Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 5/8/24

Warming | Well Seal | Appalled | Fern Fingers | Boss Petition | CRBN PIG | Bouncing Budget | Caffiend | Water Ruling | Patrona Owners | Giants Tickets | Ed Notes | Non-White Babies | Apologies Accepted | Park Concerts | Local Legends | Yesterday's Catch | Rounding Third | Seize PG&E | Camp Sasquatch | Fish Crisis | Tomato Companions | Cuckoo Clock | Beautiful Words | Killed Christ | Stormy Testimony | High Ideals | Inequality Inc | Open Fire | Cool Problem | Howl

A BUILDING EXPANSIVE PACIFIC RIDGE OF HIGH PRESSURE will continue to bring warming temperatures and strengthening N to NE winds. This combination of elements will allow for unseasonably warm and possibly record high temperatures closer to the coast and in the interior valleys. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Today will be breezy but nothing like yesterday, I hope. My roofers had to go home at 11am for safety reasons. Clear skies & 43F this Humpday morning on the coast. The rest of the week will be breeze free with warming temps. We can likely expect some fog by the weekend.

OLIE ERICKSON (facebook): If you lost your well seal, I found it. Philo Greenwood Rd.

THE OPPOSITE OF TRANSPARENCY

Dear Editor,

I just watched the BOS supervisors meeting today and I must say, I am appalled by how item 4i Discussion and Possible Action Including Adoption of Resolution Amending the Position Allocation Table as Follows: Budget Unit 4050, Add 1.0 FTE Director of Health Services, Salary Range $162,593.60- $197,620.80/Annually and Delete 1.0 FTE Director Behavioral Health, PN 4472; Budget Unit 4010, Delete 1.0 FTE Director Public Health, PN 4567 (Sponsor: Human Resources), was handled. 

As someone who has watched all the BOS meetings the last two years, I don’t recall it ever being publicly discussed to consolidate Behavioral Health and Recovery Services (BHRS) with Public Health. I knew that the last Public Health director was fired and that there was a vacancy. I had heard rumors that the Executive Office (EO) was working with the Director of BHRS to consolidate the departments. Sometime, I believe in January or February, the director of BHRS was referred to as the director of both departments without much fanfare. It seemed like the decision had been made behind closed doors.

During today’s discussion, there was quite a bit of tension between the BOS and the EO. Most of the supervisors thought the consolidation was temporary and requested a long-term plan while the EO argued that deleting two positions and creating a new position was merely administrative cleanup. In my view, this was a move to quietly restructure the County, consolidating more power into fewer department heads then denying the public adequate notification and the opportunity to comment. This is the exact opposite of transparency and is a disservice to the public. 

After the BOS tabled the item and directed staff to return with a presentation on the proposed consolidation, the item was reopened at the discretion of the chair to allow managers that serve under the director of BHRS to present the board with an impromptu petition demanding that the director receive a pay raise. I find it highly inappropriate for department managers to circulate a petition, forcefully coercing their fellow co-workers into supporting a pay raise for their superior while on the clock. The board sets policy for staff to follow, not the other way around. 

I want to thank the three supervisors that voted for transparency.

Adam Gaska

Redwood Valley

WE WANT MILLER

Board of Supervisors, Mendocino County

501 Low Gap Road, Room 1010

Ukiah, CA 95482

May 7, 2024

Dear Members of the Board of Supervisors,

We, the dedicated employees of the Public Health and Behavioral Health departments, are writing to express our concerns regarding the recent decision to decline the creation of a Health Services Director position to oversee our departments. While we understand the complexities involved in administrative decisions, we are deeply disappointed and feel compelled to share our perspectives on this matter.

Jenine Miller, who has admirably taken on the role of overseeing both departments, has been instrumental in fostering collaboration and unity among us. Her leadership has brought a renewed sense of purpose and teamwork, significantly enhancing our effectiveness in serving the community.

We are deeply worried that if we do not create a fair position for her that encompasses all the work she is doing to oversee two departments, another county or organization will. Jenine has a rare level of talent even for those in the highest levels of leadership, and losing someone of this distinction would be a significant blow to our departments and to the community we serve.

We believe that recognizing Jenine's expanded responsibilities with the creation of a Health Services Director position is essential. Not only would this acknowledge her hard work and dedication, but it would also ensure the continued success of our departments under her remarkable leadership. Investing in effective leadership is crucial for the well-being of our community, and retaining someone of Jenine's caliber should be a priority.

Approving reimbursement for a job she was directed to take months ago should have been a matter of routine. We would have been present in public comment, had we any realization that such a formality required advocacy.

Thank you for considering our perspective on this matter. We urge you to carefully weigh the implications of your decision and take action that is in the best interest of Mendocino County and its residents.

Sincerely,

Public Health and Behavioral Health Staff

Signatures in addendum attached

FOLLOW THE BOUNCING BUDGET BALL

by Mark Scaramella

We didn’t really expect the Supervisors to address the many inconsistencies and incongruencies in Tuesday’s budget presentation that we previously outlined, that would be unheard of from this Board. 

