balance carry-forward that Mendo Officialdom felt was so important to understanding how much money they have. (But then, the carryover from a year and a half ago is of little use now.)

The report does mention “general reserves” in the fine print of a fund balance chart as amounting to about $10.3 million as of June 30, 2022, for what that’s worth. When asked why this amount was much less than the reserves listed in the budget presentation at a recent meeting, CEO Darcie Antle said that the larger reserve number includes some “restricted reserves” even though no such annotation is included in the budget-reserves chart. Nor could we find any accounting of these “restricted reserves” elsewhere in the ACFR. (However, it’s possible that some reserves are earmarked to cover costs that have been committed to via contracts or purchase orders but for which there has as yet been no invoice. This could include, for example, the huge sole source mental health/services contract with the Schraeders and their Redwood Quality Management Company and various facilities and construction projects, probably including the new jail wing which should be its own fund too, but is not.)

There’s also about $8 million (or $8.7 million (?) elsewhere in the report) in a “road projects” fund which is designated for “planning, design, construction, maintenance and administration of County-maintained roads.” But there’s no explanation of what specific projects this money is intended for and how it may overlap with regular Transportation Department operations. The Road Fund is probably primarily used for projects that the County finances upfront in anticipation of later reimbursement from state or federal sources. This is the fund that Supervisor John Pinches exposed in the 1990s as too big which lead to a mini-scandal and the premature retirement of then-Transportation Director Budge Campbell. Pinches argued that Campbell was sitting on money that should be used for long-overdue road repairs and upgrades. Campbell replied that he needed every dollar in the reserves to cover unanticipated future road work. Obviously, the road fund amount should be formally reviewed by the Board of Supervisors annually based on current and planned projects and the level and timing of reimbursements. But of course, they never do such things.

There were some interesting, if routine, numbers in the report, too, of course.

According to the ACFR there were a surprisingly large amount of taxable retail sales estimated to be about $2 billion in Mendocino County in the fiscal year from July 2021 to June 2022. The biggest of which were from gasoline and motor vehicle and associcated sales. Construction and Garden supplies came in third. Two billion dollars in taxable sales translates to about $180 million in total sales tax, a little over $30 million of which goes into the General Fund. 

The biggest property tax payer in Mendocino County is PG&E, more than double what #2, Mendocino Redwoods, pays. Four vineyard/wine outfits are in the top ten along with AT&T, Costco and “Mendocino Hotels LLC.”

After the Covid Dip, Transient Occupancy Tax revenues have recovered and then some.

After Supervisor Ted Williams posted a link to the ACFR on his facebook page, an on-line commenter noted that the Supervisors pretending that the long-delayed report had something to do with their ouster of Chamise Cubbison and replacement with Sara Pierce was bogus: 

“Oh yeah. Sara came in and drafted this in her first month on the job. If you putzes hadn’t thrown a monkeywrench into the works by pushing your own agenda we’d probably have had it long ago. No Christmas mercy for you.”

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/auditor-controller/comprehensive-annual-financial-report-cafr

In the next overdue ACFR for 2022-2023 (for the fiscal year ending six months ago, last July, now expected to be finalized perhaps by next July), it will be interesting to see if/how they handle the borrowing of the Measure B funds for the jail expansion project and the Measure P “advisory measure” funds that are supposed to go to emergency services but which Supervisor Williams has hinted that the County also may raid.

TAP, TAP, TAPPING AWAY

Meanwhile, after morning ablutions at the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center, enjoyed the sumptuous free meal at Plowshares Peace & Justice Center, afterwards taking the MTA bus to the Ukiah Public Library. After reading today’s New York Times, am tap, tap, tapping away on computer #5. Not the body and not the mind…Immortal Self I am! Available on the planet earth for spiritually based direct action in response to the abominable situation everywhere. What are we waiting for? Thanks for listening.

Craig Louis Stehr

MARY PAT PALMER (Philo): 

In the midst of everything else, I feel moved to put together a presentation of what it was like to have an illegal abortion prior to 1973. Mine was on G (for Gynocology) Street in Tijuana. I was 17. Mine was relatively professional and still I became infected and was lucky enough to have a family doctor who treated me for the infection despite what charges could have been brought against him. That was 1965.

Women growing up after 1973 did not, and I am thankful, have to experience an illegal abortion. Many are unaware of what it meant and most of us who did have them don't talk about it much. I recently listened to a very good presentation on KPFA and we could use that but I feel a more personal/Mendo County connection would be important.

Hopefully we will not return to the time of illegal abortions. But let's help our younger sisters, daughters and granddaughters to understand why we are passionate about this issue. Let's be proactive on this one.

Like my cancer group, this is a group that I hope very few will belong to but please IM me or call 895-3007 if you can help.

ED NOTES

ANYBODY ELSE REMEMBER when Georgia-Pacific was laying off whole shifts of workers G-P hired a guy to shoot pigeons at the Fort Bragg mill, which lots of people would have done for free. Before the old timers are gone, someone oughta write a history of the mill, or at least collect the anecdotes, of which there are many and personal memories are always more fun than a formal history.

ON THE LARGE subject of Mendocino County's most happening town, and while we're strolling Memory Lane, remember when then-4th District supervisor Patti Campbell startled the audience at a Westport candidates’ night by saying she wanted to take the million bucks Caltrans gave back to Fort Bragg in Noyo Bridge mitigations and invest it in a road from Highway One that would loop down around Dominic Affinito’s one story too tall North Cliff Motel and on into Noyo Harbor, outletting at Jim Cummings’ place. The mitigating million was supposed to go for the creation of a topside public park for the enjoyment of the general public, since established, kinda, at the trailhead on the bluffs. But whatever happened to that mitigating million?

WE WILL RECALL that as a Fort Bragg City councilperson, Campbell faithfully ran errands for Affinito and kindred FB big boys as her supervisor successor, Dan Gjerde, nobly fought Affinito so effectively, Affinito assaulted Gjerde in town hall. Got away with it, too.

THE LATE DA NORM VROMAN warned me, circa 2000, that criminally-oriented dudes were doing a lotta loud talk about “getting that Boonville bastard.” Vroman advised me, “Take a gun when you go up there, Bruce.” Guns were Norm's solution to all vexations, and people who saw his gun locker in the Courthouse will remember that Vroman was always momentarily transported at the sight of all that firepower, gazing for a moment at the DA's collection of confiscated weapons. 

ANYWAY, PATTI CAMPBELL led the charge for tax-paid roads and water and sewer lines for Affinito’s Glass Beach project, an investment of public funds in Affinito’s private business which soon bankrupted the City of Fort Bragg. But the old cheerleader always insisted that Fort Bragg’s investment in Glass Beach was a terrific deal for the taxpayers. 

THE TERRIFIC DEAL? Fort Bragg obligated itself to pay $4 million over 25 years for Glass Beach infrastructure — roads, sewer, water. Fort Bragg also got the privilege of paying Affinito $57,000 for each parcel on which Rural Communities Housing, a charity, erected sweat-equity homes. Affinito had paid about $13,000 per parcel when he bought the area from Georgia-Pacific.

