Mendocino County Today: Saturday 3/16/24

Sunny | Heilan Coo | Aural Assault | AVCSD Resignations | Fortunate Sheep | Ukiah Construction | Calypso Orchid | Skunk Review | Mo's Meeting | Scott's Sharpening | Vet Gratitude | Ocean View | Only One | Sheriff Interview | Adverse Effects | Yesterday's Catch | Torturing Tinkerbelle | Sanchez Sketchbook | Marco Radio | Godfather 1972 | Cannabis Tax | Cat Training | Incredible Hash | Low Wages | Dorothea Puente House | Up End | TikTok Ban | Lady Pilot | Neoliberal Doctrines | Our Collapse | Wonderful Season | 1969 Hippies

WARM, DRY WEATHER will continue through the weekend into early next week. Unsettled weather and cooler temperatures return late next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 42F under clear skies this Saturday morning on the coast. Our lovely weather is forecast to continue well into next week. A large surf & sneaker waves are still happening along the shore this morning so heads up beach walkers.

THE WINE INDUSTRY’S ANNUAL ASSAULT on Anderson Valley began again for 2024 early Friday morning, March 15, when the first of their giant frost protection machines broke Friday morning’s quiet sleep of thousands of Valley residents with their now-familiar rumble. This nuisance goes back to spring of 2011 when the wine industry started using these infernal machines to keep a few of their precious buds from freezing. As Philo Grape Grower Ted Bennett told some complainers at the time: “My grapes are more important than your sleep.” Although the local wine industry said at the time that there was a permit process that addressed “noise, placement and need” of the rattletrap fans, that was a blatant lie since the “permit process” addressed only concrete and electrical considerations. When the Major sued the County to implement the same permit process that the wine people said was in place (but was not), County Counsel Doug Losak, speaking for the County as a whole, responded by saying that the Major would have to put up a $1 million bond just to be allowed to sue! Losak also said that the fans were not a nuisance because they’d been in use in the Ukiah Valley for pear growing since the 1950s. Not one Supervisor — especially Anderson Valley’s then-Supervisor Dan Hamburg — said word one on the record about the problem. Now that the fans have been in use since 2011, the claim that they are a new nuisance no longer even applies. The fans have become another giant nuisance on top of the pesticides, water draws, and other “agricultural” (i.e., grapes) nuisances heaped on locals so that a few grape growers can produce and sell fancy wine. 

ANDERSON VALLEY COMMUNITY SERVICES DISTRICT NEWS

The AVCSD’s General Manager Cora Richard has announced that she is resigning as of the March. District Secretary Patty Liddy had previously announced her resignation at about the same time. Rather than hire direct replacements, the Board is considering some internal reorganizations which will be discussed further at next Wednesday’s Board meeting at the Boonville Firehouse at 3pm. 

UKIAH CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FOR THE WEEK OF MARCH 18

The return of the sunshine brings the return of construction crews, including concrete and landscaping teams. On the south side of the project, between Gobbi and Cherry, concrete crews will begin patching the sections where utility work was done. Joint trench work will continue between Mill and Gobbi, moving to the east side of the street, starting near Mill and moving south toward Gobbi. There will be temporary impacts to some driveways, but crews will provide advance notification and will work to place steel plates across the driveways as quickly as possible. 

On the north side (Norton to Henry), crews are completing the concrete work and installing new street lights. Some of them have already been energized! Also, we’re starting to see some of the utility poles come down, now that the utilities are underground. What a difference this makes! In most parts of this section, on-street parking has been restored. The on-street parking is not very intuitive, because the orange delineators (cone-thingies) must remain in place to keep vehicles traveling in a single lane. However, it IS okay, unless there are barricades in place that state otherwise, to park inside (to the right of) those delineators.

When will the project be complete? We’re estimating in about June. Thanks for your patience!

Work on the joint trench for electrical and communication lines between Mill and Gobbi continues; on the north side, concrete work, installation of the new street lights, and removal of utility poles will continue.

Construction hours will be Monday-Friday, 7 a.m. - 6 p.m., depending on the weather.

Disruptions: On the south side, on-street parking in the construction zone will be closed; however, on-street parking on the north side of the project is open in most areas (see above). Pedestrian access to businesses will be maintained at all times. Through traffic on State Street will be allowed in both directions. Traffic signals at Gobbi/State and Mill/State will remain on flash.

