Mendocino County Today: Monday, Dec. 25, 2023

Overcast | Christmas Lights | Little Encounters | Tracking | Kidney Stone | Haiku Ukiah | Working Holidays | Fungi | Water Projects | Cafe Neon | Cubbison Demand | Quarter Past | Melbourne | Bragg Irony | Town Meeting | Insurrection | No Snow | Candidate Kangas | Yesterday's Catch | Voters Decide | Artist Trees | Christmas Wish | Early Days | Wilt | Enemy Within | Needs | Fiducia Supplicans | Arcade 1975 | Politics 2024 | Country Caps | Biden Trajectory | Wasted Evenings | Alone | Bravo Belgium | Genocide Talk | Anti-Semitism | Patria Mori | My Car | Ford Pinto | Yuppie Prank | Sick Day | Before Christmas | Funky Sweater | Merry Christmas

LIGHT RAIN AND DRIZZLE WILL continue into early Tuesday with a strong, very windy storm arriving early Wednesday. Unsettled weather will continue through the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Merry Christmas weather fans! 44F with mostly clear skies this holiday morning but clear skies won't last long as a lot of clouds are moving in soon. Drizzle is forecast for Tuesday then lots of rain & wind for Wednesday. Then more rain into next weekend.

MENDOCINO DRIVE area, Ukiah (via Pam Partee)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I was shopping at North Coast Artists in Fort Bragg for presents, found two lovely prayer flag panels and took them to the artist on duty. The artist, a woman somewhat younger than I named Ginnie, exclaimed. “Oh, those are my work.” So we talked for a few minutes about how she began making them 30 or so years ago, influenced in part by her Buddhist readings, and how she had continued on through the years making them. She had also done a large installation of prayer flags at a hospital some years ago. I in turn shared a story from long ago about a prayer flag at my urban commune in San Diego. It was such a pleasant, heartening meeting, brief as it was, and both of us agreed it had “made our day.”

In this age of hurry and worry, with so much sorrow and loss at hand, and so many digital encounters lacking human warmth and energy and connection, little encounters like these remind me again of who we really are, and how much we all share in common. 

— Chuck Dunbar

JOHN REDDING: While sitting in the ER on Christmas Eve, I re-purposed a famous Dylan Song.

Once upon a time, you felt so fine,
Thought you'd always be in your prime.
Didn't you?

You used to laugh about,
Everybody that was hangin out (in the ER)
Now, you don't laugh so loud.
Now you don't seem so proud.
About having to pass a kidney stone.

How does it feel? (it hurts!)
How does it feel (OMG)?
To be on your own,
In the Emergency Room
Having to pass
A kidney stone!?

JADE TIPPETT:

In the early 1970's, on a break from college, I worked in a nursing home in Ithaca, New York. Started out on “days” and later moved to the night shift, 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM. It was one of the better investor owned facilities, but still a place of suffering. The staff was a combination of older blue collar women, some women of my generation, a few more progressive than others, and two men. I was one. There was an informal agreement among the staff regarding the holidays. The older staff tended to be religious, so the younger folks, the progressive ones, call us the “hippies,” all worked Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so the religious folks and those with families could enjoy the holidays in church and with family. Come New Years Eve and New Years Day, those of us who had worked the prior holidays had those off to party...and recover. I lasted about a year there, an education about institutionalized end-of-life care that likely hasn't changed a whole lot in 50 years.

To all who are working these holidays, in health care, law enforcement, fire, the responsibilities that cannot be walked away from… Thank you, and may your time off, when you get it, be joyful and filled with love.

BOONVILLE WATER PROJECTS COMMITTEE UPDATE

(Project Planners Meeting, Dec 7, 2023)

Attendees: Val Hanelt (CSD), Kathleen McKenna (CSD), Cora Richard (CSD), Brent Beazor (B&R engineer), David Coleman (B & R engineer), Tara Ouitavon (SAFER), Vanessa Soto (SAFER), Brita Romans (SAFER), Henry Wijaya (DFA), Malia Helms (DFA), Mehreen Siddiqui (DFA), Norval Johnson, Gwyn Smith, Corey Limbach, Jim Learish.

Brelje & Race Engineering in Santa Rosa; SAFER (Safe and Affordable Drinking Water consultants from the State Water Control Board); DFA (Division of Financial Assistance – funding from the State Water Control Board). 

Clean Water (Sewer) Project: The Brelje and Race engineer, David Coleman, is planning further testing at the Valley Views site just north of Boont Berry Farm in Boonville to get a better handle on soil permeability. He has some concerns about the permeability results resulting from the tests done on the “corings” in the lab and would like to do “in situ” testing to get more complete and possibly better permeability data. The in-lab data is not bad or good – just incomplete due to soil composition. This will require digging a trench that would be a facsimile of a portion of a leach trench. Val will communicate with the owners of Valley View to get permission. We are undoubtedly going to have to devote more acreage to leaching the treated water due to the permeability data in any case. He is working with Roy O’Connor, Regional Water Board, to use the Willow Creek leach field design as much as possible as that has been approved by the State and will simplify our approval process. Dave has obtained the Willow Creek design file. Once he has his updated design, he will develop the Rate Study for Clean Water. The agreement between the CSD and the owners of the Valley Views property will be developed by our attorney once the permeability tests are done and satisfactory. The Clean Water project is submitting an additional amendment to request funds from DFA for the costs of the LAFCo process. It might be as much as $7K per project for the LAFCo fees and additionally the costs of the engineers’ time developing the materials for the application. The amount requested will be determined after our LAFCo meeting today at 1 PM. 

* * *

Drinking Water: We have nine agreements with wells and tanks and sites for treatment buildings. Two have minor adjustments to be finished and one is more complicated as it is between the Meadow Estates Mutual Water Company and the CSD municipal system. We sent the State the draft of the Meadow Estates agreement to review a couple of months ago and they sent back their edits and comments. They are requiring justification of the purchase of the 5 acre well field area and, also, to have the offered compensation amount include a report of its value from a licensed appraiser. Brent Beazor, the engineer for Brelje and Race, is working on the justification argument. He contacted two appraisers and has selected one. The appraisal will include everything of value on the 5-acre well field parcel. Both Meadow Estates and the CSD water committee can review the appraisal before submittal in case there are questions. The other Meadow Estates issue is the application of the consolidation requirements set by the State and whether all the parcels must participate in the new CSD Water project. We have heard that 3-4 parcels do not want to hook up to our system as they want to rely on their own wells. The OCC (Office of Chief Counsel) responded on Dec 5 and stated that there were no requirements on the part of the DFA (Department of Financial Assistance – our grantor) to require all parcels to hook up. However, they advised that any non-participating parcels should be noted in the consolidation agreement so those parcels are not included in the scope of work. We will continue the negotiations with Meadow Estates when we have the appraised value of the 5-acre parcel.

Drinking Water is also submitting an amendment for additional funds for the LAFCo process and the amount requested will be decided after our meeting with LAFCo today.

Brent reported that the Rate Study for drinking water will be ready in about 2 months. That will allow us to begin the LAFCo process for Drinking Water. The LAFCo process must be completed before the “218 Protest Letter” can be sent to the parcels in the Drinking Water boundary. This means that there might be 4-6 months before we can send out the 218 Protest Letter. We have decided to send the “218 Protest Letter” to all parcels in the boundary. 

Discussion about communicating with the parcel owners in the Drinking Water boundary to update them on our progress as it might be 6 months before the protest letter which will contain the rates. SAFER will assist in a letter or postcard. 