MIRACULOUSLY promoted to supervisor by an amnesiatic Fort Bragg electorate, Campbell wanted to borrow tons of money through what she’d hoped would be a county redevelopment agency (still stumblng towards existence at the time) to extend water and sewer lines south of town where guess who owned property. Campbell seemed surprised when the reform Fort Bragg City Council — Gjerde, Michelle White, Vince Benedetti — rejected a second big handout to Affinito. 

BUT NOBODY ever accused Affinito of not being on perpetual red alert for a government handout. Glass Beach Two, Affinito’s big plans for Noyo Harbor, supported by the lead trustee for the Cummings estate, Bob Peterson and, of course Old Faithful Patti Campbell, saw supervisor Campbell appoint Affinito consiglieri Jim Burns to the Noyo Harbor District’s board of directors. Long-time Noyo businessman, the widely respected Tommy Ancona, did not get the Harbor District appointment. 

HERE'S WHY BURNS got the nod over Ancona: Burns was the guy who prepared the “financial analysis” that Campbell and Affinito brandished before a bamboozled pre-reform FB City Council to get Fort Bragg’s taxpayers to subsidize Glass Beach One. To Campbell’s confused thinking, Burns was a regular public finance wizard so she returned to Burns and his magic calculator in the hopes of getting Affinito and the Cummings’ combine another big hunk of public money for whatever tax-gobbling schemes they had in mind for Noyo Harbor.

TOMMY ANCONA lived in Fort Bragg. Jim Burns lived in Lake County but Campbell appointed Burns over Ancona on the proposed Noyo Harbor deal.

* * *

REMEMBER that creepy Brit calling himself “Master David” who appeared in Fort Bragg to briefly operate an auto repair shop? Master David was subsequently convicted in Sisikyou County of rape and assault and packed off to the state pen for nine years with the proviso that as soon as his sentence was up he be deported to merry old England. 

IN MENDOCINO COUNTY, where gurus were plentiful at the time, local publisher Richard Johnson devoted four pages of ads in his occasional paper devoted to the Master David types. Johnson called the insert, “The Confluence Directory,” where cons fluidly took the cash of the gulled and gullible. 

MASTER DAVID committed at least two serious assaults on female members of his five-person cult here in Mendo, neither of them prosecuted. Having worn out his welcome in Mendo, the master moved on to Yreka where he promoted himself to “His Holiness Master David.” 

HIS HOLINESS' real name was Robert Martin Loyd, and he was wholly placed behind state prison bars out of Sisikyou County where His Holiness defended himself with the claim that the women he’d beaten and raped “had signed contracts to be beaten.”

TWEEKERS AT MOTEL SIX

THE EEL RIVER, THEN & NOW

by B.J. Rowland (2000)

The very first day I saw this River I made myself a promise that I would buy myself a site on the bank of it. 

We got up early that day — myself, Eddie Downing, and Everett Branscomb — and jumped into Eddie’s old military jeep, open top and all. It was New Year’s Day. We drove up Highway 101 to the Spy Rock Road, then up Spy Rock down into the Garrison. Margie had a hog ranch there. Keith, her man, drug out the brandy. We spiked the coffee and visited. 

After the sun got up and took the chill off, we went on down to the river. Ed and Everett had the roe in a jar, treated with borax powder to toughen it, they said. We walked up river about a mile, past a long hole to the upper end at the beginning of a big riffle. Eddie rigged my line. He then said, “Watch me fish.” He flipped his line out into the moving water. It drifted down river a little ways and BAM! something hit Eddie’s bait. Eddie jerked the hell out of the line. The water parted and a beautiful steelhead came up out of the water, twisting, landing on its side with a whomp on the still water, and the race was on. 

Eddie took off down over the rocks, the pole above his head, down into the bigger hole of water. I clambered over the rocks behind him, watching his moves. He played the fish for what seemed like a long time. Finally, the steelhead surfaced, acting like it was all over, only to go battling to get away again. Eddie finally got it up near the bank and held it while I ran over and grabbed it with my hands, slinging it onto the bank. The fish was a big female steelhead. 

Eddie said, “Good, we got us some fresh roe bait.” By the time we got the fish, Everett had had his own fight with a fish. We went back to where we started and Ed hooked another one. He told me to fish just like he did and went down to land his. I fished all the while as they caught fish after fish. I spent the rest of the time there and never did hook one at all. They let about six more go that they didn’t want. They each got their limit, and a couple of charity fish for me. There had to have been 100 fish in that hole that day.

I didn’t catch my first steelhead until a few years later. I just couldn’t detect the fish picking up the roe while bouncing down over the rocks. When I caught my first fish it was at Dos Rios. I got it on a spin-glow. The fish struck the artificial bait. I landed it down under the bridge. When I got the first fish on roe, it was about 4 one afternoon at Dos Rios. It is hard to tell a person what the bait feels like when the fish picks it up. It just takes a lot of trying and patience. I loved to fish at the Dos Rios segment of the Eel, but fish don’t stay there very long. They move on through. You’ve got to catch them at about daylight. There’s a rock where the runs come by and you can get a couple fish from there every morning.

I said to my friends, “Man, if I lived closer I could beat Clyde and Richard Williams to the spot.” Well, about ten years later I purchased the property. A job was about to go out to bid in Willits for fixing Main Street, Highway 101, from Remco to the Bank. I needed more rock and a better source of gravel, and I knew the value of the gravel at Dos Rios. But I couldn’t bid at the time because I didn’t have a bonding capacity to bid the Willits job myself.

At the time I was talking with Earl Maize and Frank Crawford about helping me with my ideas and how to get in on the bidding for the Willits job. The Dos Rios material had been a source of concrete aggregates for the proposed Point Arena nuclear power plant. Not many knew this besides myself and the PG&E officials. 

I can tell the world that the most honest, intelligent men I have ever known were Mr. Frank Crawford and Earl Maize. We lost some beautiful human beings when they perished. The face of Mendoland would be nothing like it looks today had they not been on the scene. There probably would be no L-P or GP in Mendocino County. Boise Cascade would never have gotten Union Lumber either. But if the rabbit didn’t stop to shit… 

Wow! If there be anyone that could think and shake like them today, this county would have zero unemployment today.

I bought my Dos Rios river site in about 1969. The first Thanksgiving Day there I counted 40 fish caught that one day. This continued throughout the 70s and into the 80s. But in the past ten years I have not seen a single fish taken at Dos Rios. There are no fish there anymore. 

When Jim Eddie ran for re-election to the Supervisors I ran against him. One of the reasons was the destruction of the Eel River. No one knows more about this river than me — period. The bastards we have running our county have all but destroyed it.

With the public epithet “We have to take a stand” the power plants and dams at Lake Pillsbury need to come out. The Eel can never return at all without water. The problem is the Farm Bureau. They’re a bunch of so-called farmers who beg all day for government subsidies. I ain’t met a farmer in Mendoland that has made a dime of profit farming — unless they’re growing pot or grapes. Yet the so-called “agriculture” runs Mendocino County. If those farmers had to pay for what they use they’d all leave. In Idaho, a real agribusiness area, the government dammed up 1,000 miles of the Snake River for power and agriculture. But Clinton has a billion-dollar bailout on the table today. The little farmer don’t get none of this money though. The corporation-farmers get it. The salmon and steelhead are no longer in the rivers in Idaho either. Just like the Eel system. Dams and fish don’t mix. Fish need the water when they come to spawn, not when the dam man turns the dam water loose. Way back when life began, we knew better, but we continue to do wrong.

