YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Ukiah 106°, Yorkville 103°, Laytonville 103°, Covelo 103°, Boonville 101°, Fort Bragg 61°, Mendocino 61°, Point Arena 58°
HOT AND DRY weather is expected in the interior again today. Temperatures are expected to slowly diminish later during the weekend. The marine layer return tonight, with persistent stratus and fog returning Friday and into the weekend. Breezy west to northwest winds and low RH will increase fire danger slightly in the areas well away from the coast Thursday and Friday. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): An overcast 54F on the coast this Thursday morning. It look like fog & high clouds. Patchy morning fog today & tomorrow then mostly clear skies this weekend. A mix again for next week.
LISA NUNES: Van Zandts swimming hole for their guests Wednesday morning. The spires you see are most likely anabaena algae. Toxic. Toxic. Toxic.
JULIE IS MISSING
On Tuesday, August 6th, 2024, around 11:00 AM, Julie [last name not provided] left her residence in Kelseyville to travel to Sonoma County. Around 4:00 PM, she contacted her husband to say she was heading home, but she did not feel well. She has not been heard from since.
Julie’s last known cellphone ping was on Tuesday, around 5:00 PM. Julie is associated with a 2018 red Subaru Forester, license plate 8EUJ265. Julie’s vehicle was last seen on Tuesday, at approximately 5:00 PM, heading east toward Lake County on the Hwy 175 Hopland Grade.
Julie is 5' 7", about 200 lbs, with brown hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing brown slacks, a turquoise blouse, and a tan leather purse.
On August 7, 2024, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office conducted a preliminary search from the Mendocino/Lake County line on HWY 175, with assistance from the California Highway Patrol (CHP) and CHP helicopter.
The Sheriff’s Office is actively working on this case, and we encourage anyone who may have seen Julie to contact Central Dispatch at (707)263-2690.
(Lake County Sheriff’s Presser)
REDWOOD VALLEY’S WATER FUTURE
by Monica Huettl
All hands were on deck for the July Board meeting of the Redwood Valley County Water District, led by Board President Adam Gaska, and General Manager Jared Walker. The Board voted on several important agenda items that have long been under discussion.…
ANDERSON VALLEY JUNIOR-SENIOR HIGH
We are excited to welcome everyone back to school! Remember that the first day of school is August 19th. We will be having two days of orientation. It is important that you come to orientation because we will have documents that parents will need to sign and fill out.
We will also provide help if you do not have Aeries or Parent Square access.
You will also get to meet our new Principal Heath McNerney!
Orientation Days are the following:
August 12th- Junior High Orientation Between 10am - 2 pm
August 13th- High School Orientation Between 10am - 2 pm
We will also be having a Mandatory Parent-Sport Meeting on August 14th at 6pm in the gym. Please make sure you attend if your student is planning on playing sports this school year.
If you have any questions, please call the High School Office at 707-895-3496.
CANDIDATE FILING INFORMATION FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION ON NOVEMBER 5, 2024
Attention - Elected Candidates Whose Terms End This Year:
Candidate filing for elected Special Districts, School Districts and Municipalities ends at 5 p.m., Friday, August 9, 2024 for incumbents to file their candidacy paperwork. If an incumbent fails to file their candidacy paperwork by 5 p.m., August 9, 2024, the filing deadline is extended through 5 p.m., Wednesday, August 14, 2024 for non-incumbents to file. If you are an incumbent or a non-incumbent and plan on filing your candidacy papers, please call our office to confirm at 707 234-6819, or contact your City Clerk or District Secretary, accordingly.
Please go to our website at www.mendocinocounty.gov/candidateinfo to read our Candidate Packet to find the qualifications required to become a candidate for local races.
You may call the Mendocino County Elections office at (707) 234-6819, or come by the Elections office at 501 Low Gap Road, Room 1020 in Ukiah to complete your candidate filing paperwork. We are open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
ALL YEARS PANTHER HIGH SCHOOL REUNION
Deadline for RSVP is Monday 8/12/24. We only have 11 confirmed attendees. Please message me or confirm your attendance by commenting on this post.
Anderson Valley Casual
Grad Gathering
Date: Saturday 9/14/24
Time: 11am
Location: Mosswood Cafe
14111 CA-128
Boonville
Cost: $20 per person-cash at the door.
Menu: Breakfast Panini
Pastry
Fruit
Coffee
RSVP: 8/12/24
Please confirm your attendance and the number in your party by sending me a message on Facebook messenger.
If you don’t make the deadline you can always stop by to say hi we will be in the back. The cafe is open until 3:00pm.
If you have questions please reach out. Panthers Rule
SONOMA AND MENDOCINO COUNTIES EYEING MAJOR GEOTHERMAL ENERGY PROJECTS
by Monica Huettl
Sonoma Clean Power held a GeoZone Town Hall on July 25 at their Customer Center in downtown Santa Rosa. SCP, a not-for-profit company, provides sources of clean energy to Sonoma and Mendocino counties. That clean energy is transmitted to customers via PG&E.
There was a packed house for this event, including congressional staffers, and council and board members from local governments. SCP CEO Geof Syphers spoke about plans to explore new geothermal opportunities locally in a large area in the eastern parts of Sonoma and Mendocino counties, called the GeoZone. The goal is to eventually produce 600 Megawatts of new geothermal energy locally.…
MENDOCINO LAND TRUST & The Conservation Fund Celebrate the Conservation of 16,000 Acres
On July 18th we took time to mark the success of more than two years of collaborative work. The Conservation Fund and Mendocino Land Trust achieved the conveyance of two separate conservation easements of forestland along the Big River and Salmon Creek, totaling more than 16,000 acres of vital and diverse watershed habitats.
On July 18th, 25 dedicated conservationists from both organizations gathered deep in the Big River Forest to soak up the sun surrounded by these conserved working forests, stroll down to the river, and learn about this extraordinary project, and the work that got us here.
11,707 acres of the Big River watershed and 4,389 acres of Salmon Creek Forest are both high priority watersheds for anadromous salmonids, crucial to the Recovery Strategy for California Coho Salmon. Combined, they include 34 miles of fish-bearing streams, 41 miles of perennial streams, riparian habitats, and support coho salmon, northern spotted owls, steelhead trout, and an array of sensitive and vulnerable species.
All this is a pretty big deal. But there is another story here, and the Big River runs right through it. That story is the history of Mendocino Land Trust itself: where we live, what we love, how we protect that, and how we grew into the organization we are now. In 2002, we conserved 7,334 acres of the Big River Watershed, which then became part of the CA State Parks system. This milestone conservation project transformed a local land trust run by a fully volunteer Board of Trustees into the thriving organization we are today, employing 10 full and part time staff, summer interns, and supported by a host of dedicated volunteers.
Days like this remind us that what we do matters, to our community, to our wild unbuilt spaces, to the planet, and to you. Thanks for being here.
SF MAYOR’S “OUTTA-HERE-ONE-WAY HOMELESS BUS PLAN” SORE POINT IN MENDOLAND
by Jim Shields
I have a question for you.
What do you think will happen first:
- California and its 58 counties will solve the twin dilemmas/failures of homelessness and broken mental health services, or
- We will discover that space aliens are real.
My money is on the aliens; they are already in our midst, especially in Mendoland.
Six weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that state and local governments have the authority to enact laws and ordinances that prohibit people from sleeping or camping on sidewalks, shopping malls, residential neighborhoods, and state, city, and county public parks and lands.
I think the Supreme Court’s decision is a much-needed step in the right direction (even a blind pig finds a truffle every now and then), and should return a bit of sanity, reason, and responsibility to a process that has been out-of-control and not serving anyone well, including the homeless.
Gov. Gav Newsom is prodding local governments to kick it into high gear after the U.S. Supreme Court gave cities and counties the OK to clear homeless encampments and enforce bans on un-housed people living and sleeping in public spaces.
Newsom issued an executive order directing state agencies to adopt policies to sweep encampments on state property, and urged local governments to do the same.
“We have now no excuse with the Supreme Court decision,” Newsom explained. “This executive order is about pushing that paradigm further and getting the sense of urgency that’s required of local government to do their job.”
Under the order, state agencies should give residents at least 48-hour notice before clearing a camp, and provide storage for their belongings for at least 60 days. Agencies also should request services from local organizations for displaced residents. But encampments that pose an “imminent threat” to life, health, safety or infrastructure can be removed immediately.
We’re now beginning to see local governments in other counties and cities take certain steps to exercise their legally restored authority to deal with homeless issues. However, the action taken by San Francisco Mayor London Breed rankled our Sheriff.
Here’s the story.
This week, Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall said via facebook, “On Thursday, Ms. Breed directed city officials to offer bus tickets to homeless people before providing them a shelter bed or other services. This is what we in the policing business refer to as a “Clue” of things to come. I had heard this was coming, having serious concerns we were just a couple counties North and an easy drop spot for Greyhound, I attempted to set a meeting with the mayor. After several emails back and forth, and a whole lot of wrangling I was advised she was too busy to meet with anyone, too busy for a simple phone call. Feeling quite frustrated I called it a day and moved on. Now’s the time we should brace ourselves for an influx of folks whom likely suffer from several problems including addictions and mental health disorders. Also, we will likely see folks who were allowed to engage in some fairly anti-social behaviors arriving in our communities which simply aren’t staffed or funded to handle these issues. The genie has been let out of the bottle under the guise of compassion in San Francisco (which honestly didn’t seem compassionate to me at all). As they begin their “bussing to happiness program”, I am afraid several less affluent counties are going to struggle while attempting to get that genie back into the bottle.”
While Sheriff Kendall is rightfully miffed at the refusal of SF Mayor Breed to even take a call from him over her outta-here-one-way homeless bus plan, he needn’t fret over her insulting behavior. She doesn’t even talk to her own sheriff.
Breed has been on a four-year kamikaze mission to de-fund law enforcement in San Francisco. She calls it “reform” which is nonsense unless you consider open-air drug dealing, soaring crime rates, and citizen insecurity to be reform. She’s a spineless, PC ideologue incapable of tackling complex issues, such as homelessness, and the larger struggle between providing life-saving care and services for homeless people (who oftentimes refuse help) while balancing that reality with the other reality of the need and sworn obligation for maintaining public safety.
If you haven’t had the opportunity, read my latest piece in a series on the homeless and mental health crises in this state and county (“The Real Deal On The Homeless Mess, In Case You Want To Know”).
People need to wake up and realize why all these programs and the billions upon billions of dollars spent on them, have resulted in complete failure. The answer has always been right in front of us, but most people seem content for some reason to just talk these issues to death.
Case in point, look at this county where for years the Board of Supervisors and their staff responsible for homeless and mental health services, hold public meeting meetings discussing those issues, which are always over-larded with charts, graphs, eye-blurring reams of data, and staff presentations and non-report-reports.