Enjoy the sunshine!

Shannon Riley, Deputy City Manager, City of Ukiah, sriley@cityofukiah.com

COASTAL COMMISSION URGES ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW FOR PROPOSED RAILWAY RESTORATION BETWEEN WILLITS AND FORT BRAGG

…“When we talk about passenger rail, I think sometimes people conflate that a train that has people on it is passenger rail, but I think that that’s not transportation…because the people are just riding for amusement…It’s no more transportation than a roller coaster.” — Coastal Commissioner Mike Wilson of Arcata

mendofever.com/2024/03/15/coastal-commission-urges-environmental-review-for-proposed-railway-restoration-between-willits-and-fort-bragg/

JACOB BROWN (on Supervisor Maureen Mulheren’s meeting on improving communications with veterans):

“The meeting went well. It sounds like they have found a building for AQMD that they are interested in (not a county owned building, so it must be leased). There were many issues discussed but the primary issue was how to get the veterans plugged into the County Veteran Service Office and how to best communicate, coordinate and inform this population in the future. It is something we, as veterans, need to take point on. Hopefully more to come in the near future.”

THANKS FOR FIXING YOUR ERROR, SUPES

To: Mendocino County Supervisors and Mendocino County CEO Darcie Antle 

On behalf of Lewis white Post 76, American Legion, Ukiah, and all Veterans in the County, I wish to express our sincere thanks and gratitude for your support of our request to move our Ukiah Veterans Service Office back to its previous location on Observatory Avenue. 

The unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors in favor of this action reflects that you all truly do respect and support the welfare of our veterans and serving their needs. 

Further, your timely action on this matter, following presentation and discussion at the recent Board Meeting, restores our faith in the American democratic system, where the “people” do have a voice, and are heard. It was the right thing to do. 

Thanks are also in order to CEO Antel and the County staff that have been involved in working on this issue. 

A special thanks to staff member Tony Rakes who has been involved in this issue from the start and has shown us the greatest in courtesy, understanding, and respect throughout the process. 

Please feel free to call upon our Post in the future anytime you need input regarding Veterans, or help on community service projects (especially those of a patriotic nature). 

Thank you again! 

Ralph Paulin, Adjutant, Lewis White Post 76, American Legion

Ukiah

VETS NEED UNITY

Editor,

Five supervisors, only one actively engaged the gaggle of unappreciative, generally egotistical veterans [at Supervisor Mulheren’s recent veterans outreach event]. I live with a half dozen other vets and have never seen any of these people reaching out to help them, including myself. If it wasn’t for HUDVASH [?], we would get no support at all. I went to an event where the VSO and VA had side by side tables yet did not even know each other. That has not changed despite me asking them both to please do their jobs more properly. There is no recourse for a veteran who has problems with a VSO/VSP [Veterans Service Office/Program]. I’m hoping this incident will shine some light on the desparate condition of the veteran community. A community that can be so bold and childish as to not appreciate a young woman who never served, stepping up to the plate for myself and the other veterans the so-called community does not acknowledge. 

I suggest that instead of throwing barbs, using this opportunity to create a clearer dialog with a larger percentage of the wonderful untapped resource in our veterans, especially the ones who have come from the streets/bottom. I’ll believe all these words of brotherhood when I see it in real time with the neediest vets BEFORE they end up on the streets or a tick on the number 22. 

I have done years of veteran suicide prevention and intervention. Not for money, I didn’t get paid, and I saved a lot of people. Hope these people understand throwing in a candidate just to have one was a terrible idea, but at the time I’m hoping they all learned little bit more about the complexities our county will always face. There is no end, we are part of a cycle, and again, I hope this will bring our community closer through mutual understandings.

Have a nice day.

Goldie

Ukiah

SHERIFF MATT KENDALL TACKLES HOMELESSNESS AND ADDICTION on Mendo’s Homegrown ‘Like It or Not’ Podcast

Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall recently sat down with the hosts of the Like It or Not podcast for a candid discussion on issues he faces as the elected lawman of MendoLand. Hosts Carter Lane and Drew Nicoll asked Sheriff Kendall about an array of topics such as the Homeless Drug Addicted and Theft Reduction Act, strategies for combating the opioid crisis, and the recent security breach involving fentanyl in Mendocino County Jail.…

mendofever.com/2024/03/15/sheriff-matt-kendall-tackles-homelessness-and-addiction-on-mendos-homegrown-like-it-or-not-podcast/

ADVERSE EFFECTS

Editor,

Has anyone noticed that recent laws seem to be only affecting the law abiding? I attempted to purchase some shotgun shells a while back and found I was unable to do so. I was told I hadn’t completed the correct forms nor paid a fee for a background check. I have been purchasing shotguns shells since I was 12 years old. I’m not prohibited from possessing firearms so why do I need to complete forms, pay fees and jump through these hoops to do something I have been doing for over four decades?

