Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024

Windy | Ocean Cliff | Palace Neglect | Myers Break-In | DA Hires | Comptche Chapel | AVUSD News | Panther Ballers | Grange Cleanup | Pet Fanny | AV Events | Save Landlines | Double Rainbow | Ed Notes | Greenwood Oasis | Political Ciphers | Shrub | Oppose Genocide | Pigeon Point | Ukiah Haikus | Yesterday's Catch | Blaming Dams | Minimum Wage | Gig Work | Lucky 13 | Beans & Rice | Steal 24 | Rainbow Pride | Mountain Heart | Audi Workers | Marco Radio | Assassination Memories | Target Shoplift | Pass Boldly | Big Bad | Swift Judgment | Criminal | Big Club | Without Artists | Storm Survival | Bell Flower

A POWERFUL STORM will bring strong gusty winds and moderate to heavy rainfall with high elevation heavy snowfall to Northwest California today. Wet and unsettled weather will continue into Monday, and then ease up by Tuesday. Another frontal passage is expected late this week.

FLOOD WATCH remains in effect from noon pst today through this evening.

WIND ADVISORY remains in effect until 7 pm pst this evening.

(National Weather Service)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A rainy 46F this Sunday morning on the coast with .59" more wetness. We have a high wind warning today but I have mostly calm at 5am. Rain for the morning turning to showers later morning. Rain tomorrow then a couple dry days ? Next week is looking less wet in general.

DEMOLITION BY NEGLECT

by Mike Geniella

Heavy winter rains this past week pummeled the historic Palace Hotel, sending storm water gushing into an already severely damaged landmark.

A return of back to back wet winters – which are typical for the region – is taking its toll on the town’s most significant historic building after more than three decades of neglect under two ownerships, and a largely hands off policy at City Hall.

At least 3.1 inches of rain were dumped on Ukiah over a 72-hour period ending Friday as a second rainstorm swept through inland Mendocino County. More heavy rain is expected Sunday, promising the Palace's interior, already ravaged by neglect, to become even more saturated.

Jitu Ishwar, the current owner, has done nothing to protect the building or stem the decay since he acquired ownership of the Palace in 2019, according to city officials.

Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley has said Ishwar has made “zero progress” to shore up the Palace under his ownership. Prior to Ishwar’s takeover in 2019, at least there had been some interior cleanup under former owner Eladia Laines, and subsequent preliminary structural and engineering studies were done under the direction of a court-appointed receiver. 

Since Ishwar obtained a clear title to the building, however, nothing further has been done. 

“It’s like demolition by neglect,” complained Dennis Crean, a local advocate of salvaging major portions of the damaged Palace building and recycling the historic three-story brick structure into new uses. 

Crean and others say they are increasingly disturbed by a widely promoted “false narrative” that it is “too late to save the Palace, and that nothing short of a complete demolition is the only outcome.”

Ishwar and his attorney Stephen Johnson of the law firm of Mannon, King, Johnson & Wipf continue to ignore questions seeking public comment about Ishwar’s role in the Palace’s advanced state of deterioration, or why he has spurned at least two serious offers in the past few years from potential investors who sought to rehabilitate the historic building. 

Lake County Contractor Tom Carter, who renovated the acclaimed Tallman Hotel and Blue Wing Saloon in Upper Lake, came forward this week and said that less than two years ago he was eager to enter into escrow to buy the Palace from Ishwar, and restore it. 

“I went through every inch of that building, I know the condition, and I know what can still be done,” said the veteran contractor. Carter said he proposed to Ishwar that at the very least a new roof to protect the building from the elements should be a top priority.

Carter, who has experience in rehabilitating historic properties in Sonoma County, San Francisco, and Oakland, said Ishwar rebuffed his offer, and ignored his bid to enter into escrow.

“I had the check in hand to get it going,” said Carter.

Carter said he now believes Ishwar at the time was already in talks with Minal Shankar, another investor who collaborated with a team of preservation experts for a year to develop the most serious renovation plans yet, only to have her deal with Ishwar collapse last summer.

Carter said he agrees with former court receiver Mark Adams that Ishwar has no interest in returning the Palace to the center of community life. “He’s engaged in a real estate play,” said Carter.

Ishwar now has an agreement with the Guidiville Rancheria and its backers of a $6.6 million taxpayer-funded scheme to demolish the 133-year-old landmark so a state study of possible contamination from purported underground fuel storage tanks can be made, and a possible two-year cleanup done if necessary. 

The state Department of Toxic Substance Control has the Guidiville application under review. A spokesman said a decision will be made this month. 

Demolition of the Palace could happen this summer if the state grant is awarded. The Guidiville tribe is only one of two tribes applying for grants that specifically targets tribes, nonprofits, and municipalities in poor areas.

For Ishwar and Guidiville, the new round of storms may be a blessing in disguise.

Even before this past week’s heavy round of rains, historic preservation experts worried that the unprotected Palace may not be able to survive a second wet winter. 

Investor Shankar said she spent $22,000 in a futile effort in late 2022 to lay tarps across the Palace’s patchwork roof and divert water from collecting on the roof in hopes of stemming the tide. There was limited success. Ishwar initially agreed to pay half the cost, but he never followed through, according to Shankar.

Several months later the city formally declared the Palace building a “public safety hazard” after city building and fire department inspectors found that last winter’s storms had accelerated deterioration inside the Palace, and “substantially contributed to the building’s current unstable condition.”

Now this past week’s heavy rains are provoking more city concern that sections of the oldest unreinforced brick walls of the Palace could give way, damaging neighboring buildings or falling onto the streets surrounding the hotel.

The draconian scenario sends chills through local advocates, who had high hopes for the structure to be shored up and recycled into a new downtown centerpiece under Shankar’s plan. They fear city officials may be even unwittingly aiding the Guidiville group’s efforts to secure state funding to tear down the 1891 landmark.

Shankar, an experienced financier who now lives in Ukiah Valley, emerged with the most serious restoration plan yet for the Palace. In 2022, she hired a noted San Francisco team of historic preservation architects and designers who produced a plan that included a boutique hotel, bar and restaurant, a cluster of shops and a rooftop event center.

But Ishwar, as he had done the year before with contractor Carter, walked from their proposed deal. 

Ishwar acquired the Palace in 2019 with ideas of his own to recycle the building into new uses but he abandoned those plans, according to court receiver Mark Adams, a Santa Monica attorney.