But at least they touched on — without resolving, of course — the still unaddressed multi-million dollar gaps in next year’s budget.

The Board agreed that Tuesday’s presentation by relative budget newcomers Sara Pierce and Tony Rakes seemed to be better than previous attempts, but nice graphs and charts don’t balance budgets.

The picture this improved presentation provided wasn’t positive. This year, property tax revenues are expected to be up a modest 3%. Sales tax revenue down almost 5%. Bed taxes down 12%. The carry forward from last year is at least $2 million less than in previous years, the Board’s recent salary and pension increases have put more strain on all departmental budgets, tax default auctions are way behind, the General Fund has had to cover about $5.5 million in Teeter Plan debt because the County paid schools and special districts their nominal amounts, but sales from long-delayed tax defaulted properties didn’t make up for it… 

And that was just this current year (July 2023-June 2024). Instead of proposing any increased tax collections or specific budget cuts, Acting Deputy CEO Tony Rakes (the latest in a parade of budget presenters that CEO Darcie Antle has put forward), proposed using a variety of one-time funds to close the gap. Rakes also said the CEO’s office has asked the departments to reduce their non-salary costs (travel, training, supplies, contracts, etc.) by 5%. But that’s a small percentage of a small percentage, if it happens.

When Acting Auditor-Controller Treasurer Tax Collector Sara Pierce said that expects some revenue from defaulted property auctions to make up for the Teeter Plan debt, Supervisor Haschak was skeptical, saying that even if they got some late taxes or property sales revenue from that process it wouldn’t come close to the $5.5 million loss the Teeter Plan has already suffered via the General Fund. Pierce said it was too early to say, and that they are only now catching up on a large backlog of tax lien sales and supplemental tax bills that accumulated during covid and before.

Supervisors Gjerde and McGourty thought the County should be doing more to increase tax collections, despite Supervisor Williams continued irrational insistence that it wouldn’t change the underlying deficit problem because, basically, revenues are not keeping up with inflation.

Supervisor Gjerde became so frustrated with the lack of attention to uncollected revenue that he grumbled:

“I don’t see anything in this presentation about revenues and tax collection. I don’t see it here in the meeting, on camera. I don’t hear it from the CEO saying ‘this is what my plan is, I’ve got a plan.’ I’d like to hear a plan from our CEO who’s paid $200,000 a year. So my plan would be that we direct the CEO to either put out an RFP (for assessing non-assessed properties) from the CEO’s office or we work with other counties to put out an RFP … In rural counties like Mendocino County all the houses are built as one-offs, not in a subdivision, and every contractor or every ‘builder’ [Gjerde’s air quotes] in Mendocino County asks their client, ‘Do you want building permit?,’ as if it’s an option! We know most projects are built outside of the system. Everyone has known that for decades. So I would like to see a bullet point to direct the executive office to send out an RFP to hire somebody to do the work because we cannot rely on the elected Assessor to come forward with a plan. I want the CEO to add a bullet point under budget projections for what they’re going to do to increase revenues and improve cash management because I’m not convinced we’re collecting enough [interest] from CDs and money markets, etc. and come back with budget projections. That’s how you balance the budget: you increase revenues one step at a time, one piece at a time.”

Supervisor Gjerde made his blunt criticisms of the $200k CEO and the unreliable Assessor clear. He may be exaggerating about “every builder” in the County asking their clients if they want a building permit, and that “most projects” are built outside the system. But he’s right that Mendo needs to focus on revenue collection, as we have been pointing out for years. 

Haschak thought the County should do something to accelerate the retirement incentives they offer, noting that very few senior staffers have taken the County up on this option. Deputy CEO Cherie Johnson (and acting Human Resources Director) said that the Departments have been reluctant to guarantee that such vacancies would stay vacant for two years to realize the expected savings of such vacancies and still make sure that necessary work can still get done.

There was no public comment on the budget. In the end the Board voted 4-1 to accept the two presentations (one for this year and a preliminary one for next year) which depend heavily on one time funds, such as the remaining PG&E settlement money, the remaining covid money, what’s left of the carry-over and use of some reserves. But this still leaves an estimated $4.225 million deficit for this year (ending on June 30) which went unaddressed. Supervisor McGourty added that the Board wants the CEO to come up with a plan for increased assessments and tax collections, to increase the rate of return on the County’s investment pool, and to try harder to avoid construction costs overruns. Williams was the only no vote, saying he didn’t like using one-time funds to balance the budget.

* * *

The highly anticipated re-hearing of the Redwood Valley gas station developer’s appeal of the Planning Commission’s permit denial ended in another postponement. Supervisor Williams appeared to have ignored the applicant’s demand that he recuse himself. We’ll have more on that coming up. 

FEDERAL JUDGE: RUSSIAN RIVER DAM RELEASES ARE VIOLATING ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

by Andrew Graham

A federal judge ruled Monday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has violated the Endangered Species Act by disturbing salmon populations through flood-control releases from Coyote Valley Dam into the Russian River.

