Mendocino County Today: Saturday 10/19/2024

Sunny | Clipper Moon | Creep Sweep | Young Tree | CVS Strike | Ukiah Wins | Motel Check | Fentanyl Meeting | Holiday Bazaar | Lease Dispute | Premature Santa | RVMAC Meeting | Palace Future | Loose Shoe | Prop 36 | Junkie | Local Farmstands | Siphon EV | String Quartet | Aquathon 2024 | Leftover Pot | Dropped Ball | Famous Karma | Ed Notes | Yesterday's Catch | Denver House | Feeding Wildlife | Teed Up | Marco Radio | Chester Burnett | Constant Flow | Journalism | Lead Stories | BB & Elvis | No Justification | Louisiana Maroons | Calley Testimony | KKK Visit | Not Crazy | Hall Groceries | Culpable Layers | First Class | Your Choice | Columbo | Open Spaces | Hustling | High Noon | Quest Unknown

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GUSTY NORTHEAST WINDS and low humidity will continue to promote critical fire weather conditions for southern Lake County through Saturday. Otherwise, dry and warmer conditions are expected this weekend. Coastal stratus will return on Sunday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 44F with some haze(?) this Saturday morning on the coast. Hard to tell sky cover in the morning darkness. Except for a chance of a Sunday night shower we have mostly sunny skies in the forecast until later next when we might see some rain.

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TWO CHILDREN RESCUED in Northern California Child Exploitation Investigation Involving Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity Counties

A multi-agency operation led by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, in collaboration with the FBI and local sheriff’s offices, including in Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties, resulted in the rescue of two children and the seizure of tens of thousands of illegal files, according to a press release from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. The operation, targeting suspected child sex predators across Northern California, involved 21 suspects and uncovered significant amounts of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), along with illegal firearms.

The operation, dubbed “Creep Sweep,” identified suspects through their sophisticated online methods of sharing CSAM and targeted individuals with potential access to live victims. Detectives served search warrants in nine counties–Yuba, Sutter, Yolo, Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta, Siskiyou, Mendocino, and Nevada–over three weeks in September, resulting in the recovery of more than 200 electronic devices. At one location, over 4,600 files of Child Sexual Abuse Material and 27,000 of child erotica were seized.

Two children under the age of four were rescued from active sexual abuse by a relative.

According to the statement, “The suspects were from various occupations and backgrounds, including a pilot, scientific researcher, parents, mechanics, IT, independent contractors, engineers, and some retired individuals.”

Detectives also found 30 illegal firearms at one location, and several suspects face potential federal charges as investigations continue. This far-reaching operation was made possible by collaboration between nearly 30 agencies, including the FBI, Homeland Security, and our local sheriff’s offices from Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties.

We’ve reached out to the sheriff’s of those three local counties for comment on what arrests have been made locally, but they have not responded by the time of publication.

(kymkemp.com)

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ON-LINE COMMENT: Woodchipper, feet first.

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A READER WRITES:

The CVS drug stores employees across California are now on strike. CVS pays the lowest wages of all drug stores in the state. Please honor this strike, and bring real justice to these workers.

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UKIAH ROLLS SANTA ROSA

Week 8 Scores

Saturday's games:

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ASHTYN TAYLOR’S GHOST ASSAULT WEAPON (repost with booking photos)

On Sunday, October 13, 2024, at approximately 1:17 p.m., Ukiah Police Department (UPD) officers were dispatched to the Royal Motel (750 South State Street) to conduct a welfare check on a female subject inside a room, screaming and banging on the wall.

UPD officers arrived on the scene and contacted the room occupants, Ashtyn Taylor, 18, of Ukiah, Priscilla Ronco, 39, of Ukiah, and an 18-year-old female subject. The 18-year-old female subject appeared to be experiencing a mental health crisis, and a Mendocino County Behavioral Health unit responded to assist officers.

UPD officers conducted a record check on Taylor and Ronco. Officers determined that Taylor had a previous felony conviction, which prohibited him from possessing firearms and ammunition. Taylor was out of custody on pre-trial release for felony charges with a search waiver, and Ronco was on California Department Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Parole out of Mendocino County with a search waiver. Ronco was on CDCR Parole for a previous Arson violation.

During the UPD officers’ investigation, they observed the slide of a pistol was in plain view, protruding from under a pillow on a bed in the room. Officers inspected the firearm and found it to be an un-serialized Polymer 80 brand 9mm pistol, commonly referred to as a “Ghost gun.” The pistol had a threaded barrel, classifying it as an assault weapon.

A search of the room was conducted, and officers located a 9mm magazine loaded with hollow point ammunition under the pillow were the firearm was located. A second magazine and ammunition were also located in a “fanny pack” belonging to Taylor. The officers’ investigation determined the firearm and ammunition belonged to Taylor.

Taylor was arrested on charges of possession of firearm without ID, illegal pistol grip, offenses while on bail, felon/addict with firearm, possession of assault weapon.

Ronco was arrested for a parole violation.

Taylor and Ronco were booked and lodged at the Mendocino County Jail. The Mendocino County Behavioral Health unit determined the 18-year-old female subject was having a mental health crisis. The 18-year-old female subject was transported to an area hospital and placed on a 5150 psychiatric hold.

(As always, our mission at UPD is to make Ukiah as safe a place as possible. If you would like to know more about crime in your neighborhood, you can sign up for telephone, cell phone, and email notifications by clicking the Nixle button on our website; www.ukiahpolice.com.)

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FORT BRAGG COMMUNITY FENTANYL TASK FORCE

On October 16, 2024, the Fort Bragg Community Fentanyl Task Force organized by Fort Bragg Police Department met for their second meeting. The Task Force is comprised of elected officials, educators, business owners, community leaders, students, those impacted directly by fentanyl and professionals. It was established to bring new ideas to combat the fentanyl crisis in Mendocino County, specifically the coast.

During the first meeting in February, Fentanyl Task Force members learned about the depth of this public health crisis and what is being done by Fort Bragg Police Department right now. Prior to the second meeting, the Care Response Unit reviewed over 30 private and public agencies in Mendocino County who have the potential to positively impact the current opioid crisis. Ultimately, nine of the most critical agencies were selected to present to the Task Force due to time constraints. The Fentanyl Task Force heard presentations from Chief Izen Locatelli of the Mendocino County Probation Department, the New Life Clinic of Ukiah, Dr. Lynn Taylor of Mendocino Coast Clinics Medicated Aided Treatment Department, and other organizations with pivotal roles in addressing the opioid crisis.

At the conclusion of the speakers, Task Force members distilled down to three main goals where they could do more work to impact the fentanyl crisis. Those areas are:

1) Increase education related to fentanyl and the opioid crisis. This included targeted education for the business community, school age children, and underrepresented populations such as the Latinx and Indigenous communities.

2) Increase access to outpatient treatment options for opioids by working alongside existing organizations to identify potential funding while reducing barriers related to wraparound services.

3) Research the potential of opening an inpatient youth treatment facility for substance use disorders in Mendocino County. Several of our organizations described the lack of inpatient youth treatment facilities in Northern California as being a critical barrier to addressing the crisis.

Currently, Fentanyl Task Force members are being divided into three different committees to pursue the goals identified. These committees will continue to meet monthly with each Task Force member given assignments related to furthering the committee’s goals.

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A LEASE DISPUTE COULD JEOPARDIZE COAST HOSPITAL

Adventist Health, which operates Adventist Health Mendocino Coast in Fort Bragg, is seeking to restructure the terms of its lease, stating it has taken a financial loss over the last year.

by Sheryl Sarfaty

A lease dispute could lead to Mendocino County losing Coast Hospital.

Adventist Health, which operates Adventist Health Mendocino Coast in Fort Bragg, is seeking to restructure the terms of its lease agreement with the Mendocino Coast Healthcare District, citing financial losses.

