Mendocino County Today: Sunday 6/30/24

By AVA News Service on June 30, 2024

DRY AND SEASONABLE conditions will continue through weekend along with gusty northwest wind in the afternoon. A strong heatwave will build early this week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): An overcast 52F on the coast this Sunday morning, looks like some passing high clouds. Lighter winds today, stronger wind Monday, then moderate on Tuesday.

ONE OF THE BEST VIEWS IN FORT BRAGG:

A Reader Writes: As I was making my way along the Fort Bragg coastal trail I saw this cube. I thought, is that a bench of some sort? An alien invasion? A surreal feeling kinda settled over me, right angles and cubes in nature settings are so obtrusive-rad. A calm came over me on my approach and I chilled here for a good half hour, not a soul in sight.

ED NOTE: Where on the "Fort Bragg coastal trail"? I've walked it for years and never saw this most interesting art.

TERRIBLE HOMICIDE IN WILLITS

Woman Killed, Suspect Reportedly Was Also Attacking Chickens With An Axe Northwest Of Willits

by Kym Kemp

Law enforcement discovered a homicide today in the 52000 block of Blue Lake Rd., a remote area northwest of Willits. According to initial reports from scanner communications, the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) and California Highway Patrol (CHP) responded to the scene after a call for help came in about 11:23 a.m.

The incident began with reports of a male suspect wielding an axe, killing chickens at another residence on Blue Lake Road. As law enforcement responded, the suspect fled into a residence where he barricaded himself. They successfully took him into custody fairly quickly though.

Upon clearing the home, law enforcement discovered a female victim, initially reported as possibly deceased and also as a homicide. Medical personnel were urgently summoned to the scene, and lifesaving efforts including CPR were initiated by authorities which temporarily revived the victim. A medevac helicopter was dispatched.

However, despite these efforts, the victim's condition tragically deteriorated, and she was pronounced deceased at the scene.

Details regarding the exact nature of the injuries sustained by the victim have not yet been disclosed, and it remains unclear whether the axe allegedly wielded by the suspect played a role in the incident. The identity of the victim has not been released.

Law enforcement is investigating and details beyond what we've reported are not available. It is important to remember in breaking news:

Information is being reported as we gather it Saturday night. However, some of the information coming from witnesses and initial official reports could be wrong. We will do our best to get the facts but, in the case that something is inaccurate, we will update with correct information as soon as we can.

(KymKemp.com)

TWO COMMENTS on this terrible event from Kym Kemp's comment line:

(1) This was my elderly neighbor. Multiple people called to report this psychopath walking up and down Blue Lake yelling and screaming violent profanities. I called 911 at 11:07. Another neighbor had called before I did. This article says a call came at 11:23. I was literally on the phone with 911 when this was happening telling them to come NOW and that I was worried about my elderly neighbor. That something terrible was happening. I heard fighting. Dispatch put me on hold. Cops took forever to respond. This could have been prevented. So fucking sad. Multiple incidents leading up to this. They don’t respond when neighbors call. They don’t treat it seriously. And now an innocent woman is dead. This had nothing to do with weed. Just a horrid tragic incident that could have been prevented had law enforcement responded to the multiple calls from concerned neighbors. This man was a known psychopath. Now it’s too late. At least they got him. But it cost an innocent woman her life who was brutally murdered in her own home.

(2) This man already had a murder charge as a minor. He was the one who killed the clerk at Mom’s place (Sherwood Market) by shooting the victim at point blank. He was released and on parole, yet went on to kill another innocent person who only tried to help him. She lent him her car repeatedly. She babysat him as a child. He killed her with an axe in her own home. He was not homeless. He was not a cannabis farmer. He was a violent unhinged individual and a convicted criminal. This is not a laughing matter. It is a horrific tragedy.

DAVID (commenting at the AVA): Editor, The comment you included from Redheaded Blackbelt has incorrect information about the suspected murderer in the Willits incident yesterday. The man who attacked the elderly woman with an axe yesterday, is the brother of one of the men who killed the owner of Sherwood Market back in 1999. There are some very informative comments from neighbors in that area who have been living in constant fear for years due to this man’s violent behavior. Many calls to law enforcement through the years, yet he was still free to terrorize his neighborhood culminating in yesterday’s avoidable tragedy.

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

Editor,

In Mendocino County Jail, the necessity of in-jail programming and reentry support is a critical aspect of addressing the needs of incarcerated individuals. Many individuals in jail require healing, empowerment, and support in order to achieve success upon their release. Mendocino County Jail has implemented the Inmate Services Restorative Justice program, which takes a restorative approach, including incorporating a connection to nature.

The Restorative Justice program aims to address the needs of incarcerated individuals by offering a collaborative, participatory-centered approach. This approach allows participants to engage in a restorative process that fosters healing and empowers them to develop the necessary skills for successful reintegration into society.

One of the unique aspects of this program is the focus on connecting participants to nature through activities such as organic gardening. This serves to not only provide therapeutic benefits, but also to teach the basics of organic gardening, human/ecological systems, and useful work and life skills. Through this experience, participants often gain a sense of purpose and accomplishment, which can be transformative for their overall well-being.

Furthermore, our program also aims to address the underlying issues that may have contributed to an individual's involvement with the criminal justice system. This may include trauma, substance abuse, mental health challenges, and other factors that can hinder successful reintegration. By providing a supportive and nurturing environment, we hope to empower individuals to address these issues and make positive changes in their lives.

The impact of the Restorative Justice program extends beyond the individuals directly participating in the program. By supporting individuals in their journey towards successful reintegration into society, the program also contributes to reducing the fiscal and psycho-social impacts associated with the cycle of incarceration. As individuals are empowered to break free from the cycle of incarceration, the program has the potential to create lasting and positive change within the community.

By providing participants with the opportunity to connect with nature, learn valuable skills, and gain a deeper understanding of the world around them, we aim to break the cycle of incarceration and set individuals on a path towards successful reintegration into society.

If you would like to volunteer, please contact:

Buffey Wright Bourassa

Restorative Justice Program Manager

(707) 234-2136

DUI CAUSING INJURY

On Friday, June 28, 2024 at approximately 1650 hours, UPD officers were dispatched to the intersection of Orchard Ave. and E. Perkin St. regarding a multi-vehicle collision with injuries. Fire and medical personnel were also dispatched.

Immediately upon arrival, officers saw two vehicles were involved, and one vehicle had sheared a fire hydrant off its permanent mount. Water was gushing from the broken hydrant causing minor flooding to the intersection. Officers closed a portion of the intersection for safety. City of Ukiah water personnel were called to the scene to shut the water off in the area.

UPD Officers conducted a preliminary investigation and suspected the at-fault driver of driving under the influence of alcohol. Due to the severity of the situation, the Ukiah PD designated Traffic Officer was called to the scene to investigate the collision.

Based on the investigation, officers learned that a Toyota Tundra driven by 59-year-old Jason Hamby was traveling at a high rate of speed northbound on S. Orchard and failed to stop at the red light. Hamby continued through the intersection and collided with a Toyota Corolla that was turning right onto N. Orchard Ave. from E. Perkins St.

The Tundra continued north after colliding with the Corolla and veered off the roadway crashing into a Toyota Corolla. Major damage was caused to both vehicles and the driver of the Corolla was transported to the emergency room at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley for treatment. Hamby and his female passenger were uninjured.

Upon speaking with Hamby, it was suspected he was driving under the influence of alcohol and was placed under arrest for felony DUI causing injury. He was transported to the hospital before incarceration and was then booked at the Mendocino County Jail.

As always, UPD’s mission is to make Ukiah as safe as possible. If you would like to know more about crime in your neighborhood, you can sign up for telephone, cellphone, and email notifications by clicking the Nixle button on our website; http://www.ukiahpolice.com.

Photographing the Sunset, Pomo Bluffs (Jeff Goll)

TELEPHONE FRAUD SCAM

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office has received numerous reports of fraudulent phone calls where a person claimed to be an employee of the Sheriff's Office and requested payment over the telephone for fictitious fines. The most recent examples were a subject claiming to be a Lieutenant with the Sheriff's Office who asked the people on the phone to verify their personal identifying information because they missed a Grand Jury appearance.

Do not release personal identifying information to anyone on the telephone and do not agree to pay any fines electronically or by using gift cards or payment apps.

No Deputy, Sergeant, Lieutenant, or Captain will ever call you from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office asking for money or payments.

The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office does not receive payment for anything using methods such as online payment apps or gift cards.

If you receive a suspicious telephone call or letter, contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office directly at 707-463-4086 to report the incident.

(Sheriff’s Office Presser)

THE WORLD’S LARGEST SALMON BBQ

Saturday, July 6 | 11:00am - 6:00pm

South Noyo Harbor, 19275 South Harbor Dr, Fort Bragg

The World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue is held each year on the first Saturday of July, with great food, live music, and all proceeds going to the Salmon Restoration Association to improve salmon populations along the Mendocino County coast. The meal features grilled wild-caught salmon, fresh corn on the cob, salad, and local bread from Fort Bragg Bakery. Coffee is provided by Thanksgiving Coffee. A variety of craft brews from North Coast Brewery can also be purchased.

ALL-PRESS DEMOCRAT GIRLS FIELD ATHLETES

Athlete of the Year: Allison Tito, Sr., Maria Carrillo

All-Press Democrat team

Karis Morasch, Sr., Analy
Kayden Coloma, Fr., Justin-Siena
Carlyana Wong, Sr., Maria Carrillo
Nina Bobitt, Jr., Rancho Cotate
Dacey Howe, Jr., Santa Rosa
Savannah Nelsen, Jr., Ukiah

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE List of Events

UKIAH SHELTER PETS OF THE WEEK

Stormy came to the shelter with Breezy; he’s braver than Breezy but still a little shy until he knows you. Stormy walks well on-leash and enjoys getting outdoors for walks. He needs work on his sitting skills, but we bet he'll be a quick study, as shepherds are a very smart breed. Stormy is friendly, smart, and eager to learn. This sweet dog will need help building up his confidence, and adopters who have experience with shy dogs would be a wonderful bonus for Stormy. Stormy is a year old and 64 very handsome pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com

Join us every first Saturday of the month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.

