Mendocino County Today: Saturday 3/23/24

Showers | Creekside Tracks | Doing Well | AVA Readers | Redwood Violet | AVUSD News | Overdose Spots | FFA Conference | MS Notes | Frog Woman Rock | Salvage Palace | Tsunami Test | Bess Bair | Planning Agenda | Please Re-Read | Sorrel Patch | Ancestral Trip | Yesterday's Catch | Half Beans | Steelhead Return | Ferlinghetti 2012 | Fame Game | Run Spot | Executing Willie | Contains Nuts | AI Censoring | Tittle Picked | Gino Lawsuit | Arles Avenue

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Leggett 2.68" - Laytonville 1.34" - Covelo 1.27" - Hopland 1.09" - Boonville 0.96" - Willits 0.90" - Yorkville 0.88" - Ukiah 0.46"

A ROUND OF SHOWERS is moving across the area currently with another round of showers and isolated thunderstorms expected late this morning and afternoon. Snow levels will be around 3500 to 4000 feet. Showers will slowly diminish Saturday night Sunday. Mainly dry weather is expected Sunday afternoon through Tuesday. Another round of wind and rain is expected mid to late in the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A mostly cloudy 49F on the coast with 1.8" more rainfall in the last 24 hours. More rain is forecast for today & maybe some thunder? Maybe a shower during Sunday thru Tuesday but mostly dry. More rain returns for later next week. BASTA!

THE LOTUS HAS RISEN!

Bruce Anderson is “doing well” according to family reports, so much so that he demanded we title his status update with the above headline (using a slate and a marker), then got up and took a short stroll around his hospital room. The doctors reported that “there were no surprises” during his successful hours long throat surgery on Thursday. The Editor is not in much pain and expects to be out of the ICU and into a hospital recovery room by Saturday where he will spend the next few days recovering and adjusting to his new circumstances associated with changes in breathing, swallowing, talking and/or tasting. Since he already has his computer with him we expect the Editor to produce his own account of his hospital experience in the next few days as his condition improves.

(Mark Scaramella)

PRINT EDITION SUSPENSION NOTES (carefully handwritten and mailed to the AVA by US Postal Carriers):

Alan Crow: For the honor of having a seat at your table for the past 35 years I thank you, sir.

Alan ‘Captain Fathom’ Graham: You have done good work! Like Eugene V. Debs and the IWW, the AVA’s spirit will live on. Thank you. 

Billie and John Crowley: We have been subscribers to the AVA since 1985 and have anticipated the arrival of every issue. Thank you for keeping the paper paper alive as long as you have! Happy Trails.

ANDERSON VALLEY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT NEWS

by Louise Simson, Superintendent

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Congratulations 3rd Quarter Honor Roll Students!

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LEIGH KREIENHOP ACHIEVES CBO CERTIFICATION

Anderson Valley Unified School  District Board of Trustees is pleased to congratulate Leigh Kreienhop for her achievement in successfully completing the Certified Business Officer training offered by Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT). This is a rigorous one-year course that prepares school district financial officers with high level mentoring and staff development. 

Program Overview

The FCMAT CBO Mentor Program is unique because of the following four major components:

• Participants are nominated and selection is competitive.

• Each participant is teamed with a mentor.

• Training involves hands-on experience.

• Tuition is free to participants. FCMAT underwrites this professional learning activity.

Desired Outcomes for Participants:
• Understanding of fundamental issues that drive school business policies in each major functional area: school finance; accounting and budgeting; facilities and construction; special education; contracts and procurement; risk management; child nutrition; charter schools; and others.

• Demonstrated knowledge and application of school business principles and processes in district operations.

• Demonstrated leadership and communication skills.


The goal of the FCMAT CBO Mentor Program is to help California LEAs fill CBO vacancies with qualified CBOs. FCMAT works with the California Association of School Business Officials (CASBO) to link this training program to the CASBO CBO certification program so that graduates are eligible for CBO certification if they successfully pass CASBO’s CBO examination and after evaluation and approval by their mentor and the CASBO CBO certification program evaluator.

Leigh passed the difficult test to achieve the CBO designation. Ms. Kreienhop has been with the district for more than 16 years in a variety of roles. Related AVUSD Superintendent Simson, “We are delighted to congratulate Leigh on her achievement and earning her CBO designation.  As we maneuver difficult budget times, it is important for small school districts  to have staff developed with strategies and acumen at the level of larger districts that have more power and voice at the legislative table.”

WHAT I WANT

I accept full responsibility for all of my social circumstances! Clearly, I have been too reserved and generally polite, and therefore have gotten nothing substantial for the past two years, while surviving at the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center in Ukiah, California.

This is what I want: I want a fully subsidized apartment on capitol hill in Washington, D.C. near the Whole Foods.

N.B. I would ask my fellow Americans to send me money at Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr, but you don’t have any wealth. You are in worse shape than I am, on all levels.

PS. Overdoses happen mostly outside of the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center property. Regardless, there is no input at all regarding “fear, trauma, and grief”. Most overdosed individuals deny that there is anything wrong with them, while the emergency responders attempt to revive them. And then the next week, the fentanyl-methamphetamine-cocaine-oxycontin-marijuana-tobacco chain smoking individuals die, and are found on a bus bench at dawn. The old car wash on Talmage Road was the gathering spot for heroin users. The heavier fentanyl users dropped dead in the parking lot of Sunny Donuts. As always, the premier gathering spot remains on Observatory Way above South State Street. It is the most pitiable place possible. News update at ten.

BETH SWEHLA: We made it to the CA State FFA Leadership Conference! Emilia and Julian are our voting delegates. Everyone is very excited!

REMEMBER DOUG THRON? He’s the guy who took the dramatic photographs of Headwaters Forest — by trespassing onto Hurwitz’s property and getting shots of not only the impressively verticle trees, but also Pacific Lumber’s illegal logging activities — which were a big factor in getting the issue onto the national stage. After more than a year of attempting to negotiate with the publisher of Julia Butterfly Hill’s best-selling book, ‘The Legacy of Luna,’ about her months of living in a tall redwood she named “Luna,” Thron filed suit against HarperSanFrancisco and Amazon.com for repeated copyright infringement for their illegal use of his photos in Hill’s book. (The ‘Legacy of Luna’ went through multiple printings and sales of the hardback book were estimated at over 50,000 copies. It was translated into five languages.) Ms. Hill’s publicity folks approached Thron about a year and a half ago with the absurd idea that he should simply give the rights to two of his photographs to HarperSanFrancisco, a division of the publishing giant HarperCollins (a Rupert Murdoch operation which the enviro star obliviously signed up with, by the way, as ironies pile up), and let Harper/Murdoch use Thron’s photos in ‘The Legacy of Luna’ without compensation. Thron never asked for payment when his photos were being used by non-commercial outfits, however: “I draw the line at letting a multibillion-dollar corporation refuse to pay me for my work,” said Thron. “Unfortunately, this sort of exploitation is widespread, with big publishers grossing millions or billions of dollars while those who produce the work — photographers, artists, and writers — often don’t get a nickel.”