In a Sept. 30 letter to District Board Chair Paul Garza, Adventist Health Northern California Network President Eric Stevens said the “medical business … has achieved less than 5% EBITDA for the previous 12-month period.” EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Adventist Health took over management of the hospital from the district in May 2020.

Stevens in his letter proposed a 60-day negotiation period and said if an agreement to restructure isn’t reached within that time, Adventist would terminate its lease.

Garza agreed and negotiations are underway, with an end date of Nov. 29. If there is no resolution, Adventist Health stated it will vacate June 30, 2025.

Should the hospital close, the nearest for Coast residents would be Adventist Health Howard Memorial in Willits — 40 miles away.

In an Oct. 17 joint statement, Adventist Health and the Mendocino Coast Health Care District’s leaders said they are making “steady progress on optimizing the existing agreement” to keep the hospital in the community.

“The community can be confident that both organizations are reaffirming our investment in helping keep health care local through a sustainable model,” Stevens said in the statement.

Garza stated, “I look forward to an enhanced agreement that is a win-win for both entities and the communities we serve.”

No specific details were disclosed, but both parties said they intend to release weekly updates as discussions continue.

The hospital was known as Mendocino Coast District Hospital before Adventist Health took over management, and the publicly run facility had a board of directors that had been in place since 1971, according to the Fort Bragg Advocate-News.

“We recognize this is an appropriate time in our five-year relationship (with Adventist) to reevaluate the terms of our partnership,” Garza said Oct.

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ED NOTE: Coast Hospital was built and owned by the Coast community, primarily Fort Bragg, and was operated for years as genuinely non-profit. Enter the vegetarian cult called the Adventists which, although a tax-exempt church, operates its hospitals as for-profits, hence its lament that it isn't making enough money from Coast Hospital, which it probably isn't, given the number of indigents hospitals must treat, including putative Christian hospitals. (Jesus seemed to have been a non-profit operator all the way.) The Adventists now operate all three Mendocino County hospitals. However, it's not as if there aren't adequate medical options in the County's network of clinics, mini-hospitals capable of competently handling the bulk of medical care. I daresay most Mendo residents head for The City for serious, complicated care anyway.

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REDWOOD VALLEY MAC MEETING: 2017 fire anniversary honored, siren deployment delayed

by Monica Huettl

At the October 10 Redwood Valley MAC [Municipal Advisory Council] meeting, Caltrans engineers detailed plans for a new bus stop at West Road and North State Street, local officials reflected on the 2017 Redwood Complex Fire’s anniversary, and Sheriff Matt Kendall raised alarms about rising mail theft. The meeting touched on public safety, upcoming projects, and community challenges, with a focus on fires, infrastructure, and animal control.…

https://mendofever.com/2024/10/19/redwood-valley-mac-meeting-2017-fire-anniversary-honored-siren-deployment-delayed/

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RON PARKER:

I watched the Palace Hotel go downhill starting with the loss of the first Black Bart Room. If the hotel is revived there is still little interest in business locating in the center of town. Who is going to stay there and what will they do for entertainment and tourism? There is little parking during the day. With the court house moving there will be even less interest. I hate to say it but the Palace property would make a great parking lot for all the downtown businesses. Maybe a really nice steak house and parking?

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‘RAISE THE BAR, STOP MAKING EXCUSES’: Sheriff Kendall calls for accountability in a Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor-

I read the Op-ed written by Susan Sher, a member of Ukiah City Council, and published on MendoFever.  This was titled “False Promises regarding proposition 36”.  Prop 36 is basically a fix to Proposition 47.  Prop 47 was clearly false promises and cleverly marketed by our legislators.  Prop 47 in its most simplistic view was legislation aimed at draining our prison populations, however it was sold to the voters as a way to make us safer.  Those two goals simply didn’t coincide with one another.  

There are a couple of glaring omissions from this editorial, which sadly seem to be a sign of the times.  Standard values that were once normal aren’t represented here.  Values such as stealing anything from someone else are wrong. Also, I saw no mention of our victims of crime.   Outside of the District Attorney and Law enforcement it doesn’t seem like anyone is thinking about our victims, no one is talking about our victims.  In this editorial, no one is representing our victims.  We see our leaders making excuses for some extremely bad behaviors and that is also an example of lowering the bar.  When you argue for mistakes, you get to own them forever. It's time for the excuses to stop and accountability to begin.

When a person commits a crime, and that crime is investigated by a peace officer it begins a process of vindication and justice for the victims.  The investigation is provided to the District Attorney who has the role of representing the victim and society, the defense represents the suspect.  Throughout the prosecution, their work is overseen by our magistrates. Ultimately if found guilty, the duty of representing our victims and society is handed to our judges when they hand down a sentence.  These judges are standing in for the victim because we need someone fair and impartial to represent the victims and society.  It wouldn’t be fair if the victim was left to decide the punishment against someone who had victimized them.  I see nowhere in this opinion any mention of justice for our victims.

I have written before about this strange new direction our state has gone.  This is a case where the architects and engineers of the law (our legislators) are no longer speaking with the carpenters (Peace Officers and District Attorneys) who are tasked with enforcing the law. I see no mention of Council Member Sher speaking with leaders in law enforcement including our District Attorney, the Ukiah Chief of Police or myself.  When confronted with issues that require one to be educated in, why not reach out to those who are educated in the field of study?  That didn’t happen here and is another example of the architects not speaking with the carpenters.      

The statements that Prop 36 would incarcerate drug dealers and users. There has been a push to move away from punishment for crimes as if a stay in jail is a horrific event, it isn’t.  When I see addicts dying in the brush surrounded by trash and human feces, and compare it to the folks I see in our classrooms at the jail, learning, growing, and becoming more, even if it is just for the time they are incarcerated I absolutely see what is humane and what is not.  The Mendocino County Jail isn’t “Shawshank State Pen”. Also, people have forgotten when someone is in custody they aren’t victimizing folks in neighborhoods.  

Currently, a prison sentence in the State of California has become a lifetime achievement award for the most persistent criminal who has refused several levels of supervision and have continued forward on a life of crime.

Let’s face it, narcotics are killing people.  Lots of folks are getting rich on the addictions of others and poison is being marketed, distributed, and paid for with the lives of our residents including our children.  I don’t think any of us should be arguing for more of the same.  It isn’t working and we can all see it.  Our state legislators have stated time and time again the dealer didn’t know he was going to kill someone when he sold them drugs so they shouldn’t face incarceration.  I’ve seen a lot of folks not intending to kill someone in an accident when they were drinking and driving, they still face the consequences.  

Many parts of Prop 47 simply didn’t work and we can all see it. So why was Prop 36 being fought with such vigor in Sacramento?  The real issue was a little deeper and darker than most folks realize.  Prop 47 created a lot of savings by closing prisons, and these savings provided a lot of programs in which a lot of people began getting paychecks.  I am all for these programs if they work, however they haven’t.  In a recent CAL-MATTERS report, we see the state simply misplaced about one billion dollars which they couldn’t account for.  This money had been funneled through grants to various groups to help solve homelessness.  Obviously, this isn’t working and it’s not working to the point no one seems to know where a billion dollars went.  So, when we ask about the price of Prop 36 who is asking about the funding spent on Prop 47 and the funding which had no effect and simply can’t be found?  To the contrary statistics show homelessness and drug usage is up 53% since the passage of Prop 47.  Who is asking about that?  Recently Senator Ernst from Iowa brought forward reporting which shows our federal food stamp program is losing roughly 1 billion dollars a month to fraud and errors.  No one is talking about that either.  

There is a way to reduce prison populations, they would require work our legislators simply don’t have the backbone for.  This work must begin with education, opportunities and accountability.  Sadly, these are three things that California seems to be struggling with constantly.  Draining prison populations in the correct fashion would have taken a long time and it would have placed the focus on these societal issues.  People would have had to ask themselves how many failures in a system occurred prior to 911 ever being dialed.  It was simply easier to blame the legal system. So, the easy way out was to simply decriminalize a whole lot of crime.  That was lowering the bar, and we can see it didn’t work.  

