Mendocino County Today: Friday 7/5/2024

By AVA News Service on July 5, 2024

Willits Fourth of July Parade (Jeff Goll)

YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Ukiah 108°, Yorkville 108°, Laytonville 105°, Boonville 105°, Covelo 105°, Fort Bragg 74°, Mendocino 69°, Point Arena 62°

THE long-duration extreme, record breaking heat wave will continue. The strong dome of high pressure will begin to center over N CA, further increasing temperatures Saturday. Sunday temperatures will ease by a few degrees, but remain very hot into the first half of next week. The heat risk will also be accompanied by very dry air and breezy afternoon winds increasing fire weather concerns. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): My high temp yesterday was a 4F cooler 78F. High temps will continue to drop going into the weekend. I have 54F under clear skies this Friday morning on the coast. As you can see from the satellite shot the fog is building back in to our south. Will it be foggy for the fireworks tomorrow night ? We'll see.

AV FIRE CHIEF ANDRES AVILA REPORTS:

“We had one heat related medical call on Wednesday afternoon for a very remote Signal Ridge resident with a severe heat illness. The patient was flown out by CalStar-4 for medical attention. Thanks to a friend who had checked in on the patient, a callout to 911 was made for an emergency services response on the patient's behalf. Please stay hydrated and keep in touch with those who are alone and vulnerable to heat issues during this hot spell!”

COUNTY AGENDA NOTES: Adventists Want Mendo To Help Them Get More Money From Medi-Cal.

by Mark Scaramella

No major controversies or issues are on next Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors Agenda.

Of course, there’s the regular retroactive handout of almost $650k for the Schraeders on the consent calendar (Items 3k and 3m) with the usual minimal descriptions of “to Provide Specialty Mental Health Services, Medication Management/Support Services to Eligible Medi-Cal Beneficiaries of Mendocino County” ($541k), and “to Provide 24/7 Emergency Crisis Services, Outreach, and Engagement to Children, Youth, and Young Adults in Mendocino County” ($84k). But unless Supervisor Williams tries yet again to make another token objection to these retroactive consent calendar handouts, it will be approved without discussion.

In a possibly related consent calendar item (3n) we see that four budget elements of the Mental Health department’s budget are being increased to almost $10 million: “Approval of Appropriation to Increase Budget Unit MH/4050 86-3113 to $3,000,000, Increase Budget Unit MH/4050 86-3164 to $790,000, Increase Budget Unit MH/4050 86-3280 to $1,050,000, and Increase Budget Unit MH/4050 82-5331 to $4,840,000.

There’s no explanation of why these increases are being made, what the previous budgets were, how much the increases are, nor where the additional money is coming from. There’s a hand-written note on one of the attachments that simply says there’s no budget impact because revenues and expenses are being increased by the same amount.

Apparently, it’s of no interest to anyone at 501 Low Gap Road why such large increases are being handled on the consent calendar and no one needs to ask. Since the increases are in the Mental Health budget it’s possible that we will see future agenda items handing out more of this money to the Schraeders, also on the consent calendar, perhaps retroactively, with minimal explanation or justification because it’s already budgeted. Excuse our suspicions about the Schraeders. But, we’ve come to suspect that the Schraeders are behind everything having to do with mental health funding in the County. Our apologies if our suspicions turn out to be unjustified in this case. It’s just this consent calendar item is so devoid of actual information that it’s impossible not to suspect that the Schraeders are behind it.

The only “major” issue on next Tuesday’s agenda is a proposal, sponsored on the agenda by Supervisor Ted Williams, to conduct a feasibility study to establish a “Business Improvement District” for the Adventists’ three county hospitals “at the request of Mendocino County Acute Care Hospitals,” i.e., the Adventists.

We hesitate to inflict this rat maze of a proposal which seems like an attempt to avoid coming right out and saying what it is. So readers may be excused if they choose to skip all this stuff, even in our boiled down description. But there it is, on the agenda for the Board and perhaps the public (although we doubt it) to consider.

There’s attached proposed “resolution” which would declare the Board’s intent to proceed with the hospital “BID” saying that it will provide “specific benefits to assessed businesses located in the County and licensed as acute care hospitals…” The Benefits being that the hospitals will receive “additional resources to support the Hospitals’ provision of healthcare services to low-income and needy members of the community.”

The proposed resolution adds that “the owners of the Hospitals that will pay 100% of the assessment under the district supported this action by signing petitions in favor of the formation of the district by the Board.”

The “territory” of the proposed district is the four incorporated cities in the County, three of which have Adventist-owned hospitals. So the resolution would require the four cities to agree with the formation of the district, even though one of those cities, Point Arena, does not have a hospital.

There’s half a dozen dense documents full of bureaucratese and legalese attached to the item, making it very hard to determine how the “district” would operate.

According to the form the cities are supposed to sign to agree to the proposal, the MCHID (Mendocino County Hospital Improvement District) will “promote the economic stability of acute care hospitals in Mendocino County.”

The attached “Management District Plan” says that the district would “levy a broad based and uniform assessment on all acute care hospitals …, the proceeds of which will be used to specifically and directly benefit the Hospitals.”

It’s hard to tell from the bureaucratese in all the attached materials how this would work or how it would translate to improved low-income healthcare, if at all.

As best we can tell, if such a District were established then somehow the Adventists could bill for more Medi-Cal dollars on top of their regular bills which at present are paid at small percentage of the cost of low-income patient healthcare. Those additional funds would then be collected from the hospitals by the “district,” i.e., the County, and then the County and would turn around and return the funds to the hospitals to supplement what they now get in low-income healthcare reimbursements.

The hospitals would be assessed 6% of their “net patient revenue” which “could generate approximately $20 million annually” and over five years would generate an average of over $22 million a year.

Mendo would be allowed to recoup its costs of administering the district as part of the arrangement.

While the idea appears to have some obvious benefit to the Adventists on paper, it’s hard to see how such a contorted scheme would actually improve healthcare per se, although it probably would garner more Medi-Cal money for the Adventists providing the healthcare.

It’s more evidence, if any was needed, that in today’s convoluted health care financing picture the lengths to which healthcare providers must go to try to get reimbursed for anywhere near their costs are downright byzantine.

We understand the Adventists’ desire to increase their revenue from Medi-Cal which pays only a small fraction of their itemized bills. But is it in the public interest for the County to participate in a convoluted quasi-money laundering scheme to get more money from Medi-Cal for a private business?

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

UKIAH SCHOOL BURGLAR FOUND WITH DRUG STASH

On Wednesday, June 26, 2024, a Ukiah Police Department Officer began an investigation into a burglary that had taken place at Oak Manor School earlier that morning. Upon arriving on campus, school staff found that the Administrative Building had been broken into by force, and items of food had been stolen from the refrigerator.

Oak Manor School security cameras captured a male subject moving about the campus around 3:00 am, and the subject was suspected of being the burglar. The suspect moved in the shadows, but could clearly be seen wearing a hat, a backpack, and bright blue tennis shoes.

At approximately 1:00 pm that afternoon a UPD Officer noticed a male subject wearing matching clothing in the parking lot of the Super 8 motel at 693 South Orchard Avenue. The UPD Officer attempted to contact the subject to speak with him about the incident at Oak Manor School, but the male climbed through a fence and fled on a blue bicycle. UPD Officers and UPD Detectives checked the area but were unable to locate the subject.

On Saturday, June 29, 2024 at approximately 6:30 pm the same UPD Officer was on routine patrol in the parking lot of the Quick Stop gas station at 1105 Airport Park Boulevard when he saw the male subject again. The male was still wearing the backpack, the bright blue shoes and he had his blue bicycle with him. The UPD Officer was able to contact the subject, who was identified as former Eureka resident and current Ukiah transient, Sixto Ramos O’Connell.

Numerous baggies of controlled substances were found on the burglary suspect.

After questioning, Ramos O’Connell confessed to the burglary of the Oak Manor School Administrative Building and was placed under arrest. During a subsequent search of O’Connell’s backpack numerous baggies of controlled substances were located, accompanied by a significant amount of cash. Ramos O’Connell was transported to the Mendocino County Jail and booked for charges of burglary of an uninhabited dwelling and possession of controlled substances for the purpose of sales.

As always, UPD’s mission is to make Ukiah as safe a place as possible, and we are grateful for the help that we received from the staff of the Oak Manor School. 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.

WOMAN KILLED IN MENDOCINO COUNTY ‘VIOLENT ASSAULT’ IDENTIFIED

The woman was found inside a home near Willits late last month.

by Sara Edwards

A woman who was found fatally injured inside a Mendocino County home last weekend has been identified, according to authorities.

The woman, 77-year-old Roberta Ann McNeal-Wood of Willits, was identified by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

A Wednesday sheriff’s office news release said McNeal-Wood’s cause and manner of death is still under investigation pending the final autopsy and toxicology report.

Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office received multiple calls from residents of Blue Lake Road north of Willits shortly after 11 a.m. Saturday with reports of a man yelling and a possible fight taking place at a home in the 5200 block.

When deputies arrived, they found broken windows and blood in and around the front of the house.

In the living room they found a woman who appeared to have suffered injuries likely caused by a “violent assault,” according to the news release. There were no other people or victims at the house, according to officials.

The woman, McNeal-Wood, was pronounced dead at the scene after deputies used CPR and administered first aid while waiting for emergency medical assistance.

A car drove up to the house as deputies were at the scene.

In the car was Willits resident Michael Coleman, 41, who was arrested after deputies found evidence he was involved in the assault, according to the authorities.

Coleman was booked into Mendocino County jail on suspicion of homicide that day. He is being held on a no-bail status and was still in custody as of Thursday morning.

Anyone with information related to the investigation is asked to call the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Communications Center at 707-463-4086.

Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the nonemergency tip-line at 707-234-2100.

WENDY MEYER:

Thanks Mendocino BOS for this new yellow stripe, i.e. lipstick on the pig, that is Navarro Ridge Road.

Now can we get some real improvements?

RACHEL LAHN: ELK ARTISTS COLLECTIVE

The Elk Artists' Collective Gallery is thrilled to announce its upcoming exhibition scheduled for July, 2024.

