YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Laytonville 112°, Ukiah 111°, Covelo 110°, Yorkville 107°, Boonville 99°, Fort Bragg 65°, Mendocino 62°, Point Arena 60°
VERY HOT and dry weather will continue in the interior all week. A shallow marine layer will result in cooling and periods of fog for coastal areas today through Wednesday. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy 54F this Monday morning on the coast. Yes, I said fog. I expect some clearing today, but I never know when. We should see morning fog for the next few days.
LOCAL EVENTS (this week)
AND a small town’s biggest yard sale of the year: Comptche Community Yard Sale, Saturday July 13, 11a.m. to 3 p.m., Comptche Community Hall, 30672 Comptche-Ukiah Rd., (no early birds please).
THE STATE CONTROLLER'S REPORT
Dear Ms. Pierce and Ms. Antle:
The State Controller’s Office reviewed Mendocino County’s internal controls over financial reporting during the period July 1, 2020, through June 30, 2022. Our review identified internal control deficiencies and other challenges that contributed to the county’s inability to prepare and submit its annual financial reports promptly.
The county should develop a comprehensive plan to address these deficiencies. The plan should identify the tasks to be performed, as well as milestones and timelines for completion. The Board of Supervisors should require periodic updates at public meetings regarding the county’s progress in implementing this plan. Furthermore, we will require that the county provide the State Controller’s Office with a progress update of its plan six months from the issuance date of the final report.
We appreciate the county's assistance and cooperation during the engagement, and its willingness to implement corrective actions.…
sco.ca.gov/Files-AUD/07-2024_lga-lgo_MendocinoCounty.pdf
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE STATE AUDITOR’S REPORT
by Mark Scaramella
A postscript is in order for Mike Geniella’s interesting summary of the State Auditor’s July 1 report and findings, basically blaming the Supervisors for the County’s financial difficulties.
Let’s focus on a few specific remarks from the State Auditor’s report:
State Auditor: “A former payroll supervisor’s access to the payroll system was not adequately segregated, possibly resulting in unallowable payments.”
Where have we heard versions of that before? Oh, I know, every other criminal financial charge in Mendocino County history!
Over the last three and a half decades we have followed several cases of alleged financial fraud or embezzlement against County employees. Not one of them made it to trial, mainly because the County’s record keeping was bad.
There was the Court Clerk in Point Arena (who happened to a relative of mine) who was charged with embezzling about $3,500 from court collections by the mercurial then-jerk/judge Vince Lechowick, her boss, after the Point Arena Courthouse burned down in the late 80s and Lechowick checked some salvaged computer printouts. Turned out the records were a mess and my cousin-in-law got a $25k malicious prosecution and defamation settlement from the County.
Then there was the coast Librarian who was accused of skimming small sums of cash from the Coast Library till over a period of years back in the early 2000s. Almost two dozen boxes of computer records were turned over to the DA, but no charges were ever filed. Nobody could make sense of the piles of printouts and nobody could show where the librarian received any financial gain.
There were a couple of other smaller cases of misappropriation that never made it to charges being filed because investigators could never find substantiating evidence in the County’s poor records.
Now the State Auditor tells us that “the payroll system was not adequately segregated…” Surprise, surprise.
The State Auditor also reported:: “After learning of potentially unallowable payroll payments, we expanded our objective to include determining whether the unallowable payments were an isolated instance or pervasive.”
We read through the rest of the report and could find no mention of whether they met their objective either way. We are left with their observation about payroll access not being “adequately segregated.”
The State Auditor said: “ACO [Auditor-Controller] and TTCO [Treasurer-Tax Collector] staff members confirmed many of the Grand Jury’s findings during our review. Some of these findings include the lack of an effective performance management process, a poor workplace culture, staffing shortages, high turnover, and a lengthy hiring process.”
This is a reference to the Grand Jury’s review of the Human Resources Department last summer. How did the Board respond? They agreed with the Grand Jury on a number of points, put a CEO staffer in charge of the Human Resources Department, made a few empty promises about making things better complete with long-lapsed completion deadlines last year… And then never discussed the subject again.
The State Auditor reported: “Various county departments generate journal entries to record financial transactions, such as adjustments, allocations, and transfers. Fiscal staff members in each county department prepare these entries, which are then processed and entered into the general ledger by ACO [Auditor Controller] staff members.”
Before being unceremoniously fired, Auditor Controller Chamise Cubbison tried to tell the Board that a large part of the delays in closing the books had to do with delays in “various county departments,” not to mention entry errors (also noted by the State Auditor) that had to be sent back for correction, but the Board ignored her and continued to unfairly blame Cubbison for the delays.
The State Auditor reported: “We did not identify any additional unallowable payments to county supervisory staff during the review period. However, we did identify internal control deficiencies related to the payroll system.”
So neither Cubbison nor any other “supervisory staff” personally benefited. Instead, there were “internal control deficiencies related to the payroll system.” More evidence that the “system” which had been in place for years if not decades is the problem, not the people allegedly overseeing the departments. Despite numerous prior “audits,” internal and external, nobody mentioned much less paid any attention to the “internal control deficiencies.”
The State Auditor reported: “The County does not have an official policy and procedure manual; existing written procedures have not been formalized through standardization. Furthermore, these procedures do not fully or accurately reflect the county’s current operational processes. Policy updates have been sporadic and haphazard, leading to confusion among staff who found these changes unclear, contradictory, and poorly communicated.”
Wait a minute. If “the County does not have an official policy and procedure manual,” how can “these procedures … not fully or accurately reflect the county’s current operational processes”? No wonder there’s confusion.
Then we have the State Auditor’s cover letter which concludes:
“The county should develop a comprehensive plan to address these deficiencies. The plan should identify the tasks to be performed, as well as milestones and timelines for completion. The Board of Supervisors should require periodic updates at public meetings regarding the county’s progress in implementing this plan. Furthermore, we will require that the county provide the State Controller’s Office with a progress update of its plan six months from the issuance date of the final report.”
The State Auditor expects the people she says are responsible for the financial problems, the people who rashly combined the two offices without a plan or follow-up that created most of the problem, the people who have never required any financial reporting from their CEO — the Supervisors and the CEO — to fix the problems they created and have ignored for years.
She expects the Supervisors to prepare a plan to address the deficiencies and “require periodic updates at public meetings regarding the county’s progress in implementing this plan.”
This proves that the State Auditor has no idea who she’s dealing with.
She also wants “a progress update of its plan six months from the issuance date of the final report.”
What does that mean? What final report? When? To whom?
Given Mendo’s dismal track record — especially in the CEO’s office and in the Board chambers — which we have chronicled for years, much of it confirmed by the State Auditor, compliance with this toothless “requirement” is about as likely as compliance with the Grand Jury reports, even the ones the Board agreed to comply with.
As we have noted time and time again, Mendo is allergic to “milestones and timelines for completion.” As CEO Darcie Antle told the Veterans Service Office advocates during the months-long relocation fiasco after being asked last March for a target date when the Veterans Service Office could move back: “I would hate to commit to a timeline.”
And the Supervisors backed her up.
CHARLOTTE ANNE SMITH: Our Supervisors' blew it when they consolidated auditor-controller, and treasurer-tax collector together. The county was not getting reports in a timely manner - did they really think this consolidation would help? Everything should be caught up before cut backs were made. What were they thinking? And now they're playing the blame game on the employees that were short staffed and years behind. The lawsuits will end up costing the county (us taxpayers) much more than the pay that is most likely legitimate to the payroll manager. The taxpayers' better not be responsible for our Supervisors' bad decisions. There is no common senses in the decisions they're making. Time for a big change.
STATE CONTROLLER CITES MENDOCINO COUNTY SUPERVISORS’ ROLE IN FINANCIAL CHAOS
Chris Skyhawk: Hello Listers following up from my my post a few days ago regarding Mendocino County BOS, transferring $3 Million to city of Ukiah; I thought. This article pertinent, to those who are concerned with how the affairs of our county are running. I will post the entire article on “discussion” and of course if you subscribe to the AVA (recommended) you can read comments and post your own. I hope y’all have had a restful holiday, thank you!
John Redding: The state controller confirms what we all knew or suspected. The supervisors were unwilling to tackle the problems, which is their responsibility, to avoid being called divisive or combative. More interested in “collaboration” which is pleasant way of saying “don't rock the boat” and be popular.
FIREWORKS FESTIVAL REFLECTIONS…
by Jennifer Smallwood
Those of us that live in and around Point Arena may have noticed quite an increase in our population this week.
All of the celebrations brought lots of visitors to our area. The roads were crowded. The beaches were crowded. Restaurants were crowded. There were lines at the bakeries and coffee shops. There were lines at the gas stations. There were lines at the restrooms.
The roads in and around Gualala and Point Arena were clogged with folks driving too fast and too slow along unfamiliar roads.
We, at the parking checkpoint at Iverson and Port Road, had many people ask "What event is happening?" "Why is the road to the pier closed?" Everyone in town wasn't here just to see the fireworks. Many were also escaping the heat and smoke of the interior.
Fast forward to some big event that sends these same folks to the coast to escape whatever it is they're experiencing…
When you go to the Co-op or Gualala Super or S & B or Anchor Bay Market to pick up that quart of milk you just ran out of: will there be any? Will you be able to get gas? Will you even be able to even get to the market - did you see how people parked and drove when they were focused on getting to the fireworks?
Picture this event without internet and/or power and/or cell service and/or landlines; in the pouring rain or navigating through smoke filled air or evacuating from an oncoming fire…
Are you ready?
- Do you know your neighbors
- Have food for several days
- Have water for several days - including water for your pets
- Have at least a half a tank of fuel in your vehicle
- Have fuel in your generator
- Have an evacuation plan
- Have a shelter in place plan
- Have and know how to use a GMRS radio
- Have you taken steps to harden your home against fire
Position yourself, your family and your community to be resilient in emergency situations:
- Connect to the Point Arena GMRS radio network: Obtain and learn how to use a GMRS radio
- Attend the Saturday, July 13th fuel reduction/home hardening education event at the Manchester Grange.
Get your GMRS radio. When the power goes out; when the internet goes out; when the landline goes down; your GMRS radio will work.
It's suggested that you purchase an extra battery and an extended antenna when you order the radio.
We've ordered them from the website radioddity: radioddity.com/collections/consumer-radios-frs-gmrs-radios
Learn how to connect to the repeater and other "how to use your radio" information at the monthly meeting. Or if enough folks are interested - RSVP to this email - we'll set up a special "learn-what-to-do-with-your-radio" meeting.
See you at the parade today! Join the Fire Safe contingent.