Those releases, which relieve pressure upstream from the 66-year-old dam during rainy months, kick up sediment from the bottom of Lake Mendocino, a reservoir that serves as critical water storage for Sonoma County.

The sediment increases turbidity in the river that harms and harasses coho and chinook salmon and steelhead trout in violation of the Endangered Species Act’s mandate to protect the imperiled species, U.S. District Court of Northern California Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley ruled.

Corley ruled on a lawsuit brought by Sean White, who has spent much of his career involved in the Russian River in one way or another, serving as general manager of the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District before moving in 2015 to direct sewage and water services for the city of Ukiah.

White brought the lawsuit as a private citizen. The Endangered Species Act, one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws, allows for citizens to sue governments, businesses or individuals they believe to be violating the act.

“Today’s ruling from the Northern District confirms there has been complete institutional failure in protecting endangered species from the effects of Coyote Valley Dam — essentially reducing our beautiful river to a dirty, muddy mess,“ White said in a news release Monday.

Corely found that the Corps’ own data concurred with White’s tests, which he largely conducted on his own, to indicate there was no factual dispute that the releases were increasing turbidity that harmed salmon and steelhead in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

“Judge Corley’s decision is a great example of how our legal institutions is supposed to work by simply declaring what the facts and the law are,” White’s attorney, Phil Williams told The Press Democrat.

North Coast Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, also cheered Corely’s ruling.

Huffman has been advocating for years for the Corps to study raising Coyote Valley Dam to increase Lake Mendocino’s water storage capacity and redesign its outflows to reduce turbidity.

“I was surprised, frankly, that its been allowed to happen for so long,“ Huffman said of the river-clouding releases. ”It’s just undeniable and its really significant.“

The court order comes roughly two months after Huffman touted a $500,000 federal appropriation for a study on raising the dam. Coupled with the judge’s ruling, the two developments are a powerful step toward a major dam project.

That infrastructure project “would fix the water quality problem,” Huffman said, “and we now have a court ruling telling them they have to fix (that problem).”

In brief answers to Press Democrat questions, Army Corps of Engineers San Francisco District counsel Merry Goodenough said the lawsuit would not have long-term impacts on the agency’s plan for the dam.

While Corley ruled against the Corps of Engineers, she did not order them to stop releases. With the wet season now mostly in the rear view mirror, the judge said in her ruling that issuing an immediate injunction was unnecessary, as dam operators were shifting from flood control to water supply operations, which are managed by the Sonoma Water, the county agency and the region’s dominant drinking water supplier.

Sonoma Water is not a party to the lawsuit, Assistant General Manager Brad Sherwood said in a statement to The Press Democrat, and the claim does not involve the agency’s water supply operations.

Meanwhile, the Corps is already engaged in drafting a new plan to manage releases in a way that mitigates impacts to the salmon. In his lawsuit, White contended, and Corley agreed, that the Corps has violated a biological opinion issued in 2008 by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which oversees imperiled salmon stocks.

That opinion, a guiding document for river managers, found the dam was “a major contributor to sustained turbidity in the Russian River,” and included a directive to the Corps to draft a plan minimizing turbidity by 2014.

The biological opinion expired in September 2023 and the federal agencies have not yet replaced it with an updated version.

“Had the 2008 Biological Opinion not expired in September of 2023, we would have had a different result,“ the Corp’s Goodenough wrote in her response to The Press Democrat.

Instead of issuing an immediate injunction that would order the federal government to alter its flood release plans, the judge said she would take the matter back up in August, and look to see if the Corps had taken steps toward crafting a new management plan for making the releases in a manner that might better protect the fish.

Until then, “there is no reason … to step into the shoes of the expert agencies to prematurely determine what is the best dam operation practice,” for the fish, Corley wrote.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, White told The Press Democrat he began testing turbidity at different points of the Russian River — below Coyote Valley Dam, above it and at different tributary points — out of his growing frustration over what he believed were damaging dam releases. The Corps had documented for years that its releases were increasing turbidity to a point that would harm imperiled salmonid populations, he said, but had not acted.

“That’s what’s most bothersome of this entire endeavor,“ he said. ”Nobody held them accountable for fixing it.”

He conducted the tests on his own time and paid for analysis out of his own pocket, he said, to build a case that the dam releases were violating the Endangered Species Act.

Environmentalists and water managers have long known the placement of the dam’s outlet meant that sediment from Lake Mendocino’s bottom was being released into the Russian River. But many considered it a flaw in the dam’s antiquated design that couldn’t be rectified without a major reconstruction project.

“The way the dam was built it was designed to scour out sediment as it accumulates around that outlet and send that downriver,“ Don McEnhill, director of environmental group Russian Riverkeeper, told The Press Democrat Tuesday.

“The only way that can be fixed truly is by changing the outlet structure,” he said. Any federal judge would be reluctant to issue an order that could interfere with the Corps’ flood control management efforts, McEnhill noted, which protect Ukiah and other inhabited areas.

McEnhill said Russian Riverkeeper has also advocated for a dam-raising project.

