Mendocino County Today: Thursday 11/14/2024

Owl | Showers | Local Events | New Deputies | Director Parker | AV Athletics | Harbor Commissioners | Fungi Festival | Adaptagenic Herbs | Community Radio | Wickson Thursday | Poetry Events | Gschwend Carving | Hastings School | Yesterday's Catch | Rotten Shame | Hate Addiction | See Less | Educational Pathway | Botched Autopsy | Fair Share | Happier | American Dream | BS Tree | Fecal Matter | Cooked Turkey | Mass Deportation | MIGA Cap | Offshore Wind | Privatize Everything | Rough Baptism | Climate Change | Abbe Lane | Women's March | Dutch Girls | Lead Stories | AG Gaetz

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CONVECTIVE SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS will continue to move onshore today. Light mountain snow is expected in the Trinity horn as precipitation tapers off. Cooler temperatures are expected today and Friday, and more rain is forecast this weekend. (NWS)

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Laytonville 1.87" - Covelo 0.86" - Ukiah 0.57" - Boonville 0.41" - Hopland 0.36" - Yorkville 0.32" - Leggett 0.01"

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): On the coast this Thursday morning I have 49F under partly cloudy skies & a fresh .48" in the rain gauge. All that cold unstable air west of us will make for scattered showers & maybe some thunder today. Dry skies Fri & Sat then rain on Sunday. No really.

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LOCAL EVENTS

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SHERIFF STAFFS UP

The Sheriff’s Office Wednesday morning swore in two deputy sheriff-coroners and welcomed back one corrections deputy at a ceremony with loved ones and Sheriff’s Office staff in attendance.

Corrections Deputy Gabriel Rodriguez is returning to the Sheriff’s Office after a one-year hiatus. Deputy Sheriff Kevin Di Franco comes to the Sheriff’s Office from the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office. Jace Kroh is a recent graduate of the Police Academy and was a Community Services Officer with the Sheriff’s Office prior to today’s appointment. All three were raised in Mendocino County. Please join Sheriff Kendall in congratulating Gabriel, Kevin and Jace.

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AV ATHLETICS

Get Ready for Our First Home Basketball Game of the Season!

Come cheer on our varsity teams as we tip off the season with an exciting home game against Rio Lindo this Saturday, 11/16! Let’s show up in big numbers and support our teams as they start what’s sure to be a big season for Anderson Valley!

Game Times:

Girls Varsity at 6:30 PM

Boys Varsity at 8:00 PM

Ticket Prices:

Online: $6 General | $4 Students, Seniors, and Children under 12

(Children under 6 get in free)

Cash at the Door: $5 General | $3 Students, Seniors, and Children under 12

Card payments at the door will match online prices at $6/$4

Let’s fill the stands, show our Panther pride, and give our athletes the support they deserve!

See you Saturday!

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FUNGI FOR FUN GUYS & GALS

For those of you on the fence about making it to the Fungi Festival this weekend I'd say nudge nudge it's time!

Porcini are poppin' and timing will be even better this weekend, this shot taken yesterday, not just a random attention getter, join our 2 morning forays sat and sun and have fun at the fest with Your People! 15 vendors and loads of fun and cool things to watch and partake in!

Enjoy a bomb mushroom dinner on Sunday at Caspar Bones!

Do It! We've been working hard on this folks, we've made it all as affordable as possible! Bring cash for the vendors, The MCMC welcomes you

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KZYX LOOKS AHEAD

Independent journalism is the exact tonic the world needs most at a moment in which polarization and misinformation are shaking the foundations of liberal democracies and undermining society’s ability to meet the existential challenges of the era, from inequality to political dysfunction to the accelerating toll of climate change.”

— A.G. Sulzberger, Columbia Journalism Review (excerpt), 5/15/23

Mendocino County residents have created and nurtured KZYX, our community radio station, for more than 35 years. In recent days, I’ve been thinking about how KZYX can help protect democracy and contribute to personal and community well-being in the years ahead. I want to share a few thoughts and hope you will respond with your own.

A look at the station’s programming reveals the range of its essential roles, both actual and potential, in our lives. To name a few, KZYX informs us about current events and issues. It provides an outlet for the diverse passions and perspectives of fellow community members. It stimulates curiosity. It brings beauty, joy, and entertainment into our lives. It connects and enables community members to talk and listen to each other across the county’s far-flung geography. It helps us respond effectively when disasters touch our lives. It helps us care for ourselves and each other. And in all these ways, it builds resiliency.