Discussion about the parcels that hook up being guaranteed water service (if our grant is approved for construction). The DFA and SAFER (Henry, Mehreen, Tara) advised that any parcels within the boundary that do NOT enter in a contract to have water service cannot be guaranteed future service. Once we call for contracts in a year or so, we will know how many actual hook ups we will have. They explained that the number of contracts we have with parcels owners will be considered 100% of the parcels we are serving. The State will allow an additional 10% capacity, but that would not allow more than a few additional parcels. Basically, we need to let parcel owners know that it would be a “now or never” situation. We have focused on the expense of hooking up after the free grant, but we need to make clear that we will probably not have the capacity to allow them to join the municipal water project in any case.

A discussion was had with the State DFA and SAFER representatives about the total funding based on the cost per connection calculation. The current cost per connection amount allowed in the grant is $80K per connection. This is for residences. The updated permissible 2024 ‘cost per connection calculation’ amount will soon be available. There might be a possibility of appealing to the State Water Board if we exceed the $80K per connection. 

The issue about the mixed-use parcels (commercial establishment plus a residence on a single lot) still has not been resolved as it is a state-wide issue that impacts all Drinking Water grant projects in California. We still don’t know whether commercials with residences will be required to pay the costs of hooking up from the main line or just hooking up to a water meter that has been provided for the residence on the parcel. If the parcel is ‘commercial only’ the costs will be from the main water line in the street to the commercial building. This is because this grant is for health/safety for low-income residents. HOWEVER, any connection that is solely commercial can be LOAN eligible. 

CHAMISE CUBBISON’S DEMAND FOR REINSTATEMENT as Mendocino County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector

Petition For Writ Of Mandamus 

Petitioner, Chamise Cubbison, alleges:

1. Petitioner Chamise Cubbison (“Petitioner” or “Ms. Cubbison”) is the elected Mendocino County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector.

2. Petitioner is informed and believes that in or about 2021, the Board of Supervisors decided to merge the positions of Mendocino Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector into one position currently known as the “County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector,” which would become effective on January 1, 2023. 

In or about June 2022, Ms. Cubbison was duly elected as the County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector. As of July 2022, the position of County Auditor-Controller was vacant, and the position of Treasurer-Tax Collector was vacant. Petitioner is informed and believes that the Board of Supervisors decided in or about July 2022 to advance the merger date for those elected positions and appoint Ms. Cubbison to fill the position for the now merged position of County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector for the balance of the terms of each position set to expire in December 2022.

3. Ms. Cubbison assumed office as the duly elected Mendocino County Auditor- Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector on January 3, 2023, assumed her duties in that capacity as of that date.

4. Respondent County of Mendocino (“County”) is a general law County, located in the State of California. Respondent Mendocino County Board of Supervisors (“Board of Supervisors”) serves as the legislative and executive body of County government and many special districts, and is comprised of five full-time members elected by their respective districts.

5. Plaintiff is informed and believes that on or about October 13, 2023, the Mendocino County District Attorney filed a criminal complaint styled “People of the State of California v. Chamise Cameron Cubbison, Mendocino County Superior Court, Case No. 23CR02523-B,” against Petitioner (“Criminal Complaint”). The Criminal Complaint alleged that between the dates of October 1, 2019 and August 31, 2022, Ms. Cubbison violated California Penal Code section 424(a) through her alleged involvement in the misappropriation of public funds by the former payroll manager, Paula Kennedy. The Criminal Complaint identifies Petitioner as the “then-supervisor” of Ms. Kennedy. The Criminal Complaint does not allege any specific facts supporting the criminal charge.

6. On or about October 13, 2023, the County’s Chief Executive Officer and Human Resources Manager escorted Ms. Cubbison out of the County’s Administrative Building and locked her out of all access to any County building or facilities, removing her ability to perform her duties as an elected official, and directed further that she not perform her duties as a duly elected official nor enter any County building and/or facility.

7. On or about October 17, 2023, Ms. Cubbison appeared with counsel in court for arraignment on the Criminal Complaint, and the arraignment was continued.

8. Petitioner is informed and believes that on or about October 17, 2023, at a regularly scheduled Board of Supervisors Meeting, without proper notice to the public by noticed agenda, or prior notice of any kind to Ms. Cubbison, the “Item 5b) OFF AGENDA ITEM” was added:

“Discussion and Possible Action Including Adoption of Resolution Suspending Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison from Her Position Without Salary And Benefits; and Appointment of Acting Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector, Pursuant to Government Code 27120 (Sponsor: Chair McGourty)”

The accompanying Resolution No. 23-173 was thereafter passed by the Board of Supervisors, suspending Ms. Cubbison in her capacity as a duly elected official, to wit, the Mendocino County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector. The suspension was without pay. 

9. Petitioner is informed and believes that on or about October 18, 2023, the County mailed a letter to Ms. Cubbison informing her of the suspension without pay or benefits, effective October 17, 2023, reaffirming that she not enter any County building or facility, and notifying Ms. Cubbison of the opportunity to address the Board on October 31, 2023 at 1:00 p.m. Petitioner received the letter approximately one week later.

10. On or about October 31, 2023, Ms. Cubbison appeared with her counsel, Chris Andrian, before the Board of Supervisors. Mr. Andrian notified the Board of Supervisors of the multiple legal deficiencies for the actions taken by the County and/or the Board of Supervisors on or about October 13, 17, and 18, 2023, including the lack of notice and due process, as well as the lack of legal authority for the actions taken (i.e., the “lockout,” suspension, the suspension without pay, and/or removal from office).

11. Petitioner is further informed and believes that the County has no authorized procedure or process, whether by statute or ordinance, to take the foregoing actions as alleged herein (i.e., the “lockout,” suspension, the suspension without pay, and/or removal from office) and did not adhere to or follow any duly authorized procedure or process in taking such actions.

12. This Petition for Writ of Mandate under California Code of Civil Procedure section 1094.6 and section 1085 seeks to enforce the right of Petitioner, the duly elected Mendocino County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector, who was suspended without pay by Respondents, and each of them, allegedly on authority of California Government Code section 27120.

13. Government Code section 27120 pertains only to Respondents’ power to suspend a Treasurer; there is no reference to the Auditor-Controller in that statute. In summary, Government Code section 27120 is inapplicable because 

(1) it does not apply to the merged positions of Mendocino County Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector; 

(2) section 27120 never applied to the Auditor-Controller; 

and (3) even if section 27120 could be used to suspend the Treasurer only, Respondent had no authority to suspend Petitioner in her capacity as the Auditor-Controller.

14. Further, the power to suspend is not equivalent to a procedure, with the protections of notice and due process, to suspend. Government Code section 27120 is also limited in its terms to the “Treasurer.” The County and/or the Board of Supervisors cannot suspend or remove the duly elected official in a combined office of Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector without notice or due process.

15. The importance of an established procedure, including notice and due process, is demonstrated by the Criminal Complaint, which is silent on any facts supporting the violation. It is impossible to tell from the Criminal Complaint exactly what facts Petitioner is charged with that may tie to any official duty in her current elected office as the Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector. Accordingly, Respondents did not, and could not, make an affirmative finding that the charges against Petitioner had anything to do with her official capacity as elected Mendocino County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector or to the performance of her duties as such.

16. Further, the Criminal Complaint, herein identified, alleges unlawful actions by the former payroll manager (Ms. Kennedy) during a particular time period – between the dates of October 1, 2019 and August 31, 2022. For most of that time, Ms. Kennedy was under the direction and authority of the prior elected Auditor-Controller (Lloyd Weer), who is curiously not referenced in the Criminal Complaint. Further, Petitioner assumed duties, and the term of office as the elected Mendocino County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector that she now holds, on January 3, 2023.