WILLITS WOMAN WAS KILLED WITH PIECE OF FURNITURE, COURT RECORDS SHOW
Roberta Ann McNeal-Wood was pronounced dead June 29 at a home on Blue Lake Road north.
by Colin Atagi
A Willits woman was killed June 29 after being attacked with what authorities described as a wooden table leg, according to a Mendocino County court document.
The weapon is identified in a criminal complaint filed July 2 in Mendocino County Superior Court against Willits resident Michael Coleman, 41.
Coleman is charged with murder in the killing of Roberta Ann McNeal-Wood, 77, who was found in the 5200 block of Blue Lake Road in Willits’ Brooktrails Township.
Coleman is also charged with one count of burglary. He was arraigned Wednesday and is scheduled to enter a plea to both charges on July 10.
Court records show he’s being held at the Mendocino County jail in lieu of $600,000 bail.
An investigation began about 11 a.m. June 29 after investigators received calls about a disturbance with yelling and fighting at the home.
The front windows appeared to be broken out and there was blood in and around the front of the house, according to the Mendocino Count Sheriff’s Office.
Coleman was in a vehicle that arrived at the scene while investigators were present and he was arrested, officials said.
Court records show Coleman has a history of arrests and convictions since 2002. His last felony conviction in Mendocino County was in September 2020 when he pleaded no contest to causing a structure fire.
Anyone with information related to the investigation is asked to call the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Communications Center at 707-463-4086.
(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
EXCERPTS from the Anderson Valley Village Newsletter, July 2024
Are you looking for a great volunteer opportunity? Martha Crawford will be working with small groups of students in the summer school program to design and make mosaic tile covered trash and recycling cans for the Community Park. It would be an opportunity for you to use your artistic and creative talents along with helping the students in a fun activity. The program starts 6/25 and takes place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon for 4 weeks. If you'd like to participate a little or a lot, just let Donna Pierson-Pugh know at 707 684-0325 and thanks for considering helping with this project!
Bring your toe tapping boots (or dancing shoes) as The Coyote Cowboys will be serenading us with their wonderful music and in the spirit of Anderson Valley history, they will be sharing how their long time Anderson Valley music playing began and some of the highlights of their many years of valley entertainment. Our annual gathering is our chance to honor and thank our members for their support and an effort to seek new interest and membership in the museum. All are invited - no admission fee! spread the word on this special gathering. July 14, 2pm - 4pm, Little Red Schoolhouse Museum, 12340 Hwy 128, Boonville.
Judy’s Barn Party. Don’t miss out on the fun. Mark your calendars now. July 20th at 6 pm until who knows when! Local icon, Gregory Sims, will be leaving the valley and this is a chance for his friends to gather and give him a royal send off. BYOB and a potluck to share at High Shams Ranch. Call: 621-4244 if you need more information.
https://www.andersonvalleyvillage.org
THE ELK VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT invites you to its 18th Annual Summer BBQ to be held Saturday, August 3, from noon to 4 p.m. at the Greenwood Community Center on Highway 1 in downtown Elk. The firefighters and their friends will back at the BBQ and in the kitchen preparing to serve up grilled tri-tip, smoked chicken and polenta and mushroom ragu entrees, along with baked beans, green salad, garlic bread, homemade dessert and coffee. Savor this complete meal for a donation of $30 for adults and $15 for kids 7-12 (6 and under free). And, as always, Elk’s Famous Margaritas will be available, along with beer, wine, gin and tonics, and soft drinks.
Kids will find activities just for them. There will be a table of fire safety and emergency preparation resources. And throughout the day, music by Bryn and Blue Souls will keep things festive. At 1:00, enjoy a special performance by MendoTaiko, which includes 2 members from Elk. There will be a silent auction, as well as a raffle, featuring items donated by local inns, merchants and community members. Raffle tickets are a bargain at $2 each or 6 for $10 and are available starting July 1 at the Matson Mercantile, Elk Garage, Elk Store and at the BBQ. You don’t need to be present to win. The latest EVFD hats, t-shirts and sweatshirts will be for sale, too.
Serving the community for 68 years, the EVFD has a small but dedicated roster of 18 volunteers, 4 of whom are Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs). The department maintains a fleet of 8 firefighting vehicles of mixed type, 2 ambulances and an ATV located at 3 stations spread out over a large, 55 square-mile service district. As the department’s only fundraiser, the annual BBQ generates critical funds to maintain the department’s facilities, vehicles, equipment and training. Please come out and support the volunteers who help you in emergencies. But kindly leave the dogs at home.
For more information, contact Sarah Penrod at 707-877-1607 or visit https://www.elkweb.org/fire-department-summer-bbq/ Can't make the BBQ? Consider sending a donation to Elk Volunteer Fire Department, PO Box 151, Elk, CA 95432
PAY US. WE’LL FIX IT, BUT GOOD
by Tommy Wayne Kramer
Here’s a short list of things that worked fine until we fixed them, at which point every solution wound up a failure.
MARIJUANA: For decades weed supported Ukiah and Mendocino County economies despite it being, at bottom, a criminal enterprise. We had a rising tide that lifted all boats and that also sold a lot of trucks, bought a lot of restaurant meals, vacations and 40-acre parcels. But what about taxes? We need to legalize pot and tax it, we whined. Very smart, us.
Eyes wide open, we let the government run the marijuana industry the way the government usually does: Over a cliff. Once legal, everything about Mendocino County marijuana got worse. Every single thing. A lot worse.
We went from weed money distributed in free markets in support of our economy to government officials forming committees, hiring administrators, oversight agencies and spending money on things to spend more money on later and then standing back and slowly realizing they’d botched the entire enterprise. We've made no money on marijuana, and instead businesses lost millions. It all turned into a confusing mess.
How did our smart county administrators botch it? They were gifted world famous, top quality Mendocino Marijuana to market and they blew it.
THE INSANITY OF MENTAL HEALTH: Passage of Measure B generated millions of dollars for county professionals to provide services to an ever-expanding number in crisis. But that was years and millions of dollars ago.
The Measure B committee probably still meets now and then, though what it accomplishes would be the same if it never met at all. High level expert professionals, these committee members. They owe taxpayers some explanations, but never explain anything. Let’s terminate every member and start over with people who actually want to address mental health issues.
We gave them money. They closed the door and turned off the lights.
INDIAN CASINOS: Well that was easy. All we had to do was legalize gambling on Native American reservations and poof! Goodbye poverty and alcoholism as the slot machine money started rolling in.
Been to a Mendocino County reservation in the past decade or so? Sad as ever. Where, indeed, has the money gone?
HOMELESS: Once upon a time in a small town in Northern California, a few down-and-out chaps panhandled. We’d see them at on-ramps holding “Will Work For Food” signs, or maybe outside Safeway sitting on a backpack, head buried between his knees, a cup on the sidewalk and a small cardboard “God Bless You” sign. We gave what we wanted or could afford.
Then came trained government-approved hotshots to turn a local problem into a citywide catastrophe. The professional helpers promised to cure the homeless problem with proven strategies, networks of services and other tired slogans. They managed to turn a few homeless folks into a full-blown disaster.
It began with “A Hand Up, Not a Handout” posters to convince citizens that giving a lazy bum a dollar meant a dollar less was sent to a nonprofit government agency. (Besides, the dirty old homeless guy would waste your buck on vodka, then go sleep under a bridge.)
Your money should instead have gone to Redwood Community Services’ travel budget, enabling high paid grant-funded workers to visit seminars and conferences in San Diego and learn about networking and cross-pollinating programs that deliver unworkable solutions for problems the social workers themselves had carefully designed and implemented.
And 25 years later, Mission Accomplished. Those running Ukiah’s homeless programs have accomplished their work: There are zero beggars holding up signs saying “Will Work for Food.”
I HAVE A THEORY.
These policies and solutions align nicely with yard signs and bumper stickers we’ve seen around town. All the “No Matter Who You Are or Where You’re From, You Are Welcome Here” got planted in yards by people who would in reality invite a rabid snake into their home before a family of Guatemalans.
It’s called “virtue signaling” and we can also thank it for for “Coexist” bumper stickers and Che Guevara t-shirts. In 2024 goody-goody sentiment is impacting elections. Emotion-based virtue voting is a cancer sweeping the land, and an especially virulent strain has struck Mendocino County.
This weird, disturbing evolution toward societal suicide is a mega-example of virtue voting. We now cast ballots for candidates and issues that make us feel like nice people, the kind of people with signs celebrating open borders and instructions on Whose Lives Matter.
All these pious displays are for show, and to impress friends and strangers who judge others by their advertised tolerance, sensitivity and their child-like faith that, across the globe, our hearts beat as one and are in universal harmony.
The result: California’s dysfunctional one-party rule is forcing change and solutions where none are needed, and mostly will fail.
A MILESTONE REACHED, AND GRATITUDE FOR SUPPORT ALONG THE WAY.
I swear the sweltering desert heat sobered me up 17 years ago as much as the program at the renowned Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage. I arrived there 17 years ago today and sweated every ounce of alcohol out of my system over the next 30 days. Why didn’t someone tell me you go to the desert for substance abuse treatment in the winter, and not during scorching hot summers?
I am holed up during the current heat wave across Northern California even though the temperatures pale in comparison to the desert. Still, my memories of the first steps in sobriety at Betty Ford stir deep feelings of gratitude. It was life changing. I spent 30 days with men, many of them half my age but all coming to terms with alcoholism. It was especially difficult for those of us who were binge drinkers, high functioning alcoholics who managed to hold onto their families, careers and community lives. We never considered ourselves boozers, wife beaters, or substance abusers. We did not knock back a bottle every day, nor were we hiding the stuff in the toolbox out in the garage. Well, maybe not until the end, anyway.
I have learned, thanks to Betty Ford and others, that there is a fine line between those of us who maintain the façade of respectability, and the down and out who sleep in the streets and struggled every day to find that “fix.”
I remain grateful to my former employer The Press Democrat/New York Times Co. for providing a medical insurance plan that mostly covered the cost of Betty Ford. It isn’t cheap, folks. In fact, substance abuse programs offered at Betty Ford and others are too costly for many people suffering from alcoholism and drug abuse. It is a national problem.
The Betty Ford Clinic gave me the jump start I needed to find sobriety. It introduced me to a substance abuse recovery program with AA at its core. When I came home, the real work began.
Program friends – you know who you are – have walked with me for 17 years. I could not have reached this milestone without you. Family, friends, and my community have had my back.
I am especially grateful for the incredible support of Terese, and my sons Nate, Luke, Pete, and Sam. Our daughters Tarita, Katy, Christine, and Sara share in the family support system. Because of all of them, I am still walking the path. Their love, and forgiveness, means everything to me.