Every bill or legislative action has a legislative intent. Often that intent can be hard to find. However we should look closely. The reason I bring this up is that we are headed into the political season and as we prepare to cast votes for people and legislation, I am hopeful everyone will spend some time actually reading the text that our laws will be decided on. California has a long history of deceptive election tactics being used against our voters to sway them one direction or the other. A little bit of disinformation seems to go a long way. When we see bills and legislation which will have adverse effects on law abiding residents I think we have to look a little harder at what is happening.

We all remember the “Safe Schools And Neighborhoods Act” also known as Proposition 47. We all want safe schools and neighborhoods, therefore the bill passed. The legislative intent behind this bill was to reduce prison populations and had little or nothing to do with the descriptions provided in the summary. Biased ballot measure titles and summaries will undermine our democracy. 

There is a way to reduce prison populations. However it will take time. We can reduce these populations through opportunity, education, and accountability. Sadly, these are three things we seem to continually struggle with in California. Continuing to criminalize behaviors of good people isn’t the direction we should be moving in, and I fear it will eventually become our undoing.

This has been a problem for many years and has gotten so bad that transparency advocates introduced a constitutional amendment (ACA 7) in 2019 that would remove the Legislature and the Attorney General from the process of providing ballot material content. Instead, this legislation proposed the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) would be mandated the responsibility to write the circulating and pamphlet ballot label, title, and summary for all measures put before voters. In California, the LAO has a well-deserved reputation as a fair arbiter on matters of public policy.

ACA 7 was designed to address what multiple media sources have reported regarding the politicization of the ballot pamphlet process by the office of the Attorney General who, at that time, was Xavier Becerra. Sadly, and predictably, ACA 7 failed to make it out of the legislature where it was deemed to be a threat to entrenched political interests. Exactly why the amendment was proposed. 

There have been many experiments conducted by researchers regarding informed minority vs an uninformed majority. Each time the results are clear, an informed group will always prevail over the uninformed. I am hopeful we will all do our best to be informed regarding the laws we are voting for. Some of these have been real doozies and we are seeing the results of legislation running roughshod over the law-abiding residents. 

Sheriff Matt Kendall

Ukiah

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, March 15, 2024

JANE BARISIONE, Laytonville. Vehicular manslaughter in commission of unlawful act without gross negligence.

JOSE BARRIGA-BARRERA, Ukiah. Stalking in violation of restraining order, county parole violation, resisting.

ANGELA CHAMBERLAIN, Riverside/Fort Bragg. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, embezzlement, fraud to obtain aid, concealed dirk-dagger, controlled substance without prescription.

LACEY DEVEREUX, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

TONY PAUL, Ukiah. Dumping in commercial quantities.

EMIL REDZIC, Ukiah. Community supervision violation.

KYLE SOTELO, Hopland. Vandalism, conspiracy.

MARCO MCCLEAN: I stumbled on this story in DeComp, a story and poetry site I occasionally mine for material to read on the radio. And I thought of you.

CRYSTALLOGRAPHY

by Brian Bahouth

When the radio signal came from the bottom of the hill that the police had breached the lower barricade and were on their way up the dirt road, a pair of logging activists locked themselves to a massive yellow bulldozer, and I began the climb up into my hiding spot.…

decompmagazine.com/crystallography.htm

ARTIST NICOLAS V. SANCHEZ fills entire sketchbooks with drawings of the world around him rendered in precise color ballpoint.

thisiscolossal.com/2015/11/color-ballpoint-pen-drawings-by-nicolas-v-sanchez/

(Falcon)

MEMO OF THE AIR: Live from Albion all night tonight on KNYO!

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg as well as anywhere else via KNYO.org. Also the schedule is there for KNYO's many other terrific shows. Just the first hour of the show is also on KAKX 89.3fm Student Powered Radio in Mendocino.