17. The words “official misconduct” are virtually the same words as “misconduct in office.” The language relied on in Article IV, Section 18, Subdivision (b) of the California Constitution provides the basis for impeachment of state officers and judges of the state courts. (Mazzola v. City & Cnty. of San Francisco (1980) 112 Cal.App.3d 141, 149-151 [noting that for official misconduct, “…by its very definition, there exists the requisite nexus between the act or omission and the position held”] [citing 63 Am.Jur.2d, Public Officers and Employees, § 190, p. 743 [“To warrant the removal of an officer, the misconduct, misfeasance, or malfeasance must have direct relation to and be connected with the performance of official duties…”]; and citing, Coffey v. Superior Court (1905) 147 Cal. 525, 529 “The phrase includes any willful malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance in office.”].)

18. Here, the Criminal Complaint is devoid of any facts or alleged conduct supporting the charge. Respondents simply relied on the fact that criminal charges were filed. (See, Exhibit B, herein, Resolution No. 23-173.) No criminal grand jury proceeding or indictment was issued in connection with the Criminal Complaint. No civil grand jury proceeding was commenced concerning the allegations that gave rise to the Criminal Complaint. No meaningful evidentiary hearing – either pre-suspension or post-suspension – was held on the merits of the allegations in the Criminal Complaint. Respondents’ 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 Respondent and a violation of Petitioner’s right to due process.

19. Petitioner is beneficially interested in the performance of Respondents’ duty to reinstate her as the Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector, with backpay and benefits.

20. Respondents have the present ability to perform the above-described duty.

21. Petitioner has no plain, speedy, and adequate remedy in the ordinary course of the law other than the issuance by this Court of a writ of mandamus.

22. As a direct and proximate result of Respondents’ unlawful and improper actions, including, inter alia, the “lockout,” suspension, the suspension without pay, and/or removal from office, Petitioner 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.

Wherefore, Petitioner requests that the Court:

1. Issue a peremptory writ of mandamus in the first instance commanding Respondents to reinstate Petitioner to her position of Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector, with back pay and benefits no later than one (1) business day following an order for relief;

2. Award Petitioner damages in an amount equal to all backpay and lost benefits due and owing to her;

3. Award Petitioner all interest due to her at the legal rate; and

4. Grant Petitioner such other and further relief as the Court deems proper.

Dated: December 15, 2023

MELBOURNE?

Anybody else ever heard of this town, Melbourne?

Gene Galetti: Yes hauled logs from Comptche area to Fort Bragg through there.

KAREN RANDOLPH:

Ok. My favorite part of the name Fort Bragg though is the general it is named after (who wasn't a general yet when the name was given and never in his lifetime set foot anywhere near the town, and had nothing to do with local natives) was such a lousy general that he significantly contributed to the confederacy LOSING the war. His actions (unintentionally) helped end slavery and the confederacy. Seems a fitting irony to honor.

TRUMP DIALOG

A Reader asks: Would someone please ask Ted Williams, a candidate for state assembly, if he supports the state AG removing Trump from the CA ballot. Let's see if he is committed to due process or to partisan politics.

Nancy Ugrin Bond: Trump hasn’t been charged….but the civil war era law referenced by the Colorado court doesn’t require it for the law to apply. It references involvement in an insurrection. Our former President documented his involvement on TV for all to see. Due process did not exist as it is today; evidence did.

DA EYSTER:

During my elementary school years in small town Ohio, you generally could not see the grass, let alone have to mow it, in December. 

Rather than yardwork, the main December activities were shoveling the drive and walkways, and sledding down the golf course hill until your mother sent a messenger to tell you to come home.

Good memories but I'm definitely okay with no snow and wearing flip flops a day or two before Christmas while mowing the grass.

ONCE AGAIN, Jared Huffman has shown his contempt for Humboldt County and the North Coast at large. His office recently touted a $2 million grant to study how to co-opt the decommissioning of the Potter Valley Project to steal water from the Eel River. Cynically referring to this proposal as a “two basin solution,” it’s clear Huffman is just catering to the rich interests of his Bay Area base.

Much like the new offshore wind craze, the foolhardy rush into massive hydroelectric projects during the 20th Century caused unimaginable environmental damage. The brunt of those impacts was always borne by our rural communities across the North State. Now that error is being corrected through dam removals, and we have an opportunity to recover the natural flows to the Eel headwaters.

But Huffman and his cronies have rolled out a plot that pits North Coast communities against one another. Under the false pretense of improving conditions for Salmon and other fish to run, the proposal would instead divert much needed water flows from an already endangered Eel River. This sequestered water would undoubtedly end up irrigating massive and unsustainable vineyards and other Big Ag enterprises at the southern reaches of our district.

Huffman attempts to curry favor with users of the Russian River through promises of “restoring” its natural course, as if that will offset the ruinous impacts felt to the North. Yet it’s clear he has his thumbs on the scale to the benefit only of his biggest and wealthiest backers. It will only be a matter of time before there are more diversions to benefit big business, and less water for recreational users and wildlife on both rivers.

We have an opportunity on March 5 to empower our communities and make our voices heard. I’m running as an advocate for the entire North Coast, not just a small subset of wealthy interests. Let the rivers flow free as they should, and let’s bury the sordid legacy of these damned dams for good. Join me at kangas4congress.org.

— Jolian Kangas, Candidate for US Representative

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, December 24, 2023

VANESSA CURL, Ukiah. Vandalism.

JEREMIAH ECKEL JR., Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DAVID JOHNSON SR., Willits. Controlled substance.

KIRSTEN LOWERY, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

ROBERT MORENO, Ukiah. Controlled paraphernalia, resisting, unspecified offense.

SHEILA OWENS, Ukiah. Paraphernalia. 

WILLIAM OWENS, Ukiah. Controlled substance, parole violation.

MELISSIA TURNEY, Ukiah. Controlled substance, vandalism, protective order violation, failure to appear.

LET VOTERS DECIDE

Editor: 

The Colorado state Supreme Court, with three justices dissenting, is denying Colorado citizens the right to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice. The Colorado justices ruled that Donald Trump’s name be taken off the primary ballot, and voters may not even write in his name. The justices’ premise is that they, and they alone, have decided that Trump is ineligible. This is wrong, and I would say so no matter who was being taken off the ballot, even if it was Joe Biden. Let the voters of Colorado, or any other state, decide who will be president. It is not the job of state court justices to legislate.

June Keefer

Santa Rosa

COULD A 7-YEAR-OLD GET DRAYMOND TO GROW UP?

This is my Christmas wish for not only Warriors fans but for people who believe in the power of redemption. Draymond Green’s son will stop the dance of denial. In his innocence, his son, DJ, 7, will accomplish what Steve Kerr and a team of psychologists have yet to do.

by Bob Padecky

Sometimes the best Christmas present isn’t under the tree. It’s not even wrapped or comes with a Christmas card. Can’t even touch it but, oh my, it can be very, very heavy.

“Dad?” the son asks his father. Thus begins a conversation that hasn’t happened to anyone’s knowledge but, oh, that it could.

“Yes?” Draymond Green responds to his 7-year old, Draymond Junior (DJ).

“Kids at school have been teasing me. They keep coming up to me and asking to see the bruises. They pretend to kick me. Some kid even tried to put his hands around my neck.”

Draymond shuffles his feet nervously, standing on one, then the other.

