Mendocino County Today: Thursday 9/5/2024

Mural | Hot Interior | Blue Whales | Parade Float | Council Candidates | Candidate Parading | Panther Wins | Preserve Tracks | Noyo Harbor | Name Changers | Bee | KZYX Move | Hopland Ashursts | Asking Directions | Left Evolution | Ed Notes | Hitchhiker | Herman Knaesche | Yesterday's Catch | Phoenix Heat | Women's Music | Deer Night | Sako Radio | Missing Husband | Your System | Workers Unite | Dignity Wraiths | Do Something | Last Third | Obnoxious Admiration | Bad Boys | Niner Doubts | Rude Clerk | Gig Workers | Class Fashion | Dysfunctional Democrats | Daddy Watches | Minimum Wage | Waitress Tip | Insecure Bully | Born Fool | Kamala Panache | Secular Talk | More Vegetables | Refusing Surgery | Israeli Injustice | Now & Then | Baking Bread | Shock Therapy | Stoking Politician

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YESTERDAY'S HIGHS: Ukiah 106°, Boonville 104°, Yorkville 101°, Laytonville 101°, Covelo 101°, Fort Bragg 69°, Mendocino 63°, Point Arena 59°

WELL ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES continue in the interior valleys through Friday. A gradual cooling trend is expected to begin this weekend into early next week. A system mid next week could bring a return to wet weather mid next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The fog has returned (in a big way) a day sooner than forecast bringing a warm 55F with fog this Thursday morning on the coast. Morning fog & afternoon clearing is our forecast thru the weekend. The NWS mentions a chance of showers next week, we'll see?

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BLUE WHALES!? [MCN-Announce]

Dobie Dolphin:

I got a message from a woman who said she saw blue whales on Saturday, from a boat 5 miles out from Noyo. "Yes, we do get blues late summers/early fall when the krill is running thick over the canyons offshore. We had more than one report last year and the year before at this same time of year. Keep your binoculars close! It's so good to live in this wonderous place."

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John Gallo:

The worlds largest creature is passing by Fort Bragg right now.  I think.

My ametuer eyes spotted what I think is a Blue Whale and calf (based on spout size only).  They were about a mile off of Jughandle, heading north, at 8:32 AM.

Spout shapes: https://www.oldsaltblog.com/2017/01/thar-blows-identifying-whales-spouts/

If anyone could confirm that would be be cool.  They swim about 5 miles pe hour…

And if anyone has any info on how rare or common this would be.  I realize that there have been a fair amount of Humpbacks this summer, but this spout seemed taller and narrower.

With so many environmental tragedies on our coast like the kelp and the abalone, it is nice to celebrate a few happy stories, like the return of the whales.

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MORE FORT BRAGG LABOR DAY PARADE PHOTOS (Dobie Dolphin)

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A READER WRITES:

The following is meant to be a suggestion for a developing story. A good chunk of it is speculation that I can't really back up but your sources and resources might have more success. You probably already know most of it, anyway, but I hope the AVA will keep on top of this as the election season progresses.

I hope you're paying attention to the current Fort Bragg City Council races. As you know, there are two seats up for election. Lindy Peters is running for re election to the seat he currently holds and there are four other candidates running for both that seat and the seat that will be vacated when Bernie Novell goes to Ukiah.

Two of the candidates seem to have decided to run in tandem. Around town, their signs are often placed next to each other. During the FB Paul Bunyan Days parade, several floats also displayed election posters for both candidates together. It's a smart move, I suppose, as Lindy Peters has the power of incumbency on his side. The tandem pair can plug into each other's constituencies to try and offset that advantage. The other two candidates seem like nice, well meaning people but have no signs out or pr and I'm afraid they're going to get steamrolled.

One of the floats that displayed the posters of the tandem together was the Fort Bragg Forever one. A few years ago, one of them was involved in a City commissioned group asked to study the name change question. He was against it, I presume, and that was why his poster was on the float. None of the other candidates have made any mention that I know of about the issue. I don't know that person’s position but am assuming it's anti-change, as well, given his pairing on the float.

One of the unfortunate developments in the name change debate is that it seems to have turned into a liberal vs conservative battle, at least as far as a big chunk of Forever folks are concerned. I guess the issue really pushed their anti-woke button, despite the fact that resistance to the name change seems pretty universal across the political spectrum of Fort Bragg people I personally know. I guess it's timely and good politics to embrace the current angry national dichotomy to drum up support, but it's certainly unfortunate on a local level.

As an aside, there were also two floats for Republican candidates, adorned with large Trump signs and lots of red, white, and blue. The Forever float and the tandem’s floats were all done up in a similar looking red, white, and blue motif. There were no floats of any sort for any Democratic candidate or liberal cause. To an outsider, Fort Bragg was looking pretty redneck for a town that usually votes reliably blue.

I read the candidate statements and all of them are a bit boilerplate. You might check them out, if, for no other reason, than to see their individual submissions, under Candidate Information, on this page: https://www.city.fortbragg.com/departments/city-clerk/city-elections

I don't really know the tandem’s politics. One is a business owner and land owner down in Noyo Harbor. I've heard many good things about him — a great boss, a generous donor to local causes, personable and approachable, a nice guy. He's also an ambitious businessman and works hard at promoting Noyo Harbor and fishermen. All things to his credit. Interestingly enough, he is also the boss of a current City Councilperson, who manages a restaurant. An alliance of those three would provide a majority on any issue coming before the Council.

The other member of the tandem works or has worked, I believe, for the Mendocino County Dept of Transportation Road Maintenance Division and is a retired Fort Bragg volunteer fireman and assistant wrestling coach. His father was a Mendocino Deputy Sheriff. He has deep roots in the community. On his float was the slogan “It's Time for a Change.” I've heard rumors, admittedly unverified, that he is a big supporter of the Skunk Train and I wonder if that is the change referred to.

My guess is that this election is when Mendocino Railroad makes its move to squash the lawsuit the City has filed against them. They've been agitating more recently about the Great Redwood Trail and how the City of Fort Bragg and its lawsuit is trying to put them out of business. Robert Pinoli's August 11 op ed in the Press Democrat generated a lot of comment on the Mendocino group Facebook page that included the President of the railroad, Chris Hart, weighing in several times and generally trashing both the Great Redwood Trail and the City Council. If the tandem is indeed, pro Skunk, and gets elected, Lindy Peters will be out of the picture and there's a strong possibility that one of the incumbents will join them to vote as a pro Skunk block to drop the lawsuit.

I personally have nothing against any of the candidates, They all seem like decent people who care about Fort Bragg's future. But they have a narrow view and maybe don't see the bigger picture. My problem is with Mendocino Railroad and this certainly feels like their power move.

November 5 will certainly be interesting and consequential, on all levels of government.

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PANTHER VOLLEYBALL STARTS SEASON WITH WINS

Last night, AV Panther JV and Varsity Volleyball defeated Calistoga! Tomorrow they travel north for their overnight trip to Humboldt county where they will take on the McKinleyville Panthers. On Friday the girls will tour Cal Poly Humboldt in the afternoon and then take on the Huskies of Fortuna High before returning home. Let’s go panthers!

— AV Sports Director John Toohey

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SAVE THE MENDO TRACKS

Editor:

I strongly agree with Skunk Train President Robert Jason Pinoli that the Great Redwood Trail needs reevaluation. While the railroad tracks in the Eel River wilderness are beyond repair, the tracks from Cloverdale to Willits are on stable and easily accessible ground and could be operating again, connecting to the Skunk Train to Fort Bragg.

The Great Redwood Trail as planned will remove the tracks, so hardy hikers and long-distance bicyclists can enjoy — at taxpayer expense — what hundreds of rail travelers will be permanently denied. Putting the trail next to the tracks would allow a lot more people to enjoy this area, reducing traffic and burning less fuel in the bargain.

I urge state Sen. Mike McGuire, who is spearheading the trail, to build a Great Redwood Trail and Rail, a benefit for everyone — and for the environment, too.

B.B. Kamoroff

Willits

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CHANGE OUR NAME’S Monthly teach-in will be Tuesday, September 17 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall, 363 N. Main St, in Fort Bragg.

All are invited.

Envisioned as a program to educate attendees about the issues involved in the name change and to hear neighbors’ ideas, the teach-in will last about one hour and will feature two speakers and a question and answer/discussion period.