Rachel Lahn is the featured artist. Her mixed media, large dimensional constructions are bold and dynamic. She transforms recycled packing materials and found natural organic materials into dynamic relief paintings. Please stop by and enter her world. Lahn has a BFA and an MAT from the Rhode Island School of Design.

The Elk Artist Collective Gallery is located at 6031 S. Highway One, Elk, CA. (707) 877-1128. We are open daily, from 10 am to 5 pm. Admission is free, and all ages are welcome.

For more information about the exhibitions and events, please visit our website at https://www.artists-collective.net, or Rachel Lahn's website, www.rachellahn-art.com

We look forward to welcoming you to the Elk Artist Collective Gallery this July!

ED NOTES

HERE'S how the Major’s father Gene Scaramella got to school as an 8-year-old in Gualala circa 1916: “In the wintertime when the Gualala River was in flood stage my brother Charley and I would have to take a boat to cross it to go to school and then cross it again when we came back. Each time we had to put the boat in several hundred yards upstream because as we rode it across it would float downstream. If we wanted to land at point A we would have to set the boat in about 200 yards upstream on the opposite bank and row and then finally get across to Point A. In the evening on the way home we would reverse the procedure. It was about four miles to the one-room schoolhouse each way.”

AN EXPLANATORY GRAPHIC would be useful as accompaniment to the prose picture we've often attempted to paint as an explanation of Mendo's inland water realities. Although Anderson Valley is not directly affected by the Eel River Diversion at Potter Valley, Lake Mendocino's storage capacity, Russian River flow, inland aquifers up and down the 101 corridor, Lake Sonoma and Sonoma County's preservation of Lake Sonoma's huge storage of water for jet-skiers while Ukiah runs dry, many of us will be indirectly affected more and more as more and more public time is devoted to figuring out rational inland water policy. I'm continually surprised at how little people know about where inland water comes from, how it's delivered, who owns it, and how much (or little) there is of it, even when it rains a lot. Nobody has explained it in a way we can all understand. Which is where media are supposed to come in but so far haven't. Every time we try to explain, Jim Armstrong of Potter Valley laughs at us as uninformed.

"YOU'D BE SURPRISED how many gun owners there are in Marin County, said Baradat, who has the only shooting range in the famously liberal county." That signs-of-the-times line from a Chron story on Bay Area gun owners, especially those who fear the ever greater chaos outside their suburban gates who think an in-home arsenal will protect them against it, but it wouldn't surprise me if liberal (liberal in the registered Democrat sense) Marin County had howitzers in its hills and ground-to-air missiles in its pool houses.

DENNIS HUEY, Mendocino County's then-auditor-controller, was quite clear when I asked him years ago about the viability of the county's employee pension fund. “We're about $70 million short of where we should be. If there was a run on the bank and we had to pay out retirement dollars, and everybody lived out their lives according to the actuarial expectation, we're $72 million short; that's the county's unfunded liability here. Which has grown from $47 million from six years ago. The county is trying to refinance the $72 mil by taking advantage of existing low interest rates.”

THAT the county's investment of its employees' retirement money will do better assumes the economy as a whole will soon do better, a shaky assumption, I'd say. County employees maintain their own retirement board, but it's the usual fox-friendly county henhouse. If my retirement money was being guarded by the present board of supervisors, I'd be calling the Poor House to reserve a room with a view of North State Street.

MAJOR SCARAMELLA, USAF RET., COMMENTS:

Supervisor Gjerde says the fund is in good shape, he's supposed to be the Board's expert on the pension fund. The decades old "Pension Obligation Bond" that they borrowed in the 90s is supposed to be paid off in a couple of years which is supposed to free up about $6 million a year that they were paying on it. In the past Gjerde has proposed that the Pension fund invest in higher rate securities, but last month he backed off after an explanation from Acting Auditor Sara Pierce who said they were already doing that within the “conservative” nature of the law. Williams has complained, meekly, that the pension payments are part of the “structural deficit” and as the County cuts staff, some of them will be drawing more pension money. It's all pretty theoretical and not very interesting to me. But there's no question that the Carmel Angelos of the pension world are still drawing pensions way out of proportion to their “service.” At the other end, the pensions for the lower paid staffers are relatively modest and shouldn't be cut. I'd bet that the old 80-20 rule applies, or something like it: 80% of the payouts go to 20% of the recipients and 20% of the payouts go to 80% of the recipients.”

THE ANNUAL BOONVILLE FAIR is a county fair although Boonville people have always had an exclusive lock on the board because the fair started in Boonville long before the state took it over. (The photos of the original fairgrounds compared to the architecture of the present fairgrounds are a study in the devolution of architecture generally.)

THE BOONVILLE PEOPLE on the Fair Board have as their first priority keeping people they don't like out of Fair business and off the Fair's board of directors. The people they don't like comprise, at a conservative estimate, 92% of the current population of Mendocino County, hence the ongoing top-security sequestration of the Fairgrounds as other communities in the state with fairgrounds in the center of their towns devote their grounds to the public as public parks, town squares, public space.

IF OUR top security fairgrounds were available to any old body, the thinking goes, all kinds of undesirables would be roaming the Fairgrounds like they owned the place, which they do, of course, because it's public property.

THE FAIR BOARD and the Farm Bureau are interchangeable entities, intellectually speaking. One year, the local branch of the Farm Bureau used the Fair to distribute an unsigned, unattributed think piece that, boiled down, said the industrial, chemically-dependent, water-thieving, Mexican- exploiting wine industry is also farming, and seeing as how the hippies have already destroyed logging now they want to kill off cows and horses and do a lot of other crazy communist stuff like a county grading ordinance.

AS WE KNOW, or should know, distant corporations killed logging and communists are even more extinct than hippies, but cows and horses seem to be thriving and there's plenty of room for whole herds of the methane-spewing beasts in spacious Mendoland.

A GRADING ORDINANCE is a good idea because as is the industrial wine industry totally reconfigures the land to illegally divert winter rains into summer holding ponds, and the way the wine Industry clearcuts entire hillsides is an ongoing crime against nature that a grading ordinance might at least occasionally impede.

THE FARM BUREAU would be wise not to draw too much attention to the composition of the Boonville Fair Board, whose elections are always secret and an inside process all the way, because the hippies might start running people for seats and the next thing you know cows might be wine bottles.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: I will never forget the news back in the early 2000s when the late-great Roanne Withers and a few of her friends sued the County for not complying with the County’s first (and reluctantly generated) General Plan in the late 1970s which required the enactment of a comprehensive grading ordinance by 1984. After several court hearings and subpoenas and such, Withers et al discovered that the text of the General Plan had been surreptitiously changed to “erase” the words “by 1984” as part of a much larger collection of “clean ups” and updates to the General Plan which were proposed on the Supervisors’ consent calendar. (At the time of the “update,” the 1984 date had passed. So instead of changing the date, Planning Director Ray Hall and County Counsel Peter Klein simply decided on their own to delete the offending deadline entirely. No need to consult the Supes besides burying it on the consent calendar.) The requirement for a grading ordinance was still there but the deadline had been discreetly removed. So Withers & Co. lost their otherwise bulletproof lawsuit which would have compelled the County to comply with their own General Plan (which used the word “shall.”) . A few years later the Supervisors reluctantly formed a “Grading Ordinance Committee but they inserted a poison pill into the formation language saying that whatever they came up with had to have unanimous approval. As expected, the wine mob (aka the “ag community”) appointees steadfastly refused to allow any ordinance drafts to mention ag, so over time the increasingly frustrated enviros on the committee resigned one by one leaving what was left of the “committee” to recommend that the building code grading requirements (which only apply to commercial and residential structure projects) were all the County needed as a grading ordinance. As Withers commented, “Tragically, as a direct result, our rivers are now overcome with sediment and depleted of water, our salmon are now on the verge of extinction, and our fishing industry jobs are almost gone.”

Candelabra Aloe, Albion Harbor (Jeff Goll)

DON LIPMANSON (formerly of Navarro)

A few additional factoids about David Colfax:

Statute of limitations having long expired, I can recount that David and I purloined a couple railroad spikes and ties during a Port Chicago blockade to stop military shipping weapons to Nicaraguan Contras.

As 5th district supervisor, David was a powerful force in protecting Mendocino County’s environment from sprawling development in remote areas. He brought his sociological and statistical talents to our 1984 pamphlet, “Down the Federal Drain,” showing how much more $ Mendo taxpayers sent the IRS than the country received back from all federal programs, harming local libraries, affordable housing projects and public schools.

David was a huge fan of Bruce Anderson’s bum’s rush and takedown of County Schools Superintendent Jim Spence at a meeting in Pt. Arena some 40 years ago.

Lastly, David and Micki were true Pinot connoisseurs as well as wine snobs throughout the years he graciously shared them with me.

LEW CHICHESTER (Covelo)

Lindy Peters and I must be about the same age, discovering baseball and the San Francisco Giants as eight or nine year old boys. My family had just moved to the Bay Area in 1960 from our previous home in provincial, segregated, Deep South middle Georgia. There were no major league ball clubs down South back then, just the AAA Atlanta Crackers (I think that’s what they were called in those days). It almost seems like magic that I was was transported to a neighborhood with Catholics across the street, a Russian family on the corner, a Spanish speaking flamenco dancer in the apartment upstairs, kids in class who had lived in Europe, a school teacher from England who had been around the world. And the Giants, who were almost the United Nations of baseball. They were from everywhere baseball was played. The starting lineup I can still recall. Along with Kennedy getting elected president and Willie Mays in center field the world was going to be all right.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, July 4, 2024

JESUS DELGADO JR., Fort Bragg. Vandalism, paraphernalia.

DEVYN MILLER, Redwood Valley. Burglary, vandalism, under influence, paraphernalia, disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting, offenses while on bail.

JUAN SALDANA, Westport. DUI, child endangerment.

JUAN SANCHEZ-MONTIEL, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-under influence. (Frequent flyer.)

MEGAN SPAIN, Ukiah. Trespassing.

KUA TURNER, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DON’T WAIT

An old man’s advice:
Don’t wait to say I love you.
Then say it again.

— Jim Luther

‘NOTHING WILL BE PROTECTED’: California Environmentalists Oppose A ‘Green’ Energy Bill

by Ryan Sabalow

Power companies, racing to meet the state’s ambitious clean-energy goals, are asking lawmakers for some relief from California’s signature environmental protection law so they can upgrade their transmission lines, including at state parks.