Ishwar and his wife Paru and their partner Anil Bhula have been hoteliers in Mendocino County for the past 25 years and have connections to a string of motel operations in Sonoma and Lake counties. Ishwar and Bhula’s Fairfield Inn on Airport Boulevard was honored last summer by the Redwood Empire Fair board of directors as “the business of the year.” 

Ishwar at one time served as president of the Ukiah Chamber of Commerce.

Ishwar, however, has had a tangled history with City Hall. His aging Economy Lodge property fronting State Street has been red tagged repeatedly for permit violations and efforts to force compliance are stalled. The project has become another eyesore in town.

The Palace Hotel under his ownership has further declined, and Ishwar now faces a city order to either stabilize the building or demolish it.

City officials acknowledge enforcement on that order is on hold pending the state decision on the Guidiville grant application.

Critics worry the city may be acting in concert with Ishwar and Guidiville to get the Palace torn down, and the site cleaned up for new development. The group is proposing a faux Palace that mimics the plan Shankar and her advisors produced.

Deputy City Manager Riley brushed off critics’ concerns that the city’s public safety declaration and the Guidiville application for state funding to demolish the Palace are linked. 

“The city’s declaration and the submittal of the grant application were two parallel pathways that were in no way connected,” said Riley.

Riley said, “Our (building and fire department) officials had no pre-conceived notions about what the outcome of their inspections would be, and I have no reason to believe that the grant applicants anticipated this declaration.”

Ukiah, unlike other cities including Glendale, Oakland, and San Francisco, has not adopted any ordinances to protect historic buildings.

Architect Alan Nicholson accused city officials of “rolling out the red carpet for Mr. Ishwar and Guidiville Tribe to demolish the Palace by exempting them from any environmental review or oversight with normal checks and balances from the City Council, Planning Commission or the Demolition Review Committee.”

“Ishwar is actively demolishing the Palace Hotel by blatant neglect,” said Nicholson. He argued that Ishwar was ordered to prevent further water damage to the interior but “he has done nothing.”

Nicholson said the city is negligent for not imposing fines and other repercussions on Ishwar.

“It is the same policy we have seen for 30 years of Palace neglect with the city talking tough and looking the other way,” charged Nicholson.

(Mike Geniella is a veteran North Coast journalist and regular contributor to local news organizations.)

MISSY KEFFELER SCHAT (this is from my brother, Tim Keffeler owner of Myers Medical Pharmacy in Ukiah): There was a break in at the pharmacy Wednesday night when the business was closed and we were forced to close today. No one was injured. We are hoping to be open for business tomorrow, Saturday February 3 at 10am. Thank you for your understanding and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.

SCOTT'S BACK!

Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster announced recently that his office has hired two men who retired from local law enforcement agencies to serve as investigators, including a former chief of the Fort Bragg Police Department.

According to DA Eyster, “coming to the DA’s team from the California Highway Patrol after a very short retirement is Robert Simas,” whom he described as serving “as a peace officer with the CHP for 25 years, beginning in October 1998 until his ‘retirement’ from the force in December 2023.”

Eyster notes that “in addition to specialized training in accident investigations and vehicle-related crimes, (Simas) brings to his new job specialized narcotics and major crimes investigation experience.”

Also joining the DA’s office as an investigator, Eyster reports, is former Fort Bragg Police Chief Scott Mayberry, whom Eyster described as also serving “with the Redding Police Department, the Petaluma Police Department, and, of course, as a DA investigator pre-retirement. (Mayberry) is returning to the DA’s team as a civilian administrator/advisor/ liaison and will be undertaking special assignments, which will include mentoring younger peace officers to better fight crime and promote public safety collaboratively in both Mendocino and Lake counties.”

Eyster notes that Simas and Mayberry “are joining a diverse and complimentary team that includes Assistant Chief Investigator Bryan Arrington, who (previously) worked for both the Ukiah Police Department and the MCSO, (and) other members of the DA’s team include Investigators Mariano Guzman and Tom Kiely, both with significant law enforcement experience from working at the Ukiah Police Department, Jim Schnitzius and Alex Johnston, both with significant law enforcement experience from working at the MCSO, and Investigative Tech Naomi Carter, who has law enforcement experience from working at the Willits Police Department; and, before that, the DA.”

Eyster described “the primary purpose of the District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigations (as providing) professional investigative and victim/witness support for the local prosecutors. All DA investigators are sworn peace officers with many years of law enforcement experience. The DA’s investigators and their investigative tech are expected to professionally and thoroughly investigate all matters assigned to them by the DA and his deputies, particularly investigations intended to compliment initial investigations undertaken by other local law enforcement agencies.”

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

That was quite a week of weather! We had some leaks, but thankfully no major damage. I hope your homes are safe and dry. Thanks again to our transportation department!

If your kid came home from school on Friday and said they petted a python, they weren’t kidding! We were delighted to host the Nature Conservancy again and educator Gabe brought some wonderful animals including an owl, a huge python, an African toad, a monkey, and several more. For so many of our students that have never been to a zoo, seeing these animals up close and hearing their stories is a magical experience. I have worked with Nature Conservancy for years, and they always bring a quality program that holds the attention of the littles all the way up to the high school crowd.

Congratulations to both sites for honoring their students of the month! So important to recognize effort, citizenship, kindness, and attendance, not just grades. We are proud of these students!

Lots of exciting things are coming up in the next couple of months including Pozole and Pajamas at the elementary school, the 6th-12th grade College and Career fair night, FAFSA application night, and the California Scholastic Federation (CSF) field trip on the ferry to San Francisco. CSF is an honor society for 9th-12th grade students that maintain a consistently high GPA. We are delighted that our numbers skyrocketed from last Spring. It’s a pleasure to recognize the achievement.

You may notice the painting in the elementary hallways. New flooring will be put down before summer. Additionally, it is expected the front parking lot will be resurfaced. Signage will complete the overhaul. The last big project scheduled for the elementary will be a significant kitchen remodel that will allow for more fresh cooking on the site. It is currently in permit review.

Staff will begin packing for the high school wing and the science room remodels. We hope to have students involved in the groundbreaking ceremony the last week of school. Construction will impact that site for this project for about six months but we have portable classrooms to handle the overflow.