I am blessed that my three grandsons Giannie, Frankie and Julian have never seen me falling drunk as others have. I believe they never will, although it will only be true if I continue to live one day at a time.
Lastly, I want to pay homage to Betty Ford, a woman of courage. With the support of her husband former President Gerald Ford and their family, Betty Ford in 1982 founded the then innovative Rancho Mirage treatment clinic after publicly acknowledging her own battle with alcoholism and drug abuse.
Betty Ford also fought breast cancer and spoke openly about her challenges. She was a leading advocate of AIDS treatments, and women’s equality.
Betty Ford offered hope and helped change people’s lives, including mine.
My heartfelt thanks.
(Mike Geniella)
FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS FROM BRUCE McEWEN:
Thanks for the slow-pitch softball interview, Skipper; the way the in-house interviewer lobbed ‘em o’er the plate so you could bunt a few foulball grounders over to the fans on the sidelines, dotty old Reactionaries like Hollister, and MAGA Mormon will cherish those souvenirs but surely you must recall all the jeers and sneers you yourself have over the years heaped on such blatantly sycophantic performances—eh?
I would ask these questions:
- Out of three possible biographers — Michael Koepf, Steve Sparks and Mark Scaramella — who would you “authorize” to write your story?
Sparks.
- How do you account for the reactionary nostalgia for the racist, bigoted days of our youth you’ve grown to share with such contemptible characters as Marmon, Koepf, Hollister — not to mention the anonymous pack of misogynistic jerks who have commandeered the comment page?
I can't. One more of life's mysteries, I guess.
Those were both fast pitches right over the plate — even a blind umpire would call a strike, so I expect you to knock ‘em o’er the fence!
- Do you ever wake in the night and wonder if you are not essentially like RBG, and Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi — and any number of other old cadavers who were determined to drag the office they had into the grave w/ ‘em rather than loosen their grip on power? Has it ever occurred to you? Go ahead slugger — knock it outta the park.
No, and adios pelota!
THE EDITOR DIRECT!
Editor,
Good Gawd! I thought you were wearing a CHOKER! Turquoise! And that stare: I could pick it out of a Lineup! USMC.
Ukiah, 117F. That’s about the record temperature they’re afearing in Las Vegas tomorrow, where my sibling lives. Oy, what have we wrought? Don’t answer that.
Speaking of Ukiah, and you were. Should we call it the Oakland of Mendocino County?
Let it be said that the AVA has long been generously threaded with the collective mind of the USA. That is, now as always: Move to Wyoming/Montana.
Even RuPaul and his “Husband” (?) are hip to that. And are building some kind of bunker in the blocky inland NW States? He doesn’t like European-American Men, gay or straight. He may have to depend on them as wilderness is wilderness no matter how autonomous they view themselves.
Strength, love, and JOY! to you Sir!
David Svehla
San Francisco
THE JOYS OF HOARDING (via Fred Gardner)
FROM THE ARCHIVE. January, 2003
Murder in Boonville
by Bruce Anderson
They'd known each other all the way back to their home country of Mexico, and had crossed the border together a decade before. In the Anderson Valley they'd worked together in the vineyards and the marijuana gardens.
Compadres.
But all that shared history was cut in half late on a Friday afternoon in early January of 2003 when Rodolfo Saldana walked up on Ramiro Bolano and pumped a magazine of nine millimeter bullets into the man he'd known all his days.
It was a little after 5 when Rodolfo Saldana shot Ramiro Bolano to death in the middle of Boonville with many people nearby at the end of the work day.
Rodolfo lived in a cabin near Lauren's. He only had to walk a few yards to where Ramiro, in his usual red headband and serape, sat on the front porch of the busy restaurant.
Ramiro stood up when he saw Rodolfo coming.
Rodolfo kept on coming and kept on shooting at Ramiro until he was standing over Ramiro where Ramiro had fallen, face down, a few feet from where he'd seen the last man he'd see, the man who killed him, his brother from the old country.
Ramiro was hit by nine of the twelve shots in Rodolfo's gun. Three of those shots were lodged in Ramiro's back. Rodolfo nudged Ramiro's body with his foot then, apparently satisfied his friend was no more, Rodolfo leaned up against a car parked in front of Anderson Valley Market to wait for whatever came next.
What came next was the peculiar slow-motion pandemonium that accompanies sudden violence where it isn't expected to happen. People freeze in place. People who can't see what happened wonder if they've heard firecrackers or guns. When it's clear that it's over, whatever it was, a tentative crowd gathers.
Two bold young women from out of town walked up to the shooter and suggested to him that he put his gun down. Rodolpho seemed to ignore them. The two young women had just emerged from Anderson Valley Market when a young man they'd never seen before was shot dead a few feet from their car.
Inside the market, Carolyn Wellington called 911. Lots of people called 911. The Anderson Valley Ambulance arrived. The emergency people turned Ramiro face up. He was dead. Deputy Squires arrived directly from his home a mile away. The deputy took the gun from Rodolpho, then he took Rodolfo and put him in the back of the deputy's cop car.
Rodolfo went peacefully. He was finished. His friend was dead and so was he.
Ramiro lay face up where he'd fallen for the next five hours.
”Why don't they cover him up?” Ernesto Cuevas asked nobody in particular. “If he was white they'd cover him up, wouldn't they?”
The crime scene was roped off with yellow crime tape. Three detectives and several uniformed cops, supervised by deputy Squires, roamed the site between Lauren's and Anderson Valley Market looking for witnesses, spent slugs, explanations for the presence of dead man in a place where most dead men get that way from living a long time.
District Attorney Norm Vroman arrived.
Lauren's exterior wall had a bullet hole in it. Wayne McGimpsey's house next door to the market had two bullet holes in it.
”Ricochets,” a cop said.
The young mother of Ramiro's two children appeared. She was crying and shaking. She knelt and cried and trembled. She stood and cried and trembled. She hadn't been with Ramiro for three years, but he was the father of her children. But there's always some feeling left whatever else happens between men and women. The young woman stood and cried and trembled, and knelt and cried and trembled, and she stayed that way until Ramiro was finally covered and taken away.
James Owens, a young Boonville man, had walked up to say hello to Ramiro only minutes before the shooting. Ramiro told James to get away because “something was happening.”
James kept on walking.
Another young man who saw the shooting from across the street knew what he'd seen.
”It was definitely an execution. The one guy started shooting at the other guy, who was sitting down at first, from about 30 feet away. The dead guy was hit right away, but the other guy just kept coming toward him and shooting more and more until he was point blank over him. Then he started kicking the body. It was a big gun with a magazine. Big caliber son of a bitch! My hands probably couldn’t get around the grip.”
Another witness disagreed.
“No, the man wasn't sitting down when he was shot. He was standing up. Those ladies who came out from the store were kinda stupid. You don’t know what a guy’s intentions are. He could go off again. If he’s going to stand and wait, which he did, leave him alone! But they walked right up to him. It seems pretty cut and dried. The shooter just stood there. Come and arrest me. I did it. It was still light out, so there was no mistaking what you saw. It wasn’t murky at all. He shot him, then he kind of kicked him like a, Is he still alive? kind of kick. Not a vicious kick. He wasn’t sorry, I can tell you that! He stood there for a good 12 or 15 minutes before anybody showed up. It was Rod Balson who told him to put the gun down. The guy was leaning up against Betty Sue’s car, the white Thunderbird. That’s where the body was. On the side of that Thunderbird. He was just standing there looking down at the body. Just waiting. Pretty cool customer. I’m sure he emptied that gun on that guy.”
Ramiro Bolanos Almeida was born at 3am on February 23rd, 1969, in Manzanalez, San Felipe, Guanajuato, Mexico. He leaves behind a brother and a sister, both of Mexico. Ramiro's parents died when he was young. He went to work in a shoe factory when he was still a boy. He’d made his way to America and the Anderson Valley when he was 19. A handsome man with a dazzling smile, Ramiro was well-known here. He worked for several years at Handley Cellars and, later, as a laborer with several Valley vineyard contractors.
Ramiro had two sons with Pam Balson. The boys were eight and nine years old. Ramiro was not good to the mother of his sons. They separated and stayed separated.
Over the past year, and especially since his return from a deportation to Mexico, Ramiro, deep into methamphetamine, had stopped working and had become a familiar sight wandering up and down Boonville. He slept in doorways, talked to himself and, it is said, insulted Rodolfo whenever he saw him, often pelting Rodolfo with stones as he derided him.
Ramiro would spend hours sitting in front of the bunker-like Pacific Bell structure opposite the Farrer Building in downtown Boonville. He'd sit there breaking big rocks into little rocks, which he would then neatly array along shop windows or in small mounds in the front yards of private homes. Late at night, he would carefully surround a Mexican candle with stones and stare into the candle's flame, rocking back and forth, singing and talking to himself.
Ramiro was already gone, he just wasn't dead. There was no help for him.
Rodolfo Saldana has family in Anderson Valley, and family in Lake County. He has worked for years with Donn ‘Uncle Donn’ Jaekle, a Boonville contractor. Rodolfo had no history of violence, so far as anyone knew.
He spoke good English and got along with everyone except Ramiro.
Rodolfo started not getting along with Ramiro about two years ago when they quarreled over a marijuana patch theft. Over the last month, the trouble between the two young men got worse.
And worse.
And then, last Friday afternoon, Rodolfo ended whatever unbearable torment Ramiro had caused him by shooting Ramiro to death.
Deputy Squires recalls that there was a dispute between the estranged friends “over a marijuana rip off a couple years ago. Then, just recently, Ramiro was calling the other guy names. I'd just talked to Ramiro a couple of weeks ago. I told him to leave Rodolfo alone. Rodolfo had come to my house on December, 21st, a Saturday, to complain that Ramiro was sitting down there at Moya Taco calling him names, throwing rocks at him and threatening to kill him. So I went down and told Ramiro that I was ordering him to stay away from Moya Taco. I told him to go find somewhere else to sit. Rodolfo lived just behind Moya Taco so he could hardly get away from Ramiro because Ramiro was camped out front.”
Ramiro moved forty yards down the street to Lauren’s Restaurant. He'd sit on Lauren's concrete front porch much of the day, working with his rocks, greeting passersby, talking to himself.
Rodolfo couldn't go to the store without passing Ramiro. Or the post office. Or any other place north of Moya Taco.