White and his attorney however say the Corps could protect salmon and steelhead runs sooner, including by limiting the duration of their releases to mimic the natural turbidity in high flows that fish are adapted to.

After a strong rainstorm, the river naturally clouds through sediment runoff, White said, but clears itself out with time. Turbidity from Coyote Valley Dam releases last significantly longer than those natural cycles, he said.

(pressdemocrat.com)

THE NEW OWNERS OF PATRONA, Bree and Mike Kesterson are opening their version of Ukiah’s beloved neighborhood bistro TODAY!! Come by and say hello, they’ve got great plans for fabulous things! 

RENEE LEE: I have 4 Giants Tickets against the Reds for this Saturday, May 11 @ 4:15pm. LB127, row 21. Great seats. Digital tickets delivers via email/MLB app. Highest bidder gets the tickets. Proceeds will benefit AV Senior Center. DM via facebook with offer.

ED NOTES

A READER WRITES: “When we arrived in Point Arena, I heard stories from a couple of the teachers about the bad mojo which blew through daily at the elementary school. The school was rumored to have been built on the site of a very old local Indian burial ground. Windy spots are good for carrying the spirits to their transcendent grounds. It is said that after massacres in Round Valley, local Native Americans were loathe to step onto state-run school soil for a long, long time. It took the dying off of a few generations with memory of the relatives they lost here and at Round Valley before the Pomo would attend school on this spot in Point Arena.”

STATE WATER RESOURCES, in 2001, says there are “130 illegally built reservoirs on the Navarro system,” and they said that in 1997 when they took a close look at aerial maps rendered that same year. How many more have been built in the years since?

A CRYPTIC PARAGRAPH from the old Mendocino Beacon’s “Old Time Notes” column I’d like to know more about: “A 160-acre tract of Indian land in Mendocino County sold to the highest bidder for $3,000 is included among 64 such tracts sold recently in Sacramento for a total of $267,968.” This particular theft occurred in December of 1951.

GIMMEE SHELTER!

Thank You for Your Patience

Warmest spiritual greetings, 

The past 24 hours have been epic. Following extensive private meetings and conversations with the supervisory staff at Ukiah, California's Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center, my emotional display last night in response to two challenging years and concern about survival, has been fully explained, feedback has been received, and appropriate apologies from myself to inconvenienced staff has been accepted. I have submitted an application for an extension at the facility, which will be reviewed next Monday. Generally, the feeling is that it would be dangerous for me to leave with luggage and a provided letter to the Ukiah Police Department, stating that I will henceforth be "camping" in Mendocino county. 

This morning included a comprehensive meeting with my housing navigator, who intends to find out why the federal housing voucher was timed out. And she is submitting applications to additional subsidized senior housing places, because the search to place me is now more crucial than ever. Aside from remaining alive, it is necessary for me to move on from the homeless facility, in order to be able to realize my next highest good. She agrees that I have a legitimate spiritual life, that my only serious interest is to do the will of the Divine, that I will receive whatever is required to be able to do this, and she is fully supportive of my expressing my feelings and emotions. She also understands the need to go out once in a while and consume beer and enjoy a first rate meal, not as a luxury activity, but as a real time necessity! 

I have done the best that I can do for the past 74 years. I look forward to anything else that may be accomplished, and will one day leave this world forever. In the meantime, I will cooperate as best as I can with the spiritual absolute. Thank you very much for listening.

Craig Louis Stehr

A NEW PODCAST FEATURING LOCAL LEGENDS...

Hi everyone,

I’ve lived in the Fort Bragg area for the past 7ish years, and have completely fallen in love with many of the wild skills that come in handy out in this part of the world. In an effort to learn as much from as many interesting people as possible, I started a weekly podcast interviewing folks with a strong connection to the wild.

The latest episode (Ep026) of ‘The Wild Dispatch' marks the show’s six-month mark by celebrating a local legend: Larry Knowles.

Larry is the owner of Rising Tide Sea Vegetables just south of Fort Bragg. I’m sure many of you know he’s been making delicious seaweed based snacks for many years, all the while remaining conscious to minimize any potential impact on our beautiful eco-systems.

Larry has some fantastic stories, and a deep understanding of coastal habitats in Northern California. In this episode Larry shares his own and the Rising Tide story, the events that shaped his perspective on our place in the food chain, the problems with mass scale food production, and the common misconceptions of human impact. We also learn some tips and tricks on the best way to approach harvesting sea veggies and fish for ourselves!

Here’s a few quick links to make life easy: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and if you don’t use podcast apps here's a computer link.

I’ve also been lucky enough to interview quite a few other great local guests too... including a couple of fantastic mushroom episodes with Billy Sprague, three episodes and many amazing stories with Ejler the fishing/woodworking/homesteader down in Elk, and more than a handful of close-call stories with retired PJ and Fish & game warden Dennis McKiver.

I’d love to hear what locals think of the pod, and definitely please get in touch if you think there’s anyone I should be speaking to!

Thanks for your time and all the best,

Robin Warman <robin.warman@live.com>

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, May 7, 2024

SABRINA LASTER, Willits. DUI, battery with serious injury, resisting.

