Mendocino County Today: Saturday 11/2/2024

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Laytonville 1.56" - Covelo 1.01" - Ukiah 0.77" - Hopland 0.75" - Boonville 0.56" - Leggett 0.50" - Yorkville 0.36"

LIGHT SHOWERS are possible this afternoon and evening. Dry weather and breezy northerly winds expected on Sunday. Dry weather expected to prevail next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): I could hear waves crashing while checking my rain gauge this morning, the system over produced the forecast with .55". A bit breezy today then dry skies until next weekend.

AVUSD NEWS

Hello Anderson Valley Community,
 
What a fantastic week we had last week! Students and staff had a wonderful time with Fall / Halloween festivities.

Additionally, we received wonderful news about the construction of the track at AV Jr/Sr High and the kitchen updates at AVES. Both projects are going to bid!! We expect groundbreaking on the track in the Spring and we will keep you posted about updates to the kitchen at AVES. We remain thankful to CalTrans for the Clean California grant for the track and to the entire community for passing Measure M, which is paying for the lion’s share of our construction projects. Beautiful things are on the horizon!

On another note, I have been hearing from some community members about the importance of keeping a commitment made by the previous administration to reinstall murals that had aged and/or been removed for painting. Please be assured we are taking next steps with this endeavor! If you are interested in helping or providing input, please contact me at the district office or via email at klarson@avpanthers.org

What’s New at AVES:
• TK went to the pumpkin patch and had a wonderful time! 
• The Halloween Parade was a hit! Students and staff were all smiles. 
• Math Instruction Specialists from MCOE provided demonstration lessons and professional development at AVES on Tuesday. They were thankful for the warm welcome they received and impressed by our teachers’ skills. They raved about our awesome, smart students, who exhibited impressive skills during the lessons. 
• We had 55 students for Spooky Camp. About 75 kids participated and had lots of fun. Nature walks, spooky slime making, mask making , bikes and pumpkin rolling contests, and Haunted Classroom decorations were created.  

Jr/Sr High News:
• Monday night was Senior Night at the soccer field. It was wonderful to see our seniors recognized. Photos will be forthcoming in the AV Athletics Facebook post. 
• We are looking forward to TWO tournaments! 
◦ Redwood Classic Dec. 4-7 (66th year hosting). 16-team tournament. 1st night will be hosted by satellite campuses: Cloverdale, Willits 
◦ First Annual Sequoia Classic girls’ basketball tournament. December 13-14.  
◦ Fliers and brackets for the upcoming basketball tournaments can be found here.
• The FFA has done an AMAZING job of raising funds for Thanksgiving meals for families in need. They have enough funding to provide dinners to 39 families and they are still collecting through November 6. Here is the link for donations: https://avhs-agriculture-deptffa.square.site/ 
• FFA has been awarded the 2024–25 Agricultural Career Technical Education Incentive Grant.$15,634.88. Beth Swehla writes this grant yearly. Way to go, Beth!  
• Ali Cook continues taking kids on amazing trips. She took a group on a tour of Sonoma State University and to a Peruvian restaurant in Sebastopol to celebrate the food unit they have been studying based in Peru in Spanish 2.  
• On Tuesday, AVHS staff meeting representatives of Anderson Valley Land Trust - outreach to teachers to consider working together on projects reflecting Pomo history, culture, and language, including a possible mural installation. We are looking forward to collaborative projects with this awesome group. We are thankful to Nat Corey-Moran, who set it up as part of the Community Schools grant. 
• Prom has been calendared for Saturday, April 26, 7:00-11:00 p.m. Mark your calendars. There will be more information to come! 

We remain deeply grateful for our community’s support through your attendance at our events, support of our facilities, and dedication to all the students of AVUSD. Please reach out to me if you have questions, concerns, or ideas to share!

With respect,

Kristin Larson Balliet
Superintendent
Anderson Valley Unified School District

HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL, WEEK 10

Friday’s games:

Windsor 18, Rancho Cotate 6
Vintage 17, San Marin 7
Casa Grande 26, American Canyon 14
Ukiah 40, Maria Carrillo 14
Analy 40, Santa Rosa 20
Justin-Siena 26, Napa 21
St. Helena 16, Fort Bragg 6
California School for the Deaf 44, Elsie Allen 12

Saturday’s games:

Roseland University Prep vs. Branson, 1 p.m.
Cardinal Newman at Marin Catholic, 2 p.m.
Montgomery at St. Vincent, 2 p.m.
Healdsburg at Archie Williams, 2 p.m.
Petaluma at Tamalpais, 2 p.m.
Piner at Novato, 2 p.m.
Sonoma Valley at Terra Linda, 7 p.m.

UKIAH 40, MARIA CARRILLO 14

In a battle of Redwood Empire Conference Bay division powers, Ukiah emerged with a statement win Friday on a muddy home field.

The Wildcats topped Maria Carrillo at home to improve to 6-3 on the year and 3-1 in league play.

Omaurie Phillips-Porter had three touchdowns on the night for Ukiah - two on special teams - and another on a long reception from quarterback Beau David, who also ran for two scores. Phillips-Porter had an 81-yard kickoff return touchdown in the first half and then returned a punt 85 yards for a score in the second half.

Maria Carrillo (7-2, 3-1 REC-Bay) led 8-0 early, but Ukiah rallied back to take a 21-14 lead at halftime before pulling away in the second half.

“It was a good character game,” Ukiah head coach Paul Cronin said. “Muddy field, there was a lot of focus stuff that’s gotta happen because it’s easy to slip and all those things, but our guys did a good job focusing, so really proud of them for that.”

Logan Bruce scored two rushing touchdowns for the Pumas — the first from two yards out and the second from six.

Maria Carrillo will look to turn the page quickly as it closes out the regular season next week with a home tilt against first-place St. Vincent.

Pumas head coach Jay Higgins praised the play of his defense — especially its ability to create havoc moments in the Ukiah backfield.

“The difference was the explosive plays. They hit (Phillips-Porter) for a touchdown on a long post route, and they got big, explosive plays on special teams to put them in a comfortable lead,” Higgins said of Ukiah. “Other than those plays, it was just a slog where we were all trying to fight for a few yards. … I think, different situation — if we could have eliminated some of the chaos — it could have been a different game. But that’s what happens.”

Friday’s loss snapped a five-game Maria Carrillo winning streak that spanned all the way back to Sept. 14.

“We’ve approached every week so far with the mindset that we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves; we want to take care of today,” Higgins said. “That’s every day of the week in practice. Of course we want to take care of Friday night, but you can’t win two games in one night. You’ve got to focus on the task at hand.

“We have been very good at staying in the present and not looking ahead, focusing on the now. … I think the key is for us to recognize that we’ve got to own everything that we do. Our previous record doesn’t mean anything. All that matters is how we respond next week.”

Ukiah will close out the regular season at Analy (3-6, 2-2) next week.

MENDO’S UNSAFE ROADS

(from the September 2024 Mendocino County Local Road Safety/Action Plan by consultant TJKM)

“From 2020 to 2022, there were 59 fatal traffic collisions that occurred in Mendocino County with an annual traffic fatality rate of 21.47 per 100,000 populations for the County as a whole. These rates are much higher than the California average of 10.89 and the United States average of 12.52. These statistics are consistent with other rural areas. Table 5 shows the comparison of traffic fatality rates and population.”

Branscomb Road and State Street North of Ukiah listed as having the majority of fatal accidents and were by far the leading accident locations. The only part of Anderson Valley that made the accident list was Mountain View Road where there were four serious accidents over its 15 miles over the period covered (2015-2019).

(Mark Scaramella)

TOM SMYTHE: This is a beautiful courthouse. In Auburn, California.

CHIEF CERVENKA RESPONDS TO THE ANONYMOUS FORT BRAGG POLICE COMPLAINT

October 27, 2024

TO: The AVA

RE: Fort Bragg Police Complaints

Attached is a letter submitted to all Fort Bragg City Council members, City Manager as well as the Police Chief. This letter has also been submitted to the Attorney General and the Peace Officer Standards and Training director. We are submitting a copy of the letter to you without the videos. If the matter is not properly investigated, we will forward the videos to all media.

Our concern is public safety from those we entrust to uphold the laws of the constitution. It is obvious the Fort Bragg Police management has no concern for their personnel actions. This is not the only mismanaged event from the Fort Bragg Police Department. The captain had an office party in which things quickly became sexually out of control and an involved supervisor was fired for lying, yet the captain is still employed. A party with subordinates is unacceptable.

Recently, an inexperienced officer arrested a black juvenile at the Fort Bragg Middle School threatening him with a Taser, a black teacher asked what was going on while other white teachers watched in horror as the officer threatened the black teacher. The black juvenile was forcibly removed from the school handcuffed, and hogtied by three officers in view of other classmates, teachers and staff, all caught on phone videos. Watch the Fort Bragg Unified School District Board meeting (10/17/2024) in which numerous members of the public and school staff complain to the school board.

The incidents involving FBPD have escalated, numerous other complaints against police officers have been filed by community members. These recent incidents should be an alarming concern for this community. It is a lack of management of these inexperienced young officers. The public fears more serious misconduct will occur that will continue to be ignored or covered up.

Those involved in these recent and past incidents are preparing to file civil litigation with their legal counsel against those involved including the police department and city of Fort Bragg both in Federal and State court.

This letter was not sent to District Attorney Dave Eyster since his ignorance of these issues will only become an excuse of why he has not acted as he should. Eyster reviews all cases sent to the DA’s office, so he is aware of these criminal complaints which he does not file with the court, it is obvious he has a bond with police management.

Sincerely,

Concerned Citizens

Attached letter:

October 21, 2024

Fort Bragg City Council 416 North Franklin Street Fort Bragg, CA 95437

Re: Fort Bragg Police Department Policy Manual

Mission Statement “Acting under the tenet of Respect and Dignity for all, we strive to impact and improve the quality of life for families, all of our residents, the business community and visitors.”

Dear Mayor Norvell and Members of the City Council:

This letter is written anonymously due to the sensitivity and nature of this matter. I request that you honor this complaint to discuss and prevent these issues from becoming a public concern. This is a small community and this information will hopefully remain confidential and acted on by the City Council with the importance it deserves. The enclosure is only one example of a number of violations by officers/employees of the Fort Bragg Police Department of its Law Enforcement Code of Ethics and Fort Bragg Police Department Policy Manual.