We're on Facebook at: facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN:

Sheriff Kendall has recently been posting some updates about Prop 47 and the potential changes regarding what may be on the ballot. I would encourage you to follow his page and that of DA Eyster. For many of the complaints that I see the laws no longer allow prosecution of “petty” crimes which to you or I would include a considerable amount of drugs on ones person and property crimes that do harm the community. It seems in California the pendulum swings too far first with closing State Mental Hospitals and now with crime initiatives. Both the Sheriff and I were on the Like It Or Not Podcast and spoke about the changes that may be coming to crimes and also homelessness this year from the Supreme Court and to the voters.

Whatever comes on the November Ballot I can’t say enough please be informed and engaged. Someone made a comment about Prop 1 to me and said well now that the County will be getting all that Mental Health money and I had to explain to them that if they voted in favor of it they just voted for the County to get less money and for the State to get more. I think anything having to do with people is complicated, we have generational poverty, mental health and addiction issues in Mendocino County that aren’t going to be repaired overnight, in a year or maybe even decades (without industry we have few options for wages to reduce poverty, but that happens in a lot of rural places). A few years ago there was an instance of someone that was unhoused and very disruptive to Downtown businesses; City officials and UPD spent a lot of time on one person and eventually the DA gave them a sentence that to many seemed too harsh but now that person is housed, medicated and happy and the Downtown businesses are no longer struggling with the disruption that they were causing. So in the end was that best for everyone including the unhoused individual?

Any given month we have 60-65 people conserved, we have the Phoenix House helping support people with mental health issues, the Psychiatric Health Facility is out to bid, we have access to addiction treatment services (some inpatient is still hard to get but you don’t have to go away to get sober; we have a lot of medicated assistance programs available for such a small community) and maybe locally for some jail is the answer I don’t know, I just know that I’ve seen the same very disruptive group of 12-20 people in encampments just outside of town or in the creeks unable to work through their active substance misuse for a decade. Offering services isn’t working maybe the alternative is tougher law enforcement action.

I am just one person and I do not make these decisions alone; we need all elected officials and for law enforcement and the service providers to work together so we are all on the same page and we need the community to understand what we are voting for and why and how it could change the system. Please be informed this November.

UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

3745 CA-128 Hwy, Philo, CA - $675,000

Unique opportunity to purchase two contiguous legal parcels, each 3.65 acres, situated on picturesque Mill Creek. Currently utilized as a licensed cannabis farm, it includes an older home that, with some renovations, could be transformed into a permitted residence. A Class K permitted barn adds to the value of the property. A good well and power on site the parcels are ready for further development. UR zoning potentially allows for two homes and two accessory dwelling units (ADUs) on each parcel, an attractive prospect for those looking to invest in real estate or expand their living space. The combination of natural beauty, existing infrastructure, and development potential makes this property a noteworthy consideration for a variety of uses. Cannabis license available for purchase separately.

https://mendocountry.com/real-estate-listings/3745-128-hwy-philo-ca

(Anne Fashauer)

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON'S RANCH IN ELK, $17.2 million.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuhOjlq3Bes

ED NOTES

FDR reportedly said that nothing happens by accident in politics. If the early debate is part of a plot to get rid of Old Joe in plenty of time before the phony Democrat convention well, golly, that's pretty slick. Is the un-elected cabal that's been running the show behind the cardboard cutout president all that slick? On the evidence, they aren't.

JOE won't go, and if he does go, how does the cabal get past the gender and race reality of Joe's highly unpopular vp, Cackles Harris, so they can sub in the only plausible candidate they have, Gavin Newsom, their great white hope to harpoon the great white whale? Seems that the Democrat's race and gender hustles have backfired big time.

THE DEMOCRATS, with their super delegates and insider traders certainly won't be asking US who we'd prefer to preside over the looming crack-up, they naturally turn to their funders, the big bucks people who each get a hundred thousand votes to Boonville's coupla hundred.

MEANWHILE, millions of working people will be voting for a bellowing billionaire whose idea of an economy is to give more public money to billionaires as he lies about reducing the extortionate food and shelter costs that have driven the millions of desperate working people to believe him.

SOME SKEWED HISTORY from ava columnist TWK this week: “…By the 1930s communists were doing all they could to drive a wedge into the already divided land of labor and management.

“Leftists have always been good at slogans and such, and they had a dandy to appeal to blue collar labor:

“Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

Compelling, eh? After all, why should you do the work and the bosses get the money? Why should ceaseless toil be rewarded by the worker getting another day older and deeper in debt?

It was a persuasive bit of misleading rhetoric, leaving out details of its own, including the reality of communism itself. No matter. The “lose your chains” nonsense failed to persuade American factory workers who, after an 8-hour shift, drove Oldsmobiles home to three bedroom houses, swimming pools, big yards for BBQ, badminton and kids who attended good schools…

WORKERS didn't need communists to tell them they were getting screwed, and murdered when they protested inhuman conditions, that's the way labor endured prior to unions, whose formation communists, among a broad array of radicals and the better liberals, made a reality. Close to home, communists were primary in the formation of the Longshoreman's union in San Francisco, one of many unions that led to working people, by the end of WW Two, enjoying much more comfortable lives. Interesting that "marxist communists" (sic) are again being dragged on-stage by the rightwing to account for labor unrest. CPUSA was never a revolutionary party. The were liberals, really, reformists. Maybe TWK can explain what happened to the security working people used to enjoy?

THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF AMERICAN LABOR — TWELVE YEAR OLDS IN THE COAL MINES

LIKE every other baseball fan, I loved that Giants team of Mays, Cepeda, Davenport, the Alou brothers, Marichal, and I have one anecdote from that glorious time to share with you today, my fellow fans: During batting practice at Candlestick I saw Cepeda hit a ball so hard it knuckled on a line drive all the way to the left field fence.

NORM CLOW

If it wasn't sad enough to lose Willie Mays, the greatest all-around baseball player of all time, a couple of weeks ago, now I wake up to find his Hall of Fame Giants teammate for several years, the great Orlando Cepeda, aka the 'Baby Bull' and 'Cha Cha', and a Puerto Rican hero, has passed into baseball legend. Cepeda came up to the Giants in 1958, their first season in The City, and immediately made his mark. The story goes that Whitey Lockman said to manager Bill Rigney one day in Spring Training, "it's too bad he's a year away”, knowing he hadn’t even played a major league game. Rigney asked. "what do you mean, a year away? He's on the roster". "A year away from the Hall of Fame”.

With his passing, and with Mays and McCovey gone, along with some others, we Giants fans are left with only Juan Marichal from those great 60s teams. Its is to weep. They are immortalized in one of the photos below - four Hall of Famers, as well as with the bronze statues cast in their honor at Pacific Bell Park.

We saw our first Giants game at Seals Stadium in 1959, against the Cincinnati Reds, that Cepeda won in the bottom of the 9th inning on a line drive solo home run over that low left field fence. My sister Janice and I learned some new possibilities of life that day in the process that changed things forever.

With his exciting play and winning personality, Cepeda became the most popular player on the team, even more than Willie Mays, who was seen at first as simply a holdover from the New York squad (little did they know, of course). He thrived on the culture San Francisco offered, particularly the lively Latin community in the Mission District, and the jazz clubs, particularly Latin jazz, that were seemingly found everywhere those great days (I guess we were musical soul brothers in that regard, and jealous that he was able to be part of it). I believe he was the only Latin, Spanish-speaking player on the team that first year, which didn’t make things easy since he didn't speak English but was told not to speak Spanish, but his prowess at the plate and skill at first base and outfield made the transition a little easier - evidently so, being named National League Rookie of the Year that 1958 season in a unanimous vote.

Unfortunately, in 1959 the Giants brought up Willie McCovey, who could play both first base and right field, and could hit the ball a mile. Oddly enough, the Giants found themselves with one more great player than they could use, so in 1966 Cepeda became a St. Louis Cardinal, where, naturally, he was named National League Most Valuable Player, while the former 20-game win pitcher he was traded for, Ray Sadecki, never came close to expectations. I mean to say, not even close. Miles away. East of the sun and west of the moon away. (McCovey was named Rookie of the Year that season, even though he was not called up until July, where he went 4 for 4 against the great Robin Roberts, with two triple - the writing was already on the wall.) Cepeda later went to Atlanta for Joe Torre, and finished out his career in 1973 with the Boston Red Sox, winning the first-ever Designated Hitter of the Year award in its inaugural year in the American League (or, as Mays liked to joke, “Little League”).

Orlando eventually came back to the Giants as one of their “Ambassadors” in 1987, his popularity undiminished and his enthusiasm unconfined. He was an East Bay Area resident until his passing yesterday. RIP, Cha Cha, one of our greatest home-town heroes. I’m going to put on some Cal Tjader, Pancho Sanchez, Eddie Duran, and maybe a little Thelonious Monk for good measure in your honor, while watching some baseball with the sound off.

A READER WRITES:

Biden’s campaign team asked to have this debate. The people closest to Biden also know how demented he really is. He is suffering at least moderate Alzheimer’s, at this point.

So, they knew what most likely was going to happen.

However, we have a “tell” in this situation. Biden’s wife, Jill.

I think there is an internal struggle in the Biden campaign camp. I think there are people around him that are attempting to show how far along his dementia really is. This was the force between scheduling this debate when and how it was, and with whom. Now whether this was a planned demolition of the Biden re-election effort by CIA, I don’t know. The legacy media’s reaction post-debate was another “tell” about what is happening. Suddenly they all collectively were “aghast & shocked” LOL, like they never knew. Who knew!?? LOL. These people are so transparently & evidently morally bankrupt & corrupt that they do not deserve one second of anyone’s attention.