I hope one day the fish will run in the Eel at Dos Rios. We can do the right thing. It wouldn’t hurt anything either. PG&E wants to shut down the power plant at Lake Pillsbury. It’s not economical anymore. Jim Eddie said at a public hearing that a fish ain’t worth the cost of the fish ladder. He was right. Besides there are no more fish. But he didn’t know what he was talking about either. He’s a good-ol-boy farmer who slept through everything but an earthquake at most of the meetings he attended. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, December 20, 2023

PARIS BEACHAM-VANDERPOOL, Ukiah. Unlawful camping on public property, failure to appear.

WYCLIFFE SARGEANT, West Sacramento/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

NATHANIEL SAYLOR, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

JASON SIKES, Laytonville. Battery.

TRAIN TO NOWHERE

Editor: 

I voted in 2008 against the high-speed rail system. Southwest Airlines transports people all over the state, quickly and cost-efficiently. Within a few months after the vote, construction costs went up, and the advertised one-way ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles doubled in price.

Gov. Jerry Brown rescued this bad project by stealing money from the cap-and-trade fund. He changed what voters backed. If the backers of this high-speed rail system were Texas Republicans, Democrats would have cried fraud and had investigations for criminal and civil actions and lawsuits filed. But when Democrats and environmentalists do this, we are to look the other way and say it is good for the environment.

The train line is in the Central Valley. How many people will use it? No state subsidy allowed, but there probably will be one. Worse, all the billions spent could have helped complete the SMART line up to Cloverdale.

Andrew Smith

Santa Rosa

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Well, well. We may now know the Dems strategy.

1. Get the GOP to put Trump in as number one.

2. Disqualify him as an insurrectionist in as many states as possible, like Colorado.

16 states have actions using the 14th amendment to disqualify him.

So the most dysfunctional administration in history is going to use the judicial system to disqualify the other side.

Nice, it may be decided by the appointed Supreme Court to decide if voting means anything in this country.

The Dems are the party of Democracy? My ass.

FOLLOW-UP ABOUT GAZA

Dear AVA:

Responding to Marshall Newman, AVA 12/6/23, where he asserts that "Israel had NO role in creating Hamas [and] whether Israel ever financed Hamas is doubtful ...", see the following:

Why Netanyahu Bolstered Hamas by Jeet Heer, The Nation, 12-11-23; Netanyahu and Hamas Depended on Each Other by Steve Hendrix and Hazem Balousha, Washington Post, 11-26-23; How Israel Helped Create Hamas by Ishaan Tharor, Washington Post, 7-30-14

These articles, a small sampling of the large and long-standing literature on an old subject, are nuanced and richly sourced; whatever one thinks of The Nation and The Washington Post, they're not known as kook fringe outfits.

Quoting Mr. Newman, "Having picked this fight, Hamas and the Gazan people have lost the right to dictate the terms of the consequent battle." Really? The Gazan people, including the thousands of dead children, and the injured now freezing and starving in tents in the desert, without clean water, crawling with lice, stalked by disease, they "picked this fight"? I'm not following Mr. Newman here.

About The Great March of Return, in which scores of thousands of people participated between March 2018 and December 2019, Mr. Newman says, "And make no mistake, these protests were not peaceful; they frequently included Gazans breaching the border fence, making incursions into Israel, and burning tires to obscure their actions, all of which provoked Israel to take the action it took against the protesters."

"The action it took" was to shoot dead some 223 Palestinians and, according to Robert Mardini, head of Middle East for the International Committee of the Red Cross, wound more than 13,000, most severely, with some 1,400 struck by three to five bullets. One Israeli soldier was reported as slightly wounded on May 14, 2018.

From this one could fairly conclude that the violence was coming mostly from one side. Yes, there were burning tires, breaches of Israel's precious border fence, and what Marshall Newman calls "incursions into Israel". Were these really crimes that called for the death penalty or crippling injury by gunfire?

The demonstrators, most of whom, according to Wikipedia, demonstrated peacefully, were protesting for the right of return to lands they were displaced from; against Israel's air, land, and sea blockade; and the U.S. (Trump's) recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Israel's actions were condemned by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B'Tselem, and anybody else with half a fucking brain and even a little heart.

Finally, while we're on the subject of Gaza and blockades, let us remember the fate of the nine Turkish nationals and one American Turkish national whom Israel shot to death when its troops stormed the Maavi Marmara, head of a relief flotilla on May 31, 2010, just a few years into the siege which persists to this sad day. There is a hopeful note: By any measure, and by many measures, American public opinion overwhelmingly favors a ceasefire.

Stephen Elliott

Bridgewater, Massachusetts

PAUL DREY:

Until 2011, conscription was mandatory for German men, with the option to refuse armed service and do civil service at home or abroad instead. In 2009 at age 19, I chose to go abroad as part of a development aid program, hoping that I would have the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to a community. I went to Senegal for a one-year civil service assignment for a German nongovernmental organization that I picked from a list of options provided by a ministry’s website.

During my time with the organization, I grew increasingly disillusioned. I didn’t see a development project operating in the way it was described to the public. The sewing school was neglected, the cultural center where I lived was empty, and some donations from Germany disappeared or rotted away in containers. As part of my work, I was eventually asked to volunteer in a hospital in Thiès, which involved many duties that I was not properly trained or prepared for.

Almost 13 years later, I decided to make a film based on my memories, videos and photographs from Senegal, as well as a present-day interview with Madeleine, a friend I made during my time there. The result is my short documentary, ‘Red Ears,’ which aims to examine the paradigm of foreign aid and volunteerism through the lens of my experiences.

https://europeanfilmawards.eu/en_EN/film/red-ears.21963

WILLIE MAYS describing when as a 17-year-old, he faced the 6’ 4” Satchel Paige for the first time:

It was 1948. Satchel had a very, very good fastball, but he threw me a little breaking ball, just to see what I could do, and I hit it off the top of the fence. I got a double. When I got to second, Satchel told the third baseman, “Let me know when that little boy comes back up.” Three innings later, I go to kneel down in the on-deck circle, and I hear the third baseman say, “There he is.” Satch looked at the third baseman, and then he looked at me. I walk halfway to home plate and he says, “Little boy.” I say, “Yes, sir?” because Satch was much older than I am, so I was trying to show respect. He walked halfway to home plate and said, “Little boy, I'm not going to trick you. I'm going to throw you three fastballs and you're going to go sit down” and I'm saying in my mind, “I DOOON'T THINK SOOO.” If he threw me three of the same pitch, I'm going to hit it somewhere. He threw me two fastballs and I just swung. I swung right through it. And the third ball he threw, and I tell people this all the time, he threw the ball and as he let go he said, “Go sit down.” This is while the ball was in the air. Yes, he struck me out with three pitches. He was just magnificent.