Deadline to make it easiest for me to read on the air tonight is around 7pm, but I'll check email a couple of times during the show when I put music on for a break. I'll be doing the show from Albion again. I can't go to Juanita's until my car is fixed up and I'm not driving to town at night until my eyes are fixed up, and who knows when that will be?

As always, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find educational/musical/artistic/ironic amusements to absorb and wick away your nervous energy until showtime, or any time, such as:

World archeology atlas. (via Everlasting Blort) https://vici.org/

The 16 (or 12, or 9, or 23) Best Air Purifiers For Pet Hair. I'm not gonna read this on the air, but you might learn something about the way the web works now by at least skimming it. https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

And interesting maps. These are all ten or more years out of date but probably still close. https://www.kueez.com/en/interesting-maps-found-any

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

BIG FIGHT BREWING OVER LEGAL WEED IN CALIFORNIA

by Lester Black

California’s cannabis taxes have long been attacked for being unsustainably high, to the point that even state Attorney General Rob Bonta has called for lowering the burden. However, at least one powerful group in Sacramento is calling on the government to raise pot tax rates even higher.

A coalition of nearly 60 nonprofit leaders is proposing increasing pot taxes to fully fund child care for low-income youth as well as substance abuse programs, according to a letter sent last month to Gov. Gavin Newsom, as well as the state Senate president pro tem and the state speaker of the Assembly. Lynn Silver, a program director at the Public Health Institute and a signatory on February’s letter, said in an email to SFGATE that pot taxes are not too high and increasing tax rates would benefit the state by increasing investing in necessary programs.

The letter is now setting up a fight with the cannabis industry and some economic experts, who say raising tax rates will have the opposite effect: further reducing overall cannabis tax revenue by making legal cannabis more expensive and driving customers to the illicit market, where they don’t pay any taxes at all.

“We should be focusing on how to increase the overall legal, regulated sales,” said Emily Paxhia, a San Francisco-based cannabis investor, in an email to SFGATE. “The problem will fix itself and we will see both a thriving market and improved and growing tax revenue to the state.”

The debate over the future of cannabis taxes comes as the size of the legal industry shrinks and tax revenue from legal weed sales continues to fall. Cannabis tax collections are down 20% over the last two years, according to the latest data released last month by the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. The state collected $1.08 billion in 2023, down from $1.36 billion in 2021.

This falling cannabis tax revenue has blown a $150 million hole in the state budget, according to February’s letter from the nonprofits. The budget shortfall is putting state programs at risk that depend on cannabis tax for funding, including programs that fund low-income child care, youth substance abuse programs and environmental cleanup programs, according to February’s letter. Proposition 64, which legalized cannabis in 2016, linked pot tax revenue directly to these programs.

Silver said funding these programs fully should take precedence over reducing taxes to help the cannabis industry. She also said high taxes are not hurting the industry, and instead wrote that the legal market is struggling because of “vast overproduction in both the legal and illicit markets.” Silver added: “Lower taxes won't solve an illicit market driven by overproduction and will just serve to increase industry profits.”

Some economic analyses have found that high pot taxes are hurting the legal market and sending customers to illicit cannabis stores, where pot is cheaper and tax-free. Peter Rupert, an economics professor at University of California Santa Barbara, agreed with this assessment and said increasing tax rates for cannabis will likely reduce overall tax revenue for the state.

“Consumers will buy less at the higher price and more ... from the illegal market,” Rupert said in an email to SFGate. 

California already made one major change to cannabis taxes in recent years, removing a cultivation tax in 2022 that pot growers said was unfairly regressive and putting them out of business. That measure was described as “revenue neutral” at the time because it increased the excise tax rate by levying it at the point of retail sale instead of on wholesale retailers. But two years later, tax revenue is falling, and no one appears to be happy.

(SFgate.com)

WHAT IMMIGRATION CRISIS?

by John Arteaga 

Where do I start in talking about the incredible hash that the Republican Party has made of our clueless, blundering nation and the bloody mess that we’re making of the rest of the world as a result? 

Today a shameless, completely corrupt Supreme Court, with a supermajority of Catholic Republican theocrats, who scoff at the very concept of ethics when it comes to their robed eminences, handed down a ruling that essentially says that the Constitution’s 14th amendment doesn’t really mean what it says in plain English; that those who engage in insurrection against our country are disqualified for life from serving in any official capacity in this country. Is it any wonder that the Scotus now enjoys approval numbers that are at wildly historical lows? 