Please accept this letter as a complaint for misconduct against the Fort Bragg Police Department: Neil Cervenka, Chief of Police, Thomas O'Neal, Police Captain; all officers and employees participating in recruiting police informants, in addition to other areas of publicly documented misconduct, dishonesty and abuse of power and authority by officers/employees.

The enclosed flash drive is the latest development that has manifested through a lack of oversight and supervision of the officers of Fort Bragg Police Department by Police Chief Neil Cervenka and Captain Thomas O'Neal. It is time for oversight of the Administration of the Fort Bragg Police Department.

The history behind this obscene text video is associated with the practice of the Fort Bragg Police Department's attempts to recruit police informants. This act is implemented by targeting and taking advantage of those individuals arrested by the Fort Bragg Police Department or on probation in the Fort Bragg area with the Mendocino County Probation Department. For many of these individuals they are fearful, trying to put the experience behind them and attempting to move forward in a positive manner. The informant recruitment actions undertaken by Fort Bragg Police Department officers/employees severely undermines the success or any positive steps made by the individuals when approached with the informant recruitment offers.

This specific video was the outcome of an arrest and the associated attempt by Officer Jarod D. Frank to take advantage of his arrestee or individual on parole. The Officer posting this video on SnapChat was aware of Officer Frank’s arrests and obtained the contact information through the records of the Fort Bragg Police Department.

Any police officer in our isolated rural community who participates in reaching out to recruit arrestees and probationers as informants is questionable and problematic at best. This process requires extensive training, experience and supervision by a trained and proven experienced professional. There is a very real and inherent risk to the officer, the support team and each informant’s life.

Neil Cervenka, Chief of Police and Thomas O'Neal, Captain, have both failed to provide supervision and oversight to their young, inexperienced officers in their attempt to establish an informant program, as well as other specialty areas of law enforcement for the Fort Bragg Police Department. Providing specialty training for officers/employees is not enough to establish and claim areas of expertise. Newly trained officers require supervision and oversight by a supervisor who is experienced and qualified in the specific area of training. There is a serious lack of both supervision and oversight within the Fort Bragg Police Department.

The level of responsibility and freedom from accountability granted to officers who lack the necessary time and experience in the position they claim to have expertise is troubling. The Fort Bragg Police Department has a recent history of numerous citizen complaints having been filed which are associated with officer/employee misuse of power and authority under color of law, misconduct and dishonesty. These complaints, those that have received acknowledgment by the Fort Bragg Police Department, are notably absent of any findings in spite of adequate evidence provided to substantiate the complaint.

As trusted members of our community, I urge you to research the recent ongoing lack of oversight, supervision and lack of transparency known to exist within the Fort Bragg Police Department. Please review the Fort Bragg Police Department Policy Manual. Hold Police Chief Cervenka, Captain O'Neal and the officers and employees accountable for their actions. Please make the Fort Bragg Police Department a law enforcement agency of which its citizens and the City of Fort Bragg can trust and be proud!

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen

cc: Isaac Whippy, Fort Bragg City Manager

Rob Bonta, Attorney General

Neil Cervenka, Chief of Police,

Manuel Alvarez Jr., Executive Director, Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

CHIEF CERVENKA RESPONDS:

AVA

The video does not violate policy, as it was not posted to social media by the employee and does not identify the City as his employer in any way. It was originally sent via private message between two consenting adults at the request of the female. It is, however, a violation of 647(j)(4) of the California Penal Code in which the officer is a victim and the female who released it and, possibly, all those who facilitated its release are suspects. It is a blatant defamation of character of the officer and an attempt to slander the police department. The victim officer does not want to pursue criminal charges at this time. I am saddened someone would be so callous as to attempt to put an innocent person in such a negative light for their own gains.

Ms. Brewer no longer works for the department due to the PRN grant ending. [“Project Right Now, an anti-substance abuse program.] It was a temporary, contract position. This was public information. I speak with her regularly.

To my knowledge, no former Community Service Officers left employment with a Non-Disclosure Agreement for anything. There have been three CSOs since I have been Chief. One left for more opportunity with the Sheriff’s Office, one left for the military and visits the Department every time she is home, and the third is currently in the Police Academy.

No one was “hogtied.” Multiple body cameras and surveillance cameras prove this. The Fort Bragg Police Department has not had that type of equipment in anyone’s memory.

The bodycam footage was not “modified.” When an Axon Body Worn Camera is activated, the video recording starts several seconds before the sound comes on as the camera is constantly in “buffering” mode when turned on, but not recording. It constantly records video, but no audio due to storage requirements. This is a safety feature of Axon systems to at least capture the video of a critical incident should something suddenly occur prior the officer activing the record function. Axon Body - Operating modes

A BUDGET REPORT IN NAME ONLY

by Mark Scaramella

Next Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors Agenda packet includes a departmental budget rundown for LAST fiscal year. Most variances are minor since the budget was revised mid-year to reflect experience to date, explained by staffing adjustments and in a few cases adjustments due to expenses or revenues booked in prior years.

The Ag Department shows some odd budget numbers for the fiscal year (July 2023-June 2024):

The Auditor offers this explanation for the weird numbers:

“Salary/benefits savings, and true up in revenue to book receivable balance.” Whatever that last part means, perhaps a delay in some state funding (“receivable”).

But the numbers themselves don’t look right. Even if the Ag department was running short staffed for that fiscal year with a part time Commissioner and limited staff, the report says the department’s expenses were only $586k. Did they really let the department shrink that much?

We also were intrigued by the Auditor’s explanation for the cannabis department’s revenue shortfall: “Revenue less than projected.” Of course, but why?

We were surprised to see that “Emergency Medical Services” was listed as a “department.”

According to the confusing item, EMS revenues were less than half of what was budgeted, but where do such revenues come from? Probably the general fund. But there’s no explanation. And expenses were less than half of budget? The cryptic explanation offered is: “Majority of variance relates to underspending CalFire contract.” This is a reference to the Calfire (fire/medical) side of the 911 dispatch system. But it leaves open the obvious question: Why did Calfire “underspend” on their contract?

Toward the end of this “draft unaudited financial report” we saw this mysterious summary of revenues:

This shows that “Aid from Other Gov’t Agencies” was overbudgeted by more than $100 million while “operating transfers in” were underbudgeted by about $86 million. Despite these huge numbers, there’s no explanation at all.

Nevertheless, this is the first time the County has tried to produce a departmental summary for the last fiscal year. It’s interesting even as it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. But what is needed is a monthly departmental budget to actual report for revenues and expenses for THIS fiscal year so that management and the public can see trends, consider explanations and make adjustments if necessary.

Last month we reported on the Board’s revisionist history included in their response to the State Controller’s criticism of their unplanned, chaotic and ill-advised consolidation of the Auditor’s Office with the Treasurer’s office. The State Controller had recommended that “For future reorganizations, conduct a risk assessment before implementing significant changes, such as consolidating two elected offices.” At that time, Acting Auditor-Treasurer Sara Pierce had simply suggested that the County agreed with the recommendation. But the Supervisors, contorting history and the timing of events to make sure blame is placed not on them but on the former Treasurer and former Auditor, revised that response (“corrective action plan”) to: “The Board of Supervisors agrees that with future reorganizations, a risk assessment should be implemented prior to significant changes, such as consolidating two elected offices, so long as the elected officers or affected departments are responsive and agree to participate in the risk assessment in a timely manner. Without responsive and timely participation by all affected parties, a risk assessment can be indefinitely delayed or published with incomplete information.”

As we said last month, both (now former) officials offered their formal assessment of the risks BEFORE the consolidation was forced on them, aka in a timely manner. Then, AFTER the consolidation, when one of those officials retired and the other continued to point out the negative impacts of the consolidation, the Board decided that the remaining official who was trying explain the problem and the impact while persevering with the consolidation, Chamise Cubbison, failed to provide “responsive and timely participation.” The truth is that it was the Board which ignored the risks “assessed” by both elected officials and went ahead with the consolidation without considering them. But this Board simply can’t fathom that they were at fault, that they indeed did no risk assessment, so they blame the blameless the officials who are no longer with the County. And, as with Cubbison’s abrupt ouster, they offer no opportunity for a corrective response.

ACTING AUDITOR-CONTROLLER/TREASURER-TAX COLLECTOR Sara Pierce finally gets around to juggling her staff to accommodate last year’s office consolidation, almost a year after the Board created the mess.

Non-Surprise: As former Auditor Chamise Cubbison predicted before she was ousted, the cost of the combined office will go up by over $170k per year.

Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Sara Pierce:

The Acting Auditor-Controller, Treasurer-Tax Collector and Human Resources have collaborated over the past eleven months to conduct a comprehensive study of the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s Office. This effort has identified a pressing need to restructure current classifications to better align with the evolving duties and responsibilities within the department. The proposed restructure aims to enhance operational efficiency, improve service delivery, and align with the strategic goals of the County.

During its October 16, 2024 meeting, the Civil Service Commission approved two new classifications - Revenue Recovery Specialist II and Treasury Specialist I. The Commission also approved title changes and modifications for existing classifications of Revenue Recovery Specialist to Revenue Recovery Specialist I, and Treasury Specialist to Treasury Specialist II, as well as modifications of the Senior Revenue Recovery Specialist. Additionally, the Commission approved the reclassification of eight incumbents during this meeting.

The recommended re-organization creates a department structure like that of the Auditor-Controller’s Office. The new classifications, title changes and classification modifications provide a series in each of the classifications allowing for career growth aiding in employee retention.

Human Resources recommends the Board adopt a new classification specification of Chief Deputy Treasurer-Tax Collector. Establishing a single incumbent Chief Deputy Treasurer-Tax Collector position allows additional support by providing oversight and supervision within the department and will assist the Auditor-Controller, Treasurer-Tax Collector and the Assistant Treasurer-Tax Collector with administrative matters and will be exempt from Civil Service.

Currently, the Treasurer-Tax Collector has a Principal Department Analyst. As a result of this study, Human Resources requests the Board adopt a new classification of Investment Operations Analyst. This classification will be exempt from Civil Service and accurately reflects the responsibilities needed for managing the County’s Treasury Pool, including preparing various accounting and financial reports and assisting the Auditor-Controller, Treasurer-Tax Collector in oversight and analysis.