Speakers will be:

Sandy Turner, who has lived in Mendocino County for 36 years, almost all of that time in Redwood Valley before moving to Fort Bragg 3 years ago. He has worked with kids much of that time as a school bus driver and then as a teacher in Ukiah area schools, and, now retired, he volunteers at Dana Gray School. He has long been active with non-profit organizations in the Ukiah area and has been involved with 3 or 4 here on the coast in the last three years. He will speak about interacting in positive ways with people in Fort Bragg Forever, in particular, in collaborating on several projects on which he believes we mostly agree.

and

Amanda Cruise, who is an artist, writer, educator, facilitator and earth based healer. She founded Wild Soul Medicine and over the last fifteen years has helped many people lift stress, distress and trauma individually and collectively, through the healing power of nature, art, subtle and deep soul work. Amanda was born in Rome, Italy, and raised multilingual in multiple countries, providing her with a wealth of exposure to the many below the surface ways that racism, oppression, and toxic patriarchal systems can permeate people, places and communities. She will talk about the effort to rename streets and remove statues in Glasgow, Scotland which honor those who profited from slavery.

Discussing controversial topics requires civility and respect for the opinions of others. This program is free and open to all.

For further information: changeournamefortbragg@gmail.com

A local grass roots non-profit, Change Our Name Fort Bragg is dedicated to an educational process that leads to changing the name of Fort Bragg so that it no longer honors a military Fort that dispossessed Indigenous people or Braxton Bragg, an enslaver and Confederate General. who waged war against our country.

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HELLO HISTORY? GET ME RE-WRITE!

KZYX: A Short History

by Susan Baird Kanaan

KZYX has been the centerpiece of our local airwaves for 35 years. Some might assume it has always been here and always will be. But 40 years ago, it was the dream of a few visionary Anderson Valley organizers.

Sean Donovan, a prime mover in the creation of KZYX, observed in a recent conversation that “Mendocino County Public Broadcasting isn’t just a name; it’s an idea — a big one.” In 1984, when he and a few other Anderson Valley residents started imagining a public radio station for Mendocino County, no medium existed to enable residents across the county to talk and listen to each other and access the same information. Given the geographic and economic challenges, the dream of a sustainable, listener-supported radio station for Mendocino County was highly ambitious; some said it was impossible.

It took five years from that first glimmer of an idea for KZYX to become a reality. As a first step, the founders held a public meeting in September 1984 to assess interest and elicit support from the handful of attendees. Thus encouraged, they formed a board, and Mendocino County Public Broadcasting was incorporated on January 12, 1985. Amazingly, over time Sean and others raised nearly a million dollars in seed money from local and federal sources. Finally, KZYX went on the air from its new Philo studio on October 15, 1989.

The hard work of fundraising, relationship-building, satisfying governmental requirements and securing a broadcast license, finding a site, building a studio, and erecting a tower were just beginning. In many ways, it still continues.

Watch for more on the KZYX history and inner workings in future issues of The Connector. Next: the people and technical matters behind KZYX broadcasting, and the decision to move the headquarters to Ukiah.

This story is adapted from an article published by the Community Foundation of Mendocino County in May 2023.

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Plans Advance at Board Retreat

The Mendocino County Public Broadcasting/KZYX Board of Directors focused on both the immediate and longer-term future of KZYX during their August 27 planning retreat. The above photo, taken at the Anderson Valley Historical Society’s Museum in Boonville, the retreat venue, shows (from top to bottom and left to right) Board members Troy Mellott (Ft. Bragg), Xochilt Martinez (Ukiah), Carol Wilder (Pt. Arena), David Hulse-Stevens (Willits), Stewart Dickson (Ft. Bragg), Renee Vinyard (Redwood Valley), Mary Golden (Ukiah), and Susan Baird Kanaan (Ukiah).

The Board’s #1 goal is for KZYX to move into its new Ukiah home by the end of 2025. Thus the members zeroed in on planning the next phase of the Building Fund Drive. They kept in mind that the whole purpose of the move is to sustain and grow the station’s ability to provide all county residents with a broad range of programs, reliable local news, and vital emergency information. They also considered the new services KZYX will be able to offer as new capacities in the Ukiah headquarters allow it to grow into a true community media center. Enticing examples are providing a maker space for podcasts and broadcasting live, “Tiny Desk”-type music shows.

As it has been from its inception 40 years ago, KZYX is a living process, in a constant state of creation and re-creation. And its future depends on community support. In the words of a new slogan coined during the Board retreat, It takes a county.

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THAT WAS COOL - LOST ON THE MENDOCINO COAST

by Justine Frederiksen

When’s the last time you asked someone for directions? And by someone I mean a live person, another human being you talked to face-to-face — something I call “Old School GPS.”

While you’re trying to remember, I’ll tell you why I had to dust off my ancient searching skills very recently while trying to find something on the Mendocino Coast called Blues Beach.

That was cool.

Why? Because it was fun to actually look for something again, to physically search for a place that couldn’t be virtually located for me. More importantly, it was comforting to know that there are still places in this world that my phone can’t find, locations that an electronic voice can’t give me driving directions to mere seconds after I type its name.

Like Blues Beach, which I read about every week in an email I get from Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation, which alerts media outlets to upcoming road projects in your area that will affect traffic.

And for months now that email has included something called the Blues Beach Trailhead, words that made me picture a trail along the gorgeous Mendocino Coast that I hadn’t been on yet. And as someone who loves both trails and the Mendocino Coast, I decided I had to find the Blues Beach Trailhead.

So I set out with my friend Nathan to do just that. Like most drives I take, it started off with a mistake, because I turned onto the wrong highway to head to the coast. But Nathan shrugged it off by declaring: “We’re on an adventure, right? We’ve got plenty of time, just start over!”

And so I did, turning around and heading back to drive to the coast on Highway 20 instead of Highway 128. Once we reached Highway 1, I didn’t ask my phone where Blues Beach was because I knew it was near Westport, and I figured there had to be a sign. After all, the beach used to be owned by Caltrans, and who makes more signs than Caltrans?!

But also, we were on an adventure, dang it! I didn’t know it yet, but I secretly wanted a mystery to unravel, a puzzle that my human brain had to solve, using only clues provided by other human brains.

Like this rock a birder friend told me about. Back in the pre-digital days like the 1980s, he said, there was a rock near Mono Lake where birders kept a list of the birds they had seen in the area. So instead of just getting an email telling you of recent sightings, you had to find the rock, lift it up and pull out the piece of paper people had written on.

I loved learning about that rock; loved picturing that list tucked under it, waiting for the few fingers that knew they could pull it out and read it. And yes, I want there to still be things like that: knowledge transferred from one human to another the old-fashioned way — by touch, taste, sight, smell or sound.

Like how my mother spent her weekends listening to records of bird calls so she could identify the sounds she heard coming from the trees. But now? Now you can just ask your phone to tell you which bird is talking.

And maybe my mother would have liked not having to memorize the calls herself because a phone app could just tell her, but I doubt it. And I don’t want to ask a phone either.

Like when I was at the grocery store shopping for turnips, and found only purple ones instead of white.

“What’s the difference between purple turnips and the white?” I asked the man stocking vegetables next to me.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I can Google it for you.”

“No, thank you,” I said, because I didn’t want to ask a phone. I wanted to ask a person who had obtained facts firsthand through experience, then could offer them firsthand to someone else.

So I think I wanted it to be harder than it needed to be to find Blues Beach. I realize now that I could have just taken the mile marker off the email and found the turnout that way. But I wanted a mystery to solve, an analog path we had to find ourselves by picking another human brain.

Which is what we did to find Blues Beach, finally asking the camp host at Westport-Union Landing State Beach for directions, which she happily provided while explaining why we couldn’t find them online: “Because only locals call it Blues Beach, so you have to ask a local!”

So while Blues Beach was definitely not the prettiest beach I’ve been to on the Mendocino Coast, especially because of the fresh tire tracks on the sand, it was definitely the most satisfying to find.

And has one of the best signs I’ve ever found at a beach, a placard nailed to a telephone pole that declares “Go Jump in the Ocean,” which I think we should all do every chance we get. Why? Because you can’t take your phone with you!

And that is really cool.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

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ED NOTES

THIS SENTENCE drifted in out of cyber-space: “Four veterans who served with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz came forward Monday to publicly criticize his service in the National Guard, particularly his decision to retire from service and run for Congress right before the unit was deployed to Iraq.”