”The most violent thing Ramiro did that I know about,” the deputy continues, “was he took Uncle Donn's American flag and burned it about three weeks ago because Uncle Donn had kicked him off the property. He wasn't violent, but I got a lot of complaints about him. I'd have to tell him to leave this place or that place because people didn't want him loitering wherever he was loitering. He got to looking pretty bad so he scared some people just because of the way he looked. He had no place to go so he'd sleep in doorways. I was surprised that Rodolfo would do something like this. I walked up to him just after the shooting and said, Who did this? And Rodolfo said, ‘Keith, I shot him.’ I said, You? You? I couldn't believe it. He's the last guy I'd think would shoot anybody.”
Carolyn Wellington was at work inside Anderson Valley Market. Ramiro lay dead just on the other side of Carolyn's distinctive gray Pontiac, parked where it's always parked when she's at work at the market.
”I just heard the shots and called the cops,” she said. “Someone came to the door and said they needed an ambulance. I called and said I needed an ambulance and the sheriff, now! I didn’t give them time to argue. People started running out there. I told them to stay in the store. I didn’t know if there was one, two, three shooters. I didn’t go outside until someone came in and said they needed an ambulance. When I went outside, the medics were there, the fire department was there. I knew both of them by sight. I'm shocked by it. The man who did it has been coming into the store nearly every night lately. He seemed nice.”
Another woman said she didn't like the way the crime scene was handled.
”They could have called the fire department and at least had the blood hosed off.”
Rod Balson came by the next day and cleaned it up. “And another thing. It happened a little after five and the dead guy was still there at 10:30. They were taking all kinds of pictures, that’s why they said they were delayed taking the body away. You need five and a half hours to take pictures?”
Lauren Keating was inside her restaurant getting ready for a busy Friday night when she heard the shots.
”We heard the gunfire. I walked by the man who was killed maybe five minutes before when I went to the market. He was sitting on the end of my front porch in front. I didn’t know it was gunfire at first so we had a little debate about whether it was shots or not. Then we went out front to look. I saw him lying face down and I ran back into the restaurant to call 911. No one in our place saw it happen. We only saw the aftermath. We saw the shooter just standing there. He didn’t have the gun in his hand. I didn’t expect to see anything because I thought it was someone firing a gun, but not firing a gun at someone!
”But then I saw the body and saw the guy just standing there who was the shooter. It was all very odd. Other people thought so too. You think you should go to the person down on the ground to see if you can help, but there was this person standing over the body and leaning back against the car, not doing anything. It seemed too dangerous to ask him, What can I do to help? I couldn't believe he was the gunman until he pulled the gun out again to show it to someone. We ended up being busy, but it was a very surreal night. I didn’t notice the bullet hole in my wall until the next day!”
”I was using Ramiro as a helper two summers ago,” Brian Blumberg, a long-time Anderson Valley plumbing contractor, recalls. “Two summers ago while he was working with me he started bingeing again. I’d pick him up for work but he’d be too out of it to work. I gave him a place to stay at Rancho Navarro but I had to kick him out because he was causing too much trouble. Ramiro had moved in because he needed a place to stay. He told me some pretty wild stories about people threatening to kill him. He was pretty scared for a while and stayed pretty straight.
”Then he drifted back on to drugs again. I asked him to leave and that was that. He got deported, came back, got deported again. Then he called a few people in the valley wanting them to help him pay his mule to get across the border. He called me and asked me for money to get back, but I told him the best thing for him would be to stay down there. He said he had to come back to see his kids. And he did. I saw him when he got back and he was really out of it. But he was still friendly, smiling, shaking everyone's hand, but he wasn't the same Ramiro I knew. When he was straight was a good guy. Good worker. It's very sad. Very, very sad.”
In court, Saldana testified that Bolano liked to call him “faggot,” Saldana said he ignored the name calling, but when Bolano split from his wife a year-and-a-half ago he had become more aggressive and Saldana became frightened.
Then, about a week before the shooting, Bolano started throwing things at Saldana and threatening him.
“He started to threaten to kill me,” Saldana said. “He would hold his arm behind his back, as though he had a gun, then pull his arm around and point his gun finger at me. I'm going to kill you when you least expect it. I'm going to kill you when you're asleep.”
Saldana was sentenced to state prison for a total term of 40 years to life after a jury denied his “imperfect self-defense” claim and found him guilty of second degree murder “involving the personal use of a firearm.”
A fund for Ramiro's two young sons was established at the Savings Bank of Mendocino. Saldana is out of prison. Remiro's two sons grew up, won college scholarships, graduated from college, and went on out into the world where, and from all reports, they are doing well.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, July 7, 2024
JUSTIN BROOKER, Potter Valley. Concealed dirk-dagger.
NOE COLEAZA-BENITEZ, Ukiah. DUI.
ZACHARY COLLINS, Willits. DUI.
LORENZO CRUZ, Ukiah. Under influence, paraphernalia.
BHAKTI DILLENBECK, Ukiah. Resisting.
DOMINIC FABER, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, parole violation.
JENNY GRIFFINS-STEPHENS, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15% with prior within ten years, resisting, probation revocation.
JOSHUA LEONARD, Willits. DUI.
MICHAEL MARTIN, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, parole violation.
DEMETER MCFADIN, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
ROBERT MOYER, Willits. DUI.
ISSA NIAMBELE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-under influence.
DAVID POWERS, Novata/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
RIORDAN WILHELMI, Mendocino. Vandalism, concealed dirk-dagger, disobeying court order.
HISTORIC PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN STATE PARKS AND BIG VALLEY POMO FOR CLEAR LAKE
California State Parks and the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians of the Big Valley Rancheria (Big Valley) celebrated the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for Clear Lake State Park (SP), a state park within the Tribe’s traditional territory, on Friday, June 21, 2024.…
UNIDENTIFIED CLOVERDALE MAN ARRESTED FOR STARTING GEYSERVILLE FIRE WITH LAWN MOWER
CalFire Law Enforcement arrested an adult male out of Cloverdale in connection to the cause of the 11-acre Pocket Fire Saturday north of Geyserville.
The subject was arrested and booked into the Sonoma County Jail in Santa Rosa on one felony charge and three misdemeanor charges. The felony charge unlawfully causing a fire of a structure or forest land. The subject was also charged with three related misdemeanors.
The cause of the Pocket Fire was determined to be the result of using a riding lawn mower in cured annual grasses, four-feet tall. The riding lawn mower used is designed for wet, green lawns, not for dry weeds or grass. The metal blades on riding lawn mowers can spark fires when hitting rocks.
Aside from lawnmowers, other equipment used that can spark a wildfire include weed-eaters, chainsaws, grinders, welders, tractors, and trimmers. Defensible space work is critical to help create a perimeter around your home to protect it from a wildfire, but only when done under the right weather conditions. CalFire urges the public to avoid any activities that may ignite a wildfire.
Given the combination of extreme heat, elevated fire conditions and an abundant, cured grass and shrub crop across most of California, CAL FIRE will have maximum enforcement on human-caused wildfires. This is the second arrest made this week by CalFire Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit Law Enforcement Officers in connection to the cause of a wildland fire.
The first arrest was of an adult male on July 3 in connection to the cause of the Adams Fire, which was started by weed-eating in dried grasses.
The Pocket Fire started at 11:19 a.m. Saturday near Pocket Ranch Road and Ridge Oaks Road. CalFire's initial attack strategy is to keep 95 percent of all fires at 10 acres or less. By the time Air Attack had arrived overhead it had already exceeded that size, but a coordinated air and ground attack was able to quickly contain the fire once resources were at scene.
Along with CalFire, additional responding agencies included the Northern Sonoma County Fire Protection District, the Healdsburg Fire Department and the Cloverdale Fire District.
No structures were damaged or destroyed in the fire and no injuries were reported.
Saturday's fire burned in the same footprint as the 2017 Pocket Fire, which was a part of the Central LNU Complex. That fire started on Oct. 9, 2017 and consumed 17,357 acres.
To learn more about preparing for the threat of wildfire, visit ReadyForWildfire.org.
POSTMODERN BLUES
There are other things happening than being bored to death in the stupidity and insanity of postmodernism. Check out the festival in eastern India celebrating Lord Jagannath, the "all seeing one", an incarnation of Vishnu the Preserver. And then stop identifying with the body and the mind, and realize your own true nature, and let that make use of the body-mind complex, without interference. This is the culmination of Integral Yoga. This is the way to be effective with direct action, particularly radical environmental, and peace & justice. I am available on planet earth after July 19th. Feel free to contact me.
— Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
CHANGE ALL NAMES
Plasencia was and is the name of an ancient town in Spain. 1300. After a few decades of allowing the development of Jewish life, rights were limited. Jewish citizens were also subjected to additional taxes, especially concerning contributions to the royal treasury. By the end of the next century they constituted only about 50 families. The persecutions that followed, especially those of the Inquisition in 1492, encouraged their departure. There were several synagogues in Plasencia. One of them was transformed into a church, named Santa Isabel, after the queen. Another suffered the same fate, becoming the church of San Vicente. The Jewish cemetery was also confiscated.
Jeffrey Don Lundgren (May 3, 1950 – October 24, 2006) was an American self-proclaimed prophet, cult leader, and mass murderer who, on April 17, 1989, killed a family of five in Kirtland, Ohio. Lundgren led a Latter Day Saint movement-based cult and interpreted scripture using an unconventional method that he described as "chiastic", which involved searching text for recurring patterns. He and several of his followers murdered the Avery family, fellow members of his cult, for which he was convicted and sentenced to death. Lundgren was executed in 2006.
Gosh, the Fort Bragg name changers are now enlisting and paying off kids to come up with new names for dear old Fort Bragg, a toiling class town if there ever was one. No direct connections or associations, of course, to historical figures or places, but the judges in the name change contest have names that are similar to individuals and places with rather dark histories. It’s not their fault. They’ve done nothing wrong except to conspire to change the name of a famous working class town, but let’s face it what name isn’t suspect? Anderson? 160 years ago was there an Anderson who fought for the south? Maybe, yes, no? Who knows? As you know, I'm be in the same unfortunate moniker boat with my name: Koepf, Kopf, dummkopf, German for stupid person, dumbbell or blockhead.
I’m beginning to think that every person, town or city on earth should forsake their names to avoid dark associations whether they know it or not. 666, and 13 excluded, numbers are the only way to go. Please call me 1444 from now on. Fort Bragg can be 3478903. Mendocino County should be: 0000000000.0. Who do you want to be? 70770784?
Mike Koepf
EVERYBODY'S TALKING WEATHER
by Jonah Raskin
Mark Twain never said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” though that remark has often been credited to him. It sounds like Twain; I once wrote that he’d written that “A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” I was wrong. Rudyard Kipling wrote those words in 1886, two years after Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
San Francisco is notoriously foggy in the summer months and the presence of the fog usually means little or no direct sunlight and cool temperatures. This summer in the City by the Bay it has been warmer than most summers in memory, though not warm by the standards of California’s Central Valley, where temperatures can be well over 100 degrees and where vegetables wilt during the day.