Solid reporting is arguably the cornerstone of our public radio station, for the reasons expressed in the above quotation. But for me — and I’ve heard the same from many other listeners — it’s the range and balance among all its dimensions that make KZYX so valuable. That’s because our lives as individuals and citizens have many facets. And for all these reasons, I believe KZYX/Mendocino County Public Broadcasting is an asset well worth sustaining through our combined efforts. I hope you agree.

Susan Baird (The KZYX Connector Editor and Board President)

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LOCAL’S NIGHT THURSDAY AT WICKSON IN PHILO

I went on Saturday and the new menu items were amazing and portions generous! Grab your bestie and split a Molto Meat Pinsa and the Roast Chicken with Lemon-Herb Sauce. With your 20% off, you can leave satisfied and happy for only about $21 per person plus tax/tip!

www.wicksonrestaurant.com

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MENDOCINO OPEN MIC POETRY SERIES

Dear Poets and Lovers of Poetry,

The Mendocino Open Mic Poetry Series will be on Holiday Break November and December. We will resume in January with poets Amanda Cruise and Karen Lewis. I will send another email reminder in January for that date of Saturday, January 25, 4-6 pm at the Art Center.

Please consider attending the first Mendocino Funghi Festival, Saturday, November 16th and 17th at the Caspar Community Center. The Festival is from 11:00 -7:00 both days and features many events; vendors, dye classes, workshops and a poetry reading featuring coastal and inland poets beginning at 5:00 on Saturday. I included the link below to read the schedule of events.

https://www.mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org/festival-events.html

Sending all best wishes in the coming year.

Devreaux Baker, www.devreauxbaker.org

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A VALLEY READER WRITES: Anyone know what happened to this guy. Gschwend Rd. Just curious.

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THE HASTINGS SCHOOL OF LAW

by Bruce Anderson

A stern visage, the picture of 19th century rectitude, used to look down on passersby from a banner at the corner of McAllister and Larkin, fin de siècle San Francisco. The banner celebrated the adjacent law school, which was named after Serranus Clinton Hastings, born in New York, law degree in Indiana, west to Iowa where he was Iowa's first congressman and first chief justice, then out to California during the Gold Rush where he became Chief Justice of the first California State Supreme Court.

Hastings, through his term as a congressman and founding legal father of the state of Iowa, was already a nationally-connected Democrat when he arrived in California in 1849, looking to add to the small fortune he'd made in Iowa real estate. He knew the Gold Rush also meant a land rush as thousands of Americans made their way into the under-populated state to make their fortunes. But Hastings preferred to look around for likely real estate and legal sinecures rather than pan for gold; and as he prospected for free land he also got himself a sinecure on California's early supreme court as its chief justice.

The Mendocino Indians soon had the judge sitting on them in Eden Valley, near Covelo, which the judge had appropriated for himself as a horse and cattle ranch, remarking that he'd found the place “uninhabited except for some Uka Indians.”

The foreman of Judge Hastings' Eden Valley ranch was a giant Texan named Hall, “Texas Boy Hall” as he was known, and at 6'9” and 280 pounds, a doubly intimidating presence to the Indians who were still trying to adjust to the lethal unpredictability of ordinary-size white men when they first encountered Texas Boy, a recreational Indian killer who showed up with the first wave of white settlers in the Round Valley area in the middle 1850s, and may have killed more Indians than any other single American, including Kit Carson, the generally recognized champ.

While Hall ran Judge Hastings' ranch in Eden Valley, Hastings built himself a big house in Solano County, a remove which would later lend the judge what he seemed to think was plausible deniability when his foreman became a little too notorious for his free lance retaliatory rampages against the Indians on the judge's behalf, and the judge reluctantly had to let him go. A psychotic baby killer, after all, was an unseemly sort of employee for a state supreme court judge. Texas Boy, though, soon got a paid job killing Indians with Jarboe's Eel River Rangers, breathed into life by Hastings via his supreme court connections with the state legislature.

Indians had been casually murdered in every part of Mendocino County since the Gold Rush. But Judge Hastings, Texas Boy Hall and Walter Jarboe, in California's first public-private partnership, managed to convert dead Indians to cold cash in expeditions against the native peoples of the Eel River drainage, from Covelo to Hayfork, public funding arranged by Judge Hastings.

