Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Dec. 26, 2023

Cloudy | Willits Peacock | Big Waves | Colorful Sky | Sandbar Watch | Ed Notes | Perfect Fire | Christmas Grinched | Day After | Herzog Family | Yesterday's Catch | Five Interceptions | Soft Age | Cycling Women | Vaccine Stacking | Willie McCovey | Albatross Draymond | Spare Tire | Homeless Solution | Air Freshener | Various Hustles | Doctor Fox | Evil Spending | Bombs Away | Destroying Life | Land Back | Marin Ceasefire | 1957 Thoughts

BRIEF QUIET weather today will give way to increasing southeast winds this evening. Strong and potentially damaging winds are expected Wednesday morning followed by periods of moderate rain. Unsettled weather will persist through the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Tuesday morning I have a cloudy 48F. Our ever changing forecast brings us a calm cloudy day before things get crazy wet & windy tomorrow. Add some high surf while you're at it. Off & on rain is currently forecast for the next week.

OCEAN SAFETY ADVISORY

Due to the large ocean swells hitting the Mendocino Coast, CA State Parks will be closing coastal access in low lying areas.

These areas include Mill Creek Rd. (Laguna Point) in MacKerricher State Park, Russian Gulch Beach, Van Damme Beach parking lot and Navarro River Beach remain closed. Anyone walking the beaches are advised to stay well above the wet sand and out of reach of the powerful waves.

Please be cautious and experience the Mendocino Coast from a safe place away from the ocean's reach. 

Wishing everyone a safe and merry holiday season!

NEW NAVARRO SANDBAR WON'T CLOSE 128

High surf and high tides have built up a new sandbar damming the mouth of the Navarro River again.

However I predict that Hwy 128 will not flood this time because rains over the next few days will send a new surge of fresh water down the river and wash out the sandbar.

The NWS forecast chart for the Navarro currently predicts a rapid rise from today's level of 3.45 ft.  up to 9.9 ft. at 4 AM on Dec. 28. If that peak doesn't blow out the sandbar (which it will) then a second crest is forecast two days later, hitting 9.9 ft. at 4 AM Dec. 30 and continuing sharply upward.

The previous sandbar was a big, high and wide one that had built up over the preceding months, and it almost breached naturally with 5.2 ft level at the gauge. It was illegally manually breached by two men with shovels on Dec. 13.  Only one or two more days would have finished a slow natural breach caused by high water in the estuary filtering through the sandbar under the surface, carrying away sand as it flowed out on the ocean side, creating a drainage channel that inched its way to within 10-15 ft. of reaching the pent-up water in the estuary.

The new sandbar is not as massive as the previous one, so even 5 ft. of water at the gauge would quickly breach it. We have two nearly 10 ft. crests on the way in just a few days this week. The new sandbar doesn't stand a chance if the forecast surge early on Thursday Dec. 28 comes in when predicted and is above 5 ft.. I believe the sandbar will naturally breach before the water in the estuary is high enough to reach the short, flood-prone stretch of 128 beginning just east of the Navarro River bridge at mile marker 0.18.

If you or friends are planning to travel on 128 Wednesday or Thursday, then you're advised to check river and road conditions.

National Weather Service (NWS) Navarro River forecast chart graphs recent measured level and flows and forecast levels for future days: https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=eka&gage=nvrc1

U.S. Geodetic Survey (USGS) show fine detail of recent Navarro levels and flows: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/11468000/#parameterCode=00065&period=P7D&showMedian=false

Caltrans Division of Traffic Operations search page tells if roads are open, usually a few hours after real time when changes occur. https://roads.dot.ca.gov/?roadnumber=128&submit=Search

Again, I don't think 128 will be affected this time, but it doesn't hurt to check before you travel.

Merry Christmas and Hippy Nude Year,

— Nick Wilson

ED NOTES

GLEN RICARD’S rambling wreckage at 128 and Haehl Street in South Boonville, is in its 50th year of active, in-yer-face neglect. Although spruced up with nice irony by our local Banksys whose found art decorates Ricard’s abandoned walls, the structure represents Mendocino County’s longest running combination fire hazard and eyesore.

RICARD’S PROPERTY serves as a metaphor for the civic paralysis suffered in many areas of contemporary government. (cf, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors) while the man himself lives in savage splendor on the Mendocino bluffs where the kindling pile aesthetic is definitely forbidden, although persons of higher aesthetic sensibility, such as, ahem, your host, given the choice between the Mendo Bluffs and a woodpile, would go for the woodpile. 

RICARD couldn’t get away with maintaining a major community hazard any place on the Mendocino Coast like the one he has maintained here in Boonville all these years. Ricard won’t sell, he won’t rent, he won’t fix the ramshackle complex, and he won’t even let people apply cosmetic enhancers at no cost to him, as one guy offered to do because he wanted to use the structures as a backdrop for a movie. 

YOU’RE OUTTA HERE in ‘24, Glen. Got that? Gone, Glen, gone. You and your dilapidated pile of festering boards are over. You have no right to do this to us and we’re not taking it anymore! (Right there we have what is called an “idle threat.”)

THE COUNTY OF MENDO, of course, doesn’t have nuisance abatement laws, and Boonville’s local government has said, variously over the years, “We don’t have the authority” and, incredibly, “It isn’t yet deteriorated to where it’s flammable.” (Neither was the Hindenburg.)

BUT THERE ARE LAWS against fire hazards, and Ricard’s buildings constitute just about the grandest ongoing fire hazard in all of Mendocino County. If his great big pile of fire starter goes up, all of the Haehl Street neighborhood could go with it, not to mention Pearl and Tommy Thomasson’s well-maintained building which abuts Ricard’s boarded-up time bomb. 

IT’S A MINOR MIRACLE that Ricard’s unmaintained fire pile hasn’t already combusted considering that transients often spend the night in it and feral children run in and out of its warren-like interior at all hours of the day and night.

THE COUNTY’S Department of Planning and Building is the agency Boonville might get to remediate the rambling eyesore and fire hazard represented by the abandoned row of shops. Years ago, Dale Hawley of Planning & Building said Boonville’s oldest non-human nuisance might be abated one of three ways: by applying the uniform building code to it; or the dangerous buildings abatement code to it; or by holding it up to the standards of the uniform building code. “It depends on the conditions that we’re talking about,” he said. “We don’t have a public nuisance ordinance that might get into areas such as appearance, but the dangerous buildings abatement code might apply from what you’ve told me.” Hawley went on to say that P&B is not required to make annual inspections of abandoned structures, but if someone filed a complaint explaining their concerns about a specific structure, “we would go out and have a look to verify those conditions. We could issue a notice to repair,” Hawley said. Or, he added, “We could issue a notice to repair or vacate and secure the structure from further damage. If somebody files a complaint we could contact the property owner and have him take care of it.”

HAWLEY said that back in 2000. I formally complained soon after, and here we are.

BILL KIMBERLIN: 

Beverly said, “Are we going to have a fire tonight?” 

The answer of course was yes, but I wish someone would remind me every winter that once you get the fire going good, leave it alone. I am always looking for the perfect fire just like I look for the perfectly shaped potatoes in the market. Does one exist? I will let you know when I find it. About the fire: I sold a hell of a lot of DVDs of my race car movie over the holidays this year and one guy listed his name as, ”Arsonist.” I sure could have used him tonight, although it is going good right now. I just need to tweak it a little bit.