Mr. Thron, who later went by the name Doug Riley-Thron, received a written contract from Harper/Murdoch prior to publication which he never signed or returned, and he repeatedly let Hill’s agents know that he would not sign the contract. Meanwhile, he said, HarperSanFrancisco acquired copies of his images through a third party unbeknownst to him. “When I discovered my photographs were printed in ‘The Legacy of Luna,’ I felt annoyed that they had printed my photographs without my permission,” he said. “To settle the matter, I asked for a very reasonable price — $500 — it worked out to only about one penny for each time they printed one of my images. They refused to take my photos out of the book, and said that they did not normally pay photographers. HarperSanFrancisco now claims that they had a verbal contract with me.”

Riley-Thron’s images have appeared in numerous other books, and he has always been compensated for their use. In a typical year, Riley-Thron said, he spends $5,000 to $20,000 of his own money in battling for ancient forest protection. “It makes it hard for me to continue my work when large corporations illegally use my work, reaping large profits on account of it, and refuse to compensate me.”

Riley-Thron said he has supported Hill's work, (if you can call mysticism and bad writing work), but is somewhat insulted that she has put no effort into clearing up the matter. For her part, Hill has sued a cellphone company and an ad company and a magazine on her own behalf for running an ad which included an actress who looked a little like Hill sitting in a tree with a cellphone and a young man standing at the bottom with a jacket that said “spongebath.com.”

Reportedly, HarperCollins has belatedly removed the Thron shots from subsequent editions of the book. 

Amazon.com is included in Thron’s suit because even after notifying them that they had no permission to use his shots, the photos appeared on the website with his copyright notice removed. 

Thron later formed his own land acquisition operation in Arcata called “New River Wild” — call him an enviro realtor — which targets land along specific Northcoast river runs and wildlife corridors — whether public or private — for possible acquisition and subsequent conservation easements. Thron says he’s pretty much given up on most of the Northcoast’s high-profile “environmentalists,” having seen them close up (“I have no respect for 80 percent of them”), and sees the land acquisition approach as the only viable method of saving what’s left. Thron says that the other organizations which claim to be doing land acquisition/easement work are scattered, haphazard, unfocused and marginal in their net impact. He continues to use his photographic skills to back up the fundraising necessary to do the land acquisitions. He doesn’t limit himself to high value property which is “savable,” but targets property in any condition which forms a specific environmentally cohesive unit. 

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A FORMER MENDO DEFENSE ATTORNEY told us a few years ago about the case a woman who was his client who had no criminal record. “The prosecutor alleged that she had taken her ex-husband’s sister’s credit card. She did it, true. But the husband wasn’t paying child support, so she was flipping out. She’s got two kids, she’s getting no child support. She just went a little crazy. Allegedly she went to four different stores and used the credit card. She charged about $900 worth of stuff. Again, she had no record, she was 28 years old, never even had a traffic ticket. The DA charged her with nine felony counts! The visiting judge listened to the evidence at the prelim and said, “I wanna talk to you guys. He told the prosecutor, You know, in my county this is a misdemeanor. What are you doing?” The prosecutor replied, Well the police are pretty pissed off about this! The victim’s pretty pissed off! The judge says, Well, who do you take marching orders from? The cops? The victim? I really encourage you to make this a misdemeanor. The DA says, No, she can plead to two felonies. I said, Screw that! So that it went to trial. It’s just not felonious conduct. It could be misdemeanors if the DA wanted to charge it that way.” The woman eventually plead guilty to one misdemeanor, and was ordered to pay restitution and six months probation. The defense attorney considered it a win, even though on the books it was a conviction. 

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WHILE DRIVING NORTH on Highway 128 just outside Boonville, a few weeks ago a crow and a little brown bird (starling, sparrow, etc., I don’t really know) took off as usual as I drove by. Just after they both took off the little brown bird immediately hopped onto the back of the crow and rode the crow up to power line height where it jumped off and perched on the power line next to the crow. The crow didn’t seem to mind giving his companion a lift. Has anyone else seen birds giving rides to other birds (other than ordinary motherly flock-tending)?

(Mark Scaramella)

SALVAGING THE PALACE

Carolyn Kiernat, a principal in the Page & Turnbull firm in SF, asked me to submit this opinion piece on her behalf.

Page & Turnbull, a firm renowned as a California leader in preserving and transforming historic structures into new uses, has an impressive portfolio. They have successfully revitalized the Ferry Building, converted a cluster of Presidio buildings into the Walt Disney Family Museum, and undertaken numerous other projects across the state including the Carter House in Eureka and the Hotel Tioga in Merced.

Kiernat and a team from her firm went through the Palace Hotel in downtown Ukiah in 2022 and developed a design proposal for Ukiah investor Minal Shankar. The deal collapsed when the current owner, Jitu Ishwar, decided to sell instead to the Guidiville Rancheria and a group of local investors. That deal, as we know, is on hold while a state review of the Guidiville application for $6.6 million to tear down the Palace under the guise of ground contamination continues.

Despite no longer being directly involved in the Palace's fate, Kiernat's passion for its preservation continues. 

The photo [below] was taken in 2022 on the rooftop of the Palace with Kiernat (shown far right) and two of her Page & Turnbull associates: Clare Flynn (left) and Elisa Skaggs (middle).

— Mike Geniella

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A PALACE COUP MAKES SENSE

by Carolyn Kiernat, AIA, Principal, Page & Turnbull

Making History Relevant 

The Palace Hotel has been part of Ukiah’s history since 1891 – opening just two years after the first passenger rail service came to town. In the decades that followed, the Palace Hotel expanded its footprint and its prominence, with the final of three building expansions taking place in 1929. A lot has happened in Ukiah in the 133 years that have passed since the Palace Hotel was built. There is no doubt that the Palace Hotel is a link to Ukiah’s past, and there is still time for the Palace Hotel to be part of Ukiah’s future.

Places tell stories, and everyone in Ukiah seems to have a story about the Palace Hotel. It’s these stories that make a place unique and personal. It’s these stories that connect people to a specific time and place, binding them to a shared history. 

To look at the Palace Hotel today in its current state of disrepair, many seem to believe that the time has come to tear it down. But as someone who has worked with historic buildings virtually my entire career, I can see possibilities and a future for the Palace Hotel.