The proposed changes aim to modernize the office structure, improve operational efficiency, and support the professional development of employees within the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s Office. The proposed changes do not alter the work being performed by incumbents; rather, they provide more comprehensive specifications.

The fiscal impact shown below for this year is calculated at Step 5 during the pay period 24-24 (November 10, 2024) and includes the cost of benefits. The annual recurring cost shown is also calculated at Step 5 including the cost of benefits.

Current F/Y Cost: BU 1130 $111,184 Increase, includes cost of benefits; BU 2012 Savings $111,184 including cost of benefits.

Budget Clarification: Department to work with fiscal.

Annual Recurring Cost: BU 1130 $170,046 Increase, includes cost of benefits; BU 2012 Savings $170,046 including cost of benefits.

Budgeted In Current F/Y (if no, please describe): No

(Translation: the reorganization which Pierce says will provide the necessary separation of duties between the Auditor and the Treasurer (essentially as it was before the consolidation) will cost an unbudgeted amount of about $112k (for the new “Chief Deputy Treasurer-Tax Collector” for this fiscal year, and an on-going cost of $170k per year thereafter.)

LAST WEEK we noted CEO Antle’s Measure B promise to provide some Measure B information, a promise which she conveniently hedged with her usual “…hopefully.”

After assuring the Board that she was working oh-so hard on “options” regarding Measure B funding, and “working their very best to figure out how to get those Measure B dollars back to Measure B…” etc., she concluded by saying, “More to come on that. Hopefully by November 6.” We also noted that nobody expressed any concern about CEO Antle’s dismal record of not delivering on things she’s “actively working on.”

It’s now a week later and the November 6 board agenda says nothing about Measure B. Antle’s dismal record remains intact.

POT CULTIVATION EXPANSION: BAD IDEA

by Jim Shields

Those of you who have been around this County for a while are familiar with my views on the weed industry.

This county has spent more time, taxpayer money and resources on this marijuana issue than any other issue in county history — and there is nothing to show for it.
This county still persists in unloading responsibility and accountability and pointing fingers to others when it was the Board of Supervisors who developed and implemented local rules and regulations that have never worked, resulting in their Cannabis Ordinance laying like a rotting, beached whale for all to see.
After nearly 8 years of the Cannabis Ordinance being on the books, less than 10 percent of pot farmers have made application to the program. By any process of evaluation or measure of a program’s effectiveness, the Mendocino County pot ordinance is an abysmal failure. The people it was supposed to shepherd into legal status have voted with their feet. They will never be coming into compliance with the ordinance.
There is no one who lives in this county who has not benefitted, directly or indirectly, from weed cultivation over the past 50 years.

I’m a poster boy for feeding at the pot manger.

While I don’t grow or smoke the stuff (as a physical fitness freak, I do use CDB ointment for workout strains and pains), but I sure have banked lots of pot dollars over the years.

I own a private sector business, the Mendocino County Observer, and I’ve never refused pot dollars for subscriptions, newsstand sales, or advertising.

I’m the long-time district manager for a local government water utility, the Laytonville County Water District, and conservatively speaking, at least 50 percent of our revenues are derived from customers who grow weed.

So for all these reasons and many more, I have always been active and involved as a participant and leader in county and state activities surrounding all aspects of cannabis laws, regulations, and policies.

Due to the total failure of a majority of the Board of Supervisors to implement a workable Cannabis Ordinance, the local economies of the unincorporated areas where two-thirds of the population reside, have been wrecked and de-stabilized.

The only hope for a compliance-friendly Cannabis Ordinance is for the Supervisors to implement a program based on the sole economic model that was successful for five decades: the small farmer “Mom and Pop” model.

That’s the model that a vast majority of county citizens support also.

You would think that county seat officials would know that also.

Evidently a majority of our supervisors aren’t aware of that fact.

Believe it or not, at their last meeting (Oct. 22), the Supes actually wasted several hours fussing and fretting over expanding by double cultivation areas.

This issue came about back in April when Cannabis Department Cannabis Department staffers “re-interpreted” a provision in the failed Weed Ordinance that they argued would allow in some instances doubling the size of cannabis cultivation areas. For example, instead of limiting a large outdoor grow to 10,000 sq./ft per parcel, by applying this re-interpretation, a person could increase, even double, the size of the area of cultivation on a single parcel. This is pure nonsense and is made out of whole cloth.

Supervisors Maureen Mulheren and Ted Williams supported the expansion proposal.

Supervisor Glenn McGourty said he didn’t know what a majority of the “industry” wanted.

Supervisors John Haschak and Dan Gjerde opposed it, saying the provision cited by the Cannabis Department has been in effect for years, and everyone understood and the practice was that grows were limited to 10,000 sq. ft., and it did not become an issue until new pot department staff raised it this year.

Haschak and Gjerde had it right a hundred percent.

The Supes also wasted more time fretting about how to figure out what a majority of the pot industry favored relative to the bogus expansion issue.

If I didn’t know better, I would think this issue hadn’t been resolved several years ago.

Some of the Supes seem to think that only the marijuana industry has the right to express their views and opinions on pot laws, regulations and “re-interpretations.”

They seem to be not aware that cannabis laws and regs are enacted for all citizens, not just the cannabis industry.

This whole issue of expansion was resolved without question several years ago when the people of this county massively supported referendums to repeal a Board of Supervisors’ proposed ordinance to expand cultivation grow areas.

So, again, the question is, why are some of the Supervisors and their unelected staff, attempting to ignore overwhelming opposition of the people of this county to cultivation expansion?

This is another example of County officials creating a problem where none existed before.

I think everyone is opposed to that.

(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)

ACCORDING TO a press release from the Coast Hospital District Board of Directors, “about 78% of patients are covered by Medicare or MediCal, and about 22% of patients have private insurance.”

Which right there should tell you why Coast Hospital is in financial difficulty. Typically, Medicare pays about 10% of the nominally high hospital bills and MediCal pays about 5% of them, as compared to private insurance which pays 100%. So, for example, if the hospital says it costs $10 million a year to operate the place then they get $2.2 million from private insurance and maybe $750k from Medicare and MediCal combined. Even if the hospital’s insurance bills are inflated (as they likely are) that’s not a sustainable arrangement unless some form of government subsidy covers some of the gap.

Coast Hospital CEO Judy Leach told the District Board that the hospital faces financial challenges that are “driving higher expenses without a commensurate increase in revenue.” Mentioned were operating losses, declining cash balances, rising costs since the pandemic for labor, medical supplies, and purchased services, labor shortages, and the severity of patients’ health needs. All of which are arguably true.

(Mark Scaramella)

YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED…

Editor:

You may have noticed that The Press Democrat endorsed Kamala Harris for president, citing Donald Trump’s toxic stamp on our country and our politics. Perhaps you missed that two of the leading liberal newspapers in America failed to make the same endorsement. What do you think prompted these well-respected publications to take a pass on Harris? Crime on our streets? Illegal immigrants being treated better than American citizens by our own government? What it costs to feed your family? Fill the gas tank? Continue sending billions of taxpayer dollars overseas funding wars? The drug epidemic wreaking havoc on our country? I’m hoping The Press Democrat can help shed light on what specific criteria they took into consideration other than a hatred for Trump.

Mick Menendez

Santa Rosa

CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF DEDICATION:

Teresa Thompson Honored at Annual Adventist Health Mendocino Coast Service Awards

Adventist Health Mendocino Coast proudly recognizes Teresa Thompson for her remarkable achievement of 40 years of dedicated service to our community. This milestone was celebrated during our 2024 Service Awards ceremony, where we honored team members for their commitment and contributions over the years working at the hospital.

Teresa began her career here as a PBX Operator, quickly demonstrating her potential by transferring to the Medical Records department within a year as a patient records representative. Her journey continued as a typing pool clerk, eventually leading her to a pivotal role as an inpatient coder in the early 1990s. In 1993, Teresa earned her Certified Coding Specialist Certificate, marking a significant step in her career that allowed her to promote to a certified coding specialist. Over the years, her dedication and expertise propelled her through various titles, ultimately becoming a senior certified coder.

Reflecting on her application from 1983, Teresa humorously indicated her first choice for a position was "Billing or Switch Board (PBX)" and her second choice was "ANYTHING," with her availability to start being "ANY TIME." This eagerness and flexibility have undoubtedly contributed to her long-standing success at Adventist Health Mendocino Coast.

Beyond her professional achievements, Teresa's vibrant personality shines through in her personal life. A devoted animal lover, she has cared for upwards of 40-50 chickens at one time and enjoys spending time outdoors gardening and hunting. Known for her exceptional holiday decorations, Teresa's Halloween and Christmas displays are a highlight for her colleagues.

One of her closest teammates shared a light-hearted secret that Teresa, known for her stellar annual evaluations, have been humorously noted for "talking too much and too loud." This speaks to the joy and camaraderie she brings to our team.

"Thank you, Teresa, for dedicating 40 years to us and our community," said Judy Leach, hospital administrator. "Your incredible journey, commitment to excellence, and vibrant spirit make you a valued teammate and friend."

As we celebrate this impressive milestone, we invite the community to join us in thanking Teresa for her unwavering service and dedication. Her contributions have made a lasting impact on Adventist Health Mendocino Coast and the lives of those we serve.

DAVID EYSTER

Halloween 2024:

Please indulge me if you have already heard this Eyster family story.

When I was in elementary school in Coshocton, Ohio in the sixties, we always hit it big and would bring home shopping bags full of candy on Halloween night.

My mother -- a dental hygienist – would then have my siblings and I pour out our bags of candy on the living room floor.

It was explained to us that candy was not good for our teeth and really bad for our overall health.

Due to parental concern for our well-being, we could each pick out ten pieces of candy to keep as our own from what had been poured out on the floor.

What would happen to the rest, you ask?

My mother further explained to us that there were kids who were not as fortunate as we were. Those “unfortunate” kids could not go out trick-or-treating because they were very sick and had been admitted to the local hospital for medical care.

My mother's plan was to take the remainder of the candy to the hospital so the hospital staff could distribute our significant candy bounty to those very sick kids.