SHAUN LELL, Ukiah. County parole violation.

ORLANDO MUNOZ, Ukiah. Under influence. (Frequent flyer.)

JULIO NAJERA-LEON, Ukiah. Parole violation.

KAILEE POZZI, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TERRY RICHMOND, Willits. Loaded handgun not registered owner, felon with firearm, ammo possession by prohibited person.

SILAS YOUNG, Willits. DUI, suspended license for DUI.

RICHMOND BECOMES ANOTHER LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO CALL FOR THE SEIZURE OF PG&E

Richmond City Council Agenda Item Q.1, May 7, 2024:

Richmond residents and all Californians deserve access to safe, clean, affordable and reliable energy. The failures of California’s current utility model and regulatory infrastructure have caused grievous harm via catastrophic wildfires, smoke, shutoffs, environmental injustice, climate disruption and escalating rates. An alternative to the investor owned utility model is needed. Richmond residents and Californians more broadly would benefit from ending PG&E’s monopoly control of the energy transmission and distribution system and transitioning to an energy system. 

“Electrification” is now considered a cornerstone of the transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources. In California, the largest sub-national economy in the world, its legislative body and multiple state agencies have put policies in place that encourage decarbonization via massive electrification infrastructure shifts in particular. 

Pacific Gas And Electric Company (PG&E) is one of six investor-owned utility (IOU) companies in California and one of the biggest utility companies in the United States. Its coverage area, which includes most of Northern and Central California, covers 70,000 square miles and serves 16 million people across the state. 

In California, IOU rates are approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the state’s regulatory agency for these utility companies. In April 2024, with the blessing of the CPUC’s regulations, PG&E implemented massive rate hikes on its customers. This increase comes despite the corporation’s recent, well-documented history of power outages, wildfires, safety violations and financial mismanagement — all of which have posed significant threats to the safety and well-being of Californians. Given the economic profile of its residents, the City of Richmond must be particularly proactive about energy affordability and accessibility, all of which impact the local economy, housing stability, resident health, and more. 

Fundamentally, the investor-owned utility model disincentivizes grid updates and investments in safety measures. Electricity rates are regulated to allow these utility companies to earn a specific rate of return (profit). Under this business model, investments into large projects — particularly new transmission projects — bring in more profit than investing in safety upgrades to existing infrastructure. In other words, there is very little incentive for PG&E and other IOUs to prioritize public benefit and safety when building or upgrading their assets; the safety and reliability of energy service come second to ensuring shareholder profits are maximized. 

There is potential for an alternative model. Following PG&E’s 2019 bankruptcy filing, California passed Senate Bill 350 in 2020. Also known as the Golden State Energy Act, SB 350 represented a critical first step in preparing for the potential failure of PG&E. SB350 created a framework for establishing Golden State Energy (GSE) to receive PG&E’s assets and authorized GSE to take the basic actions necessary to ensure continuity of critical electrical and gas service in Northern California. 

At this juncture, SB350’s design is extremely skeletal, and GSE remains unstaffed and unfunded, creating significant uncertainty in the state’s ability to act quickly in the event of PG&E’s unexpected failure. With the increasing severity and unpredictability of our climate crisis, it is critical that we prepare for that eventuality in a way that prepares GSE to meet Californians’ modern energy needs. 

A statewide not-for-profit utility would address energy injustices and prioritize public benefits in the generation, distribution, and transmission grid-level investments. Across the country, municipal utilities, community choice aggregates, rural electric cooperatives, and tribal utilities already serve local electric loads without a profit motive. Nonprofit utilities, including publicly owned utilities, are able to consider the long-term impacts of an investment and weigh the long-term benefit to customers against short-term costs, without needing to prioritize immediate profits for shareholders. 

Significant legal and financial issues remain to be addressed for this transition to occur, from wildfire liabilities to asset price determination. Many sectors of California are directly impacted by PG&E’s failures to prioritize safety, reliability, affordability, health and climate. Transitioning power away from PG&E requires political will, and the movement must center frontline communities in order to meaningfully transform hundred-year-old institutions that are not able to shift with the urgency required for this moment. Cities, counties, schools, labor unions, and community-based organizations must call on California to enable Golden State Energy to become California’s people-serving utility. 

In short, further legislative action is needed to flesh out Golden State Energy. Local jurisdictions are in a unique position to apply their influence on state-level decision-makers and advocate for SB-350, the Golden State Energy Act which would authorize the CPUC to petition a court to appoint a receiver to assume possession of PG&E’s property and to operate its electrical and gas systems as a nonprofit public benefit corporation.

CA SALMON, DELTA FISH POPULATIONS ARE IN WORST-EVER CRISIS As Pumps Keep Exporting Water To Big Ag

by Dan Bacher

Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations are in their worst-ever crisis ever as California Governor Newsom forges ahead with the Delta Tunnel and Sites Reservoir projects and the Big Ag voluntary agreements while fish populations get closer and closer to extinction.