MITCH CLOGG: ‘Tis Christmas Eve. Please do not feel inspired to send me any cutesy notes. They make me nuts. Cold, hard cash is welcome. Let me tell you why I became a grinch, starting with my blissful first years.

Christmas in the Clogg family, that noisy bunch on quiet Edgevale Road in Roland Park, Baltimore, Maryland was as follows:

If you were young enough to still buy the Santa myth, it was magical. It’s still early when they let you go downstairs, Christmas morning, and it didn’t disappoint. The tree was BIG. It went from the floor all the way to the ceiling, star or angel on top, things that flashed and sparkled pendant. Elves. Santa had a preference for blue lights on the Clogg tree. It scented the room with this heavy piney smell. The butt of the tree had a battered red can-device that held water for it and had four thumbscrews that straightened the trunk. That didn’t matter to a kid young enough to be sold all this—the long red socks with white collars, disgustingly full of things that stuck together, but under the tree was the dragon’s-lair of treasure, the stacks of gay boxes, all different, sliding down one another, tagged with the seven names of us. Daddy was doing well. He started his company in the Depression, while Hitler was starting his business in Europe. The Clogg Company – Sheet Metal Fabricating. Came a war and daddy couldn’t go because he had three kids, me the then-youngest. His new factory (“the plant”) was called on to supply war needs, though I never saw a thing roll away from the loading dock that looked like a weapon, hard as I looked. 

Mommy and Daddy and Santa could make a fun Christmas. I once heard Daddy tell a close friend in a low voice: “I made seventy thousand after taxes last year.” I didn’t know what taxes were, but I knew 70,000 was a big number, whatever you were counting. So there were lots of presents to open, lots of quiet smiles and yawns, because Santa’s helpers hadn’t slept too much. That was Christmas at the Cloggs for the few years you’re able to believe it. After that it was different.

When the second batch of Clogg kids came along, both of them startling the hell out of my mother and father, I was six. Judsan was born then, in hot summer, with a big red bawling face. I dunno what I said, but I remember my disgust over the unattractiveness of this heralded thing, like it was yesterday. As it turned out, Jud was the kind of son I was not, a player, somebody who dove in and did it all well. Too bad he died young. Couple of years more and Chanel is born, another shock, and my mother says she was the youngest mother in Sandra’s class and the oldest in Chanel’s. My parents had mellowed a lot by Chanel’s time, and she stepped into a nice world. She’d stand behind my father’s couch and rub his bald head, which almost made him purr and made me sick.

So Judsan and Chanel got the full Christmas treatment, only Sandra, Judy and I were, by God, old enough to be the goddamn elves. Daddy sat on the couch drinking wine and directing us on the placement of the skinny bits of silvery paper called “icicles.” We did all the stars and balls, candy canes and the draped spirals of Christmas glee, and on and on, until sleepiness and fatigue had me in a place I didn’t know, and at some point I was permitted to stagger to bed. We of the first batch arrived before Benjamin Spock published “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.” Kids of my wartime genesis were to be seen and not heard. I said “sir” to my father.

So that was Christmas on Edgevale Road. Of those seven, I am last. By 1960 I was a man growed, army veteran, freshly married, at twenty-two walking down the street in embarrassment: stroller, infant, mommy and 22-year-old me, at the obviousness of my folly. I was going to get out of the army “free, white and twenty-one,” as we said in our careless racism. I would be, as I’d decided as a little boy, “a writer and an adventurer.” I have done that as much as possible.

But, Christmas: No sooner did Lynda deliver the third child but she was off with another man. I had spent down my modest inheritance, and coping with a moody man and three children was more than she said “I do” to, so she left the child-rearing to me, became a favorite of a certain fast crowd I didn’t admire, and lived in different places in Mexico and the U.S. 

I raised ‘em. My writing and adventuring continued, but I had to have regular income, too, so I worked in news-reporting and government jobs. My kids got used to occasional airplane rides in the blue-and-white one with the big numbers 2861Z on it, “six-one zulu,” in the shorthand you use with control towers. My girlfriends got used to hanging with a bachelor father. Any new neighborhood sized up our whole act and decided they needed to keep an eye on this man and his kids. I had to ack right. I had to observe every Easter, summer vacation, pre-school and school, every school event, PTA meeting, birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, birthday, Christmas, CHRISTMAS and every other birthday. They watched me. The school’s didn’t often “call me in,” and when they did, it was from a shock like Lynda’s departure. Lynda and Mitch3 were a loving pair. She got over him. He never got over her. Newborn Molly had no mommy whatsoever. She has faced the world extremely well and made a successful life. As for Mitch3 and Lynda, now they, too, are dead, and I don’t have to do Christmas anymore. And I don’t.

Questions?

I WAS THERE WHEN IT STARTED (IN SONOMA COUNTY)

by Bob Dempel

Peg Melnik wrote an excellent article on the Barron Herzog Wines several weeks ago in the Press Democrat. She included some of the history of the Herzog Family starting in 1840.

I am going to add on to the article about the presence of the Herzog Family as a significant purchaser of Sonoma County Winegrapes starting in the 1980s.

Peter Stern was the consulting Winemaker for the Herzog Family. The parent company, Royal Wine Company was Eastern Winery when Eugene Herzog worked for them starting in 1948. By 1958 Eugene Herzog had equity shares in the Company and he purchased Royal Wine Company. Ernest had four brothers. When Ernest died in the 1990s, David Herzog took over. (I was fortunate enough to have met Ernest before he died.) Somewhere in the late 1980s while I was brokering grapes, I connected with Peter Stern who consulted for Royal Wine Company. Peter consulted as well as for Yarden winery in Israel starting in 1986. He made many trips to the winery located in the Golan Heights every year. Royal Wine Company (Herzog) in New York also desired to expand their presence and their portfolio by purchasing California vinifera variety wine grapes. 

My connection with Peter was a 30-plus year association. One of the first things Peter asked me to do was help with a tour of California vineyards for ten Yarden winery grape growers. The tour was scheduled for 10 days. By pure luck I hired a recent graduate from Fresno State, Brian Clements, to be the tour guide for the growers. The tour ended up in the North Coast where I gave a talk on growing grapes on the North Coast. 

The next thing Peter asked me to do was to instruct another Yarden grape grower on the protocol of field grafting of grapevines. By this time I had expanded my vineyard services to include both grafting of rootstock as well as field grafting of mature vines from one variety to another. I was then fortunate enough to accompany Peter to Israel and observe the fields of grapevines that had been grafted by my student from the winery. The tour included several days by myself to visit Jerusalem and historic sites.

By the late 1980s Herzog was ready to expand their winery from New York to California, looking to purchase California vinifera varieties. One such variety I could help Peter and Herzog locate was the Warnecke Vineyards Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

Sourcing and processing grapes for Kosher wine is at best a challenge. On the north coast it requires the skills of a dedicated perfectionist. Identifying and buying the grapes are the easy parts. The grapes then are required to be handled and processed under the strictest of sanitary conditions, and under the supervision of a rabbinical supervisor. Any of the cellar workers who in any way handle the grapes post-crushing must be, as I learned, referred to as mishgiam or cellar workers. The challenge is to find these workers on the north coast and then try to find Kosher food to feed them, 

My first delivery of Warnecke Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to Herzog was to the J.W. Morris winery located on Grant Avenue in Healdsburg. Due to the Hebrew sanitary conditions the only way we could deliver the grapes was after all the grapes J.W. Morris had received for that day. Morris was first opened as a Port style winery. I cannot find any history on J.W. Morris himself. Ken Toth purchased the winery in the 1980s. Peter tells me Royal crushed grapes at J.W. Morris for three years. I lost track of the winery and somewhere Bronco purchased the Label and as far as I know the winery facility was disbanded.