Or perhaps we should consider the case of the Trump manufactured ‘immigrant crime wave’, despite the fact that statistically, towns and cities with high immigrant populations tend to have LOWER crime rates. Of course, reality has nothing to do with the ‘stable genius’s’ prattle; he is clearly an idiot savant when it comes to getting people riled up enough about something, anything, designed to leap right over their logical faculties and get them to join in with the mindless MAGA mob worshiping the One Great Leader who is going to solve all their problems. Never mind that immigration, both legal and undocumented, serve an important role in our nation’s economy, filling jobs that are eschewed by American citizens. They contribute mightily to Social Security (which they will never get to draw from), local economies, etc. and that the reason most of them are here is the fact that in recent decades and even centuries, the US has intervened in almost every Central and South American country, almost always to deter or overthrow any dangerous outbreak of democratic rule. 

As one who has followed in detail the decades of bloodletting in Central America during the 80s, where, at the behest of one corporate interest or another, whether United Fruit or Citibank, sincere and popularly elected leaders were overthrown, murdered, their supporters dragooned into dungeons to be tortured by US paid troops ‘educated’ in ‘democracy’ in places like Alabama’s School of the Americas. It will never fully leave my consciousness to have read about the activities of our proxy soldiers in places like Guatemala and El Salvador, where whole Mayan villages were lined up, their skulls smashed with a sledgehammer blow, then dumped into the village’s well. 

Of course when one destroys the government chosen by the people and replaces it with a comprador class of lackeys willing to do whatever their bosses and New York or Washington tell them to do, all respect for law and order is destroyed, which is why so many of these countries are now ruled by ruthless murderous gangs who want to take your teenage child to join their ranks, and if you have a problem with that, they might just kill your whole family. 

Gee, I wonder why they want to come to the United States instead, despite the incredible hardships they might face along the way. 

WE OWE THEM ALL! No amount of money, no generous immigration policy can ever fully make up for our crimes against them! 

The stupidity of the MAGA worshipers is indistinguishable from that of the stupid Germans who went along with the Nazis scapegoating of the Jews as the source of their economic misery. There are millions of Americans whose lives have simply stopped penciling out; the bipartisan ‘free trade’ agenda, which put American workers on the same playing field as coerced and exploited workers in countries where we would commit suicide rather than accept the going work conditions, where protesting can be fatal, has made the economic lives of millions of Americans no longer viable. 

Clearly, it is not the itinerant farmworker who is responsible for their economic dislocation, but Trump has clearly hit pay dirt when it comes to distracting people from the real cause of their situations by blaming it on people who should be their comrades. 

Similarly, this horrifying disaster in Ukraine was brought to you, 100 percent, by the US military/industrial/congressional/journalistic/academic complex. If the US had not, through kind of a knee-jerk tendency, funded all kinds of dirty tricks to overthrow the popularly elected Pres. of Ukraine years ago, who was apparently judged to be too friendly to the Russian regime for our Cold War hangover tolerance, the guy we replaced him with was sufficiently anti-Russian for our tastes, to the point where he was basically making war on the Ukrainian provinces that were largely Russian speaking and probably would have voted for uniting with Russia rather than Ukraine. 

Think about it; if a Chinese/Russian military alliance overthrew the Mexican president in order to install an anti-American leader there, and then began to build military bases in Tijuana, would the US government scrupulously observed every right of Mexican autonomy? 

Finally, and most seriously, the horrific Israeli campaign of starvation and mass murder of the Palestinians in Gaza brings to mind an image that anyone who lived at that time with any interest in the news will never forget; that of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc sitting motionless in lotus position while fire consumes his body and life. 

Just the other day we had another such martyr make the most emphatic statement it is possible for a human to make. An Air Force member in good standing, Aaron Bushnell, doused himself with some petroleum distillate, set his phone down to live stream the event and lit himself on fire in front of Washington’s Israeli Embassy, yelling his last words, “free Palestine, free Palestine”. Unfortunately for him, a nearby policeman came up with a fire extinguisher to delay his demise for a number of, no doubt, tortuously painful hours. 

The idea that we don’t even discuss cutting back on the $10 million a day that we send to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv, and that we meekly accept Israel’s turning back of our food aid trucks to those poor Gazans starving and dying of thirst as I write this sickens me. 