WALZ'S alleged “stolen valor” stems from a preposition error. “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are the only place where those weapons are at,” which is what Walz, a veteran of 24 years in the National Guard, actually said, immediately clarifying that he wasn't a combat vet. He'd retired from the Guard two months before his unit was deployed to Iraq so he could run for Congress.

I HAPPENED to mention to an acquaintance that I'd been in the Marines. I thought he was kidding me when he said, “Thank you for your service.” I laughed. Like the overwhelming numbers of veterans of all the services, the closest I got to combat was the daily battle of Noon Chow. This constant Gotcha about who did what in America's endless wars is another reminder that the emotional age of the average American male is ten. (10)

WOKE PROSE from the SF Chron: "A shelter-in-place was issued until law enforcement was able to find the shooter and take them into custody. Only one person was taken into custody."

A MENDOCINO COUNTY HISTORY PHOTO:

July 19, 1984 - A Brink's guard locks the bullet-punctured armored car that was robbed that day on Highway 20 northeast of Ukiah, about a mile from US Highway 101. The holes in the thick, bullet-resistant windshield came from high velocity rounds fired at point blank range by a man who leaped onto the armored car hood from the bed of a moving pickup.

THAT spectacular bit of derring do was brought off by a gang of white supremicists from their stronghold deep in the Northwest. The robbery was either extremely bold or extremely dumb, depending on your perspective on high stakes crime. But it worked. Or it worked until the putative representatives of the master race, soon exchanged ideological commitment for second homes and big engine motor boats, prompting their envious neighbors to wonder out loud to the cops, “How come the crazy bastard next door suddenly has a lot of money?” And soon everyone but the leader, a guy named Mathews who failed to emerge alive from a shootout with the FBI and about 500 cops on an island near Seattle, were in jail.

BUT THE WAY the Mathews Gang hit the Brink’s truck for something like $11 mil in cash was a one-of-a-kinder. It happened just east of 101 and the Redwood Valley turnoff on the long grade approaching the north end of Lake Mendocino. The hold-up men were in the back of a pick-up that suddenly stopped in front of the eastbound Brink’s truck as the truck labored up the hill. A man jumped from the bed of the pick-up onto the hood of the Brink’s truck, spraying its windshield with automatic weapons fire. The two (black) Brink’s men in the cab of the truck instantly advised the guard riding with the money in the back to open the door to the bandits. As traffic — including a Boonville-based Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department deputy named Dennis Miller — backed up nearly to Highway 101, the robbers, taking their time, threw thousands of pounds of money bags into the back of their pick-up, drove to one of Lake Mendocino’s grungy, deserted picnic areas, transferred the money bags to another vehicle, and drove the loot out Orr Springs Road to a travel trailer they’d parked at Montgomery Woods State Reserve, somehow managing to drop $10 grand or so beside the road not far from Ukiah where it was eventually discovered by a group of disabled folks out for a walk. The bandits and the money were at Montgomery Woods overnight, as I recall. The Mathews Gang was either dead or locked up within a couple of years of their big day in Mendocino County.

FROM THE FORT BRAGG Advocate-News of April 27, 1924: “According to figures received from W.H. Prather, county clerk, the total registration in Mendocino County for the Presidential Primaries to be held May 6th, is 7,563. Republicans number 5,426; Democrats 1,768; Socialists 33, Decline to State and scattering, 264.” A hundred years later, Socialists 4; Scattereds, 26,400; Republicans 3,000; Libs 22,569.

REAL QUIK book reviews, all recommended reads:

(1) ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves, The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’ by Lynne Truss. Best book on punctuation since Strunk and White, and twice as witty. Ms. Truss begins with this apostrophe-strewn skein of an advertisement reading, “CD’s video’s, DVD’s, and book’s,” commenting, “If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once…” I kept on reading, Bonnie Burgess will be happy to learn, and have profited, I hope’s.

(2) ‘The Essential Harold Cruse, A Reader, forward by Stanley Crouch.’ There’s a whole lot of stuff the late Mr. Cruse wrote about that explains how we got to where we are in the present context of unresolved racial conflict. An honest man, Cruse took on everybody from Harry Belafonte to Black Power. I learned more about Black history from this one book than any other single book I’ve read.

(3) ‘The Degaev Affair, Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia’ by Richard Pipes. A page-turner, as they say in Hack Land, but the truly riveting true story of Sergei Degaev, among the insiders who planned and carried out numerous attempts on the Czar and finally did get the Czar’s chief of security in 1883. Degaev also ratted off his nihilist comrades, after which he fled to America where, reinventing himself as Alexander Pell, became professor of mathematics at the University of South Dakota.

(4) ‘One Man’s Castle: Clarence Darrow in Defense of the American Dream’ by Phyllis Vine. Not a very well-written book — Ms. Vine is an academic — but even awkward prose can’t destroy a naturally compelling account of the famous Darrow’s defense of a black doctor who was accused of killing a member of white mob as the mob besieged his home in a white neighborhood of 1925 Detroit.

(5) ‘Straight Life, The Story of Art Pepper’ by Art and Laurie Pepper. For pure autobiographical candor, there’s this one and James Ellroy’s ‘My Dark Places,’ the two most honest autobios I know of. Pepper, who died in 1982, was considered the best alto sax player since Charlie Parker, and many others say he was better even than Parker. He was also a drug addict in the post-War period when drug addicts, even the famous ones, were just as likely to wind up in jail as in a treatment program. Pepper tells his story whole, sparing himself not at all.

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MENDOCINO COUNTY HISTORY — Deb Silva fills in the blanks

RE: ‘Letter of the Law’ by Clinton Duffy

Back in 2021, during the lockdown, the AVA published a few stories about old murders in Mendocino County. I did the research and Zack Anderson wrote the stories. One of those stories was about Herman Knaesche who murdered his wife of three weeks. It was by far the longest and most detailed of the series spanning from 1919 to 1960.

https://theava.com/archives/149091

Not everything I turned up in the research made it into the story. There is one item I uncovered that involved warden Clinton Duffy. When Knaesche was erroneously released from San Quentin to the outrage of the citizens of Ukiah he was eventually sent to the Philippines in 1937 where he served as secretary to the owner of a sugar plantation, Ludwig Weinzheimer. Knaesche held the job for four years until the Japanese bombed the Philippines at the beginning of WWII. Anyone who was an American was put into internment camps including Knaesch and the Weinzheimer family. They were all sent to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila.

Ludwig’s granddaughter Sascha Weinzheimer, who was born in 1933 and quite young at the time of her internment, later recalled a little something about Knaesche to a website devoted to those that were interned in the Philippines.

“10 April 2015: Hi All, Herman Knaesche arrived on our plantation, Calamba Sugar Estate, in the 1930s from San Quentin Prison. Warden Duffy (great reputation) was a good friend of my grandfather. When Knaesche, his model prisoner and a Trustee (secretary for Duffy), was nearing his parole date, Duffy contacted my grandfather in the PH to ask for a job for him.

His “crime of passion” murder was a big thing in California, the warden didn’t want to expose the story all over again by releasing Knaesche to the general public. He figured he would have a better start at life in a remote area of the world. Duffy liked his prisoner.

Duffy and my grandfather kept Knaesche’s secret about his past and he was hired by CSE as my grandfather’s secretary. I grew up with this mild-mannered kind man on the plantation who I always associated with his great pipe aroma. He was in Santo Tomas during the war and settled in a small tiny walkup apartment in the San Francisco tenderloin. We always included him in our Calamba SE reunions over the years in our Walnut Creek home. It wasn’t until 1960 when he died, that a reporter found his criminal trial and spread his whole history all over again in the SF papers.

My family kept a great secret all those years, and it wasn’t till I was married in 1960 that I found out about his past.

Aloha – Sascha”

Sascha being only 10+/- years old had the timeline a little skewed. At the time of Knaesche’s release from San Quentin Duffy was not the warden but rather the civilian secretary to the warden, James Holohan. Duffy did not serve as warden until 1950-1960 but he was the one who arranged to have Knaesche go to the Philippines and work for the Weinzheimer’s.

A little background on Sascha: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-war/sascha-weinzheimer

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, September 4, 2024

JESSICA BELL, Willits. Failure to appear.

EMERSON BRENDE, Redwood Valley. DUI.

