Mendocino County Today: Thursday 9/26/2024

By AVA News Service on September 26, 2024

DRY WEATHER and above normal temperatures are forecast to return in the interior Friday through this weekend. Hotter weather conditions will likely arrive early next week. Coastal areas are forecast to have occasional low clouds through this weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A balmy 57F in the fog this Thursday morning on the coast. Patchy fog then clear then back again is our forecast thru the weekend.

CATCH AND RELEASE, A RATHER EXTREME CASE

Ukiah PD Reports: In the early morning hours of Friday, September 20, 2024, a Ukiah Police Department Officer was dispatched to Schat’s Bakery in the 100 block of West Perkins Street in Ukiah for a report of graffiti. The officer arrived and spoke with the business owner, who showed him that a large flower planter in front of his business had been vandalized with spray paint. The local business owner then pointed out several other graffiti tagging’s on the properties of the Ukiah Brewing Company and Jax Boutique.

The suspect had been captured on video in the commission of the tagging, and was immediately recognized by UPD Officers as Aldar Fragoso, 31, of Redwood Valley. At the time that the graffiti was discovered, Fragoso was already in custody at the Mendocino County Jail, after having been arrested by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office for a separate misdemeanor graffiti vandalism on South State Street. A UPD Officer responded to the Mendocino County Jail and rebooked Fragoso for a felony vandalism charge, with the hope that the new charge would keep him in custody pending his arraignment. At the time of this incident, Fragoso had two additional pending UPD cases for felony vandalism by way of graffiti, and was also pending being placed on Parole through the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for animal cruelty. Fragoso posted bail and was released later that day.

At approximately 6:45pm on Saturday, September 21, 2024, a UPD Officer was on routine patrol in a marked vehicle in the 1000 block of South State Street, when a bicyclist came racing out in front of his patrol vehicle, nearly causing an accident. The reckless bicyclist turned into the parking lot of 1104 South State Street, and the officer followed to attempt to stop the cyclist and admonish him for his dangerous riding.

The bicycle rider failed to obey the officer’s commands to stop, and continued riding through the parking lot, and down into a drainage creek. The officer requested assistance, and other officers arrived and began checking the area.

The bicyclist was found hiding in the bushes to the south of Washington Avenue, and identified as Aldar Fragoso. Fragoso, who had been out of custody for less than twelve hours was found in possession of multiple cans of spray paint and permanent markers.

Fragoso was arrested for resisting arrest and possession of graffiti tools. He was booked into the Mendocino County Jail for charges of possession of vandalism tools and resisting arrest. Fragoso was later released from custody on a signed promise to appear at a future date in Ukiah Superior Court.

On Line Comments:

This clown has an arrest record in every county from here to San Diego. He tortured animals, involved in burglary, and every type of theft and vandalism imaginable, and they allowed him back on the streets. Unbelievable.
But he promised.
This dude is blatantly TWEEKIN and any real graffiti writer knows this Aldar Fragoso guy is a complete toy.
Trash ass toy. Making Street art look bad (figurately and literally). This guy killed his dog with Garden shears a few years ago. That is the real tragedy. I am so tired of watching these amazing loving dogs being dragged through hell and back only to be abused for their trouble.

NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER in Fort Bragg

T-Mobile representatives hand a $50,000 check to Council members Marsha Rafanan, Lindy Peters and Jason Godeke to help establish a Native American Cultural Center in the old Fort Building adjacent to City Hall on Franklin Street. (Lindy Peters)

FORT BRAGG POLICE DEPARTMENT AWARDED $1 MILLION PROP 47 GRANT FOR CARE RESPONSE UNIT EXPANSION

In May, the Fort Bragg Police Department partnered with Mendocino County to apply for a grant from the California Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) and the Proposition 47 Grant Program to expand Care Response Unit (CRU) outside of Fort Bragg on the coast. The total grant awarded is $2.5 million to be used over the next three and a half years. This was a competitive grant process with dozens of applicants across the state. Recently, FBPD was notified their grant proposal was selected to be awarded.

Proposition 47 passed in 2014, with the intent of reducing the number of people sent to prison. Part of the proposition was the resulting savings generated by reduction in the prison population would be deposited into a special fund. Sixty-five percent of those funds were to be used annually for BSCC to administer a competitive grant program. BSCC requires at least 50% of awarded funds are passed through to community-based providers.

The Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center will be receiving $1.5 million to expand behavioral health services outside of Fort Bragg to more of the Mendocino Coast. These funds will also be used to dedicate temporary and transitional housing to CRU Team clients.

The $1 million portion to the Fort Bragg Police Department pays for a third Care Response Unit team member, whose time will be split between Fort Bragg and county areas from Albion to Westport. A part-time administrative assistant, administrative costs, and other associated costs are also covered.

Also included in this partnership is the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, who will have a CRU team member to address the same issues in the county in which CRU has been so successful with in the City of Fort Bragg.

Chief Neil Cervenka said, “The Care Response Unit program was imagined by Captain Thomas O’Neal, who got the first grant to start it in 2022 to address the homeless crisis in Fort Bragg. Over the past two years, CRU has proven a successful model and grown to be a holistic answer to many of the social struggles law enforcement is tasked with solving. With the support of Mendocino County and Sheriff Kendall, we will show the model can be expanded to much larger areas and still be successful.”

City Manager Isaac Whippy highlighted the significance of the CRU program and its expansion, stating, “The Care Response Unit has become an integral part of how we approach public safety in Fort Bragg. By addressing complex social challenges like homelessness and mental health, the CRU program has made a real difference in our community. What sets this program apart is its ability to provide not only safety but also compassion, treating people with the respect and dignity they deserve in difficult times. By partnering with the Sheriff’s Office to expand this successful Fort Bragg model along the coast we are ensuring that all coastal residents, no matter where they live, have access to the care, support, and services they need. This partnership allows us to better serve our community while easing the burden on our law enforcement officers, letting them focus on their core duties. It’s a smart, compassionate approach, and I’m proud to support it.”

This information is being released by Chief Neil Cervenka. All media inquiries should contact him/her/them at ncervenka@fortbragg.com.

BRAUGHT’S GEIGER’S MARKET OF HOPLAND DEFAULTS ON COUNTY LOAN

by Jim Shields

At Tuesday’s, September 24 meeting, the Board of Supervisors received a report from staffer Kelly Hansen, of the County Executive Office Grants Unit on the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program’s Covid-19 grant “closure.”

The Supervisors learned from Hansen that one of the recipients of the low-interest loan program has defaulted on their loan, Geiger’s Market of Hopland, which closed their doors in July 2024. The Hopland LLC was created by former Laytonville grocery store owner, Michael Braught shortly before he put the Laytonville Geiger’s Long Valley Market up for sale in 2023. The amount of the loan was $180k, at 1% interest for 10 years, which was used for inventory and working capital. The loan required that 6 full-time equivalent jobs be created by July 1, 2024.

According to Hansen and a representative from “CDS,” the contractor working with the County on this program, that Geiger’s is currently in default of their loan and have not responded to letters, phone messages or attempts to contact the business owners. Supervisor Dan Gjerde expressed concerns that as the County ramps up a new loan program, that they ensure that the County has established protocols for dealing with defaults in the future. Hansen assured Gjerde and the other supervisors that the loan to Geiger’s had been secured by business assets as well as a personal guarantee from the current owners. Hansen noted that the current Geiger’s Hopland business is for sale, and that when the store sells, she hoped the loan would be paid.

Since pulling up stakes and moving to Montana back in 2018, Braught masterminded the sale and closure of the Laytonville landmark Geiger’s Long Valley Market. He originally acquired ownership of the Geiger family-owned institution after he married into the family.

In August of 2023, Braught sold Geiger’s Market to Haji Alam, of Ukiah. Following an 8-month legal dispute that brought new meaning to the adjective Byzantine, the store finally re-opened under Alam’s new ownership this past July.

This April, Braught put his Belgrade, Montana ranch on the market for $6,840,000. Earlier this month he reduced the selling price to $5,999,000.

My sole comment to my friends down there in the county seat on dealing with Mr. Braught and his loan default: Lots and lots and lots of Good Luck.

Newsom Signs Bill Restricting School Cell Phones

Gov. Gav Newsom signed a bill into law on Sept. 23, AB 3216, aka as the “Phone-Free School Act,” that requires every school district, charter school and county office of education to develop a policy limiting the use of smartphones by July 1, 2026. The new law will require public schools to limit or ban the use of cell phones in class.

I say it’s about time. Newsom says, “We know that excessive smartphone use increases anxiety, depression and other mental health issues — but we have the power to intervene. This new law will help students focus on academics, social development and the world in front of them, not their screens, when they’re in school.”

In a statement released at Monday’s bill signing, Newsom explained, “This legislation aims to reduce distractions and create a more focused learning environment for students.”

I was recently driving by Laytonville High School during lunch break while students were walking toward the downtown area. I observed nearly every kid on a cell phone but none of them appeared to be talking to each other. Later that day I asked my daughter Jayma, who’s director of Laytonville Healthy Start which does outreach work with the schools, why the kids were on cell phones instead of conversing with one another. Her response flabbergasted me.

“Dad, that’s exactly what most of them were probably doing. They were talking to each other on their cell phones.”

“While they’re walking side-by-side?” I said disbelievingly.

“Yep, that’s exactly what they’re doing,” she said.

“I’ll be damned,” was all I could muster.

Anyway, Newsom and the state Legislature did a good job on getting this much-needed legislation on the books.

Consumer Watchdog Testifies That Minimum Inventories Are Necessary To Combat Gas Gouging

On Thursday, Sept. 19th, my main man at Consumer Watchdog, President Jamie Court, tore the oil companies a new one when he testified in the legislative special session that California needs to establish a minimum inventory requirement of 15 to 18 days if it wants to avoid gas price spikes that led to billions in excessive profits for oil refiners during the last two years.

“When refineries go down and refiners don’t have adequate inventories that’s when gasoline prices go up like a rocket,” said Court. “Establishing a 15 to 20 day floor on gas inventories is the easiest way to protect California consumers at the pump from the grip of the 4 oil refiners that make 90% of the gasoline in the state. I have been watching this industry for 25 years, since serving on Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s Gas Pricing Taskforce, and it’s been the same story for two and a half decades. Low inventories combined with refinery maintenance lead to big price and profit spikes. It’s time to end this cycle that we call the Golden State Gouge. Governor Newsom deserves congratulations for being the first Governor to take on this well documented problem and call out the refining industry for keeping the state running on empty in order to pump up its profits.”

Drawing on data from the California Energy Commission, Court testified before the California Assembly Petroleum and Gasoline Supply Committee that the two California price spikes that occurred during the last year and a half were precipitated by refiners having less than 15 days of inventories.

His data-laden comments showed that the drop in inventories corresponded to gasoline prices spiking at over $5 per gallon in September 2023 and April 2024 and oil refiners reporting to the state record profits per gallon of more than $1.20 per gallon through their gross refining margins reporting now required under the law (SB 1322).

Some Reasons Why County’s Affordable Housing Policy Doesn’t Work

Scott Ward is a former inspector and planner with the County’s Department of Planning and Building.

Over the years, I’ve always paid close attention to his comments and insights on local planning and housing policies and issues, as he always informs and educates me on such matters.

Here’s Ward’s latest spot-on observations regarding the County’s affordable housing problems and the oftentimes self-inflicted snags and obstacles to implementing workable and citizen-friendly policies and rules.

Ward explains that, “Residential construction in California is exorbitantly expensive due to several factors. The California Building Codes are amended and re-written every three years. The California state legislature uses the building code for social engineering such as the Green Building Code and the California Energy Code. Building material manufacturers use lobbyists and spend millions to get their products mandated by the Codes. The insurance companies lobby for code changes so that they do not have to pay out claims. Local government such as Mendocino County raise building permit fees to cover costs AND to replenish the General Fund. In California whenever an affordable housing project is built with government loans and subsidies the contractor and subcontractors have to pay prevailing wage (Union scale) to their employees. “

Ward concludes, “The items above are why the term affordable housing in California is an oxymoron.”

(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)

MENDOCINO DANCE PROJECT - NEED SOME MAGIC?

by Justine Frederiksen

Standing under a grove of redwoods is already a pretty indescribable experience, since finding yourself surrounded by trees so tall you can only see their ankles as they stand in silent command of not only where you can stand, but how much light you can see and how much sun you can feel on your skin, is an astounding sensation to say the least.

And then when you add music and dancing to that already transcendent experience? Well, this writer isn’t even going to try and describe that for you, because watching dancers soaring under redwood trees to perfectly matched live music left me at a loss for (or maybe not in need of?) words, so you’ll just have to see it for yourself to understand.

“We’ve been working together for two years,” said Kristi Bohlen of Mitchell Holman, the musician who stood on the forest floor to add just a bit more magic to the dance routine she was performing about three stories up a redwood tree late Saturday afternoon on private property near the village of Mendocino.

“It’s challenging,” Bohlen admitted of dancing on a “floor” that is not only fully vertical but fully alive, and full of grooves, edges and even creatures that make every dance, even every step, a unique and unpredictable experience.