I defy anyone to explain to me or anyone else, just where this county’s performance stands with its numerous homeless programs and what successes have been achieved in the last 20 years that has seen millions of dollars paid out to private and/or public-private outfits providing various homeless services.
Over the years, what have we learned? We’ve learned the official county government view, i.e., the Board of Supervisors and their ever-so-hard-working staff, is that most everything is working splendidly with mostly successful outcomes. The few things that are not quite working yet are retarded due to lack of funding. Other than that, things are spot-on, thank you, now go away.
(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)
LOW INTENSITY CAMPING
Here’s more info as to the limited transient camping proposal by the County Planning and Building Services that I raised yesterday. In my detailed reading, it appears this issue may pertain only to inland properties, but I am not sure about this. It seems to be kind of buried in the bureaucracy. This proposal could affect a good many of us, and should have been raised more openly and broadly to the general public.
It could be kind of a big deal, and the impacts are unknown. If a camp-site near our semi-rural home south of Ft. Bragg opened, the traffic on our one-road access would be greatly expanded. I wonder what the story behind this new proposal is, and what interests were advocating for it. I especially wonder if input was sought by the County from fire departments, the Sheriff, experts in resources like water, and others, as to possible impacts. Note that the original proposal required a local contact for assistance at the camping site within one hour. This was changed to requiring a host on-site at all times so that problems can be resolved immediately.Enforcement insuring the constant presence of such a person is no doubt an important issue.
Here’s how to access the 3 page proposal— quite well hidden as you’ll see— that appears set to be heard at a meeting on Aug. 15, not sure if that is the final consideration for adoption or not:
Scroll through each separate heading below to find the document in question:
https://www.mendocinocounty.gov
Planning and Building Services
Public Hearing Bodies
Planning Commission
August 15, 2024
Staff Memorandum (July 30, 2024)
Memorandum Subject: OA_2023-0001 Inland Zoning Code Update
Chapter 20.176 Recreational Vehicle Parks And, Campgrounds, And Low Intensity Camping (Pages 40-41)
Sec. 20.176.020 Low Intensity Camping (Pages 41-43)
Provide citizen feedback and concerns before August 15:
pbscommissions@mendocinocounty.gov
While there is much more to know about this proposal, I am concerned about the lack of transparency and publicity here. This kind of proposal should be openly publicized so that all citizens know the facts and can weigh-in with their concerns.
(Chuck Dunbar)
ED NOTES
TRUMP ON FOX THIS MORNING: “There's never been a ticket like this. This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner.”
HUH?
THIS deliberate conflation of liberals and what there is of a left in this country, is already Trump and Vance's main move, even though Kamala and Coach Walz have just teamed up. The two “weirdos” — thank you Coach for describing Trump and Vance so succinctly — are claiming that the Democrats are really a gang of Bosheviks aimed at establishing “socialism” in the United States. Eek! Save me, Orange Man, save me!
AS A MATTER of historical fact, socialists formed a good part of Roosevelt's New Deal, including social security and other mass programs that were and are of enormous benefit to everyday Americans. Socialism has a long and honorable tradition in this country, as Boonville understands every time it crosses the WPA bridge over Con Creek, and as we all understand in our gratitude for Social Security and MediCare. Republicans have opposed these benefits since they were first proposed in 1930.
SOCIALISM, to Trumpers and would be Trumpers, has somehow been transmogrified into a horror for low info citizens because, in this country of amnesiacs, few Trumpers know what it is, it having become a convenient shorthand for all the boogeymen rioting in the perfervid Trumper brain — killers and rapists welcomed into the country at the border by Poor Old Joe; men in women's sports; drag queen story hours for kindergartners, etc. and so endlessly on. If you are an American of ordinary means, which is most of us, Dos Weirdos are not for you, or shouldn't be for you. If you vote for them, you're voting against yourself.
ARE KAMALA and Coach Walz any better? I think Kamala is another huge blunder by the wealthy non-democratic Democrat shot callers. Enthusiasm for the Coach might lift Kamala past Trump but it will be close. Myself, I have zero enthusiasm for the party that supports Israel's monstrous mass murder in Gaza. Which is both parties at this point.
IS IT CYNICISM or fact that the problems we face in our deteriorated country are built-in, structural, and beyond the capacities of our leading political figures to intelligently address even if they dared defy their funders to have a serious go at them?
I MUST SAY I like The Coach. He's the first fun and funny candidate in years who, obviously, should quickly switch places with Kamala to prevent Trump from becoming the next president.
THE SLIME MACHINES on both sides are busily publicizing the human lapses of the other side's leading figures. Turns out The First Gentleman's first wife left him when he made a baby with their au pair, and The Coach picked up a DUI when he was young and, according to a former National Guard comrade, he ducked out of a deployment. Youthful folly accounts for the DUI, I'll wait until the evidence is in on the deployment.
MY OBJECTION to the First Gentleman has always been aesthetic — the cloying placement of the guy as Mr. Kamala is, is, is… mildly nauseating, and one more “personality” shoved down the American gullet. A steady diet of this silly willy if Kamala's elected president, is unbearable to contemplate.
THE COACHES' DUI? Raise your hand if you've had one or should have had one? Uh, huh, just what I thought. A majority of Americans, more males than females, but females coming on fast, have big screw-ups in their background.
I STOPPED driving drunk when I was about thirty because, after a softball game in Cloverdale with a team of heavy boozers, as was the custom of the sport in that time and place, we gathered for post-game merriment at Bob's Pizza where I often over-indulged, one night so dangerously I didn't remember driving back to Boonville. That was it for me.
THE POINT? Young people, especially young men, do dumb, dangerous stuff that they understand only later could have gotten them killed. Some of us even grow all the way up.
CHANGE OUR NAME, Fort Bragg: “…the biggest change was realizing we're not talking to the other side, when we make these arguments about the truth of the past, we're not trying to convince white supremacists in the League of the South to change their mind. We're not even convincing white supremacists in Congress to change their mind. I think we're talking to folks in the middle and I think we're talking to students. And I think that is the nature of truth telling, this idea that you're going to somehow strike up a friendship with the white supremacist and all of a sudden it's going to be Green Book. I think that's what American audiences and quite frankly, white audiences often want out of stories. They want reconciliation. But I think the work is actually reckoning. How do we tell the truth about the past?” — Furioius Carol
ED NOTE: Dear Furious Carol, it won't have occurred to you Name Changers that it's your overweening piety, not to mention your racist version of Coast history, that instantly turned off the sensible people of Fort Bragg. Blind to the complications of history in your righteousness, you contradict your reason for being, to wit, the history of Fort Bragg as a tale of the wholesale murder of native people by white settlers, reinforced by white soldiers. Since you enjoy the telling, don't you want to keep Fort Bragg as Fort Bragg? What would you do with all your free time? As you glory in the spectacle while pretending to be shocked by it, and implying that contemporary white Fort Braggers approve of both their Confederate namesake and the unhappy story of the native people, Fort Bragg is a handy historical reminder. According to you. In fact, soldiers were dispatched to bring order to the upper Mendocino Coast and, soon, to escort area Indians to the new rez in Covelo where they would be safe from white depredations. No, the Indians weren't bussed to Round Valley. They walked. The infirm and the elderly died. They weren't safe in Covelo, but that's a story for another time, and one you Name Changers would certainly enjoy because it's a bloody one. The times being what they were, the white-Indian interfaces were often lethal, but the really, really bad white slaughters, the deliberate, state-funded killings of native peoples, occurred far to the east of Fort Bragg in the Eel River basin. If we re-named every American town because their namesakes were bad people we'd have to re-name much of the United States, wiping out the true history of our fine, fat country in the process. To summarize, the first white settler in Mendocino County with his small herd of cows immediately killed Indians as he and his cows destroyed the natural world's balance the Indians depended on for their lives. Finally, the Indians always fought back as best they could. Name Changers always make it seem as if the Indians stood passively around while they were gunned down and their women raped. There were small detachments of soldiers posted to inland Mendocino County through the early 20th century because Indians were still resisting.
FIRST CLASS CROOKS
Dear Editor,
Thoroughly enjoyed your “blast from the past” article on the New Boonville Hotel.
I worked there during the summers in the early 1980s. I was living primarily in Mexico and came to the Valley during the summers. Tom Cronquist was the dining room manager and hired me to be a wait person over the weekends and I also worked as a bartender.
The Rollins’ were first-class crooks cashing in on the incredible free PR they received from the Bay Area foodies. Yes, they were crooks before they fled. All of the employee payroll checks had the normal deductions – social security, disability, etc.
Those monies were never sent to government entities. Vernon kept it. The annual Social Security print out that most of us receive showed no income on the years that I and all of the other employees worked at the New Boonville Hotel.
Yes, he kept all of it.
The place was a joke. To serve the bread they raved about, a server first had to remove the cat that was sleeping in the breadbasket, shake out the napkin and put in the fresh bread.
Vernon had the habit of going to the walk-in cooler and drinking milk out of the carton that was used to be served to customers. Charlene and Vernon had no sense of appreciation of the staff and never once offered any of us something to eat at the end of our shift.
I could go on but couldn’t resist adding on my two cents on this fiasco.
Susan Bridge-Mount
Boonville
LOCAL EVENTS (this week)
RITUAL MENDOCINO GRAND OPENING SOIREE THIS SATURDAY
This Saturday August 10th, we welcome your presence to celebrate this exciting move just a few doors down from our previous location. Here we will be featuring more antique furniture and home goods as well as increasing our inventory of local art.
In the coming months, we will be hosting intimate gatherings to nourish the soul and feed the creative spirit.
Look forward to these announcements.
For now, meander over after the Obon Festival and delight in our exceptional Japanese cultural pieces to weave in a broader understanding of the Japanese heritage on the coast and connection to our sister city.
Reception 5-7pm (we will be open earlier and likely straggle later)
New address is to the left of the Country Store and Bebe Lapin on Ukiah Street.
Email or call with any questions
Or call 732-272-2386
Lauren ritualmendocino@gmail.com
CONTROLLER COHEN PUBLISHES 2023 PAYROLL DATA FOR STATE GOVERNMENT, SUPERIOR COURTS, AND CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTIONS
State Controller Malia M. Cohen has published the 2023 self-reported payroll data for state departments, superior courts, and California State University (CSU) institutions on the Government Compensation in California website. The data covers more than 399,000 positions and approximately $28.87 billion in total wages.
Users of the site can view compensation levels on maps and search by region, narrow results by name of the entity or by job title, and export raw data or custom reports.
The newly published data were reported by:
- 24 CSU institutions (116,235 employees),
- 56 superior courts (20,884 employees), and
- 157 state departments (262,097 employees).
California law requires cities, counties, and special districts to annually report compensation data to the State Controller. The State Controller also maintains and publishes state and CSU salary data. However, no such statutory requirement exists for the University of California, California community colleges, superior courts, fairs and expositions, First 5 commissions, or K-12 education providers; their reporting is voluntary. Two superior courts either did not file or filed a report that was non-compliant.