“Dad, they tell me you kicked someone where it really hurts and choked someone and slapped someone in the face and stomped on someone’s chest. Is that true?”

Draymond nods. His face is flushed, as if just downed a bottle of habanero peppers.

“Why, Dad?” DJ says.

No one ever said being a parent was a walk on beach. A young child is unvarnished, unsophisticated, beautifully ignorant. They ask questions even a priest in a confessional might never ask. They are the lie detector test that spares no one.

So this is my Christmas wish for not only Warriors fans but for people who believe in the power of redemption. His son will stop the dance of denial. In his innocence DJ will accomplish what Steve Kerr and a team of psychologists have yet to do.

This 7-year old will help his dad grow up, to dislodge the eruption.

Draymond always has claimed he enjoys being a role model for his two children, a daughter, Cash, and D.J. This would be the time to do it, Draymond. Unless he wants to shrug it off and fall back on what he always has considered his safety net.

“I don’t live my life with regrets,” said Green after he slapped Phoenix center Jusef Nurkic in the face. That Green is now suspended indefinitely by the NBA reveals that a few people are feeling regretful, and frustrated and annoyed. Green has been suspended more often a bridge.

Yet he continues. That’s why his children are so important to him right now. Draymond can push a lot of people away and shrug but he can’t act like that around his kids. Parents can’t dodge. Kids see through the smoke, the obfuscation. Kids would be hellfire for a politician. Kids can see through everything.

DJ already has shown he can. Last May during the playoffs, Green was holding a press conference in which he went out of his way to show how much he depends on his kids. He mentioned he took his kids to practice.

“It just pushes me harder,” Green said, “knowing they are watching every single thing you do.”

That sentence had just finished when DJ, sitting on his father’s lap said, “No, I wasn’t.” Right then, without varnish or hesitation, son busted father. DJ said he doesn’t go the Warriors’ practice.

At the time DJ’s comment grew giggles. Yep, that’s Draymond’s kid, not afraid to say what’s on his mind. Just like his old man. A loose cannon. How cute, the impulse of honesty, coming from a little kid.

Ignored was DJ telling everyone Draymond is lying, that right in front of his kid, cameras rolling, microphone on. Doesn’t seem so cute and innocent now.

That was May which seems like it took place in another century. Then, Draymond was still able to hide behind the Warriors’ cloak. Now, without details being revealed, Draymond is being counseled by who knows? His treatment is private, as it should be. Unfortunately opinions are not. Some are just baffling.

“Draymond doesn’t need counseling,” said Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal. “There’s nothing wrong with Draymond. On the court Draymond is a solid human being.”

LeBron James’ groin, Rudy Gobert’s neck, Domantos Sabonis' chest - they provide evidence to the contrary. Many cast doubt that Green will ever be rehabilitated. He’s 33. Competition, once his friend, has now turned into a snake that bites him, a venom of anger and a fury, that at this time no known antidote is available. And, the pessimists claim, none will ever exist.

A legacy can be disrupted, contradicted, even ignored. Truth to tell, Draymond could give two wits about what the guy in the 20th row thinks. He has displayed such disinterest time and time again.

Draymond may even sniffle at the thought of his behavior putting his Hall of Fame election in doubt. That the NBA would wince at fans gawking and muttering at Green’s plaque is not an optic they would want to see living in perpetuity. That said, Draymond very well might not care about that. An asterisk following his name - representing his misdeeds - might be nothing more than a meaningless symbol to him. The man is exceptional at not being distracted.

A son and a daughter, however, is something altogether different. It is the continuation of a blood line, of something deeply personal, something that represents a legacy. Do DJ and Cash want to spend the rest of their lives defending their father? Do they try to explain what he did and why he did it, while accepting the mocking and ridicule because to answer with a physical response would result in a damning phrase.

Yep, the instigators will say, that’s Draymond’s kid all right. Figures.

I want to be believe Draymond doesn’t want that. I want to believe he is a good father, that he doesn’t want his kids so burdened, to answer for him as they twist on the spit. For the rest of their lives.

Change. Grab control of your emotions, this is the Christmas present that will endure long after today. It’s not just for his children, the Warriors and their fans. It’s for all of us who have children, who believe we are more than caretakers, that we can and should show our kids the way. Even as we stumble.

Draymond, true greatness awaits you. Merry Christmas.

(pressdemocrat.com)

WILT

by Bill Russell

I guess the thing I’m most proud of is that I played a team sport and almost all the time I made my team the best team in existence. It’s a ten-man affair, strictly 100% team, and they keep score. Most of the time my team was the champion. People talk about who was the best team, and all that. We won eight straight championships in the NBA. It’s a number that’s basically lost its impact to most people. It’s so far out there that it’s like Wilt’s 50 points a game. You hear people say, “Oh, this guy’s a great scorer.” There’s nobody who’s been a better scorer than him. His numbers were so outstanding. One year I think he averaged 27 rebounds a game.

The first time we played each other, around 1960-61, I think he must have got close to 30 points, 20-something rebounds. I think I might have outrebounded him, but he outscored me. But we won the game, which was the important element. We had three more games that week, and I did not make a contribution to my team. It wore me out so I had to make a decision that I couldn’t throw myself into it so, battling Wilt so much that I couldn’t function the rest of the time. Not only was it draining, but it’s a team game, and if I tried to match him statistically, I would not be doing for my team what I normally do. Basically, I’d be trying to play like him. I had to discipline myself to play the way I’d been playing to help my team win. That was a unique, scary situation. Here was a guy 7-3 or 7-2, whatever he wanted to admit to, 275 or 280, his playing weight, who could outrun 95% of the guys in the league in a straight race. He was fast!

And he could jump up and touch the top of the backboard, and the last little thing was, he was smart. So you couldn’t play him the same way every night. If you did, he’d just embarrass you. So what I did realize early in the thing, after watching him, was if you tried to play him vertically, you were in the wrong arena. But I had much better lateral movement than he did, so what I wanted to do was try to make him play laterally or horizontally as much as possible. If I could do that, then we could win the game. 

THE ENEMY is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

— Cicero

THE CHURCH, LIVING IN CHRISTMAS PAST

by Maureen Dowd

My mom loved Christmas so much, she would sometimes leave the tree up until April.

She dyed a sheet blue for the sky behind the crèche and made a star of tin foil. The cradle would stay empty until Christmas morning; when we tumbled downstairs, the baby would be in his place, and the house would smell of roasting turkey.

Mom always took it personally if you didn’t wear red or green on Christmas, and she signed all the presents “Love, Baby Jesus,” “Love, Virgin Mary” or “Love, St. Joseph.”

(My brother Kevin was always upset that Joseph got short shrift, disappearing from the Bible; why wasn’t he around to boast about Jesus turning water into wine?)

We went to midnight Mass back then, and it was magical, despite some boys wearing Washington Redskins bathrobes as they carried presents down the aisle for Baby Jesus.

In 2005, when my mom was dying, I played Christmas music for her, even though it was July and the muted TV showed Lance Armstrong cycling in the Tour de France.

Christmas was never my favorite holiday; I thought it was materialistic and stressful. But I try to honor my mom’s feeling that it is the happiest time of the year.

Now that my Christmas is more secular — my bond with the Catholic Church faded over the years of cascading pedophilia scandals — I miss the rituals, choirs and incense.

I didn’t mean to, but I succumbed to the irresistible pull of the TCM holiday doubleheader of “Going My Way” and “The Bells of St. Mary’s.” It’s hard to beat Ingrid Bergman’s luminous nun coaching a bullied kid in “the manly art of self-defense” — i.e., boxing — as Bing Crosby’s bemused Father O’Malley looks on.