Before Bohlen danced, she waited patiently while suspended from ropes carefully attached to the redwoods as three women — Jessia Curl, Mackenzie Rain and Kara Starkweather — performed together.

Next, another dancer draped her long costume nearly to the forest floor while suspended from her ropes, which Bohlen said are carefully hung by professionals and checked before each performance.

To see these dances for yourself, you can visit the non-profit’s website to buy tickets for shows this weekend, or to attend their “Deck Party Fundraiser” Saturday, Sept. 28.

The performances are held on a property just “five minutes from the village of Mendocino, (with the) exact address provided after purchase of tickets.” Also included is a short walk/hike through the forest, as the current performance is hosted at three different sites among the redwoods.

As described on their website, the “Mendocino Dance Project is a dynamic and athletic dance company that brings the power of dance to theaters and outside spaces, on and off the ground. We are committed to helping art thrive in rural communities, bringing inspired work to local and regional audiences, and providing opportunities for people to participate and engage in the arts. The company’s thought-provoking work addresses what it is like to be human from many different angles, exploring our relationships to each other and to nature. A deep appreciation for beautiful landscapes and rural living guides the art-making.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

Mendocino Dance Project (photo by Cassandra Young)

SARA SONGBIRD

Hello Friends & Neighbors! Some good friends of myself and Jon Tyson will be filming a feature film in Philo this October. They are looking for some help. Mainly local housing for some cast & crew & some extras for a group event scene. Below is a letter from our dear friend Chris Thomas, co-producer, with some more info about the project and what they are needing. Please check it out and contact him, or Jon or I, if you think you can help.

Thanks in Advance!

Greetings Lovely Boonville and Environs community -

I’m shooting a fun, meaningful, professional feature-film, comedy in Boonville and I’m hoping some of you may want to get in on the act!

I’m a big Boonville fan, friends with a few locals and former locals, (Sarah Larkin, Jon Tyson, Doug & Wendy Reed, Bryan Huggins and others) which is one of the main reasons we chose this location ….. River’s Bend Resort in Philo, Oct. 6-16.

The Yogi Trademark, will be a meaningful feature dramedy with competitive yoga as the comedic backdrop.

The film both celebrates the yoga sutras and pokes fun at our American competitive spirit. It's a comedic call to action for us all to seize this critical period of East meets West to create a world of individual self-awareness and global peace.

We're looking for:

Background extras. Come to River’s Bend and be an extra in the film! We’re shooting a pretend Yoga Olympic Demonstration Banquet (dress as nice as you can), the evening of Friday, Oct 11 and then on Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 15 where you’ll be watching the pretend Yoga State Championships!

Ten Total Rooms for some cast and crew. Just for sleeping from Oct. 6-15. (Our folks have their own transportation, will be gone all day, and be fed at River’s Bend.) If you have a spare room, or an empty guest house, we would be forever indebted to you!!!

You’ll receive:

a fun adventure
good karma
a huge hug and handshake of thanks
some food to keep you happy
credit in the film!

We’ve assembled a cast and crew beyond our expectations! Which is wonderful but now we’re beyond River’s Bend’s capacity! Please email or call me, Chris Thomas at (510) 386-3695 or cthomas.sf@gmail.com. I’d be very happy to share more information with you.

I hope this tickles your fancy!

Thank so much!

Chris Thomas

Co-writer/Co-Director

The Yogi Trademark Movie

https://www.theyogitmmovie.com

KZYX board president Tom Dow and Barney the basset hound at the site of the future Ukiah studio. (2021)

MAKING PROGRESS AT THE NEW KZYX HEADQUARTERS

KZYX’s emerging future home in Ukiah has seen a lot of action lately. Project Manager Alexis Vincent reports that new windows have been installed and the dry rot-damaged front wall of the broadcast building (west side of the breezeway) has been replaced. Soon, the building will have new exterior siding and a repaired roof. Once these jobs are finished, it will be power-washed, prepared, and painted.

In addition, soundproof glass and doors are being installed inside the broadcast building that houses an on-air studio, two production studios, and a meeting/performance space plus a break room/kitchen and ADA bathroom. An early round of landscaping maintenance is slated for late September.

While these projects go forward, the studio design team is working behind the scenes to map out the connectivity plan for the studios, determining exactly what must be installed inside the studios’ walls and ceiling before they are finished. At the same time, Alexis is purchasing materials -- fixtures, appliances, equipment, carpeting, paint, and so on -- for the next stages of the project.

Alexis has high praise for Contractor Adrian Fisher of Big Fish Construction, his wife and business partner, Evelyn, and the other members of the construction team. This project, which began almost three years ago, has called for unusual flexibility and sensitivity on everyone’s part about the need to operate on a tight budget and to carry out the multifaceted work in stages as funding becomes available.

What projects are on deck once the donations have been raised? The next priority is installation of the rooftop mini-splits that will serve as an energy-efficient HVAC system. Other big-ticket items awaiting funding include the 90-foot broadcast tower, the satellite dish, and a generator that together will bring our new broadcast studios to life.

All in all, it’s an intricate puzzle with interdependent pieces and steps, requiring careful planning, staging, and coordination. We are ever so grateful to our wonderful building team!

Drop by on 10/5 and See What’s Happening at the New KZYX HQ!

KZYX Ukiah site party

Saturday, October 5, 11am - 2pm

390 West Clay Street, Ukiah

Guided tours

Live music by Back Porch Trio

THE EIGHTH ANNUAL NOYO HEADLANDS RACE will take place on Saturday, November 2^nd, 2024. Registration is open for the 5K Fun Walk, 5K Run, 10K Run, and half-mile kids’ run along the stunning Coastal Trail in Fort Bragg, California. This oceanfront trail consists of asphalt and soft track and is fairly flat and well maintained. The popular trail is loved by runners, walkers, visitors and locals.

Day-of-race packet pickup and registration will be located at the start/finish line adjacent to the Noyo Headlands Park parking lot at the end of West Cypress Street. Plenty of participant parking will be available near the start line.

The Noyo Headlands Race benefits Mendocino Land Trust in its mission to conserve and restore habitat and scenic areas, and provide public access to beautiful places in and around Mendocino County. All participants registered by October 4^th will be guaranteed a race t-shirt. Some sizes may not be available for those registering after October 4^th; however, race registration will remain open through race day, November 2^nd. MLT looks forward to bringing back half and full marathons to the Noyo Headlands Race in 2025.

Business sponsorships are still available! Learn about our sponsors or support the race here: https://www.mendocinolandtrust.org/get-involved/2024-noyo-headlands-race/

Race registration link here: https://runsignup.com/Race/Info/CA/FortBragg/NoyoHeadlandsRace

MLT website: https://www.mendocinolandtrust.org/

SANKEY GALLERY: A BLEND OF ART AND HISTORY

The Johnson-Evergreen Cottage, located just north of the Evergreen Street entrance to Evergreen Cemetery, stands as a testament to the rich artistic and architectural history of Mendocino. Originally built in 1886 by master carpenter J. D. Johnson for Justin Packard, this cottage was one of a pair of identical homes that graced the east side of Evergreen Street. In 1891, Johnson acquired both cottages and began renting them out, but the cottage to the south burned down in 1898. The north cottage continued to be used as a residence until at least the 1930s.

Painted in its distinctive rose red with yellow trim, this cottage became a well-known local landmark during the 1960s when Laura and Elwood Sankey turned it into the Sankey Gallery. The gallery, which first operated on Little Lake Street, moved to the Evergreen Street location by 1965. The signpost near the door, with its clear labels reading "ANTIQUES" and "GALLERY," reflected the Sankeys' eclectic business, which combined the couple’s passion for art and antiques. Their tenure at the gallery lasted until 1971, when they relocated to Caspar.

Sankey Gallery, 1965 - 1970. (Photographer: Bill Wagner)

After the Sankeys moved on, the building continued to evolve. In 1971, it briefly was home to "Moving On," a retail store that offered new and used items, antiques, gifts, and jewelry, before becoming the Coast Democrats headquarters in 1972. In 1976, property owner Roger Lovett remodeled the historic structure and added a two-car garage. Lovett operated his real estate office from the property, marking yet another chapter in the building’s versatile history.

Today, the building that once housed the Sankey Gallery is again a private residence, but its past remains etched into the fabric of Mendocino’s history. From its days as a modest rental cottage to its time as an art gallery and beyond, this structure stands as a reminder of the town's rich cultural and architectural heritage.

(www.kelleyhousemuseum.org)

ED NOTES

STREET RUNNIN' MAN, '67-'68

It was a short walk to San Francisco's primary riot venues from my grungy tenement apartment at 925 Sacramento Street. Either up the hill to the Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins, or through the Stockton Tunnel to the Union Square hotels. War criminals were always coming to San Francisco. Still are, lots of them welcomed and feted.

One night at the Fairmont may have given the feminist movement major forward momentum when the “chicks up front” seated on the curb across the street from the Fairmont took the first blows from the Tac Squad's fungo bats when the sadists in blue jumpsuits suddenly charged across the street as all us stop the war cadres massed between the Fairmont and the Pacific Union Club. The Tac Squad was selected for their size; they were all big, agile bastards who enjoyed beating people up, especially longhaired, loud-mouthed, highly irritating people like us. (There was a Tac Squad offshoot on patrol at night in unmarked cars. These guys were described by a cop friend as, “fat guys who like to drive around beating people up.”)

That night, we were hollering up at the impervious hotel facade for Field Marshall Ky, one of LBJ’s interim Vietnamese stooges, to go home. Ky was home, as it soon turned out, melting into Los Angeles to run a restaurant rather than the second-hand country he'd been looting for LBJ’s blundering imperialists.

Someone, probably an undercover cop grandly rechristened as a provocateur by us lefties who were on perpetual alert for infiltrators, sabs, and miscellaneous running dogs, although the sabs couldn't have been better than we were at sabbing ourselves, threw a balloon full of red paint up against the implacable gray wall of the grand old hotel, monarch of San Francisco’s inns.

No sooner was the paint running bright red down the hotel’s wall, the Tac Squad was sprinting across the street and clubbing their pre-designated demonstrator of choice. The chicks up front got the worst of it because they were no sooner on their feet to flee than the clubs started falling on them.

My brother and I jumped the stone wall into the Pacific Union Club — no Jews, no people of color, no women, nobody with a net worth less than half a billion. We were sprinting for the relative safety of Huntington Park past the basement door of the Club when a man in the black and white checked pants and cook’s hat of the kitchen worker, a bona fide member of the proletariat whose interests my comrades and I were theoretically committed to advancing, yelled, “You can't come through here!” Bro straight-armed the kitchen man, sending him clattering among empty garbage cans, and soon we were beyond the big boys wielding the clubs.

Behind us we could hear the screams and curses of the targets of opportunity as they were beaten by the defenders of order, and then things deteriorated into the usual 60s demo ritual of back and forth stampedes, this one up and down the flat Nob Hill block of California Street between Mason and Taylor.

We’d re-group when the Tac Squad retreated, then they’d chase us down California again, and on it would go for several hours, romanticized later in song and selective memory as ‘Street Fighting Man.’ It was more like running the bulls, with one or two cops scattering and pursuing a thousand middle-class book readers who'd never been in so much as a fistfight. We certainly weren't the Frisco longshoremen of 1934 in support of whom San Francisco was completely shut down for a week. The old working class stood and fought. The 1967 working class was with the cops all the way. We represented no one but ourselves, although public opinion was beginning to oppose the war even while enjoying the weekly spectacle of us getting whacked around by the Tac Squad and their East Bay counterparts when the demo targets were in Oakland and Berkeley.

That night we got smashed with the fungo bats and ran up and down Nob Hill streets, and very soon the worst of us, the fanatics, the true nut cases, the stone killers, the dwarf Lenins, took over the left, such as it was, and here we are today with millions of young people aware that America is not a benign force in the world and only rhetorically benign at home, but facing forces far more formidable than those we faced then, the primary one being the destruction of the global show itself.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, September 25, 2024

LINDA ALMOND, 66, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JONATHAN CAMARGO, 36, Ukiah. Controlled substance, under influence.

SEAN FLINTON, 43, Fort Bragg. Petty theft, disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

YAO LEE, 67, Richmond. DUI.

LAWRENCE MARSH, 50, Covelo. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

PABLO MARTINEZ II, 31, Covelo. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

JOHN MORAN, 57, West Lynn, Oregon/Ukiah. DUI.

DANIELLE RAMAKER, 49, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JOSEPH REDLION, 22, Fort Bragg. Battery, resisting.

GERRELL SCRIBNER, 38, Covelo. Failure to appear.

CLOVERDALE MAN ARRESTED AFTER ASSAULT WEAPON FOUND IN HOME AMID FBI SEARCH

FBI agents and other law enforcement officials said they found the illegal assault weapon and multiple high-capacity magazines in his home during a search Tuesday.

by Madison Smalstig

A Cloverdale man was arrested Tuesday after law enforcement said they found an illegal assault weapon and multiple high-capacity magazines in his home during an FBI search.

Federal agents, with assistance from the Cloverdale Police Department and a California Highway Patrol officer, served a search warrant about 6 a.m. Tuesday to the home on Pepperwood Drive in a southwest area of the city.