Over the next couple of weeks, you will receive links to participate in our parent/guardian survey. This is an important short survey that helps us understand school perceptions and how we can strengthen our partnership together. It translates to Spanish, so please take advantage of that. These results really are looked at. Staff will also receive one as well as your children. If you do not want your children to participate, please give the office a call. This is for grades 5-12. Some grades require a specific permission slip in elementary and those will be sent home. Otherwise, it is an opt out survey for the upper grades. Here is the link: Healthy Kids Survey

I also want to update you around our CCGI partnership. The Governor's office has been funneling a huge amount of money in TK-16 education and collaboration. The CCGI is a computer platform where students from 6th to 12th grade can do career exploration and have a one site portal for their college and career applications, financial aid applications, and transcripts. This will provide an opportunity for a much deeper career exploration in earlier grades and will also be an integral tool for our senior seminar to have all the data in one place. We are in partnership with Sonoma State to roll this out. A huge thank you to Angel Davies who is working on the data side of this agreement. If you do not want your child to participate or would like to know more information, please contact me. Here is the link to the site. CCGI. Many private and wealthy school districts have had platforms like this for years and years to give their students an advantage. The state is rolling out a platform that will allow the same access to students without the private financial resources. I’m very excited about this.

Lastly, Mendocino College is offering a very unique dual enrollment program over the summer at their Willits Center. Included are four classes, community speakers, lunch, and it will pay students $300 to attend. If I can get three or four students with a firm commitment to attend, we will provide the driver. Ninth-12th graders should see Mr. Howard.

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson, Superintendent

AV Unified School District

ANDERSON VALLEY BOYS A TEAM BASKETBALL team went 3-0 at the tournament in Willits today!

Special shoutouts to Logan and Nicholas for their remarkable performance, earning them spots on the All-Tournament Team. 

We’re eagerly awaiting the rankings to see where our team places. Stay tuned for more updates and join us in celebrating their hard work and success!

Go Panthers!

IT'S A WORK PARTY at the Anderson Valley Grange

When: Saturday Feb 17

Where: AV Grange 9800 Hwy 128

Time: 9:00 AM to Noon : 1PM-4PM

Tasks: Morning

Tasks: Afternoon

Are You Joining Us? I would love an RSVP so that I can know how many people are coming, and if you would like to be a Team Leader for one of the tasks above. If you are unsure, that's okay-show up when you can.

What To Bring:

For questions or RSVP, text me or email.

It's going to be a great community work party,

Laura Baynham, 707-684-9340

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Fanny is very playful and affectionate when she feels comfortable with her surroundings. She loves to play with stuffies and tennis balls, and she would like her new home to have lots of each, thank you very much! Fanny would enjoy a playful canine housemate to whoop it up with. Fanny went on a playdate and had the best time! We learned that she rides well in the car and really enjoyed sitting in a hammock with her human playmate. Fanny also sloshed around in a mud puddle, and had the BEST. DAY. EVER! Fanny is a mixed breed, SPAYED female puppy of 11 months and weighs 45-ish darling pounds. For more about Fanny and all our adoptable dogs and cats, head to mendoanimalshelter.com. For information about adoptions, call 707-467-6453. Check out our Facebook Page and please share our posts!

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE Calendar of Events

LANDLINES ARE LIFELINES

Editor,

As I was reading the letter from AT&T last week announcing that they wanted to remove land-line service here in Albion, the power went out!

What perfect timing, showing just how important land-lines are. They work when there is no power. We can still get emergency notices. We can call our friends and neighbors if we need help of any kind.

So many of us have no cell phones, and if we do have one there is no reception, so the cell phones are of no use.

Land-lines are a lifeline. Do not let AT&T take them from us.

Sincerely,

Louise Marianna

Albion

ED NOTES

JENNIFER CRUMBLEY is a terrible mother. Does that mean she should go to prison? We are in the midst of an unprecedented American trial: a parent criminally charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter for the school shooting perpetrated by her then 15-year-old son Ethan in 2021. Four students were killed and seven were wounded at Michigan's Oxford High School. The slaughtered students were popular, bright, attractive and athletic, targeted by Ethan for those very reasons. The weapon and ammunition Ethan used had been bought for him by his parents as a Christmas gift. Taking the stand this week, Jennifer Crumbley exposed herself as a profoundly disengaged mother who ignored her only child's desperate pleas for help, in one instance mocking him. On the other hand, if defective parents were hauled into court, the courts would have no time for anything else.

THE REASON we’re burdened in Mendocino County with an over-large delegation of judges — 9 for a population of 90,000 — is that our former justice court judges were declared Superior Court judges by declaration of the State Legislature, i.e., mostly lawyers. This coup occurred 40 years ago in a big cash and carry favor from the legislature lawyers to their country cousin lawyers sitting as judges in Mendocino County’s outback justice courts. 

BEFORE THAT, non-lawyer judges were cleared out of the justice courts on the transparently false grounds that only persons with law degrees were capable of dispensing justice. We’ll pause here for bitter laughter. 

THESE CONSECUTIVE done deals — only lawyers as justice court judges, and then justice court judges elevated to Superior Court status — were presented as a “court consolidation” made in the interest of judicial efficiency. Remember that next time you drive from the South Coast, Fort Bragg or Covelo to learn when you sit down in the basement of the County Courthouse only to be told you won't be needed, the matter has been settled.

OF COURSE the only thing that got consolidated was a guarantee of life-time employment plan for a group of underemployed rural lawyers, several of them re-entered hippies. 

THE MENDO COURTS, all courts in fact, are run for the convenience of the judges and their supporting apparatus of some 70 (count ‘em) employees operating mostly out of Ukiah. Controversial cases that should be heard in Fort Bragg, are still shunted over the hill to Ukiah to spare the judicial apparatus, especially the judges, the emotional strain of looking out at a courtroom of directly affected citizens.

ACCORDING to the Mendocino County Superior Court’s mission statement, our 80-person judicial team “is to provide quality equal justice for all by applying the law and Constitution in an impartial and fair manner; to provide an accessible forum to all segments of our community; to resolve disputes in a peaceful, dignified and timely manner; to maintain community respect and a leadership role in the administration of justice.”

SOMETIMES, I guess, it works out that way, but after all this consolidation-for-efficiency, and as another gift to the sorely put upon population of Mendocino County, our royal family of life judges are bringing us a new County Courthouse at the foot of West Perkins Street, Ukiah, a neighborhood already replete with fast food franchises, a sprawling gas station, and a medical complex. And as an added convenience for themselves, the “leadership in the administration of justice,” Mendo branch, has designed their new courthouse for themselves, meaning only them and their gofers. All the other County functions presently housed in the old County Courthouse in central Ukiah will remain where they are meaning, for instance, the DA will have to jog up and down Perkins to make court appearances.