As bonding agents, religion and patriotism have been superseded by Facebook and TikTok. But somehow social media, which was touted as an engine of connectivity, has left us disconnected and often lonely, not to mention combative. We’re all in our corners. We understand one another less than ever and have less desire to try.

When we ran up against mean priests as children, my mother would say the church was not the men who ran it. The church was God, and He was all kind and all just. But it was increasingly hard for me to stay loyal to a church plagued with scandals and cover-ups and to an institution that seemed to delight in excluding so many.

At a time when the church is shrinking in the West, Pope Francis has been on a mission to make it more tolerant and inclusive.

On Monday the 87-year-old pope decreed that priests could bless same-sex couples. But the Catholic Church and Francis say that men with a “deep-seated tendency” for homosexuality should not be ordained as priests.

The pope did not change church doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman. The blessing is not a sacrament and cannot be connected through “clothing, gestures or words” to a wedding.

“Blessings instead are better imparted, the Vatican says, during a meeting with a priest, a visit to a shrine, during a pilgrimage or a prayer recited in a group,” The Times’s Jason Horowitz explained.

It’s better than nothing, and it’s certainly better than the 2021 Vatican ruling that inveighed against blessing gay unions, arguing that God “cannot bless sin” and that sexual unions outside marriage, like gay unions, did not conform with “God’s designs.”

But the declaration — “Fiducia Supplicans” — seems like a narrow gesture, designed to be delivered in a furtive way.

If the pope wants to move beyond the suffocating stranglehold and hypocrisy of the conservative cardinals so the church survives and grows, he must be bolder.

When he started, in a puff of white smoke, he seemed open to change. He does believe in a more pastoral, less rule-driven church, but he’s not ready to change the archaic rules.

That’s true not only with gay people but also with women. Allowing women to just give readings during Mass, serve as altar girls and distribute communion is not going to cut it. Jesus surrounded himself with strong women, even a soi-disant fallen woman, but his church has long been run by misogynists. Nothing major has changed for women since that 1945 classic “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” except that nuns have been muzzled by the Vatican. Ordaining women as priests is not on the table, any more than allowing priests to marry is.

It’s passing strange that a church with Mary at the center of its founding story could suffocate women’s voices for centuries. The cloistered club of men running the church grew warped. They were more concerned with shielding the church from scandal than ensuring the safety of boys and girls being preyed upon by criminal priests.

The church can’t succeed in a time warp, moving at the pace of a snail on Ambien. Even Saudi Arabia is modernizing faster.

It is simply immoral to treat women and gay people as unworthy of an equal role in their church. After all, isn’t the whole point of the church to teach us what is right? And it’s not right to treat people as partial humans.

TAIBBI AND KERN

And the only thing that I probably strongly disagreed with Bill Maher on was that Gavin Newsom should be the next Democratic nominee, that came up at the very end of the show when he announced he’s going to be his first guest when they get back in January.

Matt Taibbi: Interesting.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. The last time I was on Maher, which was 2014, I was on with Gavin Newsom.

Matt Taibbi: Really?

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Gavin Newsom is like a shark fin. He parts the waters without actually touching them. He’s a very different breed of cat, and he looks away when you talk to him as though somewhere off to his right at about 10 o’clock, there’s something far more interesting than you.

Matt Taibbi: Is that a California thing? I mean, I don’t know. Or is that just a person with interpersonal issues?

Walter Kirn: The guy, he’s got hair that others would kill with a dull knife.

Matt Taibbi: It’s fantastic hair.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, fantastic hair. And he’s slim and trim. I had to diet for approximately three weeks on hard-boiled eggs and spring water in order to be presentable on the show. But Gavin Newsom just walks in, plops down, and he’s at his shark fin perfection. So anyway, but that Maher promoted him so strongly and denigrated Biden so strongly at the very end of the show, maybe it was in the overtime section, suggested to me that there’s a memo going around and they’re trying something or about to try something. Who knows?......

Matt Taibbi: Well, yeah, who knows? I mean, well, that leads us into the subject of the week, which is this extraordinary thing that happened on Tuesday where the Colorado State Supreme Court in a four to three ruling basically expelled Donald Trump from the ballot in that state on the grounds that he participated in insurrection. So this is a law that goes back to the post Civil War period. It’s designed as is often the case in the wake of some kind of a national reconciliation type situation. It was designed to keep former Confederates from running for the presidency or running for high office. I don’t think it was designed for the situation.

And even though they did have an adversarial proceeding of sorts in the lower court hearing, he’s never been convicted of participating in an insurrection against the United States. So it’s a little weird that way, but it’s going to go to the Supreme Court now. And I don’t know, first of all, Walter, what are your initial thoughts on this? Because this is on top of, I tried to count this morning, my count is different from what the Washington Post. I think I got up to 121 when I looked at the different cases, but it’s however many counts. It’s four different indictments, he’s facing God knows however many lawsuits sponsored by 19 different people and organizations, and he’s still up in the polls. And so this is what the last gambit, what is this exactly?

Walter Kirn: Well, I don’t know that it’s the last, because I read that California is exploring a similar option to keep him off the ballot.

Matt Taibbi: Well, there’s 15 other states that are doing it, but theoretically, one rejection by the Supreme Court would eliminate all of those, I think.

Walter Kirn: Who knows Matt? I mean, not only has he not been convicted of insurrection, has he been charged with it? I don’t know that there’s, out of all the cases, a single insurrection charge among them. And since it appears that the Colorado Supreme Court neither performed an investigation, nor is capable of it, I don’t know that they have detectives on their staffs. It looks to me like some boundary busting new technique that we’ve not yet seen, specifically designed for the unique threat that is Donald Trump allegedly. And I found it frightening, to be honest. I found it immediately frightening. I was, okay, now we get a tit-for-tat situation where Republican states take the Democratic candidate off the ballot. And then what do we have? We have a kind of legal deterioration that ends in rival ideas about who’s running for president. Was this some kind of Fort Sumpter where-

Matt Taibbi: Well, that’s the question.

Walter Kirn: Well, and I am already seeing in chat groups and various bulletin boards, how should the Republicans counter, now, my suggestion would be that they don’t, that this was meant to ferment a breakdown of order. I don’t imagine it will lead to more order. So I’m actually a little apprehensive about where we’re going now. It’s such a ridiculous precedent, and as I understand it, they stayed their own order. Is that correct, until there’s a higher rule?

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Well, that’s kind of standard to give him a chance to appeal to the higher court.

Walter Kirn: But while it stayed, he then stays on the primary ballot. Is that correct?

Matt Taibbi: Right. But the assumption is that he’s going to appeal pretty quickly because he’s... And he does have to do that, because otherwise these other cases will proliferate. He’s got to get the precedent from the Supreme Court pretty quickly from what I understand. But there was a poll released this morning by the New York Times that contained some kind of amazing language in it, among other things that showed that this decision by Colorado didn’t seem to knock him down against his Republican rivals, nor did it affect his admittedly slim lead against Joe Biden. But there are a couple of quotes in there that were amazing. The array of charges against Mr. Trump so far do not appear to be helping Mr. Biden politically and reservations about Mr. Biden are undercutting concerns about Mr. Trump’s criminality. So-

Walter Kirn: Wait a second. They use the word criminality as though that’s been established.

Matt Taibbi: Yes, exactly. Concerns about Mr. Trump’s criminality.

Walter Kirn: Oh, I see. Experts are concerned about his... People are saying that.

Matt Taibbi: People are saying, yeah, yeah.