Preservation is Local (and Preservation Ordinances are, too)

Demolition of the Palace Hotel should never have been on the table. Cities throughout the United States have preservation controls and ordinances that prevent significant historic properties from falling into disrepair and being demolished. Penalties for violating these preservation ordinances can include civil and even criminal charges. But it takes forethought to have these ordinances written and time to have them enforced. Unfortunately, local controls are often the only protection that historic resources have, and without an active preservation ordinance in Ukiah, the fate of a building like the Palace Hotel is left up to its owner and their action (or inaction).

Despite the building’s 1979 listing in the National Register of Historic Places, its subsequent listing in the California Register of Historical Resources, and the City of Ukiah’s own 2010 designation as a Preserve America Community by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, this historic property has little to no protection from demolition. 

There is no question that the Palace Hotel is in poor condition. I was nervous when I first walked through the building two years ago, and its condition has gone downhill since then. But based on past project experience and in consultation with experienced structural engineers, I believe there is an alternative to demolition.

Before any more time passes, the city should hire a qualified third-party structural engineer to assess the building and determine – objectively – what can be done. Perhaps a portion of the building does need to be demolished; perhaps reconstruction of the 1891 corner is in order. We won’t know until a structural assessment is complete. 

I have heard the arguments that have been put forward supporting the building’s demolition, including the presence of underground fuel tanks, irreparable damage sustained in last year’s storms, exemption from California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review, and support for private property rights. But to all these arguments, there is one solid counterargument: there was a person who had the vision and who was willing to put in the resources and the time to make this building whole again. The current owner may not want to take this renovation on, but that is no reason to demolish the building on his way out.

Preservation Isn’t All or Nothing 

The Palace is a mess, that much is clear. Years of neglect by a series of owners and a lack of action on the part of the City have led to the condition that we see today. But many buildings in similar or even worse condition have been renovated, leading to a positive economic impact for the building owner and the surrounding community.

Preservation can make a difference without being burdensome. This is because historic preservation isn’t a ‘black or white’ proposition. Preservation comes in many forms and there is an array of options between demolition and full restoration that may be considered. Most historic preservation occurs somewhere between those two poles. At the Palace Hotel, there are opportunities to retain the building—either in whole or in part—and build new to serve the way we live and use buildings today. 

The Benefits of Heritage Tourism

Retaining the Palace Hotel and integrating portions of the historic building into a new development could be an economic boon for the owner, the operator and the City. 

In fact, restoration and reuse of this building may enhance Ukiah’s ability to tap into ‘Heritage Tourism,’ defined by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as, “traveling to experience the places, artifacts, and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present.” According to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), “Heritage tourism creates jobs and business opportunities, helps protect resources, and often improves the quality of life for local residents.” It is estimated that 49% of cultural travelers will pay more for lodging that has a distinctive heritage component. *

A grand old hotel could become a tourist destination, providing a highly sought-after authentic experience that highlights the best of what Ukiah and surrounding Mendocino County have to offer. It could hold space for the local community. It could generate income, tax revenue, and civic pride. The Palace Hotel could be a vital part of the city’s future, not just its past.

But Preservation is Expensive

Yes, preservation in its many forms is expensive. A willing owner would need to invest significant resources to bring the hotel back to life. But study after study has shown that investment in historic properties leads to quantifiable investment in the community. 

There are Federal Historic Tax Credits designed to make building reuse more affordable, and a State Historic Tax Credit is expected to be released later this year. These important preservation incentives were developed because historic buildings are proven economic drivers and sources of community pride, bringing more value to the surrounding community than dollars invested. 

Keep The Palace. It just makes sense.

Demolition of the Palace Hotel benefits no one, least of all the City of Ukiah and its residents, and demolition would leave an even greater gap in Ukiah’s sparse historic fabric. Rather than looking for reasons why the building should be torn down, let’s look toward the people who have said they would be willing to take on the Palace’s restoration. Let’s give them a chance. 

And to the City of Ukiah: You are a Preserve America Community. According to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, this Federal designation is an honor that recognizes your efforts to protect and celebrate your heritage; use your historic assets for economic development and community revitalization; and encourage people to experience and appreciate local historic resources through education and heritage tourism programs.

Let’s live up to this designation and make the Palace Hotel a great center of the community, once again.

*American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association

(Carolyn Kiernat (left), AIA, is a principal at Page & Turnbull, a full-service Architecture, Planning and Preservation firm. An expert on historic tax incentives with several major adaptive reuse projects to her credit, including the Tioga in Merced and the Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio of San Francisco.)

OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES PARTICIPATING IN THE ANNUAL TSUNAMI WARNING COMMUNICATIONS TEST

The National Weather Service (NWS) and the Counties of Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del Norte will be participating in the annual Tsunami Warning Communications Test on March 27, 2024, between 11:00 AM and noon. Tsunami sirens, the Emergency Alert System (TV, radio, and NOAA Weather Radio), Civil Air Patrol public address system, and the reverse 911 calling system will be tested to ensure the tsunami warning systems are working properly.

What to expect for Mendocino County residents:

The NWS will send an Emergency Alert System message to Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del Norte Counties.

A crawler will appear at the bottom of TV screens indicating that a tsunami warning has been issued and a voice will indicate that it is only a test.

Alerting tones followed by a voice announcing that the test is occurring will be broadcast on local radio stations. If you have a NOAA weather radio with the Public Alert feature, the radio will automatically turn on and you will hear the same message as broadcast on regular radios.

Tsunami sirens will be activated on the coast.

The Civil Air Patrol will fly the entire coastline broadcasting a test message over the public address system.

The Mendocino County Office of Emergency Services (OES) will send a reverse 911 call to the coastal tsunami zone.

For all questions, please contact OES@mendocinocounty.gov or call 707-234-6398.

ROSIE RADIATOR, Tap Dance Guru, Dead at 78.

by Mark Scaramella

We were saddened to hear of the death last week of the northcoast’s most famous tap dancer “Rosie Radiator” (aka Bess Bair) at the age of 78 in Florida where she had retired for family reasons a couple of years ago.

Born in Arcata in 1946, Rosie lived on Poonkinney Road in Dos Rios for years while maintaining a dance studio in San Francisco (part-time) and Willits. 

Described by Smithsonian Magazine as “San Francisco’s Tap Dance Guru,” Rosie gained national attention in 1976 when she tap-danced across the Golden Gate Bridge in honor of her famous dancing grandmother’s passing. She went on to establish several Guinness Book of World Records records for long-distance tap dancing with her students and fans. 

When Rosie tap-danced across the Golden Gate Bridge in 1976 she proclaimed it the first World Tap Dance Day and a tradition of long distance tap dancing was born which she lead until her retirement from long-distance tap dancing in the mid-2000s.