Perhaps my mother knew I was destined to be a lawyer when I felt it appropriate to cross-examine this woman's do-gooder-ness:

“So let me get this straight. This candy is unhealthy for us and bad for our teeth. But you plan to take all that we worked very hard to gather tonight to the hospital to share with kids who are already super sick? How does that make sense?”

Not one to appreciate a snippy child, my mother's answer and whether I got slapped down has nevertheless been lost in the annals of time! I'm still here so whatever the outcome couldn't have been too bad.

Update: Halloween Night 2024: 9:00 p.m. In three hours, 68 trick-or-treaters have come to the front door. Record since 2011 has been 93. We were prepared for up to 120.

Two of the last group getting picky … looking for M&M's. Had none available. One had to "settle" for a Kit-Kat, the other for a Reese's.

Three adults have now shown up demanding trick-or-drink, including a neighbor who must have tipped off the other two.

Official Shutdown: 9 o'clock. Lights off. Finished off my glass of red wine. Dog allowed to return to free range chicken status around the house.

FREE CONCERT ON SATURDAY, NOV 2 AT PRESTON HALL, MENDOCINO

A group of singers renowned on the coast will sing a group of opera arias, duets, sacred and art songs this Saturday, Nov 2 at 3:00 pm in Preston Hall. There is no charge.

The vocalists will include: Vince Russo, Elaine and Matthew Miksak, Marius Constantin, Randy Knutson, Evelyn Harris, Cindy Frank, James Blanton, and Barbara Barkovich. Robyn Knutson will be the accompanist for all the singers.

— Kathy Hart

NAMES!

With power comes responsibility.

Some anonymaton of the administration of MCN Announce listserv wrote to me and apparently to dozens of others:

Hello Selected List Members,

Rest assured that no one has ever been banned from the MLP lists for posting a "Trump" banner. Political speech is not a violation of the Listserv AUP provided it is civil and does not include profanity or insults.

While we do not comment on individual moderation actions, as an example, persons might be banned from the lists for multiple violations of the AUP after repeated warnings, including;

(8f) Personal insults or attacks, public ridicule

(8h) Attempting to provoke or sustain a public verbal brawl

(8m) Using an alias to avoid a moderation action

These and other violations which might result in moderation actions are documented in the AUP here: https://mcn.org/support/Listserv/atos

(Which sound almost okay, on the face of it, but I wrote back)

Please put your name on email you send me privately or that you send to the listserv. Everyone else who participates in the group does. You're in a position of power. With power comes responsibility.

You'll notice that everywhere when someone writes on behalf of an organization, from the organization's email account, he or she puts his or her name in the body of the email.

How do /you/ feel when you get a call or text from someone whose identity is obscured or obfuscated, but who knows who /you/ are, who does this again and again, and refuses to identify himself? What you're doing is like that.

Marco McClean

ON THE ROAD WITH JAN THE MAIL LADY

by Bruce Anderson

On the road with Jan Walker, known from Anderson Valley to Point Arena as “Jan the Mail Lady,” Jan the Mail Lady was one of the many unsung persons whose commitment to their essential work holds this county (and this country) together.

Jan the Mail Lady, before her hard earned retirement, set out from her home in Yorkville before sunrise six days a week, and didn’t return to her home in Yorkville until the sun was dipping into the sea, and she completed that grueling schedule every day but Sunday, 51,148 miles a year for 20 years, never missing a day in all that time delivering and picking up the mail for Postal customers in the vast area lying between Cloverdale, the Anderson Valley, Greenwood Road and Elk, Manchester and Point Arena.

At Point Arena, Jan the Mail Lady reversed herself and made her way back to Cloverdale and finally home to Yorkville, the whole loop being nearly two hundred miles of winding road replete with hazards ranging from drunk drivers to barely accessible mailboxes erected by persons who seem to think their mail flies into their boxes on its own.

Six days a week for twenty years, Jan The Mail Lady successfully negotiated what most drivers might rightly regard as a sort of highway obstacle course, and she did it with an amiable serenity which belied the great care she took to accomplish her formidable daily task. This lady was on task, even with me peppering her with questions from the passenger seat.

When someone wasn't taking up the passenger seat, which someone wasn't most days, Jan The Mail Lady, a great reader who scoured the library system for books-on-tape, accumulated the equivalent of several PhD’s in English and American literature.

All those miles over all those twenty years beginning in 1987 Jan had one accident when “a guy kinda ran into me and scraped up the side of my van.”

That’s it, that and no missed days despite occasional vehicle breakdowns, whatever the weather, and Mendocino County gets some real weather in the winter when the Garcia near the Stornetta Ranch, which Jan passed over or through twice a day when the rain swollen Garcia raged. And trees fell across the road, and animals ran out in front of her van and odd people popped out of the bushes beside the road, “Which is fine with me so long as they stay out of the road,” Jan laughed.

By the time I boarded Jan’s van in Boonville, she’d already been on the job for a couple of hours, driving from Yorkville to the Cloverdale Post Office where she’d picked up the mail for several thousand people strewn over some 500 square miles of western Mendocino County. (There was no Netflix without Jan The Mail Lady.)

She’d already dropped off Boonville’s mail at the Boonville Post Office and was now headed for Philo where Joe and Sheila would quickly have it in their customer’s boxes by noon, usually way before noon.

Then it was up and over the Greenwood Road to Elk where Postmaster Melissa and, occasionally, the legendary Joel ‘Mole Man’ Waldman directed the day’s post to its seaside destinations. Down the road at the Manchester Post Office Postmaster Kathy with a y was filling in for Kathe with an e, and in Point Arena, once presided over by Boonville’s vivid postmaster, the late Al Zischke, another Kathy and a Shawn were hurrying around Point Arena’s hillside post office. Rural post offices always seem to be a person short, meaning the on duty people have to hustle.

As the day grows longer, it occurs to me that I am meeting one highly capable woman after another, confirming old suspicions that Mendocino County is held together by women, reliable, capable men having always seemed in short supply.

The Point Arena Post Office’s front door featured a sort of town greeter whose high decibel conversations were independent of second parties. The greeter was talking loudly to himself as we arrived.

“Local color,” Jan explained. As we pulled into Point Arena, the late Eddie Scaramella (the Major’s cousin) drove up in his perfectly maintained early 1950s Chevrolet, a museum piece with probably not more than 10,000 miles on it since his dad, the late Joe Scaramella, drove it out of the show room in Santa Rosa the year the vehicle was produced. Eddie Scaramella drove it from his service station a block away to the post office, and then he drove it back to his service station where he put the pristine Chevy back in its box.

Scaramella turned down numerous offers from car collectors for his rare first edition. “I’ll sell it when they move the post office next to my gas station,” he said.

We then drove the six steep miles up the hill to the long abandoned Point Arena Air Force Radar Station where we found… well, imagine a tiny suburb, complete with a two-lane bowling alley, a community swimming pool, a gym, a mess hall, and thirty neat little homes whose residents have unaccountably disappeared, a self-contained village with no people deep in the remote Coast Range.

“Every election someone running for supervisor says they want to do something with this place,” Jan commented, “but nothing ever happens.”

Jan The Mail Lady knew more about her vast service area than any politician before or since, including several 5th District county supervisors. She knew all the people and, as we made the rounds, noted changes in the landscape I would have missed completely if she hadn’t pointed them out. “That’s a new road there, and that house on the bluff just appeared one day, it seemed, it went up so fast.”

After a truly excellent lunch at The Point Arena Record Building, we reversed direction and headed back to Boonville, the sun now at our backs. When Jan dropped me off at Uncle Ed’s Ice Cream and Assorted Edibles, Edward F. Donovan the Fourth, proprietor, Jan The Mail Lady still had to drive to Cloverdale and then back to her home in Yorkville.

Whatever the Post Office paid her it wasn't enough.

*New Year’s Eve* (1984) by Sergei Andriyaka

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, November 1, 2024

ANTONIO AMADOR, 27, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15% causing great bodily injury to a person over 70 years of age.

JOSE AYALA-MARTINEZ, 24, Redwood Valley. DUI, suspended license.

JUSTIN BENDA, 38, West Sacramento/Ukiah. DUI, escape attempt, resisting.

ALLYSSA HANN, 26, Vacaville/Ukiah. Under influence, controlled substance, suspended license, failure to appear.

FRANK KEECH, 59, Ukiah. Domestic violence court order violation.

MATEO PACHECO IV, 20, Ukiah. DUI withr blood-alcohol over 0.15% and with minor passenger.

JOSEPH SMITH, 42, Willits. Probation revocation.

DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT POLITICAL LIES ANYMORE?

To the Editor:

Recently, the Trump team protested to the news media and others about “fact checking” as if checking the veracity of a candidate’s statements is somehow forbidden. We all know Trump and his surrogates have called proven lies as “alternative facts” in the past to explain the differences between events that actually happened and his completely false view of those events. J.D. Vance objected to CBS for fact checking during the vice-presidential debates and more recently, Trump refused interviews on CBS 60 Minutes because they fact check interviewee’s statements in real time.

How well aligned are the Republican candidate’s demands to theatre of the absurd when they challenge outrageous lies and obvious falsehoods as truth and cleverly manipulate these lies and events solely for personal political gain? How far have we sunk together as a society born of freedom when we support candidates to the highest elected office in the world that demand their lies not be contradicted? What is next for these weasels, making a no-contradiction law or banning news media? Let’s see, who else does this? Oh gee, V. Putin who surprisingly, as Trump states, has a great relationship with Putin.

If the news media cannot insist on validating the integrity of statements issued by presidential candidates and their surrogates, what is their value? Trump has refused numerous interviews because of the news outlets policy of fact checking and ensuring they report only facts. Other than delivering the news, i.e., facts, news media has no other role in our society. Sadly, even some news outlets have been co opted from bringing facts to viewers about events happening around the world to presenting news in the view of those who exercise a particular hold or advantage on what the news says.

Have we as a nation become so brain-deadened by the internet and social media that we have no room for objectivity, honesty, truth and facts? Are we so entwined with social media that veracity is only important if it is in accord with one’s favorite “Likes” and tickles their bias? How could we have rotted so far into hell? How can we demand so little for those who can exert so much power over our daily lives and the history of the world? How could we care so little about us?