California salmon fishing was closed in 2023 and will be closed this year also. The 2024 stock abundance forecast for Sacramento River Fall Chinook, often the most abundant stock in the ocean fishery, is only 213,600 adults. The return to Coleman Fish Hatchery was an absolute disaster. Meanwhile, abundance of Klamath River Fall Chinook is forecast at 180,700 adults.

Endangered Sacramento River spring and winter-run Chinook also continue their march towards extinction. The spawning escapement of Sacramento River Spring Chinooks (SRSC) in 2023 totaled 1,479 fish (jacks and adults), with an estimated return of 106 to upper Sacramento River tributaries and the remaining 1,391 fish returning to the Feather River Hatchery.

The return to Butte Creek of just 100 fish was the lowest ever. In 2021, an estimated 19,773 out of the more than 21,580 fish total that returned to spawn in the Butte County stream perished before spawning.

Nor did the winter run, listed under the state and federal Endangered Species Act, do well. Spawner escapement of endangered Sacramento River Winter Chinook (SRWC) in 2023 was estimated to be 2,447 adults and 54 jacks, according to PFMC data.

A group of us, including the late conservationist and Fish Sniffer magazine publisher Hal Bonslett, successfully pushed the state and federal governments to list the winter run under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts starting in 1990-91 because we were so alarmed that the fish population had crashed to 2,000 fish.

Then in 1992 the run declined to less than 200 fish. Even after Shasta Dam was built, the winter run escapement to the Sacramento River was 117,000 in 1969!

Now we are back to approximately the same low number of winter-run Chinooks that spurred us to push for the listing of the fish as endangered under state and federal law over 30 years ago.

The State Water Project (SWP) and Central Valley Project (CVP) Delta “death pumps” have been the biggest killers of salmon, steelhead, Sacramento splittail and other fish species in California for many decades, as I have documented in hundreds of articles in an array of publications.

In the latest episode in this outrageous saga, a coalition of fishing and conservation groups, including the Golden Gate Salmon Association, San Francisco Baykeeper and Bay Institute, urged the state and federal water agencies to “take immediate action” to stop the unauthorized killing of thousands of Chinook Salmon and Steelhead at the State and Federal water export pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Both winter-run Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead are protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). Central Valley winter-run Chinook Salmon is also protected under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA).

The coalition reported that this is the second time in 2024 the coalition has responded to an increase in killing of legally protected fish at the pumps of the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project (Projects or Water Projects).

While the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has called for significant reductions in the Projects’ Delta water pumping, the California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the federal Bureau of Reclamation that own and operate the Projects ignored these recommendations and continued to export water at rates that killed thousands of imperiled fishes, the groups said.

“Indeed, over the past week, DWR and Reclamation further increased pumping — as a result, significantly increasing take of winter-run Chinook Salmon at the pumps,” the groups said in a statement. “As a result, the Water Projects have exceeded the legal limits for killing both Central Valley Steelhead and winter-run Chinook Salmon established under the ESA by NMFS.”

State Water Project pumping accounts for 80% of the water exported from the Delta at this time, according to the groups.

The annual ESA take limit for winter-run Chinook Salmon is *1,776 fish*. As of March 25, 2024, an estimated *3,030*winter-run had been killed at the pumps — not counting the much larger number of fish that likely died after being drawn by pumping into inhospitable parts of the Delta, the groups said.

Since December 1, 2023, an estimated *2,919* naturally spawned Central Valley Steelhead have also been killed by the Water Projects. The maximum allowable ESA Steelhead take is *1,571* as a three-year rolling average or 2,760 in any single year. The numbers show that the Water Projects are in violation of both limits.

Now we turn to Delta Smelt. Unfortunately, the mainstream media, for the most part, either refuses to report on the Delta smelt or report inaccurately on the Delta Smelt when it does report. This is from an article in the LA Times in February 2024: “Recent surveys have found decreasing numbers of Delta smelt in the wild.”

Are you kidding? Actually, for the sixth year in a row, ZERO Delta Smelt were collected in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl (FMWT) Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta from September through December 2023.

Once the most abundant species in the entire estuary, the Delta Smelt has declined to the point that it has become *functionally extinct in the wild*. The 2 to 3 inch fish, found only in the Delta, is an “indicator species” that shows the relative health of the San Francisco Bay/Delta ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the other pelagic species collected in the survey — striped bass, Longfin Smelt, Sacramento Splittail and threadfin shad — continued their dramatic decline since 1967 when the State Water Project went into effect. Only the American shad shows a less precipitous decline.

Between 1967 and 2020, the state’s Fall Midwater Trawl abundance indices for striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by *99.7, 100, 99.96, 67.9, 100, and 95%*, respectively, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

IN ITALY, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.

— The Third Man, 1949

CHARLIE CHAPLIN once told a joke in front of an audience..!!

Everyone laughed

And he told it a second time, so only a few laughed.

When he told it for the third time, no one laughed.

Then he said beautiful words.

If you can't laugh and laugh at the same joke, why do you cry and cry at the same pain and sorrow?