MORGAN DEBOLD, Laytonville. Assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury, special allegation: victim over 70 years of age.

MICHAEL DONAHE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

SAMUEL EDER, Laytonville. Suspended license for DUI, failure to appear.

RUDOLPH ESQUIVEL, Willits. Suspended license for DUI, failure to appear.

CHARLES GIELOW III, Willits. Probation violation.

JOHN HILL, Laytonville. Parole violation.

ELIZABETH JOHNSON-CONSGROVE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, resisting.

FRANKLY MORRIS, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, felon-addict with firearm.

KENNETH PETERSON, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, domestic abuse, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

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MIKE GENIELLA:

Some friends in retirement have joined an exodus of former state and local employees relying on their public fund pension checks to live the good life in Arizona and other neighboring states. I don’t begrudge them their pensions. Law enforcement is a challenging, demanding career. However, I wouldn’t trade all the riches for the relentless desert heat, the looming severe water shortage, and Kari Lake, the MAGA choice for the U.S. Senate. This native NorCal guy is staying put. I feel, after a lifetime of witnessing California’s population tripling to 40 million, that the people and our communities remain strong and the natural beauty of the place unsurpassed.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATE WOLF

Liz Helenchild: Ev'rybody's Looking For the Same Thing. “…The same thing, it's plain to see. It's an old Chevy, a bass player, country house on three acres, three bedrooms, absolutely free.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6tnAa3vjFY

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Marco McClean here.

I can still hear it in my head and sing the whole thing, from when it was the theme song of the swap shop show Saturday morning on KMFB. I played records from midnight to 6am Friday and Saturday nights. A few times when I had been there Friday night, and had burned the mountain of teletype paper in the burn barrel and put all the records back and flushed the toilet (just once, at the end of the night, to save water), something went wrong and Lindy, or whoever was supposed to do the Swap Shop show at 8am, called and said they couldn't make it, so I got to do that from 8 to 9, with my eyeballs stinging and my skin buzzing from being so tired. I don't have the broadcast cartridge of that song, but I have one of the recorder-player cart decks from that era of KMFB, that Jack Millis threw into the deal when I bought a beautiful old microphone from him in 1984 at his garage sale, just when the school district was about to swallow the Community School. It had some things loose in it, and it needed some wiring and connectors but it was an easy fix, and I used it to play sound effects for radio drama in Crown Hall, and some plays at Helen Schoeni Theater. All the sounds were loaded onto one 10 or 15-minute cart. You'd press the trigger button on its long cord, the machine would play the sound, cue up the next one and stop, and so on.

A song I love and associate in my mind with Kate Wolf is /Waterfall/, though it's not Kate Wolf but Chris Williamson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlXPZVvImJ8

Also /Surrender Dorothy/, which I see now is also Chris Williamson and not Kate Wolf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2j7ropljZ8

I just asked ChatGPT, "How are Kate Wolf and Chris Williamson connected?" It answered as follows:

“Kate Wolf and Cris Williamson are both influential figures in the American folk music scene, especially within the women's music movement of the 1970s and 1980s. They were connected through their shared involvement in this movement, which focused on creating music that resonated with the experiences and voices of women.

“Cris Williamson, a key figure in the women’s music movement, co-founded Olivia Records, a groundbreaking women's music label. Kate Wolf, although not directly associated with Olivia Records, was part of the same broader community of folk musicians and women artists who were pushing for greater representation and creating music that spoke to social issues, including feminism and environmentalism.

“They were likely aware of each other's work and might have crossed paths at folk festivals, concerts, or other gatherings where artists of similar backgrounds performed. However, their connection is more about their shared place in the folk and women’s music scenes rather than any specific collaboration.”

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JOHN SAKOWICZ:

On KMUD, Thursday, September 5, at 9am, Pacific Time
 
Israel Aiming To "Ethnically Cleanse" Its Enemies, And They Aim To Do It With The Help Of U.S. Democrats
 
OUR SHOW
Our guests for our show are MAZIN QUMSIYEH and ABBA SOLOMON.
 
MAZIN QUMSIYEH [from Bethlehem]
Qumsiyeh, our first guest, is a professor at Bethlehem University. His books include "Sharing the Land of Canaan". He is founding director of the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability. His latest piece is an “Open Letter to U.S. Citizens.”
 
We'll discuss "Israel’s Starvation Strategy" and IDF's ongoing war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza.
 
ABBA SOLOMON
Solomon, our second guest, is author of two books on Zionism, "The Miasma of Unity: Jews and Israel" and "The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech and The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews".

He just wrote the piece “Why Are Liberal Zionists Cheering as Harris Echoes Biden on Gaza?” which states: “Key to Harris’ brief discussion of Gaza in her acceptance speech was the customary refusal in American political discourse to attribute the slaughter to the U.S. or its Israeli partner. Instead, there was a reference to ‘what has happened’ –evoking victims without victimizers…

“After pledging unconditional support for Israel’s military, Harris expressed sorrow — as if the horrors are being inflicted by a force of nature, not a military force that the U.S. government supplies with fundamental and essential support. …

“Harris carefully omitted any mention of the only way that the U.S. government could actually put an end to the suffering in Gaza that she called ‘heartbreaking’ — an arms embargo to stop the huge shipments from the United States that provide the Israeli military with the weapons and ammunition it’s using to continue to massacre Palestinian people of all ages.”

Solomon concluded that the Democratic Party-aligned “pro-Israel, pro-peace” American Zionist organization J Street “represents untenable liberal American Zionism that clings to the fantasy of a democratic and humane ‘Jewish state.’ Washington officeholders pledge continued weapons resupply for that fantasy Jewish state — with no connection to the actual Israel that is now engaged in remorseless genocide.”
 
KMUD
Our show, "Heroes and Patriots Radio", airs live on KMUD, on the first and fifth Thursdays of every month, at 9 AM, Pacific Time.
 
We simulcast our programming on two full power FM stations: KMUE 88.1 in Eureka and KLAI 90.3 in Laytonville. It also maintains a translator at 99.5 FM in Shelter Cove, California.
 
We also stream live from the web at https://kmud.org/
 
Speak with our guest live and on-the-air at: KMUD Studio (707) 923-3911. Please call in.
 
We post our shows to our own website and Youtube channels. Shows may be excerpted in other media outlets.
 
Wherever you live, KMUD is your community radio station. We are a true community of informed and progressive people. Please join us by becoming a member or underwriter.

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WHEN I HAD MY FASTBALL

Get Back Get Back In the System (Fall ‘76)

Down at my neighborhood bar the other night
This old student leader showed
This round’s on me I wanna be the nominee
Gonna need your vote… You and Jimmy Carter…
Smile, Jesus loves you
Get back get back in the system
That’s the real theme of his campaign
Get a suit and a tie and remember to smile
Think positive don’t be negative
don’t be bitter don’t be angry don’t be hostile…

Went to see Woodward playing Redford
Dustin Hoffman played by Carl Bernstein
Martha Mitchell who really blew the whistle
Never got mentioned, she got no credit
on the silver screen
Get back get back in the system
Martha was a crazy drunken dame
Not a nice respectable reporter
Watergate shows that nothing's changed
Except for a few big shots somewhere…

And old friend of mine just finished her training
Now she says serving Werner’s fine
You should heave heard her back in 1969
Serving some salesmean wasn’t her line
(still ain’t mine)
Get back get back in the system
Invisible forces can be felt
Act your age and find your own space
Play the game (what game?) with the hand you were dealt
Don’t complain, don’t be bitter don’t be angry don’t be hostile…

All right!

Down at my neighborhood bar the other night
This old movement leader showed
This rounds on me, I wanna win the primary
And I need your vote, I said okay make mine a Cuervo Gold
Make it a double
Here’s to you student council leaders
Old generation and new
I hoped by now we’d have taken power
from you and Overthrew your system
your system your system your system…

— Fred Gardner

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THE 49ERS, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

Levi’s Stadium is the perfect home for a Kyle Shanahan outfit. Overpriced, humorless, more debilitating than the surface of the sun, completely lacking in joy, and ready to bleed every last ounce of hope from you, while simultaneously draining your wallet. If there indeed are dignity wraiths, the 49ers are mine. I hate this f—king team almost as much as I hate myself for loving them. I wanted to believe during the Super Bowl. I really did. I wanted to think our defense was good enough to give us a chance against Mahomes. But I was lying to myself. I knew we had no shot. The defensive coordinator was s—t all year and had the whole unit out of sync, and so we were going to rely on Purdy to outdo Mahomes? After Shanahan apparently didn’t teach his team the overtime rules? I am convinced Shanahan is 90% responsible for the rehabilitation of Andy Reid’s reputation. Deebo Samuel can’t stay healthy. George Kittle does ads for Chubbies. I am excited though for us to finally get an answer to the question of whether Brock Purdy is actually any good or just benefiting from having all-pros around him (I say he’s not, but don’t listen to me because I once got into an intense argument with a drunk fan at Candlestick about the merits of Gio Carmazzi).