The site contains pay and benefit information on more than two million government jobs in California, as reported annually by each entity.
(State Controller Presser)
Chuck Ross: Quick story on this locomotive.
I don't know why it was numbered 139. Most likely it had been ordered and canceled by a larger company. It came available to LEWLCo and they took it with that number. It was originally lettered "Campbell" on the tender after the judge who had recently awarded L.E. White and son Will White's entire estate to Will White's widow Helen Pauline, rather than to Will White's sister Helen Evelyn (White) Paddock. A short time later Helen White married her attorney Frank C. Drew and became Helen P. Drew. I'm sure the engine was called "Campbell" long enough for the good judge to see it. Then it was renamed "Helen P. Drew" after Frank Drew's real boss.
Some time later the engine might have been renumbered "1" probably after the first number 1 fell in the creek and was abandoned. Later it was renumbered "5" and wore that number plate on its smokebox door until it went under the scrapper's torch in 1940.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, August 7, 2024
OSCAR CABEZAS-TAFOYA, Ukiah. Arson.
TROY CHAMBERS, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
SCOTT FABER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
ANGEL MILLER, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)
RHEANNAH MOLINA, Ukiah. Domestic battery.
CHRISTOPHER MORAN, Fort Bragg. Narcotics for sale, unpermitted fireworks.
CHANCE SMITH, Clearlake/Ukiah. Grand theft, vandalism, use of weapon with controlled substance.
ROBERT STANSBERRY, Willits. DUI.
NORMA TESTROETE, Ukiah. Trespassing.
MESSAGE TO POSTMODERN AMERICA
Warm spiritual greetings,
For the next three weeks, I am living in a motel room in Ukiah, California. Tomorrow, there is a phone assessment with the Social Security Administration to verify my continuing eligibility for receiving SSI (due to age). Meanwhile, I am identified with the Parabrahman, or Divine Absolute, and not the body and not the mind. Aside from needing to move on from Mendocino County in order to have a continued usefulness on planet earth, I would also like to disassociate from the existential confusion which defines contemporary American society. I wish to be associated with others who identify with the Eternal Witness. Please contact me if this is consistent with your spiritual condition.
Thank you very much.
Craig Louis Stehr
craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCKIN’ ON DYLAN’S DOOR
by Marilyn Davin
It all started so innocently, a simple ad in some online publication whose name I don’t even remember. Bob Dylan coming to California, it read. Really? THE Bob Dylan? The one whose songs we used to sing back in the day during lunch hour, sitting in a long-haired mournful circle on the junior high school’s front lawn? THAT Bob Dylan? Turns out it was, and that The Legend himself would be at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. Hmmm…I’ve only been to a handful of mega-concerts in my life…maybe it was time for a live concert. And it was Dylan…
Taking a trip down Memory Lane is tricky since so many of our most vivid memories were forged decades ago when we were young, passionate, and unjaded, not yet ground down by the inevitable tumble through the jaws of the grinder we call Growing Up. These memories burrow deeply into our bones where they live forever. The problem is that whatever the intensity of those memories, however timelessly we still see ourselves within them, the sad truth is that we’re just not the same people we were all those decades ago when we were actually living them.
The music bound us together, for it seemed at that time that the music spoke to us personally, with San Francisco at its beating heart. It was as if San Francisco set the soundtrack for everything that came after, instead of the other way around. The music uplifted us, separated us from the generation before, and defined us.
My own first live concert was in the summer of 1969, at Fillmore West, when Janis Joplin joined the Grateful Dead on stage. That unforgettable night, Deadheads galore were densely packed into a sweaty ball in the smoky, strobe-lit auditorium on South Van Ness Avenue. Some revelers may mostly remember the Dead; but my memory is solid Joplin. I found some film of that performance on YouTube. The grainy close-up images of Joplin took me right back to that undulating mass of humanity in what felt like a tiny space. I realized watching the film that I had been standing about 10 feet in front of Joplin at that moment, on that very night, in that very spot. The film couldn’t do justice to the real experience, of course: the screaming crowd mashed up with Joplin’s soaring emotion, the drops of sweat flying off the ends of her hair like tiny crystals in the bright stage lights, her passion too big for the hot room. Janis held us in the palm of her hand, raising us to our feet with her voice and crashing at the end as we ourselves crashed in exhausted heaps on the filthy floor.
But that was then. Back here in 2024, the concert experience bears little resemblance to its ancient 1969 iteration before cell phones, the internet, and guerilla marketing. The first unavoidable hurdle is buying a ticket. Unless you’re fortunate enough to be gifted a couple of tickets for your birthday, you’ll have to buy your tickets from a mega online ticketing corporation — you know, the ones recently called to account for their sneaky “extra” charges. The website we used featured a pious banner proclaiming its transparency, though if true I suspect those usurious charges have simply changed hats: they’re now upgrades to your so-called “concert experience,” starting with the ticket itself, which unsurprisingly mirrors our sharply stratified economic times. The Shoreline holds a maximum of 22,000 souls, though 16,000 of them are “lawn“ seats, in this case a muddy slope long ago scraped clean of any greenery beneath platoons of scurrying feet. The tickets range from $60 and change for the lawn to several hundred dollars for the first rows closest to the stage. (I paid $3.50 for my Fillmore West ticket, purchased at the door.) Buying a ticket these days is not as simple as inputting your credit card info and clicking the buy-it button. There are choices to be made. Lawn chair? ($15 online, $20 at the concert) Parking? Premier for $200, VIP for $75. The free option was not prominently featured online, and there is no box to choose it; but it does exist and involves walking a couple of hot, dusty miles to and fro. More on this later. Once you purchase your ticket you have to figure out how to get it into your cell phone, which doubles as your ticket. (I can hear techies harrumphing at the depths of my ignorance; I challenge them to a spelling bee…)
The next step was getting to the concert. Our houseguests (Michelle and Ben, formerly of Ukiah) drove because they thankfully knew how to operate the GPS in their car. All appeared rosy as the four of us set out on our 63-mile journey from the East Bay to Mountain View.
Once off the 101, however, the nightmare snarl began and $200 for preferred parking seemed more and more like a bargain not to be missed. Suffice to say that it took over an hour to travel the couple of miles to the parking lot, barely visible in the last quarter-mile beneath a cloud of choking dust and exhaust. Finally parked, we checked to make sure we weren’t carrying any of a long list of prohibited items: no food (except for what you can pack in a see-through Ziploc bag); no drinks, even water, if the bottle isn’t sealed; no folding chairs or blankets (unless rented onsite); no binoculars (a real bummer given our perches on the faraway not-lawn); and no pharmaceutically induced inappropriate behavior, including alcohol.
So we walked and walked to the amphitheater, eyes squinting as we trudged west into the setting sun along a rocky path. Once inside after managing to retrieve our tickets from my husband’s cell phone, we emerged from the turnstiles into a dizzy maelstrom of consumer opportunity. Duh. No wonder you can’t bring anything with you; you’re supposed to buy it all at the concert. Eateries of every conceivable origin, booths for wine, beer, or cocktails, t-shirts, hats, you name it. It was like going to the county fair, just five times more expensive. If there was a pfennig to be made, there was somebody selling it in a booth: the ultimate consumer experience.
Climbing halfway up the no-lawn lawn, it was time to choose a spot for our rented folding chairs and weary bones. We settled near the beginning of a haphazard row, reasoning that it would be easy to get in and out of. Wrong. What it did was set us up at the terminus of the pedestrian freeway that surged at our feet. One man tromped on my right foot, making me happy I was wearing my cowboy boots. Whew! Hobbling all those miles back to the car would have been Hell with an injured foot. We had missed the opening band so had time to check out the place before Dylan began. The huge overhead monitors (which made it almost possible to identify the ant-like performers on the faraway stage), blasted the commercials that I routinely mute if I’m watching TV at home. Devil Juice, anyone? Pizza? I wonder if Dylan would buy any of these junk edibles…
The amphitheater appeared to be sold out, and revealed some interesting demographics. First off, in our very large lawn section of several hundred, there were exactly two black people, both men: one was with a group of white men, and one sold lemonade from a tray suspended by a strap around his neck. Hmmmm…here we were in the heart of the Bay Area (6.7% black at last count), virtually across the street from Google, and there were basically no black people in the audience. Dylan was clearly not a draw for non-white folks, something that should probably have flashed brighter warning lights back in the ‘60s. Female attire fell roughly into two camps: old Boomers, who dressed as they probably did back in the 60s in flowing ground-length skirts, shawls and other bygone finery; and young nymphettes so scantily glad I averted my eyes when they walked by. I realize that times have changed and all but still puzzle over why so many young women, in the full flower of their equality, choose to dress like Chuck Berry’s Little Queenie (she of the “lookin’ like a model on the cover of a magazine, She’s too cute to be a minute over seventeen”). Go figure.
Dylan finally crossed the stage to his spot behind the keyboard. Though hard to see from the lawn you could sorta hear him, though I quickly realized I should have kept up with his recent music since I didn’t recognize any of it. Not true for second-act Willie Nelson, now 90, who along with his son offered up some old chestnuts like You Were Always on my Mind and Mamas, Don‘t Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys. As the final act, it became increasingly difficult to follow Nelson since the Stampede to the Parking Lot began in earnest in the middle of his performance.
It took one hour to reach the parking lot and two hours to get out of it. During that time our friend Ben provided the following tutorial on creation of the parking lot, as told to Bruce McEwen:
Ben, a self-styled “cat wrangler” (veterinary assistant) grew up near the amphitheater, his dear old dad a cop in South San Francisco. He used to go duck hunting down behind the dump, upon which the amphitheater’s parking lots were built, the crust of dirt over the garbage covered up with “lawn” provided by Mancini Furniture; but it was well-trod lawn and we were glad to have a ground cloth. Dylan sang a song about a little boy and girl who got baked in a pie (Under The Red Sky), and later, tramping over the pie crust to the car Ben pointed out holes — which I took for gofer holes — but were actually vents for the methane gas to escape…
The escape route from the vast parking lot was shaped like an upside-down Christmas tree: the $200 parkers at the base, close to the exits, with all other branches from the peasants’ parking lot competing for limited opportunities to merge into The Road to the Outside World. Then it was drive drive drive again home, freeway after freeway unspooling before us in the wee hours. Arrival: 2 a.m.
HOW ARE THE CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES AFFECTING BIRDS?
by Connor Michael Greene
As California faces another catastrophic wildfire season — with risk levels recently elevated — many of the state’s birds are in danger.
So far in 2024, wildfires have burned more than 790,000 acres in California, more than twice the area damaged in all of 2023. Across fire-touched land, animals and their ecosystems — including birds living in the state’s forests — are impacted in many ways.
Perhaps the biggest fire-related risk for birds is smoke.