“A little more than a year ago, Hall of Eden Valley employed 13 Indians in place of pack mules to go and pack loads from Ukiah City to Eden Valley, and promised to give each one a shirt in payment; the distance, I think, is about 40 miles. The Indians commenced complaining at not receiving the shirts, and he, Hall, whipped two of them to keep them quiet; he said he never gave them the shirts after he whipped them.” (Indians War Files)

In retaliation for not getting their promised and coveted shirts from the judge and Texas Boy, the Indians, knowing exactly on whose behalf Texas Boy was acting, killed Judge Hasting's $2,000 stallion.

At the time, no one in Mendocino County was in danger of drowning in the milk of human kindness, but Judge Hastings and Texas Boy Hall were extreme even by the frontier standards of 1856.

In retaliation for the death of Judge Hasting's stallion, neighboring rancher William T. Scott would testify, Texas Boy got up a gang of his friends and “commenced killing all the Indians they could find in the mountains; when Hall met Indians he would kill them. He did not want any man to go with him to hunt Indians who would not kill all he could find, because a knit (sic) would make a louse. Mr. Hall said he had run Indians out of their rancherias and put strychnine in their baskets of soup, or what they had to eat.”

Scott related another incident when Hall, having killed all the adult males among a group of Yuki Indians he'd encountered near Covelo, took some women and children into his custody with the apparent aim of taking them to the reservation at Covelo. “I think all the squaws were killed because they refused to go further. We took one boy into the valley, and the infants were put out of their misery, and a girl ten years of age was killed for stubbornness.”

But Judge Hastings was still unhappy about the Indians killing his stallion, and he seemed to consider Texas Boy's random revenges inadequate pay back for the loss of the horse. The judge wanted all the Indians of inland Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties permanently gone. On July 11, 1859, the judge called 16 Covelo-area settlers together who all signed a declaration selecting “Walter S. Jarboe as Captain of our Company of Volunteers against the Euka Indians.”

Of course Texas Boy Hall was first among Jarboe's Rangers. Texas Boy would be paid to kill Indians, for him the best of all possible worlds, and Hastings, the state's number one judge, had no trouble persuading the state legislature to pay Jarboe and his Rangers to empty inland Mendocino County of all the Indians Jarboe's Eel River Rangers could find to kill.

The Indians didn't have horses and they didn't have guns. Jarboe and Hall and their Rangers would typically ride down on Indian rancherias at dawn, slaughtering men, women and children right down to infants. The only casualties the white warriors suffered was an occasional non-combat injury unrelated to their one-way war. Bows and arrows were no match for dragoons, and certainly no match for the Chief Justice of the California State Supreme Court.

The newspapers of Northern California regularly urged extermination of the Indians, so when news of large scale murder drifted out of the seemingly infinite recesses of an area larger than some states, an area which is today bordered by I-5 to the east and 101 on the west, Clearlake to the south, and the Trinity mountains to the north, they were blithely reported like this:

“Massacre of Indians in Mendocino — Captain Jarboe's Rangers attacked an Indian ranch eight miles from Indian Valley, Mendocino County, lately, killing quite a number. Hall, the 'Texan Boy,' 6 feet 9 inches high, and weighing 278 pounds, who is the dread of all red skins, a week or two ago killed two Indians in a fair fight…” (The Napa Reporter, August 22, 1859)

By the end of the Civil War, and certainly by 1870, the Indians were finished. They'd fought back as best they could without the horses and guns their enemies possessed, but they'd been hit so hard and so fast all they could do was fight on the run, retreating on into near extinction.

Judge Hastings, attorney, jurist, rancher, real estate developer, and mass murderer was subsequently memorialized as the Hastings School of Law, San Francisco. Ukiah made Walter Jarboe the town's first law enforcement officer. (A man named James Jarboe is contemporary America's domestic terrorism section chief for the FBI, which may or may not be of histor-genetic significance, as may or may not be a very large Covelo horseman named Hall, as in Texas Boy Hall, who is presently confined to the state hospital at Napa.)

A New Age impresario calling himself TimoThy tried to buy Eden Valley to convert it to an “Earth Village sustainable community” featuring “a straw bale roundhouse” and cabins for TimoThy's followers that would be called “earth arks.” For $33,000 you could buy in.

Eden Valley was already an earth ark. It had fully sustained people for 12,000 years before Judge Hastings and Texas Boy moved their horses in on them and started killing them.