NOT A PEEP of protest from our supervisors or the Ukiah city council, although a new courthouse will seriously disrupt County government and what's left of Ukiah's civic center.

THE NEW COUNTY COURTHOUSE is one more swindle pulled off by a gaggle of highly paid lawyers on top of the swindles that made them judges. 

The Greenwood Oasis, formerly Ruben's Oasis, formerly Nick's Oasis, formerly Jim's Oasis, formerly Evelyn's Oasis. Every little town had a bar, this was Elk's bright spot. They served a lot of Burgie, Lucky Lager and even some Hamm's. 

— Chuck Ross

IF YOU WERE WONDERING why Supervisor John Haschak is so ineffectual and wimpy as a Mendocino County Supervisor, one explanation might be the political company he keeps. According to Rusty Hicks who is running to replace Jim Wood as our State Assembly rep, Hicks is most prominently endorsed by, among many other prominent present and past area Democrats: Wesley Chesbro, Patty Berg, Dan Hauser, Bonnie Neely (former HumCo Supervisor), Juan Orozco (Ukiah City Councilman), Coast Hospital District Board member Susan Savage, John Haschak, and of course, Jim Wood himself.

IF YOU LIKE THOSE POLITICAL CIPHERS, if you like their annoyingly bland records, if you like the fact that they stand for nothing but themselves, if you yearn for more of the same, you'll love Rusty Hicks.

(Mark Scaramella)

FORT BRAGG CITY URGED TO OPPOSE GAZA GENOCIDE

Dear fellow citizens on the Fort Bragg City Council,

We are writing to you as a coalition of concerned citizens who are working to take action against the ongoing and shocking violence occurring in the Israel-Gaza conflict. After months of weekly demonstrations outside Town Hall calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a group of local citizens including a Palestinian, a Muslim, several Jewish folks, and others decided that we need to do more than just demonstrate. The group came together and, through a consensus process, drafted what we hope will become a city resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.

According to data from Reuters, at least 70 US cities have passed resolutions relating to the Israel-Gaza conflict (US city councils increasingly call for Israel-Gaza ceasefire, analysis shows | Reuters.

These resolutions have ranged from calling for an end to Israel's bombardment, to condemning the October 7th attacks in Israel, to more generalized calls for peace in the region. In drafting our Fort Bragg community resolution, we focused on what has been happening in the conflict from October 7th to the present. We kept our verbiage as non-partisan as possible, focusing on the loss of civilian lives on both sides of the conflict and striving to stay away from hot button issues, trigger words, and the long historical background. Please find the resolution attached.

Some people have argued that such resolutions are not within the purview of municipal councils and distract from domestic issues. However, the purpose of this nationwide groundswell of municipal resolutions is to generate evidence of the will of the people in regards to the horrific loss of life happening in the Gaza Strip. Such evidence leads to cumulative public pressure that moves up the chain of national representation to influence decision-making at the federal level. The passing of resolutions empowers a city council to make the voices of its constituents heard, and such resolutions have come from cities large and small in states across the nation. Cotati, Oakland, and San Francisco stand as some more-nearby examples, while Chicago recently became the largest city in the nation to pass one.

Furthermore, federal spending of public funds is a domestic issue. Our government has provided billions of dollars in military support to Israel and those funds equate to money out of all of our pockets. The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights estimates that, in 2023, the average taxpayer paid $25.25 to provide armaments and other military support to Israel--this figure translates to well over $100,000 provided by our local tax dollars (Home - US Campaign for Palestinian Rights,

That figure will substantially rise in 2024. Jon Shwarz, a journalist writing for The Intercept, demonstrated in a December 2023 article that any taxpayer can calculate their approximate contribution by multiplying the sum of their federal tax payment and any government bonds purchased by 0.004 (How Much of My U.S. Taxes in 2023 Went to Israel’s Gaza War. This means that a taxpayer who buys no government bonds and pays $25,000 in federal taxes has contributed approximately $100 to the violence in Gaza.

This violence is ongoing, and so is our government's complicity through material support of Israel's military. Time is of the essence in raising public pressure to call for a ceasefire. At least 27,000 people have been killed in Gaza, approximately 70% of them women and children. As of January 19th, two thirds of Gaza’s hospitals had been rendered non-operational by Israeli attacks (/Reuters/). Almost 1.9 million Gazans are displaced from their homes with nearly 1.4 million of them sheltering in overcrowded facilities, leading to dire increases in communicable disease. Up to 97% of people have inadequate food. This is largely due to Israel intensifying their standing blockade of Gaza into a “total siege,” and Israel has been accused by Human Rights Watch of “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” (/UN via /ReliefWeb).

We implore you to schedule our resolution as an agenda item for the next city council meeting on February 12th so that we, the citizens of Fort Bragg, can make haste in joining dozens of other cities in our country in demanding a ceasefire now. We are beginning to collect petition signatures from Fort Bragg residents who support the resolution, and we will present these to you on the city council ASAP. We eagerly await your reply regarding this time-sensitive issue.

Respectfully yours ,

Ceasefire Now Working Group:

UKIAH SPELLED BACKWARDS (Rendering from the Downtown Ukiah Haiku Walk)

— Craig Stehr, Ukiah

ED REPLY

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, February 3, 2024

BRETT ADAME, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

JOTHAM FORD, Willits. DUI, misdemeanor hit&run.

JULIO GONZALEZ-CARBAJAL, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

TERESA MANZO, Redwood Valley. Domestic battery.

ANNIKA NIELSON, Phoenix/Ukiah. DUI.

RYAN OKERSTROM, Willits. Shoplifting.

MICHAEL OLVERA-CAMPOS, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, false ID, parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

FRANCISCO PINA, Sacramento/Ukiah. DUI, probation revocation.

DAMIAN ROSALES-REYES, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

SARAH SCHMITZ, Redwood Valley. Domestic battery.

TRAVIS TIBBET, Eugene, Oregon/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

THE REAL SALMON THREAT

Editor,

There is misinformation being spread by groups following Rep. Jared Huffman’s erroneous theory that taking down dams will restore salmon. Stop blaming dams. Salmon populations are declining from California up to Alaska. Put the blame where it belongs.