So enjoy every moment of your life - Charlie Chaplin left a great legacy without saying a word or hurting anyone's feeling

BECAUSE I’M JEWISH, a lot of people ask why I killed Christ. What can I say? It was an accident. It was one of those parties that got out of hand. I killed him because he wouldn’t become a doctor.

— Lenny Bruce

STORMY DANIELS DESCRIBES MEETING TRUMP DURING OCCASIONALLY GRAPHIC TESTIMONY IN HUSH MONEY TRIAL

by Nichael R. Sisak, Jennifer Peltz, Eric Tucker & Jake Offenhartz

With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president’s hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.

Jurors appeared riveted as Daniels offered a detailed and at times graphic account of the encounter Trump has denied. Trump stared straight ahead when Daniels entered the courtroom, later whispering to his lawyers and shaking his head as she testified.

The testimony was by far the most-awaited spectacle in a trial that has toggled between tabloidesque elements and dry record-keeping details. A courtroom appearance by a porn actor who says she had an intimate encounter with a former American president added to the long list of historic firsts in a landmark case laden with claims of sex, payoffs and cover-ups and unfolding as the presumptive Republican nominee makes another bid for the White House.

Daniels veered into salacious details despite the repeated objections of defense lawyers, who demanded a mistrial over what they said were prejudicial and irrelevant comments.

“This is the kind of testimony that makes it impossible to come back from,” attorney Todd Blanche said. “How can we come back from this in a way that’s fair to President Trump?”

The judge rejected the request and said defense lawyers should have raised more objections during the testimony. The Trump team later in the day used its opportunity to question Daniels to paint her as motivated by personal animus and profiting off her claims against Trump.

“Am I correct that you hate President Trump?” defense lawyer Susan Necheles asked Daniels.

“Yes,” she acknowledged.

Daniels’ statements are central to the case because in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about what she says was an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump in July 2006 at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

Led by a prosecutor’s questioning, Daniels described how an initial meeting at a golf tournament, where they discussed the adult film industry, progressed to a “brief” sexual encounter that she said Trump initiated after inviting her to dinner and back to his hotel suite.

She said she didn’t feel physically or verbally threatened, though she knew his bodyguard was outside the suite. There was also what she perceived as an imbalance of power: Trump “was bigger and blocking the way,” she said.

At the time, Trump was married to his wife, Melania, who has not been in court for the trial. Daniels said Trump told her they did not sleep in the same room, prompting him to shake his head at the defense table.

After it ended, Daniels said, “It was really hard to get my shoes because my hands were shaking so hard.”

“He said: ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch,’” Daniels said. “I just wanted to leave.”

Trump’s reaction to her testimony at the defense table prompted Judge Juan Merchan to summon his lawyers to a quiet discussion at the bench.

“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous. It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that,” Merchan said, adding, “I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don’t want to embarrass him.”

“I will talk to him,” Blanche replied.

In the years since the encounter was disclosed, Daniels has emerged as a vocal Trump antagonist, sharing her story innumerable times and criticizing the former president with mocking and pejorative jabs. But there was no precedent for Tuesday’s testimony, when she came face-to-face with Trump and was asked under oath in an austere courtroom to describe her experiences to a jury weighing whether to convict a former American president of felony crimes for the first time in history.

She told jurors how she met Trump because the adult film studio she worked for at the time sponsored one of the holes on the golf course. She said they had a brief conversation when Trump’s group passed through, chatting about the adult film industry and her directing abilities. The celebrity real estate developer remarked that she must be “the smart one” if she was making films, Daniels recalled.

Later, in an area known as the “gift room,” where celebrity golfers collected gift bags and swag, Trump remembered her as “the smart one” and asked her to dinner, Daniels said.

She said her then-publicist suggested in a phone call that Trump’s invitation was a good excuse to skip a work dinner and would “make a great story” and perhaps help her career.

“What could possibly go wrong?” she recalled the publicist saying.

The two saw each other periodically in the ensuing years, when she said she spurned Trump’s advances.

In 2011, several years after she and Trump were last in touch, she said she learned from her agent that the story of her encounter with Trump had made its way to a magazine.

She said she agreed to an interview for $15,000 because “I’d rather make the money than somebody make money off of me, and at least I could control the narrative.” The story never ran, but later that year, she was alarmed when an item turned up on a website.

Perhaps seeking to preempt defense claims that she was in urgent need of a massive payout, Daniels testified that she was in the best financial shape of her life when she authorized her manager to shop her story during the 2016 presidential campaign.

She said she had no intent of approaching Cohen or Trump to have them pay her.

“My motivation wasn’t money,” she said. “It was to get the story out,” she testified.

But Necheles zeroed in on that point, pressing Daniels on the fact that she owes Trump hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees stemming from an unsuccessful defamation lawsuit and that she tweeted in 2022 that she “will go to jail before I pay a penny.”

“That was me saying, ‘I will not pay for telling the truth,’” Daniels testified Tuesday.

She later forcefully denied that she was trying to squeeze Trump for money.

“You were looking to extort money from President Trump,” Necheles said.

“False,” Daniels responded.