Rosie said she was never interested in establishing a solo long distance record because, she said that it seemed that it would be practically unverifiable. "Who is to say what constitutes actual tap dancing?”, she asked. “Someone running along with taps on their tennis shoes could be considered tap dancing and who would be the judge?"

When her famous tap-dancing grandmother from the 1920s died several weeks after her 1976 Golden Gate Bridge performance, she was buried with a picture of Rosie dancing across the bridge in her honor. 

It was in her lively spirit that Tap Dance Day in San Francisco was established. “I am proud to say that the tradition has continued,” Bair said years later. 

“I knew my grandmother wanted to celebrate tap dancing,” Rosie said, “but how could I connect with the people she had known and been so close to?” After a visit with her grandmother shortly before her death, “I pondered that question as I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge. Suddenly her words came to me. ‘Say it with your dancing…’ and I knew what I had to do. … You were right grandma, I said it with my dancing and people understood.”

Rosie was a close friend of the late Judi Bari going all the way back to the late 1980s, and once told us that when she was living in San Francisco in 1990, she was the first person to visit Judi Bari in her hospital bed after Bari was nearly killed in the famous May 1990 car bombing in Oakland. Bair said that Bari immediately named Mike Sweeney as the bomber, but later reversed her public position to blame a mysterious conspiracy of Big Timber, the FBI or agents thereof to protect her parental rights and, later, to as basis for a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the FBI and the Oakland Police for false arrest.

In the early 2000s Bair lead a group of Poonkinney Road residents who opposed a gravel operation proposed by a Dos Rios couple further up the road. Bair was unfairly accused of being against the gravel operation. But that wasn’t true. She and her neighbors objected to the permit because the County refused to improve the road and eliminate several dangerous blind curves that the gravel trucks would be driving over. 

Rosie was harrased by some north county neighbors including some members of the County road crew during that dispute Rosie wrote at the time: “Only last week I went to the feed store and saw an anonymous petition stating that our coalition wants to stop the county road crew from doing their work and close the Poonkinney road and close down the gravil mining operation. This lie is an attempt to scare the local people and nothing is farther from the truth. The truth is that these huge quarry trucks (one every 20 minutes according to the permit application) will destroy the road and make for very dangerous traffic. We need the road crew to keep the road open so we can live here. The only reason the road crew is involved in this situation is that a relative of quarry guy was forced by the County to resign from the crew because he was using his job to harass us.”

After considerable delays and court proceedings, the couple who proposed the gravel operation died and the issue evaporated.

Rosie and her fellow dancers were frequent performers on the streets of San Francisco where they entertained local and visiting audiences countless times with their fancy, polished and perfectly timed dance stylings. She even performed at the Anderson Valley Variety Show in 2017, still lively in her glittery tap shoes at the age of 71, described by Variety Show reviewer Jerry Karp as “riveting” (perhaps a reference to her name) and “she even made us laugh with her dry wit that topped the act.”

A San Francisco tap dance colleague said, “Rosie's tap dance adventures and pioneering discoveries have changed the world of tap forever.”

In one of her letters Rosie concluded, “You know I'd rather be tap dancing.” We’d like to think that will be her epitaph.

PLANNING IS OUR MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT

Dear Interested Parties,

The Staff Report(s) and Agenda for the April 4, 2024, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at: mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff if there are any questions,

Thank you

ALEXANDER COCKBURN once replied to a critic as follows: “If you want to continue this correspondence you have to make a major turn in your life’s chosen path. In the future, please take the trouble to re-read something that upsets you. It’s obvious to me that like many people you read about every fiftieth word and then invent what the other forty-nine words might have been, all nicely tailored to suit your expectations, aka prejudices. This time you’re scampering off after another demon of your own invention: my supposed derision of Christianity, merely because I cited one of the endless little notes of a trial physician, pretentiously printed up in plastic envelopes and posted on the chainlink fence. My own house is loaded to the point of excess with Christian iconography, so much so that a Mexican matron visiting the Mattole valley a few years ago, visibly petrified at the thought of being in partibus infidelium, crossed herself with relief when she entered my living room and saw the plenitude of images of the mother of the Redeemer. Whatever you may think of J. Christ, he was perfectly capable of looking straight on at the facts, however unpalatable.”

YESTERDAY WE POSTED the Editor’s advance notice of his trip back to southern Illinois to visit his maternal ancestors. Today we present his report of the trip when he returned.

JUST RETURNED from a week in Southern Illinois, where half my family comes from. I was able to confirm one piece of family lore, which I'd always assumed was non-verifiable. Or myth. My aunt dug up an old clipping from the long-defunct St. Louis Republic that reported the death of one of my great grandfathers: “John W. Major, who was buried at Chapel Cemetery, near here, was well known through out this section of Illinois as one of Quantrill's men. In the Civil War he served as companion-in-arms to the James and Younger brothers. So great was his reputation as an expert horseman and crack shot with the revolver that when the Grand Army of the Republic held its celebration at Coffeen, Mr. Major was invited to give an exhibition. He complied, and his skill, even in advanced age, astonished his old neighbors. Mr. Major was among the best citizens of the state, and no man possessed more of the confidence of the people. After the war he applied himself systematically to business, and was so successful that at his death he left his widow and two children in very comfortable circumstances. The Lost Cause was always to him a memory of sadness and his heart was always warm for his friends of the Confederacy. Yet he accepted the defeat as final, and so lived that he attached to him the veterans of the Union Army, as well as the general public and his death was regretted by all who knew him.”

THE OLD MAN was particularly close to Frank James who, as it happens, once visited Boonville where other Missourians had settled in the post Civil War westward exodus. Major grew up with the James and the Youngers in Missouri. Many of their subsequent adventures were partly inspired by devotion to the Confederacy, partly bloody settlings of old feuds. I don't know if Major was with Quantrill when Quantrill's Raiders killed all the males they could find in Lawrence, Kansas then burned the town down in reprisal for raids on their neighborhood in Missouri by Kansas-based guerrillas opposed to slavery. The adjective Major applied to Jesse James was “cruel,” which I believe was the euphemism of the time for “psycho.” The old man went out to Oklahoma several times to visit Frank James, returning from one trip east with a prize horse.

ABE LINCOLN practiced law at Vandalia, an hour from Hillsboro. Settlement of Illinois was south to north, pioneer farmers walking out on Jefferson's national highway whose terminus was Vandalia. Lincoln often stayed in Hillsboro on his way to Springfield when he was first elected to office and before it became the state capitol and he moved there permanently. 