The warrant is connected to an ongoing federal investigation, the California Highway Patrol-Santa Rosa said in a news release, though no details as to what the investigation entails have been released.

Officials said they found an illegally modified and unregistered assault rifle and ammunition, some of which was capable of piercing body armor.

Nick Pavelka, 33, admitted to altering the firearm and having the magazines and ammunition, officials said.

Pavelka was arrested on suspicion of multiple weapons charges and was booked into the Sonoma County jail in Santa Rosa, the release said.

As of Wednesday morning, he was no longer listed as being in the facility, according to records.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office had not received a report on Pavelka’s case, spokesperson Brian Staebell said.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

GOOD OL' REDI KILOWATT

Editor:

As PG&E raises my rates every other day I am also being hammered with their self-aggrandizing television commercials. This is as ridiculous as when we had to watch “got milk” ads on TV. We all know about milk, and we all know we have no choice about where our power comes from. My research suggests PG&E is spending $6 million on ads this year. I know that is a mere drop in the bucket to its total budget, but how do regulators allow this company to get away with constant rate hikes and making us, their customers, pay for advertising about the company we know so well?

Eddie Flayer

Santa Rosa

SALTING A WOUND

Editor,

After stealing our history to feed his greed. After thumbing his nose at some of the most loyal fans in the world. After running a franchise into the ground by constantly trading All Stars and maintaining the lowest payroll in MLB. After laying off a thousand workers. After lying to us that he wanted to build a new stadium in precisely the worst place to build a new stadium. After causing the city of Oakland to spend hundreds of city employee’s work hours to try and make it work. After always intending to move to Las Vegas, John Fisher has the audacity and insensitivity to take out a full-page ad (Sunday 9.22) on the back page of the sport section saying: “Thank you Oakland.”

This Oaklander responds: You are NOT welcome, John Fisher. Take your organization and puppy dog president and get out of town ASAP. Good riddance, you are a persona non grata here!

Jim Prchlik

Oakland

ED NOTE: And while you're leaving Oakland, Fisher, leave Mendocino County, too, but leave your thousands of acres of trees here as permanent forest.

RIVALS AT THE SAN FRANCISCO DA’S OFFICE

by Fred Gardner

A few weeks ago a NY Times reporter named Matt Flegenheimer asked me to reminisce about being District Attorney Terence Hallinan’s press secretary in the year 2000, when Kamala Harris and Kimberly Guilfoyle were both Assistant DAs. I sent him a piece originally written for the AVA, slightly revised and renamed “Rivals at the District Attorney’s Office, San Francisco, Y2K.”

Here ’tis:

When Kamala Harris was running for District Attorney in 2003, Phil Matier and Andy Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle got a column out of an alleged rift between her and Kimberly Guilfoyle. It was Guilfoyle who did the alleging. A wicked drawing by the late, great Don Asmussen depicted the situation as described by Guilfoyle to Matier & Ross, who wrote:

They both have glamour, brains and determination — they even travel in the same tight-knit San Francisco social circle—but don’t look for District Attorney hopeful Kamala Harris to get a job reference from former office mate Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom anytime soon. Because behind the smiles, Guilfoyle Newsom — the network TV analyst and wife of mayoral front-runner Gavin Newsom — is still smarting from what she says was the frosty and underhanded treatment she got from Harris when she was making a bid to return to the D.A.’s office a couple of years back.

“The bottom line is she didn’t want me there,” Guilfoyle Newsom tells us. The back story — as they say in Hollywood — begins in 1996 when freshly elected District Attorney Terence Hallinan swept house at the Hall of Justice, and in the process sent the young and green Guilfoyle packing. She landed in the Los Angeles D.A.’s office.

A short while later, Hallinan’s chief assistant Richard Iglehart, who had worked with Harris in Alameda County, recruited the young up-and-comer (who had been dating Mayor Willie Brown) to supervise the D.A.’s career criminal unit. In time, Iglehart landed a judgeship and exited. Darrell Salomon, a local attorney with his own political connections, became chief assistant in January 2000. Guilfoyle — who by this time was dating the politically ambitious Supervisor Newsom — started making overtures to Salomon and others about returning to San Francisco.

Just what happened next is open to interpretation. Some office insiders say Harris caught wind of Guilfoyle’s plan and got her resumé from the secretarial staff. Next, Guilfoyle Newsom says, Harris was on the phone to her in L.A.:

“She called me and said basically that she was on the hiring committee and in charge of the budget for the D.A.’s office, and that I should have gone through her if I wanted to return to the D.A.’s office and that there was no money to hire me.”

Guilfoyle Newsom — who already had met with Salomon about coming back — says she called the office to find out what was going on and was told that that there was no such hiring committee and that Harris had no say in the matter. “You have to understand, I came with an excellent resume,” Guilfoyle Newsom said, “and talented women should support other talented women.”

Harris recalled the conversation differently. “I never discouraged her from joining the office,” she said. “I never suggested to her there wasn’t a job for her in the San Francisco D.A.’s office. Of that, I’m very clear.”

So why did Harris call her? “To see if she needed any help — to let her know I was there to help her,” Harris said.

She says she’s at a loss to explain Guilfoyle Newsom’s version of events. “I’ve seen Kimberly a number of times over the last few months,” Harris said. “We have great rapport and have great respect for each other.

“I think she is a great lawyer,” Harris added, “and I look forward to working with her.”

Terence had once corrected me when I said Kimberly had been “rehired.” He wrote me a note – which he didn’t often do – clarifying how things had gone down. At Flegenheimer’s request, I found it.

I inferred from the Matier & Ross piece, which ran a year after I left the SFDA’s office, that Darrell Saloman had urged Kayo to hire Kimberly. Which meant that his handwritten “Timing is everything” note had been an attempt to shine me on! Kayo didn’t want to admit that he’d been pushed into a hiring decision by his Chief Assistant, didn’t want to hear any guff about it. Nor did he want it recalled that he had given Kimberly the boot when he first took office! Long afterwards he would acknowledge that, according to Salomon, Kimberly Guilfoyle’s presence at SFDA would guarantee support from her father’s politically potent in-crowd at the Irish Cultural Center.

I didn’t often see Kayo after I left his employ. We moved to the East Bay and in 2003 I began producing O’Shaughnessy’s, a journal of sorts for pro-cannabis doctors and their patients. I was glad he didn’t ask me to endorse him when he ran for re-election in 2003. I would have advised him to bury the hatchet with Kamala and withdraw. As far back as 2000 he used to duck into my office to ask the name of so-and-so. Then he would smack his forehead with a flat hand and say, in sincere anguish, “My memory!” He was 63 – not that old, but as a fighter he had taken many more powerful blows to the head (including a few from Cassius Clay).

Although he remained physically fit, Kayo would spend his last decade in a residential care facility.

By the time Matier & Ross ran Kimberly’s put-down of Kamala, she was on leave from SFDA and pursuing a career as a TV pundit. She never returned to work as a prosecutor. Her new career would take her to New York, where she soon married an investment broker, had a kid, and got divorced. I don’t know when she met Donald Trump, Jr.

Kimberly’s handsome father had been born in Ireland. Her mother, who died when she was 10, came from Puerto Rico. Kimberly used to make much of her Puerto Rican heritage (to me and Marine of the Chronicle (whom she made for a lib-lab); but in 2017, when Puerto Rico was leveled by a hurricane, the Trump Administration withheld reconstruction funding, and if Kimberly Guilfoyle pleaded for her people, it was discreetly and in vain.

The last bit of advice I gave her before I departed SFDA went something like this: “I don’t really notice these things, but my wife, who sees you on TV, says she can tell that you’ve had a little work done on your lips. You’re a very beautiful woman, Kimberly. Don’t let them do anything more to your face!”

People tell me that was “rude,” but burnishing her image was part of my job. And she knew I was sincere.

When I sent the first draft of this piece to the AVA on August 10, 2022, Kamala’s photo was on the front page of the New York Times accompanying a story by a trio of reporters under the headline, “Is ‘Top Cop’ Now a Reformer? Wrestling with Harris’s Record.” According to the Times, “Ms. Harris also created a ‘re-entry’ program called ‘Back on Track’ that aimed to keep young low-level offenders out of jail if they went to school and kept a job.” To re-enforce the claim that Kamala had created the program, they quote the police chief of East Palo Alto: “Re-entry was not a prevailing thought in law enforcement,” he said. “She said this is a unique opportunity to reduce recidivism.” (Kamala’s staff just might have steered the Times to that quote.)

The claim that Harris “created a ‘re-entry’ program called ‘Back on Track’” is technically accurate. But it was a replica of Hallinan’s “Streets to School” program.

The Times reporters also gave Hallinan short shrift by writing, “He was seen as one of the nation’s most progressive district attorneys.”

On the issue underlying mass incarceration — the War on Drugs — Terence was the most progressive DA in the nation as of 1996, the lone advocate within law enforcement of legalizing marijuana for medical use. And he was the nation’s first progressive DA, says Susan Breall, a veteran prosecutor who is now a Superior Court judge. “Before Terence, nobody had ever heard of ‘a progressive district attorney.’ And no DA’s office that I know of had put significant resources into prosecuting domestic violence cases.”

TRAPPED IN SQUALOR

by Paul Modic

It doesn't take long for me to generate squalor. I've been home a couple weeks and surfaces have quickly become clutter vectors, the floors magnets for detritus, and I am wishing for a house cleaner to save me. It always feels so good when the place is straightened up but have no desire to do it myself.

It's a disaster within also as I've been on the road for two months and my previous healthy diet of copious amounts of veggies, in various forms, has vanished. (I just got my latest test results and my sugar and fat levels have gone way up.)

I started hiring housecleaners about 30 years ago when the wage was ten dollars an hour. The house cleaning would evolve into garden help and whatever else needed to be done. I ran through ten or more over the years, once entertaining the idea of having a tea party where I'd invite all the former housecleaners.

I really hate housecleaning though I have actually started doing my dishes the same day for the first time in my life. (I'm thinking of that song from the Broadway musical “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” which goes “Everybody ought to have a maid! Everybody ought to have a working girl, to putter around the house.”)

Back in the day out in the hills I was living in such squalor that not only were all the dishes dirty but were so encrusted that if I wanted a plate or bowl to eat from it meant soaking the disaster dishes for hours.

During the fall I'd pull a trimmer off harvest duty every few weeks to clean the house. “A clean house makes Paul happy and relaxed and that's important if we're going to get through this,” I said. They didn’t like it but went along.

The last year or so I was pretty spoiled, renting out my place in the hills in a work/trade situation. Once a week she came in and prepared an entree and many veggies: sauteed, fresh salad, and a green drink. The green drink could be scary or tasteless, for some who tried it, but I liked drinking that medicinal goop.

Trading housing for 20 hours a month seemed like free food, but now she’s bought the place and I’m struggling just to chop up a few veggies. (She also did some housecleaning every month which kept the squalor under control.)

Who are these neat freaks who keep their homes clean? How do they do it? It's not like I go to work, am gone all day, and come back to a clean house. I'm home all day and every move I make creates more dirt as I go in and out, tracking in the grime.

When I was sick a couple years ago I felt like a helpless blob and wanted everything done for me. Now I'm healthy but still feel like a helpless blob and would like everything done for me.

My latest motto is: “I don't do much but it takes me all day to do it.”

I’m just doing the minimum, which is usually a sign of depression, am not motivated to do anything around the house, and will be lucky to just get a batch of clothes into the washing machine today. I love a clean house but detest cleaning, like good healthy food but don’t like cooking, and must really like to whine and complain. (I know what you're thinking now: “Shut up! There are people with real problems!”)

hillmuffin@gmail.com

JIVIN' WITH JIVAN

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Sitting in the Adam's Place Drop-in Center on computer #8, slight rain outside, the afternoon meal of a chili dog and fries with soda pop has been served. Showers are being taken. Laundry is being done. FYSY is on one screen, football highlights are on the other screen. All is calm as the evening check-in at the Adam's Shelter entrance at 5 p.m. approaches. Dinner is at 6:30 p.m. and seconds are served at 8:45 p.m. The lights go out at 10 p.m. Lights go back on at 7 a.m.

Meanwhile, the 75th birthday is Saturday September 28th. The monthly social security benefits will be automatically deposited into the Chase checking account before October fourth. EBT benefits will accumulate on the fourth. I am identified with Sakshi, or the eternal witness. We Jivan Muktas chant: "I am not the body, I am not the mind, Immortal Self I am".

Contact me if you want to do anything on the planet earth. I am available until the body-mind complex vanishes. 🕉️

Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

MITCH CLOGG

Nothing I’ve ever known or done prepared me for this. They don’t tell you about this stuff. Every day is another lesson in old age. They don’t tell you about this stuff, how things you assume are more or less forever are absolutely not. Yesterday I was back in Stanford Hospital so my glamorous surgeon could glance at my errant left foot.

And she did, there in her spike heels, cool outfit and warm disposition, there where rich and poor meet for damn near unequaled health care.

My antipathy for unequal wealth is mollified to see that a lot of people waiting their turn are not wealthy. Out through one of the clinic doors came a young couple. Apparently the best she could wear for this trip to the doctor was a plain old T-shirt.