When we fall on hard times, the only solution is to raise the bar, not to lower it.  If we ever want to see this change, it is time to raise the bar and stop making excuses for bad behaviors.  Benjamin Franklin once said, “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”  This makes me wonder if perhaps many leaders simply want us to wait until the entire nation is equally outraged and victimized before real changes can be made. We need to get back to basics, if you’re in a hole, perhaps you should stop digging. 

Thank you

Sheriff Matt Kendall   

(mendofever.com)

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LOCAL FARM STANDS

Brock Farms

The farmstand is closed now for most produce, but we are selling Pumpkins, Thursday through Sundays in Boonville.

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Velma's Farm Stand at Filigreen Farm on Anderson Valley Way in Boonville

Friday 2-5pm and Saturday-Sunday 11-4pm

Fresh produce this week: pears, apples, winter squash (delicata, kabocha, koginut, acorn), eggplant, last LAST of the tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, sprouting broccoli, potatoes, celery, fennel, cabbage, frisee and possibly other chicories!, cauliflower, onions, beets, carrots, kale, chard, basil and flowers. We will also have dried fruit, tea blends, frozen blueberries, olive oil, everlasting bouquets and wreaths available. Plus some delicious flavors of Wilder Kombucha!

All produce is certified biodynamic and organic.

Follow us on Instagram for updates @filigreenfarm or email annie@filigreenfarm.com with any questions. We accept cash, credit card, check, and EBT/SNAP (with Market Match)!

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Petit Teton Farm

Petit Teton Farm is open Mon-Sat 9-4:30, Sun 12-4:30. Right now we have sungold and heirloom tomatoes along with the large inventory of jams, pickles, soups, hot sauces, apple sauces, and drink mixers made from everything we grow. We sell frozen USDA beef and pork from our perfectly raised pigs and cows, as well as stewing hens and eggs. Squab is also available at times. Contact us for what's in stock at 707.684.4146 or farmer@petitteton.com. Nikki and Steve

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Blue Meadow Farm

Open Tuesday – Sunday, 10 AM - 7 PM, Closed Monday

Blue Meadow Farm

Holmes Ranch Rd & Hwy 128, Philo, CA 95466

(707) 895-2071

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UKIAH COMMUNITY CONCERT ASSOCIATION TO PRESENT ALEXANDER STRING QUARTET

The Ukiah Community Concert Association will open its 2024-25 season on Nov. 3, 2 p.m., with a performance by the world-renowned Alexander String Quartet in the Mendocino College Theatre.

The quartet, now in its fifth decade, will present a program of classic works by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, composers who defined the string quartet genre in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Ukiah Community Concert Association has been presenting nationally acclaimed talent since 1947. This all-volunteer nonprofit’s mission is to build and maintain a permanent concert audience and cultivate an interest in fine music of all genres among the citizens of the community and surrounding area. It is also its goal to encourage music appreciation in the schools of the community.

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2024 AQUATHON at C.V. Starr Community Center November 16

The City of Fort Bragg and The CV Starr Community Center are thrilled to announce AQUATHON 2024, a fun-filled event aimed at raising funds for our community’s Second Grade Swim Lesson Program. Join us on Saturday, November 16, starting at 10 AM for a day of activity and community spirit!

Participants can support the cause in several exciting ways:

Swim Laps: Dive in and collect pledges for every lap you swim.

River Walk: Enjoy a scenic stroll and gather donations along the way.

Water Slide: Have a blast going down the water slide while encouraging friends and family to contribute.

In addition, children can engage in fundraising by completing a Donation Coloring Sheet.

AWARDS will be presented to the top fundraisers, so get creative and rally support from your network! Both pledges and flat-rate donations are welcome.

To participate, please pick up your pledge packet and choose a time slot at the front desk. The event is open to all youth and adults, ensuring fun for everyone!

Additionally, stay tuned for details on our upcoming Silent Auction.

For more information, contact us at (707) 964-9446 or visit our website at www.cvstarr.org. Let’s make a splash together for our community’s children!

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DROPPING THE BALL; SETTING THE STAGE FOR CARMEL ANGELO

by Mark Scaramella

In the summer of 2007 the Mendocino County Grand Jury released an unusual and barely noticed report about the fiasco surrounding the Supervisors’ firing of former CEO John Ball. (No other local news outlets made mention of the report.) Ball had been a reasonably successful municipal executive in Multnomah County in Oregon and somehow, by accident, this relatively competent manager ended up in Mendocino. It didn’t take the then-board of Supervisors long to get rid of him substantially, but not entirely, because Mr. Ball committed the sin of insisting that if the Supervisors were going to give themselves a much bigger travel budget they’d have to vote on it by the full Board in open session, not bury it in the Consent Calendar or the CEO report.

The Supervisors at the time had secretly demanded that Ball sneak their travel budget increase in via Ball’s back door — they wanted their travel budget jacked up and included as an incidental in a larger consent calendar package deal to cover such things as commuting to and from work, attendance at constituent meetings and award banquets, purchase and repair of their computers, internet hookups, phones and phone service, and other questionable and dubious outlays, unusual even for other highly compensated county officials. And they wanted Ball to give them cover and take the heat for what was essentially a gift of public funds to themselves.

When Ball wouldn’t play ball, if you'll excuse a bad pun, the supervisors bounced him on out the door, falsely claiming after the fact that they hadn't liked the way Ball had consolidated Mental Health, Social Services, and Public Health into the Health and Human Services Department.

That particular blunder was done at the behest of Carmel Angelo who had been initially hired by Ball as Public Health Director. She soon told the Board that they should combine the three separate departments into one large HHS Agency (department) to “save money” and put herself in charge of them. The Board obediently subsequently did that, but instead of consolidating anything, Angelo simply created a new management level Agency with a large staff for herself to be on top of and in charge of the three existing departments; no reductions were made in the management or staff of the three departments.

If this sounds familiar, it is. The same thing happened with the Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector which was billed as a cost savings, but did nothing but add an additional official while keeping two “assistant managers” in charge of the two offices.

After Ball was fired, the Board went through a short post-Ball temporary CEO assignment by retired CEO Al Beltrami followed by the legendarily moribund Tom ‘I’m Looking Into It’ Mitchell. During his tenure Mitchell had promoted Angelo to be his Assistant CEO so she was perfectly positioned to take the job when the Board declined to renew Mitchell’s contract for saying “I’m looking into it,” “we’re working on that,” or “I can’t answer that at this time” once too often. (Today’s board accepts such ridiculous answers as routine.)

We had already reported on many of the incriminating details which the Grand Jury summarized regarding the shameful dispatch of Mr. Ball — the dumbest and most costly of which was that the supervisors had let Ball’s fat executive contract roll over and auto-renew itself just a couple of months before they fired him, costing the County almost $170k in an unnecessarily large contract buyout and associated health insurance costs.

That costly decision came just two weeks after Ball made it clear to the Board that he wasn’t going to jack up the Board’s travel budget for them, and — this part was new — one day after the County’s Public Health Advisory Board asked the Supervisors for an opportunity/agenda item to criticize the HHSA consolidation decision.

As noted here at the time, the Supes could and should have put the proposed consolidation on their agenda the previous March (three months earlier) when Ball first presented it as a done deal. Instead, on June 28th, they suddenly fired Ball, saying they couldn’t talk about why they'd fired him because it was done in closed session. Ball himself had asked that his firing be discussed in open session, which was his right. But the supervisors knew they couldn't do that because the true reasons for Ball's shabby dismissal would have been exposed. To cover themselves and hide the facts, the supervisors gave Ball a big hunk of public money. Then they proceeded to quietly give themselves all the perks that Ball had balked about. The same perks that are now ensconced in Ukiah Officialdom as “that’s they we’ve always done it.”

Although the Supes bleated about possible problems with the mess of the consolidation, they went ahead with it after Ball was fired, with members of County staff telling the grand jury that the consolidation might take ten years or more! (Ten years later after finally realizing the consolidation was not only a bad idea but a huge waste of money the Board unconsolidated the offices but with a comparable lack of planning.)