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WHITEHOUSE RESPONDS BOLDLY AND INSIGHTFULLY to the latest school murders by a 14-year old in Barrow County, Georgia, killing two students and two teachers and hospitalizing nine others on Wednesday:

“The President mourns the death of those whose lives were cut short. This is not normal. This is not normal. Students and teachers deserve to know that their schools are safe. They should focus on learning not lockdowns. While the President and Vice President have taken historic action to reduce gun violence, more must be done to keep our schools and communities safe. We continue to call on Congress to do something. To do something."

— Karine Jean Pierre, White House press secretary

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MEDIA MEATHEADS ARE FEASTING ON 49ERS ROOKIE SURVIVING GETTING SHOT

by Gabe Fernandez

In the aftermath of 49ers rookie Ricky Pearsall surviving an attempted robbery in which he was shot in the chest, the prevailing message quickly shifted from worry to obnoxious admiration.

Pearsall was injured Saturday afternoon in Union Square when a 17-year-old allegedly attempted to rob him and shot him in the ensuing scuffle. The bullet went through Pearsall’s torso and, according to his mother, narrowly avoided hitting any vital organs. Niners radio color analyst Tim Ryan was among the first to say that Pearsall’s reputation around the organization had improved after getting shot.

“I talked to him yesterday. He was actually in the weight room,” Ryan said on KNBR on Tuesday. “Thank God it’s not worse than it was … I already know this: His street cred has gone up tremendously around here.”

Naturally, the talking heads that surround Pat McAfee in his eponymous ESPN show got in on the action too. One mulleted member of the crew, “Boston” Connor Campbell, editorialized the conversation that Pearsall and Niners general manager John Lynch had in the hospital where the rookie wide receiver insisted the Niners go forward with a scheduled party last Saturday.

“I believe the first thing he said when John Lynch talked to him was, ‘Hey, you make sure those boys have that party tonight,’” Campbell said, before veering off into fantasy. “‘You make sure Rick Ross pops a couple bottles in my name. You know, I got a bullet wound in my chest, but you know what I would do if it was you guys? I’d party.’”

After showing a clip of Lynch recounting the conversation — in which the GM said Pearsall said, “Mr. Lynch, what’s going on? I’d really like everyone to go to that party” — Campbell said the team started blaring 50 Cent’s “Many Men,” a song about the rapper’s near-death experiences. McAfee, to his credit, corrected the record to say that song likely wasn’t playing … because of 50 Cent’s beef with Rick Ross. This all came after Campbell first declared, “It turns out Ricky Pearsall might be First-Team All-Generation as far as swagger goes.”

These people weren’t alone. All over social media, Pearsall’s survival served as a boon to his persona rather than a miraculous turn of fate. Terms like “badass,” “alpha,” “beast,” “stood on business” and “AN ABSOLUTE DAWG” have been thrown around, turning a 23-year-old nearly losing his life into hypermasculine projections.

Let’s remember reality for a second. Yes, Pearsall bravely (depending on your perspective) fought off his would-be robber, but after the scuffle, one of the first things he asked the officer tending to his wounds was if he was going to die. His teammates, for the most part, also had a more sober perspective on what happened. Wide receiver Jauan Jennings called it a “blessing that Ricky’s here.” Receiver Brandon Aiyuk called it “a traumatic experience for all involved.” Tackle Trent Williams said the shooting inspired him to return to the Niners and that he wanted to tell the rookie “everything will be all right.”

There is of course the exception in Niners guard Jon Feliciano, who reshared on X an image of Pearsall’s face poorly edited over the image of former President Donald Trump putting up his fist after he was shot at in July. But the comparison to a presidential assassination attempt just proves how divorced from reality the yelling about “alphas” and “dawgs” has gotten.

(SFgate.com)

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IF THIS IS TRULY 49ERS’ TIME TO WIN THE SUPER BOWL, THEY’VE BEEN MASTERS OF DISGUISE

by Michael Silver

Perhaps each increasingly disturbing sign of the San Francisco 49ers’ demise is nothing more than a deceptive decoy, all of them combining to create the false impression that a tough, well-coached, talent-rich team has missed its last, best chance at a championship.

Sure, it’s theoretically possible that, after four trips to the NFC Championship Game in five seasons, after a second heartbreaking Super Bowl defeat to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs in February, the 49ers — 30 years since they last seized the moment — will finally capture that sixth Lombardi Trophy.

Maybe, just maybe, the horrific scene that played out in Union Square on the last day of August will be bookended by a euphoric parade down Market Street in mid-February, with Kyle Shanahan and Brock Purdy awash in a sea of scarlet and gold confetti and the unabashed affection of a football-loving region.

That’s the vision, and it remains attainable. But, man, it’s getting hard to ignore the ominous foreshadowing as this pivotal season approaches.

The 49ers, who’ll open their 2024 campaign against Northern California native Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets at Levi’s Stadium on Monday night, may in fact be ready to rumble.

If so, they’re doing a pretty good job of faking us out. On Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, their Bad Vibes Summer morphed into near-tragic territory when first-round draft pick Ricky Pearsall was shot through the chest during an attempted robbery.

Blessedly, Pearsall survived and was released from the hospital the following day.

On a less consequential but pertinent note: We’re not quite sure what kind of shape his team is in as they prepare to dig deep and attempt something really, really hard.

Only one team in the past 50-plus years (the 2018 Patriots) has come back to win a championship the year after losing a Super Bowl. It’s daunting under optimal conditions, let alone when the universe — and organizational missteps — conspire to complicate the task.

Beginning in the second quarter of Super Bowl LVIII, when punishing linebacker Dre Greenlaw tore his Achilles tendon while running onto the field after a punt, the 49ers seemed to enter a vexing vortex that threatens to drag down the entire operation.

Shortly after losing that game on Mahomes’ walk-off touchdown pass in overtime, Shanahan, once again a polarizing figure on the sport’s grandest stage, fired first-year defensive coordinator Steve Wilks, whose unit had limited the Chiefs to a single TD in regulation. Ballsy, but disruptive.

Then came the contract squabbling, presaging a long, hot summer of messy monetary matters. In March the 49ers asked two longtime standouts, defensive tackle Arik Armstead and All-Pro fullback Kyle Juszczyk, to take pay cuts or be cut. Armstead chose the latter and signed with the Jaguars. Conversely, squeezing “Juice” worked out for the Niners’ management, but it left a popular locker-room presence with bruised feelings.

As the draft approached, Shanahan and general manager John Lynch began looking ahead to 2025, when Purdy will be eligible for a lucrative contract extension and there’ll be less salary-cap room available for standouts at other positions. With one starting receiver (Deebo Samuel) already making big money and the other (Brandon Aiyuk) seeking a massive extension, the 49ers entertained trade offers for both before selecting another wideout, Pearsall, with the 31st overall pick.

What played out over the next several months was confounding. As great as Shanahan and Lynch have been in terms of roster construction and establishing a winning culture, the coach/GM duo made some strange choices that ultimately turned training camp into a national spectacle.

After making Aiyuk a contract offer in May, the 49ers stopped engaging with him for months, leading to a trade request and training-camp “hold-in.” Aiyuk’s presence, seemingly phantom back injury and emotional mood swings triggered his head coach and ultimately worked to the player’s advantage.

He could have been gone: Aiyuk essentially vetoed potential trades to the Patriots and Browns, and though the 49ers continued to investigate other possibilities, they ultimately caved, giving him a four-year, $120 million deal just 11 days before the regular-season opener.