As they passed by, they passed an old Sikh man, all in white, beard and clothing, except his black turban, a man whose appearance spoke prosperity. He did not stare, nor did they.

Next to a receptionist’s seat behind the partial window is a sign that says something important in twenty languages. I don’t remember what, but I have a copy of it around here somewhere. The busy lady made a copy of it for me as readily as if I’d asked her the time.

So my surgeon peered at my heel for maybe two minutes—surely fewer than five—and declared it good. Then another five to ten minutes were spent on telling daughter Molly and me the answers to our questions. Yes, I’ll have to keep an eye on my plumbing and associated hardware for the rest of my life. No, it’s a little too soon to go to the big indoor pool at the Starr Center. Yes I need to come back in three months, another nine hours riding in a van for ten minutes conferring, because that’s how it goes.

Nothing prepared me for all this. Maybe I should make a new plan, go back to school and become a doctor of gerontology. Ten years should just about do it, provided they soon announce a cure for stupidly named Attention Deficit Disorder. Ninety-six seems like a suitable age to give up on writing and start filling the hole created by not telling you about all this old-age stuff.

A man ahead of me, talking with a staff person, wearing a Ducks Unlimited T-shirt, responded to my respectful mention of his shirt as being the sign of one of the best conservation organizations in the country. He said are you a hunter? I said used to be but I don’t get off on killing anymore. I hunted when I was a kid. He said smilingly you’re still a kid. I’d guess he was half a dozen years younger than me, but I’ve always looked young for my age.

BEYOND POLICY, CALIFORNIA’S AGING WORKFORCE NEEDS LOCAL SOLUTIONS

by Tylor Taylor and Dr. Jennifer Taylor-Mendoza

Nearly a quarter of California’s population will be over 60 within the next five years. Along with that shift comes a profound transformation in the workplace: Many older adults are not retiring.

With life expectancy increasing and housing and medical costs at an all-time high, older adults need ways to extend their careers or sustain new income. Whether by choice or necessity, nearly 11 million Californians will remain in the workforce beyond the traditional retirement years.

With such a significant demographic shift, the state will inevitably see economic implications. There are many benefits when older adults contribute to the workforce, but it has now become a necessity that employment opportunities exist for them. One-third of California’s older adults live below the poverty line, and 2 out of 3 depend on Social Security for at least half of their annual income.

As this demographic continues to grow, many with inadequate incomes, the state will see an increase in demand for social services and public assistance programs. These could include state-funded programs such as food assistance, Medicaid and housing support, all of which increase the fiscal burden on the state.

Without adequate workforce opportunities for older adults, their quality of life and our state’s economy could take a staggering hit.

This issue has been on the radar of California policymakers. A key goal of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “Master Plan for Aging” is to foster opportunities for older adults to contribute socially and economically through continued employment, and there are several tax credits and resources encouraging employers to hire older adults. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit, for example, incentivizes California employers to hire from target demographics, including seniors. Or the state’s Employment Training Panel, which reimburses businesses to update skills and retain their staff, is another example.

These programs represent positive steps forward, but the challenge we face can’t be solved with policy alone. The sustainability of any solution to increase employment opportunities for older adults is contingent on the intervention of local organizations with infrastructure in place and knowledge of what the community needs. Skill training is just one part of the puzzle.

If barriers such as digital literacy or access to transportation exist in a community, educational workshops or employer incentives can only go so far.

In Santa Clara, for instance, the older adult population is projected to surge by more than 200%. In response, Successful Aging Solutions and Community Consulting and the West Valley-Mission Community College District came together to pioneer a unique program, informed by county-level data about workforce and resource needs, offering credit and noncredit course bundles curated for adults 50 and older.

It’s also positioned to create pathways to the older adult services industry, addressing the state’s critical caregiving needs as baby boomers reach adulthood. Additionally, it will boost the financial stability of our community colleges by improving enrollment — a number that took a catastrophic hit post-pandemic.

Community colleges are just one example. Organizations like Tech Exchange partner with local organizations to provide digital literacy coursework to help older adults stay competitive in the workforce. Cogenerate partners with organizations to create pathways for seniors to segue into new careers.

The key is for community organizations to assess local needs and identify ways to use available funding and resources to maximize the potential solutions to address this forthcoming population shift. In this case, we have the right state policies in place.

Still, the solutions must continue to evolve at the county level to ensure that resources adapt appropriately to the needs and characteristics of older adults. Without that, the financial future of many older adults — and the state itself — looks bleak.

(Tylor Taylor is the CEO of Successful Aging Solutions and Community Consulting.Dr. Jennifer Taylor-Mendoza is the president of West Valley College.)

NEW STATE BILLS SIGNED

Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills that will strengthen protections for consumers, addressing issues that have put financial strain on Californians while setting new standards for transparency and accountability across industries.

Medical Debt Relief

SB 1061 by Senator Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) targets the devastating impact of medical debt on consumers. Under this new law, medical debt will no longer be included on consumers’ credit reports, ensuring that people are not penalized for the high costs of necessary healthcare. The bill also prohibits using any medical debt listed on a credit report as a negative factor when making credit decisions, and gives individuals more room to address their medical bills before debt collection and reporting actions can take place.

“I am proud to author legislation to provide relief to Californians suffering from the burden of medical debt,” said Senator Limón. “No Californian should be unable to secure housing, a loan, or even a job because they accessed necessary medical care. With this new law, California is stepping up to protect consumers impacted by the effects of medical debt.”

Making It Easier To Cancel Subscriptions

AB 2863 by Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo (D-Chatsworth) addresses complicated auto-renewing subscription services that are easy to sign up for but hard to cancel. The bill requires companies offering automatic renewals and continuous services to provide consumers a means to cancel the subscription using the same medium they used to sign up; for example, a person who subscribes online has to be given an online click-to-cancel option. This ensures that consumers can easily exit from services they no longer want, without being trapped by confusing processes or hidden fees.

“At a time when too many in our community are struggling, unwanted subscription renewals can really add up. AB 2863 is the most comprehensive ‘Click to Cancel’ legislation in the nation, ensuring Californians can cancel unwanted automatic subscription renewals just as easily as they signed up – with just a click or two,” said Assemblymember Schiavo. “California is setting a model for the nation on protecting consumers from unnecessary charges – giving them more control over their finances and helping to ensure fair business practices, providing a win for both consumers and small businesses. I’m grateful that this important legislation was signed, as it will mean more money in the pockets of people throughout our community.”

Protecting Against Unfair Fees

AB 2017 by Assemblymember Tim Grayson (D-Concord) and SB 1075 by Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) address unfair banking practices. AB 2017 prohibits certain banks and credit unions from charging nonsufficient funds fees when a transaction is declined due to the consumer having insufficient funds. SB 1075 sets limits on the amount credit unions can charge for overdraft fees. These bills aim to protect lower-income Californians that are disproportionately impacted by financial fees that can push them deeper into financial hardship.

Additional Consumer Protection Measures Signed Into Law

AB 1849 by Assemblymember Tim Grayson (D-Concord) – Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act: services and repairs: travel trailers and motor homes (signed earlier this year).

AB 1900 by Assemblymember Dr. Akilah Weber (D-San Diego) – Consumer refunds: nondisclosure agreements (signed earlier this year).

AB 1971 by Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay) – Administration of standardized tests.

AB 2202 by Assemblymember Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) – Short-term rentals: disclosure: cleaning tasks.

AB 2297 by Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) – Hospital and Emergency Physician Fair Pricing Policies.

AB 2347 by Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) – Summary proceedings for obtaining possession of real property: procedural requirements.

AB 2426 by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks) – Consumer protection: false advertising: digital goods.

AB 2801 by Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) – Tenancy: Security Deposits (signed earlier this year).

AB 2837 by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) – Civil actions: enforcement of money judgments.

AB 2992 by Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen (D-Elk Grove) – Real Estate Law: buyer-broker representation agreements.

AB 3108 by Assemblymember Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, Sr. (D-Los Angeles) – Business: mortgage fraud.

AB 3283 by the Committee on Judiciary – Enforcement of judgments: claims of exemption (signed earlier this year).

SB 919 by Senator Thomas Umberg (D-Santa Ana) – Franchise Investment Law: franchise brokers.

SB 924 by Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) – Tenancy: credit reporting: lower income households.

SB 1286 by Senator Dave Min (D-Irvine) – Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act: covered debt: commercial debts.

ED NOTE: Nothing from the Northcoast's state senator and assemblyman.

GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM SIGNS THREE LAWS TO HOLD OIL DRILLERS ACCOUNTABLE

by Dan Bacher

Los Angeles, CA - Surrounded by oil wells at a press conference in the Inglewood Oil Field, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed three bills into law allowing communities to restrict oil drilling and help the state address polluting idle wells.

The signing of the bills was a big victory by the consumer, climate justice, environmental and community groups that have been urging the Governor to do so — and the culmination of years of organizing against Big Oil in California.

In summary, AB 2716 (Bryan) will shut down 600 wells in the oil field he was standing in. Another bill, AB 3233 (Addis), protects Los Angeles’s ordinances against oil drilling from judicial assault. A third bill he signed, AB 1866 (Hart), will prioritize the plugging of idle wells, according to Consumer Watchdog.

“The health of our communities always comes first,” said Governor Newsom in a statement. “These new laws allow local leaders to limit dangerous oil and gas activities near homes, schools, and other areas as they see fit for their communities, and give the state more tools to make sure that idle and low-producing wells get plugged sooner. This builds off of our all-of-the-above efforts to protect communities from pollution and hold Big Oil accountable.”

“Governor Newsom used his power to protect Angelenos from the toxic harm of oil wells,” explained Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, the sponsor of AB 2716. “Kids should not be playing soccer and going to school within yards of oil wells. California is once again leading the way in protecting communities from the harmful impact of oil drilling.”

“Since the wells are producing so little oil, on average three barrels per day, there is no economic reason to keep them open and endanger the lives of children and families who live around them. Newsom’s signature on AB 3233 is a vote for local control over oil drilling and strikes back against a recent, wrong-headed ruling that struck down LA’s oil drilling ban,” Court said.

AB 2716 (Bryan) is expected to lead to the closure of Inglewood Oil Field

AB 2716 (Bryan), the Low Producing Well Accountability Act, requires oil wells in the Inglewood Oil Field that produce less than 15 barrels of oil per day to pay $10,000 per month. The oil field is the largest urban oil field in the U.S. Sponsored by Consumer Watchdog, the bill is expected to lead to the closure of the Inglewood Oil Field in the Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles and sets a target date of 2030.

“The Inglewood Oil Field is the largest urban oil field in our state. Production in recent years has been marginal, but for decades the negative health impacts surrounding it have cost the nearby community with their life expectancy,” said Assemblymember Bryan. “Today, with Governor Newsom’s signature, we will finally shut it down and establish the state’s first repair fund for the frontline communities who have been organizing for years to be seen, heard, and protected.”

AB 3233 (Addis), the Local Environmental Choice And Safety Act, protects local statutes that limit drilling from statewide preemption arguments and should bolster the ban on new wells passed by the City and County of Los Angeles City, according to Court.

“The signing of AB 3233 is a vital win for communities across the Central Coast, and all of California,” said Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay). “Putting this bill into law affirms our right to clean air and water, free of oil and gas pollution. I’m thankful to Governor Gavin Newsom for signing this important bill into law, to my colleagues for helping me get it to his desk, and to the many community-members and leaders who have been fighting this battle with me. Today is a huge win for the well-being of all Californians.”

A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge recently struck down the City of Los Angeles’s ban on oil drilling based on a California Supreme Court ruling in a case involving a Monterey fracking ban. AB 3233 makes clear that cities like LA have the power to stop oil drilling in their jurisdiction.

AB 1866 (Hart), the Idle Oil Well Cleanup Act, prioritizes the clean-up of idle wells to facilitate the plugging of the wells and protect communities.

“This is a landmark victory for taxpayers and communities most affected by the harmful health impacts of neighborhood oil drilling,” said Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara). “I am proud of this decisive action we are taking today to hold the oil industry responsible for plugging over 40,000 idle oil wells across California. I want to thank Governor Newsom for recognizing the urgency of solving the idle oil well crisis in the state."

Court concluded, “Governor Newsom celebrated Climate Week in the most appropriate way, putting an end to fossil fuel infrastructure that threatens communities.

Likewise, the Last Chance Alliance praised the Governor for signing the three bills into law, tweeting, “These critical measures will hold the oil industry accountable and protect California communities from dangerous pollution. This is a huge step toward a cleaner, healthier future!”

Western States Petroleum Association: “Just More Political Theatre”

In contrast, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President and CEO of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), bemoaned the bill signing as “just more political theatre — signing bills that pile on mandates and drive up costs for Californians.”

“These new laws do nothing to produce more oil here at home and, in fact, cost jobs while forcing us to bring in more oil from overseas,” claimed Reheis-Boyd, the former chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create “marine protected areas” in Southern California, in a statement. “While the Governor cannot stop demonizing our industry, the truth is we prioritize community and worker safety too.”

“Gov. Newsom must rethink his own proposal on refinery maintenance that threatens refinery workers and communities. Even the Governor’s own experts disagreed with him last week. More mandates won’t lower gas prices or help California families,” she added.