Herzog then crushed at several wineries for their next few years in Northern California. The challenge was always the delivery standards. Delivery of grapes had to work around having no deliveries on Friday or Saturday. Right during the harvest season that falls on several religious holidays.

The decision was made that Royal Wine Company would build a winery in California. Specifically, to crush North coast winegrapes. After looking at several locations they selected Oxnard, in Ventura County. One of the reasons was the proximity to a labor force in the Los Angeles area. A parcel was purchased in a new industrial site just west of Highway 101 on the South end of Oxnard.

Now the problem was transferred to getting the wine grapes down to Oxnard. A decision was made that the grapes would be picked in half-ton bins. These bins could be loaded into refrigerated vans and shipped to Oxnard. S.S. Skikos did a wonderful job of getting the grapes down to the winery. The challenge was the transportation time. On a good day it was over nine hours. 

I remember the first Warnecke load. I had instructed the Warnecke foreman just how many bins to load. Refrigerated vans come with a liability. The refrigerated unit itself weighs almost 1,000 pounds. A refrigerated van at most can transport 24 tons including the weight of the bins. Forty half-ton empty bins weigh two tons, so the net weight of grapes is around 22 tons. The foreman at Warnecke loaded 48 bins into the Skikos van and off he went. At Petaluma the driver went over a public scale and the gross weight was over 80,000 pounds. The truck turned back to the Skikos yard to unload four bins so that the load was legal. By this time the driver had too many hours behind the wheel to start back for Oxnard. The truck left the next morning for Oxnard. The winery was informed of the delay in the delivery. By now the grapes had been picked for 24 hours. There should be no problem since they were refrigerated. I had shipped grapes to Japan that did not arrive for 20 days. 

Winemaker Joe Hurliman did not see the delay in the same manner. I started to receive phone calls from him almost at daybreak. In turn I called Chad Skikos who had constant communications with the driver. In retrospect, the load should have left at 8 pm. There is no fast way of getting from Santa Rosa to Oxnard. The load did not arrive until late afternoon. The cellar workers had all gone home. 

Clearly there had to be a better way of transporting grapes from the North Coast to Oxnard. The answer was to find a winery in the north central valley that would receive, crush, and pump the juice (must) into a waiting tanker truck. This was how Herzog received grapes for several years. Currently the grapes are delivered to a central valley winery 

Royal Winery was very happy with the quality of the Wienecke grapes. Over the last few years Royal has leased a portion of the Warnecke Vineyards. Royal hires a vineyard management company to oversee the grape development and production. Royal bottles the grapes with Warnecke Vineyards on the label.

I look back with much pride in the part I played in the connection between Royal Wine Company and the Warnecke Vineyard. 

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, December 25, 2023

ALBERT COTTRELL IV, Dublin/Laytonville. DUI.

JEREMY ECKEL, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JAVIER GARCIA JR., Redwood Valley. DUI.

COLE ICKES, Fort Bragg. Battery with serious injury, parole violation.

49ERS KEEP FAITH IN BROCK PURDY, hope 4 picks vs. Ravens just a plot twist

by Ann Killion

This wasn’t what the movie script called for. The player who was a draft day afterthought, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who morphed from Mr. Irrelevant into a legitimate MVP candidate, wasn’t supposed to throw four interceptions and look lost in a huge Christmas night game. 

Or, is this just part of the drama? Could it just be a set up for what comes next?

“I think the NFL script writers did a great job tonight,” George Kittle said. “I never saw Brock Purdy throw four interceptions before.”

No, Kittle hadn’t. None of us had. This season, Purdy had thrown seven interceptions in 384 passing attempts. But on Monday night, he threw four in 19 attempts. 

In a prime time showdown between the NFL’s two best teams and after weeks of stellar performances and increasing national hype about Purdy, he crashed. And the 49ers burned, losing to Baltimore 33-19 at Levi’s Stadium. Their record is now 11-4, tied with the Lions and the Eagles.

“I have to look myself in the mirror and ask myself why or how that happened,” Purdy said. “And why I made those decisions. Our team came ready to play. So for me to make some decisions like that, that pains me. It’s not fair to these guys.”

But to a man, Purdy’s teammates had his back. And none seem worried about his aberrational performance, with a stat line of 18-of-32 for 255 yards, those four picks and a dismal 42.6 passer rating.

“I think it’s unbelievable how he’s played for the past two years — it’s seemed like he’s immortal out there and nobody’s immortal,” Nick Bosa said. “He’s responded from not his best performances before. I think he’ll do that again.”

Still, though no one in the 49ers’ locker room was voicing it, Purdy’s performance had to raise at least a small whisper of doubt. In one of the biggest moments of the season — if not the biggest — he did not rise to the occasion. His nascent MVP campaign took a hard hit. Of the three MVP candidates on the field, Purdy played the worst. His counterpart, Lamar Jackson, played the best - and had his coach John Harbaugh actively campaigning for him afterwards.

Yes, this was a team loss and no one on the 49ers played particularly well. They looked out-schemed and out-scouted and out-hustled by Baltimore, who left Levi’s with the league’s best record at 12-3.  But Purdy, facing maybe the best defense he’s played against, turned the ball over four times in a huge game, just weeks before he leads his team into the postseason. That’s concerning.

The 49ers fell into a hole in the second quarter and could never climb out. Purdy still has not led the team to a fourth-quarter comeback. For a bigger, and more worrying sample size, Kyle Shanahan’s teams are now 0-37 when trailing by at least eight points in the fourth quarter.

On their first possession, the 49ers were cruising downfield. But on first-and-10 inside the red zone, Purdy thought he saw Deebo Samuel flash and tried to force the ball into a space instead of going through his progression. Instead of a touchdown, Baltimore safety Kyle Hamilton cleanly intercepted the ball.
 
That was the interception that Shanahan deemed the worst, calling it a bad decision stemming from a misread of coverage.  But that was just the beginning.

On the second play of the second quarter, Purdy’s pass was batted up in the air and intercepted. The Ravens converted that into a touchdown.

The next time the 49ers got the ball back, on third down, Purdy dropped back but a flag was thrown due to a chop block called on Christian McCaffrey. Rather than throw the ball away, as it looked like a free play for the defense, Purdy tried to find Kittle. That ball, too, was intercepted. The Ravens converted that into a field goal.

“I can’t make a bad play worse,” Purdy said. “I have to know that. For me to throw across my body with a guy on George, that’s very dumb of me.”

When the 49ers next got the ball back, they had a stabilizing McCaffrey-the-MVP kind of drive: five of the six plays went to McCaffrey and they scored a touchdown. 

Only trailing by four at the half and getting the ball to start the third quarter, things didn’t seem particularly dire. But the 49ers went three-and-out and had a penalty on the ensuing punt that Shanahan described as being almost like another turnover. 