For all the drama of the Aiyuk saga, it turned out his wasn’t even the most significant contract standoff. Quietly, perennial All-Pro left tackle Trent Williams, the Niners’ most indispensable player, staged a training-camp holdout that pushed into early September. On Tuesday, six days before the opener against the Jets, Williams — who once sat out an entire season while employed by Washington — finally returned after getting the contract adjustment he wanted.

As with most of his on-field confrontations with opponents, big No. 71 had all the leverage.

That the Niners’ powers that be allowed both disputes to drag on so long was stunning given the team’s recent history. In 2021, Samuel and the 49ers had an acrimonious contract clash that caused him to miss the offseason program. Following a 2022 campaign in which his production declined, Samuel, who termed his performance “awful,” admitted that the ordeal (which included a public trade request) had been a “distraction” and conceded he was out of shape upon signing an extension just after the start of training camp.

Last year, history repeated: Star edge rusher Nick Bosa held out of training camp before signing a five-year, $170 million extension four days before the regular-season opener. In late October Bosa said he’d underperformed partly because of his late arrival.

You’d think those scars would have compelled Shanahan, Lynch and CEO Jed York to get to the gist and settle things early with Aiyuk and Williams, who’d made his desire for an upgraded deal known throughout the spring. That’s how they behaved when star running back Christian McCaffrey skipped OTAs, quickly working out a drama-free extension in early June.

In this case, they blew it. After failing to acquire even a semi-feasible alternative to the 36-year-old Williams in free agency or the draft, the 49ers were locked into a staredown they couldn’t win. Six days is not enough prep time, even for a future first-ballot Hall of Famer. Not since Green Day at the 2020 NHL All-Star Game has a local power trio bombed so badly (though in Green Day’s case, the bombs were of the “F” variety).

The 49ers have had reasonably good injury luck the past two seasons, but that seems to be waning, too. McCaffrey missed most of training camp with a calf strain, part of a wave of nagging ailments that evoked unpleasant memories of Jim Harbaugh’s mess of a final season a decade ago.

Along those lines, Pearsall’s problematic shoulder situation was a legitimate concern — until things became far scarier on Saturday. On Monday he was placed on the reserve/non-football injury list, meaning he’ll miss at least the first four games.

Obviously, all things considered, that’s a deal he and the Niners would take 100 times out of 100. From a purely football perspective, it’s yet another unfortunate development.

Coming out of the draft, given the age, wear-and-tear and high salaries of so many of the 49ers’ key players, it was clear to me that there were “Last Dance” overtones heading into this season. And as these 49ers try to trudge their way back to the playoffs, and beyond, there are many hazards that could cause them to stumble.

The locker-room dynamics will be interesting. Aiyuk’s signing is a clear signal that Samuel will be gone after this season. If the 49ers are struggling as the trade deadline approaches in November, or if Samuel’s off his game, or if the vibes in the huddle are weird, might Shanahan and Lynch listen when other teams inquire?

Will this team be as equipped to survive a crisis, or mini-crisis, as the S.F. ensembles that did so in each of the past three seasons?

If things start to unravel, will players press, point fingers, pull back, pout?

No one should dismiss these possibilities. Pro football success is too fleeting, the stress of the game too unremitting, to believe even a team as talented and grounded as the 49ers is impervious to peril.

And, yet, despite the bad omens, it doesn’t have to go down that way, either.

The 49ers have a brainy head coach whose gifts as an offensive strategist are unsurpassed. They have an alarmingly accurate, ascending quarterback in the process of asserting his leadership, a young man who dropped the mantra “bloody mindset” when I spoke to him at the start of training camp. That wasn’t arbitrary, either; the 262nd and last pick of the 2022 draft understands the power of his words and said what he said for a reason.

When Purdy declared, “I want to be dominant,” he was talking mostly to his teammates, imploring them to join him on the journey. Next year, many familiar faces will be gone; however, the 2024 49ers have an opportunity to flip the script and show that none of these offseason distractions could deter them from their destination.

Don’t dismiss the possibility. Maybe Shanahan and Purdy and these Niners can break on through to the other side and take that slow, sweet ride down Market Street.

Given the current vibes, it would be the ultimate misdirection play.

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CALIFORNIA COMPANIES WROTE THEIR OWN GIG WORKER LAW. NOW NO ONE IS ENFORCING IT

Prop. 22 promised improved pay and benefits for California gig workers. But when companies fail to deliver, the state isn’t doing much to help push back.

by Levi Sumagaysay

Nearly four years after California voters approved better wages and health benefits for ride-hailing drivers and delivery workers, no one is actually ensuring they are provided, according to state agencies, interviews with workers and a review of wage claims filed with the state.

Voters mandated the benefits in November 2020 when they approved Proposition 22. The ballot initiative was backed by gig-work companies that wanted to keep their workers classified as independent contractors and were resisting a 2019 state law that would have considered them employees. Prop. 22 stipulated that gig workers would remain independent contractors but be treated better.

The state Industrial Relations Department, which handles wage claims, now tells CalMatters it does not have jurisdiction to resolve those related to Prop. 22, citing a July 25 California Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law and therefore maintains that gig workers are not employees. That effectively passes enforcement responsibility on to the state attorney general, whose office was noncommittal when asked about its plans, saying that it does not adjudicate individual claims but does prosecute companies that systematically violate the law.

The lack of enforcement leaves in limbo workers who in many cases have already been waiting for months or years for the state to resolve their complaints. Workers have filed 54 claims related to Prop. 22 since it went into effect in December 2020. At least 32 of them are unresolved, state records obtained by CalMatters show, although at least two of those are due to workers not following through.

Of the unresolved claims, one goes back to 2021, several are from 2022 and 2023, and about half are from this year, through May.

Emails included with the claims show that the Industrial Relations Department told one worker it was severely understaffed, and seven others, starting in 2022, that it did not have jurisdiction to help them since they were independent contractors rather than employees.…

calmatters.org/economy/2024/09/gig-work-california-prop-22-enforcement/

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McGUIRE AMONG THREE WORST

California’s Dysfunctional Democrats

The Golden State’s dysfunction starts at the top, with Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and state Senate President Mike McGuire.

by Tom Philp

This could be the worst threesome to run California in a very long time.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and state Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire emerged at the end of this year’s legislative session, which ended Saturday, as independent autocrats as opposed to a functioning team of Democrats. They disagreed. They proposed big reforms at the last minute. Too often they failed.

And while they can’t make spectacles of themselves any more this session because it is thankfully over, there’s no reason to think that they can do any better conducting the people’s business any time soon.

This session’s lowlights began with the implosion of an effort to address the state’s electricity crisis and the skyrocketing bills of the investor-owned utilities such as Pacific Gas & Electric. There had been weeks of chatter that the Democrats would make some effort to lower electricity bills for consumers, but no actual legislation. The whole concept appeared dead.

And then within mere days of the close of session, Democrats unveiled a complex collection of legislation. Its centerpiece was Assembly Bill 3121 by Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Irvine. It proposed to give one-time refunds of electricity bills, estimated in the $30 range, to the millions of customers of these for-profit utilities. But it would have done so in the most destructive of ways, by diverting funds from existing programs intended to support schools and low-income Californians.

McGuire in the Senate led in this so-called “California Made” package of reforms. But soon after AB 3121 made its debut, it was dead in a Senate committee.

AB 3121’s death was a blessing that needed no disguise. It purported to lower electricity bills with a one-time refund that couldn’t cover a tank of gas. It wouldn’t have reduced a penny of actual electricity costs.

It turned out that the leadership meltdown over this bill was just the beginning. Following through on his threat, Newsom on Saturday called an immediate “special session” to ram through yet another last-minute idea, this one a mandate for the state’s oil refineries to amass more reserves to avoid price spikes during production slowdowns.

But McGuire ignored Newsom’s maneuver. The governor’s ability to actually force a session and a vote is as murky as a barrel of crude. And in the end, outmaneuvered and out of time, Newsom called off his session, as if that action had any real-world meaning.

This dysfunction starts at the top. Saturday night exemplified how the imperious and distant Newsom has horrible relations with his fellow Democrats in the Legislature. He treats them more like children than partners. Newsom leads like an island unto himself, now relocated to Marin County.

All Rivas, D-San Benito, and McGuire, D-Healdsburg, have done is replicate Newsom’s style of bad governance. They have become their own islands. None of them seem to care what the other two think. They are bereft of the civic mindedness of putting the public first, leaving egos at the door and making some really tough decisions. They all have come to prefer island living.