Olivia Sanderfoot, a researcher at UCLA who studies the effects of smoke on bird populations in California, said the smoke from these large fires is “unprecedented,” with “climate change changing the frequency and intensity of those fires.”
Sanderfoot explained that birds are particularly impacted by smoke because of their highly efficient but sensitive respiratory systems.
“Flight requires a great deal of oxygen,” Sanderfoot said. “This is a phenomenal adaptation that birds have, but it means they’re more vulnerable to the bad stuff in the air … because they’re so good at breathing.”
She referenced research that indicated bird activity is significantly reduced after smoke events, while birds that were near or in the wildfires’ smoke showed decreases in body mass, presumably due to the smoke inhibiting them from scavenging or hunting.
Another effect of the smoke is its impact on migration patterns. Sanderfoot referenced a study that showed how geese migration patterns were delayed and disrupted due to the fire season in the Northwest in 2020.
While the immediate adverse effects of smoke on birds is clear, the long-term effects of extreme smoke events is an understudied topic, said Sanderfoot.
One way Sanderfoot is helping to increase the study of how wildfires affect birds is through a community science effort called Project Phoenix, a collaboration between UCLA and the Natural History Museum of LA. The project, which she helps lead, monitors the effects of smoke on bird populations across California, Oregon and Washington by engaging volunteers in recording and documenting bird activity in areas affected by wildfire smoke.
Beyond smoke, birds can also suffer from habitat destruction during wildfire season.
California Spotted Owls, which depend on old growth forests with dense canopies to nest and are scattered across the Sierra Nevada mountains, are vulnerable to fires that render their homes uninhabitable.
Meanwhile, nestlings are in danger during summer, when wildfires are more intense and these birds are too young to leave the nest.
Fire isn’t always harmful to animals. Smaller, less intense fires can actually benefit some bird species.
“Not all [bird] species are negatively impacted by fire,” said Nick Hendershot, a forest ecologist with the Nature Conservancy and the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. “We know that we need different types of fire across the landscape…and a lot of species respond positively.”
The Black-backed Woodpecker, for example, found in the central and northern Sierra Nevada mountains, can benefit from a newly burned forest when bark and wood-boring beetles arrive to lay eggs in charred trees. The woodpeckers swoop in and feed off of the larvae, while other insectivore birds hunt other bugs that make a home in the burned trees.
“It’s a really dynamic ecosystem post fire,” said Hendershot, noting that as years go by, different species make use of the re-growing landscape. “A lot of people see it as this dead, stagnant habitat, but there’s a lot going on and it takes place over time.”
Many birds affected by wildfire smoke end up in rescue centers across the state. Ashton Kluttz, the executive director of the Bird Rescue Center of Sonoma County, says many of the up to 3,000 birds per year the center treats have been harmed by smoke inhalation. On average, birds are rehabilitated for 30 days at the center before being released back into the wild.
Kluttz and her team monitor the air quality in Sonoma County, and she encouraged anyone who finds injured birds to call their local wildlife rescue center, which are scattered around the state.
When fires are diverse in size and severity, they can be beneficial for biodiversity. But large, high-severity fires, which have become more common in the past decade, are far more destructive and provide little benefit to bird species or the land itself. High-severity fires — like the Park Fire, now California’s fourth largest wildfire — are defined as those that destroy nearly all the top canopy of trees.
“So many species have evolved alongside fire and it creates these really diverse and resilient landscapes when it’s burning in a way that’s more natural than it is today,” Hendershot said.
Hendershot emphasized that the higher temperatures and dryer landscapes driven by climate change are making fire season longer with more frequent, intense and destructive fires.
As high-severity fires become more common due to these worsening conditions, smaller, beneficial fires will become less common, and the consequences could outweigh the benefits, Hendershot said.
“The more we can get fire … in a way that has beneficial effects, the better we’re going to be and the better the condition of biodiversity is going to be in the long term.”
“I would say that the angriest critiques I get from people about shows are when I'm drinking whatever convenient cold beer is available in a particular place, and not drinking the best beer out there. You know, I haven't made the effort to walk down the street 10 blocks to the microbrewery where they're making some fucking Mumford and Sons IPA. People get all bent about it. But look, I like cold beer. And I like to have a good time. I don't like to talk about beer, honestly. I don't like to talk about wine. I like to drink beer. If you bring me a really good one, a good craft beer, I will enjoy it, and say so. But I'm not gonna analyze it.”
— Bourdain
A LANGUAGE TEACHER was explaining to her class that in French, nouns unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine. “House” in French, is feminine — “la maison.” “Pencil” in French, is masculine — “le crayon.”
One puzzled student asked, “What gender is computer?” The teacher did not know, and the word was not in her French dictionary. So for fun she split the class into two groups appropriately enough, by gender, and asked them to decide whether “computer” should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Both groups were required to give four reasons for their recommendation.
The men's group decided that computer should definitely be of the feminine gender (“la computer”), because:
- No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
- The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
- Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for possible later retrieval;
- As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine (“le computer”) because:
- In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
- They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
- They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem;
- As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
The Women won.
CALIFORNIA BATTLES ONSLAUGHT OF WILDFIRES WITH HELP FROM MUTUAL AID: ‘MORE RESOURCES THAN REST OF US COMBINED’
by Julie Cart
On the surface, fighting wildfires doesn’t appear to require delicacy or nuance. Fire bosses speak in the language of war: weapons, attack, suppression, control.
But to effectively manage a wildfire is to engage in an intricate game of multi-dimensional chess: moving firefighters and equipment where they are most needed or where they are predicted to be required, then coaxing and caring for these resources so that they can continue to be used and moved around a fiery board.
Take the Park Fire, which is blazing through Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama counties, already consuming about 415,000 acres. Now burning for two weeks, it’s the fourth largest fire in California history.
It’s a difficult fire to manage because of the steep, remote terrain, its early start in the season and the nearly 30,000 other wildfires around the country this year that have been gobbling up firefighters and equipment.
“Some people might ask, ‘Are there enough resources in California?’,” Cal Fire Chief Joe Tyler said during a news conference last week from the Borel Fire in Kern County. A fire chief’s standard response is ‘Yes, but we could use more.’ Thanks to mutual aid, help is here and more is coming from around the state, nation and world, Tyler said.
As Cal Fire wrestles with long shifts, stressful conditions, sizzling heatwaves and budget restraints, California’s statewide mutual aid pact and reciprocal assistance from crews across the U.S. and other nations are critical to ensuring there’s enough firefighters to battle its intensifying wildfires.
California “is very successful at handling its incidents” with its own platoons of firefighters and specially-equipped fleets of aircraft, said Sean Peterson, manager of the federal government’s National Interagency Coordination Center, which triages the nation’s large fires by deciding where to send reinforcements. “They have more resources, with state and federal cooperators, than the rest of the U.S. combined.”
At the Park Fire, a dusty parking lot at the Silver Dollar Fairground near Chico is crammed with red, yellow and green fire engines and crew trucks emblazoned with the logo of the agency that sent them.
Jeff Whitehouse, an engineer with the Ventura County Fire Department, sat in his fire engine on a recent day, with the air conditioning blasting against the 100-degree-plus temperatures at the Park Fire command post.
He had been on the fire for a week and, after working shifts of 24 hours on and 24 hours off, he said his priorities are sharply focused: “Hydrate, eat and sleep,” Whitehouse said. “On days off, after I get myself squared away, I don’t have trouble sleeping. Then it’s back at it.”
Emiliano Lopez, a firefighter from the Riverside County Fire Department, said he hasn’t had a bad day yet, that he’s managing the heat, takes time to rest and tries to take breaks when he can.
State officials say implementing a shortened 66-hour workweek — down from 72 hours — and a plan to phase in more firefighters over five years will take some of the stress off overworked Cal Fire firefighters. For wildfires, state crews stay as needed, generally working 14 to 21 days before they are rotated out.
“Our focus is on getting the health welfare and rest time,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Acuna. “It used to be that the large incidents were so infrequent that you’d get to go home for a week. We have made a more concerted effort to make those 21-day cycles a reality and allow people more time at home.”
Cal Fire would not allow its firefighters at the Park Fire to be interviewed by CalMatters.
The fire is so vast that the fairground is one of two incident command posts established to better stage the nearly 6,600 personnel on the fire.
According to Chris Hardy, Cal Fire’s deputy chief of command and control, federal fire crews from the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service are deployed on California fires.
Hand crews from the California Conservation Corps and the National Guard are working firelines. The state Office of Emergency Services assigned hundreds of engines from local jurisdictions to join the fight.
Outside of California, help is coming from all points of the compass. Texas dispatched 25 engines, Utah sent engines and water tenders and Nevada deployed an engine. A fire engine from North Dakota is making its way to the state. A cadre of fire supervisors from Florida, Arkansas and Oregon are working California fires.
And a group from the New York City Fire Department is assisting with a complex of fires in the Sequoia National Forest.
Two waves of Australian firefighters — whose extensive experience and familiarity with California fires is highly prized — are expected to arrive this week. Canada, a reliable partner, is enduring its own fire assault and regrets it cannot help.
“I got calls from governors on the East Coast who were willing to send help,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “That’s a hell of a thing.”
It’s a two-way assistance channel: Despite its already severe fire year — with almost four times more acreage burned so far than the average for this time of year — California already has sent crews to Oregon and Texas, state officials said.
A Nationwide Level 5 alert — The Highest
Tyler praised California’s mutual aid system for its ability to marshall resources from cooperating agencies quickly. The agreements are pledges that when calls for help come in from another agency within California, fire departments will answer if they can.
The state’s overall fire response is bifurcated, with north and south operations centers set up to more nimbly respond to fires in each region.
With nearly 4,900 fires in California so far this year, and more sparking every day, the system’s limits are being tested.
“We recognize the need to order additional resources,” Tyler said. “We continue to reach out and ask for resources across the U.S.”
Some of those requests are sent to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, where Peterson oversees the daily national fire situation report, making decisions on where to send crews, engines and planes.
With the U.S. now on Preparedness Level 5, the highest, it’s a sobering outlook. It’s only the fourth time in 20 years that the alert level has been reached so early in the summer.
For those requesting assistance, and for those sending it, it’s starting to be everything, everywhere, all at once.
“All of our western geographic areas are ordering resources,” Peterson said. “When I came in at 7 o’clock today, we already had 800 orders sitting here. No large fire is going to get every resource they ask for right now. We are almost fully committed with our resources.”
Peterson, who was born in Redding and grew up in Paradise, scene of California’s most-deadly fire, is a third-generation firefighter who used to work for Cal Fire before joining the U.S. Forest Service.
As the chessmaster responsible for moving much of the nation’s firefighting pieces, Peterson said the current challenge is “we don’t have people to send. It’s a balancing act, it can be a chess game. It’s a game we have been playing for several decades.”
Newsom said last week that “a lot of mutual aid is being stretched to West-wide fires,” acknowledging that California is not always the top national priority.