The bill’s author, Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, said to tackle climate change, power companies need to be able to connect solar fields and wind turbines to an upgraded energy grid faster and without as many bureaucratic hurdles.

“Achieving these goals will require unprecedented construction of this infrastructure to provide reliable, renewable energy to electrify our homes, commercial buildings and transportation,” Garcia, a Democrat from Coachella, told the Senate’s Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee, last week. “And that’s going to require some bold moves in the policy space.”

Supporters of Garcia’s Assembly Bill 3238, which is being heard today by the Senate’s Environmental Quality Committee, say streamlining the state permitting process for electrical grid upgrades is sorely needed since California’s sweeping plan to end its dependence on fossil fuels by 2045 would increase electricity consumption by as much as 68%. That would put an immense strain on the state’s already blackout-prone energy grid. As it stands, large-scale grid upgrades regularly take five or more years to plan and build, due to the lengthy environmental review process, they say.

But major environmental groups are fighting the bill to change the California Environmental Quality Act. The debate is an example of a broader tension bedeviling California officials and those across the country as they try to get more clean energy projects up and running amid a climate crisis.

The same rules that helped environmental groups fight development and polluters in the past are now often used to delay energy projects necessary to wean the country – and California – off dirty fossil fuels.

Environmentals fear fast-tracking environmental reviews would lead to power companies trampling fragile landscapes in the rush to make the grid bigger. They’re particularly concerned about state parks that currently have smaller power poles and lines that utilities would like to upgrade into massive, unsightly energy towers.

“We know how imperative it is for our state and planet to transition to clean energy as quickly as possible,” Kim Delfino, a lobbyist representing Defenders of Wildlife and the California Native Plant Society told the committee. “However, efficiencies should not equal weakening core environmental protections.”

Reforming CEQA Isn’t Easy

The opposition to Garcia’s bill, which has 12 bipartisan co-authors, also illustrates the fierce pushback to even small reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act – something that’s befuddled the Legislature and governors for years.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown once called reforming the act “the Lord’s work,” but he wasn’t able to pass substantial reforms. His successor, Gov. Gavin Newson, has made cutting delays from “green tape” a priority, and he also has tried to tackle CEQA. Last year, his office supported a package of bills and created a “strike team” with a goal of speeding up CEQA.

Advocates for CEQA reform say that since former Gov. Ronald Reagan signed it, the law intended to protect the environment from harmful pollution and large-scale industrial development is now regularly used to kill or delay for years much-needed projects, from affordable housing to green-energy infrastructure.

As it stands, CEQA (pronounced “see-kwa”) requires developers to pay for an environmental impact report that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take years to complete.

The analyses, sometimes thousands of pages of impenetrable legal and scientific jargon, have to consider a number of potential harms to wildlife and people. That includes pollution, construction traffic, noise, urban blight and a project’s impact on recreation. The reports must offer a range of alternatives that would mitigate any possible damage.

If an agency approves a report and moves the project forward, the law allows environmental groups, local organizations and other opponents to then comb through the document looking for flaws that can be used in a lawsuit. Those lawsuits can take years to make their way through the courts.

Garcia’s office said CEQA reviews have become a major barrier to upgrading the state’s energy grid. His office cited one 117-mile Southern California powerline project that took five years for officials to review. It had an 11,000-page impact report that evaluated over 100 project “alternatives.” That same project required 70 permits issued by more than two dozen different agencies.

Are State Parks Threatened?

Garcia’s bill is in response to a settlement reached last year between the state’s three largest investor-owned public utilities – Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric — and some environmentalists and clean-energy groups.

The settlement called for changes to the way the California Public Utilities Commission issues permits for electrical transmission lines. The bill would take the settlement’s recommendation to make the commission the lead CEQA permitting agency for electrical grid infrastructure projects.

The commission would be required to conduct reviews within 270 days, which Garcia’s office says would shave up to two years off the process.

And instead of having other state and local agencies conduct separate CEQA reviews for the entire length of a powerline project, they’d only be obligated to conduct a review for the portion that crosses their jurisdictions. Garcia’s office said that would eliminate up to three years of delays.

Garcia told the committee last week those provisions would eliminate bureaucratic duplication “while still ensuring the opportunity for environmental review.”

But a key sticking point for environmentalists is how the bill would exempt power grid upgrades from CEQA on state owned-lands, particularly at California’s parks.

Garcia’s bill would eliminate CEQA reviews for infrastructure upgrades that require a utility to acquire state lands immediately adjacent to existing “right of way” already used for power lines and other energy infrastructure. His office said the actual construction of new transmission towers and other electrical equipment on state property would still require a CEQA review.

Environmentalists such as Brianna Fordem, executive director of the Anza-Borrego Foundation, worry that the upgrades will destroy huge stretches of state parks.

Fordem told the committee last week that Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in San Diego County alone has “hundreds of miles of existing rights of ways” that will be “the path of least resistance for hundreds of 200-foot towers permanently scarring our campgrounds, our hiking trails, our sacred cultural preserves, endangered wildlife habitat, dark night skies and more.”

“Nothing,” she said, “will be protected.”

Bill Sails Through, Despite Opposition

The state’s major utilities companies, however, contend that the bill is critical to meeting the state’s clean-energy goals.

“If we are truly in a climate crisis, then we need to behave as if we are in one,” San Diego Gas & Electric’s Erica Martin told the committee last week. “The existing process for approval to construct electric infrastructure is duplicative, lengthy and costly.”

Those arguments have given the bill momentum, despite environmental opposition.

It sailed through the Assembly this spring with only one lawmaker, San Ramon Democratic Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, voting “no,” according to the Digital Democracy database. She declined to comment, according to her spokesperson.

The Senate utilities and energy committee also passed the bill last week without anyone voting against it. The committee’s Democratic chairperson, Sen. Steven Bradford of Inglewood, said his experience working for a utility informed his vote.

He’s a former public affairs manager for Southern California Edison, and he said he saw environmental groups support an energy project only to be “absolutely opposed” to building the transmission lines to make it functional. He said he saw the same thing happen to a San Diego Gas & Electric project.

“Both of those projects were delayed almost five years and added billions of dollars to the cost,” Bradford told the committee. “At the same time, we set all these arbitrary goals of when we’re going to have this renewable power, but we’re failing to build the infrastructure that’s necessary to deliver the power where it’s needed.”

(CalMatters)

PG&E GETS ANOTHER HANDOUT

Editor:

I’m disgusted that Gov. Gavin Newsom and California lawmakers approved a $400 million loan to PG&E to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant running. Nuclear power is extremely dangerous.

Nuclear power is already subsidized by the federal government by the Price Anderson Act, which covers liability for operators of nuclear power plants. Price Anderson socializes the cost of insuring nuclear energy.

One of the worst problems of nuclear power is the lack of adequate storage for the highly radioactive waste created in each power plant. All nuclear waste is stored temporarily and unsafely at each reactor site.

One in three people in the United States lives within 50 miles of a nuclear waste storage site. As of 2017, more than 88,000 tons of nuclear waste were being stored in this country in pools or dry steel and concrete casks just outside the power plants where they were generated.

PG&E, which built Diablo Canyon not far from four earthquake faults, should not be rewarded by more government subsidies after putting citizens at such risk. It has raised electricity rates approximately 12.8% this year while reporting $2.2 billion in profits for 2023.

Ed Oberweiser

Fort Bragg

CALIFORNIA TO IMPOSE FIRST-EVER PERMANENT WATER RESTRICTIONS ON CITIES AND TOWNS

by Kurtis Alexander

After a decade that saw two major droughts, and with more dry times inevitable, California is imposing permanent water restrictions on cities and towns for the first time in state history.

The powerful State Water Resources Control Board on Wednesday approved a long-debated policy that will require hundreds of urban water suppliers to reduce the amount of water they provide over the next 15 years.

As soon as 2027, some suppliers will have to cut back deliveries upwards of 30%, which means finding ways for their customers to use less water — either by imposing restrictions, incentivizing savings by raising rates, or boosting efficiency by encouraging low-flow appliances. Suppliers can do whatever they want to tamp down water use, but if they don’t, they face state fines of up to $10,000 a day.

The mandated permanent reductions, meant to better prepare California for a drier future, are tailored specifically to communities and their individual needs. The cuts are based on a formula that weighs several factors, including the area’s past water consumption, climate and land use. The level of cuts projected for each water agency could change before the regulation takes effect, and suppliers will have the opportunity to apply for variances when they have unique circumstances, such as uncounted seasonal residents using more water.

Most suppliers in the Bay Area will see little or no required cuts because water use in the region has historically been low. This is due largely to the moderate climate and limited landscaping, which requires less water. There are exceptions, however. The Woodside-Atherton-Portola Valley area, Discovery Bay, Pittsburg, Martinez and Livermore face significant reductions, all above 10% by 2040, when the gradually implemented reductions take full effect.

“Conservation is a critical part of California’s strategy to adapt to a hotter, drier future,” said Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the state water board, which worked with the Department of Water Resources to develop the regulation. “Our climate has changed. Our uses should match the hydrology that we’re now facing.”

With the state water board’s unanimous vote to approve the regulation, it heads to the state Office of Administrative Law for official adoption. The rules are expected to take effect Jan. 1. Water suppliers will be required to make a first round of cuts by 2027 with additional cuts mandated in 2030, 2035 and 2040.

By 2040, the regulation is projected to generate a cumulative savings of 500,000-acre feet of water a year, which is enough to supply more than 1 million households.

Called “Making Water Conservation a California Way of Life,” the policy is intended to decrease statewide water use on a permanent basis so reductions during drought times don’t have to be as severe. The regulation is prompted by legislation signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 after a five-year drought resulted in painful water restrictions — and often steep fines — for many Californians.

The new policy has been contentious. When the state water board drafted the first iteration of the regulation last year, water agencies widely criticized how quickly they’d have to make the cuts and how much they would cost. Suppliers will lose money largely because they will sell less water and have to promote water efficiency, notably by giving costly rebates to customers to encourage purchases of water-saving appliances.