THE END OF THE WORLD Is Just the Beginning...There Will Be No Warning

youtube.com/watch?v=ZhTzqIuQ660

(John Sakowicz)

AT 91, JOHN BURTON STILL HAS A FEW CHOICE WORDS

by Jack Ohman

Before there was Speaker Nancy Pelosi, before there was Vice President Kamala Harris, before there was potential presidential candidate Gov. Gavin Newsom, there were the Burtons. The aforementioned political careers would not have happened without the San Francisco political machine that the Burtons created.

From the 1950s through well into the 21st century, John Burton, the former San Francisco congressman, Assembly member, California Senate president pro tem and state Democratic party chairman, along with his late brother, Rep. Phil Burton, and Phil’s wife, the late Rep. Sala Burton, ran San Francisco Democratic politics alongside former mayor and California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. 

The Burtons tapped Pelosi to succeed Rep. Sala Burton in Congress, and Pelosi became the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives.

John Burton, famously profane, barely swore during an interview last week. He hasn’t mellowed, exactly, but on Dec. 15, his 91st birthday, he was definitely tart.

When asked about his relationship in Sacramento with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, he noted that as an Assembly member “he was irrelevant to me. I mean, I was the leader of the senate. I was the president pro tem. There was no relevance between us.” 

When do you think McCarthy changed?

“I don’t know … probably the fact that he stood up for Trump after the riots and all that stuff — he (Trump) had a lot to do with that riot and the fact that he caused that.”

Do you think McCarthy’s going to have a role in the Republican Party going forward?

“I don’t know. I don’t think so … I think he’ll probably go to work with some corporation or some board of directors or stuff like that.”

Maybe Elon Musk is hiring.

What of the political fortunes of Vice President Harris?

“Vice presidents, except for LBJ, kind of feel irrelevant … I don’t really give a lot of thought to it.”

“OK, you know what? Who was it? John Nance Garner (President Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice president 1933-41). It (the vice presidency) is like a ‘bucket of warm spit’.”

Burton, born in 1932 during the collapsing Herbert Hoover administration, may well have contemporaneous childhood memories of Vice President Garner, who was the recipient of President John F. Kennedy’s final phone call wishing him birthday greetings on Nov. 22, 1963. 

What of President Joe Biden, who was also a sometimes-underestimated vice president himself?

“We’re definitely worried about next year. If we’re not, we should have our heads examined.”

What of the would-be One Day Dictator, former President Donald Trump, who was the recipient of a classic John Burtonism in his last speech as party chairman: “F— Trump!”

He didn’t say that this time, but close.

“Always (does) his best to make the rich people richer, at the cost of the working class and the low, low-income people. I don’t think he’s good for the country.” 

Are you concerned about Trump as a potential dictator?

“He’s kind of a thief and a fascist … I worry about Trump. I worry about what he’s done to the country, the future that my kids, my grandkids … (but) we can get beyond this.”

How did Trump get us to this point where democracy is imperiled?

“Because I think, in many ways, the Democrats failed somehow in talking about the issues (about) what’s important in life, (but) it’s the Republicans who just abdicated … their responsibility. I mean, who would ever think that one of the (leaders) to save democracy is Liz Cheney?”

How has Congress changed since you, your brother and your sister-in-law served there in the 1970s and 1980s?

“I served with three John Birchers (members of the right-wing political advocacy group John Birch Society) … you could talk to them. You could joke with them. You could have a drink with them, whatever the hell you want to do. Now there’s just a … line of people who just don’t like anything.”

Imagine pining for the good old days of your comparatively agreeable John Bircher House colleagues.

Burton now occupies his time with the John Burton Advocates for Youth, which helps foster children and homeless kids navigate the world, and he is finishing a book about his career.

At 91, John Burton continues his passion, helping poor people, even if his vocabulary has been a bit dialed back. The real profanity is what this country has yet to accomplish for the folks Burton wants to help.

RESIDENTS OF PAWLET, VERMONT, WERE ACCUSTOMED TO CALM AND NEIGHBORLY INTERACTIONS. THEN A NEW RESIDENT MOVED IN.

by Paige Williams

A letter arrived in September at the law office of Merrill Bent, the attorney for Pawlet, Vermont, a farming town in the Taconic Mountains. It began, “NO CONSENT NEEDED ADVISMENT!” and went on to announce that a “documentary film” was under way, about “the individual or individuals that have manipulated a system set in place to protect and honor individuals’ constitutional rights…” The letter was signed “Bartholomeu Poopolopskimheimer,” but Bent recognized the misspellings and the tortured syntax as the work of a longtime defendant. Wearily, she added the letter to her files for Town of Pawlet v. Daniel Steven Banyai.

Banyai is a fifty-year-old former landscaper from Poughkeepsie. Ten years ago, he bought thirty undeveloped acres on Briar Hill Road, an unpaved thoroughfare in West Pawlet, a few miles from where the historic center—Town Hall, the library, Mach’s Market, Lake’s Lampshades—knuckles onto a bend in the Mettawee River. The property borders a quarry, and Banyai named it Slate Ridge. His patch of woodland was tucked out of sight, at the end of a long, gravel driveway. Banyai liked the “clandestine” location, once telling an interviewer, “The property is one-hundred-per-cent conducive to anonymity.”

Slate Ridge was secluded, but it wasn’t remote. The area was zoned for residential and agricultural use, and numerous families, along with their horses and pets, lived within walking distance. In the ensuing years, neighbors could hear the clearing of trees, and construction. They had no idea what Banyai was planning until December, 2017, when, without warning or permits, he opened an outdoor shooting range.

Pawleteans, being Vermonters, are accustomed to hearing the crack of a hunting rifle and intermittent target practice, but they balked at what sounded like battle—prolonged fire, multiple shooters. Social-media posts involving Slate Ridge showed men in camouflage, rucking around ravines. There were two shoot-and-move ranges, both backstopped by man-made berms. One featured a façade where assaulters could practice storming a building; another allowed trainees to fire at a junked car, to see which ammunition best penetrated automotive steel. An area was designated for “explosive training,” and Banyai told people that he planned to add a sniper course, a helipad, and a “maritime” element, in case anyone needed experience blitzing a ship.

He had also erected a one-room “school” house, which measured about five hundred square feet. Designed for firearms instruction, the room held desks, an anatomical dummy, and a trauma kit. A T-shirt on display said “Blackwater,” the original name of the private-security firm founded by Erik Prince. Online, Banyai declared, “We are PROFESSIONAL Gun Fighters.” Banyai told Adam McLain, an ex-marine with a YouTube channel, that a “whole bunch of private security contractors” used Slate Ridge early on, for training purposes, and that when townspeople “saw black S.U.V.s coming here” they probably wondered, “Are they militia? Are they a cult? Are they terrorists? Are they radicalized people?”

Families had lived in West Pawlet for years without having to wonder whether they’d need Kevlar and earplugs to enjoy their own porch. “If he’d just moved here and built a house and shot his guns every now and then, nobody would care,” one local, who owns firearms, said. (Vermont is a blue state with permissive gun laws.) “But when you roll into town and the next thing you’re doing is building a gun range—tactical stuff?”