San Francisco might be one of the few tolerable cities, climate wise, in the continental US where temperatures have hit record highs and where citizens have fled to lakes and rivers and to a coast to cool off. Still this past June there have been some hot days in SF, hot enough for women to wear Bikinis at Ocean Beach, where I live, and work on their tan. They're a rare but a welcome sight.
I’ve only lived in San Francisco for three years. I’m still growing accustomed to the weather — after 40 years in Sonoma County and after droughts, fires, smoke and a few earthquakes that unnerved me. I’ve learned that winters in San Francisco can be brutally cold and windy, especially when standing on a street corner, at, say, the corner of Lincoln and La Playa to wait for the number 18 bus. Sometimes the wind has blown so fiercely that it has nearly knocked me down and made me pine for the more temperate weather in Sonoma County, but perhaps those memories are false and misleading.
As most readers of the AVA know, while we talk about the weather at length, there’s little or nothing we can do to change it. Turning up the heat means a big PG&E bill; better put on a sweater or two and tell yourself you’re warm. I’m trying my best to accept San Francisco weather and not wish or want it to be different than it is. “Radical acceptance.” That’s the way to go. I learned that phrase and the concept of radical acceptance when I signed myself into Langley Porter, the psychiatric hospital, when I suffered from depression, a kind of internal climate that can be worse than anything outdoors and in the open air. The novelist, William Styron, who suffered from depression said that for him that mental state was like November in the cold and the rain.
When I was depressed I felt like the Norse god, Thor, was banging away inside my head with his hammer. At Langley Porter they gave me pills that changed my internal weather system and banished Thor and his hammer. There’s no pill that will banish fog. A Latino poet whose name I don't remember described communism as an aspirin the size of the sun. I don’t think so. Communism, or what passes for it, has brought with it too many headaches and worse.
I wish I could have been in San Francisco with Mark Twain when he enjoyed oysters on the half-shell and described the abuse that the Chinese received at the hands of white citizens. That political climate was as bad for the Chinese as any that exists in some parts of the US today. Will voting make it better? It might make it worse. That’s the essence of the weather reports I’m hearing. As Creedence Clearwater Revival sing in “Bad Moon Rising,”: “Looks like we're in for nasty weather.” In fact, it’s already here. I just looked outside my window.
WE THE PEOPLE V. TRUMP
Editor,
Stealing Our Democracy
With the recent US Supreme Court ruling that granted presidents absolute immunity from prosecution for committing criminal acts while performing official presidential duties, the American experiment with democracy is now officially over.
We no longer live in a Constitutional Republic in which no one is above the law; we now live in a Constitutional Monarchy in which the president has absolute power to order the imprisonment or even the execution of political opponents simply by claiming the orders were given as official acts of the president to protect the American people from “enemies” of the state. Under this court ruling, presidents are now kings.
The consequences of this momentous Supreme Court decision cannot be overstated. This Supreme Court, (the most corrupt in American history with the lowest public approval rating of all time), tailor wrote this decision to absolve former president Donald Trump of his crimes of inciting the January 6, 2021insurrection against the United States of America and of stealing classified top secret government documents as he left the White House on January 20, 2021; crimes for which he is presently being prosecuted. The court also wrote this decision to pave the way for a future Trump regime in which he will be free to commit crimes with absolute impunity.
Trump has made vengeance and retribution against his political enemies the central theme of his campaign for president. He is on record calling for the execution of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, General Mark Milley. He has called for former Republican Congresswoman and member of the House January 6 Committee, Liz Cheney, to be tried by a military tribunal. He has called for Congressional Republicans to investigate Congressional Democrats for having the gall to hold Trump accountable for his crimes. In his blueprint for a second term ominously titled “Project 2025”, Trump plans on firing tens of thousands of civil service employees and replacing them with his own henchman who will execute his illegal orders without hesitation. If Trump wins the presidency in November, America is in for a reign of terror the likes of which we have never seen.
This brings us to the scariest part of this horror story: in the upcoming presidential election, the malevolent psychopath is leading in the polls, especially in the critical swing states. How can this be? I suspect that many of the voters who consider Trump as a viable option are not ultra-MAGA, they are just people who aren’t paying close attention and don’t realize what an existential threat Trump represents to our free and democratic society. It doesn’t help that the presumptive Democratic nominee, 81 year old president Joe Biden, is physically and mentally deteriorating in real time right before our eyes.
In my opinion, the best chance the Democrats have to beat Trump is for president Biden to step down and for the Democrats to develop a democratic process to choose his successor at the Democratic National Convention. I believe a younger candidate without all of Biden’s baggage would provide voters with a fresh option that millions of Americans are yearning for.
Ultimately, it is up to we the people to stop this madman from stealing our democracy; clearly, the Supreme Court is in on the heist.
Jon Spitz
Laytonville
MAGA'S UNREALITY
Editor,
Reggie Jackson’s memories of playing minor league baseball in Alabama in 1967, not long after Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation were banned, caught my attention.
Jackson gave an interview on the nationally televised pregame show. He said that there were times when he was called the n-word and turned away from restaurants, hotels and a team party at a country club.
In contrast, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) recently spoke at a Black voter outreach event for former President Donald Trump. He suggested that Black families were more unified and better off during the Jim Crow era. He implied that things had gotten worse for Black people after they embraced Democrats following the enactment of Great Society programs in the 1960s.
These contrasting stories show that some Trump supporters are divorced from reality. If reelected in November, his plan calls for rounding up and deporting 11 million undocumented residents. One previous attempt at this, Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, aka the “show me your papers law” (struck down by the Supreme Court in 2012), appeared to use the color of a person’s skin as criteria for questioning.
Hearing Trump’s campaign surrogates speak about how great Jim Crow was for Black families and contrasting that with Jackson’s real experiences just after Jim Crow was abolished should clarify the stakes in this race for many people.
Greg Knell
San Rafael
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
We need to be careful about treating this most recent Biden gaslighting as some sort of unique event or a “new thing.” It is not.
The loyal Democrat press did much the same for Franklin Roosevelt. By the time FDR ran for his fourth term, he was a dying man who literally could not stand on his own. The press, most of whom adored him, did much to hide this from the public. The president died less than three months into his final term.
Even farther back, the press failed in its obligations after Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke in October 1919. For the final 17 months of his second term, Wilson was essentially brain-damaged and bed-ridden; all contact was funneled through his doctor and his wife. (Sound familiar?) Wilson never fully recovered and died less than three years after exiting the White House.
$235,000 SETTLEMENT REACHED IN POLICE RAID OF A KANSAS NEWSPAPER
by Emmett Lindner
Almost one year after authorities raided the Marion County Record, a Kansas weekly newspaper, a former reporter has reached a $235,000 settlement as part of a lawsuit she filed over the search, which set off a national discussion about press freedoms.
The settlement, dated June 25, brought an end to a lawsuit filed by the former reporter, Deb Gruver, against Gideon Cody, who resigned as the Marion city police chief in October in the face of mounting pressure.
Gruver’s lawsuit claimed Cody had caused injury to her hand while forcibly obtaining her personal cellphone during the raid. Body-camera footage corroborated Gruver’s account, according to Eric Meyer, the newspaper’s publisher.
Meyer said Saturday that body-camera audio recorded Cody “saying that it just made his day.”
Gruver, who left the newspaper last fall, said in a letter to the editor that she “no longer wanted to work in a town where the majority of ‘leaders’ clearly don’t respect the Fourth Estate or the U.S. Constitution,” the Record reported.
On Aug. 11, local police and county sheriff’s deputies raided the office of the Record and the homes of a councilmember and Meyer. The raid at the newsroom sparked outrage and a nationwide debate over First Amendment rights.
A search warrant was issued about one hour before the raid in which officers searched the newsroom and opened drawers and removed computers, cellphones and other materials from the Record’s office. Seven law enforcement officials spent over two hours in Meyer’s residence, where his mother was at the time, he said.
Authorities said the search was part of an investigation into how a document, which contained information about a local restaurant owner’s steps to restore her driver’s license, had been obtained by the newspaper.
Authorities said the acquisition may have constituted identity theft and other crimes.
Less than a week after the raid, Marion County’s top prosecutor, Joel Ensey, ordered officials to return the seized devices because there was insufficient evidence to justify the searches.
(NY Times)
MIGRANTS ARE RISKING EVERYTHING TO CROSS THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER AMID BIDEN’S ASYLUM BAN
President Joe Biden restricted asylum for those who cross unlawfully, but migrants are still coming through the California-Mexico border.
by Ko Lyn Cheang
Illuminated by a full desert moon, a 29-year-old Sudanese computer scientist hauled himself up a rope over the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
He had been traveling for a month — fleeing Sudan’s civil war — to arrive at a section of the border near the southern San Diego neighborhood of Otay Mesa, where two 30-foot-high fences are meant to deter migrants from entering the U.S. The man’s goal was to surrender to border patrol agents and request asylum, which would place him in a line of at least 1.1 million pending asylum cases in the U.S. as of December 2023, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
“In Khartoum right now, nothing is open,” the man said, referring to the Sudanese capital. The man spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with Chronicle policy because he feared retaliation against his family back home. “No schools, no companies, no jobs, no work. Nothing.”
Unknown to him, while he was preparing for a two-week journey on foot from Nicaragua to Mexico, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that could quash his hopes of obtaining asylum in the United States.
The June 4 order, implemented through a rule issued by the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, deems migrants ineligible for asylum if they crossed the southern U.S. border unlawfully with few exceptions, and places them in expedited removal, a process by which they can be deported without a hearing.
Biden’s asylum crackdown comes four months after his 2024 political rival, Donald Trump, persuaded Republican leaders to kill a bipartisan congressional deal to beef up border security while placing restrictions on asylum that were less onerous than the June 4 rule. Biden’s order — similar to a 2018 one issued by then-President Trump that courts later struck down — upends decades of U.S. federal law allowing foreign nationals to request asylum even if they enter the U.S. without authorization and is being challenged in court by several immigrant rights groups.
“Essentially, asylum access has been cut off for people who are fleeing very dangerous situations,” said Melissa Shepard, directing attorney at San Diego-based Immigrant Defenders, which provides legal representation to migrants facing deportation. “This version of an asylum ban is really an attack on the U.S. asylum system, which is a form of legal immigration.”
In addition, it appears the new rule is not being applied equally.
According to a leaked U.S. Customs and Border Protection memo, first reported by conservative news outlet the Washington Examiner, border agents in San Diego have been instructed to release migrants into the U.S. with notices to appear in immigration court if they are from countries considered not “easy to remove” a person to, such as China, Turkey and Sudan.