“We haven’t skimped on staffing, we have a record number of personnel. When I got here as governor we had 6,700 personnel at Cal Fire. Today, more than 9,700 men and women work at Cal Fire,” Newsom said at a news conference.
Rest “Is Paramount” For Hotshots, State Crews
The Forest Service has adjusted, too. The standard staffing on its Hotshot crews in recent years has expanded to 25. These highly-trained crews are often positioned at the most dangerous parts of fires. With at least 18 members required to deploy, a firefighter who needs to stand down can do so without affecting the functionality of the crew.
The Park Fire, stubborn and dangerous, has grown into a “campaign fire,” an informal designation that acknowledges it’s a blaze likely to be around for some time. The million-acre August Complex fire in 2020 burned in seven Northern California counties for nearly three months.
On a fireline, that translates into days and nights that blur. Sixteen-hour shifts or longer are not uncommon. Already tired crews settle into a rhythm of hours on the fire followed by a handful of hours to shower, eat and, critically, sleep.
“Getting the crew sufficient rest is paramount for me once we are off the fireline,” said Dan Mallia, superintendent for the Redding Hot Shots, an elite Forest Service team that worked the Park Fire.
He said the fire service has a better understanding of the link between sleep and maintaining physical and mental health. To that end, some crews sleep in specially retrofitted trailers at the incident command post, others, such as Cal Fire, stay in local hotels.
But fire camps, which can be loud, bustling places with round-the-clock lights and noise, are not ideal places to rest. Mallia said after decades of fighting fires in remote places in California, “I know all the hidey-holes. It needs to be quiet and it needs to be dark. We find a campsite, put a sleeping pad down and get in our bags. I’ve slept in hundreds of high school gyms.”
Veteran firefighters joke about being able to sleep standing up. Talking this week while waiting for his team to be assigned, Mallia said the crew was in trucks, ready to go. “I guarantee you they are catnapping,” he said.
‘Can I Pet Your Dog?’
Fire bosses now understand that rest and time away from the fireline are critical to maintaining the ability of crews to stay at work, and to mentally stay on the job. With firefighters facing months of racing from fire to fire, officials employ anything that can reduce the strain of an already-stressful job.
Ember, a cheerful yellow labrador, is one such tool. Richard Alamo is her handler, and as he strides through the sprawling camp he is greeted with “Can I pet your dog?,” exactly the reaction he’s looking for.
Alamo, a captain with the Sacramento Fire Department, employs Ember and her ever-swishing tail, as a therapy dog to allow firefighters to decompress by petting and playing with the dog, a small moment of normalcy in a frenetic place.
“They’re working long hours. They’re waiting to see some of the devastation,” he said. “And so when you come up they’re all smiles. We’re making a huge impact.
“She has a calming nature and she just loves people,” Alamo said, stroking the dog’s head. “It’s amazing to see her seek out certain people who might be stressed or having some type of emotion, and she’ll provide a little nudge, then position herself right in front of them so that they can pet her. Sometimes there’s no conversation that needs to be had. Just her simply going up to that person and saying, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ “
Those moments of decompression are now part of the state’s overall fire strategy. Tyler has said that attending to the mental health of his employees is a top priority, amid what some state officials have described as a crisis of PTSD and suicide.
The department has a team of peer support counselors who travel to fire stations and set up in trailers on large fires, with an open-door policy for anyone working the fire to talk.
The frequency and intensity of fires now leaves little down time, on a fire or after, because they might be quickly redeployed.
It’s a never-ending chess game.
“It has the potential to be a very long fire season,” Peterson said. “It does give us pause, yes it does.”
(CalMatters.org)
After the First World War, Arthur Fellig, self-insistently known as Weegee the Famous, captured images of New Yorkers—especially those caught up in sudden calamities of crime and fire. Weegee got to the nighttime action so fast that he developed (and encouraged) a reputation for being psychic. His frantic pace was actually a matter of economic and temperamental need; no matter how fast he might be on his feet, his job required a lot of waiting around between catastrophes, and car-wreck pictures paid only $2.50 apiece. Read about the outlandish street photographer’s career, and see a collection of his gritty images from the 1930s to the 1950s: http://nyer.cm/mMIXb3J
AN ELDERLY ITALIAN MAN lay dying in his bed. While suffering the agonies of impending death, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite Italian anisette sprinkle cookies wafting up the stairs.
He gathered his remaining strength, and lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort, gripping the railing with both hands, he crawled downstairs.
With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen.
Where if not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven, for there, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite anisette sprinkled cookies. Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted Italian wife of 60 years, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?
Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself towards the table, landing on his knees in a crumpled posture. His parched lips parted, the wondrous taste of the cookie was already in his mouth, seemingly bringing him back to life. The aged and withered hand trembled on its way to a cookie at the edge of the table, when it was suddenly SMACKED! with a spatula by his wife…
“Back off!” she said, “They're for the funeral.”
WHAT’S IN A WORD: WEIRD?
Tim Walz, the Governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harris’s running mate, gave new meaning to an old word when he called Trump and Co, “weird.” Leave it to a high school teacher and a football coach to come up with that word to describe Senator JD Vance and the creepy Republicans who lie, cheat, steal, and who would turn American-style democracy into an authoritarian state. “Weird” must have been a word that Walz heard when he taught high school and aimed to keep the cafeteria in some sort of order during lunchtime. It’s the sort of word that high schoolers would use to designate classmates who were over the line, crazy, and, well just plain “weird,” like writing the word “fuck” on their foreheads and going out on the football field without any clothes. I have never thought of myself as “weird,” though I did call myself a “freak” in the Sixties, as a way to distinguish myself from hippies. To be a freak was a compliment in some countercultural circles; it designated someone who didn’t fit-in to the American scheme of things, and the cultural norms, but who didn’t tie his or her identity to Tie-dye T-shirts, long hair and a vocabulary punctuated by words and phrases like “groovy,” and “dig.” JD Vance is definitely a weirdo in my book, a kind of throwback to the racist, homophobic past that once threatened to dominate much of American society and that threatens to rear its ugly head once again and enforce rightwing conformity. I say let’s not vote for Trump and Vance; keep the weirdos out of the White House and off the levers of power.
(Jonah Raskin)
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Kamala Harris was proclaimed the winner of the DNC election, with 99% of the vote.
99%? She was the only person on the ballot, and only delegates were allowed to vote. Shouldn’t that be 100%? Maybe they thought 99% sounded more legit.
In other news, the Democrats and the media are still telling us that the Venezuela election was unfair and rigged.
THE CRYBABY WHITE PROBLEM
Rob Anderson: My conclusion from the above: That 50% of Republicans are delusional, but then that's also why they are Republicans in the first place.
GOP ATTACKS WALZ AS ‘TAMPON TIM,’ ‘STOLEN VALOR GARBAGE’ AND MORE. A FACT-CHECK
by Molly Burke & Joe Garofoli
Republicans are trying to define Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz as he’s being introduced to a country where most voters don’t know much about the Minnesota governor and six-term House member.
Their approach is to throw a lot of attacks into the ether and see what sticks. Their early salvos are a mixed bag: Walz is “a San Francisco liberal.” He allowed “rioters to burn down the streets of Minneapolis,” in 2020 after the city’s police killed George Floyd. He ducked out early on his military service. And he is “Tampon Tim.”
Some of the attacks are exaggerated, erroneous or reincarnated from previous campaigns against Walz, 60. But Walz will have to provide more in-depth answers to others in which the record is foggier.
Here are a few of the early attacks:
Claim: Republicans call Walz “Tampon Tim,” over his support of a law requiring pads and tampons to be placed in all school bathrooms, including men’s. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s presidential campaign, called the law “a threat to women’s health” on Fox News Tuesday morning.
Context: The law was celebrated by many organizations in Minnesota as a step to ending “period poverty” and supporting transgender students, at a cost of about $2 per student.
California enacted a similar law in 2021 requiring that schools that serve grades 6 through 12 provide free menstrual products in all women’s and gender-neutral bathrooms, as well as in at least one men’s bathroom. The act also requires schools to notify students of their right to complimentary menstrual products.
Leavitt was trying to tap into the conservative belief that measures supportive of transgender rights are dangerous or harmful to women.
The Trump-Vance ticket has leaned into anti-trans rhetoric, often highlighting its support of limiting trans children’s abilities to transition or use preferred pronouns without parental input.
Fact-check: Walz signed the law, which went into effect at the start of the year, mandating schools provide free menstrual products for “all menstruating students” in grades 4 through 12. Republican state lawmakers fought to amend the language to call for the tampons and pads to be provided only in women’s restrooms, but failed to get support to add the language to the act.
Claim: Walz abandoned his enlistment early from the Army National Guard. Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, called Walz “stolen valor garbage” Wednesday in Michigan.
Vance is amplifying a charge made by former Minnesota State Sen. Scott Jensen, who lost the gubernatorial race to Walz in 2022. In that race, Jensen accused Walz of leaving his battalion just before it was deployed to Iraq, saying Walz “failed to lead and ran from his duty.”
Context: The claims were fueled by an open letter posted on Facebook in 2018 by Thomas Behrends, another retired Command Sergeant Major in the National Guard. Behrends claimed that Walz quit early after reenlisting and misled his battalion on whether he would be joining on a mission to Iraq.
“We all do what we can. I'm proud I did 24 years,” Walz said to The Star Tribune at the time. “I have an honorable record.”
The Star Tribune reported that Joseph Eustice, a veteran who led the same battalion as Walz, said that the politician “fulfilled his duty” to the Minnesota National Guard before he left in 2005. “He was a great soldier,” Eustice told the newspaper. “When he chose to leave, he had every right to leave.”
Fact-check: Walz, who served in the Minnesota National Guard since 1981, was honorably discharged in 2005 after retiring to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. The governor responded to tornadoes, was part of flood fights and spent time on active duty in Italy while in the National Guard, according to the Harris campaign. Walz had served as a Command Sergeant Major before retirement, but reverted to a master sergeant after not completing required coursework before his exit. Walz is the highest-ranking enlisted man to ever serve in Congress.
Claim: Walz is “the Bernie Sanders of Congress.”
Former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield made that claim, perhaps overlooking that independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic socialist, is still in Congress. Vance piled on, saying “Kamala Harris is running as a San Francisco liberal. She has governed as a San Francisco liberal, and she's chosen a running mate who will be a San Francisco-style liberal."
Context: Republicans try to portray every Democratic opponent as an uber-lefty. They've spent tens of millions of dollars trying to tie various Democrats to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, of San Francisco, over the years. Republicans and their allies spent $50 million on anti-Pelosi ads in the 2022 cycle and $45 million in 2020, according to Ad Impact, a media analysis firm. It wasn’t that effective. Democrats held the House in 2020 and outperformed expectations in 2022 when Republicans narrowly took back the House.
Fact-check: Walz’s record in Congress was close to the center of the people he served with, according to an analysis by GovTrack. He mainly focused on veterans issues, agriculture and employment issues.