6,366 new and reworked oil and gas well drilling permits approved since Jan. 2019

While the signing of the three bills was a major victory for climate justice, California still has a long way to go until it is free of fossil fuel production. California remains the seventh biggest oil producing state in the nation.

California oil and gas regulators approved 35 new oil and gas well drilling permits in 2024’s second quarter, a big leap from zero new permits approved in the same quarter last year, Consumer Watchdog and FracTracker Alliance reported in August.

“About half of these new wells were potentially illegally issued within the community setback zone,” said Liza Tucker, Consumer Advocate for Consumer Watchdog, in a press statement. “The pace of plugging wells slowed by a quarter over the same period last year, though the issuance of all types of permits in total fell 41%.”

A total of 16,366 total new and reworked oil and gas well drilling permits have been approved by the Gavin Newsom administration since Jan 2019.

A total of 35 new well permits were issued in the first 6 months of 2024, a +400% change from the first 6 months of 2023.

A total of 99 oil well rework permits were issued in the first 6 months of 2024, a -67% change from the first six months of 2023.

That comes to a total of 134 new or reworked permits in the first two quarters of 2024.

California is currently home to 101,000 actively producing, idle, and newly permitted wells that have not yet become operational, according to data compiled by the FracTracker Alliance. Out of that number, 26,000 are located within the 3,200-foot health protective zone where millions of people live.

DID ‘MONEYBALL’ RUIN BASEBALL?

by Susan Slusser

Author Michael Lewis gets two different responses when it comes to his book about Oakland Athletics executive Billy Beane, “Moneyball,” including accusations that he changed the sport for the worse, hastening the rise of analytics.

“Oh, yeah, people tell me I ruined baseball all the time,” Lewis said. “But mostly, the response to the book is, ‘Oh, I read your book and I’m Moneyballing government,’ or Moneyballing the hospital system or whatever it is. Most people just took it as a metaphor for the broader sweep of change and the insinuation of data and analytics all into kinds of places where they hadn’t been before.”

More than 20 years after the book was published and more than a decade after the movie, with Brad Pitt portraying Beane, was released — and with the A’s poised to leave Oakland after Thursday’s final home game — Moneyball remains a slippery and occasionally controversial topic.

Among those who believe it has been bad for baseball: Michael Lewis.

“I think that’s true,” he said. “It turns out that the smart way to play baseball is boring. Don’t steal bases. Don’t swing at bad pitches. Position fielders so the ball is hit right to them. It does make what is already a pretty sedentary sport less kinetic. … They are kind of addressing it now, making the bases bigger, not letting people shift. The problem is that it’s already a slow sport in an age that doesn’t like slow sports, and if you’re going to do it smart, you make it slower.

“It’s much less fun having geeks from MIT running the baseball team than it was having colorful tobacco-chewing former players who you knew. It’s much less fun when the manager is clearly less important, more like a middle manager. The way reason permeated the front offices has bled onto the field, and the players are more reasonable, more rational and not likely to go off half-cocked. Could you imagine if (animated reliever) Al Hrabosky rolled into baseball now? It would be fun to watch, but it would be just like, ‘Oh, that’s weird. That’s not optimal.’

“I kind of agree that Moneyballing baseball made it more boring.”

Jeff Berry, a recently retired agent who represented former Giants catcher Buster Posey (among others), is known to rail against Moneyball and its impact as a regular guest on Buster Olney’s ESPN podcast.

“Moneyball, the efficiency model, the slash-money model, I think it’s a failed ideology,” Berry said. “To me, the proof is the decline in attendance of those that followed, the retraction of the popularity of the sport. The efficiency mindset was not good for the game.”

Fans point to the increase in analytics-driven platooning and roster churn, trying to find value on the margins, for waning interest, complaining that the game is now more about numbers than people. Many prefer set lineups and rotations so they can root for everyday players and invest in jerseys without fear their favorites will be the victim of metrics.

Lewis, who is attending Thursday’s finale at the Coliseum, has long argued that though his book might have accelerated analytics’ ascension, it would have happened at some point as teams started paying attention to Beane’s work in Oakland, with the Boston Red Sox under owner John Henry already leaning that way.

Berry believes that Beane was the real key to metrics taking off, though.

“I think the reason Moneyball became such an incredible movement was at the center of it was Billy Beane. And Billy is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met,” Berry said. “He’s a huge, physical presence. He’s articulate, he’s good-looking, smart, funny, and he takes over any room that he’s in. It was kind of a perfect storm. You had a world-class writer, a world-class movie star playing the coolest dude in baseball. And you look around and people say, ‘Oh, we’re going to replicate that.’ The thing is: You can’t replicate Billy Beane.

“And there were some false narratives, because the moves that Billy made weren’t what drove that A’s team. What drove them was the scouting department, Eric Kubota and the international guys. It wound up grossly inflating the value and salaries of front offices, and it marginalized the value of managers, players and scouts.”

Berry pointed out that when the Giants won World Series titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014, they had one of the best scouting departments, development departments and front offices in the game, “but not one person was hired from that organization because they were not efficient in doing it. When John Henry talked to Billy, he said, ‘Billy, congratulations, you run the cheapest operation in the sport. Because of that, I’m now going to make you the highest-paid executive in the history of sports.’

“Tampa Bay has been built on that. If you get coffee with Tampa Bay, you’re qualified to be a GM somewhere. If you worked for Brian Sabean and the Giants and won three World Series in five years, you won’t even get an interview.”

The shifts in emphasis helped prompt Berry’s retirement this year, at just 54. Among the things that rankled him: Josh Hader, a premier closer, had lost in an arbitration hearing, and then as a free agent, he didn’t get an offer until spring training this year. All-Star catcher J.T. Realmuto got one offer when he became a free agent in 2020. The problem, Berry said, is the emphasis is so much now on brilliant executives, they can’t prove their savvy with slam-dunk moves.

“It’s not safe to sign Josh Hader,” he said, “because you can’t show how smart you are to sign him. He had the highest strikeout rate in history, the lowest batting average against in history.

“It’s embarrassing, is what it is. It’s an efficiency mindset over a growth mindset.”

Former A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson, traded to Toronto after the 2014 season, became the AL MVP with the Blue Jays in 2015. He said he and the Oakland team certainly understood what Moneyball meant for them.

“It was a great opportunity to be in an organization where you could say, ‘Look, there’s going to be a time where my name gets called,’ because they weren’t going out and getting a top-tier free agent that they were going to plug in every day, right?” Donaldson said. “But as a big-league player, once you established yourself, you knew that you were playing your way out of Oakland at some point.”

When Lewis’ book was released, the first backlash centered around the idea that Lewis had given the bigger, wealthier clubs the secrets, reducing opportunities for finding undervalued assets. Nevertheless, the A’s, and especially Tampa Bay, continued to use analytics and out-of-the-box thinking to routinely fare better than big-budget franchises.

Andrew Friedman, who established himself as one of the top minds in the game by using analytics to make Tampa Bay a regular contender, now runs the Los Angeles Dodgers. The combination of money and Moneyball has turned Los Angeles into a dominating team.

When Friedman went to L.A., he said, Beane called him and said, “It’s going to be fascinating to see how much you can take from what you did with the Rays and apply it in a large market. And it’s scary.”

“Moneyball” is a major reason Friedman is in the game in the first place, something that’s true of several current top execs, including Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, who started his career working under Beane and then was Friedman’s No. 2 in L.A.

“I was working in investment banking in New York, and on a Sunday, the insert in the New York Times Magazine had an excerpt from ‘Moneyball,’ and I remember sitting there reading it, and my desire to get in the game was already incredibly strong, and I had sent out tons of letters, but all that did was fuel it even more,” Friedman said.

“Thinking in terms of how to exploit market inefficiencies, knowing that payroll doesn’t decide the standings, being nimble enough to pivot as things were changing, being bold enough to go against the grain — that isn’t easy, but that’s what we had to do in Tampa Bay to survive in the AL East. And Billy really blazed the trail in how he went about it.”

Brian Cashman of the New York Yankees is the lone top executive to have been around since Beane took over the A’s. His team now has about 10 analysts, a smaller group than some clubs. The Yankees also hired Sabean as a senior adviser. They’re not all analytics all the time to the degree some teams might be — Cashman calls metrics “one spoke in the wheel” — but Cashman recognizes what “Moneyball” did.

“Billy was the spark for the entire sports industry — not just baseball, but the entire industry of sports recognized that analytics could make better, more efficient decision-making. They weren’t just for Wall Street and hedge funds and boardrooms,” Cashman said. “You could apply more predictive measures and eradicate a lot of bad decision-making. It transformed an entire process in the world of sports, not just baseball.”

So what about the idea that “Moneyball” has had some detrimental effects?

“If you’re disinterested in bettering yourself and putting yourself in a better position to make quality decisions, don’t invent fire, right?” Cashman said. “Just stay in the caves. You’re trying to compete at the highest level possible and anybody arguing not to use your brain — well, I can’t wrap my mind around that. You wouldn’t want someone operating your investment portfolio that way.”

“The game is constantly changing, constantly evolving and that’s true of any industry, any business.”

The idea that analytics take the human element out of the game, emphasizing numbers over personalities and team continuity, is too simplistic, Friedman said.

“I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive,” he said. “I think there is a misperception around that, but I’ve definitely heard it. I don’t think about it much. It feels like a lazy kind of first-level take. We didn’t hear that much in Tampa Bay because there was enough novelty around it, but after the mass adoption, those criticisms got louder.”

Sam Fuld, a former Stanford outfielder, played for both the Rays and the A’s and he absorbed as much as he could. He’s now the general manager of the NL East champion Philadelphia Phillies.

“Being exposed to all of that as a player was a really neat experience, enormously helpful,” Fuld said. “I read the book when it was published, and it was pretty transformative for me. It sort of confirmed a lot of the things that I was thinking and the way that I looked at the game, and a year later, I was doing an internship with Stats Inc. after I finished up my first minor-league season with the Cubs.

“‘Moneyball’ was a big part of my life. Little did I know I’d be suiting up for that same team a decade later. I had great admiration for the way that they operated because of that book.”

One of Beane’s main points in “Moneyball” is that he wanted to find a way to draft players based on something other than “looking like” a big leaguer — because he himself had fit that bill, a tall outfielder who very much looked the part. He was never a regular in the majors. He wanted, in essence, to avoid drafting himself.

Fuld was the flip side: A smaller, slighter outfielder, he didn’t look the part. So “Moneyball” helped him.

“More than anything, it was just this open-mindedness about looking at the game in a nontraditional way and an objective way, and appreciating players for who they were as players, and not necessarily like what they look like in a uniform,” Fuld said. “I resonated with that, and I knew I didn’t catch anybody’s eye physically. It was just refreshing to learn about a club that got the most out of their resources and made some really smart decisions, even if they were nontraditional and not universally accepted in the game.

“I don’t think the game is ruined. I recognize it’s a different version of the game today than it was 20 years ago, but I think there’s a lot to be excited about. Sometimes different is good, and I can appreciate that not all changes in the game are universally loved, but I do think the general state of the game is a really positive version.”

(SF Chronicle)

BREAKER BOYS that work in the coal mines back in 1911. Not a class picture like you'd think but more of an employee get-together. Unreal to know these little fellas all did hard work. I am often asked what types of jobs young boys did so maybe this will explain a bit more about the job of being a breaker boy.

A breaker boy was a young worker, often between the ages of 8 and 12, employed in coal mines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their job was to separate impurities such as slate, rock, and other debris from coal after it was mined but before it was shipped off for use. Breaker boys worked in coal breakers—large, noisy, and dusty facilities where coal was crushed and sorted by size.

Sitting on wooden benches beside conveyor belts or chutes, breaker boys would pick out unwanted materials by hand as the coal rushed past. It was grueling, dangerous work that exposed them to constant dust, noise, and the risk of injury from machinery. The job was often seen as an entry-level position in the coal mining industry, and many boys eventually went on to work underground as they got older.

The work environment was harsh: the boys were often subject to cuts from sharp slate, respiratory problems from coal dust, and the ever-present danger of getting caught in the machinery. Despite the hardships, breaker boys were a crucial part of the coal mining process during that era, playing a role that modern machinery would eventually replace. Their labor is a sobering reminder of the exploitation of child workers during America’s industrial past.

NAVY SAILORS are allowed to swim in the ocean during designated events known as "swim calls." These events are a tradition where sailors can jump from the deck of their ship into the open ocean for relaxation and morale-boosting. Swim calls often occur during long deployments when the ship is in calm and safe waters. Sharpshooters and rescue boats are on standby to ensure the safety of the sailors, watching for sharks and preventing anyone from drifting too far from the ship.

The practice dates back to at least World War II and is still enjoyed by sailors today, offering a unique and memorable break from the rigors of naval service. Ships across the U.S. Navy fleet, including aircraft carriers and submarines, participate in these swim calls, providing sailors with a refreshing and enjoyable experience.

BATTLEGROUND MICHIGAN: A TALE OF TWO COMMUNITIES DIVIDED BY WAR

by Francesca Block

Abed Hammoud grew up in south Lebanon fearing the sound of Israeli war planes. The echoes of their engines were so commonplace that he told me he learned to differentiate between different kinds of fighter jets — and where they dropped their bombs — based on the noise they made as they whizzed overhead.