I also think Jill Biden knows this as well, but she just doesn’t care. Her actions directly after the debate and the following day illustrate this. She is/was Biden’s care giver, and cheerleader. She is obviously too comfortable with her elevated position. She is perhaps the most successful example of a “gold-digging” type of woman.

So, what’s next?

The Bidens will not step aside.

So, this is gonna be really messy. Lots of “democracy” LOL being thrown around in the next few months.

The democrat bench is super thin. I think it’ll be Newsom. However, from that point to dumping Bidens, will be a real rollercoaster.

And don’t forget Harris. How does the democrat party overlook “the 1st ‘black female’ President” ?? LOL!

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, June 29, 2024

JOSHUA BOLTON, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

MADYSON BUSHBY, Ukiah. DUI.

JESSICA CAREY, Willits. DUI.

NATHANIAL CLARK, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%.

JASON HAMBY, Stafford, Virginia/Ukiah. DUI causing bodily injury.

SARA JUDICE, Redwood Valley. Domestic battery.

DYLAN KILLIAN, Ukiah. DUI.

FRANK ONETO JR., Dos Rios. Parole violation, assault on peace officer, resisting.

WILLIAM SCOTT III, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

WILLIAM SPEAKMAN, Nice/Ukiah. Conspiracy.

BRANDY TIREY, Ukiah. DUI.

STEPHANIE MARCUM:

Can we please normalize NOT opening food and eating it while we're shopping in a grocery store. I just watched 3 people eat an entire part sized bag of chips while they were waiting for their deli sandwiches. Touching other items with their greasy fingers and then putting the items back. All while telling their children they couldn't open the gum they wanted. “No honey, we have to pay for that 1st.”

Gay Pride Cookie from Arizmendi (Jonah Raskin)

BISCUITS

Taking down your neighbor won't take you any higher
I burned my own damn finger pokin' someone else's fire
I've never gotten taller makin' someone else feel small
If you ain't got nothin' nice to say don't say nothin' at all

Just hoe your own row and raise your own babies
Smoke your own smoke and grow your own daisies
Mend your own fences and own your own crazy
Mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy
Mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy

Nobody's perfect, we've all lost and we've all lied
Most of us have cheated, the rest of us have tried
The holiest of holies even slip from time to time
We've all got dirty laundry hangin' on the line

So hoe your own row and raise your own babies
Smoke your own smoke and grow your own daisies
Mend your own fences and own your own crazy
Mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy
Mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy

Pourin' salt in my sugar won't make yours any sweeter
Pissin' in my yard ain't gonna make yours any greener
And I wouldn't know about the rocks in your shoes
So I'll just do me and honey you can just do you

— Brandy Clark, Kacey Musgraves, Shane L McAnally

IMPROVIDENTIAL

Editor,

A pregnant mom is in southeast Petaluma. She’s at 9 months in her second pregnancy, carrying her healthy baby girl. Ready to join the world, eventually a citizen of Sonoma County, California. Maybe her mom missed your front page article, “$10M to settle health dispute.” Our young mom planned to drive the four miles from her apartment to PVH’s maternity unit. No problem, Right? Her drive-time: 11 minutes. But the unit’s owner-manager, Providence, closed it “13 months” ago.

Her only hospital options: Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, about 20 miles and 35 minutes drive-time. Or, Marin General Hospital, about 26 miles and 32 minutes drive-time. These are the shortest possible drive-times when there is normal Hwy 101 traffic.

What might happen if she goes into labor at 5 AM or 2:30 PM when tranportation either direction takes much longer?

I support the doctors, nurses, moms, dads and the National Union of Healthcare Workers (and concerned citizens) who are bringing suit against the poor planning of Providence.

Frank H. Baumgardner, III, Santa Rosa

CALIFORNIA GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM SIGNS BUDGET TO CLOSE $46.8B BUDGET DEFICIT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed California’s budget to close an estimated $46.8 billion deficit through $16 billion in spending cuts and temporarily raising taxes on some businesses.

Lawmakers passed the budget Wednesday following an agreement between Newsom and legislative leaders in which both sides made concessions and also had wins as they were forced, for the second year in a row, to pare back or delay some progressive policies that had been fueled by record-breaking surpluses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is a responsible budget that prepares for the future while investing in foundational programs that benefit millions of Californians every day,” Newsom said in a statement. “Thanks to careful stewardship of the budget over the past few years, we’re able to meet this moment while protecting our progress on housing, homelessness, education, health care and other priorities that matter deeply to Californians.”

The deficit was about $32 billion in 2023 before growing even bigger this year, with more deficits projected for the future in the nation’s most populous state. Saturday’s signing came just two years after Newsom and Democratic lawmakers were boasting about surpluses that totaled more than $100 billion, the product of hundreds of billions of dollars of federal COVID-19 aid and a progressive tax code that produced a windfall of revenue from the state’s wealthiest residents.

But those revenue spikes did not last as inflation slowed the economy, contributing to rising unemployment and a slowdown in the tech industry that has driven much of the state’s growth. The Newsom administration then badly miscalculated how much money California would have last year after a seven-month delay in the tax filing deadline.

California has historically been prone to large budget swings, given its reliance on its wealthiest taxpayers. But these deficits have come at a bad time for Newsom, who has been building his national profile ahead of a potential future run for president and has been tapped as a top surrogate for President Joe Biden’s campaign.

Police detain a man on Castro Street, San Francisco, 1979 (Nicholas Blair)

WHY THE MATH ON INHERITING YOUR PARENTS’ CALIFORNIA HOME HAS TOTALLY CHANGED IN PAST YEARS

What to consider if you inherit a home, or are planning to pass property to your kids.

by Kellie Hwang

When my grandparents moved to California from Taiwan in the early ’90s, they bought a home in the East Bay for just over $320,000. That home is now worth five times that amount, and it’s become my home — my husband and I are gradually renovating and planning for the long haul; one day we will inherit it.

We feel incredibly fortunate, as it’s unlikely we would be able to afford such a home on our own. Yet, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported, the math on inheriting a home is changing, with many people in similar situations to mine finding the benefits of keeping an inherited property not as great as they once were.

This is especially true in California, where a law that went into effect in 2021 has dramatically changed the inheritance math, with one estate attorney calling it the “worst thing to happen in inheritance law in California in decades.”

So in California and the Bay Area, what options do you have if you inherit a home, or are planning to pass property on to your children? What factors should you consider before deciding to live in the home, rent it out or sell it?

The Positives Of Inheriting A Home — And Keeping It

If your parents left you their home, it can seem like a jackpot in the expensive Bay Area. Keeping a family home can also be very meaningful, especially after the difficulty of losing a parent.

“There’s a lot of sentimental value in inheriting a home,” said San Francisco estate planning and probate attorney Elizabeth Button. “ ‘We grew up here, we don’t want to get rid of it.’ It would be like saying goodbye to a family member all over again.”

Emotional attachment is a major driver for some of Button’s clients, some of whom have even taken second jobs to afford the costs of keeping the family home, she said.

For those who choose to sell, the inherited property comes with a built-in capital-gains-tax perk, experts said.

“If you are planning to sell the property, there should be minimal (capital gains) taxes since the value of the home gets ‘stepped up’ or moved up to the fair market value at the time of death, freeing the inheritor from capital gains taxes in most cases,” said Ariana Alisjahbana, lead adviser with North Berkeley Wealth Management.

The Challenges

But if there’s still a mortgage on the property, or major renovations or repairs are needed, that can be a big financial burden for inheritors. In the Bay Area, “a lot of people are house rich and cash poor,” Button said, which means they don’t have a lot of extra money to put into upkeep or new loan payments.

In addition, the family home often is left to multiple siblings equally, which can lead to disagreements about what to do with the property.

“If three siblings inherit a $1.5 million house from their parents, and only one of them wants to keep it, she will have to buy out the other siblings’ share for $1 million, which reflects the high cost of housing in the Bay Area,” Alisjahbana said. “It’s often not possible to buy out the siblings’ shares, so in this situation it’s common to sell the house.”

Another reason to sell can be that the inheritors have already made a life in another city or state, and don’t plan to relocate.

“Renting the home out is an option, but not everyone is interested in becoming a landlord and managing a rental property,” Alisjahbana said.

In order to transfer or inherit a property after a loved one dies, you usually have to go to probate court. It’s a lengthy and costly process and cases can take anywhere from nine to 18 months.

For those passing down property to their children, legal experts recommend meeting with an estate planning lawyer and setting up a living trust. This can help your children bypass probate court, or at least shorten the probate process.

How California’s Prop. 19 Changed The Math

But a living trust does not address the complexities that have arisen with California’s Proposition 19, which went into effect in 2021 and curtailed the tax benefits on property transfers between parents and children.

Prop. 19 is the latest in a series of propositions over the past four decades that have shaped and then reshaped how Californians pay property taxes.

The 1978 ballot measure Proposition 13 capped property tax increases at 1% of the full cash value of the property as assessed in 1975, and which thereafter would be reassessed only when purchased or during a change in ownership. Annual increases are limited to 2%. Proposition 58, which went into effect in 1986, allowed a parent to transfer a home to a child without the property’s value being reassessed. These two amendments resulted in a generous tax break for those inheriting property from their parents.

That’s especially true because of the steep appreciation in home values over the past generation in California and the Bay Area. Just in the past 23 years of data available on real estate listings site Zillow, the value of a typical home in the San Francisco metro area has increased from about $290,000 to $1.1 million, or nearly four times. Zillow’s estimates for typical home value are based not only on the prices of recently sold homes, but also on the estimated value of all homes within a selected area based on the selling price trends of similar homes in the area.

Alexandra Ayoub, an Oakland estate planning attorney, said Prop. 19 is “an attempt to rectify some of the fallout from Prop. 13” and to “regain some of that lost tax revenue.”

Under Prop. 19, the parents’ tax basis does not pass to the child. However, if the home was the primary residence of the parent before they passed away, and the child makes it their permanent family home within one year after the property transfer, they can apply to have up to $1 million of the value excluded from reassessment. Even with this exclusion, heirs are likely to see a substantial increase in annual property taxes, amounting to thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, Button said.