Steven Pointer

Ukiah

KLAMATH BASIN POTATO FARMER

He remembers when the first carload of potatoes left this valley in 1910. In 1934 he lost $3500 on 48 acres of potatoes. His present acreage is eleven acres in potatoes, the rest in hay and soil-building crops. He has eleven milking cows. “I'm gonna eat.” (Tulelake, Siskiyou County, California.)

A PARABLE

by Bruce McEwen

The Fourth Estate turned out

To be the Fifth Column

They were already inside the gates

And needed no Trojan Horse to get in

So they built a Sicilian Bull instead

A cavernous hollow of smelted pennies

Where journalists were herded in

Despite their bleats and whinnies

Before the furnace beneath was lit

So the screams of the roasting wights

Blared from the Bull’s tuba-belled mouth

And the Gathering of Idolators danced

In erotic raptures to the baleful dirge.

Let this parable counsel any young scholar to covet not the glorious honors and accolades our esteemed editor and his doughty crew enjoy today.

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:

Lifestyles of the parasitoid wasps. https://www.neatorama.com/2024/10/31/The-Brutal-Lifestyles-of-Parasitoid-Wasps

I think the wooden cards for this are laser-cut. https://theawesomer.com/playing-a-27-note-street-organ/738252/

White neighbor belligerently harrasses Black neighbor nonstop for months, then shoots him down in the yard from an upstairs window. Police hold a press conference to declare they're too afraid of the white guy to go to his house and arrest him, but he hardly ever goes out anywhere anyway, and the guy who got shot is safe all the way across town in the hospital now, so our work is done here, thanks for asking. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/minneapolis-man-charged-shooting-neighbor-not-arrested-prompting-anger-rcna177437

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

BILL KIMBERLIN: Went into the City last night to celebrate something on what happened to be Halloween. First stop was a new cocktail bar on Polk Street called, "Bar Iris". Imagine a scientist making your cocktail and you would be close. Next was "Mezcalito", which looked fun, but we passed on. Now we had a strait up hill climb on foot to Abrazo" a Spanish restaurant on Telegraph Hill. Watching the Hyde street cable cars roll by there is always a treat. Next, we had a pleasant down hill walk amongst beautiful houses and apartments that you would never see by car to North Beach and Original Joe's. Along the way to North Beach we saw some artistic pumpkin carvings in front of artist's homes. This is the San Francisco I love.

HOTEL STRIKERS MARCH AND ARE ARRESTED IN DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO

Photographs by David Bacon

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2024/11/05-hotel-strikers-march-and-are.html

‘STICKY FINGERS’ is the title of Joe Hagan’s fascinating if often sordid 2017 book about Rolling Stone Magazine and its mercurial publisher/editor Jann Wenner. Mr. Wenner, only in his 20s when he started the rollicking magazine, embodied the “sex, drugs and rock-n-roll” ethos of the era, most of it at ground zero in San Francisco. Author Hagan plumbs the extensive archive of Wenner and his magazine for lots of insider anecdotes, including many accounts of his encounters with pop culture icons of the era like John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Janis Joplin, John Denver, etc. Along the way Hagan includes mini-bios of Rolling Stone’s noteworthy contributors and writers including Hunter S. Thompson, Annie Liebovitz, Ralph Gleason, Ken Kesey, Joe Esterhas, and, later, Matt Taibbi, etc., as well as his dealings with less well-known funders and backers from business and industry.

Jann Wenner, founder and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine, with wife Jane Wenner in the magazine's offices in San Francisco, 1968. (Photo by Baron Wolman Collection/Rock & Roll Hall of Fame/Getty Images)

Although married to his glamorous wife and business partner Jane Schindelheim, Wenner was a then-closeted gay man and had an active sex life with both genders, mostly fueled by a veritable cornucopia of drugs. (They were divorced in 1995 after 28 years of marriage, after which Wenner married the much younger fashion designer Matt Nye with whom they have three children from surrogate mothers.) But, we were particularly amused by Wenner’s reaction to a critical “hit piece” about him and his magazine which ran in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2015 which criticized a Rolling Stone article about a gang-rape at the University of Virginia for relying on what turned out to be a bad source and their lack of objectivity. After reading the Columbia Journalism Review article, Wenner quipped, “Well, so much for objectivity.”

(Mark Scaramella)

HASTA LA VISTA, GAVACHOS

I have no feel for how this strange election will turn out. I sense that most people want both leading candidates to lose and lose badly, but they think and fear Trump will win. Of course, that may be their fatalism taking over, and who could blame them? The polls seem unnaturally close–to the extent you can poll cellphones. People keep telling me you can’t, but they sure as hell seem to have no trouble bombarding me with their non-stop texting. And I’m hit with a dozen more every time I text “STOP” back. So I’ve stopped looking at texts, and if you send one, don’t expect a reply until after the election is settled sometime in January.

CNN has Harris up in Michigan and Wisconsin, but tied in Pennsylvania, which is slightly surprising and may represent some vengeful machinations by Josh Shapiro for passing him over as Veep, even though the Governor of Pennsylvania is somewhere to the right of the ADL on Palestine. Not that Harris is any less hostile toward the starving, orphaned and maimed of Gaza. Harris’s campaign has offered voters little more than a droning insistence that she’s not Trump, which is much less obvious than it may appear, at least in terms of policy. In fact, she’s had to recruit the likes of Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban to testify to the distinction, narrow as it may be, which is unlikely to prove helpful in the long run, even among the white suburban women voters of Philadelphia, who she seems to have sacrificed what remains of the Democratic base to attract. She sent Obama to repair the damage, though he seems to have squandered whatever mojo he once possessed.

Apparently, she’s up comfortably in that lone Nebraska district around Lincoln. If Harris holds Pennsylvania, she could still win, even if she loses Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. But if that’s how it plays out apparently Mike Johnson now has some scheme to muck things up in the House. Then there’s Virginia, where Harris should be leading by 5 or 6 points given that Trump’s people want to slash the federal workforce by 2/3s, but she’s only ahead 1 or 2 points and that was before the Supreme Court’s whacko ruling this week (Bush v. Gore, redux) allowing the state to purge its voter rolls even of legally registered voters, which should be an ominous sign for Harris.

I tend to think Harris wins a plurality, but not a majority, of the popular vote 49-47 and loses again in the electoral college, even though I hope it turns out the reverse, if only because it might ignite MAGA into laying waste to the Electoral College, despite the fact that anti-democratic relic of the slave-owning era works entirely to their advantage. I flipped my way through the 200 dreary pages of the Oregon Voters pamphlet and only found two races that captured my attention: both for Soil and Water Conservation District Commissioners and one of those was running unopposed.

Cockburn used to say, vote for whoever makes you happy, knowing that the vote-counting machines will probably record it for someone you despise. So I filled out my ballot, though not very joyfully, and drove to the drop-off site in our little mill town, where the ballot box was being “monitored” by four MAGA people, adorned in their red hats, who, undeterred by the drenching rain, recorded my arrival on their cellphones and asked to see my ID, a request I replied to with a customary Mexican gesture, as I told them I’d left my papers back in Juarez. Hasta la vista, muchachos.

— Jeffrey St. Clair

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Vermont has just gone crazy, the whole state …. nasty, drug addled homeless people have taken over my "cute" little old village (Town Manager "doesn't know what to do!") and they don't even have laws on the books to shift the homeless tent city down the road -- so the homeless bums refuse to go to the shelter and urinate and defecate on the back steps of the library, and expose themselves to the librarians through the window…("We don't know what to dooo! We can't punish people for not having a hoouussee!") Town business leaders and real estate brokers are BEGGING the town to DO SOMETHING, but alas -- the answer, it seems, is Federal money…..but never enough of that…

LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT

Trump, Preparing to Challenge the Results, Puts His 2020 Playbook Into Action

Harris’s Hope: Getting Right-Leaning Voters to Shift to the Left

In Shift From 2020, Identity Politics Loses Its Grip on the Country

With Election 3 Days Away, Harris and Trump Cross Paths in Milwaukee

‘Cesspools,’ ‘Hellholes’ and ‘Beautiful Places’: How Trump Describes the U.S.

Trump Is Betting Big on Musk’s Swing-State Moonshot

SAVE DEMOCRACY FROM INFORMED VOTERS: VOTE CENSORSHIP!

by Matt Taibbi

Nico Grant of the New York Times rode shotgun with Media Matters of America [ to shoot down 30 conservative broadcasters as unfit to appear on YouTube: YouTube, which is owned by Google, has prided itself on connecting viewers with “authoritative information” about elections. But in this presidential contest, it acted as a megaphone for conspiracy theories… Kayla Gogarty, a research director at Media Matters who led the analysis, said that “YouTube is allowing these right-wing accounts and channels to undermine the 2024 results.”

Grant’s story garnered huge pre-buzz thanks to conservative targets pre-empting his “scoop” with colorful early responses. “I do hope… you’ll note that I told you to fuck off,” was the acid reply of Tucker Carlson, accused of participating in one of “286 videos containing election misinformation” reaching “more than 47 million views.” Ben Shapiro ripped Grant’s exposÃ© as an “October surprise,” saying the purpose was to “pressure YouTube to demonetize and penalize any and all conservatives” a week from Election Day.

As Grant’s story roared across social media, eliciting outrage from Democrats and Republicans alike, a trio of Washington Post reporters published a similar piece: “Elon Musk says X users fight falsehoods. The falsehoods are winning.” Instead of a Media Matters report, the Post worked off new “analysis” by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Labour-connected advocacy group featured last week in Racket and The Disinformation Chronicle. Musk created “Community Notes” on X/Twitter as a crowdsourced alternative to censorship, but CCDH was not happy with its results.

X is poised to play a prominent role in the U.S. presidential election, a race in which Musk is a major backer of Republican nominee Donald Trump and spreading unfounded claims of voter fraud — most of which go unchallenged by his fact-checking program… The CCDH’s analysis… tracked how Community Notes responded to 283 posts that contained election claims identified as false or misleading by independent fact-checking organizations.

CCDH’s annual priority this year is “Kill Musk’s Twitter” through “Advertising focus” to drive away X’s corporate advertising revenue, the chief weapon being shrieking reports claiming “hate” proliferates on the platform. This now-exposed contempt for Musk and free speech was evident in the Post conclusions.