The Eel River has four major forks and hundreds of tributaries where salmon and steelhead spawn. The most egregious problems are illegal water diversions for unpermitted cannabis operations and chemicals leaching into these depleted tributaries. “A River’s Last Chance” (Amazon Prime) documents hundreds of these illegal water diversions. Who is addressing this problem?

Huffman’s federal money could be better spent to help the fish by saving and upgrading the Van Arsdale diversion and repairing and raising Scott Dam to hold more water. Upgrading the existing fish ladder at Van Arsdale Dam and installing a hydroelectric plant at Scott Dam could power a fish hatchery using only native broodstock eggs.

Salmon populations can be improved by Scott Dam holding back cold water for release in the fall when salmon are returning, especially in dry years, while limiting summer diversions. Our existing dams and reservoirs provide the much-needed water capacity to provide for the fish and humans.

David Fanucchi

Geyserville

UNFAIR RULES

Editor: 

Sarah Hunter Simanson’s story of loving the gig economy when it met her needs, then struggling with gig work when it no longer fit her circumstances is a perfect example of what happens when government passes rigid anti-gig legislation like California’s AB 5 and the new federal rules modeled on AB 5. (“Can millennials escape gig economy?” Jan. 27 Press Democrat).

There are many workers who want and need workplace protections and employer-paid benefits, but there are just as many who want to go it on their own and make their own work decisions who are prohibited by AB 5 and similar legislation.

As the author of “Small Time Operator,” a guidebook for gig workers and self-employed people, I have interacted with many frustrated people who are unable to make an independent living because of the one-size-fits-all rules of AB 5. I am still hopeful that the federal government will revise its new rules to protect workers but allow for the concept of personal choice.

Bernard B. Kamoroff

Willits

HOW TO EAT CHEAP & GOOD

by Harvey Reading

Simple. I buy beans and rice by the 20-pound bag, cook them, and eat a couple or three bowlsful every day. I eat meat every other day and alternate between pork loin that I cut into chops and freeze and eat a half chicken breast every third day. On no-meat days, I make pancakes at lunchtime or sometimes late in the afternoon. I only go into Riverton about every three months, and my food tab runs between roughly $180-$240 per trip.

I quit eating out during covid, which wasn’t hard, since the Chinese smorgy where I ate closed down. I guess it was around 2012 or 13 when I gave up eating meat every day and took up cooking and eating beans and rice. Even before my eating habits changed, I never spent even close to $200 per week for food, including an occasional burger. That’s a lotta money, almost a thousand per month…for one person.

I had given up soft drinks years ago, and gave up booze before I was 40. I still roast, grind and drink three mugsful of coffee per day. One roast lasts about a week. I avoid cookies and prepared snacks, though on my tri-monthly trip to town, I do buy several packages of pastry at the Walmart bakery. They last me about two days, then back to the normal routine. Oh, and I also bake my own rolls, a dozen at a time. I eat one per day, cut in half and coated with a mix of strawberry jam and peanut butter. I also eat a couple or three bowls of heated rolled oats every day. I cook them in the microwave.

Since beginning my current pattern of eating, my weight has gone from 185 to 160, the latter my weight as a high-school senior. I feel much better, too. There are reasons that many people eat beans and rice to survive. They’re good for you, too.

I simply cannot imagine spending $200 per week for food!

A READER WRITES: "For medical reasons and rain-ravaged roads I have been confined to my small area most of the last two months and I am not living the nature-loving recluse lifestyle that I prefer. But I'm aging out on wilderness solitude and whatever I had garnered of self-sufficiency, and soon enough will happily age out of a self. Trump looks like the presumptive Republican nominee, so you are welcome to join my new organization, "Start the Steal 24," and maybe we can avoid a psychopathic narcissist for a leader. Dread and despair seem the order of the day."

WHEN YOUR HEART IS IN THE MOUNTAINS

Through the city’s maze I wandered

When the lights were shining bright

Everyone seemed full of gladness

For it was a gala night

.

But my thoughts were tinged with sadness

While around me all were gay

For my heart was in the mountains

And they seemed so far away

.

Oh, the cities have attractions

That awaken our delight

Markets, parks, and homes of splendor

Buildings of imposing height

.

But amid the toil and turmoil

Vagrant thoughts will go astray

When your heart is in the mountains

And they seem so far away

— Edna C. Beck

(From Lake County historian Henry Mauldin’s massive ‘Notes’ (now available on line from the Lake County Museum), Page 8,429. Via Betsy Cawn)

MEMO OF THE AIR, I've still got the blues for you.

"What happened to, if you shoot it you eat it. Don't they teach kids that anymore?"

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-02-02) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0578

Last night's show had and has all the features, all the regular story writers, sections and departments /and/ Eleanor and Del, and a chapter from Dan Hibshman's new book, with plenty more to come. Next week's show can feature your story or dream or poem or kvetch, too. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air. That's what I'm here for.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

That time filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984 when stage pyrotechnics caught Michael Jackson's hair grease on fire, he didn't notice, kept dancing, and was rescued by being mobbed by technicians throwing their coats over him, none of which ended up being used in the ad, which is crazy. I'd start with that and build the rest of the ad around it. They did MRI studies and all kinds of scientific experiments that showed that even people who claim to like Coca Cola better really, underneath, like Pepsi –your brain likes it better– but there's some psychological function twisting this up. You don't have to understand the function to manipulate it. I'd go with, /Pepsi sets your head on fire!/ with Michael Jackson jerking his head this way and that, grabbing his crotch, spinning around, shrieking. Indelible. And six years later Pepsi actually owned a fleet of Russian war submarines, so I'd tie it in with that too. https://www.vintag.es/2024/01/michael-jackson-pepsi-commercial-burn.html

How we get brown sugar, which is regular sugar with wet brown sauce in it. I'll bet chocolate syrup would work for this. Almond syrup isn't brown, but that would be good too. Which reminds me, one of my million-dollar ideas from the column in /Memo/ thirty years ago was almond syrup or chocolate syrup in capsules to drop into a hot drink, in a bowl next to the sugar cubes and cup of cream everywhere they sell coffee, as well as brown sugar cubes, that people would see as a healthy alternative to white sugar. You wouldn't have to say it's healthy; it just looks healthier, so by the placebo effect it is, like those weird bitter kinds of lettuce, but unlike them by being yummy. (via NagOnTheLake) https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/230511/light-or-dark-brown-sugar

Could humans survive? Enclaves of super-rich ones and their domestic slaves, yes, in bomb shelters stocked with enough air and water and food and power for fifteen years, in a kind of underground Snowpiercer situation. This is why we need a space program, to slowly but surely nudge a giant asteroid off course with rocket engines or bombs, and give humanity a few more hundred years' chance to deliberately develop all of Earth into a giant Snowpiercer situation, even more than it already has been. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/02/could-humans-survive-major-asteroid.html

And Tom's Jeannie! https://laughingsquid.com/toms-diner-i-dream-of-jeannie-mashup/

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

GAVIN NEWSOM DISCUSSES SHOPLIFTING INCIDENT HE WITNESSED. ‘WHERE’S YOUR MANAGER?’