He took more of a turn to the left after being elected governor in 2018. He signed legislation codifying abortion rights into the state constitution and bills that would ban conversion practices and that would block out-of-state subpoenas aimed at forcing transgender kids seeking gender-affirming therapy back to anti-trans rights states.
But even Pelosi doesn’t think he’s that far left. “To characterize him as left is so unreal,” Pelosi told MSNBC this week. “He’s right down the middle. He’s a heartland-of-America Democrat.”
Claim: Vance said Walz “allowed rioters to burn down the streets of Minneapolis,” during 2020 protests after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd.
Context: Vance was referring to how critics have said Walz’s response was too slow to civil unrest following Floyd’s murder. A state report found that 500 businesses and buildings— including Minneapolis’ Third Precinct police station—burned, as part of $500 million in property damage done statewide.
However, civil rights advocates praised Walz, in particular for appointing Attorney General Keith Ellison to prosecute Floyd’s killer, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Ben Crump, the attorney for Floyd’s family, praised Walz saying he “gained personal respect for him in the aftermath of George Floyd's death,” and admired how he “used his position to advocate for passage of police reform legislation.”
When asked about his response to the riots this month, Walz said, “Decisions were made in a situation that is what it is. And I simply believe that we tried to do the best we can in each of those.”
Fact check: The primary responsibility for protecting the city belonged to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. But when the initial protests intensified quickly, Frey and the city’s police department asked for help from the state National Guard, which Walz controls. Frey said that Walz hesitated and did not take his requests seriously until it was too late. Walz countered that the city’s response was “an abject failure,” and its requests for help were too vague. Walz eventually sent 7,000 National Guard members to the Twin Cities, but that was 18 hours after Frey’s request.
A report reviewing the response, written by Republican state senators, found that Frey and Walz “identified with the causes promoted by the demonstrators, causing them to lose sight of their responsibility to protect the public from criminal acts committed during the riots.” The report said, if Walz “had acted in a decisive manner by activating the Minnesota National Guard when requested, the riots would have been brought under control much faster.”
But even then-President Donald Trump praised Walz’s response, telling a group of governors days later, “I fully agree with the way he handled it the last couple of days. I was very happy with the last couple of days, Tim…You called up big numbers and the big numbers knocked them out so fast it was like bowling pins."
(SF Chronicle)
THE UNDEMOCRATIC REALITY OF CAPITALISM
by Richard Wolff
Fans of capitalism like to say it is democratic or that it supports democracy. Some have stretched language so far as to literally equate capitalism with democracy, using the terms interchangeably. No matter how many times that is repeated, it is simply not true and never was. Indeed, it is much more accurate to say that capitalism and democracy are opposites. To see why, you have only to look at capitalism as a production system where employees enter into a relationship with employers, where a few people are the boss, and most people simply work doing what they are told to do. That relationship is not democratic; it is autocratic.
When you cross the threshold into a workplace (e.g., a factory, an office, or a store), you leave whatever democracy might exist outside. You enter a workplace from which democracy is excluded. Are the majority—the employees—making the decisions that affect their lives? The answer is an unambiguous no. Whoever runs the enterprise in a capitalist system (owner[s] or a board of directors) makes all the key decisions: what the enterprise produces, what technology it uses, where production takes place, and what to do with enterprise profits. The employees are excluded from making those decisions but must live with the consequences, which affect them deeply. The employees must either accept the effects of their employers’ decisions or quit their jobs to work somewhere else (most likely organized in the same undemocratic way).
The employer is an autocrat within a capitalist enterprise, like a king in a monarchy. Over the past few centuries, monarchies were largely “overthrown” and replaced by representative, electoral “democracies.” But kings remained. They merely changed their location and their titles. They moved from political positions in government to economic positions inside capitalist enterprises. Instead of kings, they are called bosses or owners or CEOs. There they sit, atop the capitalist enterprise, exercising many king-like powers, unaccountable to those over whom they reign.
Democracy has been kept out of capitalist enterprise for centuries. Many other institutions in societies where capitalist enterprises prevail—government agencies, universities and colleges, religions, and charities—are equally autocratic. Their internal relationships often copy or mirror the employer/employee relationship inside capitalist enterprises. Those institutions try thereby to “function in a businesslike manner.”
The anti-democratic organization of capitalist firms also conveys to employees that their input is not genuinely welcomed or sought by their bosses. Employees thus mostly resign themselves to their powerless position relative to the CEO at their workplace. They also expect the same in their relationships with political leaders, the CEOs’ counterparts in government. Their inability to participate in running their workplaces trains citizens to presume and accept the same in relation to running their residential communities. Employers become top political officials (and vice versa) in part because they are used to being “in charge.” Political parties and government bureaucracies mirror capitalist enterprises by being run autocratically while constantly describing themselves as democratic.
Most adults experience working at least eight hours for five or more days per week in capitalist workplaces, under the power and authority of their employer. The undemocratic reality of the capitalist workplace leaves its complex, multilayered impacts on all who collaborate there, part time and full time. Capitalism’s problem with democracy—that the two basically contradict one another—shapes many people’s lives. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Walton family (descendants of Walmart’s founder), along with a handful of other major shareholders, decide how to spend hundreds of billions. The decisions of a few hundred billionaires bring economic development, industries, and enterprises to some regions and lead to the economic decline of other regions. The many billions of people affected by those spending decisions are excluded from participating in making them. Those countless people lack the economic and social power wielded by a tiny, unelected, obscenely wealthy minority of people. That is the opposite of democracy.
Employers as a class, often led by major shareholders and the CEOs they enrich, also use their wealth to buy (they would prefer to say “donate” to) political parties, candidates, and campaigns. The rich have always understood that universal or even widespread suffrage risks a nonwealthy majority voting to undo society’s wealth inequality. So, the rich seek control of existing forms of democracy to make sure they do not become a real democracy in the sense of enabling the employee majority to outvote the employer minority.
The enormous surpluses appropriated by “big business” employers—usually corporations—allow them to reward their upper-level executives lavishly. These executives, technically also “employees,” use corporate wealth and power to influence politics. Their goals are to reproduce the capitalist system and thus the favors and rewards it gives them. Capitalists and their top employees make the political system depend on their money more than it depends on the people’s votes.
How does capitalism make the major political parties and candidates dependent on donations from employers and the rich? Politicians need vast sums of money to win by dominating the media as part of costly campaigns. They find willing donors by supporting policies that benefit capitalism as a whole, or else particular industries, regions, and enterprises. Sometimes, the donors find the politicians. Employers hire lobbyists—people who work full time, all year round, to influence the candidates that get elected. Employers fund “think tanks” to produce and spread reports on every current social issue. The purpose of those reports is to build general support for what the funders want. In these and other ways, employers and those they enrich shape the political system to work for them.
Most employees have no comparable wealth or power. To exert real political power requires massive organization to activate, combine, and mobilize employees so their numbers can add up to real strength. That happens rarely and with great difficulty. Moreover, in the U.S., the political system has been shaped over the decades to leave only two major parties. Both of them loudly and proudlyendorse and support capitalism. They collaborate to make it very difficult for any third party to gain a foothold, and for any anti-capitalist political party to emerge. The U.S. endlessly repeats its commitment to maximum freedom of choice for its citizens, but it excludes political parties from that commitment.
Democracy is about “one person, one vote”—the notion that we all have an equal say in the decisions that affect us. That is not what we have now. Going into a voting booth once or twice a year and picking a candidate is a very different level of influence than that of the Rockefeller family or George Soros. When they want to influence people, they use their money. That’s not democracy.
In capitalism, democracy is unacceptable because it threatens the unequally distributed wealth of the minority with a majority vote. With or without formal institutions of democracy (such as elections with universal suffrage), capitalism undermines genuine democracy because employers control production, surplus value, and that surplus value’s distributions. For capitalism’s leaders, democracy is what they say, not what they do.
(This adapted excerpt from Richard D. Wolff’s book Understanding Capitalism (Democracy at Work, 2024) was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Richard Wolff is the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens. He is founder of Democracy at Work. CounterPunch.org)
AMERICAN STASI: TULSI GABBARD CONFIRMS "QUIET SKIES" NIGHTMARE
Placed on a terror watch list, the former Hawaii congresswoman and her husband were tailed by Air Marshals and bomb dogs. "Unconstitutional on every level," she says. "And I'm not the only one."
by Matt Taibbi
Tuesday night, while self-styled Democratic nominee Kamala Harris pledged to defend “freedom, compassion, and the rule of law” to cheers in Philadelphia, Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard described being tracked by teams of government agents in a surveillance regime more reminiscent of East Germany than a free country. Whistleblowing Air Marshals told Uncover DC Gabbard was singled out as a terror threat under the so-called “Quiet Skies” program, and the former presidential candidate says she noticed.
“The whistleblowers’ account matches my experience,” says Gabbard. “Everything lines up to the day.”
This story began two weeks ago, when the former Hawaii congresswoman returned home after a short trip abroad. In airport after airport, she and her husband Abraham Williams encountered obstacles. First on a flight from Rome to Dallas, then a connecting flight to Austin, and later on different flights for both to cities like Nashville, Orlando, and Atlanta, their boarding passes were marked with the “SSSS” designation, which stands for “Secondary Security Screening Selection.” The “Quad-S” marker is often a sign the traveler has been put on a threat list, and Gabbard and Williams were forced into extensive “random” searches lasting as long as 45 minutes.
“It happened every time I boarded,” says Gabbard. The Iraq war veteran and current Army reservist tends to pack light, but no matter.
“I’ve got a couple of blazers in there, and they’re squeezing every inch of the entire collar, every inch of the sleeves, every inch of the edging of the blazers,” she says. “They’re squeezing or padding down underwear, bras, workout clothes, every inch of every piece of clothing.” Agents unzipped the lining inside the roller board of her suitcase, patting down every inch inside the liner. Gabbard was asked to take every piece of electronics out and turn each on, including her military phone and computer.
That was the other strange thing. “I use my military ID to get through security sometimes,” says Gabbard, who among other things traveled to her reservist base in Oklahoma during this period. Once, she was unable to get through security with military ID. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent saw the “SSSS” marker. “The TSA agent said, ‘Why are you Quad-S? You’re in the military,’” explains Gabbard. “And I said, ‘That’s exactly what I’m wondering.’
Gabbard goes on: “Then I said, ‘The only thing I can think of is, I work in politics.’ And he said, oh.”
The agent told her he’d encountered supporters of a certain former president who’d had no issues traveling before, but were now “marked quad-S every time they traveled.” Gabbard shrugged and slogged through, still encountering extra security. At one flight, she says, there were “at least six TSA agents doing additional screening,” along with canine support. “There were dogs in Dallas when we got there, dogs at a couple of the gates.”