Since the ill-conceived departmental consolidation wasn’t the real reason for Ball being fired, the only conclusion the public could draw was that he was fired because he wouldn’t jack up the Supes own travel budget.

A year after the firing, the Grand Jury discovered that:

• The supervisors expense budget jumped from $49,000 in the 2005-06 fiscal year to more than $100,000 in the next fiscal year.
• Supervisors travel reports had become mostly non-specific, containing few receipts and were authorized by the clerk of the board — the Board’s own employee, not the independent Auditor.
• Unlike other County employees and certainly unlike the average citizen, the Supervisors were now paid to drive to and from work.
• Supervisors were being reimbursed for attending events they would attend whether or not they were supervisors, such as retirement dinners and social events. “Claims for unreimbursable meetings, functions/events, and miles not actually driven, have occurred due to the failure of at least two Supervisors to adhere to the BOS travel policy,” noted the Grand Jury.
• “The Grand Jury found claims for reimbursement in the following areas: Cell phones; telephone and long distance charges; internet service; newspapers; Travel (in-county only).”
• “…some supervisors have a casual and loosely defined understanding of what is considered to be official County business, resulting in substantive travel policy abuse.”

The biggest travel account abusers were Fourth District Supervisor Kendall Smith who claimed $14,658 for Fiscal Year 2007, and Fifth District Supervisor David Colfax who claimed $14,315 for the year prior, even though Colfax lived much closer to Ukiah than Kendall Smith.

The report also detailed several cases of specific travel expense abuse (reimbursement claims for trips or expenses that didn’t occur) but, at that time, did not name which Supes did it. (They later named Colfax and Smith, causing yet another over-reaction toward the Grand Jury from the Board.)

This used to be called fraud and got people arrested, but in Mendocino County…

In summarizing the John Ball Firing Fiasco, the Grand Jury made several observations which don’t exactly portray the Supes in the best managerial light.

Some excerpts:

• When Ball specifically asked the Board for clarification of how department heads would be supervised under the newly created CEO concept, the Board refused to answer.
• “On more than one occasion Ball told the Board that they should act on things as a Board in open session and not give him ‘contradictory directives’ deriving from individual supervisors.”
• “The BOS could have terminated the CEO by majority vote anytime prior to February 8, 2006, with minimal monetary penalty to the county.”
• “The BOS did not employ the ‘30 day cure’ as provided for in the contract. This ‘cure’ period would have allowed the parties to resolve their differences.”
• “Some BOS members indicated they did not fully read the CEO contract, but instead relied on advice from others.”
• “Most Supervisors indicated they had no knowledge of the three-month termination clause in the CEO contract.”
• “Failure by the dissatisfied Supervisors [Smith, Colfax and Wagenet] to act prior to February 8, 2006, resulted in the automatic renewal of the CEO contract. This automatic renewal ultimately cost the citizens of the County at least $167,000 in termination penalties,” plus extended health insurance coverage after the termination. (In fact, they had no reason to fire Ball in February because he had not yet refused to sneak in their travel reimbursement scheme into the budget.)
• “Individual Supervisor’s directives, reflecting their personal desires, are often contradictory and are not directives of the Board.”
• “Under the terms of the CEO ordinance there was no longer a direct link between the BOS and department heads; a fact ignored by the BOS.”
• “Individual Supervisors do not determine policy. This is the role of the entire Board. A review of BOS minutes shows that this is a role they have failed to fulfill.”
• “A willingness on the part of some BOS members to accept the CEO form of management as defined by the ordinance passed by the BOS, was totally lacking.”
• “The termination of the CEO was a decision made without forethought, resulting from conflicting personalities, and originating within a period of four days.”

The Grand Jury then made several recommendations which are so simplistic and self-evident that they amounted to a declaration of complete supervisorial incompetence:

• “the BOS [should] educate themselves on the various forms of executive management.
• “the BOS [should] provide clearly defined policy direction by majority vote.
• “the BOS [should] put personal agendas aside for the good of the County and its citizenry.
• “the BOS [should] avoid taking on day-to-day managerial duties of staff or department heads.”

The Grand Jury concluded with this statement of the obvious:

• “Insistence by individual Supervisors that the CEO insert increased funds for Board use, has the appearance of an attempt to bypass the fiduciary duties of the CEO. The process of termination ‘had no process’.”

But in the few days after the Grand Jury report was released the Supes made it clear that these obvious and basic recommendations were not even going to be considered. The supervisors had already given themselves a huge pay raise, pegged to the regular cost of living raises superior court judges get so that supervisor pay will rise ad infinitum no matter what the County’s budget situation is. The supervisors had already changed their travel policy (since the Grand Jury report was released) to jack up their travel budget and allow exactly what the Grand Jury disapproved of, including travel to and from work, a generous combined computer, phone, newspaper and internet service reimbursement, and requiring no backup documentation.

To rub it in, the following week, the Supervisors increased County fees across the board — claiming that the fee increases had nothing to do with their own self-serving, spendthrift ways.

Supervisor Colfax then told Glenda Anderson, his stenographer at the Press Democrat, that “They (the Grand Jury) sure have made a mess of things,” neatly standing the true state of affairs on its head.

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Note: None of the current Supervisors were on the Board at the time John Ball was fired and in its immediate aftermath. But they are all happy to benefit from the hefty increased paychecks and perks fraudulently engineered by that 2007 Board which was made up of David Colfax, Michael Delbar, Jim Wattenburger, Kendall Smith, and Hal Wagenet. Colfax, Smith and Wattenburger (the “liberals”) constituted the 3-2 majority that voted Ball out.)

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ED NOTES

EARTH FIRST! on the Northcoast went under when Judi Bari died in 1997. There are still young people around who identify with the amorphous group, and EF!, complete with vaguely musical yowling they call “gaia-billy” still sits in trees in Oregon.

I RECALL a totally right-on tree sit at the perimeter of U.C. Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium, where “direct action” protesters had climbed into the trees trying to stop the football program from erecting a sooper dooper field house, i.e., a jock Taj Mahal, where there was a stand of old growth trees. The field house got built, the tree sitters got arrested, the trees survive only in old newspaper photographs.

MEMORIAL STADIUM sits right on top of the Hayward Fault. It won’t survive The Next Big One. If environmentalists will just be patient Gaia will reclaim the whole complex.

ONE OF THE MULTI-TALENTED BARI'S gifts was her organizational ability in keeping the direct action gang on task, a task she went about ruthlessly. They were either at her feet or she was at their throat. (An ethnic generalization first applied to Germans.) She also controlled the money. She, or one of her half-dozen surrogates, opened the mail. If Bari didn’t like you, you didn’t get any money from the several front groups she controlled, among them Trees Foundation, the utterly bogus Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, or Redwood Summer Justice Project, and who knows what other alleged non-profits from which a very small group of Bari-ites are probably still extracting regular hunks of cash donated in good faith by the duped.

THE TREES money pot was litigated over by a character called Shunka Wakan for the $185,000 willed to the bogus charity by a deceased Bay Area woman who thought she might be keeping a redwood or two in an upright position if she sent the money north.

Instead, one group of hustlers, Shunka and friends, went to Humboldt Superior Court fighting the other hustlers calling themselves Trees. Shunka argued that the money was intended for him and his hippie bros, while phony baloney Trees said it was theirs.

IF ONE DIME of the $185 thou ever saved a single tree it probably happened the same day Charles Hurwitz did his own tree sit in Houston. One of the larger ironies here is that Darryl Cherney, never one to leave a single stray dime to chance, denounced Shunka’s “greed.” Of course in those days it was common knowledge on the Northcoast that there were more people getting paid to save trees than there were old trees to save.