People who are to be fast-tracked for deportation include single adults from certain countries in Central and South America, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, as well as Cuba and Haiti, the agency’s memo stated. Agents were also instructed to conduct expedited removal proceedings for families from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru and the Dominican Republic.
“For those easy-to-remove nationalities, we’ve seen a drastic increase in removals,” said Erika Pinheiro, an immigration attorney and executive director of binational legal aid nonprofit Al Otro Lado, which has offices in San Diego, Los Angeles and Tijuana, Mexico. “There’s no universal presentation of what this process is, so a lot of people just don’t even understand what’s going on.”
The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection’s San Diego office did not respond to Chronicle questions about the memo, but Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a June 26 speech that the rule is “changing the calculus for those considering crossing our border.”
In the first three weeks of the rule being in effect, the Department of Homeland Security said it doubled the percentage of noncitizens removed from the U.S., deporting more than 24,000 people from more than 20 countries. It also said arrests for illegal southwest border crossings have fallen, suggesting the rule was affecting migrants’ decisions to travel.
The agency did not respond to a request to share deportation statistics by nationality.
Pinheiro said migration tends to slow during this time of year. In 2022 and 2023, border patrol encounters with migrants at the southwest land border dropped sharply from May to June, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
Asked what effect the executive order has had on the number of migrants entering the U.S. illegally, Pinheiro said, “Zero effect.”
“People are still physically crossing the border,” she said.
Over four days in June, the Chronicle witnessed the lengths dozens of migrants underwent to reach U.S. soil through its southwest border and the different reception they received based on their countries of origin.
Those Who Come
Over 30 hours on June 21 and 22, the Chronicle observed about 160 migrants being taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection after entering San Diego County through three locations along the U.S.-Mexico border.
On the morning of June 22, in the San Diego County desert town of Jacumba, agents separated a group of about 80 migrants into two lines — one for South and Central American migrants, the other for migrants from other countries — before loading them into vans.
Two men from Turkey said they were escaping religious oppression. Members of the Alevi faith, Turkey’s largest religious minority, the friends follow an offshoot of Islam in a country led by a Sunni Muslim president and said they have to observe Islamic practices such as fasting during Ramadan, contrary to their own beliefs, or risk being fired from jobs.
A woman from the Chinese province of Fujian said she was seeking better economic opportunities.
A Colombian man said he came because of “politics, violence, money, jobs, everything. For a better life.”
Both candidates in this year’s high-stakes presidential contest have campaigned on curbing illegal immigration.
The politicking around the border, which is seeing a seasonal drop in arrivals, has angered immigrant rights advocates who say Biden is reacting to perception rather than reality, but fear Trump’s vow to conduct the largest deportation project in the nation’s history if elected.
“Unfortunately, we saw that (Biden) has chosen to double down on failed policies that he thinks would make him look tough on the border and immigration,” Shepard said. “It’s just really disheartening to see how vulnerable people fleeing danger are used as part of political theater.”
Immigration law expert Kevin R. Johnson, dean of the UC Davis law school, said Trump’s platform of mass deportations and limited legal pathways into the country is pulling Democrats rightward on the issue.
“Every indication is that (Trump) wants to be tougher on immigration than he was his first time around,” Johnson said. “It’s affecting the Biden administration.”
Even before Biden’s executive action on asylum, his administration was working with the Mexican government to step up policing of migrants crossing the border without authorization.
In February, the Mexico National Guard stationed soldiers by two popular desert crossings south of the border, where migrants would crawl through gaps in the fence where it meets a base of rocky hills.
The Biden administration deployed military personnel to the southwest border last September.
Humanitarian aid workers in the region say stricter enforcement has driven migrants to take bigger risks, such as scaling sections of the 30-foot wall or hiking eight hilly miles around the Otay Mountain Wilderness, where no wall exists.
“People have just rerouted,” said Karen Parker, a 61-year-old retiree who provides water, food and first aid to migrants in the San Diego desert region known as Mountain Empire, where she was raised. “Human beings migrate; it’s what human beings have always done.”
A social worker by training, Parker has turned her cellphone into an on-the-go medical chart, where she meticulously logs details about each patient she encounters. She’s administered CPR, bandaged wounds and given Pedialyte to dehydrated migrants.
“I feel it’s my responsibility,” she said. “This is our land. Our government needs to take responsibility, and I don’t see that happening.”
Parker said she has encountered migrants who injured themselves falling from the border wall. The first time was on April 17, she said, showing the Chronicle notes she had taken at the time of the encounter. A woman had broken both her legs, Parker said.
At midafternoon on June 21, the Chronicle observed a Colombian woman, aided by her husband, limping along a portion of the border wall by the vast Tijuana River watershed toward “Whiskey 8,” one of the open-air lots where migrants and aid workers say Customs and Border Protection directs newly arrived migrants to wait to be processed.
The man said his wife had injured her leg after she became dizzy trying to climb the border wall. She fell on top of him when he tried to catch her.
“When she looked down, ‘Boom! ’ ” he said in Spanish.
The woman sat on a metal chair and closed her eyes. Her husband crouched beside her and took her hand. Customs and Border Protection agents showed up about 15 minutes later; the ambulance they called arrived 15 minutes after that.
As the paramedics lifted her onto a stretcher, her husband waved goodbye before joining a line of migrants waiting to be taken into custody.
Sister Sandra Salazar, a Colombian nun of 17 years, watched the scene unfold. She has been volunteering at the site since November, handing out bananas and bottles of water, and briefing migrants on what to expect in custody.
“Now, with all the deportations, it is hard. It is sad,” she said. “You see the people coming and at this time, with the new legislation, I feel more concerned for them.”
Those Who Stay
A middle child with eight siblings, the Sudanese man is the first in his family to make this journey. He was a third-year student studying computer science at Khartoum University, one of the nation’s premier colleges, when civil war erupted in April 2023 between a powerful paramilitary group and the military that had been running the government since 2019.
Classes stopped. His family members spent their days at home, unable to work, he said. He heard about this migration pathway from a friend who arrived in New York earlier this year and now drives for Uber Eats.
With the help of his mother and father, he saved $8,000 in U.S. funds to arrange his journey through eight countries.
“My parents want to come here, too, but it is very expensive,” he said.
On June 23, after a day and a half in border patrol custody, the man and a friend from his village were released with notices to appear in federal immigration court. They disembarked from a Customs and Border Protection bus at the Iris Avenue transit center.
The man will have to wait until December 2025 and find a way to New York, where his hearing is scheduled.
He is one of the migrants who’ve escaped expedited removal proceedings under Biden’s new order. He counts himself as one of the lucky ones.
He took the trolley from San Ysidro to Old Town, watching the sunset reflected off glass high-rises in the city center. At the suggestion of aid workers, he exited at San Diego International Airport to charge his phone and sleep on the floor as he figured out his next move.
He recognized a Sudanese man seated by a prayer mat unfurled in a quiet corner by the baggage carousels. They became travel companions in Mexico City and were separated in border patrol custody. They nodded to each other. They had both made it one step further.
(SF Chronicle)
On this day, 6 July 1907, Frida Kahlo (born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón), disabled painter, communist, and one of Mexico's greatest artists, was born in Coyoacán, Mexico City. Her father was European, while her mother was of Spanish and Tehuana descent. Major themes in Kahlo's work include feminism, colonialism and Indigenous resistance, and imperialism. While living in the US, Kahlo played an active part in the socialist movement, and wrote to friends stating: “I’ve learnt so much here and I’m more and more convinced it’s only through communism that we can become human.”
CALIFORNIA RESTAURANT SURCHARGES
by Soleil Ho
In October, California approved a first-in-the-nation ban on hidden fees, or the now-common add-on charges that hit you when you’re buying things like concert tickets.
“The price Californians see will be the price they pay,” Attorney General Rob Bonta crowed in a statement with the authors of the bill, SB478.
Then the restaurant industry started complaining, and California lawmakers spent the next few months reversing course like contestants in a backward footrace.
On June 29, governor and former restaurateur Gavin Newsom signed a new bill into law, SB1524 — which carves out an allowance for service charges at restaurants as long as they are listed “clearly and conspicuously” on menus and ads — providing Californians with yet another reason to feel disillusioned with our government.
“With today’s signing we can uphold the principle of providing consumers with up-front price transparency without inadvertently harming food service workers or small businesses,” SB1524 author, state Sen. Bil Dodd, D-Napa, said in a press release.
Yes, what is “up-front price transparency” if not a listed menu price that you still have to mentally calculate?
You might think that any bill involving the controversial and heavily lambasted practice of adding opaque service charges to restaurant checks would meet some resistance. But it passed both state houses unanimously. Bonta, meanwhile, has said nothing.
This silence is deafening, given that a recent Chronicle poll showed 81% of respondents are supportive of banning restaurant service fees. The public can and should feel insulted by the fact that lawmakers think they deserve to be led to believe the cost of goods is lower than it is.
“This is what makes consumers cynical,” said Robert Herrell, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, the only organization to go on record in opposition to SB1524. “It’s just the latest in all these little ways in which people just feel like the system doesn’t work for them.”
Part of what’s frustrating is that, no matter how positively lawmakers like Dodd try to spin this, the pro-social reasoning behind SB1524 — that it will help workers, provide price transparency and keep restaurants in business — doesn’t make a ton of sense.
Far more telling than the nonsensical platitudes of our electeds is a look at which organizations support the bill and which don’t.
The California Restaurant Association is all for it. The powerful and wealthy lobbying group and an affiliate of the National Restaurant Association has consistently opposed worker protections and health care legislation and has fought to depress wages. The top contributors to the California Restaurant Association’s political action committee include Disney and In-and-Out Burger, and a 2021 watchdog report found that the national entity has contributed $5.5 million to industry-friendly federal political candidates since 2007.
If Newsom wants the White House, he’ll need some of that cash.
The other organizational sponsor is Unite Here, a union that largely represents the types of workers who work banquets, catering, airport facilities and other institutional food vending — not what most people think of as “restaurants.” Unite Here’s participation provides the pro-labor cover for lawmakers to claim that SB1524 will be good for “restaurant workers.” This particular union, however, has secured defined benefits and wage increases tied to service charges for its members.
That doesn’t apply to all hospitality unions, let alone nonunionized restaurant workers.
Jennifer Alejo, executive director at Trabajadores Unidos Workers United, a restaurant worker union in San Francisco, rejected the idea that a junk fee ban for restaurants would hurt workers. There’s still no guarantee that these fees help them, anyway.