MY MATERNAL GRANDFATHER was a coal miner descended from families who'd fought for the Union with Company B, 117th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, among whom the lion of the Confederacy, Mr. Major, settled. My grandfather was affiliated with the Progressive Miners of America, the anti-John L. Lewis miners whose membership often contained Wobblies and Debs Socialists. John L. Lewis grew up in a place called Panama, Illinois, just down the road from Hillsboro in whose environs that side of my family, who fought on both sides of the Civil War, have lived for 175 years. Lewis was accurately assessed by my grandfather as a management-type union guy. I was able to visit nearby Mount Olive where Mother Jones is buried and where there's a well-maintained monument to her and a number of other radical coal miners shot down in various confrontations with rural capital. I was also able to spend a day in Alton on the east bank of the Mississippi, less than an hour from Hillsboro, where the great newspaper man, Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob. Lovejoy's paper set the mob literally howling, especially his comments that there wasn't a black female in the South over the age of twelve who hadn't been “violated by a noble son of the South.” That one got him killed. It was Lovejoy's martyrdom that inspired John Brown to commit his life to the destruction of slavery, which Lovejoy described as “the sum of all evils.” It's fair to say the Civil War started in Southern Illinois, a small area of America as crucial to everything that has happened since as there is in this blood-soaked country.

RECOMMENDED READING: “Blue Frontier, Saving America's Living Seas” by Dave Helvarg, published by W.H. Freeman. Written in clear, jargon-free prose, Helvarg confirms that the oceans are in trouble but is optimistic that intelligent policy can reverse their alarming deterioration. The prob is that intelligent policy on the Americano end is on hold until Georgie Two is out of the White House. “The Collected Stories of Richard Yates,” just out in this version published by Henry Holt. Wonderful writer no longer with us. Kind of a cross between Nathaniel West and John Updike. “Saying No To Power,” Bill Mandel's autobiography. Some of you know Mandel from his years on KPFA before the station went dumb and whiny. His autobiography is as good a history of the left in this country over the past 70 years as you're going to read. Lots of good stuff on the progressive politics of the Bay Area all the way back to the HUAC hearings during which Bill, like the great American he is, told the House UnAmerican Activities Committee to stuff it. “On Doing Time” by Morton Sobell. Also the work of a tough, resilient old commie who, whatever else you might think of his political opinions, paid for them as severely as it's possible to pay for them short of death. Sobell was convicted of “conspiracy to commit espionage” during the hysterical early 1950s and packed off to federal prison for thirty years. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for being Jews and for transmitting information to the Russians the Russians already had, although the farce of their trial was wrapped up in a lot of highminded hoo-rah. Sobell's thirty years included a five year stretch on Alcatraz, of all places. For a look at what persecution, American style, is really like for “talking truth to power,” Sobell's account of his cruel ordeal is the goods, and is especially welcome now as pursed-lipped, pseudo-left hustlers prattle endlessly on the Pacifica stations about how they're “talking truth to power.” (Got news for you, Noelle Bernstein, Miss Tree, Feral Darryl et al: Power, if it pays any attention to you at all, regards you as comic relief.) It's good to be reminded in a time of zero political risk that not all that long ago a few people risked it all in defense of real principles. Sobell lives in San Francisco. According to the publisher's blurb on the back of the book, he can see Alcatraz from where he lives.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, March 22, 2024

OSCAR CABEZAS-TAFOYA, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

BLAKE COX, Ukiah. Domestic battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment, child endangerment, assault weapon.

SHAYLA GUERRERO, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

KARLY HAWTHORNE, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TYLER KELLER, Ukiah. County parole violation, resisting.

SHEILA LOCKHART, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TIMOTHY MCNEILL, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

CRISTINA MUNOZ, Branscomb. Protective order violation, resisting.

TYLER NOEL, Willits. Vandalism, criminal threats, resisting.

KAELYN PENUEL, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, disorderly conduct-alcohol.

RON SEVY, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

I WAS IN JAIL in Juarez once, right across the border from El Paso. They only feed twice a day there, at ten and four, and the guys who're doing the most time take half your beans. All you get is tortillas and beans twice a day, and the guys who've been there longest need the extra calories. They presume that a man who just got in's been eating good already, and they need to keep up their strength. There's more of them than there are of you, so you have to give up half your beans.

— Charles Willeford, ‘Sideswipe,’ 1987

CENTRAL VALLEY RIVERS SEE ABUNDANT STEELHEAD RETURNS THIS YEAR 

by Dan Bacher

California’s Central Valley rivers have seen what the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has described as “incredibly strong” steelhead returns this year.

This is in contrast to the record low fall-run Chinook salmon returns on the mainstem Sacramento River that have led to another year of severely limited salmon fishing opportunities or closures.

A new record for the number of steelhead returning to the Mokelumne River was set this year. A total of 1,749 steelhead, including 968 adults and 781 fish under 18 inches, have come back to the system this season, reported William Smith, manager of the Mokelumne River Fish Hatchery.

The previous record for total steelhead was in 2018 when the hatchery reported 530 adults and 638 juveniles, a total of 1168 fish. However, there was another year when the total number of adults was over 700 fish.

The majority of steelhead are in the 18 to 24 inch range, with a few larger fish mixed in. One of the steelhead returning this year weighed 13-1/2 pounds, but it was apparently from Nimbus Fish Hatchery on the American River, said Smith. 

A total of 210,000 yearling steelhead are being released into the system this year, according to Smith. The hatchery has taken close to 770,000 steelhead eggs this season. 

Smith attributes the record steelhead run to the big water years in 2023 and 2024 to date, along with the CDFW and EBMUD’s analysis of genetic studies and release strategies to improve the fish population.

The record steelhead run follows a record salmon run. A total of 28,614 fall-run Chinook salmon returned to the Mokelumne River in 2023 — 5,700 of those fish were grilse (two-year-olds) and the rest were adults, said EBMUD Manager of Fisheries and Wildlife Michelle Workman. 

However, the Mokelumne River is a tributary of the San Joaquin River, not the Sacramento River, so it isn’t included in the Sacramento River ocean abundance estimates developed by the National Marine Fisheries Service that are the basis for determining ocean and river salmon fisheries in California every year.

The Mokelumne provided anglers with some solid steelhead fishing this year. Samuel Boyd Yoro of Watsonville and his nephew Bodhi had a great trip steelhead fishing on the Mokelumne below Camanche Dam in February.

“Bodhi caught and released his very first chrome-bright steelhead,” said Yoro. “His Mokelumne River hatchery fish fought a solid bout, jumping and flipping out, but obviously not able to spit the hook out of its mouth.

Other Central Valley rivers saw robust steelhead runs also, according to CDFW data.

The Feather River Fish Hatchery exceeded its 2023 total of some 1,200 steelhead on the very first day it opened its fish ladder in January, wrapping up the spawning season with 2,277 returning fish.

The Nimbus Fish Hatchery on the American River, home to both Central Valley steelhead and a larger coastal strain of Eel River steelhead introduced decades ago, saw 3,178 steelhead return to the hatchery in 2024. That is one of its highest totals in many years, according to CDFW staff.