SHUNKA’S real name, by the way, was Jason Wilson. He claimed a “Lakota medicine man” gave him the name Shunka Wakan. Shunka said his name meant Humble Man Called Horse. A Pomo friend told me, "Shunka means ‘white doofus.’ Whenever the hippies want to pretend to be Indians we give ’em some kinda name in Tonto-speak and they go away happy.”

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, October 18, 2024

RAUL ALATORRE, 30, Ukiah. DUI.

GUILLERMO AVINA, 44, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JASMINE BAILEY, 24, Ukiah. Petty theft, paraphernalia, failure to appear, probation revocation.

BRANDON BLOYD, 32, Navarro. Under influence, controlled substance.

JASON GOWER, 33, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear, probation revocation, attrempt to bring controlled substance into jail.

SCOTT HAYWARD, 65, Redwood Valley. Public nuisance.

FORTUNATA IANNETTA, 46, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

MADISON JOHNSON, 33, Potter Valley. Probation revocation.

VERONICA KERSTEN, 32, Richmond. Elder/dependent abuse.

DALTON MATHEWS, 31, Redwood Valley. Assault weapon, loaded firearm in public, large capacity magazine, threatening police officer.

ISSA NIAMBELE, 40, Ukiah. Controlled substance, camping in public, paraphernalia.

RONNIE PASCHAL, 43, Willits. Probation revocation.

FREDY REYES-RUBIO, 31, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JONATHON ROSATI, 41, Santa Rosa//Laytonville. DUI causing bodily injury, failure to appear, probation revocation.

PAUL SCHOCK, 23, Philo. Grand theft.

MONTE SHARP, 48, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

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WOMAN CALLS 911 WHEN 100 AGGRESSIVE RACCOONS SHOW UP IN HER YARD

The Washington State resident fed some friendly critters for years. Then, their mean friends turned up.

by Victor Mather

For more than 35 years, a woman in Washington State would leave some food in her yard for about a dozen resident raccoons.

The key word in that sentence is “dozen.”

Six weeks ago, the number of raccoons began to increase. “Somehow the word got out in raccoon land, and they all showed up to her house expecting a meal,” Kevin McCarty, a spokesman for the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office, told NBC 9 news.

Wait a minute, the sheriff’s department? How much did this escalate?

A lot. The newer raccoons began scratching around the woman’s house near Poulsbo, Wash., all night demanding food. “Anytime she comes out of her home, they swarm her until she throws them food,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement. “The normal raccoons that she feeds are nice, but the new ones showing up scare her.”

By last Thursday afternoon, the newly scary raccoons had grown to a horde of about 100, prompting the woman, whose name has not been released, to call 911. Her concern was increased by the newer arrivals’ greater aggression after years of dealing with a relatively docile, much smaller band.

Only after sheriff deputies arrived last week did the woman feel safe enough to flee the scene in her car, leaving the group of raccoons — a “gaze” is the collective name — behind.

A video shows a multitude of raccoons milling around, interacting with each other, climbing tree stumps: generally looking like an impatient crowd waiting for a Las Vegas buffet to open up. Except for the climbing of tree stumps, maybe.

The sheriff’s department said trappers had been asking a prohibitive $500 per raccoon to cart them away. So the woman was referred to the state’s department of fish and wildlife. Their expert advice was, well, to stop feeding the raccoons.

“The raccoons appear to have started dispersing now that they are no longer being fed, and we are glad for a positive outcome to this case,” Bridget Mire of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife wrote in an email on Thursday.

Though “no laws were broken by feeding the raccoons,” the sheriff’s department said, wildlife officials generally agree that feeding wild animals is a bad idea.

“We discourage people from feeding wildlife, as this causes them to lose their natural fear of people, which can lead to aggression,” Ms. Mire said. “It also draws animals together, possibly mixing healthy and sick animals and spreading diseases among them. Some wildlife, like raccoons, can carry diseases that may be transmissible to people and pets. Feeding wildlife also may attract predators, such as coyotes and bears.”

Don’t feed the raccoons, folks.

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MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night tonight on KNYO!

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6pm or so. If you can't make that, it's okay, send it whenever it's done and I'll read it on the radio next week.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first hour of the show is simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. Also there you'll find an assortment of cultural-educational amusements to occupy you until showtime, or any time, such as:

The Europa Clipper. But remember: “All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace.” https://boingboing.net/2024/10/14/europa-clipper-heads-to-jupiter-to-search-for-alien-life.html

A.I.-generated Star Trek in the 1950s. Lush, grainy, vivid, but actually you'd get a better approximation of proto-Star-Trek by mixing /Forbidden Planet/ (1956) with A.E. van Vogt's collection of stories /The Voyage of the Space Beagle/ (1950), which includes /Black Destroyer/ (1939), the single story credited with ushering in science fiction's golden age. Archive.org's entire library is down right now because of wankers; let me see if I can find /Black Destroyer/ elsewhere for you. Meanwhile: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TaKJLYw0ZSs

Ah, here: A.E. van Vogt, /Black Destroyer/, complete, with a brief preface by David Drake. https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0743498747/0743498747___5.htm

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

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HOWLIN' WOLF. Born Chester Burnett in 1910.

During much of the 1920s and '30s, the Mississippi bluesman learned directly from Charlie Patton, Tommy Johnson, Leroy Carr and Jimmie Rodgers, "The Singing Brakeman." He developed his distinctive howling style influenced by Rodgers' yodel. In 1951 Sam Phillips recorded Wolf in Memphis, and in 1952 he moved to Chicago and began a great run with Chess Records.

There is no one like him, with his bigger-than-life presence and huge voice he made unforgettable classic songs such as "How Many More Years (are You Gonna Wreck My Life)," "Smokestack Lightning," "Meet Me at The Bottom" and "300 Pounds of Heavenly Joy." Crazy about the Wolf!

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THE FLOW IS CONSTANT. Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks, waves, particles, motes. Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we need them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, wild fires, coastal erosion, earthquakes, mass killings, sea level rise, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom. Japan is pretty good for disaster footage. Florida is a target rich environment. India remains largely untapped. They have tremendous potential with their famines, monsoons, religious strife, train wrecks, boat sinking, et cetera. But their disasters tend to go unrecorded. Three lines in the newspaper. No film footage, no satellite hookup, no internet streaming. This is why California is so important. We not only enjoy seeing Californians punished for their relaxed life-styles and “progressive” social ideas, but we know we’re not missing anything. The cameras are right there. They’re standing by. Nothing terrible escapes their scrutiny.

— Don DeLillo, ‘Players’

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WHAT CAN I SAY about journalism? It has the greatest virtue and the greatest evil. It is the first thing the dictator controls. It is the mother of literature and the perpetrator of crap. In many cases it is the only history we have and yet it is the tool of the worst men. But over a long period of time and because it is the product of so many men, it is perhaps the purest thing we have. Honesty has a way of creeping in even when it is not intended.

— John Steinbeck

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LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT

Despite Yahya Sinwar’s Death, Mideast Peace May Still Be Elusive

Hopes Dim for an Immediate Cease-Fire in Gaza

Despite Israeli Bombs and Assassinations, Hezbollah Keeps Fighting

Sinwar’s Final Moments: On the Run, Hurt, Alone, but Still Defiant

U.S. ‘Fusion Cells’ Assist in Israel’s Hunt for Hamas Leaders

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B. B. KING SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT:

“When Elvis appeared he was already a big, big star. Remember this was the fifties so for a young white boy to show up in an all-black function took guts. I believe he was showing his roots and he seemed proud of those roots. After the show he made a point of posing for pictures with me treating me like royalty. He’d tell people I was one of his influences. I doubt whether that’s true but I like hearing Elvis give Memphis credit for his musical upbringing.

Back in 1972, Elvis helped me get a good gig at the Hilton Hotel while he was playing in the big theater. He put in a call for me and I worked in the lounge to a standing room only crowd. Elvis fans came in different colors but their love for good music was all the same. They were always a good audience.

Many nights I’d go upstairs after we finished our sets and go up to his suite. I’d play Lucille [King’s guitar] and sing with Elvis, or we’d take turns. It was his way of relaxing.