René Panti, a Trabajadores Unidos Workers United member, washes dishes at the Battery, a private club with several dining areas in San Francisco. The Battery has a 20% service charge for its restaurants; despite this, Panti said wages and benefits haven’t increased in three years.
“The customers are slowly paying more in fees but we as workers don’t receive this,” Panti said.
Furthermore, instead of helping workers, fees pit customers and workers against each other.
Consumer advocate Herrell noted that service charges confuse and frustrate diners who may end up leaving smaller tips or avoiding the restaurant altogether. Just because a restaurant considers the tip separate from a service charge, that doesn’t mean customers will. Instead, many will (rightfully) consider the two payments in competition for their limited generosity. When that happens it’s the tip, the allegedly optional charge, that’s going to take the hit.
Lawmakers who are worlds away from understanding the economics of the service industry seem to have no consideration of this at all.
So, what does this all mean for the future of restaurants?
Disgruntled diners have compiled a crowd-sourced list of more than 600 California restaurants that have service fees. Each is listed with its service charge percentage, demonstrating just how arbitrary and unregulated this system is: from 30% at the Black Cat Jazz Supper Club in San Francisco to 4% at Mill Valley’s Buckeye Roadhouse.
What are these fees paying for? Notably, SB1524 doesn’t mandate that restaurants be truthful or accurate in their disclosures — just “clear and conspicuous” — so who knows?
“Being honest isn’t very lucrative,” said Herrell, who said his push to include “accurate” in SB478 ruffled lobbyists’ feathers at a recent hearing.
I don’t want to make SB1524 a bigger deal than it is. Service fees have been normalized in California for some time. It’s what this law symbolizes that really matters.
It’s clear our government doesn’t think we’re smart enough to make our own informed decisions.
If they’re this disillusioned, why wouldn’t the rest of us be?
(SF Chronicle)
PASTOR BETHANY: A SINISTER IMPULSE IS TAKING OVER OUR CHURCHES
Dear Christian friends,
While I am deeply grateful for your friendship and our sibling-hood, I feel I must warn you about what I see in our country regarding Christian Nationalism. There is a sinister influence taking place in our churches and this country and it’s affected us Christians the most. Like black mold slowly growing in the forgotten corner of your damp rental, we didn’t notice until it seemed too late. We felt it — the wheeze, the itchy skin, the headache, the red eyes and stuffy nose and lethargy. We chalked it up to the crud or allergies, all the while the mold spread behind bed frames, dressers and end tables. It sunk into the walls, infecting the drywall. But one day after your landlord came to visit, the mold disappeared. Behind a fresh coat of paint, it seemed locked away and you could get back to life. Some of your symptoms even dissipated. Every month or so your landlord showed back up and threw another coat on your walls but no matter how much paint covered the mold, it was still there growing stronger.
The quest for power and control has long dominated our Churches, blaspheming the name of Jesus. This sinister force has seduced many pastors and Church leaders for generations, whispering convincing words like, “Take and eat. You’ve earned it. You deserve it. No one will know. You’re in charge. You’re God’s best.” The Church is the vulnerable gathered, the wounded held, the forgotten included, the poor, lonely, hungry, desperate brought in to belong and be reminded they are loved. But when pastors and leaders are seduced by power and control, the Church becomes a den of robbers and a safe-house for thieves, stealing Jesus from the most vulnerable. And no matter how many coats of paint are used to hide and cover up this insidious evil, it’s been leaking out and collaborating with other forms of power and control.
The term “Christian” was first a negative slur, like it was embarrassing to be known as “Little Christs,” but those first followers of the Way of Jesus weren’t intimidated by the insults. They wore it as a badge of honor as they continued meeting together, sharing their property, food and resources with each other, while they blessed and loved their neighbors, forgave their enemies, lived a non-violent life, walked with humility while learning from their mistakes (while my glasses are sometimes rosy, I know there were severe disagreements and quests for power then, too). The way of Jesus is at the bottom of society where power and control suffocates. The way of Jesus is working for justice and loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. It’s bravely telling the hard truth of our desire for power and control and declaring we don’t want to live like that anymore and to admit we need help. The way of Jesus is gratitude, joy, peace and love.
Instead what I’m seeing are “Christian” leaders coming alongside power and control, parroting the whispered tempting words they’ve been discipled in from a voice saying, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” (Luke 4:6-7) Basically, “I, as a powerful and influential Church leader, will give you all my followers and members if you help move our country into forced Biblical ways.”
I’m not sure if there was a cart or horse, and I’m no historian, but this marriage between politics and religion is more insidious and powerful than I thought was possible. Christian nationalism is a movement of evil that many people have been seduced by and it’s the most vulnerable in our society that will be negatively affected by it. (Google Project 2025). You might feel safe because you have the privilege of moving out of the mold-infested house. But much of the country is not people of privilege, and painting over the poison while saying this is what’s best for you will eventually kill our country. I am convinced that unless our religion is moving this country into greater ways of love for the least, humble empathy in our interactions, and love for our enemies, we are walking away from Jesus and towards satan.
Christian friends, may we bravely look closely and honestly at the ways we’ve been seduced and used by power. May we hold our leaders accountable without fear of repercussion. And may we fall on our knees in repentance and start over in Love.
With Christ’s sacrificial love,
Pastor Bethany Nass Cseh
(Bethany Cseh is a pastor at Arcata United Methodist Church and Catalyst Church. LostCoastOutpost.com)
The Romani people are unique, not only in their interesting style of dress and culture, but because they aren’t technically from anywhere. The Romanis - also known as gypsies - are known for constantly traveling, who are believed to have originated in northern India, although they’re closely related with Eastern Europe and even the Americas.
By the late 19th century the Romani people could be found traveling across the world, from England and Scotland to New York City. Beginning in 1888 the Gypsy Lore Society started to publish a journal that was meant to dispel rumors about their lifestyle.
DEFERENCE TO JOE BIDEN FROM BERNIE SANDERS HAS BECOME NONSENSICAL
by Norman Solomon
I love Bernie Sanders. By most measures, he’s the greatest senator in the last 50 years. I was very glad to be a Sanders delegate to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. But when Bernie screws up, his progressive base should say so.
That happened during the first months of Israel’s war on Gaza that began last October. Initially, Bernie sounded equivocal as Israeli forces engaged in mass murder. After several weeks of carnage, antiwar activists occupied his D.C. office to demand support for a ceasefire. Some were arrested for their civil disobedience.
Bernie gradually changed his position and became a fierce critic of Israel, denouncing it for horrific large-scale crimes against Palestinian civilians and challenging the shipment of weapons to the Israeli military. There’s no telling if the public pressure from progressives hastened his shift to strongly oppose Israel’s genocidal war. But that pressure was necessary.
Unfortunately, after President Biden’s debate debacle on June 27, Bernie did not weigh in against the gaslighting maneuvers by the White House and the Biden campaign. In fact, Bernie aided them by downplaying the importance of what had happened on the debate stage.
Since then, Bernie has encouraged the illusion that Biden now has the capacity to be an effective candidate against Donald Trump. Equally problematic has been the implicit pretense that Biden could be up to the job as president until January 2029.
Such evasion not only dodges the reality that Biden was inept and sometimes incoherent during the debate. Since then, much stunning information has come to light, illuminating how badly Biden’s mental capacities have diminished.
“In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations,” the New York Times reported on July 2.
But on July 3 and again on July 5, email from Bernie to supporters told them: “President Biden said today that he is staying in the race, and I take him at his word.”
However, taking Biden “at his word” is beside the point. As the party’s nominee, Biden would drag down many Democratic candidates with him while making it easy for Donald Trump to win the presidency again.
The problem isn’t only what Bernie has been telling people on his email list. He has also been putting out important messages to the broader public via mass media -- in the process sending positive signals to Biden and his top aides while they gauge whether to continue the Biden 2024 campaign.
And Bernie is talking directly with the president. Biden “has spoken to me in recent days,” Bernie said on Sunday during an interview on the CBS program Face the Nation. It’s very likely that what Bernie told Biden was consistent with what he told the Associated Press, which reported on July 2 that Sanders “does not want Biden to step aside.”
The AP quoted Bernie as saying: “A presidential election is not a Grammy Award contest for the best singer or entertainer. It’s about who has the best policies that impact our lives.”
But Biden’s inability to clearly advocate for popular policies -- or to effectively refute lies and demagogic statements from Donald Trump -- is not like a failure to be “the best singer or entertainer.” The president’s glaring inabilities amount to huge failures as a candidate and as a leader.
It’s well known that Bernie Sanders has personal warmth toward Joe Biden. But, given the enormity of what is at stake, personal ties should not get in the way of realizing what ought to be crystal clear: Every day that goes by with Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee will work to the further advantage of Trump and his extremist right-wing forces.
“I’m going to do everything I can to see that Biden gets reelected,” Bernie told the Associated Press. But at this juncture, that’s the wrong vow. What we really need to hear from Bernie Sanders is a pledge to do everything he can to see that Trump is defeated -- and that means replacing Biden with someone who has a better chance of getting the job done.
WHOEVER THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE IS, AMERICANS HAVE ALREADY LOST
by Tressie McMillan Cottom
I watched the debate from a pub in Ireland. A man sitting next to me pegged me for a Yank. “Sorry about all that — screwed no matter what you do,” he said before the final minutes of the debate ended. I nodded, accepting his sympathies for my condition as an American during a week when it has been hard to be an American.
It is only when I am not in America that I feel my American-ness. From the moment that blue passport cover places me in a different line at customs, my citizenship speaks louder than my race, gender or religion. Maybe I had to watch that debate from outside of the U.S. to fully appreciate what was happening to us, Americans.
A survey of the political commentariat shows a consensus forming: Joe Biden is fighting the final rounds of a match that the refs won’t call but probably should. Usually, after reading all of the news and polls, I turn to the everyday political discourse, which often diverges from that of the professional political watchers. What should scare Biden loyalists is that this time, the two agree. Even the most die-hard Democratic voters can see Biden’s decline for what it is — an opening for Donald Trump to win his second presidential term.
A few days after that disastrous debate, the Supreme Court finally weighed in on presidential immunity. There is no other way to read its decision than as a signal that whoever owns the Republican Party also owns the power to break the law. Whether he wins or loses, Trump owns the G.O.P., lock, stock and barrel. I’m not sure the country has fully accepted what that means.
When the Supreme Court decision was announced I had moved on to Greece. Again, it felt like a portentous place to be as the United States moved closer to an autocracy than it has been since perhaps Reconstruction. Greece prides itself as the birthplace of deliberative democracy. As you walk through the ancient ruins, the biggest ideas to transform human society don’t look very big. The buildings where they were debated are crumbling. Modern development dwarfs what were once massive structures to Western ideology. Despite standing for more than 2,000 years, these relics of early democracy feel fragile.