The Times/MMA “studied” 286 videos, while the Post/CCDH analyzed 283 Notes. Yet each outlet used a format so common in the “anti-disinformation” era, it now reads more like spam or clip-art than journalism. A DNC-aligned group produces a “report” documenting a sciencey-sounding quantity of “misinformation” incidents, then passes the scary number to a politically willing mainstream news outlet, which trumpets the new “facts” while publicly and privately pressuring platforms to remove offending material. Welcome to the new “accountability journalism.”

The problem with the Times piece is it defines “false claims” and “election misinformation” so broadly that legitimate questions or analyses and even jokes get wrapped in with far-out conspiracy tales. The MMA report denounced content that could “undermine confidence in the 2024 election results even before any votes were cast,” which apparently didn’t include its own headline, “YouTube let right-wing figures undermine the 2024 election results even before any votes were cast.”

Carlson made it for a clearly sarcastic crack: “I don’t think we’re allowed to talk about voter fraud on YouTube, which tells you that it’s real.” Shapiro made it for saying opposition to a Voter ID proposal suggests Democrats were fine with not showing ID, “which suggests they are fine with the possibility of voter fraud.”

Tim Pool was approached by Grant and mentioned in the Times piece seemingly as a way to get in a line about his work for Tenet media, through which Russia Today “allegedly funneled… money.” Neither the Times report nor the MMA version cited an instance of election misinformation by Pool, however. “The New York Times piece was remarkably tame,” Pool said. “There was nothing substantive in it.”

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch made the list of 286 bad videos by referring to criminal indictments of Trump and saying that if he loses, “people are rightly going to say, well, they had their thumb on the scale, so it’s no surprise.” Again, you can disagree, but is that an issue of fact? Asked if the purpose of the piece was to get him removed from YouTube, Fitton said “probably,” and noted the Post had already sent him queries about yet another article seemingly calling for censorship of podcasts. Even comedian Greg Gutfeld somehow made the list for saying Democrats would win with “votes, legal or illegal,” though there’s “very little evidence on that, but that hasn’t stopped me before.” This is a self-owning joke and could be interpreted almost as the opposite of a charge of voter fraud. “It’s almost hilarious how desperate they are for content,” Gutfeld said. “They now report on jokes!”

It’s no accident Media Matters and CCDH worked this “censorship two-step” to America’s two papers of record at the same time. They have a history of tag-team action with these papers. In fact, some of the more embarrassing moments in our recently obtained CCDH papers involve the Times and Post. In notes from a pair of meetings in March of this year, CCDH officials exposed how chummy they are with both papers when discussing where best to place the conclusions of a report called “Hate Pays,” about “How X accounts are exploiting the Israel-Gaza conflict to grow and profit.” Their first choice is the Times, which in a March 5th meeting they complain won’t run an early version of the report as a “stand alone.” So they decide to run to their second choice: the Post:

In the next meeting, CCDH complains the Post is grounded on a “sidetrack” with stories about banning Tik Tok , but is “now interested” in Israel-Gaza and agreeing to their pitch.

However, the Post wanted to focus on influencer Jackson Hinkle, and run it a week after the CCDH report’s release, which is “not great for us.” The alternative, CCDH concluded, is to “withdraw and send our embargoed [copy] for a bite.”

They ended up picking up their ball and running back to the Times, which ran “Riding Rage over Israel to Online Prominence” on April 13th, two days after the CCDH study. The Times cited CCDH’s “Hate Pays” report and re-ran a CCDH graph of its top-10 “antisemitic” accounts, but still focused mostly on Hinkle. But at least CCDH didn’t have to wait a week.

That CCDH could have such extraordinary demands (not just mention of their report, but mention of all their targets) and so easily play the two papers off each other like competing lovers suggests neither paper of record puts up much real resistance to these thinly-veiled proxies for “sister parties,” Labour and the Democrats. CCDH and Media Matters in this sense are mirrors of each other, tactically and politically.

ACTUALLY, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS HITLER

by James Kunstler

Along about now, you’re probably wondering what sort of mayhem the Party of Chaos is set to unleash on our democracy after their mighty ballot fraud operation fails to overcome the yet more powerful instinct of the voters to expel them from the seats of power they seized by fraud in 2020 and 2022. You can be sure they’ve gamed-out a playbook aimed at paralyzing the nation one way or another if the effort to install Kamala Harris in the White House face-plants, as it appears to be doing in these final days before the reckoning.

Rioting, arson, and looting in the cities? Not so much. Probably some, but only because it’s an excuse for 100-percent-off sale “shopping,” plus the need for hordes of dopamine-deprived youth to seek a little dangerous excitement — in a society that gives them nothing meaningful or purposeful to do. It’d surely reflect poorly on the regime clinging to power in the months before January 20. Anyway, “Joe Biden,” Kamala, and company would be blamed for letting the cities get wrecked again, and then double-blamed by their own partisans if they try to stop it with the national guard. It’s a no-win deal for them.

More likely, the Party will hijack the nation’s legal machinery to cancel the election ex post facto. They’ve done a swell job in advance setting up conditions that make it difficult if not impossible to sort out legal ballots cast from the frauds. So, expect the Party’s chief lawfare ninja Marc Elias, and his zillion-dollar-funded cadre of pettifoggers, to contest the swing-state precincts where their ballot-harvest somehow fell short a few bushels. They’ll file enough lawsuits to gum up the courts until the sun becomes a red dwarf.

If the actual numbers add up to a Trump victory, the Democrats will re-brand that as the new “Big Lie” and commence a strenuous campaign in the old media to gaslight the public into believing the vote-count isn’t what it looks like. After all, numbers are math and math is racist. That will provide the rationale, and furnish the game-space, to stop Trump by other means.

Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has already advertised his scheme to knock Mr. Trump off the game-board by using Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to declare him an “insurrectionist,” disqualified from holding office. Of course, Mr. Trump has not been charged, indicted, or convicted for insurrection, nor was anyone involved in the J-6 protest and riot.

Insurrection was supposed to be established as fact by the House J-6 Committee, but it died of illegitimacy after destroying all its accumulated records last year, including documents in evidence and the videos of all the witnesses it deposed. Whoops. The Jack Smith prosecution in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s DC Federal District court was a backup plan for that, but the July SCOTUS decision on presidential immunity has, so far, gummed up that ploy. Mr. Raskin would need a Democratic House majority to pass such a resolution, in any case, and it looks unlikely that he will have that.

A rather desperate gambit to oust Mr. Trump with a military coup, first advanced by former Pentagon official Rosa Brooks in a February, 2017, op-ed in the high-toned journal Foreign Policy, and reiterated by Nancy Pelosi in January, 2021, has been resurrected now that Mr. Trump is firmly branded as Hitler by the Party of Chaos — meaning he can be eliminated by any means necessary. “Joe Biden’s” woked-up generals might be game for a coup, but they’d have to overcome a lot of counter-coup-minded, not-so-woked-up colonels to get there.

Anyway you cut it, the hysteria in the body politic is running at a pitch — as Mr. Trump himself might say — that has never been seen before, at least not since Fort Sumter. The Democrats complain that a Trump victory means the Department of Justice will be weaponized against them. Is that rich, or what? It actually tells the whole story since you know the Party always accuses its opponents of exactly what it is already doing.

Speaking of which, we must look forward to Judge Juan Merchan’s November 26th sentencing of Mr. Trump in DA Alvin Bragg’s “Stormy Daniels hush money” case. It’s out there, looming, and it ain’t going away. Judge Merchan is going to have to do… something! The jury has pronounced Mr. Trump guilty of those 34 “felonies” (based on 34 book-keeping entries, originally misdemeanors, and beyond the applicable statute of limitations).

I’d like to see the Judge stash the president-elect in the Rikers Island lockup for a few hours. It’ll be a better stunt than Mr. Trump’s shift serving fries at McDonald’s, or riding the garbage truck after “Joe Biden” called more than half the country that supports him “garbage.” Because a few hours after Mr. Trump settles into his Rikers cell and enjoys his first boloney sandwich, the SCOTUS is going to turn a flame thrower on Judge Merchan and Alvin Bragg and vacate the absurd case and every half-assed procedure that was used to arrive at it, and refer Merchan and Bragg for disbarment for professional misconduct, malicious prosecution, and failure to uphold the law.

Which means, if Juan Merchan has an ounce of sense, on or before November 26th he will find an excuse to dismiss his own case (yes, he can) on the grounds of procedural irregularities, or insufficient evidence… or some other Mickey Mouse grounds… and suck up the humiliation… and get on with his life… hoping (and maybe even praying) that sometime after January 20th, 2025, he does not find himself under indictment, along with several other Biden-era lawfare ninjas, for conspiracy to deprive the once and future president of his civil rights.

The days just ahead will be filled with tension and angst, I know. Make sure you vote. After Tuesday, our country will be politically fogged-in for a while. Hunker down, keep your heads screwed on, and have faith in each other. The cause is a righteous one. MASA: Make America Sane Again.

*Maitresse et chauffeur, Paris* (1976) by Helmut Newton

JILL STEIN SAYS 'TERRIFIED' DEMOCRATS ONLY HAVE THEMSELVES TO BLAME IF SHE WRECKS HARRIS' 2024 ELECTION CHANCES

by Nikki Schwab

Jill Stein was never going to budge.

During the final days of the 2024 campaign, the Green Party presidential candidate spoke with DailyMail.com and suggested there was nothing Vice President Kamala Harris could have done to push her from the race.

The physician and activist is running on a third party ticket, and any votes she receives have the potential to upend what could be one of the closest elections in history.

A thousand ballots cast for Stein in one of six battleground states where she appears on the ballot - she's not competing in Nevada - could tilt the election.

Democrats fear that it will hurt Harris’ chances of taking the keys to the White House if Stein is successful Tuesday night. With America bitterly divided and the U.S. involvement in the Gaza war a source of anger for millions, the left-leaning Stein could be perceived as a viable alternative.

While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was convinced by former President Donald Trump to abandon his independent presidential bid in exchange for a role in a Trump 2.0 White House, Stein said no such overtures were made. Nor would she have accepted them.

“We would never have trusted them to have backed off the genocide. We would not have trusted them to do that,” she said in a phone interview Thursday. “So we would have remained in that race as a watchdog and as a threat against their backsliding.'