Banyai, who sometimes wore an infinity scarf, made use of the word “deployment,” leaving the impression that he had a military pedigree. After watching videos of him online, some were skeptical. “Couldn’t kick snow off a rope,” one commenter wrote. Another added, “Training with joker’s like this will get you killed when shit hits the fan.”

The historic town hall in Pawlet, Vermont. Employees had never thought of their building as a “soft target.”

Signs mark the border of Banyai’s property, Slate Ridge.

Banyai had built the schoolhouse before formally applying for a permit. Pawlet’s zoning administrator granted one retroactively. Neighbors objected, and the town ultimately decided that the permit had been issued in error. (Banyai’s lawyer, Robert Kaplan, pointed out that the objections were raised after the legal deadline.) Officially, Banyai had permission to build a garage-apartment. The town informed him that Slate Ridge would not be rezoned to accommodate the shooting range, per his request, and that he would need to raze and remove any unpermitted structures, including the façade and the schoolhouse.

Banyai chose to interpret these directives as evidence of a conspiracy against him and against the Second Amendment. During a meeting of the Pawlet Select Board, the town’s governing body, he accused elected officials of being Klansmen. In e-mails, and later in court filings, he demanded protection for his “blended family i.e. Jews, Blacks, LGBTQ individuals,” writing, “We are the minorities attempting to get fair and ethical treatment to cohabitate in a anti-Semitic, homophobic, and anti-gun community.” This confused people. Banyai was white, and whether he was actually Jewish was unclear. Yet, declaring himself a victim of “cultural cleansing,” he sought momentum for a “class action lawsuit,” asking, in postcards, “Do you feel violated by the Town of Pawlet Select Board?”

Pawleteans came to recognize Banyai on sight: six feet tall, long beard, and usually driving a big truck. When he failed to shut down the ranges and clear his property, the town, in September of 2019, took him to court. Banyai responded by mounting a social-media campaign attacking “#corruptpawlet.” That December, neighbors and town officials received holiday cards addressed to “Mr. & Mrs. Flat-Lander,” “Mr. & Mrs. Had-A-Cock,” and other made-up names. The sender called recipients “degenerates,” “racist, corrupt individuals,” “terrible humans,” and “miserable souls,” adding, “Your family is ugly,” “Have yourself a merry little meltdown,” and “Lose some weight!”

A matter that should have been resolved easily dragged on for a year. In October, 2020, VTDigger, an investigative-journalism nonprofit based in Montpelier, published an article about Banyai’s enterprise, noting, among other things, that “while Slate Ridge itself does not claim to be a militia, its Facebook page shows a web of individual connections to militia and anti-government organizations.” In the run-up to the Presidential election, federal authorities were issuing warnings about domestic paramilitary groups. In Michigan, a militia faction’s plot to kidnap the governor was unfolding, and the insurrection of January 6, 2021, was weeks away. Banyai disavowed any militia affiliations, and said that Slate Ridge planned to help train law-enforcement officers, members of the military, and “United States government attaches.”

The Times and the public-radio program “This American Life” followed up. The latter talked to one of Banyai’s ex-wives, who alleged that he had physically abused her. (Kaplan did not respond to The New Yorker’s question about this.) “He needs to be the toughest guy in the room,” the ex-wife said, on air. Banyai added the news media to his list of enemies. When the Manchester Journal sought comment from him, he tried to have the reporter, Darren Marcy, charged with harassment. Slate Ridge posted Marcy’s photo online, and called him a “pedophile.” When Marcy saw Slate Ridge sharing a photo of his Subaru and license plate, he stopped letting his teen-age daughter borrow his car, for fear of her becoming a target. Intimidation was Banyai’s “game,” Marcy told me. “He tries to scare people into silence, and if you stand up to him he gets angrier and angrier.”

Banyai’s supporters encouraged defiance. One posted, “Time to stand against tyranny!” McLain, the YouTube interviewer, who talked about making ghost guns on a 3-D printer and titled one of his episodes “Become Ungovernable,” praised Banyai’s “civil disobedience.” Banyai told him, “I’m seeing the characteristics of where society is going, how I’m going to be able to defend myself.” Banyai had held a Federal Firearms License, which enabled him to buy and sell guns.

The zoning matter became what one local news organization called, in an understatement, a “maelstrom” of legal procedure, further slowed by Banyai’s decision, initially, to represent himself. In court and in broadcast interviews, he behaved with a fidgety intensity, and often attempted to sound lawyerly. (“Objection, irrelevant.”) At one hearing, he lashed out when the judge stopped him from exploring what “decimal” levels qualified a noise as “federally annoying.” In e-mails, he told authority figures to call him “sir.”

On March 5, 2021, the presiding judge, Thomas Durkin, formally ordered Banyai to remove any unlawful structures. Durkin had written that he found it “difficult to imagine an alleged zoning violation that could be the source of more significant irreparable harm than an unpermitted shooting range.”

Banyai appealed. He also hosted a “Second Amendment Picnic” at Slate Ridge. McLain posted a video from the event, including interviews with a firearms customizer and a member of a local militia; he had already posted a video tour of the property, in which Banyai, sitting in the schoolhouse, bragged about having a rocket launcher and “more guns than anyone in this area.”

The Vermont Supreme Court upheld Durkin’s ruling on January 14, 2022. The gunfire at Slate Ridge largely stopped. Banyai grudgingly reported that he was working on demolishing the unpermitted structures. Pawlet officials wanted to see for themselves, but Banyai had “issued a ‘No Trespassing/We Will Shoot’ warning to town personnel,” the zoning administrator wrote, in an e-mail. Banyai would agree to an inspection and then cancel it, or try to. His various case-related excuses in court included “family emergency,” hospitalization, deployment, poverty, sabotage, and mud.

Finally, in May of 2022, three Pawlet officials, including Bent, the town attorney, were allowed past Banyai’s gate, accompanied by the Rutland County sheriff, David Fox, and a couple of deputies. The tactical façade was gone. The schoolhouse now sat on a trailer—Banyai tried to argue that this met the terms of the court’s order. The inspectors also discovered numerous new structures, including a barn, grain silos, an enormous tank marked “JET A-1 FUEL,” and animal pens. Donkeys, pigs, cattle, and goats now roamed about. Banyai was calling his property Slate Ridge Farm. He argued that, under state law, the changes were “agricultural” and therefore immune to Pawlet’s zoning regulations.

Judge Durkin had ultimately imposed a fine of two hundred dollars per day until Banyai complied with the court order. This February, he ruled Banyai in contempt. When the violations continued to go unresolved, the judge, in July, ordered him arrested. Bent’s staff e-mailed Sheriff Fox, “Please let our office know when he has been taken into custody.”