As we sat on a pair of sofas in the back corner of a coffee shop in downtown Dearborn, Michigan, sipping peppermint and chamomile tea, Hammoud, 58, tells me that whenever he hears thunder at night, he is transported back to that village in Lebanon. “It’s going to be our turn,” he recalled his teenage self thinking as he huddled with his family inside his grandfather’s home. “I start praying. That’s all you can do. I never forget that — that feeling of helplessness.”

In nearby West Bloomfield, Coby Goutkovich, 64, tells me about his childhood in a small village in northern Israel — just on the other side of the border, not 40 miles from where Hammoud grew up. He said he would never forget one night during the Six-Day War in 1967, lying in a ditch that he and his grandfather had dug in the backyard as a Russian-made Syrian bomber passed low overhead until an Israeli missile shot it out of the sky. “These things,” he told me, tapping his head with his right index finger, “are ingrained in the brain.”

Goutkovich moved to Michigan in 1989, built a career in construction and real estate, and raised a family of five kids with his wife of 22 years, who passed away last year. Hammoud, who is married with two sons, moved to the state in 1990, where he attended law school, then worked his way up to serving as a federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice and briefly worked at the U.S. embassy in Egypt.

But despite their geographic proximity now and as children, the two men inhabit wildly different political realities — and belong to two distinct communities in the Detroit metro area.

Goutkovich works in West Bloomfield, with a population of 65,000, at least 30 percent of whom are Jewish, and lives in nearby Farmington Hills, which has a similar demographic profile. Dearborn, where Hammoud lives, is a city of 100,000, over 50 percent of whom are Arab, largely of Lebanese, Yemeni, and Palestinian descent. West Bloomfield and Dearborn are less than 25 miles away from each other. But their residents’ perspectives on the war in the Middle East — and their views on who should win the presidential election in 40 days to bring it to an end — feel worlds apart.

The race in Michigan is unusually tight, with recent polling indicating that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are in a statistical dead heat. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the state’s 16 electoral votes by fewer than 155,000 ballots — a margin of 2.8 percent of the total vote. In 2016, Trump won them with a lead of just 0.2 percent.

But this year, Michigan isn’t just a swing state, it’s a battleground — if not the literal kind that the people of northern Israel and southern Lebanon are currently experiencing, then certainly a proxy for the tension felt between two groups of people, separated by a few dozen miles and years of war and turmoil.

Consider the news of just the last week. After Israel launched a targeted attack in Lebanon against Hezbollah by blowing up their pagers, two different Dearborn mosques held services honoring the “martyrs” killed in the attack. At the University of Michigan, two people allegedly attacked a 19-year-old student after asking him if he was Jewish. When Dana Nessel, the state’s first Jewish attorney general, charged 11 University of Michigan anti-Israel demonstrators for refusing to leave their encampment in the spring, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents Dearborn, questioned Nessel’s “possible biases” — a critique Nessel criticized as “antisemitic and wrong.” Governor Gretchen Whitmer initially refused to back Nessel, only to reverse course a day later, issuing a statement calling out Tlaib’s implication that religion impacted Nessel’s decision as “antisemitic.”

So while Jews and Muslims make up less than 4 percent of American voters (Jews represent 2.4 percent, Muslims represent 0.9 percent), who they are voting for — or who they refuse to vote for — says a lot about the state of the presidential race.

After a lifetime of voting for Democrats, Hammoud — who became a citizen in 1996 — is planning to vote for Jill Stein. The Green Party candidate is the only person running for president, he said, who is “totally anti-war.”

Hammoud fears that his vote could lead to a second Trump term. (Third-party candidates in tight races are often accused of playing the role of spoiler. See: Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential race.) But, he said, “I can’t in good conscience, today, if they stay the way they are, vote for Harris. What’s the difference between her and Biden?”

Like many Arab Americans in Dearborn — I spoke to more than half a dozen when I was in town — Hammoud believes that Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza is not merely a war, but an “extermination.” He says Biden and Harris are aiding and abetting a “genocide” — a controversial accusation rejected by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Goutkovich, on the other hand, told me that since October 7, there is just one thing on his mind: security for Israel and America against Iran, their common enemy. That, he told me, is why he’ll be casting his vote for Trump.

As we sat in a small Judaica shop he runs in the West Bloomfield Jewish community center, Goutkovich told me that he narrowly escaped death several times while serving in the Israel Defense Forces. In 1983, while working with the American military, he said he survived the infamous terrorist attack on a U.S. Marine base in Beirut during which a suicide bomber drove a truck with over 12,000 pounds of explosives into the barracks. Over 240 Americans died in the attack.

Last week, Israel claimed it killed Ibrahim Aqil, who the U.S. government said was involved in the Marine-base attack, in a targeted bombing in Beirut. Goutkovich called his death “justice being done.”

“If [Trump] was in power four more years,” Goutkovich said, “today, there will be no Iran issue. He will demolish them, just with sanctions, not even a war, not even shooting one bullet.”

Goutkovich, who became an American citizen in 2012, said he doesn’t “see big issues between communities” in Michigan, even though he acknowledges how, in general, their understandings of the war — and the world — sharply contradict each other.

But despite what Goutkovich says, the tension is undeniable. “I understand it, if there is a Palestinian and they feel bad, he’s going by what he listened to on Al Jazeera or whatever,” Goutkovich said. “That’s fine. So you want to express yourself, you are allowed to do it. But, don’t throw stones on me. Don’t intimidate me. Don’t try to make the point that you are right and I am wrong.” “Don't bring the violence from the Middle East to America,” he added.

Hammoud, on the other hand, told me he reads Haaretz, the leftist Israeli paper, every day. He said he senses more sympathy toward Palestinians from the Israeli left than he feels from his Jewish neighbors in Michigan. “It kills me that the Israeli left, or the Israeli people, intellectuals in Israel, are much more aware of what’s happening, much more in tune with it. And they’re saying, ‘Stop this war,’ “ Hammoud told me. “The Americans just give lip service.”

Historically, both the Jewish and Arab communities in Michigan lean left. There are just over 100,000 Jews in the state — over 60 percent of whom identify as Democrats. There are nearly 400,000 Arab Americans, 250,000 of whom are Muslim. More than half the residents of Dearborn have Middle Eastern or North African ancestry, and the city had been a stronghold for the left. In the 2020 presidential primary, 62 percent of Democrats in Dearborn voted for Bernie Sanders, compared to just 32.5 percent who supported Biden. Biden still went on to win over nearly 70 percent of heavily Arab American counties across Michigan in the general election.

But October 7 has shaken previous alliances, making once-ardent supporters on all sides feel disenfranchised by the political parties they once supported. And there’s no clear way either candidate can win over both communities.

Dearborn embodies this sentiment. The city’s mayor, Abdullah Hammoud (no relation to Abed Hammoud), refused to meet with Biden’s campaign staff ahead of the state’s presidential primary because of the administration’s support of Israel. Weeks later, 57 percent of Dearborn residents would vote “uncommitted” in February’s Democratic presidential primary — compared to just 40 percent who voted for Biden — a clear message that if Biden wanted to keep his supporters from 2020, he’d need to hear their demands.

Since Biden dropped out and Harris entered the race, it’s unclear if she’s had much luck regaining those voters. In her public statements, Harris promotes a ceasefire at the same time she calls for the release of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. But her insistence that Israel has a “right to defend itself” against enemies such as Hamas or Iran — as she spoke about at the Democratic convention last month — continues to alienate Dearborn’s “uncommitted” voters. It didn’t help when the Democratic National Committee declined to invite a Palestinian speaker, even one who would endorse Harris, to speak at last month’s convention.

Last week, the Uncommitted Movement released a statement discouraging their supporters from casting a “third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our country’s broken electoral college system.” The group stopped short, however, of endorsing Harris.

Recent polling from the Council on American-Islamic Relations shows Stein ahead with Muslim Michigan voters, with 40 percent of respondents backing her, followed by Trump with 18 percent and Harris at 12 percent. The most prominent Muslim for Trump is the mayor of nearby Hamtramck, Yemeni immigrant Amer Ghalib, who recently endorsed the former president, saying that Trump wants “to end the chaos in the Middle East and elsewhere.” Hamtramck is America’s only city governed entirely by Muslims — and has been a fixture of the country’s culture wars, especially in schools and libraries.

Hamzah Nasser, who owns Haraz Coffee House on Michigan Avenue in downtown Dearborn, two blocks from the Arab American National Museum, is another. Nasser, 37, knows what it’s like to live in a war zone. When he was 6, his family fled the civil war in Yemen and settled in Dearborn, where Nasser attended school, started his first business — a gas station — followed by his own trucking company, before he opened the first of his chain of coffee shops in 2019.

Since the war broke out, Nasser said his business — which imports its coffee beans from his home country of Yemen — has been severely impacted by shipping issues caused in part by Houthi rebels who have been attacking cargo ships in the Red Sea. In August, a shipment originally budgeted to cost $25,000 ended up being $52,000, he said. Nasser thinks Trump will be able to put an end to his shipping woes more quickly than Harris. “He kept the peace with all these so-called dictators,” he told me. “I think Trump is going to stop the war.” “Only thing in my mind is making money and building a better future as an American citizen,” Nasser texted me after our conversation. “Wars only cost money and lives.” (But Nasser is far from a typical MAGA voter. He doesn’t identify as a Republican, for starters. And what would be a sign of apostasy in the GOP, he believes Tlaib, the Palestinian American member of The Squad in Congress, is a “woman of principle,” and he plans to support her in November, too.)

Jackie Victor, a 59-year-old born in the suburb of Bloomfield Hills who now lives in Detroit, is a lifelong progressive and activist who has dedicated her life and career to fighting for social-justice causes like environmentalism and Black Lives Matter. In the past decade, Victor told me she started noticing a tension between her progressive community of friends and her connection to Israel, which she said has always been “embedded in me, in my cellular structure.” But, she said, “I was able to just ignore the contradictions, honestly. And now I see I was probably willfully ignoring it.”

Then October 7 happened. “Almost immediately, I felt like I was politically homeless,” Victor said. She noticed some activists she’d previously marched alongside were suddenly declaring that “if you’re a Zionist, then you have no place in this movement.”

But watching Harris’s speech at the Democratic National Convention restored her faith in her own party. “I was reminded of who I still think is the majority of the Democratic Party,” she said. Victor is planning to vote for Harris and is canvasing for her. New polling from the Democratic think tank Jewish Democratic Council of America shows that she’s not alone — 68 percent of Jewish voters across the country said they planned to vote for Harris, compared to 25 percent who will support Trump.

But even though Harris has her vote, Victor told me, “I’m fucking anxious.” “She’s saying, ‘I do support Israel,’ and that is not a politically safe thing for her to say,” Victor said. “But I do have this low-level anxiety about what comes next. What do the policies look like? How about if we go to war with Iran?” That’s exactly the sense of apprehension Trump is trying to exploit. At the presidential debate on September 10, Trump said Harris “hates Israel” and warned that if she’s elected, “Israel will not exist within two years from now.” He’s also previously said that any Jewish voter who would vote for Harris over him “should have their head examined.”

Victor called Trump’s comments “disparaging.” “His loyalty towards anyone, especially, I believe, the Jewish community, is based on what benefits him in the moment,” she said.

Adam York, a 32-year-old Jewish voter from West Bloomfield who works in real estate, sees Trump more positively. “He’s not saying there is something wrong with Jews in general. He’s saying Jews who think Kamala supports Israel in a way or more than he does that they should look deeper. Of course, his verbiage is horrible, but he’s not saying Jews should get examined. He is saying, ‘Be informed who you’re voting for’.”

Elayna Jordan, 29, once considered herself “very blue” — a feminist activist who advocated for LGBTQ causes and abortion rights. She grew up in Farmington Hills, just south of West Bloomfield, and attended a Jewish day school in Bloomfield.

After attending college and living in Chicago for a few years, Jordan said she started moving toward the center on issues like taxes and the economy. She also said she witnessed a concerted effort from the left to paint the world as a struggle between the “oppressed” and “oppressors” — and Jews, she noticed, were always labeled as the latter.

Jordan is now back in the area where she grew up, living in Ferndale, just ten miles north of downtown Detroit, a suburb known for its Victorian-style houses. Since October 7, she told me that antisemitism — especially from her Arab neighbors, and a slew of activists who have joined their cause — has been pervasive. “I can’t go anywhere without seeing ‘Free Palestine,’ or ‘We hate Zionists’ written on bathroom stalls and carved into tables at public spaces,” Jordan said. “You would never see that happen with other minorities, ever.”