She called a colleague, who told her: these things happen, don’t worry. “So I thought, ‘Maybe I’m just being paranoid,’” Gabbard says. Then she saw this past Sunday’s report in Uncover DC, a site edited by the well-known Twitter writer Tracy Beanz. Uncover interviewed Sonya LaBosco, the Executive Director of the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC), an advocacy association for Federal Air Marshals. Disclosing Gabbard had been placed on a domestic terror watch list, the former Marshal LaBosco told a disturbing story:
According to LaBosco… Gabbard is unaware she has two Explosive Detection Canine Teams, one Transportation Security Specialist (explosives), one plainclothes TSA Supervisor, and three Federal Air Marshals on every flight she boards.
Uncover DC said Gabbard was initially placed on the list on July 23rd, and that trios of Air Marshals first began following her on flights on July 25th. As Racket would learn, surveillance was conducted on at least eight flights, with different three-Marshal teams for each flight, part of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) “Quiet Skies” regimen that can literally surround people with human watchers. There are “potentially 15 or more TSA uniformed and plain clothes” at a gate for such assignments, LaBosco told Racket. The story about Gabbard was surfaced by two TSA whistleblowers, including one detailed to follow her. When Gabbard read this, she felt a shock of recognition.
“When I saw that, I thought, ‘Wow, okay. So everything I was experiencing was exactly what I feared was going on,’” she says.
Though clearly outraged, Gabbard stresses the important part of her story isn’t any inconvenience or insult she’s gone through.
“This is not a woe-is-me situation,” she explains. Instead, “it’s bringing to the forefront… how brazen the political retaliation and abuse of power continues to be under the Biden-Harris administration.”
The former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii’s 2nd district is far from the first American to be placed under physical surveillance as a “domestic terrorist” threat in post-9/11 America. Especially since January 6th, 2021, when the Quiet Skies program expanded to accommodate a broad effort to track people who were at the Capitol, Americans following Americans on airplanes is no longer uncommon, though the public largely has no idea of the scale of this activity.
However, Gabbard is by far the highest-profile figure to be caught up in this surveillance web. As a war veteran with no connection to J6 or any other known offense, her appearance on a terror watch list is striking, and symbolic of the way politicians and intelligence officials have turned the machinery of the War on Terror inward in the last decade. This aspect of the story galls Gabbard the most.
“I enlisted because of the terrorist attack on 9/11,” Gabbard says. “I was like a lot of Americans. We enlisted to ensure the safety, security, and freedom of the American people and go after the terrorists who attacked us. And so now to have confirmation — I guarantee there are other men and women in uniform or veterans now being targeted.
“I can’t think of a word that adequately captures how I feel. The closest I can think of is the deepest sense of betrayal.” She pauses. “It cuts to the core.”
Gabbard pointed to this summer’s release of documents from the ill-fated “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group,” an advisory panel led by former CIA chief John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence John Clapper. Litigation filed on behalf of former Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell led to the disbanding of the group, and the production of documents identifying Trump supporters, people “in the military,” or “religious” as “indicators for extremism or terrorism.” Gabbard says this is an indication that the intelligence community is targeting people of “many stripes,” but “especially so those who still wear the uniform or who have worn the uniform.”
Neither Gabbard nor, apparently, the whistleblowing Marshals know why the former congresswoman would be on a terror watch list. Gabbard has been a persistent, pointed critic of politicians in the current administration. The day before her reported placement on the TSA list, Gabbard appeared on the Ingraham Angle and criticized the “proxy war” in Ukraine, saying the administration was selling the public “crap” excuses for expanding its military commitment, with intent to turn Ukraine into “another Afghanistan.” A debate clash in the 2020 primary was also a factor in ending Harris’ run that year, featuring the viral line: “She put over 1500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when asked if she ever smoked.”
Gabbard’s account squares with LaBosco’s description of how Quiet Skies works. Surveillance, LaBosco says, is “every flight, every leg. If she has three legs that day, it’ll be nine Air Marshals. So if she does three flights in a day, she’ll have a set of Air Marshals on every one of her flights.” As for canine teams, “They maneuver over to the gate area. You will have plainclothes TSA officers, you will have uniformed TSA officers and the canine teams will be running in the gate area. They’ll have them floating around to try to pick up a scent of something.” LaBosco says these dogs are only trained for explosives, not narcotics.
What now? Gabbard, who has spoken to at least one of the whistleblowers, is reviewing possible courses of action, contacting former congressional colleagues about a possible Hill investigation. In a seemingly related matter, Empower Oversight — the firm that represented FBI whistleblowers Steve Friend and Marcus Allen as well as IRS special agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler in the Hunter Biden case — sent a letter Monday night to Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari demanding an immediate investigation in the Gabbard case. The firm represented an Air Marshal in another ugly Quiet Skies case two years earlier (see below), and though Cuffari’s IG office promised in January 2023 to investigate, there’s no evidence it ever did, making the Gabbard story more troubling.
Worse, Empower today says it’s learned that the TSA has already initiated an investigation to identify the two TSA whistleblowers who leaked “sensitive security information” in Gabbard’s case. The firm sent another letter to the IG this morning asking for help in stopping retaliation before it begins. “A retaliatory investigation that hunts for whistleblowers in order to intimidate them into silence is exactly the wrong step for the agency to take,” the firm wrote, adding that the TSA “should be investigating the abuses on which [Marshals] are blowing the whistle.” The TSA has not commented for this article.
“Quiet Skies” is a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program for tracking “travelers who may present an elevated risk,” as well as “unknown or partially known terrorists.” It’s a signature initiative for a new vision of the federal enforcement state that, as covered in this space before, moved after 9/11 from an emphasis on making cases and building prosecutions to endless intelligence-gathering as well as “disruption” and “prevention.” In a key moment, the FBI in 2008 put out a new “baseline collection plan,” which urged agents to come with plans to “disrupt” potential “acts of violence” or other “criminal behavior.” Agents began getting credit for an internal metric called “disruptions,” which allowed them to rise without records of prosecutions or even arrests.
Because most investigations under this new system will never lead to court, agents do not have to worry about meeting probable cause standards or justifying surveillance. The behaviors may be technically permitted, even if some would consider them unconstitutional.
“It all comes under the heading of the Department of Pre-Crime,” adds Empower attorney Jason Foster, longtime Chief Investigative Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “So it’s ‘We don’t have to prove anything. We’re not going to court. We’re just following people.’”
In the wake of 9/11 programs like the TSA’s “No Fly List” and the multi-agency Terrorist Screening Center regularly made the news as the focus of controversies, with criticism often coming from Democrats. In an incident that sounds similar but in fact underscores the expansion of the scope of such programs, the late Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy was prevented from boarding planes on five occasions in 2004, apparently because a suspected terrorist was using “Anthony Kennedy” as an alias. These programs symbolized the Bush-era reflex for wide-scale screening of mostly Muslim suspects, and came to be frowned upon as racist and anachronistic. When a judge in 2019 finally declared the Terrorist Screening Database unconstitutional, voices across the spectrum cheered, “It’s about time.”
Despite the perception that terrorist watchlists are a thing of the past, they’ve actually expanded, with Clear Skies representing an aggressive new generation of watchlisting, which no longer just targets Muslims but ranges of alleged domestic offenders. Though it’s theoretically possible Gabbard’s case will prove a mistaken-identity caper à la Kennedy’s incident (“I can’t imagine what, but they might have an excuse,” a Republican House aide counseled), LaBosco insists whistleblowers waited to make sure it wasn’t an “anomaly” before coming forward. “We thought, ‘Maybe this was a mistake,’” she says. “But then, second flight, third flight… no, this is no mistake.”
Quiet Skies eats up an astonishing amount of resources: an Inspector General’s report about the program in 2019 “identified $394 million in funds that could be put to better use,” meaning nearly half the Air Marshals’ budget was being wasted. LaBosco says this is no surprise. “Think about the overtime, the vouchers, the overnight travel, the per diems. Think of all the wasted resources that we so desperately need right now… We’re not going to find a terrorist following Tulsi Gabbard. We’re not even looking for the bad guys anymore.”
Air Marshals have complained more than once about being asked to spy on Americans. The existence of the program was first exposed on July 28, 2018, when Boston Globe writer Jana Winter published an expose: “Welcome to the Quiet Skies.” The Globe report said 30 or more people were followed every day by Air Marshals, some of whom told the paper they worried the program “may be unconstitutional.”
The Globe story led to a July 30th letter Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey to TSA Administrator David Pekoske, asking about reports that the TSA was “monitoring seemingly innocuous behavior such as whether a person slept on the plane, used the bathroom, or obtained a rental car.” The letter was followed by a remarkable (if mostly unattended) hearing in which Markey questioned Pekoske in September 2018.
When Markey asked if it were true that “innocent” Americans not suspected of crimes were followed under Quiet Skies, Pekoske deflected, then said finally, “I wouldn’t use the term ‘innocent.’” The hearing also disclosed that “thousands” of Americans were in the program. Pekoske later conceded Quiet Skies hadn’t led to a single arrest, nor had it foiled any plots, a fact that is apparently still true.
Three years later in July 2021, in a story out of a Philip K. Dick novel, a Senior Federal Air Marshal with 27 years of experience discovered that his wife had been labeled a “domestic terrorist.” She was reportedly targeted for “Special Mission Coverage” for having attended the January 6th speech by Donald Trump at the Capitol, which she did not enter. When the Marshal told his supervisor, he was advised to “let it play out” as “it was not our investigation.”
Eventually, the Marshal turned to aforementioned whistleblower firm Empower Oversight, which helped him file a protected disclosure with the Office of Special Counsel. The OSC on July 8, 2021 wrote back, declining to refer the matter for investigation to the Inspector General’s office. Empower then wrote directly to the Inspector General’s office, which to date has “provided no public accounting of what it has done.” The Marshal did manage to work with the FBI to have his wife’s name removed from the terror watchlist, though this did not slow the program.
Quite the contrary, according to LaBosco, who says the program has grown “off the charts,” especially since January 6th. “They’re watching 8-year-old children. They’re following 17-year-old cheerleaders that were traveling for cheer competitions, people who lost their legs in combat… TSA is out of control against the American people.”
Gabbard’s recent political career has already been marked by bizarre attacks and harassment. A feature describing her as a favorite of the Putin government was timed to the launch of her 2020 presidential campaign, and Hillary Clinton made waves by denouncing her as a Russian “asset.” After this episode, she intends to fight back. “I’m going to be encouraging former colleagues of mine in Congress who I know are concerned about this to exercise their oversight authorities,” she says.
“These actions are those of a tyrannical dictator. There’s no other way to describe what they’re doing.”
(racket.news)
We had heard of the “New Boonville Hotel” foodie scene back then, probably from the Chron. Sounded intriguing, but nobody’s driving from Crescent City for dinner.