Regulators have since added extra time for suppliers to comply and updated the estimated costs. Originally $13.5 billion through 2040, the new price tag is $4.7 billion through 2050. State officials said the dramatic difference in cost is due not only to changes in the policy but refinement of their modeling and errors in their initial calculations.

The final draft, officials said, would yield benefits of $6.2 billion, which is primarily the result of having to source less water, meaning there would be a net gain for water suppliers.

Still, many agencies don’t see it this way.

Paul Helliker, general manager of the Sacramento area’s San Juan Water District, noted at Wednesday’s board hearing that poorer inland communities were being saddled with the biggest water reductions and hence faced huge challenges.

Of the suppliers serving at least 10,000 people, the five with the largest required cuts are all in the San Joaquin Valley. These include the city of Atwater, Oildale Mutual Water Co., city of Kingsburg, West Kern Water District and Vaughn Water Co. The cuts for these suppliers range from 45% to 58%, compared with their recent use, by 2040.

By contrast, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission would face no reductions, and the East Bay Municipal Utility District would face a cut of 3% compared with recent use by 2040.

The final iteration of the policy has changed only slightly since the draft in March, which gave water suppliers greater wiggle room than first proposed. Most of the new changes had to do with allowing more water to be used in communities with more trees.

Some environmental groups said the final rules should have gone further to reduce water use given the expected shortages in the future. The Department of Water Resources projects a 10% decline in supplies by 2040 because of climate change. Supplies will likely continue to dwindle after that.

“The regulation does not meet the moment of growing water scarcity in California,” said Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions and environmental health for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “A strong regulation will exist in 2040, but that’s 15 years from now and there’s going to be a heck of a lot of water scarcity over that period.”

(SF Chronicle)

CONN ‘RINGO’ HALLINAN, BELOVED WRITING INSTRUCTOR AND JOURNALISM ADVISER AT UC SANTA CRUZ, DIES AT 81

by Sam Whiting

Conn Hallinan’s first act of civil disobedience was to reject his own nickname. He was called “Flash” when he went into a movie theater to see the western “Stagecoach” at age 7. By the time he left, he had taken on the persona of John Wayne’s “Ringo Kid.”

This renaming took some maneuvering because his father, the famed pugilist turned criminal defense attorney, Vincent Hallinan, had given all six of his sons prizefighter nicknames at birth. So if Conn was to be the “Ringo Kid,” he had to earn it.

He was “Ringo” (shortened from “Ringo Kid”) when he was suspended from Redwood High School in Marin for leading a mock funeral procession from the campus parking lot to San Quentin in protest of capital punishment before the 1960 execution of Caryl Chessman. And he was Ringo when he was arrested during the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964, the year the other Ringo arrived with the Beatles.

But he was back to the more dignified Conn, never Professor Hallinan, during the 22 years he spent as a lecturer and writing instructor at UC Santa Cruz, and he did not use “Ringo” on the cover of any of the five historical novels he wrote about the Roman Empire.

Hallinan, a big and gregarious man who lived large, died June 19 at his home in Oakland which, in keeping with his coalition-building character, was located at the city limit with its mailbox over the line in Berkeley. He had been diagnosed with cancer of the tongue in 2020 and by the end he could barely whisper out his yarns, though he kept trying. He was 81 and the fourth of the six Hallinan sons to die.

“Ringo was a storyteller par excellence. It infused all of his writing and teaching, and it is how everyone knew him,” said his wife, Anne Hallinan, whom he had first met on the Vietnam Day Committee in 1965. “His life was about bringing people together and making them understand their own power.”

Hallinan was a tackle on the varsity football team at San Francisco State before transferring to UC Berkeley, arriving just in time for the action. By the end of his first semester, he’d already been arrested during the three-day sit-in at Sproul Hall. There were more arrests to follow, during the Third World Liberation Front strike of 1969, as Hallinan worked his way through both a bachelor and doctorate in anthropology, having defended a thesis on rural insurrectional organizations in the Irish countryside from 1652 to 1895.

He also worked at People’s World, a leftist journal that dates to the San Francisco Waterfront strike of the 1930s. Ultimately journalism overtook cultural anthropology and Hallinan spent most of his career commuting from Berkeley to UC Santa Cruz, where he taught beginning and advanced news writing and feature writing while also serving as faculty adviser for City on a Hill Press at UCSC, the weekly student paper of record.

“When he conveyed to students how articles were constructed and how journalism fit into history and politics, Ringo always used his anthropologist’s eye,” said Roz Spafford, former chair of the Writing Program at UCSC, which enfolded journalism during Hallinan’s years on the faculty. “What was remarkable was that he convinced each student that he was engaged with work individually.”

One of these students was Martha Mendoza, whom Hallinan encouraged to the point of helping her design her own major. A decade after her graduation, Mendoza was still counting on the advice of Hallinan when she won a Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting as part of an Associated Press team that uncovered the massacre of civilians by U.S. troops during the Korean War. Mendoza won a second Pulitzer in 2016 and was still relying on Hallinan for story advice a week or two before his death.

“Conn Hallinan was the first person to suggest that I could have a career in journalism,” Mendoza said while waiting to board a flight from San Francisco to British Columbia. “He always encouraged me and had an incredible spirit. He was deeply generous.”

Conn Malachi Hallinan was born at Children’s Hospital in San Francisco on Nov. 17, 1942. There were already four older brothers waiting to beat up on him — Patrick, known as “Butch,” Terence “Kayo,” Michael “Tuffy” and Matthew “Dynamite.” Still to come was Danny “Dangerous.” No home in the city was large enough for all of those names, so when Conn was 2, the family moved to a vacant summer estate on a 5-acre spread in Ross, the fanciest town in Marin.

The lawn was the size of a football field, where the boys played tackle football. Basketball games happened in the full-court hardwood gymnasium Vincent built for his kids, and which converted easily to a boxing ring. The spring sport was swimming in an Olympic-sized pool where the less fortunate kids of Marin City were invited to swim lessons given by the brothers.

Hallinan attended the Ross School and Sir Francis Drake High School until Redwood opened in Larkspur in 1958. He was a diver on the swim team and a tackle on the football team.

After graduating in 1960, he went to London with his older brother Kayo to spend a year chauffeuring parliament member Konni Zilliacus, a left-wing Labour party politician who was friends with their mother, Vivian. She was an activist herself who enjoyed getting arrested at civil rights protests with her sons and once spent 30 days in jail. There were political rallies built into that job, including the Aldermaston Marches against nuclear armament.

By then Vincent Hallinan enjoyed an international reputation, having saved leftist labor leader Harry Bridges from deportation. Hallinan was also the Progressive Party candidate for president in 1952.

“Season of the Witch,” David Talbot’s nonfiction bestseller about mid-century San Francisco, starts with a prologue about the courageous and charismatic Vincent Hallinan and ends with an epilogue about him.

“The most important piece of fatherly wisdom he imparted to his sons boiled down to ‘question everything in life’,” Talbot quoted Hallinan saying in the prologue. “I’ll always give you the best advice I can, but make up your own minds. No matter how firmly I believe something, it might be one hundred percent false; everything I know may be wrong.”

One thing he wasn’t wrong about was real estate during the Great Depression. He and his wife Vivian turned a foreclosed building that Hallinan had gotten as a legal fee into a string of furnished and unfurnished rental properties in and around Nob Hill.

Vincent Hallinan died in 1991 and Vivian in 1999. The real estate portfolio was left to the five surviving sons as they all pursued separate careers. Patrick was a trial attorney, as was Terence, who was also elected district attorney and to the Board of Supervisors. Matthew was the first to pursue anthropology at UC Berkeley, dropping out short of his Ph.D. to become a self-described “communist revolutionary.”

Conn followed his brother and finished his Ph.D. before also becoming a communist revolutionary, and joined the staff of People’s World, the West Coast voice of the communist party. His beats were sports and the class struggle, but he soon rose to managing editor.

“Ringo was a very bright and dedicated guy who was also idealistic,” said Matthew, who compromised his own idealism long enough to take over the family business. “He was prepared to devote his life to writing for People’s World, but the communist movement fell apart.”

That turned out to be a lucky break because his pay at People’s World was $600 a month and he had four kids to feed. While still an undergrad at UC Berkeley, Hallinan had married Eda Godel, whom he met at S.F. State. Their son, Sean was born in mber 1965. Separated in 1968, they eventually divorced and he then married Judy Ann Alberti in 1972. That marriage lasted a little longer than the first and produced sons Antonio, born in 1972, and Brian, born in 1975.

In 1980 he was reunited with Anne Bernstein, whom he’d met as an undergrad when she was a graduate student in dramatic art. They were married in January 1982 and a fourth son, David, was born in September. Luckily, Conn was hired at UC Santa Cruz one week later.

He taught at UCSC from 1982 through 2004, and also served a three-year term as live-in provost of Kresge College, one of 10 residential colleges within the university. He never minded sidetracking his lectures by long segues into the struggles of the Irish in general and the Hallinan family in specific.

“He was a real Irish patriot,” said Matthew, noting that family resistance went back to their grandfather, Patrick Hallinan, who fled Limerick with a price on his head for an assassination attempt on a British government official.

Though his five novels were about the Roman occupation of Spain and North Africa, the lead character had Hallinan tendencies — and the books were always published on St. Patrick’s Day. He put out three in both digital and print form on March 17, 2023, and one on March 17, 2024. The fifth was hurried into publication at the beginning of June.

“As soon as he started writing, his depression about dying of cancer lifted,” said his wife, an actor and family psychologist. “A sixth book was in his head, but he didn’t get to it.”