To Bent’s surprise, the sheriff asserted that the arrest was perhaps best handled by the Vermont State Police. Pawleteans wondered if law-enforcement officers were scared of Banyai—or friendly with him. “We are not friends,” Fox told me the other day, when I found him working the metal detector at the Rutland District and Family Courthouse. He said that neither he nor his deputies had ever trained at Slate Ridge, as some suspected. Townspeople’s suspicions were based, in part, on a printed message that reportedly once hung on Banyai’s range. It thanked law-enforcement officers and ranked military members by first name and last initial for inspiration or help in developing Slate Ridge. The list included “Gen. David P.” During one of his interviews with McLain, Banyai once called General David Petraeus, the retired four-star general and former C.I.A. director, a “mentor.” (Through a spokesperson, Petraeus said that he does not recall any interactions with Banyai and that he does not mentor him “in any capacity.”) Dustin Circe, a state game warden, wasn’t on the list, but after visiting the range he e-mailed a supervisor, “IT IS AWESOME.”

A neighbor discreetly mounted a trail camera to a nearby tree and was disappointed to see officers do little more than drive by. The arrest warrant expired in September. Townspeople were confounded by the way Banyai managed to avoid accountability and perpetuate tension in the neighborhood. It was concerning that a single person had the ability to hold “the town and state hostage,” as one neighbor had complained to a Pawlet official. Bent told the court, “The parties can safely assume that the gamesmanship will continue for as long as the court permits it to.”

Pawleteans were trying to keep a sense of humor about the situation, but Bent, who represents multiple towns, had never had a defendant insult and threaten her simply for doing her job. In e-mails, Banyai had called her a “cunt” and “a piece of shit racist lowlife with daddy issues.” She had received anonymous texts: “am going to dox you commie bitch shyster.” The Poopolopskimheimer letter mentioned her husband, their home address, and their child.

In Pawlet, which was chartered in 1761, five citizens are elected to govern some six hundred households across forty-three square miles. The Select Board meets every other Tuesday night, at Town Hall, a landmark built in 1881. They gather in a high-ceilinged room with arched windows and blond hardwood floors. The zoning administrator and the clerk sit nearby, not far from the cast-iron vaults that hold Pawlet’s record books. Town Hall’s employees never thought of their workplace as a “soft target” until Slate Ridge’s Facebook page posted about it: “No Alarm, No Security Camera, Single Pane Windows, No Deadbolts, 30 to 40 minutes Police Response Time, Dead Zone For All Cell Service, No Safe Room.”

Once the warrant expired, Banyai and a small crew, including a cameraman—Poopolopskimheimer?—began filming around Pawlet. On the evening of October 3rd, the crew showed up at the Select Board meeting. Banyai was dressed in a black “We the People” T-shirt with an American-flag design on it. Bent had just asked the court to renew the arrest warrant, but the judge had deferred the decision to the Vermont Supreme Court. “I got a small victory, for once,” Banyai told the board. “I hope that stings.”

Banyai was berating a government body that he had attempted to join. In 2021, during a feverish point in the zoning case, he ran for a one-year and a three-year seat. He finished last—eighteen votes for the yearlong seat, four for the longer term. He had campaigned to “Make Pawlet Great Again.”

At the meeting, Banyai refused to yield the floor: “It’s my right—I’m a citizen.” He talked louder and louder as a board member—Jessica Van Oort, who co-owns a wig shop—said, in accordance with Robert’s Rules of Order, “Address the chair, address the chair, address the chair, address the chair!”

“I’m a taxpayer,” Banyai screamed.

One of Pawlet’s two constables moved toward Banyai, as if to escort him out. Jeff Cooper, a close friend of Banyai’s, stepped in, physically blocking the constable’s path.

The board abruptly voted to adjourn. The officials stood to leave, even as Banyai went on bellowing, “You’re evil, racist fucking people!” He told the board’s chair, “You have taken away my existence in this community, you and your degenerate staff here. You’re a bad person. You’re a bad person.”

Mandy and Rich Hulett, dairy farmers, have been targets in Banyai’s campaign against Pawlet.

Rich and Mandy Hulett live down the road from Banyai, in a handsome home whose panoramic windows overlook Haystack Mountain. The Hulett family has lived in Pawlet since before the Revolutionary War, and once owned the land that became Slate Ridge. Rich and Mandy, who are in their mid-forties, still own hundreds of acres in the area, including the driveway that leads to Slate Ridge and an adjacent alfalfa field. They first encountered Banyai when he erected a gate on their side of the property line and refused to move it. The Huletts removed it for him, and later cut an errant utility cable. In social-media posts and court filings, Banyai characterized this as “vandalism.”

The Huletts’ businesses include dairy farms and a trucking company. Their daughter, Julia, is a competitive equestrian in her early twenties; their son, Evan, who is eighteen, works full time for the family. For a while, Rich’s older brother, Bruce, lived nearby, with his wife, Becky, a dog-lover who operated a kennel.

When Banyai moved to West Pawlet, he was on the verge of a second divorce. He sometimes walked a dog past Becky and Bruce’s home. Bruce and Becky divorced in early 2019, and that May, Becky married Banyai. Mandy told me that she and Rich immediately bought Bruce’s property, and that the Banyais, who’d been staying there, had to find somewhere else to live.

Banyai built a place at Slate Ridge. He blamed the Huletts for setbacks that he had experienced since arriving in Pawlet. The friends who supported him in this belief included Cooper, the man who blocked the constable at the Select Board meeting. Cooper, who has described himself as a disabled veteran, is Becky’s uncle. Round stickers appeared in town, with a red slash through “#HULETT” and “#PAWLET.” On October 7, 2020, a Slate Ridge Facebook post called the Huletts “garbage.” It listed the Huletts’ home address and declared, “We must eradicate these people from allowing them to continue to cultural, ethical, and religiously cleanse an area that they feel they own and control.”

Slate Ridge’s Facebook following grew into the thousands. The Huletts were stunned to see a training video showing a vehicle marked “R. Hulett Trucking” shot through with bullets. Mandy shared the video on her Facebook page, writing, “in case something happens to me or one of my family members.”

Days earlier, around dark, two teen-age bow hunters and their fathers had tracked a deer close to Slate Ridge. A truck appeared at Banyai’s gate, and the hunters heard a man shout at them, demanding identification. One of the fathers, Dennis Williams, a good friend of the Huletts, recognized Banyai’s voice. When the hunters refused to identify themselves, Banyai told them that if they crossed his boundary he would shoot them. The fathers called 911. 

A Vermont State Police official called Banyai, who said that he disliked that the hunters had spoken to him “in an entitled manner,” according to a V.S.P. report. A local law-enforcement officer then advised the state police to “get down there,” in case things “get out of hand.” Williams had also told a trooper, “You need to come here.” He later explained, “The guy was threatening to shoot people, and they were just gonna call him?” Witnesses filed sworn statements, but Banyai was never charged.

Banyai sought a restraining order against the Huletts, saying that he feared for his life. He was denied. A judge did grant a protective order to Mandy, based on the video and other unsettling posts. Banyai was ordered to stay away from her and her children, and not to write about them on the Internet, for the next two years. The order didn’t mention Rich, who happened to have defeated Banyai in the Select Board election. Last year, when Rich lost his right hand in a farming accident, Slate Ridge tweeted, “KARMA.”