Americans don’t build monuments as well made as the ancient Greeks built. The idea has always been that our democratic ideas are the real monuments. The statues and artifice of political memory should never be stronger than those ideas. Sometimes we have made our monuments cheaply, as if to say that having perfected the means of democracy — if not its platonic ideal — we don’t need to bother with strong foundations and materials.
But Greece is a testament to what happens when we think ideas are so taken for granted that they do not need defending. That small country is fighting its way out of a decades-long economic slump and years of political unrest. A nation that was so central to the ideas of democracy can today be described as politically unstable. Voters have lost faith in their country’s ability to hold fair elections. Political violence has become more common.
Americans continue to insist that Jan. 6 was an anomaly, but we are naïve about the strength of our institutions. Too many of us, academics and laypeople alike, rely too heavily on historical precedent to safeguard our electoral present. What a nation like Greece shows is that Jan. 6 is an anomaly only once before it becomes routine.
However poorly Biden performed at that debate (and he was embarrassing), debates are theater. However ill equipped the Democratic Party is to provide an heir apparent — and they are embarrassingly unprepared for this predictable eventuality — their dysfunction is not the clear and present danger. The Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity is a harbinger of not just the court’s growing power but of Democrats’ inability to mount a populist defense. This conservative bloc on the court reflects years of undemocratic political maneuvering, from Mitch McConnell stealing a seat to the political activism of Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas. Their decisions are not only codifying minority interests, they are a show of strength for a Republican Party that has no intention of ever ceding power to majority will again.
If you take your eye off the ball of democracy for any length of time, no amount of history will save you.
Americans have taken our eyes off the ball. I have not wanted to make that call. It is an easy thing to say. Too easy. Critical thinkers too often toss about pronouncements about the demise of democracy when they lose a political battle or just want to seem erudite. It can make professional critics sound like Chicken Little, always claiming the end is near until no one cares to hear our squawking.
But it is time to squawk. It is not just that my side — the ideas I believe in like bodily autonomy, economic justice and diversity — are losing in the marketplace of ideas. It is that many of the ideas that I believe in absolutely kill in the marketplace of ideas, and it does not matter. The majority of Americans want women to have access to safe abortion care. The majority of Americans want strong social welfare programs. They want affordable housing and safe schools and sensible gun control. My ideas are winning but our electoral politics no longer care about representing the winning ideas.
The post-debate analysis quickly devolved into a reality-show catfight. Smart people are placing bets on their favorite candidate for “Survivor: The POTUS Edition.” I hate contrived reality-show competitions and I hate this one most of all. Should it be Kamala Harris? Some other dark horse candidate? What about a brokered Democratic convention? How exciting!
Except, it is only exciting for people who won’t lose no matter who wins the White House.
As for the rest of America, it has already lost.
(NY Times)
Viva La France! The people of France have shown up the way. Stop diluting your vote. Don’t fetishize your vote. Over two hundred candidates dropped out of contention so voters could strategize their vote. Here are the lessons of the recent voting in France;
Massive voter turn out. Don’t sit on you hands.
Fewer candidates, don’t dilute your vote.
Strategic voting. Hold your nose if you must but vote.
Deny the fascists electoral efforts.
Lesser evil voting is worse than not voting at all. It’s why our political class is such a pile of manure. The two parties haven’t fielded a candidate worth a dime for the presidency since George McGovern in ’72. I quit voting for their worthless offerings after the 2000 fiasco. Been leaving that part of my ballot blank, or voting third party (happens rarely that one appears on the ballot in backward Wyoming, but it did in 2016), or writing-in a selection ever since, and that includes 2020, and, so far, 2024. I will NOT “hold my nose” and vote for the lesser evil, not ever. Enjoy your games…
3rd party candidate circa 1920: “better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.” Still true.
To the critics of Tommy Wayne Kramer.
I think he hit it out of the ballpark today…
Have a nice day,
Laz
Into McCovey Cove!
Fully agree
Sorry, no home run– actually, it was a foul ball–close call, but the field umpire got it right…
“Sorry, no home run– actually, it was a foul ball–close call, but the field umpire got it right…”
CD
This is from a guy who STRIKES OUT!
Have a nice day…
Laz,
The whoever I am?
…says the no-name troll…
You got influence, get me booted…Chuck
Have a nice day,
Laz
How about a truce, the back and forth is not productive. I will avoid remarks as to your comments, if you’ll do the same. Should work just fine.
We did this once before, I believe. But as my 76 trip around the Sun approaches, the fire of the fight is dimming. More important things are left than being combative, aggressive, and stubborn.
Be well, Chuck, be well…
Laz
I agree, and at 77, same from here– truce and peace, then, and you also be well.
Thank you.
CALIFORNIA RESTAURANT SURCHARGES
Kaputalism in action.
Brought to mind another trick they use. Remember, in the 60s, when liquid dish detergent said on the label, something to the effect of, “use sparingly”? Their TV commercials carried the same message. Now, those labels say, essentially, use a big squeeze of the container (but the old “old” dose works just as well as it always has). Hand lotion outfits do the same. I am sure there are other examples, but these stick in my mind. We’re the dumbest, and greediest bunch ever to evolve.
PASTOR BETHANY: A SINISTER IMPULSE IS TAKING OVER OUR CHURCHES
Good. I hope all the imaginary gods disappear from the human imagination. Churches and gods were sinister places and things to me all my life.
Learn to think for yourselves. Then the problems that are described will be nipped in the bud, and die!
The State Auditor reported: “The County does not have an official policy and procedure manual; existing written procedures have not been formalized through standardization. Furthermore, these procedures do not fully or accurately reflect the county’s current operational processes. Policy updates have been sporadic and haphazard, leading to confusion among staff who found these changes unclear, contradictory, and poorly communicated.”
As soon as Angelo got in the CEO position, policies went out the window. And, the CEO Office never put things in writing that any department could stand on because every day is a new day, you never know what mood the CEO will be in and if something is in writing then the narrative can’t be manipulated to fit the mood of the day. End of story. That is what employees lived with and apparently still do. Before the top office, Angelo did the same to HHSA. No rules equals chaos and chaos equals an opportunity to be the savior. Until everyone realizes that the empress never had any clothes. Too bad most didn’t realize til after she was outta here. And sadly some still don’t.
I think they realized but lived in fear of her. They (the BOS) could have fired her fat ass but didn’t have the guts. So, in cahoots with the DA, whose ethics are questionable at the very least, they manufacture trumped up charges against Cubbison and suspend her, an elected official, without pay. What a sorry bunch of two-bit losers.
This is an open letter to the Board of Supervisors, the CEO, Darcie Antle and the public:
I call upon the BOS to demand Ms. Antle step down from her position as CEO.
Ms. Antle was hired as CEO for her alleged financial experience. The current State audit is an indictment of gross County mis-management. I have personally heard from multiple Board members that she is not responding to their requests for information, or keeping the BOS informed of her decisions. The many poor decisions her office is making are costing the County millions of dollars in litigation, wasted man-hours un-doing bad decisions, uncollected taxes, and inefficient unresponsive public services. The Veteran’s Office fiasco; the allegations against the elected Auditor; the on-going inability of the Cannabis Department to function as it was intended; the combining Public Health and Behavioral Health with no independent study to determine whether it was a good idea; and most troubling, there has been NO response to the very serious findings of the Grand Jury report about the under-staffing and too large case-loads at Family and Children’s Services and Adult Protective Services. Her office has taken over running almost all the County departments, including Human Resources, which seems like an obvious conflict of interest. Department heads are hired because they are subject matter experts, but the Deputy CEO’s now running almost all County departments lack this expertise. The County complains that they can’t hire department heads. Duh – no one wants to take a job that they could be marched out of at a moments notice and jeopardize their future careers. Our track record on how we treat our employees is horrible.
Ms. Antle has shown she is not up to the task of Chief Executive Officer and I call upon the BOS to remove her as CEO.
Respectfully,
Julie Beardsley
Former Mendocino County Senior Public Health Analyst
Past President of SEIU 1021
Concerned citizen
Mike Geinella @ A milestone reached …
Thank you for sharing your Betty Ford story, I was touched and a little misty eyed hearing your story and gratitude.
I attended the family program at “The Betty” in 1993 to “help” my family member. Quickly family members learn the addict can only help themselves. We can’t force them to sobriety or fix things so life will just get right for them to make the change. Rather we learn our role in the family that continues the cycle without even realizing it. Family members serve as a “cog in the wheel” which helps keep it rolling. You have to jam a stick in the cog to stop it from rolling, take the air out of the tires so to speak. We know cars can keep running even with a flat tire, not well, but they can keep moving! This is why as many family members that can learn to change their role /heal their pain/ set true boundaries for themselves that they are no longer enabling or codependency and are free. The “vehicle” breaks down and is no longer there for the addict.
None of this blames the family but rather to gain an understanding of how it functions, where to heal members of the family, and know how to move forward in a different way.
Happy 17th Birthday Mike to you and family!
Dear TWK: it’s easy to throw the hapless Mendo County Board of Supervisors under the bus for killing the Goose that laid the golden (green) egg, but what did you expect.? Did you think our County bureaucrats could herd all the hill muffins into perfect regulatory compliance? Or provide price supports for against outside competition? Ha!
The weed scene is where it should be: all the wise guys still make money on the black market using the legal market as a front. The rest bailed when the easy money went poof or they got a day job.
But the ridiculousness still prevails: we have TWO dispensaries in Rio Dell. Yeehaw!
LIVE : जगन्नाथ रथ यात्रा कथा | जगन्नाथ पुरी की Live, Jagannath Puri Odia 2024
Warmest spiritual greetings,
Having a really good day in Ukiah, California. A doctor removed the annoying skin tag inside of the lower lip, and wrote it up so as not to appear “cosmetic”. Celebrated by going to SuperCuts which was definitely “cosmetic”. Bought a bagful of rehydrating beverages on the way back to the motel. Took a cool shower. The new computer is on, presently watching the Jagannath Rath Yatra LIVE in Puri in eastern India right this very moment. Body relaxed. Mind at ease. The real Self is in charge without interference. Anybody want to be part of a spiritual nomadic direct action group? There are alternatives to rotting in the quagmire of samsara. I’ve got some money, the health at 74 is adequate, and we’ve got God on our side. Talk to me.
Craig Louis Stehr
Royal Motel
750 S. State Street, Ukiah, CA 95482
(707) 462-7536, Room 206
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
July 8th, 2024 Anno Domini