For those who would use the home as a second residence, they would have to pay property taxes based on the assessed fair market value, thus would see an even steeper increase in taxes.

“The intention was to shift the tax burden from certain homeowners and increase the burden on owners of inherited properties,” Ayoub said.

“I think that Prop. 19 has really thrown a wrench into how families might plan to pass along their homes, or perhaps more so, how siblings might agree to share in the family home as an asset,” Ayoub said. “The high cost of entry into the real estate market in the Bay Area has put a ton more pressure on this issue.”

Though California doesn’t have an inheritance tax, Button said Prop. 19 has basically created one. She says Prop. 19 has made it very difficult for many people to keep inherited homes because they cannot afford the additional property taxes — and she expects this issue to become only more widespread going forward.

“Most heirs are not equipped to take on a tax bill that could potentially jump from $800 to $20,000 on the death of a parent,” she said. “It will force a lot of families out of California where, before, they would have had the chance to stay.”

You’ve Inherited A Home. Now What?

You could find yourself in many different scenarios if you inherit your parents’ home. If you have siblings, Alisjahbana said, it can be “an emotional and delicate time to make big decisions.”

“Take time to make sure you are on the same page about the next chapter of the home you’re inheriting,” she said.

If you decide to sell, Alisjahbana suggests doing so as soon as you can.

“From a capital gains standpoint, you get a ‘step up’ on the basis of the property to the fair market value at the time of death, which means most people don’t need to worry about capital gains taxes when selling an inherited home,” she said.

If you decide to rent it out, Alisjahbana said to become familiar with local landlord and tenant rules.

“Evaluate the property’s costs … and weigh them against possible rental income,” she said. “Don’t forget to include the cost of your own time to manage the property or the cost of a property manager.”

Additionally, Button suggests talking to a CPA to help you “crunch the numbers” and sort out the tax implications.

And keep in mind, this is not a one-size-fits-all process.

“Each family’s decision will depend on (many) factors that will go beyond the dollars and cents of taxes,” Ayoub said. “Homes and homeownership is important to many, and often these decisions involve making hard choices. There is no cookie cutter answer here. Also, the laws change all the time. Prop. 19 might not be here for long — who knows?”

(SF Chronicle)

MEMO OF THE AIR: UNDERDOG.

"With whom did you leave my thirty million bucks?" snarled Jacko, the gun in his hand as polished and deadly as the grammar in his mouth. — Harper J. Cole

Here's the recording of last night's (Friday 2024-06-28) 7.3-hour Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first hour, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino): https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0599

Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or whatever. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air. That's what I'm here for.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

How we get carbon fiber bicycle frames. A lot of skilled hand work on space-age materials. Whereas I got my steel bike at a yard sale forty years ago for $25. It's single-speed, it weighs about forty pounds, it's been out in the weather all this time with the same tires and the same bolts and nuts and the same chain and hard seat and everything, and it still works. Every couple of years or so I squirt some 3-in-1 oil in its various joints, and that seems to be enough for it. I can't even remember the last time I had to pump the tires up. I think it was 2014 or 2015. It was the year my mother broke her hip. She was tango dancing and she caught her high heel in a flaw in the floor. She's 95 now. Except for two knees and the hip and some teeth, she's all original equipment, and she has a comparable percentage of her marbles to my count of mine. Speaking of which, I just read where Dick Van Dyke said, “I have all my marbles, and I'm old enough to be Joe Biden's father.” https://theawesomer.com/how-carbon-fiber-bicycles-are-made/743049

Tobe radio vacuum tubes. “They're filterized.” (via WeirdUniverse) https://repository.duke.edu/dc/adaccess/R0467

“We were ready to throw it away, but we were just ignorant.” But were they really? Is it art to throw a mess of crap in a corner of an art gallery and put a title on it? How is the janitor supposed to know it's not trash? It's trash. You can tell by mentally putting it next to art and asking yourself, Which of these things is art? https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/painting_mistaken_for_dropcloth

And the Exotica Project. (via NagOnTheLake) https://exoticaproject.com

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

SEYMOUR HERSH:

President Joe Biden's drift into blankness has been ongoing for months, as he and his foreign policy aides have been urging a ceasefire that will not happen in Gaza while continuing to supply the weapons that make a ceasefire less likely. There's a similar paradox in Ukraine, where Biden has been financing a war that cannot be won and refusing to participate in negotiations that could end the slaughter. The reality behind all of this, as I've been told for months, is that the president is simply no longer there, in terms of understanding the contradictions of the policies he and his foreign policy advisers have been carrying out. America should not have a president who does not know what he has signed off on. People in power have to be responsible for what they do, and Thursday night showed America and the world that we have a president who clearly is not in that position today.

GAVIN NEWSOM IS ON CLEANUP DUTY AFTER BIDEN'S 'HORRIFIC' DEBATE PERFORMANCE

by Alec Regimbal

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, once rumored to be a candidate for president in 2024, assumed the role of top White House attack dog after President Joe Biden stumbled through Thursday night’s presidential debate.

Republicans were quick to claim victory after the party’s presumptive nominee, former President Donald Trump, went head-to-head with Biden during the year’s first presidential debate on CNN. Though Trump, 78, is only three years younger than Biden, he was far more energetic during the 90-minute matchup.

The president, his voice noticeably raspy, struggled to land coherent blows, even on questions dealing with abortion and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — topics widely thought to be layups for Democratic candidates. Early in the debate, during a question on the economy, Biden seemed to lose his train of thought and stood quietly for a couple seconds as moderators waited for an answer.

Biden did nothing to assuage voter concerns about his age; if anything, he made things worse. The Economist labeled his performance “horrific,” and frantic talks about a potential replacement candidate abounded in the media and online in the hours following the debate.

“Our only hope is that he bows out, we have a brokered convention, or [he] dies,” an adviser to major Democratic Party donors reportedly said of Biden in a text message to a Politico reporter during the debate. “Otherwise we are f—king dead.”

Enter the California governor.

While other Democratic bigwigs aired their unvarnished views about Biden’s performance — the Hill reported that Democratic strategist David Axelrod said “there was a sense of shock” — Newsom rose to his defense, and no other Democratic elected official was more visible in the post-debate spin.

When asked by an MSNBC reporter during a post-debate interview if he thought panic around Biden’s performance was unfounded, Newsom said it was “unhelpful” and, more importantly, “unnecessary.”

“We’ve got to go in and we’ve got to keep our head high,” he said. “And, as I say, we’ve got to have the back of this president. You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that? It’s been a master class … Democrats deliver. This president has delivered. We need to deliver for him.”

He then turned to attacking Trump, who made a number of false claims during the debate, saying, “I was taking notes about all the lies. I ran out of paper.” His X account, too, was keeping track of Trump’s claims. Several posts picking apart the former president’s comments during the debate began with “TRUMP LIES.”

During the early years of Biden’s presidency, Newsom was seen as a front-runner to run for the White House if Biden chose not to seek reelection. But once Biden announced his decision to run again, Newsom quickly became one of the president’s foremost surrogates.

He defended the president’s record in high-profile media interviews and during a televised debate in December with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was running for the Republican presidential nomination at the time. He even spent time in Republican-led states as part of his recently launched Campaign for Democracy, which seeks to elect Democratic candidates in conservative areas.

His barnstorming and his role as governor of the country’s most populous state have made him the focus of panicked discussions about who could possibly replace Biden before the Nov. 5 election. After Thursday’s debate, Newsom brushed aside one reporter’s question about whether he was going to be the next Democratic nominee.

“No, our nominee is Joe Biden,” he responded. “I’m looking forward to voting for him in November.”

It’s too early to tell what kind of effect Biden’s performance will have on polls, which, as of Friday, still showed Biden and Trump in a virtual tie. As for Newsom, it’s easy to see that his dutiful defense of Biden is a way to foster goodwill among party leaders ahead of what’s sure to be a presidential bid in 2028.

THE GHASTLY VS. THE GHOSTLY

by Maureen Dowd

He’s being selfish. He’s putting himself ahead of the country. He’s surrounded by opportunistic enablers. He has created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen. His hubris is infuriating. He says he’s doing this for us, but he’s really doing it for himself.

I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about the other president.

In Washington, people often become what they start out scorning. This has happened to Joe Biden. In his misguided quest for a second term that would end when he’s 86, he has succumbed to behavior redolent of Trump. And he is jeopardizing the democracy he says he wants to save.

I got to know Biden in 1987 when he was running for president. He was hailed then as a leading orator of the Democratic Party, even though he could be windy. I knocked him out of that race when I wrote about how he cloaked himself in the life of Neil Kinnock, the British Labour leader who was a soaring speaker, and how he gave speeches that borrowed, probably unwittingly, from Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.

I ran into Biden in a Senate stairwell on his way to make a speech dropping out. He was alone, studying his script. We looked at each other in silence — struck by the weight of the moment — then went our separate ways to the same news conference.

Biden was a buoyant soul who had been told he should be president since he was elected to the Senate at 29. And he wasn’t going to let the plagiarism scandal, or his pursuant health problems, stop him. He had two aneurysms in 1988 and later said his doctors told him he wouldn’t be alive if his campaign had continued, and he kidded me that I’d saved his life. He also did not let the other tragedies that scarred his life drag him down.

I marveled at the fact that Biden forgave me. He told me that it was better that we stay on good terms. He did not get mad, even when I joked that his new hair plugs looked like a field of okra during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. He called to chastise me, with good humor, but I hid under my desk, afraid to take the call.

I was critical of his performance as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the nasty, raunchy hearings; in his effort to be fair, he let the Republicans win unfairly, and that led to a very unethical and deceitful right-winger (with a highly partisan wife who years later pushed Trump’s coup) being put on the Supreme Court for life.

Yet Biden still didn’t cut me off. When he became vice president, he invited me to his St. Patrick’s Day breakfasts and Christmas parties. He was so un-vengeful, I doubted he was Irish.