(SF Chronicle)

CONN HALLINAN: HE KNEW WHAT SIDE HE WAS ON

by David Bacon

CounterPunch Editor’s note: I was distressed to learn of Conn Hallinan’s death last week. I’d heard from our mutual friend, P. Sainath, in the fall that Conn hadn’t been well, but the news still came as a jolt. Conn started writing for CounterPunch in 2003. His first story was a blistering attack on Ariel Sharon (The Consistency of Sharon.). And a new dispatch landed in the inbox with fearsome regularity for the next 18 years, searing critiques of neoliberal economics and imperial war-mongering. Conn’s writing was clear and forceful. His columns never left you wondering what the point was or whether he’d proved his thesis. Like the late Uri Avnery, Conn had the ability to cut through the manufactured fog and allow you to see complex issues in a fresh light. In person, he was warm and funny. He was hit hard by Cockburn’s death and rang up frequently in the weeks and months after Alex’s death to see how we were coping. When Conn finally stopped writing his column, he devoted himself to finishing a trilogy of novels on rarely examined middle empire period (third century CE) of classical Rome (Hispania, Mauretainia and Tarraco), as the rot of imperial over-reach had begun to set in. The novels are as enlightening on the subject of imperialism as his columns–fast-pace, historical accurate object lessons in the crimes of conquest and occupation. Go Raibh Suaimhneas Síoraí Air, Conn. –Jeffrey St. Clair

I learned a lot from Conn “Ringo” Hallinan, who passed on June 19. Ringo had a full life as both a writer and political organizer, and ran the journalism program at UC Santa Cruz for 23 years. But that’s not the way I knew him. For me, Ringo was a guide to a path through the hard knocks of labor and radical journalism.

Ringo was foreign editor at the West Coast People’s World for many years. I spent a year of apprenticeship there, as it became a national newspaper, the People’s Daily World. Both were publications of the U.S. Communist Party, but regularly carried news and analysis that went beyond, and usually in contradiction to, the mainstream media. Ringo’s international columns, especially during the Cold War and the era of national liberation conflicts, were often the issue’s high point.

Ringo was a voracious reader with an encyclopedic knowledge, ranging from defense budget figures to the world view of anti-apartheid fighters in southern Africa. He carried his “Dispatches from the Edge” into Foreign Policy in Focus (and CounterPunch) after he left the paper and got his teaching gig at Santa Cruz.

I had no problems with the idea of being, as we called it at the paper, “profoundly partisan.” I came out of union organizing drives and factory work, and became a labor reporter at the PW after getting laid off for a time as an organizer. So, while I shared Ringo’s general perspective, I had a lot to learn as a would-be journalist. The terrible PW pay couldn’t sustain my family for more than a year, and I then had to go back to organizing work. But the bug bit me, and eventually I found a way to freelance fulltime journalism.

Organizing gives you a good grounding in the lives of working people, but the PW job taught me how to put that into a coherent news or feature article. Although no longer at the paper, Ringo would often send me critiques of my articles, and our former editor, Carl Bloice, and the previous labor reporter, Billy Allan, helped me learn as well.

Ringo had a sense of dry humor and irony about the vicious absurdities of capitalism that appealed to me. His last column, written many years after his PW days, still could make me laugh. “But the illusions of Empire are stubborn,” he wrote. “The US still thinks it can control the world, when every experience for the past 50 years or more suggests it can’t: Vietnam, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, the last war we ‘won’ was Grenada, where the competition was not exactly world class.”

Or giving unwanted advice to the British about independence for Scotland and northern Ireland, or the Spanish about Catalonia: “You can’t force people to be part of your country if they don’t want to be, and trying to make them is like teaching a pig to whistle: can’t be done and annoys the pig.”

I could never imitate that sly style. But what I really learned from Ringo, and what I think he passes on, is his demand that journalists take sides, recognizing our interest in being participants in a broad movement for social justice. That includes his sharp analysis of the relationship between media workers and the people who employ them.

I interviewed Ringo not long after the huge and bitter Detroit News Strike, which ground on from 1995 to 1997. “The anti-union bias in the industry is very deep,” he said. The strike put that on display, but Ringo warned that the bias went beyond violent efforts by corporate owners to break the Newspaper Guild (as we were then called—the NewsGuild now). That bias is evident in the content of the papers and media, which gives it enormous political power in our world.

“So how is that produced?” he asked. Although corporate class interest certainly leads to overt censorship, media workers themselves share responsibility, he argued. Thousands of us belong to unions and care a lot about our salaries and working conditions. “And there were real efforts by dedicated newspaper union activists to challenge the suppression of the news from Detroit. But most media workers didn’t feel a strong sense, not just of personal, but of class responsibility to report it.”

Journalists are taught, Ringo observed, both by their education and the rules of the corporate newsroom, that they must not participate in movements for social justice, especially organizations on the left that challenge the established order. “Many reporters internalize the ban on being participants,” he explained, “and believe it would compromise their supposed neutrality and objectivity. For reporters and editors, if they don’t already know about something, it’s not news. But the neutrality rule says you can’t cover a story if you know about it from your personal experience, because it’s a conflict. And of course, behind this lies the knowledge of what you need to do to please your boss and get ahead.

“The objective persona is like the tooth fairy—it doesn’t exist,” he added. “It not only makes reporters unwilling to be participants, but it keeps them from being good journalists. Was I.F. Stone neutral on Vietnam and Korea, or Mike Quinn on the San Francisco general strike? The point isn’t to be objective and neutral, but to be fair and accurate. Neutrality destroys independent reporting—no one but reporters believes in it.”

Belonging to the union can provide important job protections for journalists who challenge corporate power. But union membership doesn’t automatically lead to better coverage of workers and communities of color, or international stories where U.S. foreign policy demands agreement. “For that, unions need to actively educate their members and appeal for loyalty to the labor movement and struggles in working-class communities. Some of the stories most hostile to workers during recent strikes and organizing drives, were written or aired by union members,” Ringo charged.

“Look at the class origin of reporters and editors. Seventy-five years ago, they were overwhelmingly working-class people. Today they’re largely middle class. Yes, corporations own the newspapers. But if reporters bit and screamed more, they could change a lot. Newspapers have to rely on them to produce the copy. Sure, publishers and editors have a class stance, but so does the average reporter, even if they belong to the Guild.”

Ringo demanded political independence, both to know what side you’re on, but even more important, to give working people what they need to make social change. “We need an analysis of the system in this country that reflects the reality of our lives,” he said.

The media talk about our economic system in black-and-white terms. Communism is dictatorial and repressive. The free enterprise system is the savior of all people. The media says our economic system allows us the freedom to do wonderful things, but there’s no discussion of how this system really works, and its true impact on working people.

I took Ringo’s call to heart. When the United States bombed the headquarters of Serbian television during the Yugoslav war, media workers in other countries voiced outrage. But the U.S. journalism profession generally remained silent. I wrote a letter to our union newspaper, the Guild Reporter, with his words in my ear.

“We need independent international relationships, based on mutual working-class interests, free from the defense of U.S. foreign policy which characterized so much of labor during the cold war,” I warned.

The Guild has to find ways to support our right to independence from the bias of the corporations we work for, and the efforts by our own government to enforce political conformity. Independence means a culture of solidarity, identifying our common interests with other journalists and workers internationally and here at home.

The letter stirred up the predictable controversy, and I still remember the “Right On!” note I got from Ringo. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and fought the battles that make our own work possible. Ringo’s were pretty broad.

(This article first appeared on FPIF. CounterPunch.org)

“The three toughest fighters I ever fought were Sugar Ray Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Sugar Ray Robinson. I fought Sugar so many times, I'm surprised I'm not diabetic.”

— Jake Lamotta

This matchup between Jake LaMotta, the "Bronx Bull," and Sugar Ray Robinson, "The Sugar Man," was one of the most compelling rivalries in boxing history. Their styles were diametrically opposed. LaMotta was a relentless, brawling fighter known for his toughness and ability to take punishment. Robinson, on the other hand, was a gifted boxer with exceptional speed, footwork, and power.

Their rivalry spanned six professional fights between 1942 and 1951. Each fight was fiercely competitive and showcased the strengths of both boxers.

Their sixth and final fight, known as the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre," is perhaps the most famous of their encounters.

The LaMotta vs. Robinson fights are considered iconic in boxing history. They redefined the welterweight division and displayed the raw determination and fighting spirit of both boxers.

Jake LaMotta's life story, including his rivalry with Robinson, was later immortalized in the classic film "Raging Bull."

PAUL THEROUX ON NECESSARY SOLITUDE, RISKS AND THE JOY OF WRITING

After 60 years and almost as many books, the novelist and travel writer, 83, will stop when he falls out of his chair.

interview by Guy Trebay

The Unstoppables is a series about people whose ambition is undimmed by time. Below, Paul Theroux explains, in his own words, what continues to motivate him.

After 60 years of writing and publishing — and almost 60 books — I feel ordering my thoughts on paper to be not a job but a process of my life. You always hear writers complain about the hellish difficulty of writing, but it’s a dishonest complaint.

So many people have it much harder — soldiers, firefighters, field workers, truckers. The writer’s profession is a life of self-indulgence. With luck and effort, you make a living. The only difficulty is its necessity for solitude. Writing is not compatible with anything — its utter self-absorption is generally destructive to family life and friendships — and yet I find it joyous. All creativity is uplifting; I finish a book in a mood approaching rapture.

Having difficulty writing? Has it occurred to you that maybe you have nothing to write?

I once wrote a book, “Sir Vidia’s Shadow,” on my friendship with the writer V.S. Naipaul, whom I have described as a drill sergeant who, if he had seen “Full Metal Jacket,” would most likely have shouted, “What is your major malfunction, numb-nuts!” He often prefaced his reading of my stuff with, “I must warn you — I’m brutal.”

Naipaul was a deeply flawed man — tantrum-prone and depressive — but a magnificent writer. His great gift to me was of encouragement. Everyone needs it, not only writers. Everyone. Naipaul would say, after reading something of mine, “You’re going to be all right,” which vitalized me and gave me hope.

Creativity is about experimenting — failing, failing again, failing better, as Beckett said. Growing up, needing privacy in a large family — I was the third of seven children — I became a fugitive, finding solace in libraries and in long hikes and in solitude, as well as in many menial jobs — anything to escape the conflicting demands and the scrutiny of my family.

From childhood, I had always written stories in a secret way, offloading my thoughts on paper. I had no idea of the path to becoming a writer. I imagined I might be a medical doctor, and so I studied pre-med and science at university. But, on graduation in 1963, instead of going to medical school, I became a teacher in Africa, the ultimate solitude in many ways — necessary solitude.

When I began publishing stories and poems in magazines, the path became clear. But the path is never straight. When someone confides to me that they think they might have an ambition to write, I suggest they leave home — go away, get a job. Never enter a “writing program.” Rather, invite experience and especially take risks.