Walter Kirn: Right......

Matt Taibbi: I think they’ve also underestimated... I mean, all those things are true. These things that are getting an intellectual discussion now. There’s going to be highly emotional reaction to this stuff once the votes start coming in. But let’s not forget, this dirty tricks era didn’t just involve Trump. It involves Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders. I remember, before the Nevada race last year, the day before it, there was that FBI leak that Putin preferred Bernie Sanders. I mean, as brazen a dirty trick as you can possibly get right up there with the worst... Who’s that guy I’m thinking of who was the Republican hitman back in the ‘80s and ‘90s? Lee Atwater.

Walter Kirn: Lee Atwater, Lee Atwater.

Matt Taibbi: Right? I mean, it’s right up there with the worst that that guy came up with from his leafleting campaigns. Now, with RFK Jr and even Cornel West with disenfranchisement, the refusal of Secret Service maybe, the not letting people like Marianne Williamson on the ballot maybe on certain states, none of this plays. I mean, I think the ordinary American sees this regardless of party. They think this isn’t good. It’s not fair. I mean, I talked to RFK the other night, and he said, “I want to win, but not this way.” He’s going to go out there on the stump and he’s going to be saying that over and over and over again, and he’s going to score with that. That’s going to help weigh down the numbers for Biden too, that it’s not just Trump saying it.

Walter Kirn: I mean, as a side note, footnote to all this, I couldn’t help but notice, not over the Colorado thing specifically, but in general, in terms of Trump’s problems, DeSantis gleefully talking about how he’s the guy who they won’t lawfare out of existence. He’s the guy who will be able to get over the hurdles that the establishment doesn’t hate. I mean, talk about reading the room poorly. Oh my God. I mean, that guy, I thought when he started running that you and I’d be talking about him a lot. We’ve talked about him almost not at all, and that will fall to absolute zero soon, I predict.

Matt Taibbi: But he’s a symptom. Ron DeSantis is infected with the same mindset that has infected Bill Kristol, John Podesta, all the Clinton people. They think that there’s paramount importance to being acceptable to the beltway mainstream. Finding that perfect medium, that happy medium between being a little bit critical, but also being acceptable. Whereas what Trump and, I think, RFK, and 2016 version of Bernie, they’ve all hit on the idea that, no, what actually flies with voters is, “I’m an outsider. I’m the person they don’t want.”

Walter Kirn: The other way of mapping all this that occurs to me is that you have, in the presidential race, Joe Biden, and then everybody else who opposes or is skeptical of the Ukraine war. In other words, militarism is a good way to judge this field. Trump, Kennedy, West, certainly the other Democratic candidates to the left of Biden, all are skeptical about this war fever that’s overtaken the Biden administration. If anything, put aside COVID, the COVID response, the economy, everything else, that seems to be the basic division in our real politics right now. Those who accept unquestioningly this new militarism on part of the U.S. and those who at least want to think about it a little. Those are the two sides. They don’t present as the two sides, but I think they are when you boil it down.

THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC of Biden’s political career has been to make compromises with the right, no matter how far right the right gets. What started with amicable lunches with Strom Thurmond has ended with him knee-deep in a genocidal war with Netanyahu. It’s no surprise that Biden ended up here. It’s where he’s always been headed. It’s mildly surprising that the rest of the party has so willingly gone along for the ride, on a doomed political trajectory fueled by burning the aspirations of their own base.

— Jeff St. Clair

I WILL NEVER DINE OUT AGAIN. I will burn my evening dress. I have gone through this door. Nothing exists beyond. I have taken my fence; and now need never whip myself to dine with Colefax, Ethel, Mary again. These reflections were hammered in indelibly last night at Argyll House. The same party; the same dresses; same food. To talk to Sir Arthur [Colefax] about Queen Victoria’s letters, and the Dyestuff Bill and–I forget–I sacrificed an evening alone with Vita, an evening alone by myself–an evening of pleasure. And so it goes on perpetually. Forced, dry, sterile, infantile conversation. And I am not even excited at going. So the fence is not only leaped, but fallen. Why jump? 

– Virginia Woolf, Dec 16, 1930

I KNOW A SENTENCE that is still more terrifying, more terribly ambiguous than ‘I am alone,’ and it is, isolated from any other determining context, the sentence that would say to the other: ‘I am alone with you.’ Meditate on the abyss of such a sentence: I am alone with you, with you I am alone, alone in all the world.

– Jacques Derrida, ‘The Beast and the Sovereign’

TALK OF GENOCIDE

by Zinaida Miller

There are currently two conversations taking place about genocide with regard to Israel and Palestine. One is a proper legal and political discussion about the killing of more than 20.000 people and the destruction of vast swathes of the Gaza Strip. 

The other, which has featured prominently in the US Congress and on university campuses, is specious, fanned by a combination of historically conditioned fears and craven opportunism. When the Harvard Corporation reaffirmed its support for Claudine Gay, the university’s embattled president, it underlined her commitment to “redoubling the university’s fight against antisemitism” and avowed that “calls for genocide are despicable.” Of course, but they are not happening on college campuses.

At a congressional hearing on December 5 with the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT, Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman, asked Gay if she agreed that the “call for intifada is to commit genocide against the Jewish people in Israel and globally.” The university presidents’ tepid, legalistic responses to Stefanik’s questions were widely criticized, but the most harmful outcome of the hearing was the failure to contest her bogus premise. Conflating intifada with genocide makes both terms unintelligible.

As experts and ordinary Arabic speakers have been at pains to point out, intifada simply means “uprising” in Arabic. Like its English translation, it crops up in many contexts. In recent decades there have been major intifadas in Iraq (1952, 1991, 1999), Egypt (1977) and Lebanon (2005) as well as two in Israel/Palestine (1987-93 and 2000-5). The Arabic-language media also initially used the term to describe the protests that eventually toppled a number of regimes in 2010-11. Neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestinian communities, during either Palestinian intifada, ever associated the word with genocide – no matter how brutal, bloody and disturbing the Second Intifada’s suicide bombings were.

Under international law, genocide is defined as a series of acts committed with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, religious or racial group. Scholars, Scholars, UN rapporteurs and human rights organizations are suggesting that what is happening in Gaza may constitute genocide for several reasons, including references by senior Israeli officials to Palestinians as “human animals”; the assertion that Gaza must be reduced to “rubble”; the restriction of access to food, water and medicine; the massacre of Palestinian civilians; and the internal displacement of almost the entire Gazan population. Doctrinal debates should not overshadow the serious nature of the claims nor the atrocities they describe.

Supporters of Israel’s onslaught see the threat of genocide not in Gaza but on American university campuses, sometimes hallucinating genocidal speech where it simply does not exist. After a protest by students at the University of Pennsylvania in October, a widely circulated Instagram post falsely claimed that the demonstrators had chanted: “We want Jewish genocide.” As an investigation by USA Today revealed, the actual chant was: “We charge you with genocide.” The misinformation was repeated about a protest at UCLA.

Stefanik claimed that the phrase “from the river to the sea” was “advocating for the murder of Jews.” In the motion to censure the Palestinian American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib last month, congressman Rick McCormick asserted that the phrase was “widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence.” He rejected Tlaib’s description of the words as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence.” But to impute genocidal intent requires either telling protesters that they don’t mean what they say they mean, or assuming that freedom throughout the territory necessarily and inevitably entails the mass murder of Israeli Jews. The fact that such slogans genuinely frighten parts of the Jewish community requires education, not prohibition and punishment.