Having elevated Biden to a height many thought he would never reach, the hoity-toity Obama team proceeded to treat their vice president with scarcely veiled disdain. Barack Obama’s aides would trash Biden to reporters, a betrayal an angry Hunter told me was like “friendly fire.”

Biden was a good and loyal vice president, and I thought it was a mistake on Obama’s part to pass him over for Hillary in 2016. Hillary was an elitist, status-quo candidate, and the mood of the electorate was anti-elitist and anti-status quo. Biden had his Scranton Joe vibe going for him.

The Obama crew peddled the idea that Biden was too distraught over Beau’s death to campaign, but Biden is the one person on earth who could have used his grief to fuel an empathetic candidacy. Biden told people that Beau had wanted him in the White House, not a Clinton restoration.

If Biden had been the nominee, he would have beaten the immoral Alley Cat and he would now be ending his second term, ready for a golden retirement in his plastic beach chair at his beloved Rehoboth Beach.

Instead, he started his presidency too late. He has clearly been declining for the last couple of years — a dangerous development in a volatile world, with A.I. revolutionizing our country and with a Supreme Court full of religious fanatics reshaping American life.

That’s why almost two years ago I wrote a column, “Hey, Joe, Don’t Give It a Go,” suggesting he take the win for the good things he accomplished and let the younger stars of the party have their shot.

“The timing of your exit can determine your place in the history books,” I advised.

But, partly because he had been pushed aside by the Ivy League crowd, he got his Irish up; the working-class chip on his shoulder grew. He was driven to prove he could be a better president than the one who sidelined him.

Jill Biden, lacking the detachment of a Melania and enjoying the role of first lady more, has been pushing — and shielding — her husband, beyond a reasonable point. After Thursday’s embarrassing debate performance, she exhorted the crowd and played teacher to a prized student: “You did a great job! You answered every question! You knew all the facts!” This, to the guy who controls the nuclear codes.

After Democrats — even the ordinarily fawning MSNBC anchors — commiserated about the debate in a cloud of gloom, Nancy Pelosi, Jim Clyburn, Bill & Hillary, and Obama pushed back and circled the wagons. CNN’s Van Jones said that a Black leader called him and chewed him out for accurately assessing the calamity.

After a reassuring Friday rally in Raleigh, N.C., where the crowd yelled “Four More Years!” and “Lock Him Up!” the presidential historian Doug Brinkley called Biden “the Rebound Kid” on CNN.

The Democratic strategist Paul Begala, who deemed the debate “a catastrophe,” explained on CNN: “The first Democratic politician to call on Biden to step down, it’s going to end their career.” He added: “None of them are going to say, ‘Hey, let me step forward and knife Julius Caesar.’ Biden is a beloved man in the Democratic Party.”

It is because Biden is beloved, and because he has real accomplishments as president, that he needs to stop this nerve-racking, maddening tightrope walk to the Oval.

He will have sprightly moments, like Raleigh. But he will also have sepulchral ones, as he did in the debate dubbed “the Infirm vs. the Unstable” by CNN’s Audie Cornish.

He didn’t just have an off night, like Obama had when he acted huffy in his first debate with Mitt Romney. Biden looked ghostly, with that trepidatious gait; he couldn’t remember his rehearsed lines or numbers. He has age-related issues, and those go in only one direction. It was heart-wrenching to watch the president’s childhood stammer return.

His wife and staff will build their protective wall ever higher and shoo away reporters, pressing on the age spiral, ever more vigorously. But Biden, Jill and Democratic leaders have to face the fact that this is an extraordinarily risky bet, with — as they drum into us — democracy on the line.

James Carville, who also said awhile back that the president should renounce a second term, told me Biden should call former Presidents Clinton and Obama to the White House and decide on five Democratic stars to address their convention in August.

“You know what the ratings for that would be?” he asked. “The whole world would watch and people would go, ‘Oh, God, they have real talent!’”

Carville said the president should give a July 4 speech announcing he will let the next generation of Democratic leaders bloom.

The 79-year-old strategist dryly noted that you can’t win a contest against aging.

“I do everything I can to try to beat this thing,” he said. “It don’t work.” A staircase can ruin his day.

And what if Joe and Jill cling on?

In reply, Carville quoted Herb Stein, a top economist under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford: That which can’t continue, won’t.

(NY Times)

On Christopher Street, New York City, 1983 (Nicholas Blair)

PEPE ESCOBAR

Cadaver In The White House Update

It’s a kabuki for the ages: the US plutocracy finally decided to throw the cadaver in the White House under - the nursing home - bus.

Prior to that, they threw everything - and countless kitchen sinks - to make the cadaver look and sound presentable. Yet everyone with the remnants of a brain in the US could track the zombie’s cognitive disaster in real time: the ghastly “debate” was just the clincher.

Now, finally - miracle from Heaven! - Exceptionalist fanatics discovered that the cadaver is, well, a cadaver.

Enter, like clockwork, the MSM, duly obeying the plutocratic marching orders: supported by “polls”, it is telling voters they now will have to “choose” among other hopefuls to face the Trump juggernaut.

NYT, WaPo, CNN - everyone is marching in lockstep. What a riot.

Of course, with a minimal exercise in investigative journalism, the MSM could have told voters in 2020 that the Biden crime family had too many corruption skeletons in the - exceedingly large - closet to run for the Presidency.

But no: all the scandals were canceled; and the cadaver was propelled to the White House.

Now, in panic, the plutocracy needs a Fall (Cadaver) Guy.

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I thought the entire spectacle and both candidates were incredibly sad. A stark sign of the times. That and World War 3 at our doorstep. The US is going to pay some heavy dues now, and has a populace that will have no idea of how to deal with it.

LEAD STORIES IN SUNDAY'S NYT

48 Hours to Fix a 90-Minute Mess: Inside the Biden Camp’s Post-Debate Frenzy

Want to Be Trump’s Running Mate? Make Sure He Knows About Your Donors.

Israelis fear Iran and its proxies might try to exploit President Biden’s apparent weakness.

48 Hours to Fix a 90-Minute Mess: Inside the Biden Camp’s Post-Debate Frenzy

Pattern of Brain Damage Is Pervasive in Navy SEALs Who Died by Suicide

“My first big recipe was shark repellent that I mixed in a bathtub for the Navy, for the men who might get caught in the water.”

Before she mastered the art of French cooking, Julia Child cooked up shark repellent while working for the precursor to the CIA as a covert operative during World War II. Sharks kept unintentionally setting off underwater explosives meant for German U-boats — until Child came up with an inventive recipe that saved the day.

TAIBBI & KIRN

Matt Taibbi: What is the First Amendment for? The First Amendment is to prevent this exact situation where the government wants to have complete control of an issue of urgent public concern like COVID. They are telling everybody in the country false information about the mortality rate, but also more importantly, about the infectiousness of this disease. You are going to get the disease, basically. That was what Bhattacharya found out. This thing was so infectious already, this was at a very early stage that he did his testing and I think it was something like 27% of the population already had antibodies.

This was before anything even got rolling. That meant that everybody was going to get this disease sooner or later, which meant that the masking and the lockdowns and all that stuff, the public needed to be informed of that stuff early on. Instead, they suppressed this guy. They suppressed Kaldorf, whose big crime is sharing the results of a study from his home country of Sweden about children who were allowed to continue to go to school. That was the only country in the world where they didn’t shut schools down and there were no fatalities there. And he became one of the people arguing against lockdowns.

And by the way, he was also suppressed for being too pro-vaccine in another instance, because when one of the vaccines was flawed, it was discovered to have some flaws, he did the math and he said, “Well, for people above a certain age, probably they’re going to have better outcomes taking the vaccine and taking the injury risk than not.” So he wasn’t anti-vaccine at all, he was just saying something very sensible about, “Look at the result in terms of what happens to people below a certain age who don’t have comorbidities.” But this is why you can’t allow the government to censor people, because if they’re allowed to have complete sway over the whole information landscape and to de-amplify voices that disagree with a government policy…

Walter Kirn: So often, free speech arguments come down to having to defend obnoxious speech, racists and so on. These are Harvard and Stanford scientists using the methods of science to come up with hypotheses about the best policy for the purposes of public health, which just happened to have been borne out fairly well by events over the last few years.

But setting that aside, because this case isn’t about re-litigating the COVID response, but it is about showing the fact that at least in this case, it wasn’t misinformation, the people involved were exercising what would, as you say, be a kind of traditional right to add their knowledgeable views to crisis situations such that we can make better decisions. They weren’t there to end Dr. Fauci’s career, or, I don’t know, get somebody elected or something. This was an attempt to guide the public health response in the United States.

Taibbi: And it’s not as if the traditional method of dealing with adverse information, which is just ignoring people, that already works pretty well in America. I’m not in favor of it, but maybe in the internet age, it’s become harder to control information flow this way so that they feel they need to use these tools. And again, I just can’t stress enough, this is exactly what they were concerned about if you go back and read the Federalist papers. They were worried about the government having a monopoly on information for precisely this reason. Because you can extract harm and the only defense that the public has is the citizen or the free press putting out countervailing information. If you cut that ability off, everything’s lost.

(racket.news)

DATA CENTER DOOMSVILLE?

by Jonathan Thompson

AI, cryptocurrency ‘mining’ and our digital lifestyles imperil the energy transition — and the planet.

In 2018, California utility regulators approved a plan to shutter Diablo Canyon’s two nuclear reactors in 2024 and 2025. Doing so would deprive the state’s grid of 2,323 megawatts of generating capacity, but Pacific Gas & Electric, the plant’s operator, and a coalition of labor and environmental groups proposed replacing the lost power with renewables. The plant kicked out enough juice to light up about 1.7 million homes, but replacing that power seemed feasible, especially since PG&E predicted that demand would steadily decline over time, as more folks put solar on their roofs and slashed their energy consumption.

Pro-nuclear eco-modernists, who see atomic fission as a primary way to avoid the climate catastrophe, mourned the imminent loss of so much carbon-free power. But clean energy advocates hailed it as a sign of the impending energy transition — a move away from gluttonous power consumption into a system where we use much less electricity and generate more of it from solar panels.