The longer this threesome has been in power, the worse their coordination has become. The implosion at the end of this session may be a small taste of what is to come. Newsom finds himself in political steerage with Kamala Harris’ ascendancy to the Democratic Party’s throne. He is fast becoming an asterisk on the national stage. He has grown so tired of Sacramento, his family no longer calls it home. None of this bodes well for his home stretch as governor.

Real answers to any of our crises — housing, insurance, electricity, homeless, climate change — will not be popular. For California’s three top Democrats, real change means respectfully working together, reaching a consensus, watching each other’s back and working with legislators on both sides of the aisle. And that simply isn’t happening.

Good governance is an endangered species in Sacramento. With the threesome of Newsom, Rivas and McGuire, it is on the verge of extinction.

(Sacramento Bee)

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FAST FOOD WORKERS GOT A $20 MINIMUM WAGE, BUT IS IT WORKING? DEBATABLE

by Dan Walters

Every session of the California Legislature seems to produce at least one bill that generates high-octane political debate and media attention.

As the 2023-24 session winds down this week, Senate Bill 1047, which would impose rules on artificial intelligence developers, is generating fierce lobbying and drawing global interest.

During the final days of last year’s session, the focus was on a very different issue — whether the state should impose a $20-per-hour minimum wage for fast food workers and create a Fast Food Council to oversee working conditions.

A year before, Assembly Bill 257 created the council and empowered it to set an initial minimum wage of at least $22 an hour, while assuming that franchised fast food outlets were subsidiaries of the parent company, rather than independently owned.

The fast food industry responded with a referendum that, if ratified by voters, would cancel out the new law, thus renewing the debate in the 2023 session. A last-minute deal repealed AB 257 and substituted another measure, AB 1228, that dictated a $20 minimum wage and removed what the industry considered to be a threat to the franchise system. In return, the referendum was dropped.

The $20 wage took effect last April, but only after a new squabble erupted over which sellers of food would be covered, colored by a Bloomberg article alleging that Newsom had demanded an exemption to benefit a campaign donor who owns two dozen Panera locations in California.

Newsom declared that the story was “absurd” and gave assurances that Panera and other similar businesses would be covered. The businessman, billionaire Greg Flynn, also said he would honor the $20 wage.

End of fast food angst? Of course not.

Six months after the $20 wage took effect there’s a new debate in political, media and academic circles over its impact.

Fast food prices have been increasing, but how much higher wages are driving the rise and how fast food operations have changed are two new issues.

This month, Newsom declared that California fast food outlets had created 11,000 new jobs since the law was signed.

“What’s good for workers is good for business, and as California’s fast food industry continues booming every single month our workers are finally getting the pay they deserve,” Newsom said. “Despite those who pedaled lies about how this would doom the industry, California’s economy and workers are again proving them wrong.”

The industry didn’t agree.

“Every day you see headlines of restaurant closures, employee job losses and hours cut, and rising food prices for consumers,” the International Franchise Association said in a statement. “Local restaurant owners in California are already struggling to cope with the $20/hour wage, as the Fast Food Council considers additional wage increases. All the while, workers and consumers are feeling the pinch.”

Brooke Armour, president of the California Center for Jobs and the Economy, an adjunct of the Business Roundtable, criticized Newsom’s declaration as reflecting just one month of preliminary data and concluding, “Despite what some are saying, the data are clear: newly passed fast food minimum wage laws are leading to job losses in California.”

Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, also was critical in an analysis of the state’s economic trends. “California’s well-intended push to reduce income inequality via wage floors is beginning to have a significant negative impact on some of our most vulnerable workers — our youth, particularly those from lower income households,” Thornberg wrote.

What California has wrought in the fast food industry could be the harbinger of more direct regulation of other industries, and not just in California, for better or worse. It’s not surprising, therefore, that its effects will be debated ad nauseam.

(CalMatters.org)

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WRECKING AMERICA & THE PURPOSE OF NICKNAMES FOR TRUMP

by Ralph Nader

No matter what his advisers caution, Donald Trump cannot resist giving negative, insulting nicknames to his opponents and critics. Nor can the mass media resist reprinting them in CAPITAL LETTERS, without giving the named persons a right of reply. He gets a free ride day after day, month after month, year after year.

Trump and his pollsters think the nicknames stick in enough people’s minds to make this an effective rhetorical tactic. Trump’s favorites include “crooked Joe Biden,” or “Lying Ted Cruz,” or “Crazy Nancy Pelosi.”

The targeted politicians have chosen not to respond with their own nicknames for the mega-slanderer-in-chief, not wanting to lower themselves into his mud pile. Nor do they ask their allies to hurl similar invectives that would be compelling because they would be so accurate.

The old saying that you have to give a bully his own medicine is an “evergreen” because it works. Would the New York Times continue to repeat Trump’s slurs if he immediately got slurred back in kind? Would the television networks keep conveying Trump’s insulting nicknames were he to become enmeshed by others mocking him and hurling insults with similar frequency?

Not likely. Pretty soon Trump would realize that his foul-mouth utterances are buying a torrent of nickname backlashes. He is, you may recall, notoriously sensitive to personal criticism. Thin-skinned, he is.

One episode illustrates what can happen with a tit-for-tat response. When Trump was president, he went to a Washington Nationals baseball game, and a crowd started chanting “Lock him up.” This was after he would exhort his mass rallies to chant “Lock her up” Interestingly, the crooked Hillary chants ceased during his following rallies. Trump got a dose of his own medicine.

Without such neutralizing reciprocity, Trump will intensify his personal epithets against Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz in the remaining weeks before the November 5th election. Such a demeaning repetitive tactic is also an insult to most voters, who want candidates to focus on ways and means to improve their livelihoods, further their aspirations, and be more honest.

It is astonishing how lacking in introspection the mainstream media has been about being so used, so frequently by this failed gambling tsar who took them for such a ride in 2016. (See, NationalPopularVote.com).

Maybe some suggested nicknames will stimulate the media to stop playing his game, as it reports his regular contempt, just to get more ratings or readers. Think of our Founding Fathers and their wishes for elevated discourse.

Accurate nicknames Donald Trump will Dislike:

1. Dumb Donald
2. Convicted Crook Donald Trump
3. Lying Donald
4. Delusional Donald
5. Dangerous Donald
6. Disgusting Donald
7. Serial Law-breaker Donald
8. Deceiver Donald
9. Loser Donald
10. Trump-serial abuser of women
11. Lazy Donald
12. Violence Inciter Donald
13. Trump-obstructor of Justice
14. Dictator Donald
15. Dictator-lover Donald
16. Weak Donald
17. Dishonest Donald
18. Deadly Donald – Early Covid Denier
19. Fake Donald
20. Tax Escapee Donald
21. Unstable Donald
22. The Lyin’ King
23. Cheating Donald
24. Low IQ DONALD
25. Racist Trump
26. Know-Nothing Donald
27. Know It All Trump
28. Insecure Donald
29. Don the Con
30. The Incompetent Trump
31. Trump the Grifter
32. Betrayer Trump
33. Greedy Trump
34. Pardon Myself Donald
35. “I am the Law” says Lawless Donald
36. Corrupt Don
37. Ignorant Don
38. Bragging Trump
39. Trump Fantasy Land
40. Daily Lawbreaking Donald
41. Egomaniacal Donald
42. The Trump Dump

There is an important utility to such nicknames. They start reminding people of what Trump did to America in his four nightmarish years at the White House. The Democratic Party still has not reminded a voting bloc with short memories about Trump’s daily lies and sugarcoating of his record – from deadly early Covid denial to corruption and self-enrichment to promoting Wall Street over Main Street to Big Business runaway controls over Americans, to climate-violence-denial, to bashing the rights of consumers and workers, to giant tax cuts to the super-rich like him, to thumbing his nose at the Constitution and the rule of law, to obstruction of justice “as a way of life” in the White House, in the words of his former aide John Bolton.

Replaying that record is a must to dissolve the fantasies Trump weaves about his glorious four-year service.

The motivating, readable, relevant book for this critical voter education is “WRECKING AMERICA: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All” (2020) – the most usable book on Trump’s nightmarish term in office. Mark Green and I also wrote this paperback for any return engagement. “Lest we forget.”