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SOON AFTER the above appeared in the AVA, we received a call from a young man who said he was a student at Hastings and a Native American. “Is this true?” he demanded. Yes, and you can confirm it for yourself at the government archive in, of all places, Belmont. A few years later came the name change. Today, google Hastings School of Law and you find:

“UC Law San Francisco graduates have the advantage of a University of California degree, a wealth of experience, and the choices provided by an education that fosters their greatest ambitions. Students learn from top lawyers, judges, businesses leaders, and scholars, honing skills in real-world clinics and with the most influential companies, courts and policymakers. These preparations begin on Day 1, so students graduate ready to practice – and they join a nearly 150-year-old tradition of legal excellence.

Founded in 1878 as California’s first law school, UC Law San Francisco’s mission is to provide a rigorous, innovative, and inclusive legal education that prepares diverse students to excel as professionals, advance the rule of law, and further justice.

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Am I saying the AVA was first to break the Hastings link to genocide, Mendocino branch? No, but I'm pretty sure the AVA was first in putting the evidence into a coherent whole.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, November 13, 2024

PEDRO REYNAGA, 42, Willits. Petty theft, disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

PERRY TRIPP, 46, Ukiah. Domestic violence court order violation, witness intimidation.

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BREAKING THE SYNDROME

Editor:

Every tragedy starts with a success. Instead of examining why, the recipient celebrates and continues to use the same approach to every problem. When the solution stops working, the user continues to think it will. We see this scenario repeated in a variety of ways. One such saga started with the discovery of penicillin. Overuse generated a remedy-resistant virus and a newer, more complex problem. Mistakes like this build knowledge but rarely wisdom; consequently, the practitioner continues to use the same approach even though the outcome is unsuitable. Breaking the syndrome is challenging. As a recovering alcoholic, I feel qualified to say that. And for the same reason, I recognize hate as an addiction. It causes an endorphin release that makes us feel powerful, yet the result of our behavior is exceptionally destructive. Quitting is difficult, but it saves sanity and lives.

Tom Fantulin

Fort Bragg

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CHRIS SKYHAWK:

I’m a-gettin pretty PO’d with Facebook. This type of soft porn crap keeps showing up in my feed in “Reels and short videos.”

I’ve clicked the “see less” tab, but they still keep coming. I think of people who might have their kids nearby as they scroll. My message to Facebook: Yo Zuck, if I, or anybody else, wants to consume porn, we all no where to find it! I have teenage daughters and I don't want them to think these body types are anything to aspire to.

There ya go friends, I just needed to vent, thanks!

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

We’re not nearing the bottom nationally, we’re about 13th in the world rankings, we’re just not as good as we should be. Some of that I think is because we are trying to push too much information and complexity at the K-12 level and not enough focus on the basics. An additional part of the problem is from too many parents thinking of school as simply a day-care center and not an educational pathway and a refusal in some cases to hold students truly accountable for their behaviors.

As for the Dept. of Education, that overwhelming majority of their funding goes for grants (e.g. Pell grants, pre-school programs, Special Education) that are implemented at the state and local level.

Frankly, we need to be putting far more money into education, not less, and demanding better outcomes.

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MAKE THEM PAY

Editor,

In a previous edition of the Independent Coast Observer they reported that the federal budget deficit was 1.8 trillion for the 2024 fiscal year. Million, Billion, Trillion, what’s the difference?

Well, here it is: If you had a machine that spit out a dollar a second, 24/7 you would have to run it 11 to 12 days to produce a million dollars.

For a billion dollars you would have to run the machine for 32 years.

For a trillion dollars you would have to run the machine for 32 thousand years

So how is our country going to pay off the $1.8 trillion it has on the federal credit card (T-bills, etc.) for this year alone?

There are lots of relatively painless ways out of this mess, but they all involve the rich and corporations paying their fair share.

The Republicans, who represent these people, will make sure these methods of repayment don’t happen. The government will probably put it on your credit card in the form of inflation and let you pay for it.

Don Phillips

Manchester

PS. The interest on the debt from Ronald Reagan’s spending on the military ate up about 20% of all money taken in for which the taxpayers received nothing in return.