Concerned about Hillary Clinton’s ethics, Jordan voted for Trump in 2016, she said. But in 2020, she didn’t vote because she didn’t trust either candidate — and her concerns about Trump were only heightened after January 6. But this year, after the eruption of antisemitism after October 7, she told me she plans to vote for Trump once again. “There’s still people that are very fearful of Trump, and I can understand why, just based on his demeanor and the things that he says and his history,” Jordan said, “But, you know, I think that there’s a larger picture here. And I wish other people could see that.” She also recognizes there’s not a perfect political home for her in today’s climate. The extremes of both parties, she said, have become “so anti-one another that they’re touching each other.” “All this antisemitism and all that rhetoric has brushed up on each other. Now it’s like they’re joining hands,” Jordan said. Earlier this year, a group of white nationalists tried to hold a rally in Detroit to protest being kicked out of a conference held by a more mainstream conservative group — but the rallying cry quickly turned toward Jew-hatred. One of the attendees was former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who declared he was there to “save us from Jewish supremacism because we’re being genocided just like the Palestinians, just [in] a different form.” Another, online commentator Nick Fuentes, declared that Israel is “committing a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza” in order “to carve out a path for ‘greater Israel.’ ‰”

Jordan said she hears similar protest cries coming from the far left, and from just down the road, in Dearborn. Just three days after Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, a crowd in Dearborn gathered in a theater and cheered as a local imam stated that a “fire in our hearts that will burn” Israel “until its demise.” Days later, another imam referred to the October 7 attack as a “miracle come true.” In April, a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied in Dearborn and chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

Those chants were denounced by community leaders in Dearborn, including Imam Mohammad Mardini, the spiritual leader of the American Muslim Center, who told The Detroit News that “we do not accept, or share, the attitude that was expressed in those chants."

Mardini is a Lebanese immigrant who first came to the United States in 1980. At the Democratic National Convention in 2008, he presided over an interfaith ceremony in front of the conventions’ hundreds of delegates.

Speaking by phone, Mardini told me that he preaches to his congregation that “God created us equally” and that “we came the same, and we leave this life the same. The only difference is what we do in our life.”

But that’s not what’s most on his mind when he thinks about the election. “My concern is our domestic policies concerning our kids and grandkids and every American. That they deserve to live, you know, free of worries, of all of this inflation and economic unrest,” Mardini told me. He said he’s still not sure who he will vote for, although he is leaning toward Harris after watching her debate with Trump.

Many of Mardini’s congregants, however, are more conflicted about what to do in November. Many, he said, plan to vote for Stein. He said most people confess to him that they know Stein — who is polling at just 1 percent nationally — won’t win the election, or even Michigan. But he said they tell him they feel that, given the options of Harris or Trump, they have no other choice.

“They are looking for an alternative for what’s going on,” Mardini said. “They are trying to send them both a message.”

(Francesca Block is a reporter for The Free Press.)

THE TRUMP EFFECT

To the Editor:

Springfield, Ohio, is a case study in the Trump Effect. It clearly shows what happens before and after Donald Trump involves himself in a community.

Before, people went about their daily lives dealing with the normal ups and downs of modern living. After, the community has faced multiple bomb scares, school closings, militia marches, heightened fears, increased uncertainty and new divisions. This is the Trump Effect.

We have already seen it destroy long-held friendships, turn family holidays into shouting matches, increase mistrust, severely divide our nation and just generally make people more angry.

So, remember Springfield, and hope that Mr. Trump doesn’t set his sights on your community.

John Palme

Walnut Creek

WHY DO PEOPLE STILL BACK TRUMP, AFTER EVERYTHING?

by Alex Hinton

For many people, especially those leaning left, Donald Trump’s disqualifications to be president seem obvious, prompting some to question: How could anyone still vote for Trump?…

https://theconversation.com/why-do-people-still-back-trump-after-everything-5-things-to-understand-about-maga-supporters-thinking-239031

“EVERY DAY, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. “All the News That's Fit to Print,” it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it’s as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse. You may wish to choose a more rigorous mental workout, but I credit this daily infusion of annoyance with extending my lifespan.”

— Christopher Hitchens

HARRIS APPROVES VIOLENCE ABROAD

Editor,

In a recent Bay Area news item on the attempted attack on Donald Trump, Kamala Harris was quoted saying, “Violence has no place in America.”

Of course not. We’re focused on the violence we support outside our borders — Israel’s horrific campaign against the millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

We supply over 69% of the military equipment used. A minimum of 41,000 Gazans have been killed plus thousands more wounded, lives ruined.

A current poster with a picture of Harris states, “If you’ve been working ‘around the clock’ for 10 months for a cease-fire you’re bad at your job.”

Let’s fire her.

Jayne Thomas

Berkeley

LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

Eric Adams Is Indicted After Federal Corruption Investigation

Tracking Hurricane Helene

Harris’s Economic Pitch: Capitalism for the Middle Class

With Few Wins to Highlight, House Republicans Head Home to Chase Votes

Restaurant Portions Are About to Get Smaller. Are Americans Ready?

Ed note: The expanding war in the Middle East? Not among this morning's leads.

NORMAN SOLOMON’S C-SPAN INTERVIEW, including remarks about Israel’s attack on Gaza

https://www.c-span.org/video/?538430-3/norman-solomon-us-foreign-policy

‘DE-ESCALATION THROUGH ESCALATION’: Israel UNLEASHES HELL On Gaza & Lebanon… The Kyle Kulinski Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNPxxGk4pB8&rco=1

Public toilets in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Africa

THE WORLD WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT NATO

by Eve Ottenberg

The hyper-capitalist terror state that plots to rule the world keeps its fist in a mailed glove called NATO. But NATO is in trouble. As its massive, disastrous Ukraine adventure fails, a key member, Turkey, applied to, uh, essentially join the other side, namely BRICS. When Ankara does so, how will that work? One foot in the Washington-dominated axis and the other in the Moscow and Beijing camp? That could require some political acrobatics, but Turkey has performed thus before. We got a smaller show of that with the spring 2022 Istanbul negotiations to settle the Ukraine War, until Boris “To the Last Ukrainian” Johnson, doubtless at Joe “Proxy War” Biden’s behest, scuttled them.

Things got stupendously worse September 12, with Anthony “World War III” Blinken’s trip to Kiev, along with his British sidekick, foreign secretary David Lammy, to promise long-range, possibly precision missiles to Volodymyr Zelensky, to strike deep into Russia. At once Russian president Vladimir Putin took to the airwaves to announce that this would put NATO at war with Russia and that Moscow would adjust its plans accordingly. Never a good sign; one, in fact, that conjures images of bombed, radioactive American, Russian and European cities. But this was a reminder of Russia’s long-standing military policy: if existentially threatened, anything can happen. In short, one of the adults in the room had spoken. And Biden, with unexpected sanity, responded like an adult: no strikes deep into Russia. Let’s all hope to God, the west, Washington in particular, stops playing with fire — as one Kremlin bigwig accurately put it.

As for the Ukraine War itself, well, it’s a catastrophe for Kiev and for NATO. The stinging realization that Washington, the CIA in particular, bit off more than it can chew has commenced wounding the swelled heads of the more intelligent decision-makers in the imperial capital. Now, of course, Moscow is only interested in peace on the harshest terms for Ukraine, a change in posture, and not for the good for the west, thanks to the insane Ukrainian incursion into Russia. It is unlikely that Recep Erdogan and Naftali Bennett can ride to the rescue, as they attempted two and a half years ago. In those elapsed years, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have perished, tens of thousands of Russian ones have too, Europe has swung into an economic and political tailspin, Germany’s broke (Deutschland boasted 10,702 corporate insolvencies in the first quarter of 2024 alone, a scalding indictment of its Russophobic foreign policy), NATO’s cupboards are bare of weapons, and Washington is losing interest. Quite the time for Ankara to approach BRICS — perhaps the first rat leaving the waterlogged Titanic. Can Hungary and Slovakia be far behind?

Then there’s Poltava. On September 3, Russian forces attacked a military communications institute in Poltava, Ukraine. Also hit was a training center for specialists in electronic warfare and surveillance. On X, Peacemaker tweeted that Kiev reported 50 soldiers killed and 200 wounded. However, “military experts, including western ones, confirm the deaths of about six hundred people, including Czech, German and French â˜specialists.’ And Sweden is in complete shock at the loss of the entire leadership of the SAAB long-range radar detection and control systems in Poltava.”

NATO 23 Nov 2023 — Source: Estonian Foreign Ministry — CC BY 2.0

The Russian Iskander missile strike killed “specialists trained by the Swedes to operate the AWACS surveillance system of reconnaissance aircraftâ¦But in addition to UAV instructors, there were also top Swedish specialists in electronic warfare and radar systems.” (This was over and above killed British, Polish, German and French soldiers.) According to Peacemaker, “Kiev sent 15 trucks with dead bodies to Sweden.” This source also reported September 8 that “NATO specialists on the Periphery have become a priority target. High precision strikes have become a nightmare for foreign mercenaries and their equipment.” He cites four recent instances of such strikes and another on September 8, when “Russian missiles ‘repeated’ Poltava at Kharkov” — many soldiers killed and wounded.

In other words, elite NATO trainers and technicians are getting slaughtered in Ukraine. Which is just one more reason why they shouldn’t be there — the paramount one being, of course, that their mere presence could drag NATO and Russia into outright war and thus nuclear Armageddon. This is what European nations flirt with. Bad enough western mercenaries flock to Ukraine and thence into their coffins. But NATO can always claim they are not officially from the alliance, because they’re mercenaries. Trainers and technicians who man offensive western systems and target Russian soldiers and cities are another story. So far Moscow merely kills them. But what happens if they cross a real red line, as Putin has warned attacking deep inside Russia would be, the way the west witlessly crossed a Russian red line back in February 2022? Then we have a world war nobody wants. And don’t say Moscow doesn’t have red lines: the Kremlin appears unfazed by NATO provocations until suddenly it isn’t; it does nothing until, then, all at once it does something. Nitwits in the west and Ukraine found that out the hard way, when this war started.

Making matters worse for NATO were the early June European Parliament elections, followed by those in France and Germany: NATO and Ukraine war boosters lost big time. The EU parliament elections signaled that something was wrong for war-mongering elites. So upset by this vote was French president Emmanuel “French Boots in Ukraine” Macron, that he hubristically called snap elections, held June 30 and July 7. He lost. The anti-war left won. Then Macron was in a pickle. He stalled on appointing a prime minister, clearly loath to select one from the leftist winners. When he finally did, he ignored the left having won the most seats, broke with all precedent and chose a center rightist from a losing party.

Then came the September German state elections in Saxony and Thuringia. Far-right, antiwar Alternative for Germany beat all expectations, as did the anti-NATO, economically very far-left and socially conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). This new party got 12 percent and 15 seats, which means the popularity of the war-like policies of Social Democrat, in name only, leader Olaf Scholz has tanked. Not surprisingly, on September 11, Scholz, facing his self-created electoral abyss, started making noises about peace with Russia. But as at least two commentators observed, this is “too little, too late.” It wasn’t even that: Scholz almost immediately back-pedaled.

Wagenknecht is a former communist, so it’s no surprise her party’s economic platform is proudly socialist. Less predictable is BSW’s social conservatism and its committed anti-war position. But BSW has gained ground quickly, because clearly there is a huge popular appetite for its combo of left and right policies. BSW won 6.2 percent of the vote, but snagged double digits in the east. Not bad for a brand-new party.

“For now,” wrote Thomas Fazi in Unherd August 31, “Wagenknecht has ruled out forming regional coalition governments with the AfD, as well as with any party that supports arms deliveries to Ukraine (which means most mainstream parties). But her mere presence on the ballot will further erode support for the ruling coalition.” Fazi notes that she “has managed to establish BSW as one of the country’s major political forces in a matter of months.”

It’s also worth nothing that once Wagenknecht abandoned her previous party, Die Linke (the Left), which she represented in the Bundestag from 2009 to 2023, its support collapsed. In creating her new party, she avoided the term “left,” because, she says, it’s associated more with pronouns and racism than with remedying social inequality. Her policies, especially her opposition to the Ukraine War, soundly resonate with voters. If her base keeps expanding, this bodes poorly for Scholz’s Social Democrats, so heavily invested in the proxy war against Russia. And that bodes poorly for NATO.

Obviously, the western decision to bring Ukraine into NATO was a catastrophic, colossal blunder. As Kiev loses, out-manned and out-gunned by Moscow, this can only focus the very legitimate criticism on NATO that it has essentially done nothing besides make very bloody trouble since the end of the cold war (vide NATO crimes in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya). Numerous American diplomatic and security state luminaries vociferously cautioned against NATO expansion after 1991. They were ignored. American presidents, in their supreme arrogance, starting with Bill “Bomb Belgrade” Clinton, broke Washington’s promise to Mikhail Gorbachev and expanded NATO right up to Russia’s doorstep. Evidently, they thought they could do so with impunity. They were wrong. Their gamble not only risks WWIII, it destroyed a country, Ukraine. Time to mothball NATO, so it can never cause such a catastrophe and endanger the entire world again.