Now, however, the whole scenario has been turned on its head: Diablo Canyon’s reactors are poised to continue fissioning atoms for the foreseeable future. Contrary to PG&E’s optimistic projections, society, in general, is growing even hungrier for power.

Diablo Canyon remains a symbol of the energy transition, no doubt, but not in the way people once hoped. Now its continued existence represents a transition gone awry.

If you look at the supply side alone, you could be fooled into thinking that the energy transition is still going strong. Solar-generating capacity in California has doubled in the last six years. On multiple occasions this spring, renewable energy sources supplied more than 100% of the total electricity demand on California’s grid in the afternoon, when solar output peaks. Even more notable is the growth of grid-scale battery storage in the state, jumping from 770 megawatts in 2019 to more than 10,000 now. On one day in April, battery storage discharge became the largest energy source on California’s grid.

On the demand side, however, things have gone haywire. Earlier this month, PG&E CEO Patti Poppe predicted that the utility’s load — or the amount of power consumed — would double by 2040. Poppe is not exaggerating; Texas grid operators expect demand to doublethere in just six years. Some of this added load was foreseeable. Human-caused climate change is increasing temperatures, transforming energy-intensive air conditioning from a luxury to a life-or-death necessity. And all those Teslas and other electric vehicles you see cruising on the highway? They need to be charged, even as more folks are switching out their dirty natural gas appliances for electric ones.

But back in 2018, few anticipated the incredibly rapid buildup of all the electricity-sucking data centers that we would need to process our credit card payments, all the computing we do, our constant Google searches and the endless movies we stream. Those demands, meanwhile, pale in comparison to the huge power consumption required to mine a single bitcoin or process a generative AI operation. And together they are threatening to overwhelm power supplies altogether, straining the grid and throwing a digital wrench into the energy transition.

A recent report by the Edison Power Research Institute found that U.S.-based conventional data centers alone (not including harder-to-track cryptocurrency mining) consume more than 150 terrawatt-hours of electricity annually, equivalent to the output of 100 Diablo Canyon plants. (A single terawatt-hour, or TWh, is equivalent to 1 trillion watt-hours.) Federal analysts estimate cryptocurrency mining uses up to an additional 80 TWh each year in the U.S. Taken together, it’s enough to keep the air conditioners cranking in hundreds of millions of homes year-round.

And the demand will continue to grow exponentially, especially in a handful of Western states. Since a single AI query uses about 10 times the energy of a Google search, the spread of this technology is projected to mean that, by 2030, conventional data centers will be gulping up about 15% of the nation’s total power consumption, with the highest percentages in Arizona, Oregon and Nevada, where new centers have sprouted rapidly. Throw cryptocurrency mining into the mix, and it becomes clear the nation’s current generating capacity isn’t nearly up to the task.

The technophiles insist that this is a good thing, that data centers’ gargantuan power demands are spurring innovation in, and deployment of, renewable electricity sources, thereby accelerating the energy transition. It’s true that many data center operators purchase enough clean energy from utilities to offset their power consumption, and some cryptocurrency miners have developed their own solar installations or set up remote shops in oil fields to harness methane that otherwise would be flared or spewed into the atmosphere. A few are even working to develop small nuclear reactors to power their operations, technology that could then be used for other applications.

This isn’t enough, though. New clean energy development needs to do more than break even, given our ballooning consumption. In order to mitigate the worsening effects of climate change, the world has no choice but to burn less fossil fuels. Clean energy sources must displace dirty ones. But this only works if new clean energy supplies outpace increases in demand, a near-impossibility given the enormous needs of data centers and other emerging technologies.

As it is, we’re simply building new clean resources on top of the old dirty ones, plastering the desert with solar installations and cluttering our public lands with wind turbines, even as we keep extending the lives of coal and natural gas-fired plants to meet the insatiable demand.

The Information Age promised to be cleaner and less destructive than the Industrial Era, enhanced by cyberspace’s infinite possibilities. Smog-choked freeways would be replaced with electronic ones, enabling the masses to commute to work or go to the movies without ever setting foot in a car or burning gasoline. The roar of factories and mines and drill rigs would be replaced by the muted rhythm of typing on a laptop keyboard, the benevolent hum of an army of cooling fans fending off the persistent heat.

Never mind that electronic highways and Zoom calls and all those fans will demand more and more energy: We’ll simply use the technology to build yet more solar and wind and geothermal and nuclear plants. It’s always about producing more; never about using less. It’s the same old mindset that got us into this mess — our childish belief that our resources are unlimited, and that we can simply grow and consume our way out of any consequences that might arise. Just as early white settlers convinced themselves that rain followed the plow, both literally and figuratively, the techies of today think electricity will magically appear to satisfy the needs of the electronic age. That might seem reasonable as we drift serenely through cyberspace, oblivious to the world outside our air-conditioned domiciles. But what happens in the cloud doesn’t stay in the cloud, and the hunger for growth will have disastrous consequences for everything in the real world.

(High Country News)

‘SLOW MARCH’ TO DIVISION

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

There was a time in the good ol’ USA when manufacturing was booming, factories were humming and workers were making things on assembly lines.

“Things” weren’t all that workers were making, because money was also being made, and lots of it. Leaving aside details, there came disputes on how that money ought to be divided. Details aside, unions appeared.

If 100 years have taught us anything, it’s that the scent of money and power will draw nests of communists, socialists and other vermin to converge, noisily. By the 1930s communists were doing all they could to drive a wedge into the already divided land of labor and management.

Leftists have always been good at slogans and such, and they had a dandy to appeal to blue collar labor:

“Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

Compelling, eh? After all, why should you do the work and the bosses get the money? Why should ceaseless toil be rewarded by the worker getting another day older and deeper in debt?

Chains? What chains? Workers ignored the slogans and took annual vacations to lakes, mountains and Disneyland. But leftists never sleep, and they remained in pursuit of subverting America, albeit with a different strategy.

Long-range plan: A Slow March Through the Institutions. The gist was to gradually infiltrate and take over the culture. It required patience and planning. Class struggle between the Haves and Have Nots had failed to divide us; Identity politics seemed ripe for division.

Thus began multiculturalism’s slicing and dicing of society via the hammering at racial, gender and religious differences, always with the message that America is guilty, intolerant and at fault. Their Long March was underway.

Soon came quiet takeovers of college faculties and administrators, and the infiltration of newsrooms with liberal reporters and editors. TV and film became outlets for progressive viewpoints; conservative voices disappeared.

Leftists worked quietly, tirelessly to eliminate religion in schools, the public square and politics. A Hollywood movie depicting any Christian (minister, priest, Pope) in the first 15 minutes as honest, principled and decent always does a 180 -degree reversal. Every clergyman is quickly revealed as a greedy satanic hypocrite consumed by lust, duplicity and hatred.

The social undermining has been glacier-patient and stunningly effective. By the late ‘60s it was hip to hate one’s own country; pop music (Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Barry McGuire) became a Top 40 assembly line of leftwing slogans. Colleges swarmed with protesters and were rewarded with Open Classrooms and Give Your Own Grades.

Today: Higher Learning? Higher than what?

Schools first quit teaching American history, then quit teaching at all. Our greatest writers and thinkers were scorned and despised as Dead White Males. Statues were toppled and monuments defaced in the finest tradition of third world leftist takeovers. American heroes and history were sneered at for failing to harmonize with the shifting standards of those with no sense of history.

The Slow March next arrived at a familiar place: Divide and Conquer.

There is nowhere in mass media where white men are not trashed and their existence, even in mainstream advertising, labeled “toxic.” On TV white men are either submissive or invisible and made to look weak, silly and incompetent at every opportunity.

All couples on TV are biracial, every hierarchy has a woman on top. White guys are society’s enemy. White men reek of privilege, their maleness (BEGIN ITALICS) de facto (END ITALICS) toxic, loathsome, wealthy patriarchs. They are the enemy of everyone in America; women and minorities of every imaginable kind have suffered and been tortured relentlessly more than 200 years (NOTE: It often takes great imagination locating the aggrieved and the suffering in our country.)

Scorecard: The crush is on, pitting everyone on one side, and straight white dudes on the other. White men are deemed parasites; hated, scorned and all their alleged historical accomplishments achieved by enslaving others. Like most lefty logic it’s a big fat lie. Many (most) of the greatest accomplishments in the world resulted from the hard work and inspiration of white men.

White guys invented Airplanes, Antibiotics, Alarm clocks, Aston-Martin Automobiles, along with Zoology, Zippers, Zoloft and lots of stuff in between: Baseball, Celsius, Dirigibles, Light bulbs, Teflon, Telephones, Xerox, Zippers Zoology and Zeus. I could go on and so could you.

What’s to hate?

But the lefty Utopia requires still more: Jail the leader of the political opposition, convince Americans to surrender their right to Free Speech, and get on with the “fundamental transformation of America.”

COMRADE Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) author of hard boiled detective fiction, most famous for his 1930 book ‘The Maltese Falcon‘ which was made into the 1941 film starring Humphrey Bogart. He worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency between 1915 and 1922 where his duties involved union busting and strike breaking. His role in these events so repelled him that he became a member of the Communist Party. He was a dedicated anti fascist and, although he was 48 years old, in 1942 he enlisted in the US army and saw service in the Aleutian Islands during the Second World War. He was called before HUAC in the 1950s and refused to testify, he was also jailed for his political activity. Having become a victim of McCarthyism and the blacklist Hammett found it difficult to find work and he died in poverty in 1961. Having been a veteran of both World Wars he is buried in Arlington Cemetery.

His novels;

Red Harvest, 1929.

The Dain Curse, 1929.

The Maltese Falcon, 1930.

The Glass Key, 1931.

The Thin Man, 1934.

and 82 short stories.

OLD MOLE COMES BACK

by Jonah Raskin

Reds— the title of Warren Beatty’s Bohemian/Bolshevik love story that features John Reed and Louise Bryant— is also the title of Maurice Isserman’s new book subtitled, “The Tragedy of American Communism.” Issermam is the author of three other books about communism with a big letter C and a small letter c: If I had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left; California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party; and Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War.