One afternoon in October, I met Mandy and some other Pawleteans in Mandy’s sunroom. Michelle Tilander, a neighbor, handed me a tote bulging with three-ring binders. She and her husband, Paul, moved to West Pawlet more than a decade ago, expecting a quiet, scenic retirement and strong property values. They had been vocal opponents of the shooting range, and felt abandoned by the state. For years, Michelle had been collating publicly available documents about the zoning case in plastic sleeves she bought at Staples. The Tilanders were alarmed to check Slate Ridge’s Facebook page one day and see a photograph of their home, taken seventeen paces from their front door; the post ominously hinted that they would be leaving soon.

“The saddest part of it is that our neighbors, all they want to do is enjoy life,” Mandy said. “Banyai drives by, flips them off, beeps the horn. People can ignore that stuff—but why should you have to?” One neighbor, Val Davis, who is seventy-five, told me that last year Banyai was driving down Briar Hill Road when he saw her at her gate and stopped to make a nasty remark about her grandson. As Davis walked away, Banyai told her that her “cunt smells like Hamburger Helper.”

All together, Michelle’s thematically arranged binders—“SLATE RIDGE CONSTRUCTION,” “THREATS”—were like a box of puzzle pieces, shaken. Nothing pointed to a single moment that explained Banyai’s behavior, but there were inflections that one could find in the public domain. Was there a clue in the fact that in the nineties, Banyai’s mother, the executor of his father’s estate, took him to court to recover a Volkswagen Jetta? Or in the fact that, according to the National Personnel Records Center, Banyai served in the Army in 1994, from September 1st to September 16th—a little more than two weeks? In the YouTube interview with McLain, Banyai suggested that he had redeemed his failed military career by working overseas as a private security contractor, a job that he said came with “total immunity and impunity.”

Before moving to Pawlet, he had owned a home in a lovely neighborhood in Hyde Park, in Dutchess County, New York, where he had been self-employed as an excavator and had won community awards for improving a residential property and preserving a stone wall. Yet, in 2006, he pleaded guilty to insurance fraud, and was ordered to repay the State of New York more than twenty-five thousand dollars. Not long after that, he declared bankruptcy. He eventually lost his home to foreclosure.

Around the time Banyai opened Slate Ridge, he was enrolled in a master’s program in homeland security at Pace University, in New York. In February, 2018, Pace issued a security alert instructing anyone who saw him to call the police: Banyai had been expelled after allegedly threatening violence against a dean who refused to help him reverse a failing grade. The dean had received texts including one that read, “You and your family are going to suffer a miserable tortuous event and then you will die.”

Banyai was charged with aggravated harassment. (The case is pending, and Banyai did not comment on the allegations.) The State of New York revoked his pistol permit, and Banyai was ordered to surrender his firearms. A judge granted the dean a protective order. Another New Yorker soon secured a restraining order against Banyai, this time in a domestic-violence matter. (The details in such cases are sealed.) When police caught Banyai with a loaded .40-calibre pistol, they charged him with felony possession. Those cases were ongoing even as Banyai promoted Slate Ridge as a “premier, all-encompassing personal protection training center.”

Michelle’s files also contained a security bulletin from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Around February, 2020—as Banyai faced felony charges in New York, and was asking heavily armed supporters to attend a Select Board meeting in Pawlet—the agency warned law-enforcement officers in both states that Banyai was believed to be “unlawfully in possession of a large cache of firearms and ammunition.” He had “refused to follow the order to surrender” them. Banyai “falsely claims he is a federal agent, member of the military special forces community or an emergency management professional,” the bulletin advised. Noting his “declining mental health,” the agency warned that, if encountered by law enforcement, Banyai might become “agitated.” (Banyai did not answer The New Yorker’s specific questions about these allegations.)

Rich Hulett, who is a member of the Pawlet Select Board, works with sawdust for his cattle.

At one point, Michelle scribbled “WHO IS FUNDING BANYAI?” on a printout and slipped it into one of her binders. Despite his history of financial ruin, Banyai claimed to have spent 1.6 million dollars developing Slate Ridge. He had eventually hired a series of attorneys and, to avoid another foreclosure, paid more than fifty thousand dollars in fines.

In an e-mail on file with the court, Banyai mentioned his “benefactors.” In Slate Ridge’s online fund-raisers, donors tended to give small amounts, but one roster listed a pledge of a thousand dollars, from a David Brodsky. A man by that name owns a farm near Slate Ridge. That David Brodsky belongs to a family that has a long-standing real-estate development firm, BEB Capital, on Long Island. David’s father, Bert, founded a health-care data company. In 2005, Long Island Business News reported that Bert and his children “made about $50 million from the sale of 5.5 million shares” of a business. Around that time, Bert and David bought the estate that was rumored to have inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s setting for “The Great Gatsby.” David described the property as a “white whale.” The mansion was eventually razed, making way for five multimillion-dollar homes.

One day recently, I tried calling David, and his father answered. When I asked if he knew what was happening with Slate Ridge, Bert said, “I totally know what’s happening!” He insisted that Banyai was being treated terribly—“You can’t put a guy in jail for not taking down a shed!” He said that he had encouraged Banyai to sue Pawlet in a higher court: “I told my son, tell him to go federal.”

Bert was under the impression that Pawlet had rescinded a valid permit for the schoolhouse because nobody liked Banyai; that Banyai had an élite military background; that Pawleteans had driven out “all the Jewish doctors”; that the “mayor” was a “grand wizard” of the Klan; and that the town celebrates its whiteness with an annual parade. It was hard to know where to start with corrections. For one thing, Pawlet has no mayor. I asked Bert for evidence regarding the claims about Klansmen, the parade, and the doctors, but never heard back from him; he later admitted that these were “rumors.”

Nor did I hear from David, though Bert confirmed that his son is supporting Banyai financially—“enough to sustain his lawsuits.” When I wondered how David and Banyai met, Bert said only that their farms are close by, and that his son “is interested in the Second Amendment.” Bert urged me to learn “the other side of Daniel Banyai.” My attempts to reach Banyai had gone unanswered, but within hours of the chat with Bert, my phone rang.

Getting right to it, Banyai told me, “You’re gonna write pretty much a slanderous piece about me, correct?” His tone, which at first seemed cordial, eventually tipped toward bitterness: “I have not been able to collaborate with a single ethical, morally defined news reporter.”

“What would that look like, to you?” I asked.

“Well, honesty, right?” he said. “I mean, do you think pedophilia is acceptable in this world?”

I confirmed that, indeed, I oppose pedophilia. How did a sex crime against children relate to a zoning issue? Banyai replied, “I think what I’m trying to do is identify credibility and honesty.” He interpreted as negative the “monotone” of certain news articles and liked Fox News (“a more neutral publication”) for its coverage of him, which he said had generated “2.3 million hits.”

Banyai complained about journalistic “regurgitation.” When I mentioned context, and a court file overflowing with facts, he countered that the case file was “flowing with fallacy,” adding, “The facts are what’s been manufactured.” I asked for an example. He replied, “I had a valid building permit to build the building I built. Would you say that is a fact, or faux?” What Banyai seemed to want most was “the final edit.”

Before the first big snowfall, Mandy Hulett and I drove behind Slate Ridge and into the quarry, and parked at the edge of the slag piles and craters. Mandy, a lithe, lifelong hiker, wanted to walk the forest that borders Slate Ridge—land owned by friends—to see if Banyai had demolished the schoolhouse, an order that was now more than two years old.