Newsom said the clerk did nothing—and blamed the governor.

by Andrew Sheeler

California Gov. Gavin Newsom saw a shoplifting at a local Target. But the real controversy came when a clerk did nothing—and blamed the governor for motivating her not to act.

Newsom was shopping at a Sacramento area Target. It’s unclear when the alleged incident occurred. Target Corporation did not respond to The Bee’s request for comment by deadline.

The governor discussed the incident during a Zoom call to promote Proposition 1, a ballot measure to restructure mental health and substance abuse treatment in the state and also address the homelessness crisis. A recording of the account was shared on X, formerly Twitter, by San Jose Mercury News reporter Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler.

“As we’re checking out, the woman says, ‘Oh, he’s just walking out, he didn’t pay for that.’ I said, ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ She goes, ‘Oh, the governor.’ I swear to God, true story, on my mom’s grave,” Newsom said in the recording.

“‘The governor lowered the threshold, there’s no accountability,’” the cashier said, according to Newsom, who said he responded, “‘That’s just not true.’ I said we have the 10th toughest, $950, the 10th toughest (felony theft threshold) in America. She didn’t know what I was talking about.”

The cashier did not recognize Newsom at first, the governor said.

Newsom stressed that California has the 10th lowest felony theft threshold in the country, saying “No one gives a damn about it, right?”

“And I said it’s just not true, and she said we don’t stop them because of the governor. And then she looks at me twice and then she freaks out, she calls everyone over, wants to take photos,” Newsom said in the video.

“I’m like, ‘No, I’m not taking a photo. We’re having a conversation, where’s your manager? Why are you blaming the governor? And it was, you know, $380 later, and I was like, ‘Why am I spending $380, everyone can walk the hell right out?’”

Newsom has called for California lawmakers to toughen the penalties for people who steal in order to resell, as well as those who actually resell stolen property. He also has called for clarifying the state’s penal code to allow law enforcement to aggregate multiple thefts together in order to reach the felony threshold.

That legislation is pending consideration by state lawmakers.

(Sacramento Bee)

* * *

ON LINE COMMENTS

 [1] The real crux of the story is how out of touch the governor is with life in CA.

[2] Why didn't the Governor stop the thief?

[3] Yet he walks and talks with a security detail that is set to defend him against any threat. The worst is yet to come.

[4] He personally shopped at Target? Why don't I believe this story?

[5] And it was, you know, $380 later, and I was like, ‘Why am I spending $380, everyone can walk the hell right out?’

[6] Newsom is just figuring this out now? Is he that tone deaf to what's been going on for sometime now?

[7] That's the real theft...

[8] That's scenario is even worse. Knowing and doing nothing to change the situation. I'd stick with the tone deaf if I were you.

[9] He's been tone deaf since he was mayor of SF… He was tone deaf at the French laundry too!

[10] Like the governor, grumpygirl you're missing th essential point.

[11] It's alot cheaper than that time Shaq went to Walmart

[12] “California Gov. Gavin Newsom saw a shoplifting at a local Target. But the real controversy came when a clerk did nothing—and blamed the governor for motivating her not to act.” Didn't newsom know about CA senate bill 553 that forbids retail store workers from confronting thieves?

[13] Right! Retail clerks who chased down shoplifters were hurt, maimed, and for what! Safeway on Mendocino Avenue was notorious for having theft problems!

[14] Petaluma Freidman’s fired a guy in electrical for stopping a shoplifter.

[15] That law doesn't directly address theft. It addresses the danger posed to employees by violent people, which may also include paying customers that have threatened violence . It requires the employer to at the very least to seek a temporary restraining order protecting the employee. A disgruntled customer will no longer be able to menace an employee while the employer claims to be powerless to protect the employee.

[16] Newsom wasn't shopping at Target. He was doing a compliance audit of the required “non gender toy aisle” law that he created.

[17] The best part, “We’re having a conversation, where’s your manager?” Why? Are you going to have this person fired because they said something you didn’t like? Entitled elite.

[18] The Gov went full KAREN.

[19] I find Newsom's “story” lacking credibility! As governor, he travels with armed security provided by the CHP and traveling with security one would believe that alone would bring attention and curiosity. Also add the fact the governor doing his own grocery shopping? From someone who dines at the French Laundry? HUMMM?

[20] The criminals are way too protected and this will never get better unless drastic changes are made regarding accountability. Drastic, as in change our liberal ways to get society back on track. I’ll bet Michael Fay has not spray painted any cars since ‘93 and probably has PTSD when he hears a spray can rattle. Corporal punishment may be the only viable solution. Target doesn’t pay for those losses, we all pay for the cost of those goods stolen and something needs to change. [21] Considering the source, you really think this happened? He hasn't gotten much of a track record in honesty, has he?

[21] True, I usually don't use “honesty” and “Newsom” in the same sentence.

“One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.” 

— James Joyce

E. JEAN CARROLL VS. TRUMP

He huffed and he puffed
But couldn’t blow her house down
That’s what she showed us

— Jim Luther

INSIDE TRUMP’S NOT-SO SWIFT BRAIN

by Maureen Dowd

It’s easy to imagine what’s going through Donald Trump’s head right now. I can hear his interior monologue all the way from Mar-a-Lago. He’s fulminating, working himself up to another epic meltdown, like he had over Nikki Haley the night he won the New Hampshire primary. The thoughts pinballing through Trump’s cortex might be something like this:

“I like Taylor Swift. I do. She’s made a career of revenge, which gets my Complete and Total Endorsement. She’s beautiful, just my type, unlike that wack job E. Jean Carroll and her sick lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.