Dr. Jill Stein spoke by phone with DailyMail.com Thursday morning from Pittsburgh. For the third time, she's running as the Green Party's presidetial nominee and has attracted voters angry over the U.S.'s support for Israel's war on Gaza

The genocide Stein is referring to is Gaza and the “they” she speaks of is Harris and the even-more-guilty Democratic National Committee, “which is the real mouthpiece for the shaming and blaming of independent voters.'

While Stein ran for president in 2012, it was in 2016 when she became more memorable due to the condemnation she received after Hillary Clinton lost, as more people voted for the Green Party hopeful than Clinton lost by in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Clinton herself wrote in her memoir: “There were more than enough Stein voters to swing the result, just like Ralph Nader did in Florida and New Hampshire in 2000.”

But Stein threw cold water on that sentiment.

“If you look at the data in 2016, the exit polls showed that people who voted for our campaign would not have otherwise come out,” she explained. “So this charge that we stole votes is really a very self-serving piece of propaganda, essentially.'

She said that her supporters found it “ludicrous and offensive” that they would have backed Clinton.

“And ludicrous that they were ever supporting Joe Biden and then when Kamala Harris failed to distinguish herself from Joe Biden, she never had these voters either,” Stein said.

Harris - who took over the Democratic nomination from Biden in July - has found herself in an impossibly tricky situation politically when it comes to the war in Gaza.

Her rhetoric has been more sympathetic to the Palestinian civilians being killed - and she talked tough after her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just days after Biden's withdrawal - but Harris has not backed an arms embargo, as many on the left want.

It wouldn't matter if Harris had, said Stein.

“Would I have bowed out? No,” Stein said. “Because power concedes nothing without a demand, right? If we bowed out, that's the end of the Green Party, not just in this election, but period.

“Because you have to maintain your ballot status in order to jumpstart your next race,” she continued. “You want to get the best result you possibly can because of the way ballot access rules are written. You have to come out of there with the highest percentage of the vote possible in order to roll over your ballot access.”

When RFK Jr. suspended his campaign in August he initially told his supporters in swing states to back Trump.

He told those in safe red or blue states to vote for him.

Would Stein have ever instructed her supporters to do the same for Harris had the Democrat been more supportive of an arms embargo and the Palestinian cause?

“Well I would say that, you know, what are the odds that Harris would have done that?” Stein asked.

“The odds that Harris would have ever done that, you know, are pretty much non-existent,” she continued. “From the intensity of the support by Harris and Biden for Netanyahu. Effectively Netanyahu is our commander-in-chief right now.”

While Stein's Green Party has become a place for many Muslim and Arab-American voters to now call home, Jewish Insider reported this week on comments her running mate, Rudolph “Butch” Ware, made celebrating violence against Israelis - especially on or marking October 7.

When asked if there's “daylight” between her and her running mate on the subject, Stein said: “So in my view, October 7 is part of a long exchange. That basically began with massacres even before the founding of the state of Israel.'

“And I think that's easily lost sight of when people take a position on October 7,” she said. “So truth to tell I avoid being distracted by October 7. It's just the latest in a series of exchanges.”

“There's also a lot of fog of war around what happened on October 7,” the Green Party candidate said.

She then added, “not that it wasn't horrible.'

“It was horrible, I abhor all violence against civilians,” Stein said.

“At the same time, according to international law, there is a right of resistance. There is a right of armed resistance from an occupied people,” she argued.

Stein also said she disagreed with the framing that October 7th caused the current Israeli assault on Gaza.

“You can put the goal post wherever you want,” she said. “The problem began when Zionists came with the intention of violently displacing Palestinians. So if you need to put a goal post, I would put it there.'

When asked if Stein understood why some people might be offended by her running mate's comments about October 7, she replied: “People are going to get upset.'

“This is a very controversial issue. Our opposing genocide is extremely controversial,” she said. “I think Jews are a traumatized people. Many Jews having come out of the anti-Semitism of Europe and the Holocaust.'

Stein, herself, is Jewish.

“And you know, as a Muslim himself, he has a different set of sensitivities and you know, history of trauma. And as an African-American himself, he has a whole other history of trauma,” Stein added.

“I think we're not the same person, and we can have different views, and our views are controversial because we are opposing a system of economic and political elites that are doing all they can to try to drum up fear campaigns and smear campaigns against us,” she also said.

In particular, Stein bristled at comments made by progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who discouraged Green-curious voters by saying the presidential hopeful hasn't done anything to build up the party between election cycles.

“If you have been your party's nominee for 12 years in a row, and you cannot grow your movement, pretty much at all, and can't peruse any successful strategy…and all you do is show up every four years to speak to people who are justifiably p***ed off, you're not serious,” AOC said in an Instagram story last month. “To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory.'

Stein brought up Ocasio-Cortez unprompted.

“And, by the way, the AOC thing is a lie. That is a lie,” she said. “We have, we had, we've elected over 1,500 local elected officials and have currently 150 in office. So we don't go away. The big media goes away.”

Stein was talking to DailyMail.com from Pittsburgh Thursday morning, but she was headed to California - a deep blue state - over the weekend before spending her final hours campaigning in Dearborn, Michigan.

“So as you can see, our strategy goes well beyond swing states,” Stein said. “It's really where there are real hotbeds of political activism.”

Dearborn became the first Arab-majority city in the U.S. in 2023 and Michigan is the likeliest of the six battlegrounds where Stein competing could have an impact.

During the Michigan Democratic primary held in February, 101,623 voters said they were “uncommitted” instead of backing President Joe Biden, a protest vote over his handling of Gaza - showing its potency as an issue in the Wolverine State.

A Marist poll of Michigan published on Friday morning has Harris ahead by three percent, with one percent backing another candidate.

The Real Clear Politics polling average on Friday has Harris up by 2.4 points over Trump, with Stein receiving an average of 1.8 percent of Michigan's vote share.

Nationally, Stein is polling at 1.1 percent, according to the RCP average.

A speaker at a recent event headlined by Stein in Dearborn openly admitted they had no expectations of winning the White House.

“But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan.” former Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant told the crowd.

As for what success looks like for Stein Tuesday, she answered that will be “what comes out of it.”

“Are we establishing new parties? Do we have more candidates running for office?”

“And as horrific as this genocide is, you know, and the climate crisis, it is a big wake-up moment now for so many Americans,” she said.

“And this is why the Democrats are running scared. This is why they are taking out ads against us. They're absolutely terrified and they have no one to blame but themselves,” she said.

“But Kamala Harris could have earned those votes back in a heartbeat by, you know, agreeing to an embargo,” Stein said.

But Stein, of course, would have remained on the ballot.

(Daily Mail)

SWING STATE BLUES

by David Yearsley

Twice a year, every spring and fall, Ithaca, New York hosts one of the biggest used book sales in the United States. Staffed by a legion of volunteers who work for months accepting and organizing the steady stream of donations, the event supports the Tompkins County Library and runs over three successive weekends. As the sale proceeds, prices sink while the shelves in the large warehouse dedicated to the sale are plundered and replenished until stores are almost totally exhausted. On the tacked-on Tuesday that closes out the proceedings it will cost you one dollar “for all the books that will fit in a medium-sized paper grocery bag.”

On the first morning and across the opening weekend long lines run down the sidewalk outside the warehouse. Dealers, collectors, and bibliophiles are savvy to the riches inside. Others just love a good sale and relish grabbing copies of this or that oddity, old familiar, long-lost paperback for the bedside table or cheap, yet thoughtful gift.

Joining the early scrums also counts as an anthropological foray into Ithaca culture and a walk-about archeological excavation of the state of that durable, but increasingly doubted technology, the book

Treasure and trash await. Home to Cornell University and Ithaca College on neighboring hills looking down on the flats where the warehouse stands, Ithaca is a bookish place because of its thousands of students, the grizzled professoriate and a populace that boasts a high density of novelists and poets.

Last Sunday, on the sale’s final weekend, I decided to stop in at the sale late in the afternoon. Residents and visitors were still filing in. The shelves had to be emptied; supply was down, but demand for what remained was too. Fire-sale prices were in effect.

I cut past “Collector’s Corner,” long since sacked for first editions and other goodies, and made my way along the east wall of the warehouse where I ran into a friend who was mulling over some Michener. “Pretty well picked over,” he said, shrugging as he put back a worn copy of Hawaii.

I turned right past a case of dictionaries, mostly Webster’s Collegiate like the one I took, fittingly enough, to college in 1983. It was a volume I didn’t just consult, but loved to read. It’s still on my shelf, but I haven’t cracked it in at least a decade, probably two. The warehouse dictionary bookcase was utterly packed, as if not a single copy had been bought, even as a relic to be had for a few pennies. “Siri, where do old dictionaries go when they’re no longer loved?” She responds in bland tones: “They are pitched into furnaces and flame up real pretty as they feed the Cloud with electric joy juice.”

A few rows farther on I came to a clearing in the forest of bookshelves where the record bins were. Flipping through the “Organ Hits” and “Folk Medleys,” one gets an inkling of just how much offal was pressed into vinyl by the music-packing industry. Exhibit A in the “Blues and Naughty” bin was Rusty Warren’s Knocker’s Up.

To be sure, there are orders of magnitude greater quantities of ear-damaging, health-threatening fare on YouTube, but that doesn’t take up as much space, at least not on your shelves (the above-mentioned server farms are not visible out your living room’s picture window).

I checked out the comedy bin and found a single Bob Newhart record among at least a dozen by Bill Cosby, his mugging on the covers now presenting as sinister, not silly. Cosby may have beaten his conviction on three counts of aggravated indecent assault on a technicality, but he remains in the prison of infamy and public condemnation at the Friends of Tompkins County Public Library Sale!

I sidled along to Movie Music. All the LPs were now ten cents apiece, but soundtracks didn’t seem to be selling well either. I grabbed Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Patton. A white oval against the blue background of Old Glory and just over the left shoulder and a mass of medals on the general’s uniform proclaimed that the LP “includes, uncensored, George C. Scott’s full rendition of Patton’s address to his troops.” Now, there’s the stuff of a romantic evening at home!