I’ll tell you a secret. We were the original Blues Brothers because that man knew more blues songs than most in the business - and after some nights it felt like we sang every one of them. But my point is, that when we were hanging out in the Hilton in the 70s, Elvis had not lost his respect, his ‘yes sir’, his love for all fields of music. And I liked that.”

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SINWAR IS DEAD; WE MUST END OUR COMPLICITY IN THIS CRUEL AND ILLEGAL WAR

by Bernie Sanders

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a war criminal who masterminded the brutal October 7th terrorist attack that killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages, is now dead.

There is now no justification for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extremist government to continue their all-out war against the Palestinian people, which has killed 42,000 Palestinians and injured 100,000 – two-thirds of whom are women, children, and the elderly.

There is no justification for continuing to deny humanitarian aid to the many thousands of children in Gaza who are starving.

There is no justification for continuing to destroy the housing, health care, and infrastructure of Gaza.

There is now no justification for further delaying a hostage deal and a ceasefire.

And there is absolutely no justification for continued U.S. support for Netanyahu’s horrific policies, which are in clear violation of U.S. and international law.

When Congress returns, the Senate will be voting on my Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to block offensive arms sales to Israel. We must end our complicity in this cruel and illegal war.

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THE MAROONS OF LOUISIANA

One of the most powerful forms of resistance in Louisiana was marronage, where enslaved people escaped plantations to establish hidden communities.

The term "maroon" stems from the Taino word "simaran," meaning a stray arrow, reflecting the independence and survival spirit of these individuals.

In the 1770s, one of the largest maroon communities formed in the swamps south of New Orleans, led by Saint-Maló, who escaped from Karl d'Arensbourg’s plantation on the German Coast.

These maroons cultivated small gardens, hunted, and raided nearby plantations for supplies. Their fight for freedom posed a direct threat to the plantation system and disrupted the social order in Louisiana.

Despite numerous attempts by authorities to suppress these communities, they thrived for years.

However, in 1784, after years of evasion, Saint-Maló was captured, tried, and executed. His legacy lives on as a symbol of resistance and the relentless pursuit of freedom among enslaved people.

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Q: WHAT WERE THEY FIRING AT?

A: At the enemy, sir.

Q: At people?

A: At the enemy, sir.

Q: They weren’t human beings?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Were they men?

A: I don’t know, sir. I would imagine they were, sir.

Q: Didn’t you see?

A: Pardon, sir?

Q: Did you see them?

A: I wasn’t discriminating.

Q: Did you see women?

A: I don’t know, sir.

Q: What do you mean, you weren’t discriminating?

A: I didn’t discriminate between individuals in the village, sir. They were all the enemy, they were all to be destroyed, sir.

— William Calley (My Lai Court Martial Testimony)

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MY FATHER BOUGHT A MULE off a white gentleman in Alabama in 1950. Things got tough that year. The sun burned down on the clay dirt, the beetles ate the crops. It was a bad year. My father got behind on his payments. So this man came with his truck. He said: 'N, I come to get the mule or my money.' My father said: 'Look, I don't have the money. I need the mule.' The man said: 'I'm taking one today - the money or the mule.' So he gets out the truck to go in the barn and get the mule. My father goes in the house to get his gưn. He comes out to the gate and says, 'Turn my mule loose or I'm gonna shooț you.' Man says: 'N, I'll be back tonight.'

My grandfather lived 100 yards down the road. He knew what had happened. He told my father: 'They gonna kiII you. Leave now. Instantly. Boom. Go.' My father went to the station. Next train: Ohio. He went to Ohio. That night 20 members of the Ku KIux KIan surrounded the house with torches. Came in – I mean, we were scared to death - and searched. I was five years old. Believe me, I remember it. The Ku KIux KIan come after you, you don't forget. But I always remember my mother telling me after: 'We got white and black in this world good - and bad in both races. We all belong to God. Love everybody. And you know what. That night did me a favour. I would never have gone to Ohio. I would never have ended up in the fight game.'

— Ernie Shavers

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YOU'RE NOT CRAZY. This Genocidal Dystopia Is Crazy.

by Caitlin Johnstone

You’re not crazy. They are crazy. The ones who are going around acting like everything’s fine. The ones dismissing the Gaza genocide as a “single issue”. The ones who don’t like it when you talk about this stuff because it bums them out. They are the crazy ones.

I say this because living in the west during a western-backed genocide can make you feel like you’re going insane. Like maybe there’s something wrong with you for not being able to go along as though your government isn’t helping Israel burn people alive, shoot kids in the head, deliberately destroy Gaza’s healthcare system, and target civilian populations with deadly siege warfare in order to annex Palestinian territory. Like maybe you’re defective if you can’t be as chill about all this as everyone else is being.

But there’s nothing wrong with you, and you are not defective. There is something very wrong with a civilization that could go along with all this. It is our genocidal dystopia that is defective.

History is rife with examples of horrific mass atrocities to which the majority of the population did not respond with the appropriate revulsion and urgency at the time. Slavery. The Holocaust. The systematic extermination of other indigenous populations in other settler-colonialist projects. Most of the people who now look back and judge those evils correctly in hindsight are sleepwalking right through their present-day reiteration in Palestine.

Those who stood against the mass atrocities of history tended to be in the minority, because if opposing them was conventional wisdom they wouldn’t have happened in the first place. This shows us that there is no correlation between conventional wisdom and real moral clarity. We cannot look to others to evaluate whether our position on an issue is the correct one, because history tells us that the majority is very often wrong on the most important issues in the present moment when it matters.

And the majority is wrong now. The ones flagrantly supporting Israel’s abuses are wrong. The ones who try not to think too much about what’s being done in Gaza and Lebanon are wrong. The ones who say it’s all so tragic and heartbreaking but it’s oh so very complicated and Israel has a right to defend itself are wrong. The ones who don’t oppose Israel’s atrocities but only oppose their own country sending boots on the ground or spending their tax dollars on it are wrong. The ones who know a genocide is happening but avoid making too much noise about it because they want to make sure the Democrats win the election are wrong. The ones who know it’s a genocide but don’t respond to this reality with the appropriate level of urgency, forcefulness and focus are wrong.

All around us we are bombarded with messages trying to gaslight into believing that we are the ones who aren’t perceiving reality correctly. These messages can be overt, like the propaganda of the mass media and the talking points of the Israel apologists we run into online. They can also be subtle, like the unspoken messages we get when nobody around us is talking about Gaza and how people grow uncomfortable when we do.

But those messages are lying to us. We absolutely are the ones who are seeing things correctly. We absolutely are the ones who are responding to this nightmare appropriately. They are the ones acting like a bunch of lunatics casually strolling around in the middle of a house fire. 

Don’t look to others to evaluate your own level of clarity. In a civilization that has gone insane, you have to sort out what sanity looks like for yourself. When our leaders are throwing their support behind an active genocide in a society that is awash with propaganda-induced delusions, we’ve all got to be brave enough to stand on our own two feet.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

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THE THREE LAYERS OF CULPABILITY

by James Kunstler

The Great Fright among the elite of the party ruling our country steals across the land chillingly now from sea to shining sea — as if all those ghouls, werewolves, zombies, and tormented wraiths assembled in the front yard Halloween displays send up one mighty wail of despair: Donald Trump will seek revenge against his enemies if you elect him! they scream into the pale moonlight.

Well, he ought to, of course, and remember: they are your enemies, too — the FBI thugs battering down your doors at five in the morning, the malicious US attorneys manufacturing phony felonies, the Soros-owned DAs and party-owned judges, and the thousands of spooks from agencies both known and unheard-of surveilling your every move, every purchase, every journey, every thought. Consider that it is not whether Mr. Trump might seek revenge but whether justice, and the mental health of the nation, require an accounting for the real crimes of actual persons against the people of America lo these years of the Woke Jacobin Inquisition.