Meanwhile, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) has produced three options for ocean salmon seasons beginning May 16, 2024, CDFW reported. Two of the three alternatives would authorize short ocean salmon season dates and establish small harvest limits for commercial and sport fishing off California in 2024. The third alternative would close the ocean fisheries off California for a second consecutive year. 

The 2024 stock abundance forecast for Sacramento River Fall Chinook, usually the most abundant stock in the ocean fishery, is only 213,600 adults. Abundance of Klamath River Fall Chinook is forecast at 180,700 adults. For more information, go to: wildlife.ca.gov/

FAMELESS IN FRISCO

by Jonah Raskin

If I had wanted to be more famous than I already was, I wouldn't have moved from Sonoma County, where I lived for 40 years, and settled in San Francisco where I was mostly unknown. But I did move and found myself largely anonymous and invisible in a city with about three quarters of a million people, most of them living unquiet lives of desperation. When I arrived in Sonoma County I knew no one except my parents who were homesteading, and who were growing organic vegetables, fruits and berries. I felt like an outsider and wanted to be an insider but my forays into the world of weed only made me even more of an outsider, except among cannabis farmers. Then I wrote about cannabis for several different publications, at first under a pseudonym to protect my identity, and then under my real name, which brought me some notoriety. 

Since I was in favor of the legalization of weed, I came out of the cannabis closet and announced to the world that I smoked dope. On one occasion, in a classroom at Sonoma State University, where I was teaching, I decided to reveal my secret to the students. One of them asked, "Are you stoned now?" I shook my head. I had not woken and baked. Another student opened her purse, removed a joint, waved it in the air and asked, "Do you want to get stoned now?" I didn't and said so, but after I came out of the cannabis closet students wanted to get stoned with me all the time. I never did that. "You get stoned with your friends and I'll get stoned with my friends," I said. 

Teaching at SSU brought me some notoriety, mostly not because of cannabis, but rather because I was an unconventional teacher and got into trouble with the administration when for example I urged the students to paint a mural on the walls of a classroom. They got creative and painted a mural with a large tree, and with images of Mother Theresa, MLK and Adam and Eve, naked of course. They were accused of defacing government property. They would not be prosecuted, I was told, if I took credit for the mural. I became the fall guy.

By the time I began to teach at SSU I knew a lot of people who had been famous in the 1960s and 1970s, including Eldridge Cleaver, Abbie Hoffman, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Kunstler. Abbie Hoffman sold me on the idea of fame. "I can get anything I want with fame and without money," he told me. "People give me stuff because I'm famous and they want to be around me." I saw that friends and acquaintances gave him money, cars, apartments, airline tickets and more. I liked the idea of getting stuff with fame and without money. It seemed cleaner, simpler and less corrupt that way, but I found that there was often a price to be paid. 

Those who gave, wanted something in return, usually a favorable review of a movie they had made or a review of a restaurant they owned and operated. I lost much of my personal freedom and independence and I gained an addiction to fame and notoriety. It's more addicting than weed.

After 40 years in Sonoma County I decided it was time to bail while I was still alive and kicking. I gave away most of my possessions and invited a friend with a pickup truck to take boxes and boxes of my papers to the county dump and get rid of them. When he got to the dump he opened the boxes, removed the files, read them and decided that because I was famous they were too valuable to toss. He took them home where they now live, along with paintings and posters that graced the walls of my apartment. 

Once you're famous, or people think you are, it's not easy to lose fame and revert to the state of anonymity. Even in San Francisco where I am mostly unknown, people recognize me on the street and call out my name. I don't like it, though decades ago when I played the fame game I would have enjoyed the recognition. To be anonymous again I might have to disguise myself and use a pen name to protect my identity. 

Once upon a time, my fantasy was to disappear off the face of the earth, to go to some place where no one knew me, and where I wouldn't reach out and befriend strangers. But that I realized would be too much work. Besides, I like meeting people. Yesterday I had tea and a croissant with a woman who found my writings on the web and emailed me. She was sane, or seemed to be, and not a stalker, or a liability. I'm glad I came out of my cave and made a new friend.

THE EXECUTION OF WILLIE PYE

by Jeffrey St. Clair

On Wednesday night, the State of Georgia, abetted by the US Supreme Court, executed Willie Pye. It was the first execution in Georgia in four years, long one of the leading death machines in the nation.

Georgia’s pause in executions wasn’t voluntary. It was a consequence of the COVID pandemic, which had caused the prison system to restrict visits to inmates, even visits by lawyers, which meant that the counsels for death row prisoners couldn’t adequately prepare appeals or applications for clemency. All of those limitations remain in place today, even on death row.

But this rule didn’t apply to Willie Pye. The reasons are too legally obtuse and arbitrary to go into. When Georgia, the state without mercy, decided to restart the death machinery, Pye was at the top of the list, a list he shouldn’t have been on in the first place.

Willie Pye was black. No surprise there. Since the death penalty was re-constitutionalized in 1976, 34% of the defendants executed have been black. The rate is even higher in Georgia, which has put to death 77 people since 1976, 29 of them black (38%). 

Willie Pye was a black man sentenced to death by an overwhelmingly white jury (there was only one black member) in a Georgia county so notorious for its racism that a confederate monument stood in front of its courthouse until the late 1960s. It now resides in the local cemetery.

Willie Pye was poor. Too poor to afford a lawyer, so a public defender was appointed for him. A bad one and the only one in town. Pye’s lawyer, Johnny Mostiler, put on what could charitably be called a perfunctory defense, neglecting to present a range of mitigating factors that might have spared Pye’s life, such as the abuse and violence he endured as a child and the fact that he may have suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. Both of Pye’s parents were alcoholics. And his father, who labored on a prison chain gang when Pye was born, was a violent alcoholic, who frequently flailed on the Pye children and their mother.

Yet, the only witness Pye’s lawyer called during the entire trial was…Willie Pye, rarely a winning courtroom strategy. Indeed his lawyer was so ineffectual at trial that in 2021 a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals took the rare step of vacating Pye’s death sentence on the grounds of inadequate legal representation. But a year later the ruling was reversed by the full court, citing the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, one of the merciless federal crime bills of the Clinton Era crafted by Joe Biden. The appeals court didn’t dispute the ineptness of Pye’s lawyer, but simply ruled that under the Clinton/Biden law he no longer, in the interest of “effectiveness,” had the right to challenge it.

Willie Pye wasn’t the only person convicted for the crime he, alone, was sentenced to death for. Two other men were also arrested for the murder of 21-year-old Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. Both of those men, Anthony Freeman and Chester Andrews, pled out and were sentenced to life in prison. Pye, who maintained his innocence, risked going to trial with a lawyer who didn’t even probe the holes in the story told by his alleged co-conspirators. He paid the ultimate price for making the state prove its case against him. (Freeman, after serving 24 years behind bars, is now free.)