And on their second possession of the half, Purdy’s pass intended for McCaffrey became his fourth interception. Four picks in less than three quarters that led to 17 Ravens points.

Purdy came out of the game in the fourth quarter after suffering another stinger, similar to what he had a week before. Sam Darnold took over and — you guessed it — threw a pick.

“I don’t think I’ve been a part of a five-turnover game since, like, 2018,” Kittle said. “So it’s surprising.”

Surprising. Shocking. And a big-time reality check for the 49ers, who had been flying high coming into the game and obviously had heard themselves all but anointed the NFC champions.

“We got our tails kicked in on Christmas day on national television,” Kittle said. “So it’s not really fun.”

“We lost a game that we really wanted to win,” Shanahan said. “This was a big one. The guys are real disappointed tonight and they should be.”

And Purdy was disappointed in himself.

“I have to ask myself, who are you?” he said. “What do you stand for? Who are you when things are good? Who are you when things don’t go your way? It’s easy to be riding high and thinking you’re the man when things are going well and you don’t see a whole lot of adversity.

“This is the reality of the NFL. I have to look myself in the mirror, make some cleaner decisions… And when things don’t go my way, I have to be real with myself and be better. I want to be the same guy every day, be consistent in what I do whether things are going well or not. I know who I am and I’m not going to waver in that.”

Purdy’s teammates know who he is, too. And they aren’t wavering in their support.

And as for the aberrational performance on Monday? Maybe that was just a plot twist.

(sfchronicle.com)

“Youngsters don’t want to become fighters. The lean, hungry days seem to be gone. We are living in a soft age where the youth is pampered. He gets what he needs to make both ends meet and he’s satisfied.”

— Jim Jeffries

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Who thought “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” would turn out the end result of men wearing dresses and winning women’s cycling events? Apparently women are quitting the sport because they’re racing for third if they’re lucky.

COMMERCIAL VACCINE TEST

Editor,

I was watching the Christmas party football game on the television and a commercial touted that vaccines can be given stacked up to two next to each other. In my opinion that’s the true test of a human’s strength with less than a inch apart the body has to really deal with the strain. 

Happy holidays. Sincerely yours, 

Greg Crawford 

Fort Bragg

DRAYMOND (on line comments)

Lazarus: A friend has season tickets to the Warriors. He says the paying fans will take Draymond back in a second.

* * *

Stephen Rosenthal: Of course they will. But the team shouldn’t. … The best Christmas present the Warriors can give themselves and their fans is excising the malignancy that is Draymond Green and trading him so he can take his acts of sabotage to another organization. It’s not a coincidence that the Warriors are 6-0 since Green’s latest suspension, playing with high energy, teamwork and the joy that Coach Steve Kerr has heretofore preached as a key to their success. They’re not walking on eggshells waiting for Green’s next game-killing out-of-control explosion. If it wasn’t for Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Hall of Fame would never be uttered in the same sentence.

* * *

Bruce Anderson: We were just grouping on What To Do With Draymond. The almost unanimous opinion was the same as yours, Mr. R. I dissented with a lib-lab option for one-last-chance. Given his major contribution to the Warriors’ best years he has earned one more absolutely last chance. BTW, that open-hand slap to the face of the lumbering Yugo’s puss, well, the Yugo was totally faking it, hitting the floor like he’d been shot, not that his histrionics detracted from Draymond’s first-strike agro. Draymond’s a sad case. Good thing he’s rich or his lack of impulse control would put him in jail. (PS. I think of all the European imports as Yugos, but that kind of broadbrush ethnocentrism seems to come with my citizenship. Most of US think like that.)

* * *

Stephen Rosenthal: As for Green, he’s already had about four times too many one last chances. He’s 33 years old. He’s been like this since he entered the league and the Warriors have coddled and enabled him every step of the way. He’s not going to change, despite the fugazi “counseling” imposed by the NBA (which he is reportedly doing via Zoom!). He should have been forever banished from the team immediately after he punched Poole. One has to wonder if the same tempestuous bullying behavior carries over to his home life.

* * *

Mark Scaramella: In the military a case like Draymond’s would result in a demotion and big fine plus a further suspended bust with strict probation terms. Translating that to the NBA (which is a stretch, granted) would mean they’d look at his contract and tell him which parts of it he violated. Then bring him back but on the bench and only allowed in the game as a spot player. Then when he violates his suspended bust conditions (with a T or equivalent), which of course he will, they can put him on waivers and tell him enough is enough (the equivalent of a general discharge). But if so he should get a contract violation hearing for appearances sake first. It’s past time for the other players to step in anyway. Draymond’s value to another team is limited because his skills wouldn’t translate well to another team’s system and he’d be a ticking time bomb to them too.

CALIFORNIA RESEARCHERS GAVE HOMELESS PEOPLE $750 A MONTH

by Danielle Echeverria

A preliminary report found what researchers say is a potentially promising solution in the fight against homelessness: giving people who are unhoused $750 a month with no strings attached.

The study found that the funds, which were given to 69 people in San Francisco and Los Angeles for just six months, helped people meet their basic needs and reduced their likelihood of being unsheltered. The final report will look at outcomes for 100 participants over the course of a year.

Though the findings in the report — a partnership between the University of Southern California’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and the San Francisco-based nonprofit Miracle Messages — are preliminary, they are encouraging, said Ben Henwood, the director of USC’s Center for Homelessness, Housing and Health Equity Research, who led the study.

“The thing that stood out is the reductions in unsheltered homelessness,” he said. “When there’s so much effort on getting people off the streets and into some sort of interim or permanent solution, providing them money seems like it helps answer that question.”

The proportion of those who reported being unsheltered in the past month went from 30% at the beginning of the study to just 12% after six months. That far outpaced the control group, which went from 28% to 25%.

People who received the money also reported that they were closer to being able to afford all of their basic needs compared with people who did not receive the funds. More than a third of the money was spent on food, according to self-reported budgets given to researchers. Housing accounted for about 20% of the spending, followed by transportation at 13%, clothing at 12% and health care at 6%. About 14% was categorized as “other,” a category that included the 2% of funds that were spent on alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.

To Kevin Adler, the founder of Miracle Messages, the San Francisco nonprofit that helped distribute the funds, the findings were not surprising.

“People used the money better than we could have used it for them,” he said. “When we trust people, they can resolve their issues. They know what they need.”

It’s not the first time Adler’s nonprofit, which pairs homeless people with friends to talk to, has given cash payments to the unsheltered. Three years ago, after volunteers with his program expressed a desire to help their homeless friends financially, he raised money and gave 14 people $500 every month for six months — an idea that became the basis of the formal study — and found that those funds also helped lift people out of homelessness.

Adler said that, because there’s such a wide range of reasons why people end up homeless, direct cash can go a long way in helping them meet their specific needs and get past the hurdles keeping them from getting back on their feet.

“There’s a tremendous administrative burden for people experiencing homelessness. It’s exhausting. It’s an emotionally, psychologically, spiritually exhausting experience,” he said. “This is giving folks a little bit of support at a time of crisis, just like all of us have needed at different times in our lives.”

Some participants told researchers that they used the money to pay off debts, to purchase health care-related items like walkers, or to get enough food.