Isserman’s Reds is dominated by biographies of US CP bureaucrats including William Z. Foster and Earl Browder, who coined the slogan “Communism is 20th century Americanism,” plus Gus Hall and a few women such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the original “rebel girl,” and Dorothy Healey, who anchored the LA CP before and during its underground days in the 1950s.

Isserman doesn’t spend much time with rank-and-file members, nor does he show what daily life was like for CP members in, say, Pittsburgh in 1928, San Francisco in 1934 and Washington D.C. in the 1940s when Marxists, genuine leftists, and loyal American citizens worked for FDR’s New Deal.

US CP leaders bowed down to Soviet commissars, but day-in and day-out the comrades weren’t thinking of Moscow and Stalin, but rather about hawking copies of The Daily Worker, preventing an eviction by a landlord, and persuading assembly line workers to join the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the radical alternative to the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Isserman aims to tell a tale of tragic proportions, but his book might also be appreciated as a comedy of errors worthy of a Groucho Marxist like Abbie Hoffman. I remember that when the State of New York revoked the driver’s license for CP chief, Gus Hall, he traveled to and from his Manhattan office in a chauffeur-driven car. Only in America and perhaps in the Soviet Union could communists ride like plutocrats.

In his prologue, Isserman writes that “In the 1930s in the period of its greatest influence, the Communist Party fought for causes like unemployment insurance, social security and racial equality that in years to come helped make the United States a better, fairer society.” But instead of exploring the best, Isserman emphasizes the worst, especially the adherence to Moscow which isolated comrades from the blue collar workers they were supposed to bring into the party.

My brother “D” plowed through Reds before I did “It’s like reading family history,” he said. Now that I’ve read the book I know what he meant. Many of the events and the political figures that Isserman writes about flickered in and out of my consciousness when I was a boy who grew up with a mother and father who belonged to the CP. They never really shed their allegiance to communism. As a kid, I heard about the Bolsheviks, the battle of Stalingrad, John Reed and his Ten Days that Shook the World, the briefly earthshaking “Duclos Letter,” and Khrushchev’s secret speech about the crimes of Stalin and the cult of the personality. Once it went public it shook up the communist world.

Isserman acknowledges the off-spring of CP members, and not just Bettina Aptheker, daughter of Herbert, author of American Negro Slave Revolts. We numbered in the tens of thousands; a history of American reds might be assembled from our points of view, not as “red diaper babies,” a demeaning term, but rather as young people who could and did make up our own minds about the Bomb, the Cold War and the Iron Curtain.

I never joined the CP and never wanted to, but during my early years I learned about capitalism, communism, the proletariat and the bourgeois which proved useful from time to time, though those terms could also become largely rhetorical and narrowly academic. I remember a conversation with Tillie Olsen, the author of Yonnondio from the Thirties and her famous short stories, “Tell me a Riddle” and “I Stand Here Ironing.” Tillie objected to the title for a book— The Proletarian Literature of the United States—to which she contributed an eye-witness account of the 1934 SF General Strike. “What’s wrong with the phrase working class?” she asked me. “It’s better than proletarian.” “Solidarity forever,” Tillie would say after every visit I made to her Berkeley apartment.

Read Reds and you understand why communism appealed to patriotic citizens in the 20th century in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world: the economic crisis of the 1930s; the rise of fascism; imperialist wars and the racism and injustice that confronted defendants such as the Italian immigrants, Sacco and Vanzetti, along with the young Black men known as “the Scottsboro Boys,” and Eugene Victor Debs, who ran for president five times and went to jail for violating the infamous Sedition Act that jailed Americans for uttering innocent remarks.

What Isserman doesn’t explain, as least not to my satisfaction, though he has studied the subject for decades, is why— after the fall of the Soviet Union, revelations about the Gulags and news of the bloodshed at Tiananmen Square— communism has continued to tug at the hearts and minds of citizens in the US, Russia, India and elsewhere. A few weeks ago in a book store in San Francisco, I heard Malcolm Harris, the author of Palo Alto, call himself “a communist.” Other intellectuals and authors in his generation belong to the growing chorus of self-proclaimed reds.

Shortly before she died in 1996, the muckraking journalist, Jessica Mitford, told me she lamented the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism as she had known it for most of her life. Old attachments don’t die easily; loyalties often count more than ideologies. And hopes for a new world without the rapacity of class society, appeal eternally.

In the coda to Reds, Isserman writes, “The Communist Party USA still exists,” though that existence isn’t on his agenda. Still, it seems worthwhile to ask, “Why does the God that supposedly failed continue to resurrect itself with help from friends and comrades?” Perhaps the current rebirth is a sign that the contradictions of capitalism haven’t dissipated and because “the masses” hunger for an organization that will give them tools to fight for freedom from fear, poverty, an arrest, incarceration and deportation.

Communism is back. It won’t go away even if and when Trump is elected president and the Trumpers target liberals, leftists, radicals, feminists, union leaders, black ministers and their congregations. For decades, CP members cried “fascism.” I grew up with that word ringing in my ears. Now, perhaps, what comrades have seemed to fear most and yet what some of them have wanted, will come true. Under fascism, communism can seem like the only viable alternative.

By the end of Reds I wondered if the “tragedy” isn’t also about the anti-communist crusade and the US, too, the nation which saw “reds” even when reds were largely absent from picket lines and sit-in strikes.

In the early 1960s, when I was a college student, I heard ex-communists say that there were more FBI agents in the CP than genuine reds. Perhaps so.

Loyal communists and virulent anti-communists were often cut from the same cloth. They occasionally talked much the same talk, only from opposite sides of the barricades. The more the ex-reds named names and tried to lose their pasts the more enemies they made, and the more their reputations were tarnished, though sometimes, as in the case of director, Elia Kazan, careers briefly flourished.

In his last sentence, Isserman writes that the “church and the citadel” of the CP, “stood for and guarded nothing but ashes.” Perhaps he’s forgotten that the phoenix bird rises from its own ashes and that as Marx observed, “We recognize our old friend, our old mole, who knows so well how to work underground, suddenly to appear: the revolution.”

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

29 Comments

Marc Tenzel June 30, 2024

What is going on with the coal miners picture? Twins, AI deep fake? Real?

Reply
- Bruce Anderson June 30, 2024
  
  Yeah, you’re right. I shoulda looked closer, but there are plenty of legit photos on the theme of child labor
  
  Reply
  - Rick Swanson June 30, 2024
    
    The bench on the coastal trail is west of Johnson Rock.
    
    Reply
Harvey Reading June 30, 2024

GAVIN NEWSOM IS ON CLEANUP DUTY AFTER BIDEN’S ‘HORRIFIC’ DEBATE PERFORMANCE

As far as I am concerned, just more political games, that may have outcomes that will be horrific for us plebes. There was little uproar over the, in my opinion, hilarious, performance at the state of the union “speech”. Now the nutcases are running rampant, making fools of themselves. Actually, they were fools to begin with. Truth is, I would vote for Newsom without a second thought, even if he is wealthy and a dandy. He would be incalculably better than the brainless mutant. Glad I left the prezudinchul part of my ballot blank four years ago, come November…I’ll be able to die without a guilty conscience for having helped put a braindead banker lover into power.

Reply
David June 30, 2024

Editor The comment you included from Redheaded Blackbelt has incorrect information about the suspected murderer in the Willits incident yesterday. The man who attacked the elderly woman with an axe yesterday, is the brother of one of the men who killed the owner of Sherwood Market back in 1999. There are some very informative comments from neighbors in that area who have been living in constant fear for years due to this man’s violent behavior. Many calls to law enforcement through the years, yet he was still free to terrorize his neighborhood culminating in yesterday’s avoidable tragedy.

Reply
- Bruce Anderson June 30, 2024
  
  We posted your correction as the third account
  
  Reply
  - David June 30, 2024
    
    Bruce, there is a very good comment from Shawn Coleman, the older brother of Michael and Christopher Coleman, detailing all of the failures of our county’s mental health/social services agencies in dealing with his brother Michael over the years. The one who committed murder yesterday. It’s from17 hours ago. It’s very sad but it highlights what so many here have been saying, like Maizie and Marmon, concerning our county’s lack of help for those who need it.
    
    Reply
Chuck Dunbar June 30, 2024

BLUNT TALK

“If we lose this election because they didn’t have the guts to do what they know needs to be done, holy hell and history will come down on them like an anvil,” R.T. Rybak wrote.

A former Democratic National Committee vice chair wrote Sunday that leading Democrats must be pushed to urge President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race or history will judge them harshly. “Our elected officials,” wrote former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak on Facebook, “are staying shockingly silent in public, especially considering how many of them acknowledge privately that this has to happen.”

“Ex-DNC Vice Chair: Biden Must Be Pushed To Drop Out”
POLITICO, 6/30/24

Reply
- Eli Maddock June 30, 2024
  
  Too little, much too late now.
  Quote of the year from my elder:
  “Just hold your nose and vote for him”
  I don’t think I can do it though! Shame
  
  Reply
- D. Merit June 30, 2024
  
  EX-VICE CHAIR, DNC comments don’t cut it, Chuck.
  
  versus
  
  CHAIRMAN, DNC
  https://youtu.be/vnKNUjnHakg?si=IeH5tBx9VCZ3vfFg
  
  Reply
Stephen Rosenthal June 30, 2024

I was looking forward to reading Maureen Dowd today. As usual she didn’t disappoint. Dowd is unquestionably the best writer of any national publication. We’re lucky to have her.

Reply
- Chuck Dunbar June 30, 2024
  
  Yes, a perfectly written piece, with so much history, compassion, and wisdom.
  
  Reply
Call It As I See It June 30, 2024

Don’t be fooled by Mo Mulheren! You just witnessed her social game.