Willie Pye’s lawyer was not only incompetent, he was also, according to other lawyers and courthouse watchers, a racist, and frequently made racial slurs about his own clients, telling one colleague he thought “young black men were lazy” and saying of another client facing execution: “This little nigger deserves the death penalty.”

One of Mostiller’s most egregious failings was not to have Pye given a mental health evaluation before his trial or examine his school records. When Pye’s appellate attorneys did so, they discovered that Pye had an IQ score of only 68, which should have excepted him from execution under the Supreme Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia, which ruled that putting to death people with mental disabilities or brain trauma violated their Constitutional rights under the Eight Amendment. But the current Supreme Court rarely feels obliged to follow their own precedents anymore, especially in death penalty cases, and refused to hear Pye’s appeal on these compelling grounds. The Thomas-Alito Court is so obsessed with history and tradition that it seems only a matter of time before it finds a constitutional basis for lynching.

So nearly 30 years after being convicted and sentenced to death in a trial so deeply flawed that three of the jurors who voted for the death verdict pleaded for his life to be spared, the State of Georgia stuck a needle into 59-year-old Willie Pye’s arm and injected him with a dose of phenobarbitol that spread through his system until his heart stopped beating at 11:03 pm.

Willie Pye is dead and Georgia is back in the execution business. 

Willie Pye was the third person executed in the US in 2024. There are 29 other scheduled executions for the remainder of the year, 13 in Oklahoma, 8 in Ohio, 3 in Texas, 2 in Missouri, and one each in Alabama, Georgia and Idaho. Of those, 14 have pending death warrants.

+ The morning of Pye’s execution the editorial board of Scientific American came out against the death penalty, saying capital punishment “does not deter crime, is not humane and has no moral or medical basis.”

(CounterPunch.org)

MEET THE AI-CENSORED? NAKED CAPITALISM

by Matt Taibbi

Google provides an early, scary test case for mechanized suppression by threatening a popular economics site with demonetization

by Matt Taibbi

The future of AI-powered censorship is here, and the early returns are as error-filled and clumsily destructive as Google’s infamous Gemini rollout.

On March 4th, Yves Smith — nom de plume for the editor of Naked Capitalism, a popular site containing economics commentary and journalism — received an ominous letter from its ad service company:

Hope you are doing well!

We noticed that Google has flagged your site for Policy violation and ad serving is restricted on most of the pages with the below strikes…

The letter went on to list four data fields: VIOLENT_EXTREMISM, HATEFUL_CONTENT, HARMFUL_HEALTH_CLAIMS, and ANTI_VACCINATION. From there the firm explained: “If Google identifies the flags consistently and if the content is not fixed, then the ads will be disabled completely to serve on the site.”

“So this is a threat of complete demonetization,” says Smith.

She discovered a spreadsheet listing her offenses. Excerpts are reprinted below. The third image is the enhanced view of Google’s explanation for the last two entries:

Naked Capitalism is run by Smith, a Harvard Business School graduate and longtime financial services sector expert. The site often tackles issues the financial press avoids and gained renown in the wake of the 2008 crash. (I appeared with Yves on a Moyers and Company show about banking years ago.) Naked Capitalism helped force the resignation of the SEC’s Director of the Office of Compliance and Inspections, Andrew Bowden when it described Bowden telling a Stanford audience containing many private equity executives how his son would like to work in private equity. Later, California Pension Fund chief Ben Meng resigned in the wake of the site’s reporting.

Naked Capitalism is a home for smart, independent commentary about a financial services industry that is otherwise almost exclusively covered by writers and broadcasters who’d jump at a job offer from the companies they cover. It’s unique, useful and full of links and primary source material. What 16 items did Google find objectionable in its archive of 33,000 posts?

• A Barnard College professor, Rajiv Sethi, evaluated Robert F. Kennedy’s candidacy and wrote, “The claim… is not that the vaccine is ineffective in preventing death from COVID-19, but that these reduced risks are outweighed by an increased risk of death from other factors. I believe that the claim is false (for reasons discussed below), but it is not outrageous.” This earned the judgment, “[AntiVaccination].” Sethi wrote his own explanation here, but this is a common feature of moderation machines; they can’t distinguish between advocacy and criticism. 

• A link to “Evaluation of Waning of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine–Induced Immunity” a peer-reviewed article by the Journal of the American Medical Association, was deemed “[AntiVaccination].”

• An entry critical of vaccine mandates, which linked to the American Journal of Public Health article SARS-CoV-2 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death in Vaccinated and Infected Individuals by Age Groups in Indiana, 2021‒2022, earned [HARMFUL_HEALTH_CLAIMS, ANTI_VACCINATION, HATEFUL_CONTENT] tag. 

The strangest flag of all involved a review by Tom Engelhardt of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by the late CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson. Engelhardt is no fan of Donald Trump, calling him “a billionaire grifter and TV impresario who thought not just unbearably well of, but only of, himself,” and assessing Trump’s presidency so harshly that he put the word “governed” in quotes. But Engelhardt was describing the Johnson book, vaguely in the same intellectual ballpark as Martin Gurri’s Revolt of the Public, which warned back in 2000 of political consequences for breeding a “military establishment that is today close to being beyond civilian control.”

In this context, Engelhardt wrote that “it’s hard not to imagine The Donald’s success as another version of blowback.” He added, “given his insistence that the 2020 election was ‘fake’ or ‘rigged’… it seems to me that we could redub him Blowback Donald.”

This entry earned the absurd demonstrably false democratic process judgment. Obviously, its machine was unable to distinguish commentary, even overtly negative commentary, from endorsement. “An AI could have read it as Engelhardt saying that the election was stolen, as opposed to Englehardt saying Trump said the election was stolen,” is how Smith put it.

There was some slightly more hardcore content on Google’s list — I can see how a machine might trip over a Gaza-themed spoof of the Hall and Oates song “You Make My Dreams Come True” — but algorithms appeared mostly to be going ballistic over throwaway lines, or misreading criticism as its opposite. Also, the company only offered explanations for 8 of 16 flags (really 14, as the company sent the same entry twice in one place, then listed the site’s “Technology and Innovation” category page as objectionable in another). For a site like Naked Capitalism that includes many links in each post, and posts a lot, even one non-specific complaint raises all sorts of issues.

“Every day on weekdays we have six posts, and on weekends we have three,” Smith says. “So we post religiously in fairly large numbers… Anything I could do could conceivably trigger demonetization. I mean, they say ‘consistently,’ but what does ‘consistently’ even mean?”