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“BUT THERE’S A REASON. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, 'cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people -- white collar, blue collar, it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on -- good honest hard-working people continue -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all -- at all -- at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth: it's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

― George Carlin

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CALIF. OFFICIALS WARN FECAL MATTER FROM EMBATTLED COMMUNE COULD FLOOD NEARBY BAY

One official said residents ‘have a right to be protected from other people profiting off of the risk to them’

by Matt LaFever

A secluded commune on the North Coast, known locally as “Yee Haw,” has been labeled an “urgent health hazard” by Humboldt County officials after inspectors found alarming sewage issues on the property.

Owned by Charles Garth, the property of Yee Haw in Trinidad, California, has housed hundreds of people over the last four decades in homes made of scavenged materials and renovated buses. Residents celebrate Yee Haw as a hub of community and environmental stewardship, and Garth’s supporters paint him as a charitable figure who offers housing amid a statewide crisis. Critics, including some local officials, see him as a negligent landlord whose lack of oversight jeopardizes Yee Haw residents as well as the surrounding community and the environment.

In September, Humboldt’s Planning and Building Department gave an overview of nearly 30 years of enforcement actions against Yee Haw. During the Sept. 24 meeting, officials recounted findings from their most recent 2021 inspection, which revealed makeshift plywood outhouses with buckets, containers filled with human waste and DIY homes that inspectors deemed uninhabitable, as SFGATE previously reported. That led the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors to set a 39-week abatement plan into action that required Garth to begin addressing health and code violations or face eviction and that also required officials to conduct a new inspection of the site immediately.

The follow-up inspection took place Oct. 3. Last Tuesday, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors received an update on the conditions at Yee Haw that indicated little progress had been made, putting the future of the commune further at risk.

Mario Kalson, Humboldt County’s director of environmental health, informed the supervisors of his staff’s findings during the Oct. 3 site inspection. Inspectors found three camp toilets on the property — two emptying into a barrel and another with unknown disposal. Near one of the toilets, environmental health staff discovered a tarp covering around 2 yards of sewage piled on the ground. They also documented a failed joint in a 2-inch drain pipe behind a two-level building, which was discharging sewage directly onto the ground. Two wells were identified on the property, one dug and one drilled, neither with permits. Inspectors found a “complex web” of water pipes weaving between Yee Haw’s 21 structures, many laid at or near ground level and dangerously close to camp toilets, “increasing the risk of fecal contamination of the water system,” as recounted in a written memo dated Oct. 23.

During the meeting last week, Kalson warned that with Trinidad’s 40 inches of annual rainfall, the coming rainy season could “mobilize” surface contamination from Yee Haw. The standing sewage, he cautioned, risks washing downstream and polluting Trinidad Bay.

Humboldt County Building Division staff inspected Yee Haw’s structures and found “all of the structures on the property exhibit varying levels of substandard conditions.” In an Oct. 29 Building Inspection report submitted to the Board of Supervisors, the inspector highlighted “urgent health, life, and safety issues,” including missing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, electrical hazards and improperly installed wood stove piping.

Dr. Candy Stockton, Humboldt County’s public health officer, addressed the board by reflecting on both her personal history and public health principles. She recalled a story from her father about the first house he and his siblings lived in — a home built by her grandfather using materials scavenged from job sites. “I do carry that tradition in my family and see the value of it,” she said, expressing her kinship with the Yee Haw community and the spirit of communal living.

Yet she advocated for the importance of public health protection, pointing to the 1854 cholera outbreak in London, which revealed the dangers of contaminated water and laid the foundation for modern public health systems. “That is the foundation of public health as we know it today — that there are some problems and some challenges that cannot be adequately faced by the individuals who are experiencing them, and it requires a community effort,” she explained.

Stockton directly questioned Garth’s commitment to his residents’ health and safety, stating that Yee Haw residents “have a right to be protected from other people profiting off of the risk to them.” She added that Garth “is a property owner who is renting living spaces to individuals, and that environment is placing those individuals at an unsafe risk of sewage contamination, of foodborne and fecal-contanimated illnesses, of a number of other public health risks.”

Based on these findings, Kalson urged immediate action at Yee Haw to address the observed sewage contamination. He recommended removing the existing toilets and installing two serviced portable toilets, adding a handwashing station, inspecting the well for safe water and removing all stored sewage, including the waste found under the tarp.

Following the presentations on the state of Yee Haw, the supervisors shared their perspectives. First District Supervisor Rex Bohn highlighted the long-standing efforts to address issues in Yee Haw, noting that many of these problems have persisted for nearly 30 years, all the while Garth has been collecting rent from residents. “You start doing the math, there’s been a lot of money taken over the last 30 years with no, none, zero improvements,” Bohn said.

Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone, whose district includes Yee Haw, called the area “far more sanitary and safe than any encampment I’ve ever run into,” noting that other encampments lack any bathroom facilities at all. Madrone suggested that if the county truly empathizes with residents struggling for shelter amid the housing crisis, it could consider forgiving the $40,000 in fines against Garth, who could then theoretically invest that money into improving the property.

Garth himself addressed the board, sarcastically introducing himself as “public enemy number one, or, I mean, public nuisance number one.” He disputed Humboldt County Division of Environmental Health officials’ framing of his property as a health concern, at times likening the discharge to compost and something one could sprinkle on a garden. He said he had in fact submitted a permit for one of the nontraditional toilets on Yee Haw and argued, “A public nuisance is something that doesn’t have a permit. Give me a permit, I’m not a nuisance.”

Garth clashed with Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell in particular, who bluntly asked Garth if he would install the portable toilets and remove the existing camp toilets and human waste. Garth dodged the question, saying, “I’m getting my s—t tested” and “I don’t have any raw sewage.” Bushnell countered, reminding him of the Environmental Health recommendation: “Those things have to be done for the public safety,” she said. Garth relented, finally agreeing to the sewage remediation measure recommended by the county. Public comment stretched over an hour, with current and former Yee Haw residents defending the community and its owner. One resident compared Yee Haw to the Ewoks from “Star Wars” or the Na’vi from “Avatar,” describing a peaceful existence among the North Coast trees.

Another resident, who claimed to have been present during the Oct. 3 site inspection, questioned the validity of Environmental Health’s findings, arguing no tests or analyses were conducted on-site.

After public comment, the board unanimously approved Environmental Health’s recommendations, reminding Garth that the clock on the county’s abatement order was ticking with around 35 weeks left before abatement actions begin. Bushnell appealed to Garth’s sense of responsibility to his residents, saying, “Charles, you have a whole room full of people that love your property and want to stay there, and I hope that we can come to a solution.”

(SFgate.com)

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A TRUMP PROMISE COULD BE ‘CATASTROPHIC’ TO CALIFORNIA’S WINE INDUSTRY

by Jess Lander & Molly Burke

(Updated from earlier article)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Anabel Garcia, a Sonoma County farmworker who has worked in vineyards for over 15 years, said her husband, also a farmworker, was battling cancer. But because he was considered “essential,” he continued to show up to work every day in the vineyards. He couldn’t afford not to.

Now, Garcia, who moved to California from the Mexican state of Michoacan in 2002, fears that she — alongside many of her fellow undocumented farmworkers — could soon face another life-altering event: deportation.

Immigrants “are already suffering a lot of discrimination as is,” said Garcia. “And all those immigrants who were essential workers during the pandemic, (Trump) is saying he wants to deport them.”

Former President Donald Trump has said he plans to implement a mass deportation of the country’s more than 11 million undocumented immigrants. At an Atlanta rally earlier this month, Trump said that “immediately upon taking the oath of office,” he will “launch the largest deportation program in American history.”

Since the Republican National Convention in July, in which convention-goers held signs and chanted demands of “Mass deportation now!” Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has repeatedly suggested immigrants are the root cause of the nation’s housing crisis, and continued to spread falsehoods about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, even after officials there debunked the claims. Vance has said deportation would bring relief to communities “overrun” with immigrants.

The Chronicle spoke with lawmakers, farmworker experts and wine growers about the plausibility of Trump’s plan and its potential impacts on the wine labor force. While some experts believe implementing such a plan is unrealistic, there’s widespread consensus that mass deportation would be devastating to California’s wine, food and hospitality industries.

Deportation is a hallmark position of Trump’s reelection campaign and Project 2025, a blueprint published by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. (Trump has repeatedly denied having read the document or aligning himself with its authors, but many of his policies — immigration and deportation included — overlap with those in the nearly 1,000-page transitional plan. At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration helped create the plan, a CNN review found.)

While the exact number of undocumented farmworkers in California is unknown, lawmakers said Trump’s plan could exacerbate an existing labor shortage. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Santa Cruz, and the Center for Farmworker Families each estimated undocumented immigrants make up approximately 75% of the state’s agriculture workforce, and a 2015-2019 U.S. Department of Labor survey found that 49% of California farmworkers were authorized to work in the country.