“Rachel Maddow is not getting my money for that penthouse and shopping spree E. Jean promised her on MSDNC. Rachel wears the same outfit every day anyway. Besides, I don’t have $83 million. My third-rate lawyers drained the money I siphoned from my donors. I thought everyone knew I made that up about being a billionaire.

“I’ll tell you what: The idea that Taylor Swift is more popular than me is a joke. Her fans are 13 years old. They can’t even vote.

“In the Rigged and Stolen election of 2020, I got the most votes of any president in history. She doesn’t have more fans than me. She doesn’t! And my fans are more committed. Swifties won’t stand in line as long as mine. They’ve never broken into the Capitol for her. Oh, what a beautiful day that was.

“Now let me just tell you, I’m two for two, dominating in Iowa and New Hampshire, great, great, fantastic states, very special places. Every place we go we have tens of thousands of people outside every arena. They have to build larger arenas in this country just for me, right?

“Taylor seems like a nice girl, a little too wholesome for my taste. She did a Diet Coke ad and I like Diet Coke. She even got Birdbrain to take her daughter to a concert. And sure, I have a Taylor friendship “BFF” bracelet. Who doesn’t? That neurotic dope Maureen Dowd once compared me to a 13-year-old girl. SHE DOESN’T KNOW ME!

“Taylor more popular than me? Wrong! My movement is so much bigger and more fanatical than her movement. I could beat her so badly. Melania has been on more magazine covers than Taylor. More men hit on Melania than Taylor.

“And Taylor should not have been Time magazine’s Person of the Year. I should have been on the cover. I am the greatest phenomenon in history! And it should still be Man of the Year. What’s with ‘Person’?

“Like I told The Daily Caller, I wish Taylor and Travis the best. I hope they enjoy their life, maybe together, maybe not. Probably not. Too bad we have to take Taylor down. I liked Taylor’s music about 25 percent less in 2018, when she endorsed that loser Phil Bredesen against Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee. Then I liked her 50 percent less in 2020 when she accused me of trying to ‘blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold onto power,’ when I waged war on the post office to undermine mail-in voting, because those weenie Democrats didn’t want to leave the house during Covid. If she endorses Biden again, I’ll like her 200 percent less.

“SAD! But Taylor must be destroyed. She and Travis will be deified as prom king and queen at the Super Bowl, especially if 87 pops the question on America’s Holy Day like they’re in a Hallmark movie. And no one can be deified more than me. I AM THE BIGGEST CELEBRITY ON THE PLANET! Jon Voight, that old Midnight Cowboy, compared me to Jesus, and my tremendous followers think God has sent me to fight the Marxists and fix America, which is now a third-world country.

“Taylor is being treated like an American icon, but I’m the American icon. I’m trying to save America by destroying democracy, the N.F.L. and Taylor Swift. I know it might seem crazy to attack the things that bind America. But I alone can fix it.

“MAGA is waging a Holy War on her because she’s going to urge people to vote, and that would be mainly suburban women who hate me. They tell me, ‘I don’t know if the suburban women like you.’ Suburban women, will you please like me — I saved your damn neighborhoods, OK?

“It’s pathetic that Crooked Joe Biden needs a pop singer to drag him over the finish line. It didn’t help Crooked Hillary when she got propped up by Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Christina Aguilera, Bon Jovi, Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus. Speaking of music, I hope Taylor doesn’t get a Grammy. I deserve a Grammy!

“Black voters, Hispanic voters, young voters are coming to my side because I’m the greatest. The economy is roaring and the stock market is at record highs because investors are projecting I will beat Biden.

“Biden’s aides have to leak stories about how he calls me a Sick F-Word in private because I cheered on Jan. 6 rioters and I joke about Paul Pelosi getting hit with a hammer by a MAGA supporter. As if cursing like I do makes him a tough guy. Besides, I like violence. It adds some excitement to the rallies.

“LOOK AT WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, Taylor. You and Mr. Pfizer are now at the top of my enemies list. I don’t get too angry, I get even. Hey, Taylor, that would be a good song title for you!”

AMERICA THIS WEEK

Walter Kirn: I think there've been several points in my career as a journalist, and sometimes political journalist, where I've realized that they're all the same. And another one was back in the early nineties when I went to Washington to cover the new editor of the New Republic for the New York Times, Andrew Sullivan.

And Andrew Sullivan was somewhat conservative, a little bit religious minded, Oxfordian who had come to take over the gold-plated, liberal New Republic. And I sat in on some of their meetings and some of their editorial meetings, and they had all these star journalists at the time, who were all on TV, Michael Kinsley, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, et cetera. And as I listened to the talk and the table talk and spoke to them in the halls and interviewed them, and so on, I realized they were all the same. And they all hung out with politicians, and they hung out with politicians of both sides, and their kids all went to school together, and their wives worked for each other's places and... They were mostly men in this case. And the little boy from Minnesota said, it was sort of like Jimmy Stewart. And Mr. Smith. "Wow, this is a big club. George Carlin was right."

Matt Taibbi: And you ain't in it.

Walter Kirn: And you ain't in it.

Matt Taibbi: Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. There was a senatorial aide named Jeff Cotton who wrote a book about his experiences in Washington, and he had this whole term for this that has become kind of popularized. He doesn't get credit for it, but the blob.

Walter Kirn: Oh, he started the blob, huh?

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. And the concept of it was something that you get if you know enough people who live in DC or if you've been in that world. Everybody's kind of married to somebody else, right? This person works for that K Street lobbying firm. This person is in this advocacy group. The other person's an aide for this Republican congressman. But whatever parties they're in, they're all kind of part of the same thing, and it's this network of interrelationships that has its own priorities. And Jeff was someone I talked to a lot about financial reform after 2008. This is a pet issue for him, and this was why they ended up coming up with this. All of the responses to 2008 were kind of the polar opposite to what FDR did after the depression.

Instead of instituting clear, simple rules that would've recreated a landscape in which everyone can participate and have more confidence in the system, they instead did backroom deal after backroom deal. They made a reform law that was ridiculously complicated that only the most lawyered up companies and which only the most lawyered up banks and financial companies could possibly succeed. So they made it more oligarchical going forward, and they used all the public treasure to save themselves. And that's how it happens, because it's all these people are kind of in bed with each other. There's no adversarial thing there.