LITERATURE is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

— Fernando Pessoa

17 Comments

Jacob September 26, 2024

T-Mobile Photo Op

Here we go again, Lindy manipulating a photo to make it look like he was central in getting a grant. Lindy cropped the original photo that showed Mayor Bernie Norvell and the City staff who did all the work to get this grant so it showed him front and center as if he had anything to do with this accomplishment. Lacy, the City’s grant writer, wrote this grant that was so successful and exciting that a bunch of people from T-Moblie came all the way to Fort Bragg to present their check to the City. The Councilmember actually responsible for this accomplishment, along with Lacy, of course, are Marcia Rafanan and Jason Godeke, the two members of the cultural ad hoc committee. Lindy elbowed his was to the center leaving Lacy, Bernie, and the other hard-working staff to the side and then he cropped them out of what he is using as a promotional photo to make himself look more prominent. Ridiculous but I guess it is true what they say, politics is a dirty game. (Note: Lindy is so out of touch that he even misspelled the only Pomo councilmembers name, Marcia (not Marsha) Rafanan, in his post. The same councilmember he helped boot from the Mill Site mediation committee in favor of himself when she didn’t agree with him regarding the Skunk train litigation. Why should the only councilmember whose ancestors lived on what became the Mill Site have any say in how the City resolves its dispute with the current landowners? It makes sense to put Lindy on there instead even after he disrespected the current tribal elders when he joined a Mill Site tour very late and demanded that the whole group start again so he could see everything despite many of those leaders having significant mobility issues. Seriously?!…

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- Marianne McGee September 26, 2024
  
  Jacob Patterson’s obsession with Lindy Peters is interesting; it seemed to have intensified when his Mother, Michelle Roberts, lost her bid for City Council election by three votes by a write in candidate.
  
  Jacob has been a cancer on the City of Fort Bragg. Despite his attacks on Lindy about progress including the lack of affordable housing, he had the nerve to challenge the housing project for Parents & Friends!
  
  Do the folks participating in this Alliance really know who this self appointed spokesman is and how he’s negatively impacted the stability, growth and progress of Fort Bragg? Ask any employee at City Hall; they’ll tell you their experience with him!
  
  This apparent “messenger” along with Mendocino Railways Chris Hart’s participation, speaks volumes about this group and raises concerns about their apparent puppet candidates Hockett and Bushnell. While both candidates swear they haven’t received any money from the railroad, there are many ways to contribute to a campaign; we won’t see their final financial reports until after the election.
  
  People know my political experience including my educational credentials and how I have been politically involved in my 28 years living and being a homeowner here. Chris Hart’s claim of listening to people in a meeting a year ago and how he believes Fort Bragg is falling apart makes me wonder if he actually lives here.
  
  I am not going to engage in keyboard wars with either of these men. I have watched Lindy Peters grow and evolve over the years. I have worked closely with him for the last 13 years and respect him. I encourage others to vote for him to continue this Council and staff to work together collaboratively to continue the ongoing progress Fort Bragg.
  
  I support Lindy Peters and encourage other city voters to join me.
  
  Reply
  - Jacob September 27, 2024
    
    Too many inaccuracies to count but I recommend Marianne watch the meeting videos and read the written public comments for the Parents & Friends housing project on Cypress Street, which I enthusiastically supported and recommended that the Planning Commission do what it did, approve the project. I am aware of Marianne’s experience but she seems to have lost her way when it comes to being accurate, which is disappointing for someone who used to spend a lot of time filming local meetings so people could know what actually went on if they couldn’t attend in person. Now, she can’t even check a meeting video to see that her accusation is totally false. My criticism about Lindy began well-before the last election but hopefully it won’t have to continue past this one.
    
    Reply
Chuck Dunbar September 26, 2024

THE TRUMP EFFECT VS. THE WALZ EFFECT

D.J. TRUMP:

From a letter to the AVA today:

“Springfield, Ohio, is a case study in the Trump Effect. It clearly shows what happens before and after Donald Trump involves himself in a community.
Before, people went about their daily lives dealing with the normal ups and downs of modern living. After, the community has faced multiple bomb scares, school closings, militia marches, heightened fears, increased uncertainty and new divisions. This is the Trump Effect…”

TIM WALZ:

Beto O’Rourke speaks:

“For six years, I sat next to (Tim Walz) on the Veterans Affair Committee. He was the first person in the room and the last to leave. No one fought harder for veterans. And he did it by bringing Democrats and Republicans together to get the job done.

As Governor of Minnesota, he protected reproductive rights, implemented background checks on guns, passed paid family leave, defended voting rights and invested more than $1 billion in affordable housing. Not bad.

And before any of this, he was a beloved high school teacher, a championhship-winning football coach and a 24 year veteran of the Army National Guard. Put simply: Tim is one of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know…”

The comparison is stark–The choice is clear for a better America.

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Adam Gaska September 26, 2024

Re Jim Shields report on the Hopland Geigers market.

Not only is the building encumbered with $180,000 in debt for the CBDG loan, it’s also has a $500,000-1,000,000 PACE loan attached to it. It looks as though the County is paying the PACE loan obligations to the tune of $67,000 a year and the taxes are currently delinquent. Hopefully there is a faster recourse to collect than a tax lien sale.

The County needs to investigate how someone who was publicly known to be in financial duress was able to get approved for a second loan. Whoever signed off on it should be reprimanded and safeguards put in place to avoid such situations in the future.

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Elee Heller September 26, 2024

‘Pa Modic… your current physical disability makes you eligible for an In Home Health Service Worker.
“Helps with chores, and tasks to maintain the household”

M. Clogg, people don’t tell you the truth about old age 🤔 for the same reason people don’t tell you the truth about the act of giving birth, it’s too painful.
I tell about the lastest medical advances, or positive experiences I’ve heard about. You never know, you may be helping someone. Complain.

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- Paul Modic September 26, 2024
  
  Thanks, El Heller,
  I’m on the mend now, just took my first walk in the park in three months…
  Anyway, the story about Squalor is on a different time line, I’m just throwing everything and the
  kitchen sink up here now because i learned my lesson:
  Both of the paper papers I was writing for went out of business this year, The AVA and The Independent
  in Garberville, and I had been holding back what I contributed, so no more holding back, we just don’t know…
  Thanks again…
  
  Reply
  - Elee Heller September 26, 2024
    
    As a senior citizen, you are eligible for In-Home-Health Services, and meal delivery. Apply, they are happy to comply.
    
    IF we are to become a PROGRESSIVE nation, and people, we need to start acting like it, without guilt, shame, or judgement.
    
    Reply
peter boudoures September 26, 2024

Oakland ca has now lost their nba, nfl and mlb teams.

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- Lazarus September 26, 2024
  
  Have you been there lately…?
  Have a nice day,
  Laz
  
  Reply
  - peter boudoures September 26, 2024
    
    I take my 8U boys basketball team to west Oakland middle school so they know what real bball is. The Whole Foods next door has 7 armed guards.
    
    Reply
    - Craig Stehr September 26, 2024
      
      HERE IS YOUR ANSWER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzvTRoOTSjY
      
      Reply
Zanzibar to Andalusia September 26, 2024

I was told that if you wanted to be near the action at a protest ‘back in the day’ stay near a Hallinan or an O’brien. It was by accident that I was with an O’brien this day, though not the original but one of the daughters because it was 1985 not 1968. Reagan’s defense secretary Caspar Weinberger, a native of SF and already a notorious war criminal, was in town.

The event was at the St. Francis instead of the Fairmont, the terrain of Union Square certainly easier for protestors, but also for the TacSquad.

The period from 1975 (Saigon helicopter meme) to 1990 (First Gulf War) seemed like a period when the US wasn’t involved in wars. GHW Bush, celebrating his ability to bomb retreating troops in Iraq, proudly proclaimed that the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ was over.

Of course, it was just an illusion. The US was bombing 80,000 Salvadorean peasants to death, backing death squads and nun rapers and orphanage bombers, committing genocide in Guatemala, and generally backing every atrocity they could.

As the crowd pressed up against the barricades, a friend of mine had his hand nearly broken when a member of the TacSquad hit it with a baton to deter him from moving one of the barricades. The message was clear. The previous year 1500+ people showed up to protest Weinberger, and that ended in a large bonfire in the middle of Market Street, partially fueled by a police motorcycle.

The whole rainbow of protest groups was there, with the usual vanguardists up front. Members of Bob Avakian’s Revolutionary Communist Cult were hell bent on burning an American flag. I never saw the point in flag burning. It always seemed, as the kids call it today, performative. I just wanted the damn event shut down.

I was with the anarchists of course, and like anyone else we had our factions. Those were the early days of a group called Anti-Racist Action (ARA), with their hilariously cute slogan “No Free Speech for Fascists!” (Wait, who decides who is a fascist? Nevermind…) Today they are known by a different name – Antifa – aka the militant wing of the Democratic Party of War. Back in those days we laughed at ARA. Still do.

Back at the barricades, Ms. O’brien and I noticed something. Two corner barricades had become disconnected from the others, and right next to them, in the middle of the intersection, was a wide open – and accessible. We walked over to one of the young women Revolutionary Communists. (jesus, she was so fine. I’d take every opportunity to talk to her, even though I knew I could never date an Avakian cultist.) I pointed out the empty area and said, ya know, if you really want to burn a flag, that would be a good spot. Left unsaid, of course, was that I knew the police backing the loose barricades would move to ‘defend the flag’ (chuckle), and that would be our opportunity for the mayhem we really wanted.

The Commie Hottie took our advice, coordinated with her comrades, and a few minutes later, there they were lighting the thing on fire in the middle of the intersection. The cops backed off the barricade just like I though they would, and about 30 anarchists, pushing past the vanguardists, pushed the barricades all the way up to the sidewalk, splitting the TacSquad in two and gifting us the mayhem we wanted.

It was at this point that the bullhorn-wielders… the liberals (ugh)… announced “We’re gonna march!” Sure, dumbasses, go ahead and march away when we’re in smashing distance of the St. Francis’s windows. The lobby would have been next! But nooooooo, good liberals gotta ruin everything.

We retreated to Union Square and watched most of the crowd march away. The next sound we heard was the sound of two dozen dirt bikes. The TacSquad was up on Union Square, trying to surround us. There was only one thing to do. We all ran into Macy’s. Two brothers, guys who had been Black Panthers when they were 14-15, sang “Black Power days at Macys!” to the tune of their “White Flower Days” commercial as we ran. Some ducked into aisles to get rid of their anarchist-identifiying clothing. We emerged on the other side and scattered.

Some of us regrouped on BART. Once on the train we noticed a group of three guys, all fat, all with the same mustache, and – as if the stereotype could not be more spot on – wearing Hawaiian shirts. Ms. O’brien went up to them and asked “Are you guys cops?” “No,” they replied, “We just don’t like seeing our flag burned.”

“We didn’t burn s***! And you f****ing know it!”

They got off at Embarcadero.

The war against Nicaragua ended in 1992 when elections were called. Today, Daniel Ortega, a Sandinista, is the president of Nicaragua. The Guatemalan civil war, which began in 1930, did not end until 1996. After more than a million people were displaced, the US continued to back death squads in El Salvador until the peace accords were signed in 1992. The war criminal Weinberger died in 2006 at the age of 88.

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- Dobie Dolphin September 26, 2024
  
  When I was in Nicaragua in 1986, on a construction brigade from the bay area, Ortega was a hero. Not anymore. Now he’s a dictator. He makes sure he remains in power. In 2018, after a demonstration again a proposed social security tax increase, government security and paramilitary forces killed 322 people and imprisoned more than 500, including many journalists. More recently, Ortega freed 222 political prisoners, took their passports and sent them to the US. Roman Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez, refused to leave the country. He was re-arrested and sentenced to 26 years in prison, where he remains today. In 2021, shortly after Felix Maradiaga declared he would challenge Ortega for the presidency, he was kidnapped, beaten and kept in solitary confinement for 80 days. He spent 611 days in prison. Nicaragua has gone from being a mere authoritarian state to a totalitarian one. ,
  
  https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1198475446.
  https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2023-04/explainer-nicaraguas-descent-dictatorship
  
  Reply
  - Zanzibar to Andalusia September 26, 2024
    
    My point in mentioning that he’s in power now is that the entire Contra war was for nothing. The US basically told Nicaragua to vote for Violetta Chamorro or continue to be attacked. They did but it didn’t matter, Ortega was eventually put back in power via new elections.
    
    Besides the death squads, the bombings, the torture, and the terror, recall that the US government aided the distribution of massive amounts of cocaine into America’s cities in order to skirt US law and continue to wage the Contra war – for nothing.
    
    Part of the blame for Ortega’s authoritarianism belongs with the US. If you subject a people to a ruthless war of devastation, don’t be surprised when they end up with an authoritarian leader that jails or expels anyone who might be on the US side. For example, the US bombed North Korea so ruthlessly that it made General Douglas McArthur vomit. Every city, every town, every village was bombed. THAT is why they have an insane dictator at the helm today.
    
    Regarding your trip in 1986: thank you for your service.
    
    Reply
Jim Armstrong September 26, 2024

Willtsonline email, part of Pacific Internet, is not working today and neither entity seems to feel like answering their phones.
Does anyone here have information about either problem?

Reply
- Lazarus September 26, 2024
  
  I don’t use Willits Online email but Pacific email is working. I checked the Willits Online web page and the Certificate/license is good until October 30th. I click on the padlock symbol on the address line then click “Show Certificate” to see if the bill got paid…
  You’re welcome…
  Laz
  
  Reply

Mendocino County Today: Thursday 9/26/2024

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