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WHY I SUPPORT KAMALA

Because she’s got class
Even a bit of panache
Which you don’t Donald

— Jim Luther

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A READER WRITES: We share your views on Media, and want to introduce you to our favorite go-to-guy, Kyle Kulinski, of Secular Talk. We check him out daily and he’s spot on, meaning he has all our views, which of course are right, no? He’s the best consistent voice criticising US support of Israel, except perhaps for Owen Jones, who, alas lacks Kyle’s humor…when appropriate, that is.

I thought you would appreciate Kyle’s take on the Media in general. Then you can access his segments on Israel, etc.

And thank YOU, for introducing us to Caitlin Johnstone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmXmS317IkA

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

They say that Jeffrey Dahmer had an IQ of about 145. If he was so smart, why did he eat so much? We’ve all heard about overeating, but that was ridiculous! Some say he should have eaten more vegetables.

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AT ISRAEL’S SUPREME COURT

by Muna Haddad

Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian writer and intellectual, died in prison on April 7, at the age of 62, less than a year before he was due to be released. Convicted in 1987 for involvement in the abduction and killing of the Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984 – which he always denied – Daqqa, a citizen of Israel, spent 38 years behind bars. During his time in jail he was diagnosed with cancer and suffered from medical neglect.

The Israeli government has refused to release his body to his family, withholding it as a bargaining chip for future negotiations with Hamas. Daqqa’s wife and brother, seeking a proper burial for him in the family cemetery in Baqa al-Gharbiyye, asked the Palestinian human rights organization Adalah to submit a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court on their behalf.

Two days before the hearing was to take place, far-right Israeli organizations circulated calls on social media urging activists to disrupt the proceedings. Adalah contacted the court’s security personnel to make sure they were aware of the situation and request that safety precautions be taken. Adalah also asked that protesters not be allowed into the courtroom before the hearing started. The court refused the request. Concerned for the safety of Daqqa’s family, Adalah advised them not to attend the hearing.

On August 21, together with Suhad Bishara, Adalah’s legal director, and two of her colleagues, I travelled from Haifa to Jerusalem, where we met another human rights lawyer and three friends. As we entered the building, we were accosted by a crowd of hostile protesters. While security guards escorted us to the courtroom, the protesters shouted insults and threats. Tally Gotliv, a Likud member of the Knesset, spat in the face of one of the men in our group, mistaking him for a member of Daqqa’s family.

We were seated in the front row of the courtroom. The protesters followed us in and shouted at the security guards, demanding to know why “terrorist supporters” were seated up front. One of the guards replied: “Look at it from a security guard’s perspective – wouldn’t you rather they be directly in front of me?”

As we waited for the judges to enter, we were subjected to a barrage of shouts and chants, including rape and death threats directed at the human rights lawyer. Daqqa’s corpse, the protesters yelled, should be buried with “pigs and alcohol” and the lawyer’s body should “be eaten by pigs in hell.” At times the curses were drowned out by chants of “Am Yisrael Chai” (‘The People of Israel Live’) and “Death to Terrorists.”

The security guards did nothing, allowing this harassment to continue for at least 15 minutes, until the three judges – Isaac Amit, Ofer Grosskopf and Gila Canfy-Steinitz – entered the courtroom. They tried to calm the crowd, explaining procedures, and the hearing began. The state asked for a closed-door session and the judges agreed. They withdrew and Nitzan Alon, a major general in the military, testified for 40 minutes in a separate room. Meanwhile, we were trapped in the courtroom with the protesters, who continued chanting and cursing.

When the time came for Bishara to present her arguments, the protesters called her a “terrorist supporter” and interrupted her constantly. Every time Bishara referred to Daqqa as an “Israeli citizen” or “the deceased,” the crowd would yell back “Terrorist!” or “Murderer!”

Occasionally the judges asked for silence. But the only person they instructed to leave the courtroom was a woman who held up a sign saying: “The High Court of Justice Assists the Enemy.”

They tried to make another, particularly disruptive woman leave but the crowd gathered around her and blocked the guards from escorting her out. Rather than insisting that she leave, the judges instead announced a recess and left the courtroom themselves, once again leaving us exposed to the hostile crowd for a further 15 minutes.

When the judges returned, Bishara continued to make her arguments and the crowd continued to abuse her: “Go to Nova so they can murder you”; “You need a bullet in your head.” The judges heard the abuse but did not say a word.

(London Review of Books)

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EVERY TIME a baker refreshes their starter, every time flour and water mix to make a dough, every time a round is shaped and watched over and carried to the mouth of the hearth, every time an oven gives off the aroma of baking bread and draws hungry people to its warmth, the Neolithic Revolution is renewed. For over ten thousand years we humans have been grinding grain, making slurries, and coaxing them closer to the heat so there will be something good to eat together. Bread is the plate, the napkin, and the bulk of almost any traditional meal.

As many have pointed out, the very word companion comes from the Latin root panis, or bread. So, “company” was who you broke bread with. That is why the Neolithic Revolution still needs to be defended to this day: it represents an oasis between the nomadic tribalism of the past and the technofeudalism of the seemingly inescapable future. 

— Jonathan Stevens, The Hungry Ghost Bread Book

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WHAT I GOT WRONG ABOUT ‘SHOCK THERAPY’

After witnessing a historic financial collapse in the former Soviet Union, I thought bad advice from Western economists was a root cause. Now I think failure was the plan

by Matt Taibbi

In Moscow on the morning of July 24th, 1993 I fixed a cup of tea, rubbed the hangover out of my eyes, and walked out to look for breakfast. I was living then above the Metro station at VDNKh, the ex-Soviet equivalent maybe of New York’s World’s Fair grounds, and saw right away something was wrong. Old women on the street were bawling, a group of men was shouting at a beat cop, and sidewalks were full of people walking in a daze, as if a neutron bomb had gone off.

The government of Boris Yeltsin had decreed it was withdrawing all old rubles from circulation. Russians who’d stuffed rubles in mattresses for decades would be wiped out, unless they could fight through huge bank lines to exchange bills. Worse, the maximum amount was 35,000 rubles, or roughly $30-$35, about 60% of a Russian’s average monthly salary of 58,700 rubles. Those who exchanged the full 35,000 had passports stamped barring all future exchanges. I’ll never forget seeing a burly woman yelling, to no one in particular: “Vori, blyad!” (“Fucking thieves!”).

“Black Saturday” is remembered as a breaking point in the arc of post-Soviet history, the moment when many Russians stopped believing a glorious new democratic future was just around the corner, if it was coming at all. A week or so after the event, on August 6th, 1993, then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin burned his name in the nation’s history books. An aphorism-spewing figure whose unique place in Russian lore is like a cross of Yogi Berra and Spiro Agnew, Chernomyrdin said one of the most purely Russian things of all time: “Hoped for better, turned out as always.”

With inflation above 2500% the previous year of 1992, Russia was beginning a long period of economic suffering that wouldn’t hit climax until 1998, when the country defaulted and plunged into a crisis presaging the rise of Vladimir Putin. It’s hard to describe the disaster of the nineties in terms that will make sense to Americans. Life expectancy for men dropped seven years almost overnight, from 64 in 1990 to 57 in 1994. Deaths from disease doubled. An already heavy-drinking country saw alcoholism rise by 60%. The Lancet estimated Russia that decade saw seven million “excess deaths,” whatever that means. I know what it looked like: mass poverty, spiraling crime, and sharply rising levels of fury toward the West, largely seen as a primary culprit in designing Russia’s crony-capitalist hellscape.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, whose ideas for quickly transforming communist economies to market-based systems were dubbed “shock therapy,” saw his name become synonymous with pain. Though he’d overseen successful reforms in a similar situation in Poland, fellow Harvard acolytes Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais had a lot less luck when appointed economic czars in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. Russians early on associated “shock therapy” with inflation and the abrupt removal of safety nets they’d grown used to in Soviet times (though residents were awarded their apartments as property, and kept a few other important subsidies like cheap home energy). Loss of access to good medical care was a particular problem in the new paradise. I wish I’d taken a picture, but I remember seeing graffiti on an apartment building when visiting the Arctic mining town of Vorkuta during the 1998 crisis. It read, “Fuck Therapy.”

Now, on a day the Biden administration is leveling sanctions over the unkillable Russiagate hoax for the umpteenth time, Sachs has come forward with a new account that suggests the U.S. never wanted to lose Russia as an enemy…

racket.news/p/what-i-got-wrong-about-shock-therapy

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