“Well, that’s what you did,” the lawyer said.

“False,” Daniels answered.

Daniels was expected to return to the witness stand Thursday, when the trial resumes.

Testimony so far has made clear that at the time of the payment to Daniels, Trump and his campaign were reeling from the October 2016 publication of the never-before-seen 2005 “Access Hollywood” footage in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals without their permission.

Before that video was made public, “there was very little if any interest” in Daniels’ claims, according to testimony earlier in the trial from her then-lawyer, Keith Davidson. A deal was reached with the National Enquirer for Daniels’ story, but the tabloid backed out. Davidson began negotiating with Cohen directly, hiked up the price to $130,000, and reached a deal.

After the deadline for the $130,000 payment from Cohen came and went, she authorized Davidson to cancel the deal. He did, by email, according to documents shown in court. But about two weeks later, the deal was revived.

Daniels testified that she ended up with about $96,000 of the $130,000 payment, after her lawyer and agent got their cuts.

She also said she was steadfast in abiding by her nondisclosure agreement with Cohen, declining to comment to The Wall Street Journal for a November 2016 story that reported she had been in discussions to tell her story on “Good Morning America” but that nothing had come of it. She also declined to comment for the newspaper before it broke the news of her hush money arrangement in 2018.

After that story was published, her life turned into “chaos,” she testified.

“I was front and foremost everywhere,” she recalled.

Prosecutors are building toward their star witness, Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments.

Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the payments. The trial is the first of his four criminal cases to reach a jury.

(AP)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Here’s a couple of good questions for an election year: while we may talk about minimum wages, why don’t we ever discuss maximum wages? And, while our politicians may argue about how little a family can survive on, why do they never address the other end of the inequality scale: just how much accumulated wealth might be too much?

This week in January is always a pertinent one for such questions. As the world’s billionaires have private-jetted out to Davos to slap themselves on the back once again for their outrageous fortune, Oxfam has produced its annual report about the growing gap between that happy few and the other 8 billion from whom they profit and with whom they share the planet’s resources. This year’s report, Inequality Inc, again articulates a trend that we have all witnessed for the past four decades and more. While most people, locally, nationally, globally, try to survive on the same or less, the rich and the very rich become phenomenally more wealthy year by year. Since 2020, the report reveals, “60% of humanity has grown poorer, [while] billionaires are now $3.3tn or 34% richer than they were at the beginning of this decade of crisis.” The wealth of the world’s five richest men has more than doubled in that period, adding an unprecedented $464bn to their fortunes.

OPPOSING THE WAR MACHINE IS COOL AGAIN, And The Empire’s Getting Nervous

by Caitlin Johnstone

American rapper Macklemore has released a single titled “Hind’s Hall”, the name given to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall by anti-genocide protesters in honor of the six year-old Hind Rajab who was murdered in Gaza by Israeli forces. The artist says all proceeds from the track will go to UNRWA.

The song with its accompanying video is such a scathing indictment of the US-backed destruction of Gaza that Google-owned YouTube promptly age-restricted it. Macklemore attacks Biden, the brutal police crackdowns on protesters, the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, US politicians and the Israel lobby, with lines that will haunt you for days like “The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied.” 

This marks the first really mainstream artist to take on this issue in their chosen medium with a track intended for widespread circulation. It probably won’t be the last. Opposing the Gaza genocide is quickly moving from the right thing to do to the cool thing to do, which is a major problem for the empire.

The empire can handle being on the wrong side of an issue; it has all the media and mainstream culture-manufacturing institutions on its side, which allows it to frame public perception of that issue in a way that quells dissent. What it absolutely cannot handle is a critical mass of young people deciding the imperial murder machine sucks, and that opposing it is fun and makes you cool.

That’s when dissent takes on a momentum of its own. As long as opposing militarism and imperialism is just the morally correct thing to do it will always be a marginal position in an information ecosystem that’s controlled by the powerful, because simply being on the right side of an issue has little natural magnetism of its own. But the instant it moves from being about morality to being fun and cool it suddenly starts crackling with energy and drawing in huge numbers of people who normally wouldn’t be that interested on their own.

The empire has no answer to this. Seriously, how can a bunch of boring empire managers in DC and Virginia hope to compete once that happens? What are they going to do, win the young back by writing another Wall Street Journal think piece? Have Netanyahu rap about how Zionism is rad while Tony Blinken plays guitar? They’ve got nothing.

This crackling excitement behind an antiwar protest movement hasn’t happened since the sixties, and the empire had to retreat from Vietnam with its tail between its legs and dramatically restructure western civilization before it could recover from it. And all the empire managers who worked on solving that problem are dead and gone now; the people working on it now have never had to deal with anything like this, which is why it took them by surprise. The empire managers of today have only ever encountered protests against the war machine that were either very small or short-lived and easily diverted; this one’s only gaining momentum seven months in.

And the northern hemisphere’s summer hasn’t even started yet. I guarantee you the swamp monsters are scheming very hard to try and shut this thing down before summer starts, because the kids are going to have a whole lot of fun at their expense if they can’t.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)