(John Arteaga is a Ukiah resident.)

AT F & POE

by William J. Hughes

Dorothea Puente’s Death House, Sacramento. Seven or so poor senior souls robbed of their Social Security and their lives by Madame Puente, buried in Ms. P’s boarding-house backyard. My god! 1980s.

I live here in Sacramento. Of course, I knew about it. My god! Of course, people all over know about it, even somewhat mentioned in the recent film “No Country for Old Men,” the Sheriff, disgusted with life’s events, reads off a newspaper article about such that could be the Puente events. Out and about in town I've been asked to point out the “horror house.” No thank you. I’ve never been near it or interested in being near it. Poe, in reality.

But just recently, just by chance, I found myself on F Street, the Rue Morgue of Sacramento. Had no idea, then I saw two young folks taking selfies of a house from the sidewalk. My friend in our truck says, “That’s the Dorothea Puente house.” That’s all it took. I had to get out. The young couple are having a good time at the “death house.”

And what it is is truly disturbing — a shotgun Victorian Cottage, white, with wrought iron fence, with upper porch, truly of a Gold Rush Sacramento.

There’s a Dorothea Puente Mannequin doll on the porch. What?! Again, I had no idea. It’s an amusement park of death like those Hollywood celebrity “death tours,” only a lot more disrespectful. A sign reads, “Trespassers will be Drugged and Buried in the Back Yard.” What?! The folks who were murdered here must have families. I can’t unfold the whole case here, but maybe they were just men alone. Who owns this property? The city should “domain” it, condemn it, raze it to the ground, salt over its ashes like Rome did Carthage, so this house can never rise again. And there are metal plaques, almost State Parks official, announcing the events. One plaque reads, “I’m just the house. I didn’t do it…” Or words to that effect with an inlaid image of the house.

There’s a car in the short driveway. Someone still lives here among all this bloody malarkey? Does someone live in the Sharon Tate/Manson family house in Los Angeles? I guess so. Someone in Marilyn Monroe’s home where she was assassinated (read Joyce Carol Oates to learn more) in LA? I guess so. I guess real estate is more real than reality. Not me, brother.

Oh, brother, there’s more. The fella I’m with knew a fella who rented an apartment here. What?! Here I'll end this episode of Dark Shadows, the ones the House of Puente doth cast.

WHY THE TIKTOK BAN IS SO DANGEROUS

by Matt Taibbi

It’s funny how things work. Last year at this time, Americans overwhelmingly supported a ban on TikTok. Polls showed a 50-22% overall margin in support of a ban and 70-14% among conservatives. But Congress couldn’t get the RESTRICT Act passed.

As the public learned more about provisions in the bill, and particularly since the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza, the legislative plan grew less popular. Polls dropped to 38-27% in favor by December, and they’re at 35-31% against now. Yet the House just passed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act by a ridiculous 352-64 margin, with an even more absurd 50-0 unanimous push from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. What gives?

As discussed on the new America This Week, passage of the TikTok ban represents a perfect storm of unpleasant political developments, putting congress back fully in line with the national security establishment on speech. After years of public championing of the First Amendment, congressional Republicans have suddenly and dramatically been brought back into the fold. Meanwhile Democrats, who stand to lose a lot from the bill politically — it’s opposed by 73% of TikTok users, precisely the young voters whose defections since October put Joe Biden’s campaign into a tailspin — are spinning passage of the legislation to its base by suggesting it’s not really happening.

“This is not an attempt to ban TikTok, it’s an attempt to make TikTok better,” is how Nancy Pelosi put it. Congress, the theory goes, will force TikTok to divest, some kindly Wall Street consortium will gobble it up (“It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” Steve Mnuchin told CNBC), and life will go on. All good, right?

Not exactly. The bill passed in the House that’s likely to win the Senate and be swiftly signed into law by the White House’s dynamic Biden hologram is at best tangentially about TikTok.

You’ll find the real issue in the fine print. There, the “technical assistance” the drafters of the bill reportedly received from the White House shines through, Look particularly at the first highlighted portion, and sections (i) and (ii) of (3)B:

As written, any “website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application” that is “determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States” is covered.

Currently, the definition of “foreign adversary” includes Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. The definition of “controlled,” meanwhile, turns out to be a word salad, applying to:

(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;

(B) an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or

(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).