Antisemitism is a problem on college campuses and elsewhere. It should be fought at every turn, and committees – congressional and collegiate – have been formed to combat it. Far less has been done to halt Islamophobic, anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian actions. On the contrary, falsely accusing student protesters of calling for genocide justifies and distracts from the punishment and harassment of advocates of Palestinian rights. Even worse, three Palestinian students were shot and wounded in Vermont last month.

In debates about Palestine and Israel, the stakes are high. But they are only meaningful if conducted accurately and in good faith. To mischaracterize calls for Palestinian freedom as appeals for Jewish genocide degrades those debates and distracts from the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza.

(London Review of Books)

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

by Wilfred Owen during World War I

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

THE CRITICAL DETAIL THAT PUBLIC TRANSIT AND BIKE ADVOCATES MISS

by K S LaVida

I don’t like driving, and I don’t like having to drive. But since I often have to, it becomes clear to me why attempts to limit car use in most of the United States, to get people to shift to bicycles and public transit (usually buses), are doomed to fail. Reducing the carbon footprint of our transportation will thus require a more practical, less virtue-signaling approach.

In my own case, it is possible that I will not be able to drive at some point in the foreseeable future. So I made sure that I live somewhere that is close enough to some stores and transit that I don’t absolutely need to drive all the time in order to take care of my basic needs. This puts me in a minority in America where most suburban housing is too far from stores and transit to be really walkable. And while I live near public transit, I rarely use it, because I rarely need to go to downtown Boston, which is what the MBTA transit system (and I use that last word loosely) here is designed for.

Here’s the point. You can divide car trips into two categories:

One is where you are moving yourself from place to place.

The other is where you are moving more than yourself from place to place. That more than yourself might be kid(s), groceries, pets, a sack of pet food, take-out dinner, whatever. Stuff. I notice that most of my car trips are in that latter category. I am rarely driving me; I’m driving someone or something.

So in that driving more than yourself category, public transit is generally not useful. It isn’t designed for that and it doesn’t go where those car trips are to. And even if a bus went to the grocery, the frozen food could melt while waiting for the next one to come. I do know of one local bike fan who says he does carry groceries on a bike, but that’s pretty freaky, and even then it limits the amount and type of groceries you can carry. This need may help account for the popularity of luxury trucks a/k/a SUVs, as well as the station wagons now called crossovers. They carry more stuff. Yes, you could arrange to have some of that stuff delivered, but that just means someone else is doing the driving, often from a more distant warehouse.

In the driving-yourself category, even if you are near transit, it may not go where you need to go. In practice, the most prominent form of driving yourself is commuting to work. That is where public transit works best; those trains running through town on the legacy trackage, after all, are called the commuter rail. So we need to encourage its expansion and use when practical.

But even then, public transit tends to focus on the CBD, and by that I mean the central business district, not an herbal extract. Hence the MBTA focuses on downtown Boston. But it has poorer service to the new Seaport district (just a fancy bus), which has a lot of jobs, and to East Cambridge, where a gazillion biotech firms have sprung up, mostly several blocks from a T station. And it is essentially useless to the vast numbers of jobs along the Rt. 128 ring or the more distant suburban office parks. To be sure, those are no longer in fashion and employers are more likely to want to be near the T, but a whole lot of jobs are in car-only places.

Let’s not even talk about more obvious reasons why lots of bike lanes are being built without being used. Like the weather, which we have a lot of in New England. And hills, which are no fun on bikes. And cars, which are pretty dangerous to bikes, and aren’t going away. There are a few bikeways but they tend to be recreational.

It is axiomatic in the transit world to say that building more highways does not alleviate congestion. This was “proven” in the 1950s and 1960s, after a wave of highway building. The reason, though, was because those new highways begat new suburban sprawl, new subdivisions, almost all just single-family homes on wide lots, designed around cars, far from commerce and employment. And that’s what Americans mostly wanted in the 1950s. Especially affluent white ones leaving the cities behind, cities that their grandchildren now wish they could afford to move back into. The problem, then, was not actually the roads, but the sprawl, and the zoning codes (and racism) that encouraged it.

Yet the current fad among young city planners is the “road diet”, wherein for example a two-lane each way main city street is reduced to one lane plus a bike lane on each side. And new buildings that no longer require parking, just bike racks. The theory is that if more roads led to more congestion, narrower roads will lead to less congestion, or something like that. Sort of like unscrambling eggs. Magical thinking.

Yet we have a problem. We are dumping way too much CO2 into the air, and the streets are clogged. What can be done? For one, we have to stop zoning for rows of single family homes on large lots. But the suburbs already exist. And most proposed “transit-oriented” housing consists of 5 or 6 story wood (“platform”) apartments, with high rent (usually >$3000/mo for 1BR), aimed at yuppie commuters. Nothing for families.

Thus we first need to mitigate car damage rather than pretend we can do away with cars. In the rest of the world, taxes help — higher gas taxes discourage wasteful cars, and gas guzzlers can be taxed (that was tried here but loopholes the size of an Escalade made it meaningless). Electric cars are a niche market too; there are many reasons why most people today won’t buy them. Electric delivery vans and even many transit buses, though, make sense — they have a known service area and can charge overnight at their base. Hybrid cars are a good compromise for now. In fact I suspect they are environmentally better than Teslas, as the all-electric models need a lot of environmentally-damaging (from common mining practices) batteries and the electric grid is still using carbon-based fuels for all of the incremental power being demanded by rapid electrification. A hybrid needs only a small battery and reduces fuel consumption by 30% or more. Encouraging smaller, lighter cars would also help.

We also need to reduce the average length of car trips, when we have to drive to get stuff. Big box stores on the highway are farther than neighborhood ones. In Manhattan, the most transit-oriented place in the US, there are stores everywhere; you don’t need to drive or take transit to do your routine shopping. Overall, driving one mile to a store is less harmful than driving ten miles. Again, zoning in the last 75 years tended to separate residential from business zones, but we should have more neighborhood commerce as well as transit stops within walking distance of most homes. That won’t take care of everything but it will reduce total travel. And that in turn can reduce road congestion, something bike lanes won’t do.

These are practical changes that can be evolutionary and won’t be rejected by voters who are not interested in giving up a house and yard in favor of a small city flat. Most Americans don’t actually want to live in an ersatz Manhattan (there can only be one!). But there are things that can be done without creating another front on the culture war.

THE SAN FRANCISCO PRO-YUPPIE PRANK THAT TRICKED REPORTERS, POLICE AND PROTESTERS

by Timothy Karoff

In June 1999, 200 protesters flocked to San Francisco’s Dolores Park to protest a “Stop the Hate” rally… but the rally in question never actually took place.

This may sound like an odd occurrence in a city as famed for tolerance as San Francisco. But the hated group in question was not any disadvantaged group, but the yuppies of the Mission District. According to the quarter-page ads for the rally, posted in print editions of SF Weekly, the Mission District’s newly arrived, moneyed transplants were the victims of hate crimes and vitriol. They needed to band together and take a stand.

They didn’t. Instead, Dolores Park filled with an anti-gentrification counterprotest which, in the absence of any yuppie advocates, turned into a plain old protest. Protesters gave speeches into a megaphone, while others held up cardboard signs with ironic slogans like “Poor People Suck” and “Make Lofts Not War.” Police arrived to watch over the rally, but no fights occurred.

Among the crowd were reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, who found themselves disappointed by the turnout. 

A reporter from the Chronicle observed that “the few supporters were heavily outnumbered.”

“A rally ostensibly organized to protect the civil rights of yuppie newcomers to the Mission District apparently attracted just about everybody in the neighborhood – except the yuppies,” another reporter for the Examiner noted.