“Farm ranchers in my district already have trouble filling the jobs they have available,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa. “We have a tremendous gap between the number of workers we have and the number of job openings. Something like this is just going to cause heartache.”

Mass deportation could be most devastating in fine wine regions like Napa Valley and Sonoma County, where producers are more resistant to mechanization and rely on hand labor. “It would be unrecoverable,” said Doug Boeschen, owner of Boeschen Vineyards, a small Napa Valley winery. “There’s no way Napa Valley could survive that kind of deportation.”

While machine harvesting is more efficient than hand-picking, premium producers believe hand labor leads to higher-quality wines. As a result, these regions pay the highest wages and seek skilled workers, often employing the same crews year after year. And these skilled workers have been hard to come by: Many of Napa Valley’s longtime crews are nearing retirement, and a lack of affordable housing is pushing many of them to move outside of Wine Country.

“The vintners (in Napa Valley) won’t do it,” said famed grape grower Andy Beckstoffer, who farms 3,600 acres. He uses mechanical harvesters in his Lake and Mendocino County vineyards, but said in Napa Valley, there’s a stigma attached to it.

The effects of a potential mass deportation would vary throughout California’s wine regions. In the Central Valley — which produces more than half of California’s wine grapes — most growers have already mechanized production and are extensively utilizing the country’s H-2A program, a temporary agriculture worker visa established to help fill the need for seasonal labor. Steve McIntyre, owner of vineyard management company Monterey Pacific, estimated that 40% of the agriculture workforce in Monterey County is part of the H-2A program. Further south, he said it makes up as much as 70% of the workforce. “We can gear up very quickly with H-2A,” McIntyre said.

But he conceded that even in areas that use H-2A, Trump’s plan would still be “catastrophic,” impacting not only farmworkers, but also undocumented workers in restaurants, hospitality and construction. Those jobs are often in more appealing industries than field work, Beckstoffer said, and could pull farmworkers from the vineyard. The H-2A program also drives up labor costs for farmers: The federal government sets the pay rate of H-2A workers, which is higher than each state’s minimum wage and has increased yearly for the last 20 years.

As with mechanization, some high-end producers are hesitant to utilize the H-2A program, and not just because it’s expensive and bureaucratically complex. “Premium wine production has a lot of attention to fairly technical things,” said Ed Kissam, who has led several studies on farmworker life for organizations like the Department of Labor. “An unskilled H-2A worker won’t do as good of a job as a worker who’s been doing that sort of work for five to 10 years.”

Still, the wine industry — which is facing an unprecedented downturn — may not need to panic about Trump’s threat. After all, this isn’t the first time he’s promised extreme immigration action. In 2016, Trump’s vow to deport 2 million to 3 million undocumented immigrants did not come to fruition. Some of his attempts to implement bans on asylum claims during the pandemic and on immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries were scaled back by the courts. Given Trump’s track record, McIntyre said he thinks the latest plan is “just bluster and bluff.” Thompson agreed, calling it “a logistical nightmare” and “extremely expensive.”

“I think it’s really important that people know that this isn’t a serious proposal,” Thompson said. “How do you round up 10 million people? Maybe he’ll fly them on Trump Airlines.”

Yet Panetta and Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said Trump’s ability to carry out his plans will largely depend on the makeup of Congress. If Republicans control Congress, “it’s going to be very hard to stop all this,” Huffman said.

The specifics of Trump’s plan are unclear. Vance claimed the number of deported immigrants under their administration would reach 20 million, nearly double Pew Research Center’s estimates of how many undocumented immigrants are in the country. At a Univision Town Hall with Latino voters earlier this month, Jorge Velázquez, a 64-year-old farmworker from Santa Maria (Santa Barbara County), asked Trump who would replace deported farmworkers in the workforce. The former president didn’t have an answer.

But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, believes voters should take the former president’s claims seriously. “I learned over the years to take Trump at his word,” she said. “When he says he needs to do something, he generally intends to do it.”

It’s an open secret that some of Trump’s biggest supporters are the very people who employ America’s farmworkers. Lofgren said she recently spoke with a California farmer and Trump supporter who did not believe the former president would initiate his deportation plans. McIntyre, who identifies as an independent, called the farming community “highly conservative” and feels that many farmers will vote for Trump, despite his anti-immigration agenda.