I also grabbed Elmer Bernstein’s nerve-slashing, addiction-addled soundtrack for The Man With The Golden Arm with its combined ranks of jazz and classical soloists. Shelley Manne makes a cameo in the movie and takes the solo pantomimed by the film’s protagonist, the junky and would-be percussionist played by Frank Sinatra. The cover’s purple and blue rectangles, like fat prison bars enclosing the craving arm and straining fingers of the title character, echo the angles and edges of Saul Bass’s jazz-jolted credit sequence. his is music that swings and stutters, groans and shouts, blasts and bleats. And I got have my fix of Elmer B for only a dime.

The Jazz bin is nearby. It’s now sparse and sad, but the cover of the last of its LPs bursts with exuberant, color extolling the “The Exciting New Trombone Sounds of the Kai Winding Orchestra” in The Swingin’ States released by Columbia Records in 1958.

Ithaca is a blue bastion in a sea of red, its congressional district stretching two hundred miles to the western border of a swing state—Pennsylvania. A sense of dread hangs over liberal Ithaca and the book sale offers not only much-needed distraction but of affirmation through this sustaining and proudly local twice-yearly ritual. No wonder the clientele passed over Winding’s unwitting reminder of the election results coming a few days. His trombone may be alloyed, but his optimism isn’t. That mood strikes a sour American note on the last Sunday of October 2024 in Ithaca, New York—not a swing state.

On the LP cover, Winding lounges in leisure wear on the flipped-down tailgate of a red 50s station wagon next to a map-reading, smiling woman showing shiny shins above high-heeled shoes. The trombonist holds his instrument and grins back at his road trip partner. They are not off the interstate but on (more accurately, pasted into) a rural route. Eisenhower had just started in on his infrastructure program of the future.

Winding emigrated from his native Denmark to the U. S. with his parents in 1934 when he was twelve. He took up the trombone a few years later, and by his early twenties had become one of the first bebop trombonists, jamming after hours with Charlie Parker at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem and contributing to Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool in 1949. Winding could deftly manage the brisk bop tempos with skill and imagination, and there is much of that unabashed showmanship to be heard on the Swingin’ States. For several years he partnered with another founding bop trombonist, J. J. Johnson. On their recordings from the 1950s and into the 1970s, it is sometimes difficult, at least for me, to figure out who is playing.

Winding was also a talented and prolific arranger, as he virtuosically demonstrates in Swingin’ States in his treatment of his trombone quartet backed up by a scintillating rhythm section featuring the furiously fast, yet feathery fine pianist Hank Jones. Winding gives Jones space to shine on the third track of the A-side: “California, Here I Come.” Winding spent years touring, but also worked as a studio musician, and even broke into the Billboard top 10 in 1963 with “More”—proof that he could write captivating melodies and package them for the American taste.

Winding’s own humorous liner notes to Swingin’ States embrace the joys of touring “through the various states, absorbing the scenery and meeting interesting people.” This curiosity and warmth led him to the idea of a travelogue of songs about states. Winding remained eager to share the wealth of his talent and his love of his instrument not just with jazz aficionados: “The wide appeal of the sound [of four trombones] is evidenced by the fact that aside from the idiom of listening and concert-type engagements the group is in ever-increasing demand for college dances, school hops and ballrooms.”

First on the itinerary is “Indiana,”; whose chord progression was a favorite of the boppers, famously providing the framework for Charlie Parker’s “Donna Lee.” Winding’s 1958 band takes a loping Midwestern pace far less taxing than that of Parker’s big-city sprint. The next number, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” crosses the Mason-Dixon Line to the Jim Crow South. Winding’s was an integrated ensemble. Long-time Basie drummer Gus Johnson swings as robustly on this unwoke, down-south song as he does across the other stops in Land of the Not-So-Free.

After a trip to “Louisiana,” the group bathes in “Moonlight in Vermont,” and then thinks about, if it doesn’t actually visit, the only current swing state hymned on Swingin’ States—“Georgia on My Mind.” The B-side kicks off with “Jersey Bounce,” before shuffling into the ballad, “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Then it’s out to Idaho where Winding serves up some spirited exchanges with another trombone legend, Frank Mehak.

“At Last Alaska” points the trombones’ slides way out west to the newly admitted 49th state, before rolling around in the “Mississippi Mud.” The finale is a bongo-boosted, wittily Latinized “Oklahoma!”

This album swings with a huge smile. Swing State was a term coined in the 1950s, a few years before the nearly eponymous Winding LP. Whatever way Pennsylvania and the other swing states swing on Tuesday they’ll never swing like Winding and company.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest recording is Handel’s Organ Banquet. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

*Me and My Parrots* (1941) by Frida Kahlo

15 Comments

Eric Sunswheat November 2, 2024

RE: Typically, Medicare pays about 10% of the nominally high hospital bills and MediCal pays about 5% of them, as compared to private insurance which pays 100%.

—>. If this is the case, would rural hospitals be better financially viable, if retirees subscribe to private insurance Medicare Advantage instead of public insurance Original Medicare with supplemental MediGap Plan. How would patients care and financial health be impacted.

Bob Abeles November 2, 2024

“Typically, Medicare pays about 10% of the nominally high hospital bills and MediCal pays about 5% of them, as compared to private insurance which pays 100%.”

According to KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), private insurers reimburse hospitals for combined hospital and physician services at an average of 199% (double) the Medicare rate. This means that private insurance pays 20% of the phony number on the bill, not 100%. See: https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-much-more-than-medicare-do-private-insurers-pay-a-review-of-the-literature/

The only person who would pay 100% of the phony number is the unfortunate one without insurance.

Harvey Reading November 2, 2024

TOM SMYTHE: This is a beautiful courthouse. In Auburn, California.

Beautiful for those who cling to the ugly designs of the past…there are thousands of duplicates and near duplicates around the county. The design fosters the awe in us commoners for guvamints which mostly are crooked to the bone, and hate freedom for all but their snotty, self-entitled kind.

Harvey Reading November 2, 2024

“buydomethingorgetout”

Describes kaputalism and peddlers to a tee.

- David Svehla November 2, 2024
  
  Izzat Boontling?
  
  - McEwen Bruce November 2, 2024
    
    As a cub reporter covering the Ten Mile court for the AVA I had to pay $8. per hr. to file a story on an internet cafe’s computers so my copy went in pretty raw, due to the time clock ticking away while budgeting a salary of $25 per story; so sure, I felt qualms of guilt for not ordering something….in defense of the cartoon’s humor at my expense.
    
    - Matt Kendall November 2, 2024
      
      Sorry to hear that Bruce. I always appreciated your reporting and it definitely shaped me to an extent realizing fellas like you were telling our stories and doing a damn fine job.
      
  - Harvey Reading November 2, 2024
    
    Misspelling of the caption for the cartoon above about the guy sitting in the cafe playing with his computer on their free wifi connection. You’d have to check with the Publisher for an answer to your question.
    
pca67 November 2, 2024

The polls are inaccurate. They’re too weighted towards Trump. There’s a larger than normal number of women turning ballots in. The gender gap is likely larger than in the polls. This is a first presidential election since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Women will save us. Again. You read it here first.

David Svehla November 2, 2024

Jann Webber, the original “Bicoastal Bisexual”? EEK! Closeted gays often lash out about other people’s’ Perceived closetedness. When he criticized Janis Joplins’ authenticity, he wasn’t just talking about race.
… Is KISS still not inducted in to the rock and roll hall of lame? Isn’t he behind that weirdness too?

David Svehla November 2, 2024

MCDONALDS’ Fries? Forget about it! Yeah, I worked at one- no, for REAL, unlike Kamala. S. Ninety- fifth Street in Chicago’s’ Beverly nabe. .A High School Frosh, think 1979. Much more recently I sampled some and no, they’re nowhere NEAR what I, what YOU, would remember…
… And thanks to Rob Schneiders’ Twitter which posted what the Golden Arches allow in their French fries HERE vs. what they allow in the UK.

- Marco McClean November 2, 2024
  
  Three words: Jenny’s Giant Burger.
  
Do Not Comment November 2, 2024

Daughter of Los Angeles Times owner says Harris endorsement was blocked over Gaza war support

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/26/media/los-angeles-times-endorsement-nika-soon-shiong/index.html

Jeff Fox November 2, 2024

RE: “Typically, Medicare pays about 10% of the nominally high hospital bills and MediCal pays about 5% of them, as compared to private insurance which pays 100%.”

Coast Hospital is designated as a CAH (Critical Access Hospital). CAH’s are not reimbursed by Medicare on a fee-for-service basis, but on a cost basis. CAH’s are paid 101% of costs to provide services to Medicare patients, so a high percentage of Medicare patients is actually a good thing in this case. With direct care, e.g. inpatient stays, test results etc, the costs are reimbursed directly plus 1%, and the other overheads, such as plant maintenance, admin/billing costs and that sort of thing are reimbursed on a pro-rata basis plus 1%. The press release doesn’t state what the actual mix is of Medicare vs. Medi-Cal patients, but my recollection from a few years ago is that it was that the Medicare patients were something like 55% of the total mix and that was when Labor & Delivery was still open. It seems that with L&D closed the mix of Medicare patients would be higher yet. My belief is that in spite of the challenges, the hospital, if properly managed, should have no problem meeting operating costs and should even be able to turn a small profit.

- Betsy Cawn November 3, 2024
  
  Adventist Hospital Clear Lake regularly succeeds in raking in millions of local operational revenues (reported as “earnings over expenses”) and is the only one of the AH “western region” hospitals to do so. Partly due to the prescience of its former Chief Executive Officer, who began acquiring US Housing & Urban Development Agency “Rural Health Improvement” program funding, mid-2000s, the local hospital has invested in local clinic services and out-of-county specialists. With not one “trauma center” in the region, all patients requiring more than basic ER treatment are flown out to either Santa Rosa or UC Davis trauma centers by the medically staffed “air ambulance” services — just as the competitive Sutter Hospital in Lakeport. The service providers who get the least funding and political support are those we would not survive without — our Fire Protection Districts. Inadequate reimbursement from Medicare/MediCal for immediate local ambulance services make it horrifically difficult for them to pay for the cost of a single tire for an ambulance, let alone the cost of training EMT/Paramedics and paying them for serving as both medical and firefighting staff. Both situations are highly problematic for Mendocino County, but should not be.

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