“I used the money to catch up on bills. I did a car repair that was gruesomely needed, right back brakes, playing catch up on some deferred maintenance on the car, making a couple payments,” one participant wrote. “Catching my phone payment up.”

Moving forward, both Adler and Henwood said they hope that the results spur larger studies or even government-funded basic income programs, which provide cash to low-income people with no rules on how it can be spent.

“Obviously things could change,” Henwood said. “But at least the finding that this does seem to be benefiting people to the extent that they are less likely to be unsheltered because of the money seems like a worthwhile message for people to start to talk about and consider.”

(SF Chronicle)

* * *

ms notes: This is not new. In 1993 former Welfare Mother and former Social Services worker Theresa Funicello wrote the groundbreaking book ‘Tyranny of Kindness’ which documented much the same idea with lots of then-relevant stats, particulars and anecdotes. Like the Marbut report locally, it was thoroughly ignored. The majority of Americans and their elected representatives do not like the idea of money given to the undeserving poor without reams of rules and conditions and a well-paid bureaucracy to enforce them. The likelihood that the firmly entrenched Welfare-Industrial Complex bureaucrats will release any of their massive funds for direct handouts to homeless people — a demonstrably cheaper and more effective approach to homelessness — is about as likely as Charlton Heston letting go of his rifle.

SO ENDS AN ERA

by James Kunstler

“The old politics of right versus left, and Republican opposed to Democrat have now given way to a new existential struggle: Americans must choose between civilization—or its destroyers.” –Victor Davis Hanson

Now that you, the lucky ones, are beyond your steaming platters of pancakes and mighty rashers of bacon, and perhaps even a dram or two of grog in your coffee. . . and clawed your way through the bales of presents. . . a merry Christmas to all. . . and here’s something else to think about this morning:

You may have noticed that our country, formerly a republic of sovereign individuals, has become one great big racketeering operation run by a mafia-like cabal with Marxist characteristics — or, at least, Marxist pretenses. That is, it seeks to profit by every avenue of dishonesty and coercion, under the guise of rescuing the “oppressed and marginalized” from their alleged tormenters. Apparently, half the country likes it that way.

Much of the on-the-ground action in this degenerate enterprise is produced by various hustles. A hustle is a particularly low-grade, insultingly obvious racket, such as Black Lives Matter, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and “trans women” (i.e., men) in women’s sports. Some of the profit in any hustle is plain moneygrubbing, of course. But there’s also an emotional payoff. Hustlers and racketeers are often sadists, so the gratification derived from snookering the credulous (feelings of power) gets amplified by the extra thrill of seeing the credulous suffer pain, humiliation, and personal ruin. (That’s what actual “oppressors” actually do.)

Categorically, anyone who operates a racket or a hustle is some sort of psychopath, a person with no moral or ethical guard-rails. Hustles are based on the belief that it is possible to get something for nothing, a notion at odds with everything known about the unforgiving laws of physics and also the principles of human relations in this universe. Even the unconditional love of a mother for her child is based on something: the amazing, generative act of creating new life, achieved through the travail of birth. Have you noticed, by the way, that the birth of human children is lately among the most denigrated acts on the American social landscape?

The flap over Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, is an instructive case in the governing psychopathies of the day. I wish I’d been a roach on the tray of petit fours and biscotti brought into the Harvard Overseers’ board-room when they met to consider the blowback from Ms. Gay’s unfortunate remarks in Congress, followed by revelations of her career-long plagiarisms. The acrid odor of self-conscious corruption in the room must have overwhelmed even the bouquet of Tanzanian Peaberry coffee a’brew, and not a few of the board members must have reached for the sherry decanter as their shame mounted, and the ancient radiators hissed, and their lame rationalizations started bouncing off the wainscoted walls.

Apparently, Ms. Gay did not miss an opportunity to cut-and-paste somebody else’s compositions into everything she published going back to her own student years in the 1990s. She even poached another writer’s acknowledgment page. This is apart from the self-reinforcing substance of her published “research” justifying the necessity for DEI activism, for which she has become first an avatar and now a goat. The dirty secret of this perturbation — and the whole Harvard Board knows it — is that Claudine Gay’s career has been about nothing but careerism, and that this is also true of so many on the faculty and administration at Harvard, and surely at every other self-styled elite school from the Charles River to Palo Alto that had joined in the DEI mind-fuck.

It’s all one big status-acquisition hustle, the seeking of hierarchical privilege by any means necessary, including especially deceit, the politics of middle-school girls. Thus, you see on display both the juvenility of elite higher ed and its use of the worst impulses that prevail in social media, stoking envy, hatred, avarice and vengeance as the currency for career advancement. Claudine Gay was notorious earlier, as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for wrecking the careers of faculty members (Ronald Sullivan, Stephanie Robinson, and Roland G. Fryer, Jr.) who refused to play the game like middle-school girls. She had no mercy.

The mental pain endured by the Harvard bigwigs must be excruciating, and of course they have themselves to blame because they walked right into the Woke hustle with their eyes wide shut. They bargained away their dignity, and the university’s honor, for mere brownie points in a fool’s game called Win big prizes pretending to care about your fellow man. The cognitive dissonance must be like little nuclear reactor meltdowns burning through the lobes of their brains. They’ve run out of a safe space to play “victim” in. The world sees them for the coddled, malicious fakes they are.

Cutting Claudine Gay loose is the unavoidable play now or Harvard will be stung by so many lawsuits from students previously punished for academic mischief that all the alumni lawfare attorneys in the cosmos standing snout to tail will not be able to staunch the hemorrhaging of the school’s endowment and then the fire sale of its chattels to satisfy the aggrieved plaintiffs’ pain and suffering. The Harvard board is just trying to ride out the holidays. Their prized participation trophy is coming off the mantlepiece. There really is no other way. Now, stand by and watch the rats rat each other out. And so ends the era of pretending about everything.

(kunstler.com)

PRESIDENT KILL 'EM ALL

Editor: 

Since the Holocaust in World War II, when my life began and my father’s ended, I have been an Israel fan. I’m also a fan of President Joe Biden. Israelis have put together an impressive democracy, and Biden seems to have the gift of empathy — a gift we need more than ever in these fractured political times.

The war in Gaza is terrorism by definition. Killing thousands of men, women and children who had nothing to do with the horrendous Hamas attack on Israel is evil. Nearly 20,000 dead and thousands more whose homes are destroyed will never be the same. Revenge is a human desire, but it needs to stop now.

Our president’s empathy is in serious question since he wants to send more money to continue the killing. 

Not my money, Mr. President.

Peter Henriksen

Occidental

I AM GAZA CITY’S MAYOR. OUR LIVES AND CULTURE ARE IN RUBBLE.

by Yahya R. Sarraj

As a teenager in the 1980s, I watched the construction of the intricately designed Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Center in Gaza City, named after one of Gaza’s greatest public figures, and its theater, grand hall, public library, printing press and cultural salon.

Students and researchers, scholars and artists from across the Gaza Strip came to visit it, and so did President Bill Clinton in 1998. The center was the gem of Gaza City. Watching it being built inspired me to become an engineer, which led to a career as a professor and, in the footsteps of al-Shawa, as mayor of Gaza City.

Now that gem is rubble. It was destroyed by Israeli bombardment.