In the last years Racket readers have become acquainted with a variety of “Meet the Censored” subjects, whose usual problem was removal or deamplification after a questionable judgment by an algorithmic reviewer. Naked Capitalism is dealing with the futuristic next step.

Technologists are in love with new AI tools, but they don’t always know how they work. Machines may be given a review task and access to data, but how the task is achieved is sometimes mysterious. In the case of Naked Capitalism, a site where even comments are monitored in an effort to pre-empt exactly these sorts of accusations, it’s only occasionally clear how or why Google came to tie certain content to categories like “Violent Extremism.” Worse, the company may be tasking its review bots with politically charged instructions even in the absence of complaints from advertisers.

Companies (and governments) have learned that the best way to control content is by attacking revenue sources, either through NewsGuard- or GDI-style “nutrition” or “dynamic exclusion” lists, or advertiser boycotts. Previously, a human being was sometimes involved in reviewing the final placement of sites in certain buckets, or problems might at least have been prompted by human complaints. Now, from flagging all the way through to the inevitable “Hi! You’ve been selected for income termination!” form letter, the new review process can be conducted without any human involvement at all.

“No human is flagging these posts,” Smith quoted an ad sales expert as saying. “I’m pretty sure advertisers have no idea that the Google bot is blocking their carefully crafted communications from reaching [her] readers.”

Whether it’s AI or just an algorithm, it’s not clear whether Google is knocking Smith’s site on its own initiative, or to stay in compliance with a law like Europe’s Digital Services Act, since the company hasn’t responded to questions. The timing is odd; the site has never faced any kind of review before, and the breakdown of its supposed strikes suggests that even Google’s internal review process isn’t finding many recent issues. (Just four in the last two years.) Either way, the decision to even once tell a media outlet that it must remove content to remain ad-eligible sends a message someone like Smith will think of every time she publishes going forward. And think she will, because like most sites of this size, Naked Capitalism can’t afford to forego even a small amount of revenue.

“We are so lean,” Smith says. “We have nowhere to cut.”

A HARVARD DISHONESTY RESEARCHER WAS ACCUSED OF FRAUD. HER DEFENSE IS TROUBLING.

The more we learn about Francesca Gino’s lawsuit, the more problems arise.

by Kelsey Piper

Last summer, I wrote about Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino, a famous “dishonesty researcher” who was suspended from Harvard after it was revealed that someone had manipulated the data in four papers she co-authored over the course of a decade. In response, Gino — who has maintained her innocence — sued Harvard and the bloggers who first published the allegations, claiming she’d been defamed.

I’ve written about how her lawsuit will have negative consequences for the scientific community, stifling critics and making it even less likely that research fraud, when it happens, will come to light. But there’s one respect in which the lawsuit has been enormously valuable for casting light on the allegations against Gino.

Harvard’s lengthy internal investigation of the allegations was not originally released to the public. Last week, a Massachusetts judge ordered it unsealed, granting the world a look at Harvard’s process as they investigated the possibility that one of their star researchers had fabricated her data — and a look at Gino’s defense. 

Overall, the document makes the allegations of Gino’s misconduct look more warranted than ever. 

But that still may not be enough to prevent an expensive legal battle. Given that it is increasingly evident that scientific fraud is nowhere near as rare as anyone hoped, we desperately need better processes for identifying it. We also need a better means of protecting the people who stick their necks out to bring it to light.

What Harvard found

The Gino saga turns on four papers — published in 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2020. In each of them, independent data detectives found telltale signs of manipulation: rows that had been altered or inserted in the data, and which conveniently produced dramatic effects supporting her hypotheses. The data detectives alerted Harvard of their concerns.

Harvard commissioned an independent investigation into the allegations. The resulting report is almost 1,300 pages — longer than Infinite Jest — though that doesn’t mean it’s dull. It details how the research team systematically determined that, for each of the four papers, the data was indeed manipulated. And it includes Gino’s theories of who did it and why.

One explanation Gino offered Harvard for the manipulated data stands out: her theory that the data was manipulated by an academic rival of Gino’s seeking to take revenge over a disagreement. 

If that sounds far-fetched, well, the report’s authors agreed. The major problem is that while there are many people who could have manipulated the data for any one of the studies, the only common denominator across all of them — over eight years — was Gino. 

“In order to falsify data across all four studies’ records,” the report observes, “actors with malicious intentions would have needed the following: First, they would have needed access to both Professor Gino’s Qualtrics accounts and her computer’s hard drive, as two allegations (1 and 2) involve discrepancies in Qualtrics data and one allegation (3) involves discrepancies in the computer’s data.” 

Then they’d also have needed a co-conspirator in order to falsify the data associated with allegation 4. Then they’d also have needed deep familiarity with how Gino stored and labeled data on her computer and her planned timetable for each study, just to maliciously alter the study to make her look bad. 

Then, having carefully engineered this evidence of data misconduct, they would need to sit still for years before revealing the evidence of falsification.

It’s a stretch, to put it mildly.

Could this possibly be defamation?

“Defamation,” defamation lawyer Ken Whitetold me last summer, “is an unprivileged false factual statement about someone which causes harm. Where a lot of the action comes in is determining what is a provably false factual statement.”

The Harvard report makes it abundantly clear that Gino will have an uphill battle convincing any court that the Data Colada bloggers made a provably false factual statement. For one thing, the data was clearly manipulated. 

So far, her primary argument for why she didn’t commit fraud is, basically, that maybe she was carefully and elaborately framed for it by someone with access to her computer and her logins over the course of eight years.

That’s a fundamentally unserious theory of this situation, and Harvard’s analysis commission was correct to conclude it was highly unlikely. The only reason we’re obliged to take it seriously is that Gino’s lawsuit is a serious matter, whether the underlying claims are reasonable or unreasonable.

“The system is so broken that being sued for defamation in a case like this will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and go on for years,” White told me earlier. “Realistically, you could wind up going to trial. Even if you’re going to win at trial, eventually you’re going to be ruined doing it.”

Gino doesn’t need to win her lawsuit to have a devastatingly chilling effect on independent experts searching for fraud. She doesn’t even need to propose a credible theory of how the data manipulation could have happened without her involvement. It doesn’t matter if her explanation strains credulity. “The process is the punishment,” as White put it. 

That’s a huge problem because scientific fraud is a huge problem. Between the dishonesty researchers who have one by one turned out to be dishonest and the cancer research that turned out to be reusing Photoshopped versions of the same test result pictures, the last few years have been full of discomfiting reminders that, yes, some people will cheat to get ahead in science, and we lack a robust process for catching them.

Scientific integrity currently depends on the willingness of individuals to speak out when they see fraud, and it’s precisely that willingness Gino’s lawsuit targets.

(vox.com)