Finally, as the days dwindle down to November 5, you understand exactly what motivates the three layers of evil heaping America with malice and punishment. Layer one: the officers of the political establishment, a.k.a., “the blob” or Deep State, both current and emeritus. You know now that they are motived to stay out of courts-of-law (and, ultimately, prison). Figures such as John Brennan, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Chris Wray, Anthony Fauci, Alejandro Mayorkas, Barack Obama, and many more, exude culpability for doing real harm to US citizens. They do not want to do time. As Dr. Johnson famously said: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” They see Donald Trump’s poll number go hockey stick and they tremble in their Beltway mansions. On the Kubler-Ross transect of grief, they are just now wavering between the stages of anger and bargaining.

Second layer: the lawfare lawyer gang deployed to keep the blob safe from investigation and prosecution: Marc Elias, (the mail-in ballot fraud genius), Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord (authors of every get-Trump legal brief), and many others who work with them, are motivated by the gigantic fees they command from the Democratic National Committee and other cut-out orgs that funnel payments to them. The Elias Law Group alone is rumored to have raked-in millions from one client, the Kamala Harris campaign. This is apart from whatever lawyerly zeal they exercise so enjoyably in their blood-lust for Mr. Trump and his associates. Remember: Jacobins are sadists who derive pleasure from cruelly punishing their adversaries. It probably motivates them more than the money involved, since ambitious Beltway lawyers can always and easily make bundles of money from the most mundane services to the blob.

Third Layer: the news media. The motives of these birds are the flimsiest: social status and professional stature. They operate within a self-referential reward bubble that provides psychological nourishment as long as they go along with the mumurations of their flock. They will be easiest to turn around as the national mood turns (and is now turning, sharply). A year from now, don’t be surprised if they treat Mr. Trump as a revered hero who saved the country from the malignant blob — and pretend that they never thought otherwise. By then, it will be too late for some, of course, and actual figures such as Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, NBC’s Nicolle Wallace, will be drowning in their own slime trails.

Now, whether Mr. Trump would actively seek revenge is a thing apart from the paranoia of his adversaries. On the one hand, he seems aware that his own place in history will rest not on looking backward to the harms inflicted on him as the sacrificial goat for the sins of “the deplorables” — the many Lawfare cases against him will likely be reversed in higher courts, or just dropped — but on attending to and fixing the many obvious, reality-based problems afflicting the nation: inflation, the horrendous debt, the libido for war induced by military contractors and neocons, the return of productive industry and jobs that pay living wages, sealing the border and expelling dangerous aliens, and stopping the race-and-gender hustles, to name a few things.

In 2016, Mr. Trump floated the idea of defaulting on US debt, or negotiating its terms. Sounded outrageous to some at the time. Now, with the BRICs org meeting to de-dollarize their trade arrangements, might be a ripe time to make such a move. He can reverse “Joe Biden’s” 2021 reversal of his border policies by executive order on day one, put a stop to the “sanctuary city” idiocy, and end all cash incentives to illegals currently inside the USA. He can negotiate a reasonable end to the Ukraine conflict that leaves that country neutral, as everyone knows it should be. He can incentivize the return of factory production with US companies. He knows (and you know) that there is a huge agenda of practical problems to face. Mr. Trump does not need the aggravation of stirring up further grievance and resentment among the defeated Wokesters. He needs them to get aboard a national reclamation project, get their minds right, and lend a hand.

Speaking of hands, on the other hand, remember that the signal weakness of Julius Caesar was pardoning his enemies. Since Mr. Trump is best known as a deal-maker, I believe he will seek to make a deal with the blob. The deal will be for them to cooperate in the prosecution of certain key figures in exchange for not demolishing their agencies altogether. Some of these people — Garland, Mayorkas, Fauci, Brennan, and Wray, for examples — really do need to do some ’splainin’ in front of juries. That may be sufficient to clarify for history some of the damage the Woke insanity did to our country. We can’t pretend that nothing happened. Most of all, Mr. Trump has to defeat the sick belief that anything goes and nothing matters.

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THE CHOICE THIS ELECTION is between Corporate and Oligarchic Power

There is a civil war within capitalism. Kamala Harris is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the mascot of the oligarchs. Either way, we lose.

by Chris Hedges

The choice in the elections is between corporate and oligarchic power. Corporate power needs stability and a technocratic government. Oligarchic power thrives on chaos and, as Steve Bannon says, the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Neither are democratic. They have each bought up the political class, the academy and the press. Both are forms of exploitation that impoverish and disempower the public. Both funnel money upwards into the hands of the billionaire class. Both dismantle regulations, destroy labor unions, gut government services in the name of austerity, privatize every aspect of American society, from utilities to schools, perpetuate permanent wars, including the genocide in Gaza, and neuter a media that should, if it was not controlled by corporations and the rich, investigate their pillage and corruption. Both forms of capitalism disembowel the country, but they do it with different tools and have different goals.

Kamala Harris, anointed by the richest Democratic Party donors without receiving a single primary vote, is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the buffoonish mascot for the oligarchs. This is the split within the ruling class. It is a civil war within capitalism played out on the political stage. The public is little more than a prop in an election where neither party will advance their interests or protect their rights.

George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison in their book “Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism,” refer to corporate power as “housebroken capitalism.” Housebroken capitalists need consistent government policies and fixed trade agreements because they have made investments that take time, sometimes years, to mature. Manufacturing and agriculture industries are examples of “housebroken capitalism.”

Monbiot and Hutchison refer to oligarchic power as “warlord capitalism.” Warlord capitalism seeks the total eradication of all impediments to the accumulation of profits including regulations, laws and taxes. It makes its money by charging rent, by erecting toll booths to every service we need to survive and collecting exorbitant fees. 

The political champions of warlord capitalism are the demagogues of the far right, including Trump, Boris Johnson, Giorgia Meloni, Narendra Modi, Victor Orban and Marine Le Pen. They sow dissension by peddling absurdities, such as the great replacement theory, and dismantling structures that provide stability, such as the European Union. This creates uncertainty, fear and insecurity. Those that orchestrate this insecurity promise, if we surrender even more rights and civil liberties, that they will save us from phantom enemies, such as immigrants, Muslims and other demonized groups.

The epicenters of warlord capitalism are private equity firms. Private equity firms such as Apollo, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, buy up and plunder businesses. They pile on debt. They refuse to reinvest. They slash staff. They willfully drive companies into bankruptcy. The object is not to sustain businesses but to harvest them for assets, to make short-term profit. Those who run these firms, such as Leon Black, Henry Kravis, Stephen Schwarzman and David Rubenstein, have amassed personal fortunes in the billions of dollars.

Trump’s cohort of Silicon Valley backers, led by Elon Musk, were what The New York Times writes, “finished with Democrats, regulators, stability, all of it. They were opting instead for the freewheeling, fortune-generating chaos that they knew from the startup world.” They planned to “plant devices in people’s brains, replace national currencies with unregulated digital tokens, [and] replace generals with artificial intelligence systems.” 

Billionaire Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal and a Trump supporter, has waged war on “confiscatory taxes.” He funds an anti-tax political action committee and proposes the construction of floating nations that would impose no compulsory income taxes. 

Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, with an estimated net worth of $35 billion, has given Trump $100 million for his campaign. While Adelson, who was born and raised in Israel, is a fervent Zionist, she is also part of the club of oligarchs who seek to slash taxes for the rich, taxes that have already been cut by Congress, or diminished through a series of legal loopholes. 

The economist Adam Smith warned that unless rentier income was heavily taxed and put back into a financial system it would self-destruct.

The wreckage private equity firms and the oligarchs orchestrate, is taken out on workers who are forced into a gig economy and who have seen stable salaries and benefits eradicated. It is taken out on pension funds that are depleted because of usurious fees, or are abolished. It is taken out on our health and safety. Residents of nursing homes, for example, owned by private equity firms, experience 10 percent more deaths — not to mention higher fees — because of staffing shortages and reduced compliance with standards of care.  