The Israeli invasion has caused the deaths of more than 20,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and destroyed or damaged about half the buildings in the territory. The Israelis have also pulverized something else: Gaza City’s cultural riches and municipal institutions.

The unrelenting destruction of Gaza — its iconic symbols, its beautiful seafront, its libraries and archives and whatever economic prosperity it had — has broken my heart.

The Gaza Zoo has been destroyed, with many of its animals killed or starved to death, including wolves, hyenas, birds and rare foxes. Other casualties include the city’s main public library, the Children’s Happiness Center, the municipal building and its archive, and the seventh-century Great Omari Mosque. Israeli forces have also damaged or destroyed streets, squares, mosques, churches and parks.

One of my major goals after the Hamas administration appointed me mayor in 2019 was to improve the city’s seafront and foster the opening of small businesses along it to create jobs. It took us four years to finish the project, which included a promenade, recreation areas and spaces for those businesses. It took Israel only weeks to destroy it. Niveen, a divorced woman I know, was supposed to open a small restaurant in November but her dream is gone. Mohammed, a disabled Palestinian, lost his small cafe.

Why did the Israeli tanks destroy so many trees, electricity poles, cars and water mains? Why would Israel hit a U.N. school? The obliteration of our way of life in Gaza is indescribable. I still feel I am in a nightmare because I can’t imagine how any sane person could engage in such a horrific campaign of destruction and death.

The modern municipality of Gaza was established in 1893 and is one of the oldest in the Middle East. It served about 800,000 people, among the largest congregations of Palestinians in the world. Even after Israel forcibly displaced more than one million Palestinians from northern Gaza after the war began, much of the population in the city remained.

When Israel began its war on Gaza in response to the deadly attack by Hamas, I was abroad. I cut my tour short to return to help our people. I head an emergency committee of municipal workers and volunteers, who have been trying to fix water pipes, open roads and clear disease-causing sewage and garbage. At least 14 members of our municipal staff have died. Almost everyone on the committee has lost a home or relative.

I, too, have lost a loved one. Without warning, a direct hit to my house on Oct. 22 killed my eldest son, Roshdi, a photojournalist and filmmaker. He thought he would be safer at his parents’ home. It made me wonder if I could have been the target. We will never know. I buried Roshdi and quickly returned to work with the emergency committee.

Israel, which began its blockade of Gaza more than 16 years ago and has maintained what the United Nations and human rights groups call an ongoing occupation for far longer, is destroying life here. An unnamed Israeli defense official promised to turn Gaza into a city of tents and Israel has forcibly displaced its inhabitants. For once, Israel is keeping a promise its officials made to the Palestinians.

I call on the world’s municipalities — everyone — to pressure world leaders to stop this mindless destruction.

Why can’t Palestinians be treated equally, like Israelis and all other peoples in the world? Why can’t we live in peace and have open borders and free trade? Palestinians deserve to be free and have self-determination. Gaza’s emblem is the phoenix, which rises from the ashes. It insists on life.

(Dr. Sarraj is the mayor of Gaza City and a former rector of the University College of Applied Sciences there. He wrote from Gaza City.)

EVA CRYSANTHE:

Ceasefire Proponents Show 35-1 at Final 2023 Marin Board of Supervisors’ Meeting

By last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors’ meeting, the ceasefire proponent speakers had grown in number to 35, despite the fact that it was finals week in local schools and colleges, and many of the student leaders were unable to attend. Meanwhile, the anti-ceasefire side could summon only one speaker, who appeared facelessly via zoom. Throughout public comment period, Board President Stephanie Moulton-Peters maintained her cold, tone-deaf demeanor, limiting the peaceniks’ speaking time, and dismissively scoffing at 87- year-old Jeannine Herron, who had again appeared in person to beg for a ceasefire resolution.

Amid this scene, one of the more cautious men in the County, Attorney Larry Bragman, oft-embattled for doing the right thing on the County’s water district board, stepped to the podium. What was this County insider doing here? What would he say?

Bragman introduced himself humbly, and spoke plainly: “I was bar mitzvah’d in 1967 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. And I remember the jubilation that David had defeated Goliath. 56 years later, the war never ended, and David has turned into Goliath. What’s going on now is not self-defense. It’s vengeance driven by anger and grief, and we here in the protected quarters of Marin County and the United States need to break the silence, because at some point silence is complicity. And I would ask you to take up the resolution. I thank you for the platform you’ve given the citizens to bring it to you, but at some point we’ve got to act. We’ve got to speak out or else we’re complicit.”

In Marin, there’s a considerable difference between a group of regular citizens pleading their case and a man who is inarguably a leader in the community, repeatedly elected to various local seats, urging action on any issue, but particularly on this one. One wonders if it is a signal that the tide has changed.

The only person who spoke against the ceasefire that day was Laurie Dubin, the same ONDCP*-funded nonprofit director who pushed the dubiously sourced Golda Meir quote about the alleged necessity of killing children at the previous week’s meeting. Ostensibly to cover for the low anti-ceasefire turnout, Dubin claimed that her group had decided against speaking in public. It seems more likely that the anti-ceasefire group realizes at this stage of the genocide, with over 8,000 children killed by Israeli bombs, with the IDF shooting even Israeli hostages, that every time they speak against a ceasefire resolution, they are further alienating themselves from the rest of the world.

I don’t think many of the younger people who were able to attend the meeting recognized who Larry Bragman is. But Bragman’s words were an echo of the concerns of so many younger people in the County. And in all of their voices, in varying degrees, I could almost hear it: a whisper of Sigismund Danielewicz, the hardworking Jewish activist booed out of a Bay Area meeting over 100 years ago for speaking up for the persecuted Chinese workers, the “other” laborers whom many of the powerful businessmen in Pacific Heights and atop Nob Hill wanted to eliminate. I respectfully propose the mostly forgotten Danielewicz should be considered in the context of a recent Nation Magazine article about San Francisco’s Jewish Community Federation as a funding vehicle for the rightwing Israeli doxxing project, Canary Mission.

* * *

Meet Mr. Danielewicz

Sigismund Danielewicz was born in what was then known as Congress Poland, and arrived in San Francisco in the late 1870s. He would become a radical organizer in 19th century California and in Hawaii – one of many Jewish Americans who devoted themelves to labor organizing, often at great cost to their own lives. In San Francisco, Danielewicz took a lonely stand, both against his own labor union and against the leadership of San Francisco’s Jewish community, to defend Chinese workers from violent persecution.

As Lehrhaus Judaica Founder and Director Fred Rosenbaum has chronicled, Jewish leadership in San Francisco was distinct not only because it was wealthier and more assimilated than other Jewish communities in the US, but also because its anti-Chinese activism and its promotion of the Chinese Exclusion Act was so severe that it drew the ire of the rest of American Jewish leadership. This occurred after decades of anti-Chinese sentiment that resulted in pogroms, raids, and persecution so severe against Chinese communities in California that in at least one Bay Area city, Chinese were forced to build underground tunnels in order to survive.

Danielewicz’s defense of Chinese workers had allyship with many other Jewish leaders outside of San Francisco, who unfortunately carried no more weight in California than he did. In his book, Cosmopolitans**, Rosenbaum quotes a description of Danielewicz’ impassioned speech to the Coast Seaman’s Union, which he himself had helped establish: “He (Danielewicz) said he belonged to a race persecuted for hundreds of years and was still persecuted – the Jews; and he called upon his people to consider whether the persecution of the Chinese was more justifiable than theirs had been. And he left it upon the Irish to say whether it was more justifiable than their persecution in New York had been; upon the Germans to make a similar comparison.”