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: But in addition to that, now in this era, we have to think about other responses. Like you say, are they doing intelligence operations against us? I think they are. Clearly, the censorship thing is in that genre. I'd say Russia Gate is in that genre. The pandemic, there are elements of that we have to have questions about. And all of this is designed to increase control over the disobedient populace, I think.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Yeah. And if I were a sociologist, I'd say it's probably good for America to ventilate some of this energy rather than repress it. For how long can you do that? It's like you're not being allowed to sell a stock.

Matt Taibbi: Which by the way, they did in 2008. They didn't allow you to short certain stocks. But anyway, go ahead.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There's a trading halt on certain issues. You're not allowed to sell NATO. You're not allowed to sell the liberal global order.

Matt Taibbi: Right. You got to hold that stock.

Walter Kirn: You got to hold all these stocks. And the eternal wisdom suggests what won't come in through the door will come in through the window, and now they're barring the windows, the third parties, all of these vehicles which are attempting to, as I say, ventilate some of this energy. So where do they think it's going to go? What's the plan, not for how to keep people off ballots, but how to keep these thoughts, these positions, these energies out of the system? Can they make them go away?

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, and that's the fascinating question, is they have a million lawyers. They've got all this money. The amounts of money that have been poured into all these different new foundations that just do all this, I'm sorry, there's no other word for it, rat fucking basically. They have tons and tons of money, lots and lots of lawyers, and they're all going to be trained on things like the minutiae of electoral law, which is incredibly complicated. It's state by state, right? So you need institutional muscle to navigate that. They have a lot of that. They're spending a lot of that. They're spending that energy and that advantage, but they're not spending any of it on thinking about the question of, what are we going to do with all these people who are going to be more angry with us than they were even last year at the end of this thing? They just seem incapable of looking in the mirror. So we've gone over this theme, but-

Walter Kirn: Yeah. That suggests to me that they have a confidence in mind control that is insufficiently appreciated, that they think if they can lawfare all the details of the decision making, they can then afterwards somehow mind control all the frustration that's being caused, or maybe they have a mop-up operation for those people who continue to be upset that involves more than just persuasion. Who knows? I think that's the growing paranoia in America, is that okay, they're blocking all my traditional outlets for venting frustration, and they're no longer convincing me. Their bread and circus campaigns aren't quite working on me either. Are they just going to take me away? And when we see all these attempts to declare certain kinds of speech extremist, we know that that may be coming in some fashion.

Matt Taibbi: And it's not a completely irrational... Right, the fear is they're going to create, there's going to be some gigantic Florence, Colorado supermax style thing in the middle of Greenland or something like that, and that's where they're going to take all the troublemakers, which sounds insane, but I remember talking to people who lived through the Soviet years, and they would have conversations with friends about the gulags and things like that. And these other people would be like, "No, no, no, that's not true. That's all just rumors." Right? And you can read about some of this stuff in the Gulag Archipelago too. There were people who were just absolutely convinced that none of this was going on. Actually, they had this amazing system dotting the gigantic Russian landscape, and they were taking people away in bread trucks in the middle of the night so you couldn't see the arrests happening a lot. It's not totally irrational to be paranoid in... To be clear, we're not there, but I understand why people are crazy, are upset.

Walter Kirn: Well, but one tiny step toward that is keeping lists of who signed what petitions and then contacting them to say that you know that they signed it, and again, giving them a choice to correct their decision in a way that might make things better for them. That doesn't have to exist except as a nightmare to modify people's behavior. And we also know now that there are electronic and data oriented ways to discipline people's behavior, punish them. And I think almost all of us now have seen that rehearsed in social media and hope it won't be rehearsed in more practical ways, having to do with bank accounts and things like that. But when Yuval Harari speaks-

Matt Taibbi: That's a creepy tweet, man.

Walter Kirn: ... you wonder what the stick behind it is. And I've lived my life in the more paranoid precincts of America where there are gun shows and people who imagine taking last stands as in a western and so on, but a lot of them that I met back in the 90s... And there's an amazing continuity in terms of the paranoia on the American fringes. It really hasn't changed all that. Back in the 70s when I was a Mormon, there was a lot of similar talk and apocalyptic fear of the mark of the beast being put on people so that they couldn't participate in the economy and so on. It doesn't change, but they don't seem to be progressively more ridiculous as the years go on. They rack up certain points that never seem to get taken off the board.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. But all of those things seem more realistic now than they probably did in the 70s.

Walter Kirn: Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: I do feel like there's an algorithm somewhere that is slowly tallying all the things that I've done wrong and all the wrong contacts that I have on my phone list and …

Walter Kirn: There is that.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah.

Walter Kirn: Just as a tiny little novelistic aside, sometimes I'll be searching on my phone, and I'll go, okay, they liked that one. Ooh, this one's going to make them mad. Oh, this one, they won't be able to figure out. This one, they'll be entertained by. I've incorporated big brother. He now owns a little module in my head, a little guard tower right up here. And I sometimes speculate on his reactions to my behavior as I go through the day, having conversations, making internet searches, talking on the phone, doing a podcast. So are you saying that somewhere, that's being tallied? Yeah, it is. Right inside my head where they want it to be tallied.

Matt Taibbi: That's actually a really good point. Now, we have this sort of Señor Wences relationship with our own paranoia about this stuff.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. Well, so we could get our own fitness tractors, a social fitness tractor. So before they do the centralized digital currency or social credit score that everybody is ballyhooing and is so fearful about, maybe we could front run that process by having a wrist wristband, which will show us how we're doing so we don't ever run afoul of that thing in the future.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, that would be great. We could make a fortune making that.

Walter Kirn: The America This Week political fitness tractor that will tell you... Yeah. If you postulate that a totalitarian system is coming or may secretly already be in place, you can judge, you can comport yourself accordingly starting now. Why wait until the Florence Supermax facilities are built? You don't want to ever have to go near that thing, should it come. And it'll come up with little recommendations, like sit down in front of your Samsung TV and cheer on Rachel Maddow for half an hour that will wash away what you just did by listening to Jimmy Dore for an hour.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, there'll be a formula for penance, right? If you want to listen to Five Minutes of Jimmy Dore, you have to read Chuck Todd's book. And yeah, I think that's a good idea. It's like Catholicism but worse.

Walter Kirn: Right.

“Without poets, without artists... everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit.”

― Guillaume Apollinaire

ONCE THE STORM IS OVER, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about. 

— Haruki Murakami