It’s a great mistake to think of the writing profession as a game. People with dreary jobs usually stop. Writing is neither dreary nor a job. I see it as a process of life. When at last I fall off my chair, I suppose that will be my way of stopping.

Current and upcoming projects: Published the novel “Burma Sahib,” his 57th book, in February. He is now planning his next reporting adventure for a new travel book.

(nytimes.com)

MOST AMERICANS CAN’T AFFORD A SUMMER VACATION ANYMORE

by Emily Crane

Most Americans have given up all hope of a summer vacation because they just can’t afford it anymore, a new poll shows.

Forty-four percent of those surveyed said they’ll be staying put over the next three months as the crippling cost of living crisis rages on, according the Newsweek and Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll published Thursday.

More than half of respondents — 53% — said they would have set off on a summer trip if only their expenses were cheaper, the poll found.

Of those who do plan to travel this summer, 64% said their itineraries had been affected by the high cost of living.

The majority of those travelers (55%) have opted for cheaper destinations, while 45% are finding a less-costly way of getting there.

(NY Post)

UNFOUNDED PATRIOTISM

Dear Editor,

Patriotism? True patriotism? You must be kidding me. How can there be any of that left in the Disunited and Imploding States of America?

We have no common values left at all. Not politics, not religion, not culture, not education, not the American Dream, not even the value of work.

The only folks who are keeping alive the concept of patriotism are folks who stand to make money off the lie that we have something to celebrate in this country. Personal and family things, thankfully yes. But community, state, and nation? Who are we trying to kid?

Diminished gun violence? Nope. Harmony between the political parties? Yeah, over our dead bodies. High character candidates up and down on the ballot? You can’t even find character in church these days. Kids graduating high school who actually know something about history, law, science, and civics? Not in my city. Not in yours either.

Is this just a grumpy, negative point of view? No, this comes from someone who has eyes to see, and ears to hear.

Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross, Utah

THIS MIGHT BE THE MOST IMPORTANT FOURTH OF JULY SINCE 1776

by Jack Ohman

The late President Richard Nixon is cackling in his grave today.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president of the United States of America can do virtually anything he wants under the guise of “official duties.”

Apparently, official duties now can include fomenting an insurrection.

Under the new rules, Nixon would have been held immune, would not have resigned, and there would be no President Gerald R. Ford to pardon him, for he did nothing illegal.

Indeed, Nixon’s then-spurious assertion that if “the president does it, then it is not illegal,” would, in fact, be legally correct under the Federalist Society handpicked court we’re currently living under.

If Nixon is guffawing wherever he is, Earl Warren, a former California governor and the 1948 vice presidential running mate of the late Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, is spinning at 10,000 RPMs in his grave.

All of this has conspired to make this July 4 the second-most important July 4 in American history.

Those who want to see some sort of authoritarian dictatorship next Jan. 20 are emboldened. They’ll have a president who arguably could do whatever he wants, when he wants to do it.

Checks and balances? Do you see any with a MAGA Republican Senate and House of Representatives, and a MAGA-enabling Supreme Court? I don’t see anything other than a rubber stamp.

Speaker Mike Johnson called for the invocation of the 25th Amendment the other day to remove Biden from office; I don’t recall his mawkish concern as rioters defecated on the floor of the Capitol, occupied then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and absconded with her lectern, and beat police with flag poles on Jan. 6, 2021.

A President Donald Trump will pardon each and every one of them.

Under President John Adams, the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act gave the president authority to silence political opponents, shut down critical newspapers and generally be the “unitary executive” the Roberts Court seems destined to establish.

This ain’t no Alito’s Wife Flying the Flag upside down, this is the Supreme Court burning the flag on the staff.

Some fireworks display.

My great great great great great (sorry, it was a while ago) grandfather was a man named Francis A. Dana. You may have heard of Dana Point (Orange County). That’s named after his grandson and my way-back uncle Richard Henry Dana, who wrote the novel “Two Years Before the Mast.”

Francis A. Dana was an official Founding Father. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress, signer of the Articles of Confederation and minister to Russia. Later he served as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and was John Adams’ right-hand guy.

If I could speak to Francis A. Dana today, I can assure you of two things: He’d say the United States shouldn’t have a king, and that the enduring survival of the American experiment depends on goodwill.

He’d have a hard time finding a silver lining in any of this on July 4, 2024.

Benjamin Franklin, who never held elective office but was a key Founding Father of, well, everything ranging from the birth of America to electricity, and even editorial cartooning, said that the founders gave you a republic, “if you can keep it.”

On this July 4, can we keep it? Will we even try?

On this July 4, President Joseph R. Biden, the kid from Scranton, Pa., is faced with a moment no one could have predicted even days ago.

Does the president summon the spirit of ’76 and do the right thing, not just for the Democratic Party, but for the democratic experiment we’re living moment to moment today? Or does he punt, betting, probably erroneously, that he can convince already shaky pro-Biden voters, independents and a segment of sensible Republicans that he can stave off Trump one more time?

My guess is that George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Grandpa Dana are whispering in his ear that it’s time to do the right thing.

Biden is nothing if not a patriot. He sees it.

He sees an America slipping into the abyss of authoritarian rule. He sees that it’s just Joey Biden making the decision to, not to overstate it, save America from itself.

Biden has given so much to his country. John F. Kennedy wouldn’t have to ask Joe Biden what he did for his country.

He’s been doing things for his country, including the sacrifice of his cherished son, since he was 29 years old.

Stepping aside, or even resigning the presidency itself in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, would be beyond what President Lyndon Johnson did in 1968 by not running for reelection.

Ultimately, LBJ made a political decision. It was correct, but the future of the country didn’t hinge upon it.

Biden has to make a historic decision, unlike any other in American history.

On this July 4, Biden has to look the American people in the eye and say: I know I am the fulcrum of the future of the United States. I know that my decision may decide not just the future of the United States, but the future of NATO, and the physical survival of billions of people.

Knowing Joe Biden as we do, Biden will always choose the country over everything else.

On this July 4, observe it as one would. See friends, have a hot dog, shoot the fireworks, but also know this:

If you want to have another July Fourth with any semblance of meaning, don’t ignore what’s happening.

As a patriot, Joe Biden wouldn’t.

(Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and columnist who also writes at jackohman.substack.)

HAPPY HOLIDAY!

Remembering the "manly principles of independence" on the Fourth of July

by Matt Taibbi

I read two things before bed last night. The first was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, whose popularity in early 1776 was key in convincing colonists to make a full break from England, a position considered radical even after the first revolutionary battles the year before. Through an academic’s lens, Common Sense is an exposition on the evils of monarchy and an impassioned argument for independence. On a line-by-line level, it’s more a standup routine about how people end up saddled with governments. You could imagine young Eddie Izzard doing it as a set called Kings and Other Tossers.

Paine imagines a “small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth.” Things are fine until they relax and let themselves go a little. “This remissness,” he says, highlights “the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.” The one-liners flow. “Some convenient tree will afford them a State House,” Paine groans, then spins the construction of the inevitable bureaucracy. Meetings of the community are soon replaced by a “select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake,” but they develop their own interests. As a result, regular elections now need to be held to keep the new permanent class of politician-donkeys in check, so “their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves.”

The lousy system is better only than the royal alternative. Kings are said to have a hereditary connection to ancient wisdom, but when the “dark cover of antiquity” is pulled back, the first in the line turns out to be the “the principal ruffian of some restless gang,” who “overawed the quiet and defenceless to purchase their safety by frequent contributions.” The text shifts to the theme that most excites Paine: making fun of Europeans. He calls William the Conqueror a “French bastard landing with an armed Banditti and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives” who in “plain terms” is “a very paltry rascally original.” If there are any “so weak as to believe” that this personage represents the divine line, “let them promiscuously worship the Ass and the Lion.” Paine will not “disturb their devotion.”

Common Sense frames the basic American attitude. We’re scum, but at least we admit it; not scum in robes, like the English. “He who hunts the woods for prey, the naked and untutored Indian,” he writes, “is less Savage than the King of Britain.” Even worse than “ruffians” who hide their despotism in false pieties are the spineless nobles who aggrandize them. He rails against Sir John Dalrymple, who wrote a letter from Britain to the “inhabitants of America” scolding them not to withhold praise for the king, “by whose NOD ALONE” they were “permitted to do anything.” Paine’s disgust for such power-worshipping New York Times-style editorialists is hilarious. He describes Dalrymple as an “apostate from the order of manhood” who has “sunk himself beneath the rank of animals, and contemptibly crawls through the world like a worm.”

Though he warns leaders might stop bothering to avoid making a “rod for themselves,” and we might become the thing we hate, Paine’s 47-page insult bomb is written in the plain, furious language you’d recognize in Richard Pryor or Bill Hicks centuries later. I wish he’d titled it Letters From Assholes in a Forest, but otherwise Common Sense still feels relevant, heartening given the events of the last weeks, when some of us have started to wonder how much longer this thing will last.

On that note, the other thing I read was a meme:

Enjoy the fireworks, have a few tonight, and happy holiday, everyone.

(racket.news)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I was just down in Granby on Rte 10. There was a very small road project going on. On site there was a large sign, This Project Being Funded by the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act”. Who needs to know that? The sign alone probably added 5 G’s to the price of the project. Some sort of backhanded “Joe Biden” endorsement I imagine. Should have read ”Potatohead comes through for you!”

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JOE BIDEN devoted his debate time about the Middle East to highlight his unconditional support of Israel, laying all of the blame on the continued butchering of the Palestinian people and the destruction of Gaza on Hamas. This makes us a partner to genocide. Biden has turned out to be a war president, and the Democratic party is now the party of war. And they scare me.

— Moshe Adler

PRESIDENT BIDEN TELLS GOVERNORS HE NEEDS MORE SLEEP AND LESS WORK AT NIGHT

The president’s opening remark to a group of key Democratic leaders — that he was in the race to stay — chilled any talk of his withdrawal, participants said.

by Reid J. Epstein & Maggie Haberman

President Joe Biden told a gathering of Democratic governors that he needs to get more sleep and work fewer hours, including curtailing events after 8 p.m., according to two people who participated in the meeting and several others briefed on his comments.