Danielewicz was booed from the stage. Meanwhile, East Coast Jewish establishment figures who wrote plaintive letters to San Francisco’s Jewish leaders had no better luck in the 1880s. As Rosenbaum describes it: “…a Jewish editor in New York, comparing anti-Chinese hysteria with Russian pogroms, accused his San Francisco counterparts of the same complicity as the St. Petersburg journalists who defended the Czar’s bloody policies. Beyond the moral question, the East Coast Jewish press worried that anti-Chinese sentiment could result in demands to curtail Jewish immigration just when Russian Jews were arriving in America in large numbers. ‘The Chinese today; why not the Jews of tomorrow!’ Yet none of this swayed Jewish opinion makers, who, to the dismay of the rest of American Jewry, remained ‘unrepentant’.” * * * Danielewicz and the East Coast Jewish leadership were entirely correct: the rationale for the Chinese Exclusion Act and its extensions would later be used to implement the exclusionary Immigration Act of 1924, which trapped countless Eastern European Jews in the decades leading up to (and including) the Holocaust. Clearly, there was a distinction between how workingclass/non-elite Jewish leadership viewed their collective plight, and how the Pacific Heights Jewish leadership viewed it. But if the Pacific Heights crew had known that their promotion of the Chinese Exclusion Act would later result in blocking Eastern European Jews from finding refuge in the US, would they have acted differently? There has always been a divide in every community, about who is “acceptable” and who is “expendable.” Poorer Eastern European Jews were too often viewed as a heavy burden by German and Austrian Jews who had worked hard to establish a prosperous and influential community in San Francisco.

* * *

The Origins of the JCF and the Ha’aretz/Nation Exposés

One of the major Jewish charities funded by San Francisco’s Jewish leadership in Danielewicz’ era was the Eureka Benevolent Fund, which, after many iterations, is now The Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund. This is the 501c3 that was identified two days ago in a Nation Magazine article as having served as a questionably legal transfer point between at least one billionaire San Francisco family (the Dillers, in this case) and something called “Canary Mission”, an Israeli doxxing operation targeting anti-Zionist academics and students. The Nation articles builds on earlier reporting in Ha’aretz.

Several of the academics were detained and deported as a result of the doxxing, others “merely” lost their jobs. And who are some of Canary Mission’s major targets? Jewish Americans, of course. Again, as in so many other communities, it goes back to who is “acceptable” within that community and who is “expendable.”

But beyond that, Diller and the JCF were also potentially breaking the law (not that it matters when you’re a billionaire.) As James Bamford outlines in The Nation:

“Those Americans who were financially supporting Canary Mission were potentially committing a serious crime, acting as agents of a foreign power. They were financing a clandestine foreign organization with ties to Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, an Israeli intelligence angecy — which was using Canary Mission to identify, detain and deport Americans entering the country…”

But as if that were not bad enough, the donors wanted tax breaks for breaking the law:

“Not content to secretly fund Canary Mission to carry out its spying and intimidation on American college campuses, many of the wealthy donors also wanted generous federal tax breaks for their donation. The problem was that tax breaks are not allowed for donations to foreign charities, just those in the United States, and Megamot Shalom’s being in Israel would rule out the deduction. To solve the problem, years ago a family living in Israel’s illegal settlements came to the United States and set up shop in New York City as a nonprofit “charity,” calling itself the Central Fund of Israel. Therefore, the Diller family, through San Francisco’s Jewish Community Federation, actually “donated” their money to the Central Fund in New York, and in return received a substantial tax rebate.

And then the Central Fund simply transferred the money to Megamot Shalom’s bank account in Israel. Under the scheme, billionaires and their foundations got richer while American taxpayers subsidized the blacklisting and terrorizing of their own children in college.” Coincidentally, who is the former Marketing Director for the JCF, the 501c3 that was involved in possible illegally financing this “clandestine foreign organization”?

Why, that would be Jeff Saperstein, who on Thursday finally returned a fact-checking phone call I made weeks ago.

* * *

Saperstein, the Outsider:

Despite his two years as the JCF’s Marketing Director, Saperstein, an ex-New Yorker, carries the whiff of an outsider trying to claw his way into the sweet center of the kind of Bay Area Jewish culture defined by families that long preceded his arrival. The effort seems partly in vain; it is a version of Jewish culture increasingly abandoned by a younger generation of Jewish Americans. If Saperstein ever makes it past that velvet rope, the party may be over, the canapés wilted.

Saperstein’s seeming desperation to be included with the big boys was confirmed by his nearly-immediate declaration to me during our phone call that he’s “been an advocate with AIPAC for many many years.” When I asked him in what capacity he worked with AIPAC, he conceded that it’s only been as a volunteer. But Saperstein said he also serves as co-Chair at Congregation Khol Shafar in Tiburon, where they have an “Israel Affairs Committee that is involved with the Supervisors, the mayors and a lot of activity.” Much of this is coordinated, per Saperstein, by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).

Saperstein insisted that “There’s no other issue that has gotten this kind of vituperation,” a word he continued to use throughout the conversation with a dramatic flair that recalled a certain Chuck Jones creation. Was this really the best AIPAC could muster?

Saperstein’s plaint was an echo of his statement at the December 5 Board of Supervisors’ meeting that there was no equivalent outrage about Syria or China. But it has been repeatedly pointed out to Mr. Saperstein that the criticism of Israel’s actions by ceasefire proponents, many of whom are Jewish, is made more urgent because it is US tax dollars that fund the genocidal killing of Palestinian civilians by Israel. Despite this, Saperstein repeatedly demanded that I identify an issue that had so riled the public as the current situation in Gaza. It was too obvious to name Vietnam, so I identified the assive (although under-reported) protests that accompanied the invasion of Iraq in 2003. (Tragically, the Iraq invasion had real parallels to what Israel is now engaged in, a matter frequently mentioned by older ceasefire proponents.)

Saperstein countered that the invasion of Iraq was in response to 9/11, which he repeatedly maintained was an act of domestic terror because it occurred in the US. But that is not how domestic terrorism is defined. Saperstein subsequently maintained that Israel has killed 7,000 Hamas militants, citing data from the IDF. There are obvious problems with this claim, not least of which is that the IDF has a history of documented fabrications. When I pointed that out, Saperstein snarlingly insisted that I should stop listening to “Joy Reid and Medhi Hasan” (I do not have cable or even a television, and thus I listen to neither, but I did cite a Financial Times article on the impacts of Israel’s bombing campaign that Saperstein seemed utterly disinterested in.) Saperstein insisted that I should instead listen to David Petraeus and “military men”. I again politely pointed out that the IDF, which he had cited, had been largely discredited, and that David Petraeus had also been discredited years ago when he had lost his position, whereupon Saperstein announced, “This conversation is over!” at which point I thanked him and wished him well. How can AIPAC be so sloppy as to promote such irrational talking points through its volunteers? Saperstein stood a better chance of convincing me than he stood to convince any number of younger Jewish Americans of his position, but even I recognized his arguments as ridiculous, and his demeanor bullying.