We followed a rocky path studded with velvety mullein and entered the forest. On her iPhone, Mandy was monitoring an app that helps hunters stay in bounds. Tree after tree was tacked with a gold “POSTED AND PATROLLED” notice, marking Banyai’s property line. Skirting the boundary, we traversed mossy boulders, fallen logs. Squirrels chittered at us loudly from the windblown trees. Peering through a monocular, Mandy said, “There’s definitely a structure there.”

Eventually, we came to a sign: “TRESPASS HERE DIE HERE! TAKE THE CHANCE!” Two donkeys stood inside an enclosure, gazing at us. We saw nothing that resembled a schoolhouse. Walking on, we emerged, at sunset, in a friend’s field. Mandy called her daughter to pick us up. Julia sat waiting on Briar Hill Road, a large saddle in the back seat of her S.U.V. We had just started driving when she said, “Oh, my God.” Banyai’s truck was topping the hill, coming toward us. Mandy said, “There he is, right there. That’s him.”

Banyai flew past and turned toward Slate Ridge. When I asked Julia if he knew her car, she said, “Oh, yeah.” The Huletts had found it unsettling that Slate Ridge once advertised for a junked vehicle of what looked like the same make and model, to use as target practice.

The town soon scheduled an inspection of Slate Ridge: the zoning administrator, a Select Board member, and Bent would meet there on the Monday after Thanksgiving, at 10 a.m., accompanied by state troopers. The day before the site visit, Ashley Gilbertson, the photojournalist assigned to this piece, was in Pawlet with an assistant, taking photos. That morning, Gilbertson was photographing the Briar Hill Road area when a woman emerged from Banyai’s property, taking video. They could hear someone shouting, “Get the fuck out.” Gilbertson, who is known for his coverage of the Iraq War, was on a public road, and on Hulett land; he kept working.

Later that day, he and the assistant returned for more photos and saw Banyai walking up Briar Hill Road with a grain bucket—his cattle were out, and he was herding them home. Gilbertson was shooting pictures when Cooper, Banyai’s friend, stepped out of the brush and approached with what Gilbertson later described to me as a gravity knife, a weapon that can be controlled by a flick of the fingers. The blade, which Cooper held by his side, measured about three inches. (Cooper declined to comment.)

For years, the Pawleteans most familiar with the Banyai case had found it difficult to distinguish juvenile provocation from genuine threats. Gilbertson’s photo of the weapon in Cooper’s hand made manifest a long-standing fear. Mandy later told me, “You can’t just pull a knife on somebody.” Within hours, the Facebook pages of Banyai and his followers featured photos of Gilbertson and Mandy—who had been with the photography team at one point—along with allegations of sabotage and trespassing.

Banyai had called the Vermont State Police and complained about Mandy by name. A sergeant then rang Mandy to hear her side of the story. Cooper could not be criminally charged unless Gilbertson filed a police report. American news photographers try to avoid becoming part of the story, but Gilbertson was aware of the need to document threats against journalists. He decided, for now, to let the knife incident go.

Bent, Pawlet’s attorney, was aware of none of this when, the evening before the inspection, she asked the court, in an emergency filing, to restrict the opposing side’s attendance to Banyai and Kaplan, his lawyer. Banyai had submitted a list of supporters—including Cooper—who planned to observe the visit. An entourage, Bent argued, served only “to intimidate and disrupt.”

The judge granted the request. Yet when Bent and her team arrived at Slate Ridge, she agreed to let Banyai’s documentary crew—no doubt including Poopolopskimheimer—stay and film the proceedings, provided that a reporter from the Bennington Banner also be allowed to document the event. The inspectors entered Slate Ridge by walking up a snowy road, and spent the next half hour taking photos and notes.

The schoolhouse and the façade were gone, but the inspectors noticed a large tarp, inaccessible behind a fence, and wondered if structures were hidden, disassembled, beneath it. The berms were largely intact, not deconstructed, as ordered by the court. The barn had been “Moved, Modified, and Painted,” Bent later noted, in a brief, describing how the “strategic placement” of large vehicles obstructed the view. “The Town asserts that it is more likely that the Defendant has attempted to disguise the structures rather than remove them,” she wrote.

Operationally, the tactical range was a moot issue. In May, Vermont’s governor, Phil Scott, a Republican, signed into law a statewide ban on private “paramilitary training” facilities. State Senator Philip Baruth had introduced the bill on January 6th, hoping that it would help prevent Vermont from becoming accommodating to organized extremists. Twenty-five states have enacted similar laws, encouraged by Giffords, the gun-reform organization co-founded by the former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who, in 2011, survived an assassination attempt in Arizona. The organization’s newly launched Guns & Democracy project focuses on “the role that gun violence and armed intimidation play in the weakening of democracy and the exercise of constitutional rights.”

Kaplan dismissed Vermont’s new law as a “hysterical” reaction to a problem that never existed at Slate Ridge. In an e-mail, he noted that his client “did allow a couple of clubs that call themselves ‘militia’ to come to his facility and shoot but those clubs were not, in any way, anti-government or fringe. They were nothing more than groups of middle-aged men who like to get together, shoot guns and then go drink beer.” At the inspection, Banyai called the attending Select Board member a “scumbag” but otherwise behaved. Kaplan told the Banner, “Daniel can struggle with people, but he’s incredible with animals.”

In 2019, Bent wrote, “If the requirements set forth in the Bylaws are not respected, then the system breaks down and property owners feel free to disregard the law.” The court had repeatedly offered Banyai an out, but now, given the defendant’s “continued obstinance,” the threat of jail was “the only remaining tool at the Court’s disposal to encourage compliance,” Durkin ruled on December 4th. That day, the judge renewed the arrest warrant and instructed the Rutland County sheriff and the Vermont State Police to handle it, explicitly authorizing them to enter Banyai’s property. Failing arrest, Banyai was to report to the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility, in Rutland, no later than December 22nd. The town would then be free to bulldoze all his unlawful structures.

As news about the arrest warrant spread, Banyai appeared online with a lawyer and YouTuber, William Kirk, who specializes in gun law, and repeated many of the claims that he had been making for years. At the end, Kirk announced a new fund-raiser. Within hours, the video was viewed more than twenty-three thousand times and accrued more than four hundred comments, including, “Sounds like some vigilantism is in order.” By midnight, more than a hundred donors had pledged over five thousand dollars.

Poopolopskimheimer, presumably, has been getting all this. The film project’s timetable is not publicly known. Banyai “likes to be unpredictable,” Michelle Tilander told me. At the October 3rd selectmen meeting, he announced plans to attend every future session, but on October 17th he never showed, nor did he turn up at the following meeting, on Halloween. That night, Van Oort had on a sleek black wig and a cape; the board’s clerk wore a cheerful yellow flower in her hair. A Vermont State Police lieutenant chatted with Pawlet’s constables, near the door. At seven, everyone stood, faced the flag, and said the Pledge of Allegiance. It was not hard to imagine a shared desire to return to the glorious boringness of crosswalk improvements, and whether there would be enough road salt for winter.