Private equity firms are an invasive species. They are also ubiquitous. They have acquired educational institutions, utility companies, and retail chains, while bleeding taxpayers hundreds of billions in subsidies which are made possible by bought-and-paid-for prosecutors, politicians, and regulators. What is particularly galling is that many of the industries seized by private equity firms — water, sanitation, electrical grids, hospitals — were paid for out of public funds. They cannibalize the nation, leaving behind shuttered and bankrupt industries. 

Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner document how private equity works in the book “These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs-and Wrecks-America.”

“Routinely lionized in the financial press for their dealmaking and lauded for their ‘charitable’ giving, these unbridled capitalists have mounted expensive lobbying campaigns to ensure continued enrichment from favorable tax laws,” they write. 

“Hefty donations have won them positions of power on museum boards and think tanks. They’ve published books on leadership extolling ‘the importance of humility and humanity’ at the top, while eviscerating those at the bottom. Their companies arrange for them to avoid paying taxes on the billions in gains that their stockholdings generate. And, of course, they rarely mention that the companies they own are among the largest beneficiaries of government investments in highways, railroads, and primary education, reaping massive perks from subsidies and tax policies that allow them to pay substantially lower rates on their earnings,” they explain 

“These men are America’s modern-age robber barons. But unlike many of their predecessors in the nineteenth century, who amassed stupefying riches by extracting a young nation’s natural resources, today’s barons mine their wealth from the poor and middle class through complex financial dealings.” 

The housebroken capitalists are represented by politicians such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron. But “housebroken capitalism” is no less destructive. It pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the greatest betrayal of the American working class since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which placed crippling restrictions on union organizing. It revoked the Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall) which separated commercial banking from investment banking. Tearing down the firewall between commercial and investment banks led to the global financial meltdown in 2007 and 2008, including the collapse of nearly 500 banks. It pushed through the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine by the Federal Communications Commission under Ronald Reagan as well as the Telecommunications Act under Bill Clinton’s presidency, allowing a handful of corporations to consolidate control of media outlets. It destroyed the old welfare system, 70 percent of the recipients of whom were children. It doubled our prison population and militarized the police. In the process of moving manufacturing to countries such as Mexico, Bangladesh and China, where workers toil in sweatshops, 30 million Americans were subjected to mass layoffs according to figures compiled by the Labor Institute. Meanwhile, it piled up massive deficits — the federal budget deficit rose to $1.8 trillion in 2024, with total national debt approaching $36 trillion — and neglected our basic infrastructure, including electrical grids, roads, bridges and public transportation, while spending more on our military than all the other major powers on Earth combined.

These two forms of capitalism are species of totalitarian capitalism, or what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” In each form of capitalism, democratic rights are abolished. The public is under constant surveillance. Labor unions are dismantled or defanged. The media serves the powerful and dissident voices are silenced or criminalized. Everything is commoditized from the natural world to our relationships. Grassroots and popular movements are outlawed. The ecocide continues. Politics is burlesque.

Debt peonage and wage stagnation ensures political control and the further consolidation of wealth. Banks and corporate financiers enslave not only individuals with debt peonage but also cities, municipalities, states and the federal government. The rise in interest rates, coupled with declining public revenues, especially through taxation, is a way to extract the last bits of capital from citizens, as well as from the government. Once individuals, states or federal agencies cannot pay their bills — and for many Americans this often means medical bills — assets are sold to corporations, or seized. Public land, property and infrastructure, along with pension plans, are privatized. Individuals are pushed out of their homes and into financial and personal distress.

“The head of Goldman Sachs came out and said that Goldman Sachs workers are the most productive in the world,” the economist Michael Hudson, author of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy, told me. “That’s why they’re paid what they are. The concept of productivity in America is income divided by labor. So if you’re Goldman Sachs and you pay yourself $20 million a year in salary and bonuses, you’re considered to have added $20 million to GDP, and that’s enormously productive. So we’re talking with tautology. We’re talking with circular reasoning here.”

“So the issue is whether Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and predatory pharmaceutical firms, actually add ‘product’ or whether they’re just exploiting other people,” he continued. “That’s why I used the word parasitism in my book’s title. People think of a parasite as simply taking money, taking blood out of a host or taking money out of the economy. But in nature it’s much more complicated. The parasite can’t simply come in and take something. First of all, it needs to numb the host. It has an enzyme so that the host doesn’t realize the parasite’s there. And then the parasites have another enzyme that takes over the host’s brain. It makes the host imagine that the parasite is part of its own body, actually part of itself and hence to be protected. That’s basically what Wall Street has done. It depicts itself as part of the economy. Not as a wrapping around it, not as external to it, but actually the part that’s helping the body grow, and that actually is responsible for most of the growth. But in fact it’s the parasite that is taking over the growth.”

“The result is an inversion of classical economics,” Hudson said. “It turns Adam Smith upside down. It says what the classical economists said was unproductive – parasitism – actually is the real economy. And that the parasites are labor and industry that get in the way of what the parasite wants – which is to reproduce itself, not help the host, that is, labor and capital.”

The Weimarization of the American working class is by design. It is about creating a world of masters and serfs, of empowered oligarchic and corporate elites and a disempowered public. And it is not only our wealth that is taken from us. It is our liberty. The so-called self-regulating market, as the economist Karl Polanyi writes in “The Great Transformation,” always ends with mafia capitalism and a mafia political system. A system of self-regulation, Polanyi warns, leads to “the demolition of society.”

If you vote for Harris or Trump — I have no intention of voting for any candidate who sustains the genocide in Gaza — you are voting for one form of rapacious capitalism over another. All the other issues, from gun rights to abortion, are tangential and used to distract the public from the civil war within capitalism. The tiny circle of power these two forms of capitalism embody, exclude the public. These are elite clubs, clubs where wealthy members inhabit each side of the divide, or at times go back and forth, but are impenetrable to outsiders. 

The irony is that the unchecked greed of the corporatists, the housebroken capitalists, created a small number of billionaires who became their nemesis, the warlord capitalists. If the pillage is not halted, if we do not restore through popular movements control over the economy and the political system, then warlord capitalism will triumph. The warlord capitalists will cement into place neo-feudalism, while the public is distracted and divided by the antics of killer clowns like Trump. 

I see nothing on the horizon to avoid this fate.

Trump, for now, is the figurehead of warlord capitalism. But he did not create it, does not control it and can easily be replaced. Harris, whose nonsensical ramblings can make Biden look focused and coherent, is the vacuous, empty suit the technocrats adore.

Pick your poison. Destruction by corporate power or destruction by oligarchy. The end result is the same. That is what the two ruling parties offer in November. Nothing else.

(chrishedges.substack.com)

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EUROPEANS THINK A LOT about the wild open spaces of America, but the Americans themselves hardly give them a second thought. The wonders of inanimate nature leave them cold, and one may almost say they did not see the marvelous forests surrounding them until they began to fall beneath the ax.

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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THE IDIOT TOME on acting was written by Dale Carnegie. It was called “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” It’s a book on hustling. Acting is just hustling. Some people are hustling money, some power.

— Marlin Brando

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ETERNITY is a very long time, if it can be called time. The human race is just a passing fancy. I was never one to take the IDEA of the human race at all seriously. To me, we’re just another form of rather chattering monkeys. I don’t believe in afterlife, and it’s why I believe all the more deeply in THIS life as being the one thing that we can affect. And where I am is in a state of continuous high blood pressure, outrage over how badly we screw everything up in the United States, which was basically the most blessed of countries — native Americans to one side — but it was a fairly empty place for a lot of Europeans and then Asians and then Hispanics, and so on, to come to. How we could have come to this, all because of the theater of something called the cold war and the profits it has made for the defense industry, is a tragedy that I have lived through my life. I saw the high noon, I got out of the Army in 1946. I was in the Pacific. I remember 1945 as the moment when we were the first global empire, and we were absolutely unbeatable. The greatest economy. And here we sit decades later, and look at it.

— Gore Vidal

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