Her response borders on a lie. She is saying one thing, but her actions tell a different story.
Her quote, where she describes 12-20 individuals outside of town and near the creeks. She can’t even admit they are in town, not outside.
Did the carjacking by a homeless man happen outside of town? No, it happened in the Orchard Plaza.
Did the fire on the corner of Dora and Observatory at the old OBGYN doctor’s office by a homeless person happen outside of town? You know the answer.
Is the illegal camping on her favorite spot, The Rail Trail out of town? Most campers are on the section of Talmage to Brush St. In town.
Did a convicted child molester on parole chase three teenage girls into a business outside of town? No, it happened in the downtown on School St.
She even says jail could be the answer for some of these folks. I have never heard this come out of her mouth. As a matter fact, just the opposite.

Ms. Mulheren has spent the last month berating a business owner, Tee’ Em Up Golf. The owner has posted on Vagrant Watch photos of his daily interactions with homeless. She drives by his business and then on social media says she doesn’t see any activity. Basically not believe his photos. She even sent one of favorite trolls, a massage therapist that she endorsed to get on some County board, to sit in the parking lot and film the business owners. On her site, she promotes activities for kids. At one point, Tee’Em Up Golf appeared on her site. They now have been removed because of the owners displeasure with Mo. Holy Christ, it’s miniature golf. Geared towards children. For some reason Mo has a problem with the owner wanting to protect his customers, mostly children, from them Scotty Willis’s of the world.

This is garbage that Mo spews everyday. Here is another incident of her Social Media magic tricks.
She appears in a video in front of the rail depot that was just cleaned and weed whacked. The encampment was removed. She makes it appear like she had something to do with it.
Here is the real story, business owners who border the site voiced their complaint. John McGowan the ex-City Councilman and Supervisor had a contact to the person who manages railroad properties. McGowan worked with him to get the site cleaned up and homeless removed. Mulheren never knew it was happening. But yet she runs immediately to get film on it, but never mentions McGowan’s role. By the way, McGowan for years has been cleaning up the trash that the homeless leave on public and private properties. For free! He doesn’t receive paycheck. He donates his time.

This is the scam of our favorite cheerleader.

Reply
- MAGA Marmon June 30, 2024
  
  My take is that she is in agreement for Prop 47 reform when it comes to folks camping outside the city limits, how dare they!
  
  MAGA Marmon
  
  Reply
- mark donegan June 30, 2024
  
  Your comments about me are libel. And it’s Goldie Locks, at least spell it right. I have announced it publicly for almost 4yrs now. When did you wake up. You people that sit here your angry corner ARE a problem. If you continue to spread lies, well, I’m not Mo. I’m absolutely sure you are going to be all offended. Too bad.
  
  Reply
  - Call It As I See It June 30, 2024
    
    Not one lie in my statement. Everything is factual. Anyone can call Tee’em Up Golf and ask the owner if my statement is true. You may not want them to, because he saw you filming in the parking lot. Everything else I said has been reported by media or police reports.
    
    Why don’t you dump Goldie Locks, and start going by MO’s Troll.
    
    Reply
    - mark donegan July 1, 2024
      
      Repeating someone’s else’s lie when you know it is unlikely true is still libel. Look it up.
      I am clearly disabled and there is no mistaking it at this point.
      I am the one person who doesn’t get paid anything, yet consistently shows up!
      Beyond that, you ae the worst offender when it comes to useless people trying to bring down those who give.
      Why don’t you show up at any official event to speak YOUR peace instead of hiding behind an alias, something I never have done.
      You and your friends are ignorant punks.
      
      Reply
      - Call It As I See It July 1, 2024
        
        Speaking of ignorance, once again you assume I haven’t been at official meetings. I have.
        
        Isn’t this funny, a guy who uses numerous aliases is saying I’m hiding.
        Goldie Locks is not your only name.
        
        Here’s a question you have avoided.
        Did you take pictures or film the owners of Tee’em Up Golf? And be honest, because they might have pictures of you.
        
        And what does you being handicapped have to do with this subject? Taking orders from Mo to try and harm a business who questioned her role in a controversial topic.
        
        You and Mo are taking this to a personal level. Both of you are acting like children. Here is a business owner whose business is family oriented and they don’t want drug addicted mentally ill people harassing their customers. Plain and simple. But because Mo can’t control the narrative, then they become a threat to her.
        
        Reply
        
        mark donegan July 1, 2024
        
        So what? You been there once, a few times. Who cares, never recently, nor in my presence,
        They got pictures, show them. I showed mine.
        Dis-abled, none of your business but it is obvious to even one of you dim wits.
        Means you know nothing about me, but continue to attack like the child you accuse of Mo.
        You are nothing but a bully with too much time on his simple hands.
        Put them back to work pulling on yourself to see you come up with any nuts.
        
        Reply
Craig Stehr June 30, 2024

Kalki is the last incarnation of Krishna, who will incarnate on planet earth to destroy the demonic and return this world to righteousness, ushering out the dark phase of the abominable Kali Yuga and ushering in the Satya Yuga, the age of truth and light in the yugic time cycles, unless all karma is exhausted, which will allow for the pralaya, or dissolution of the entire universe, which will be drawn back into its source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalki#/media/File:Kalki_Avatar_by_Ravi_Varma.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pralaya

Reply
- Harvey Reading June 30, 2024
  
  Sounds gruesome, something to be expected of a god invented by humans! It would seem to me a simpler solution would be to lower the human monkey population to carrying capacity of its habitat. Oops, guess that one’s out, too, since another god they dreamed up told them to be fruitful and multiply, which they continue to do. Kinda hard to accomplish that, though, with only two breeding pairs with two sons, though, so the angels who flew down to have sex with human females would have had no partners, unless Eve was willing to accommodate all of them. And that, too, would have been a genetic dead end.
  
  Reply
Chuck Dunbar June 30, 2024

The Power of Speech

W.H. Auden, in yesterday’s AVA:
“…Speech is the mother of thought, not the hand-maiden. When it is corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear, and that leads to violence…”

Reading this, it’s hard not to think of Trump’s ongoing debasement of speech and language in the public arena: untruths and lies, ignorance of fact, hatefulness, enmity, nastiness, cruelty. He incites fear and division through speech, feeding his message incessantly to Americans. Many then take it as their truth and call him a leader. It’s a unique, troubling phenomena, more popular and powerful than any other demagogue’s “my way is the right way” spiel in American history.

In stark contrast, think of FDR’s fireside chats during harrowing times for our nation, using speech to calm fears and foster hope and unity. He reassured Americans, comforted and encouraged us, explained actions and policies in clear language, told us he cared about America, told us we’d make it through depression and war. And beyond words, he and his government performed myriad acts to help and nurture the country. At this fraught point for America we sorely need a leader of FDR’s vision and character. Trump’s not that person.

Reply
Betsy Cawn June 30, 2024

Would love to know about that sculpture on the coastal trail, and see more pictures if the contributor would be so kind. The photo itself is a piece of art, perfectly framed by the scenery around it. Thanks to whoever sent that in, and thanks to the Eds for including it in today’s edition.

Reply
Mo Mulheren July 1, 2024

Good morning boys, when you repost my social media posts to your blog can you please make sure to identify it as such. The above looks like I sent it to you. Supervisor Mulheren via Facebook or something of the like should suffice. I use social media because it’s a free resource. I keep all County related topics @Mo4Mendo on Facebook, Instagram, sometimes X and TikTok. In the post above I had shared the Mendocino Sheriff Facebook page and on the thread included several updates about homeless encampments and Prop 47. I welcome folks to engage in conversations on that page as a way of tracking public opinion and organizing important conversations, if threads are shared without context to the entire album of homeless concerns that I’ve been sharing on Facebook since 2019 it would seem some important pieces are missed. And of course dealing with homelessness is not my only role as a Supervisor so my social media pages share other helpful information to the Ukiah community and County as a whole. @Mo4Mendo

Reply
- gary smith July 1, 2024
  
  That’s rude and insulting addressing the editors as “boys”. It’s either intended to belittle and trivialize or an attempt to be chummy which we all know would be fake. And when I hear someone refer to other people as “folks”, I know that the odds are good that that person is a politician or a cop, and in either case it’s another attempt to fake chuminess. Ugh.
  I’m not a Mendocino resident so I’m personally unaffected by her inanities, just irked by them as an outside observer. And it’s nothing that the AVA led me to think, it’s from reading her high school level press releases. Not that she’s any worse than the majority of pols at the top, senators and congressmen, state and federal as well as once and future presidents.
  
  Reply
  - Stephen Rosenthal July 1, 2024
    
    +1.
    
    Reply
- Mazie Malone July 1, 2024
  
  Hello Mo,
  
  I have a question; I have a friend on the coast who has become homeless as of 2 days ago. For the last year he has tried seeking assistance to prevent his demise to the streets. Luckily, he has wheels and is able bodied and mentally well but still became homeless. Now that he is officially out on his ass none of the services have anything to offer. He was told by Hospitality House there are no beds and no money for Rapid Re-Housing? What are we going to do when the “services” are not addressing the need? This person is easy to assist and wants help and there is none! If we are incapable of assisting those who can participate in the process to a great degree, we will never get the sickest and most vulnerable the help they need and off the streets. Where is the housing money and assistance? Uggghhh……………………………
  
  mm 💕
  
  Reply
  - Lazarus July 1, 2024
    
    I believe the money goes to agencies and studies claiming they will house and heal with the money. However, in reality, most… if not all, goes to staffing, expenses, etc.
    As I was told in India long ago, “There’s never any money for the poor.”
    Have a nice day,
    Laz
    
    Reply
    - Mazie Malone July 1, 2024
      
      Hi Laz,
      
      There is literally no concern or understanding for these issues it is quite frightening. I have seen time and time again the passing of the buck pretending it is all working just fine. Everyone has separate responsibilities and their own hand in the pot, milking it. Sickening.
      
      mm 💕
      
      Reply

Mendocino County Today: Sunday 6/30/24

ALL-PRESS DEMOCRAT GIRLS FIELD ATHLETES

29 Comments

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