“No yups, just nopes at rally in Mission: Was scheduled anti-hate gathering a complete put-on?” the headline for the Examiner story asked.

The reporter’s intuition was spot on. The pro-yuppie rally was a prank.

Some context is important here. By the 1990s, a new wave of San Francisco’s gentrification had (mostly) crested, and the city’s predominantly Latino Mission District stood as one of San Francisco’s last working-class havens. 

But the respite was only temporary. Near the end of the decade, a familiar pattern began to unfold in the Mission. Wealthy office workers, buoyed by the dot-com boom, began snatching up old Victorian homes and artist’s lofts, driving up rents and pushing out longtime residents. To quote one especially vocal resident, the “cell phone types” trickled into the neighborhood. 

In response, a group called the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project emerged sometime around 1998. The anonymous group covered the neighborhood in anti-yuppie flyers, urging Mission residents to take action against the moneyed transplants. The suggested methods ranged from serious calls for property destruction to (presumably) facetious calls for violence.

“If you want your rent to go down, kill your landlord,” one flyer reportedly read. 

“The yuppie takeover can be stopped,” read another. “Vandalize yuppie cars … Break the glass. Slash their tires and upholstery. Trash them all!” (One of the sponsors for the pro-yuppie rally was the nonexistent “Safe Parking Utility Vehicles Working Group.”)

Another flyer listed upscale Mission District businesses as targets for destruction, including a Starbucks on Mariposa Street and the dance club Beauty Bar. While the sheet listed no methods, it urged readers to “use your imagination.”

One of the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project’s prime targets was the Cort family, commercial real estate developers with properties in the Mission, who drew controversy in 1998 when they painted over a mural on a building they spent $1.5 million renovating. One flyer included the addresses of two of the family’s homes. 

Robert Cort Jr. told the San Francisco Chronicle that people had thrown feces and balloons filled with paint at his family’s buildings.

From the newspaper records, it’s unclear whether YEP’s call for action resulted in any sort of widespread, direct action mobilization. But at one point, police suspected the group of breaking windows, slashing SUV tires and vandalizing buildings with graffiti.

Even if YEP’s bark was louder than its bite, the group’s messaging drew attention from newspapers from Sacramento to Barstow, including the Los Angeles Times. A story about the conflict ran in the Miami Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Texas’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In May 1999, police arrested Kevin Keating, an 11-year Mission District resident, after catching him pasting Mission Yuppie Eradication Project flyers around the neighborhood. They later raided his home. According to the San Francisco Examiner, police initially charged Keating with “making terrorist threats,” but later dropped the charges.

In June, Keating was among the counterprotesters at the “Stop the Hate” rally. Just three days after the fake rally took place, he penned a letter to the editor of the San Francisco Examiner, which appeared in the paper: “While I deny claims by the San Francisco Police Department that I am the diabolical mastermind of the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project, I must point out that the anti-yuppie folks have never advocated ‘destruction of people’ as claimed in the headline of your editorial.”

A few days later, he published another letter in the Chronicle: “Editor — In response to the June 8 editorial, ‘A Bad Element in the Mission,’ I must point out that the SFPD has accused me of scratching the paint on only one automobile, not many automobiles.”

In the days after the rally, the pro-yuppie organizers unmasked themselves. As it turned out, they weren’t pro-yuppie at all. 

The editorial staff of SF Weekly, led by editor John Mecklin, designed the advertisements as a prank. The goal, Mecklin wrote in an editorial on SF Weekly’s website, was to bait local news outlets into covering an absurd protest.

“We have made up a political movement out of thin air, called a rally on its nonexistent behalf, called into being a significant counter-demonstration (complete with a significant police presence), and created a minor media uproar,” Mecklin wrote.

The prank drew the ire of local journalists. Some felt that it violated journalistic standards. A few suggested that it trivialized genuine problems facing the Mission. A cartoon by Don Asmussen, which appeared in the Sunday edition of the Examiner, found a way to mock both Mecklin for lying and the Examiner’s reporters for taking the bait.

Mecklin’s prank had a secondary target: the yuppies themselves. After SF Weekly sympathetically covered the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project, the paper received tons of complaints from the yups, Mecklin told the LA Times. The “Stop the Hate” ad, in its absurdity, was meant to mock their feelings of persecution. 

Maybe it was too believable.

In 2023, a short walk down the Mission’s Valencia Street confirms that some of the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project’s worst fears were realized. (A block away, on Mission Street, it’s a different story — at least for now.) Upscale businesses, once rare enough to look out of place, now line the corridor. If SUVs are gone, it’s only because Teslas have taken their place. 

‘TIS THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS

‘Tis the day before Christmas…
Oh gawd is it really??
No presents, no lights up and no Christmas cheer
I’d love to sit down and drink a cold beer!
I still have to shop and it’s late in the day,
So I rush to the stores without further delay.
The hoards are still haggling over junk from afar,
I pick up a sweater and get socked in the jaw.
I press on and find one thing to buy,
Line up in a queue which reaches to the door,
Such pushing and shoving to buy cheep gee gaw!
Time presses on it’s now nearly seven,
This is like hell, not close to heaven!
I hand over my visa, now I’m really in debt
Next stop will be a real cheap outlet!

I rush to the exit with my one little packet,
It’s raining real hard and I don’t have my jacket!
I run to the car nearly four blocks away,
This is NOT how I planned to spend my whole day!
And as I approach, I hear a loud crash,
As a car streaks away in quite a wild dash.
The rear of my car is all banged and dented,
If I don’t get home quick, think I’ll go demented.

I stop at the lot to pick out my tree,
Trip over the sidewalk and screw up my knee.
The tree that I want I can see through the gate,
The sign on it says we’re closing at eight!!
One-minute past and it’s all closed shut,
The only thing in there’s a growling old mutt.

On Vixen, on Dancer it’s time to go home,
On Rudolph on Blitzen there’s no time to roam.
The house is all chilly, no fire in sight,
The power has gone out …. REALLY? A plight!

Flashlight in hand I climb to the attic,
Still determined to celebrate but getting more frantic.
Five boxes of Christmas décor and lights,
Getting them down takes all my might.
Piled high in my arms as I come down the stairs,
I trip over the cat as I sprawl unawares.
My phones camera goes off, CLICK, FLASH!
As the cat scampers away in a mad dash.
I crawl to the couch all bloody and bruised,
My head is a pounding my brain is confused,
My knees are still hurting, my feet are on fire,
This situation is getting quite dire.
Then I look at the photo I made as I tripped,
The baubles are broken, lights tangled and flipped,
Santa stands in the middle of all that mess,
Looking dazed but unharmed I confess,
I decide what’s important before I perish!
All the good friends and family I cherish.
And so, to you all that give my world light….
MERRY F!#%*+G CHRISTMAS
And to all a good night!!

MATT TAIBBI:

If you don’t celebrate Christmas, please, don’t take offense. I stopped going to church when I was twelve, and for over a decade in Russia celebrated according to local custom, opening presents pod yolochki (under the holiday tree) on New Year’s Day. This day is about time off, patriotically raising consumer spending statistics, and sharing a few morning smiles with loved ones. 

As a young adult I was a misanthrope who dreaded Christmas. Now I’m the same age as the Grinch, I think — “For fifty-three years I’ve put up with it now!” — but with three little boys who check to see if Santa drank the milk, who can be a pessimist? Dear readers, thank you from all of us at Racket, and please give us the gift of forgetting the world’s miseries today. Merry Christmas!