A “foreign adversary controlled application,” in other words, can be any company founded or run by someone living at the wrong foreign address, or containing a small minority ownership stake. Or it can be any company run by someone “subject to the direction” of either of those entities.

Or, it’s anything the president says it is. Vague enough? As Newsweek reported, the bill was fast-tracked after a secret “intelligence community briefing” of Congress led by the FBI, Department of Justice, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The magazine noted that if everything goes as planned, the bill will give Biden the authority to shut down an app used by 150 million Americans just in time for the November elections.

Say you’re a Democrat, however, and that scenario doesn’t worry you. As America This Week co-host Walter Kirn notes, the bill would give a potential future President Donald Trump “unprecedented powers to censor and control the internet.” If that still doesn’t bother you, you’re either not worried about the election, or you’ve been overstating your fear of “dictatorial” Trump.

We have two decades of data showing how national security measures in the 9-11 era evolve. In 2004 the George W. Bush administration defined “enemy combatant” as “an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” Yet in oral arguments of Rosul et al v Bush later that year, the government conceded an enemy combatant could be a “little old lady in Switzerland” who “wrote a check” to what she thought was an orphanage.

Eventually, every element of the requirement that an enemy combatant be connected to “hostilities against the United States” was dropped, including the United States part. Though Barack Obama eliminated the term “enemy combatant” in 2009, the government retained (and retains) a claim of authority to do basically whatever it wants, when it comes to capturing and detaining people deemed national security threats. You can expect a similar progression with speech controls.

Just ahead of Monday’s oral arguments in Murtha v. Missouri, formerly Missouri v. Biden — the case so many of us hoped would see the First Amendment reinvigorated by the Supreme Court — this TikTok bill has allowed the intelligence community to re-capture the legislative branch. Just a few principled speech defenders are left now. Fifty Democrats voted against the bill, which is heartening, although virtually none argued against it on First Amendment grounds, whis is infurating. Pramila Jayapal had a typical take, saying the ban would “harm users who rely on TikTok for their livelihoods, many of whom are people of color.”

Contrast that with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who went after members of his own party, singling out Republicans encouraging a governmental power grab after years of fighting big tech abuses not just at TikTok but other platforms. These people claim to be horrified, he said, but actions speak louder than words.

“Look at their legislative proposals,” he said, noting many want to “set up government agencies and panels” on speech, effectively saying “If you’re not putting enough conservatives on there, by golly we’re going to have a government commission that’s going to determine what kind of content gets on there.”

These, he said, are “scary ideas.”

He’s right, and shame on papers like the New York Post that are going after Paul for having donors connected to TikTok. Paul has been consistent in his defense of speech throughout his career, so the idea that his opinion on this matter is bought is ludicrous. It’s a relief to be able to expect at least some adherence to principle on this topic from him or fellow Kentuckian Thomas Massie, just as we once could expect it from Democrats like Paul Wellstone or Dennis Kucinich.

I don’t often do this, but as Walter pointed out in today’s podcast, this bill is so dangerous, the moment so suddenly and unexpectedly grave, that we both recommend anyone who can find the time to call or write their Senators to express opposition to any coming Senate vote. It might help. Yes, collection of personal information and content manipulation by the Chinese government (or Russia’s, or ours) are serious problems, but the wider view is the speech emergency. As the cliche goes, forget the furniture. The house is on fire. Let’s hope we’re not too late.

NEOLIBERAL DOCTRINES, whatever one thinks of them, undermine education and health, increase inequality, and reduce labor's share of income; that much is not seriously in doubt.

— Noam Chomsky (1999)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Well, I don’t know what you think collapse looks like, but the sky has been falling for quite some time now. A new half ton pick up truck now costs a minimum of 40K. Please go tell a working man that’s fine, just hunky dory. Then tell him his rent, electricity, food, medical costs, paying tons more for EVERYTHING, is just fine too. Not to mention the crazy, diseased social ills all around us. The process of collapse is here, and we’re living it RIGHT NOW. The big black swans may be just around the corner, maybe that’s what you’re waiting for. Me, I’m just grateful it’s not MAD MAX yet…

THE US PRESIDENTIAL RACE is that wonderful season American liberals set aside to remind socialists that they hate them far more than they hate the right and would cheerfully burn the whole country to the ground before they’d share one iota of power with them.

— Caitlin Johnstone