The remarks Wednesday were a stark acknowledgment of fatigue from the 81-year-old president during a meeting intended to reassure more than two dozen of his most important supporters that he is still in command of his job and capable of mounting a robust campaign against former President Donald Trump.

Biden's comments about needing more rest came shortly after The New York Times reported that current and former officials have noticed that the president's lapses over the past few months have become more frequent and more pronounced.

But Biden told the governors, some of whom were at the White House while others participated virtually, that he was staying in the race.

He described his extensive foreign travel in the weeks before the debate, something that the White House and his allies have in recent days cited as the reason for his halting performance during the debate. Initially, Biden's campaign blamed a cold, putting out word about midway through the debate amid a series of social media posts questioning why Biden was struggling.

Biden said that he told his staff he needed to get more sleep, multiple people familiar with what took place in the meeting said. He repeatedly referenced pushing too hard and not listening to his team about his schedule, and said he needed to work fewer hours and avoid events after 8 p.m., according to one of the people familiar with what took place at the meeting.

After Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii, a physician, asked Biden questions about the status of his health, Biden replied that his health was fine. "It's just my brain," he added, according to three people familiar with what took place - a remark that some in the room took as a joke but at least one governor did not and was puzzled by.

Jen O'Malley Dillon, Biden's campaign chair, who attended the meeting, said in a statement that he had said, "All kidding aside," a recollection confirmed by another person briefed on the meeting. O'Malley Dillon added: "He was clearly making a joke."

Biden took two foreign trips in the weeks before the debate, but then spent a week in debate preparation at Camp David with a group of advisers. One person close to Biden said that his comment about sleep and work hours reflected the fact that during the practice sessions, which came immediately after the foreign trips, he was engaged in a lot of official work on top of the campaign activity.

Multiple governors who participated in the meeting expressed dismay afterward that there had been little debate about whether Biden should continue his 2024 presidential campaign - a topic they discussed at length during a call the governors held among themselves Monday.

Biden has acknowledged to two allies that he knows he may not be able to save his candidacy for a second term if he can't demonstrate his abilities to voters following the debate. He sought to reassure concerned campaign aides in a call Wednesday before the meeting with the governors, saying he was in the race to stay.

But the fact that Biden began the conversation with the governors by declaring that he was continuing on left some participants feeling that any further discussion about the state of play was chilled.

Biden told a Milwaukee radio station in an interview made public Wednesday that he had had "a bad night." In the prerecorded interview with radio host Earl Ingram, Biden added, "The fact of the matter is that I screwed up. I made a mistake."

Biden also told the governors that he had been examined by his physician at some point in the days after the debate because of the cold he was suffering from and that he was fine, multiple people familiar with what took place said. Politico reported earlier on Biden's checkup, which the White House said was brief and wasn't a full physical examination.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates confirmed that Biden had seen the White House physician to check on the cold. But on Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the opposite, telling reporters that Biden had not had any kind of medical checkup since February.

(NY Times)

AN AMERICAN GENOCIDE: TOMMY ORANGE, FRANCINE PROSE AND LEONARD PELTIER

by Jonah Raskin

In a recent review of two novels by Native American author Tommy Orange, Francine Prose comments on what she calls “the land acknowledgment” phrase that is recited at many public meetings from coast-to-coast. In San Francisco, speakers tell audiences that they are all on “unceded land” once home to the Ramaytush Ohlone. In upstate New York Prose explains the Lenape are honored, though no one says what’s become of them. She adds that the land acknowledgment words make her “uneasy” because they’re “like thanking the owners of a house we’ve robbed even though we have no intention of returning the loot. “

The analogy might not work as well as Prose would like, but her heart is with the Indians who called Turtle Island home and who used other names for the territory that was taken from them by force. In her review, Prose poses a relevant question: “now when our conscience and consciousness seem newly awakened to the horrors of mass slaughter perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves: Isn’t there more we can do about the unresolved aftermath of the genocide that our own government committed?”

Readers will probably assume she’s thinking of the genocide in Gaza. Other authors have connected that part of the world with the American west where settler colonialists participated in the theft of Indian land and the slaughter of men, women and children. Along with US soldiers and political leaders, those settlers in the west had blood on their hands.

Like Prose I’ve been uneasy when I’ve heard speakers talk about unceded Ramatush Ohlone land. Why single them out I’ve wondered? What about the Miwok and the Pomo who lived in the Bay Area? I was far less uneasy at a recent event in Berkeley when dozens of Indian tribes and not just the Ohlone were acknowledged. Why not be inclusive I wondered?

As to Prose’s question about doing more to address the “aftermath”of genocide, there is no easy answer. There hasn’t been one for centuries. The genocide is on-going as Tommy Orange’s novels and books, and works by other authors, make clear. The genocide is not behind us. Moreover, consciousness and conscience have been awakened in the past by books like Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970) and by events like the occupation of Alcatraz in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the protests at Wounded Knee in the 1970s and more recently at Standing Rock. Leonard Peltier is still in prison for his role at Wounded Knee, and serving two life years. He was found guilty of murdering two FBI agents and was denied parole on 2 July 2024.

It’s not that Indians haven’t resisted and protested. They have fought against colonialists and colonialism ever since the 17th century when New England Puritans slaughtered Indians at places like Mystic, Connecticut, decimated their crops and seized their land. “There is a slaughter,” the Calvinist Roger Williams wrote. “The Pequod are slain,” A Narragansett chief named Miantonomi noted that the English “have gotten our land, with scythes cut down the grasses, and with axes fell the trees; their cows and horses eat the grass, and their gis spoil our clam bank, and we shall all be starved.” Starvation was a key weapon in the war waged against the Narragansett and other tribes. Herman Melville named Captain Ahab’s whaling ship “the Pequod” as a way to acknowledge the once powerful tribe.

One way to address the genocide committed by the US government might be to educate Americans: show that the war against Native Americans hasn’t ended; and that American citizens as well as American officials played a part in the ongoing genocide. Not to shame them but to illuminate the past. Also, to show that while “mass slaughter” is a big part of the story, it isn’t the only part. There are also the daily acts that have aimed to rob Indians of their cultures and identities.

As Tommy Orange’s novels show, Indians sometimes have participated unwittingly in their own colonization. Reading his novels is a valid way to come to terms with the ongoing genocide. If you haven’t read There There (2018) and Wandering Stars (2024) make a vow to do so and open your hearts to the stories that Orange tells with compassion and imagination. More than 60 years ago, JFK noted that Indian “history is our history and should be part of our shared and remembered heritage.” If nothing was done to alter “the treatment of Indians” it would be, he wrote, “marked down for all time as a national disgrace.”

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

IF VOTING CHANGED ANYTHING, THEY'D ABOLISH IT

by Paul Kingsnorth

It’s the Fourth of July, which this year is a significant date for much of my readership, albeit for differing reasons. Actually, it’s just occurred to me that many of my American readers may have better things to do today than reading online blather - things like attending parades, festivals and parties. That does sound like a lot more fun than wading through my Substack.

Whether any country can actually be regarded as ‘independent’ in the age of the Machine is, of course, another question. I’m performing a (hopefully) final edit to my Machine book this month, and it’s brought home to me for about the zillionth time the reality that the Machine is a global force, and that its power centres are not rooted in nations, peoples, ‘democracy’ or any other such quaint concepts. We like to believe, of course, that we live in independent nation states run by leaders of our choosing, but this is an obvious mirage designed to disguise the reality: that the Machine is a giant, global, digitised web of commercial power and control, managed by transnational corporations and gatherings of elite powerbrokers, none of whom have very much interest in what ‘the people’ think. And even when they are interested, there is not very much they can do about it, because they are not really in charge.

In my homeland, Britain, the masses will be heading to the polls today to hand out a kicking to the fourteen-year old Tory government, and elect instead a Labour party that nobody really likes, or even knows much about. Still, at least they’re not the Tories. Britain, like many other countries, seems confused these days about what it wants or how to get it. Five years ago, the same electorate put into power, by a substantial majority, a government led by Boris Johnson, which promised to finally deliver the Brexit settlement the country had voted for in 2016, in the biggest democratic vote in British history. Today, three prime ministers later, they will put into power a man who campaigned to overturn the Brexit vote as soon as it happened. He has promised the country that he will sort out its many problems, which include a crumbling health service, a housing crisis, collapsing infrastructure, massive and unsustainable levels of immigration, and a not-unrelated crisis of national identity.

He will, I would guess, solve none of them. This is not because he is venal (though he might be) but because he will not really be in charge. Twenty-first century society is so complex, so multilayered and so bureaucratic, with a vast and growing gap between action and impact, that even the people running it don’t know how to make it work. And yet the engines keep humming; accelerating, in fact. At this point the Machine can more or less run by itself. This will be even more obvious as the AI systems come on line and openly replace human actors in any number of fields.

This reality, I think - the reality of powerlessness - is what hums behind the rising tide of despair and cynicism that flows in the veins of our nations and people. We know that we are not really nations. We know that ‘democracy’ is not about changing anything, or exercising any ‘popular will.’ We British know that Brexit changed nothing, and the next government will fail too, just as my American readers know that Joe Biden can barely walk off a stage, let alone run a country. We have all been long colonised by the Black Ships of Machine globalism. We are not in charge. We never were. Recognising the scale of the conquest, I’d say, is the first step to working out what to do about it.…

paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-monthly-salon-july-06

WINDCHIME

She goes out to hang the windchime
in her nightie and her work boots.
It’s six-thirty in the morning
and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest
tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,

windchime in her left hand,
hammer in her right, the nail
gripped tight between her teeth
but nothing happens next because
she’s trying to figure out
how to switch #1 with #3.

She must have been standing in the kitchen,
coffee in her hand, asleep,
when she heard it—the wind blowing
through the sound the windchime
wasn’t making
because it wasn’t there.

No one, including me, especially anymore believes
till death do us part,
but I can see what I would miss in leaving—
the way her ankles go into the work boots
as she stands upon the ice chest;
the problem scrunched into her forehead;
the little kissable mouth
with the nail in it.

— Tony Hoagland

17 Comments

MAGA Marmon July 5, 2024

RE: BIDEN’S DEBATE DEBACLE AND LACK OF SLEEP

The term “sundowning” refers to a state of confusion that occurs in the late afternoon and lasts into the night. Sundowning can cause various behaviors, such as confusion, anxiety, aggression or ignoring directions. Sundowning also can lead to pacing or wandering.