Is the paucity of the pro-Israel argument the reason why Canary Mission is

targeting even young Jewish Americans?

* * *

Wikipedia Man

Richard Halstead was pacing the halls of Marin Civic Center at lunchtime last Tuesday, and despite being still out of breath from the bike ride from the East Bay, I joined him in his perambulations through the stuffy Frank Lloyd Wright building. For seventeen minutes, we had one of our usual light-hearted conversations in which he repeatedly complained that I had “mischaracterized” his publication’s partnership with the County, and when I asked him to explain what, specifically, I had mischaracterized, he was unable to specify anything. Real rom-com material.

Halstead had some other things to say — in the interest of time, I list them here in the order they were stated, so there is at least a record of how Marin County’s news media operates:

1. Halstead stated that he did not keep a count of the pro- and anti-ceasefire petitioners at BoS. Neither did Halstead explain his prior assertion that he agreed with his editors’ decision not to cover the ceasefire resolution crowds because he did not see either side as possessing the “moral high ground.”

2. Halstead stated that because the BoS has not agendized any ceasefire resolution, the I-J will not cover it.

3. When asked whether he had any thoughts on the October 18 opinion piece that Alden Global Capital required all of its publications (including the I-J) to carry about the October 7 attacks, Halstead conceded that he had not actually read the opinion piece. (That in itself is an astounding admission. The mandated opinion piece was considered newsworthy enough to be covered by Axios.)

4. Halstead claimed that the Israel-Palestine issue was complicated, and asked what I had read. I brought up Rashid Khalidi’s best-selling recent history, and Halstead indicated that he was not aware of it. He also indicated that he was unaware of Israeli historian Benny Morris, Israeli scholar Raz Segal, and Jewish American professor Shaul Magid.

5. Halstead then stated that he had only given the larger historical context a “cursory look”, referencing what he had seen on “wikipedia.” He claimed there was nothing wrong with this lack of background, since he is not covering the Middle East. It is true that Halstead is not covering the Middle East, but it is also damning of The Marin Independent-Journal that their reporter publicly states that his only information about a major geopolitical issue which reverberates on many local issues is limited to Wikipedia.

6. Halstead dismissed the significance of the recent UN General Assembly vote for a ceasefire, claiming that people can vote for all sorts of reasons at the UN. (Okay, but the vote was 153-10?) Halstead then also dismissed the stark ratio for that UN vote.

7. I asked Halstead how, on the one hand, he could so easily dismiss the UN vote when he was so adamant that the mere ceasefire petition could not be covered because it had not yet been agendized. In other words, procedure matters when it pleases Halstead, but it does not matter when it does not please Halstead.

8. Halstead’s response was to build a bizarre “philosophical” argument wherein it was too difficult to distinguish between one death on one side and 100 deaths on the other side. Halstead’s statement was monstrous; 20,000 Palestinians aren’t 100. It is the rate andnumber of slaughtered civilians that has drawn the protests and even condemnation from The Financial Times.

9. Halstead then claimed that the current rate of killing is only a genocide by my definition. When I brought up Israeli scholar’s Raz Segal’s assertion that the Israeli assault on Palestinians in Gaza is “a textbook case of genocide”, Halstead dismissed it.

10. Halstead dismissed the Israel-Palestine issue as a “Chinese puzzle.” This expression is an anachronism that is not only without any meaning in today’s world, but its definition doesn’t even apply to the situation in Israel/Palestine. (But it does suggest that Halstead, who lives in Berkeley, which itself has a very large Asian population, is apparently so isolated from Asian neighbors that he does not understand how anachronistic his speech is.)

11. Halstead inexplicably blew up at me because I hadn’t made public comment on SB 43 item at Board of Supervisors, even though I am in no way required to comment on every item, and even though the item itself was simply delaying implementation of SB 43.

12. Halstead claimed that his publishers told him I had mischaracterized the relationship between the Marin I-J and the County of Marin, even though County Public Health Officer Matt Willis announced the official partnership at the March 28, 2023 Board of Supervisors’ meeting. I repeatedly asked Halstead what, specifically, I had mischaracterized and he could not answer.

13. Halstead claimed that I was “crying wolf all the time” and said that “people aren’t paying attention to what you have to say”, but this seems a clear attempt to distract from the reality that I have repeatedly scooped Halstead on stories that he should have reported himself, whether it’s the 32-year record of severe racial arrest disparities in the County; the County’s cimplicity in abuses against the unhoused population in San Rafael; or the serious conflicts of interest on the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Working Group; among many others.

14. Halstead then said about the County’s relationship with the Marin I-J, “My general impression is that we’re doing some public service work to discourage the drug use and, uh, to try to keep people from OD’ing, but if you’re against that, Eva, I’m sorry. If you want to see people die of drug death, well, then, that’s great.”

15. I replied that my still-unanswered question remains: “What is the financial relationship between the Marin I-J and the County of Marin?” Halstead responded: “We have no financial relationship,” and then he amended that to:,”that I know of.” I replied, “That you know of? But did you ask?”

16. Halstead then claimed that he did not have to ask because he didn’t have a credible person making the assertion that such a relationship exists. But Halstead continues to ignore the fact that it is in fact “a credible person”, Matt Willis, who made the assertion in the first place. Is Halstead implying that Matt Willis, the County’s Public Health Officer, is not credible?

17. Halstead suggested that the partnership Willis announced may simply be a matter of running ads. But he did not state at any point that the partnership restricts “sponsored content”.

18. When I pressed him on that matter, Halstead’s only response was, “How do you sustain yourself? Do you have a trust fund?” (For the record, I do not.) I note that this is not an answer to the question, it is a distraction from the relevant and valid question about the County/I-J partnership and “sponsored content” that I have been asking for months.

19. Halstead then angrily accused me, repeatedly jabbing his finger toward my face, of profiting from this substack account by writing untrue allegations about his employer, The Marin Independent-Journal. (For the record, although some people have signed up for paid subscriptions to my substack, I have not yet accepted any the monies.)

20. I asked Halstead to name a single untrue allegation I had ever made about The Marin Independent-Journal. He abruptly ended the conversation, saying, “I have to go to work now.”

But what does Halstead ever actually do when he is “at work” in his Civic Center office? In a little more than a week, it will be 2024, a critical election year locally and nationally. And there is no more transparency either from the County or its partnered “news” media publications than before. For those of us who are still pursuing answers from the County, it looks to be a busy year. Fasten your seatbelts…

@2023 Eva Chrysanthe

*Notes:

*Office of National Drug Control Policy, known colloquially as the “Drug Czar”

**The full title is: Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area, UC Press, 2009.

***This was a popular position amongst Bay Area power brokers regardless of religion: One of Marin County’s most revered local Supervisors, the late Charles McGlashan, was heir to a fortune made off the anti-Chinese activity of his forebear, Charles Fayette McGlashan, who developed “the Truckee Method” of vigilante action against Chinese laborers in California. (Another McGlashan, apparently Charles’ brother, is Bill McGlashan Sr., who made a separate fortune through the Nixon administration with a method for drug-”testing” GI’s in Vietnam, with the predictable result of reduction of individual GI benefits, particularly for Black GI’s whom the testing process targeted.) Thanks for reading Marin’s Newsletter! 

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