Talent, Oregon is doable, and a small group of us ate at New Sammy’s 2-3 times a year. The venue was a small house with small kitchen from which Charlene sent out great French inspired meals. Vernon handled the wines and they had one other young guy serving. makes it easier to hide the income/wages. Very cult-like vibe. Squeezed into this little house were 5 or 6 small tables which were always full. Nice cash cow.
Bear in mind we didn’t know anything of their sordid Boonville history until I became an AVA subscriber back then.
My friends didn’t want to believe that the nice elderly couple trying to eke out a living in a back country bistro were such assholes.
Anyways, Vernon eventually tried to ramp it up with a new much larger restaurant, which sucked and people quit going. You probably know that it all went up in smoke in Sept 2000 in the epic fire that destroyed much of Talent and Phoenix.
I remember thinking well, he got his finally. Doesn’t do anything for the stiffed Boonville staff.
Also up the hill from the bistro was a trailer with a huge wine cellar packed to the gills with high$ wines–no plonk. He spent 20 minutes showing it off to me.
Up in flames. He could have easily paid back wages with a small percentage of the contents.
.
As I remember, that expensive wine was “taken” (stolen) when the New Boonville owners hightailed it out of Boonville, so you are right, they could have paid staff with the money they could have gotten for the wine. My husband and I and our toddler daughter and another couple, also with a toddler, dined at the New Boonville back in the early 80’s. The service was so slow I quipped that they must have been waiting for the purported chicken in the back to lay an egg. Luckily our toddlers had each other to stay amused, and were well-trained in dining etiquette, but it wasn’t easy keeping them busy for the seeming hours we waited for a simple meal. They did have a garden behind the restaurant where you could wander while you waited. I thought that was pretty cool, but in retrospect it seems obvious they could not have fed their patrons with just the produce from the garden. Reminds me of the scandal over a restaurant on one of the San Juan Islands, run by a chef who got his training at Nome, and was all the rage for his “foraged” “locavore” food (I believe the prix fixe price for one person was $250 before the wine). Turns out it wasn’t locally foraged but was from non-local grocery stores/suppliers. Big brouhaha over that. One of the courses of the meal was one potato chip. People flew in from all over the world to dine there, and it was quite a cash cow for residents’s B&B enterprises. Oh how the diners raved over the food, except the few honest ones who complained they still felt hungry and had to find other fare (a burger?) after the ultimate dining experience.
Correction: that’s Noma not Nome (the name of a restaurant where the above chef worked before becoming the chef on the island). There were also allegations of worker harassment, sexual harassment, and wage fraud. The restaurant business is not what it seems to diners. Behind the scenes is quite different from the extravagant “dining experience'”.
The hypocrisy of the republican party is revealed when they criticize Coach Walz for retiring from military service after 24 years while supporting stupid orange head who paid off a doctor to write a letter about non existent bone spurs so he could avoid service altogether. WTF? Have you no shame?
Orange Man Good, Tampon Tim Bad.
MAGA Marmon
TIm Walz has more character and decency in his thumb than Trump has in his whole body.
I’ll say one more thing, as you seem supremely unaware–go ahead, continue to disrespect and piss-off the women of America. It’s a stupid act and will cost you all the election.
I’m sorry I pissed you off.
MAGA Marmon
+1 Shame? None at all.
And self-certified macho man Vance “served” in Iraq as what we used to call in the marines an “office pinky.”
I guess the question is, did JD Vance ever claim he served in combat? However, he was in Iraq for a year as a combat correspondent.
The definition of combat Correspondent is:
“A war correspondent is a journalist specialized in reporting on wars, often traveling globally to cover conflicts, interview military personnel and civilians, and relay their perspectives.”
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+a+combat+correspondent+marines&client=safari&sca_esv=847412b30e358a21&channel=mac_bm&sxsrf=ADLYWIKtIwrxs2WsSNIVl8KqFkzbibKQZw%3A1723152304926&ei=sDe1ZsaaOM-d0PEP-Ny6wA4&oq=what+is+a%C2%A0combat+correspondent&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiH3doYXQgaXMgYcKgY29tYmF0IGNvcnJlc3BvbmRlbnQqAggCMgsQABiABBixAxiDATIFEAAYgAQyBRAAGIAEMgsQABiABBixAxiDATIFEAAYgAQyCBAAGBYYHhgPMgYQABgWGB4yCxAAGIAEGIYDGIoFMgsQABiABBiGAxiKBTILEAAYgAQYhgMYigVIqkJQAFiQInABeAGQAQCYAXWgAbcHqgEDOS4yuAEByAEA-AEB-AECmAIMoAL7B6gCEcICBxAjGCcY6gLCAhQQABiABBjjBBi0AhjpBBjqAtgBAcICFhAAGAMYtAIY5QIY6gIYjAMYjwHYAQLCAgQQIxgnwgIKEC4YgAQYJxiKBcICExAuGIAEGMcBGCcYigUYjgUYrwHCAgsQABiABBiRAhiKBcICERAuGIAEGLEDGNEDGIMBGMcBwgIKEAAYgAQYQxiKBcICDhAuGIAEGLEDGNEDGMcBwgIOEAAYgAQYsQMYgwEYigXCAgoQIxiABBgnGIoFwgILEAAYgAQYsQMYxwOYAwy6BgYIARABGAG6BgYIAhABGAuSBwQxMC4yoAfKeA&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
Laz
Low Intensity Camping Proposal: Update
Feedback to me today from County PBS: This proposal does not “at this time” include the coastal zone or incorporated areas. The entire rest of the County is included, which is probably over 90-95 percent of the entire area. Again, if you want to send feedback on this issue, do so before Aug. 15.
This includes residential zones for camping sites.
Many folks are now registering their objections to the County PBS regarding this proposal. Here’s a well-taken example:
“It has come to my attention that the Board of Supervisors is entertaining a change to our zoning
laws that would allow “Transient Habitation — Low Intensity Camping” on virtually any
property in the rural portions of our county. This idea should be dropped immediately. The
potential for environmental destruction resulting from such an idea far outweighs any possible
perceived benefit. If for no other reason, I would hope the Board would refuse to open County
rural areas to camping because of the danger of fire. We’ve seen the horrendous effect of fire
throughout California; Mendocino County doesn’t need to repeat the horror of Paradise, CA and
many other small California towns. It would take but a single unattended campfire, a cigarette, a
dragged tow chain, a fire cracker, or an act of arson or simple idiocy to destroy thousands of
acres along with an untold number of homes. Additionally, many rural homes already have
limited water available, campers will only make that situation worse. And where does their
garbage go? Do you really think that it will end up at a disposal site rather than alongside our
roads or dumped down embankments or tossed into streams? And what of the impact to wildlife
due to pollution and/or habitat loss?
The idea of Transient Habitation — Low Intensity Camping is very poorly conceived. The
potential costs far, far, outweigh any assumed benefits. We saw the destruction of our rural areas
due to the heavy influx and development of marijuana farming, legal or otherwise, let’s make
sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen again. If you want to get a sense of the negative side of the
camping proposal, ask the folks along Highway 128 near Philo if they would want uncontrolled
camping in and around their dry grasslands and forests.
I ask you, as an owner of a number of rural properties, do not allow this Transient Habitation
exemption to pass. If the argument above isn’t enough to convince you of the horrendous and
frightening potential, consider the financial effect that multiple lawsuits resulting from a camper-
caused fire will have on our County.”
David Springer
Fort Bragg, CA 95437
Since when do you think the BOS will listen to their constituents?
Fittingly, Taibbi’s long winded idiocies are now featured in something named racket.news
Just witnessed a masterpiece from Steph Curry. What a game. Hail to the Chef! USA!
I’ll be glad when he retires.
MAGA Marmon
I’ll be glad when you _________.
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/08/caitlin-johnstone-kamala-harris-genocide/
If Ms. Genocide wants to keep my vote, she better do a lot better than this! Her performance was pathetic. She sounded a lot like Biden.
She is speaking for the Democratic Party machine, as is the current #1. That is why they sound the same. It is best to ask who really writes the speeches, and who really makes the decisions? Whoever these people are, they know how to choose their candidates, and those candidates had better not think for themselves.
What you stated applies in both parties, and has for decades, which is why I have not voted for a mainstream candidate since 2000. I was hoping she might have been an exception, but, as usual, it appears she has about as much in the way of guts as her predecessors. Enjoy swirling in the toilet bowl as we head to the big treatment plant…possibly somewhere in the sky…
Just returned from a visit to St.Mary of the Angels Catholic Church located directly behind the Royal Motel. On Thursdays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. is the Adoration Holy Hour, with the monstrance (which holds the consecrated host) on the altar. A priest burns incense in the censer, and leads prayers, with the soft response of the congregation filling the church interior. 😇
I like Tim Walz too – how could anybody not? But I wince when he’s called “Coach.” The last important politician granted that honorific was Dennis Hastert of Indiana, the Republican Speaker of the House who tried manfully to bring down Bill Clinton for messing with Monica. IDed as a pedophile in 2007, he resigned hastily and vanished from the political scene. Hastert coached wrestling, which must have given him all kinds of kinky kicks. Walz coached football, and there ain’t nothing so American and clean… But what’s wrong with calling him “Governor?” It’s respectful, accurate and current.
Thanks for the items from the Dylan concert. The editor, an old jock, just wrote that his life was now “in triple overtime.” On his latest record Dylan wrote “I’ve already outlived my life by far.” They’ve both still got it!
My first concert was at the ShoreLine Amphitheater 27 years ago(nineteen hundred and ninety-seven). I caught the “Smokin’ Grooves” tour featuring Erykah Badu, Cypress Hill, Foxy Brown & George Clinton (Slick Willy’s brother I think) and the P. Funk. Like my friend and editor Marilyn I dislike the way society buys tickets for concerts. I enjoyed purchasing tickets from Tower Records and keeping the stubs to reminisce of the events. Now you should not compare the Smokin’ Grooves concert to the Outlaws concert since there was certainly a larger attendance at the Outlaw. Getting out of the Shoreline was wretched, I don’t know what to do but SOMETHING should be done to alleviate congestion for while we where waiting to move our concert going friend Marilyn stated ” What would we do if there was a fire?” to which I thought ” our goose would be cooked.” What powerful Gods I must be traveling with to be so fortunate to see the last remaining member of the “Traveling Wilburys” (Much thanks to the McEwens and me powerful gods) Bobby D. did not disappoint even playing the song “Stella Blue” from my favorite band The “Greatful Dead” which was a band who had made the ShoreLineAmp a secondary home. As for attire of the concert goers just keep slaying my peeps! What a greeeeaaaaat event.
P.S. a towsand tanks to da Friends what included us. : – )
This was an amazing show. I feel very fortunate to have been able to see Bob Dylan. And a surprise visit from Elvin Bishop! I did not recognize any of the songs he played but I love love loved the music. I got to dance!
Driving to the venue, we were met with some traffic. That was to be expected. But upon leaving it took us over an hour to get out of the parking lot. But it was all worth it.
(Comment by Michelle)