“Sundowning, or sundown syndrome, is a neurological phenomenon associated with increased confusion and restlessness in people with delirium or some form of dementia. It is most commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease but is also found in those with other forms of dementia.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundowning

MAGA Marmon

Reply
- Harvey Reading July 5, 2024
  
  On the other hand, lack of a brain, trumple’s lifelong affliction, has no schedule.
  
  Reply
James Luther July 5, 2024

Beautiful Windchime.

Reply
- mark donegan July 5, 2024
  
  Thank you for pointing out what happens on the consent calendar without much scrutiny. I myself would pull every service provider contract for reconsideration. There is a glut in the middle, and it is not getting to the end. Every single one of them needs to be re-structured by someone from the outside. The status quo needs to be shook up. If just one single Soul would show up at a BHAB meeting, together we would make an impact. Otherwise, everyone’s talk is useless unless it provides and answer.
  Come out to the farmers market tomorrow at Alex Thomas Plaza, 9-12!
  I will be official water spigot tender, misting tent operator offering free bottled water, and massage before it gets hot.
  Hope everyone had a safe and Happy 4th!
  
  Reply
  - Mazie Malone July 5, 2024
    
    Honestly it is really difficult for people to attend BHAB not that I believe it would do much good if they did. In fact, the BHAB should be addressing these issues along with NAMI regardless of families and community members ability to attend. Luckily for me I have this public forum of the AVA and my own FB page to openly share my input. I am grateful for that, although I do not agree with you and think you play both sides. I hold nothing against you and hope that you actually do make a difference through the BHAB.
    
    mm 💕
    
    Reply
    - mark donegan July 5, 2024
      
      People on the BOS thinks it does no good, when I came on the word from departing members was it was not worth the time. I think it THE most important place to show up to have your words on record. The fact that it is a mess has nothing to do with it for me. Same from the BOS as I spoken often that government is just a wheel from what I have seen so far, always turning.
      As far as getting along with people, I don’t think anybody agrees with anyone else, except those who have stepped in and set those things aside for the good of the community. Every single person is a part of the problem, and answer. I would never exclude anyone’s opinion, that is the main reason I served. So, I am happy you have your forums. I also am grateful for this forum.
      Same for Sheriff Kendall. I totally agree with his recent statements about what we need to do at the polls. We have to work together to push our state legislators to get this law repealed as well as stringent oversight of BH dollars. THE reason I got on the board.
      So, to accomplish my mission I must work with, and hear anyone’s word. It is also to find glut in the middle, but as I have said, we have little support. What’s left is a mandated in many ways board no one cares about except about half dozen dedicated members. All much more experienced than me. I am Honored to sit with them. They also agree with most everything you are saying, but we meet the same wall everyone does. So far…
      Thank you for extending yourself, appreciate your particular personal situation, and words when they come without barbs. We all have our own situations, it is not helpful to continue to put someone else down in any way. All of us have very different situations than each other and all usually very painful in different ways. That comes from my training as a Self-Healing Practitioner/Educator where we were required to get 100hrs in major disabilities including MS/MD, vision, and structural injuries like my spine.
      Some say I’ve already made a difference, but I like you, want to see a big piece of the current arrangements, re-arranged. No one likes that idea. It means their jobs. What they don’t realize, is we’ll still need them, just working under a differently structed management. RCS comes every month, I believe they are, and should be lead in making thing work better. The so called ‘continuum of care’. They have asked me to be on that board as well, but after the flack I’ve taken so far, I think I’ll just focus on BHAB.
      I took a lot of time to write this, so I hope it came out ok.
      
      Reply
      - MAGA Marmon July 5, 2024
        
        Stop suppling the homeless with Narcan, needles and pipes, that will alleviate most of the problems.
        
        MAGA Marmon
        
        Reply
        
        mark donegan July 5, 2024
        
        Wow. Blame whoever right? I just told you because you just sit and rant, those things will continue and not by my hand sir. You are reckless with your allegations, as are many who judge.
        
        Reply
Harvey Reading July 5, 2024

UNFOUNDED PATRIOTISM

Good one. Simple and to the point that far too many people miss.

Reply
Mazie Malone July 5, 2024

Mr. Scaramella, The County Agenda Notes… MH portion..

Some of that money is I am sure for the state mandate through Medi-Cal that we must provide
24/7 mobile crisis care. Which as things stand what a fucking joke. There are multiple county programs besides RCS. We have Dual Crisis Response, Heads up project, the mobile outreach prevention services for substance abuse and OD, Overdose hotline the crisis line, Adventist street team and myriad of outreach workers, supposedly! There is no efficient or effective protocol to these matters via all these entities.

mm 💕

Reply
Norm Thurston July 5, 2024

As an auditor in the Auditor-Controllers Office, I performed the annual audit of the retirement system (MCERA) for 1 or 2 years. Later, I served on the Retirement Board for 6 years, and was Chairman for a time. Accounting can be difficult for many, actuarial science even more so, and finance can be just about anything someone wants to sell. Retirement funds are similar to Social Security in that, when employee numbers are growing, wages are rising, and investments are doing well, there are virtually no worries about liquidity.

Actuaries compare their best estimate of the present value of all future pension payment due, compare that to the current value of pension assets, and the shortfall is known as the unfunded pension liability. During good times, the unfunded liability can become larger without threatening the liquidity of the plan. But transitioning into leaner times with a relatively large unfunded liability is challenging.

Pension obligation bonds were promoted by comparing the stated interest rates on the bonds with the actuarially determined long-term interest rate used to make actuarial estimates, and sometimes to determine the interest rate that would be allocated annually to active employee retirement accounts. The inaccurate assumption that any bond rate which was less than the actuarial rate would produce a savings for the County. The actual substance of pension obligation bonds was that it was a speculative investment that depended on earnings from the bond proceeds to exceed the interest paid on the debt. It would be like you or me borrowing money long-term to invest in stocks and bonds. But prior to the bonds, all of the County’s pension contributions were going to MCERA. Following the sale of bonds, large amounts were going to outside to bond holders to pay principal and interest. Had the County just increased its contributions to MCERA, they would have probably been better off.

The County would do well to take the $6 million they will no longer be paying on the bonds, and contribute that directly to MCERA. That would constitute a good-faith effort to fulfill their legal and fiduciary duty to the thousands of retirees and employees. Any plan that substitutes some kind of grand bargain to take away legally and contractually earned benefits will not survive the legal challenges that would result.

I understand citizens’ concerns about the cost of retirement benefits. All I can say is to get involved with County government, closely evaluate and monitor any proposed changes to the retirement system, and demand that the BOS appoint knowledgable representatives to the MCERA Board of Directors.

Reply
MAGA Marmon July 5, 2024

Biden just said he will beat Trump in 2020.

MAGA Marmon

Reply
- Lazarus July 5, 2024
  
  Yes, he did. Just more of the same…
  Laz
  
  Reply
Linda Bailey July 5, 2024

The reason a grading ordinance was required to be enacted by 1984–it was one of required mitigations that enabled the General Plan to pass muster under CEQA. The chief planner of the General Plan told me that in the original document all required mitigations were marked with an asterisk. Did the eraser hit the asterisks too? Anybody have the original Plan?

Reply
Marco McClean July 5, 2024

Re: The Major’s father’s trips to and from school every day in 1916, involving dragging the boat upstream to keep from being washed out to sea in the crossing: So it really was uphill both ways.

Reply
Linda Bailey July 5, 2024

How did Sonoma County Water Agency gain control of Coyote Dam and the lion’s share of the water supply? Short answer: Geography and politics. Longer, still simplified, answer (which does not deal with Potter Valley Irrigation District nor PG&E) follows.

State law established the Sonoma County Flood Control and Water Conservation District and Mendocino County Flood Control and Water Conservation District (both morphed into County Water Agencies) to provide the local funding and management of the water supply pool of the Project. The state assigned to each all its rights in the first stage of Coyote Dam Project.

This was fine with Sonoma County as most of the county is in the Russian River watershed. But it became clear that the residents of Mendocino County who were not in the Russian River watershed had no interest in paying for a water project that would not benefit them. This necessitated an amendment to the Mendocino County District that enabled the establishment of an improvement district governed by its own Board of Directors–the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District–which would pay for and manage Mendocino’s share of the water. Redwood Valley residents, happy with dry farming, petitioned the Board of Supervisors to be excluded from the Improvement District. Their wish was granted.

But this took time. So, Sonoma County voters approved a bond that covered all the required local participation monies. The proceeds of the Improvement District’s bond were used to reimburse Sonoma County for the district’s share. Clearly, there were interim negotiations that determined what that share would be as it was enshrined in State Water Board’s decision.

Sonoma County chose to sell its water. The Russian River Improvement District (aka Russian River Flood Control) for many years chose not to, reasoning that property owners were paying for the water through bond assessments. It had a small property tax base that it used to fund its accounting responsibilities.

Because Sonoma paid the entire local share upfront, the Army Corps of Engineers pays all Operation and Maintenance costs and regards Sonoma Water Agency as the local participant.

A side note re: Warm Springs Dam.

Readers may have noticed in a recent AVA issue reference to the testimony of Mendocino County Supervisors in DC supporting the construction of Warm Springs Dam. Why were they there? At that time the no-growth/slow growth Sonoma County Supervisors would not support the dam. So, I’ve heard, Mendocino County was approached with the deal that, if it would lobby for the dam, once Sonoma had that additional water supply it would let Mendocino have more of Coyote water. A gentleman’s agreement; nothing put to paper. Years later, another Sonoma BOS decided it would keep all it was entitled to.

But the deal with the Army Corps of Engineers is that the water supply pool of Warm Springs Dam would be divided into thirds. Sonoma would have to pay Operation and Management costs according to how many thirds they were using. It is in Sonoma’s economic interest to keep Lake Sonoma as full as possible. Hence, the happy water skiers.

Reply
- Norm Thurston July 5, 2024
  
  Great knowledge, Linda. It filled in some empty spaces for me, and certainly helps to explain how things got to be the way they are.
  
  Reply

Mendocino County Today: Friday 7/5/2024

17 Comments

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