“My brethren out there have a really hard choice to make,” McIntyre said. “Face the loss of their workforce or the other conservative values they covet?”

California Federation of Labor Unions President Lorena Gonzalez, who heads the organization of more than 2.3 million Californians, said she doesn’t believe that Trump’s immigration plan will target farmworkers specifically, and that he will protect the interests of his supporters. “Often the government and the farmers themselves have looked away from (farmworkers’) status,” Gonzalez said. “The Republicans always talk about stronger immigration reform, but in reality, they know that all their buddies that give campaign contributions are hiring people who are not here legally.”

Yet even if Trump’s plan ultimately gets blocked, Kissam said, a Trump presidency would “trigger immediate repercussions” to the agriculture labor force. “The thing to track is the threat, even before the implementation of any such plans happen,” he said. “As anti-immigrant rhetoric escalates, immigrants and their social networks tend to become less and less engaged.”

McIntyre recalled the pervasive fear that Trump’s first term ignited within the farmworker community. “The Spanish-language stations were broadcasting instructions like, ‘You don’t have to open your door unless they show a warrant,’” he said. “The first six months of the administration, people were not going to the Laundromat.”

In 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act granted amnesty to undocumented immigrants, Beckstoffer said, many farmworkers stopped showing up to work and went into hiding “because they were afraid,” despite the program’s good intentions. “Just the prospect of (deportation) could be unsettling for the industry,” he said. “The fear in this community would be great.”

For Garcia, a Trump presidency means grappling with the possibility that she’d have to leave her American-born children, whom she and her husband are putting through college. “My life is here. I work here, pay taxes here and struggle to get food on the table every day,” she said.

“Having a president who makes fun of Latinos and immigrants is an added difficulty.”

(SF Chronicle)

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THE IMPACT ON CALIFORNIA OF TRUMP’S PROMISE TO END OFF-SHORE WIND DEVELOPMENT

by Julie Cart

Donald Trump makes good on his promise to sign an executive order to “end” the offshore wind industry.

He cannot do it with the stroke of a pen. But Trump can deeply wound the state’s next-generation renewable energy source by cutting off funding just as it’s gaining a foothold in the U.S.

California’s offshore wind plans rely on a federal policy that offers billions of dollars in grants, subsidies and tax incentives.

Floating offshore wind farms, which bob in the deep ocean as much as 20 miles from shore, are still not common in U.S. waters. But the technology is well on its way to being deployed in the ocean off California, which is counting on the clean energy source to meet its goals to scrub fossil fuels from the electric grid.

The state’s energy blueprint envisions massive offshore wind farms producing 25 gigawatts of electricity by 2045, powering 25 million homes and providing about 13% of the power supply.

Five offshore wind companies have already paid the U.S. Treasury $757 million to lease five tracts in the deep ocean off Humboldt County and Morro Bay. The hundreds of turbines, each as tall as a 70-story building, would not be visible from the coast but would need infrastructure on land, including port expansions and new transmission systems.

The Biden administration calls the rush to develop this new energy frontier the “Floating Offshore Wind Shot.” But harnessing that power could end up more of a long shot if Trump pulls back federal support.

The industry, which is largely Europe-based, has kept a keen eye on Washington, D.C. politics — cheering when the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act passed, freeing up federal money, including $100 million for transmission development and a 30% tax credit.

In the wake of Trump’s election victory last week, stock in some offshore wind companies dropped.

Trump vowed to “terminate” the Inflation Reduction Act. But much of the tax breaks have already been claimed and the construction jobs, manufacturing and supply chain development will take place in districts that Republican lawmakers might want to protect.

Trump has long carried a grievance against offshore wind turbines, a dislike that may have begun with land-based turbines that he said spoiled the seaward view from his golf club in Scotland. He has repeated, many times over the years and at recent campaign rallies, unsubstantiated claims that wind farms cause cancer and environmental damage.

“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said at a rally in May in New Jersey. “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”

Scientists say there is no evidence that offshore wind projects kill whales. Other offshore wind farms around the world have had minimal impact on marine mammals, although they are not directly analogous to the Pacific Ocean’s deep floating platforms. Researchers are examining the potential impacts of increased sound and ship traffic on migration patterns and effects on prey.

“More information is needed to help us better understand the potential short-term and long-term impacts of this industry on protected, threatened, and endangered species, as well as the cumulative effects of these activities on marine mammals in the context of stressors already present in the marine environment,” the federal Marine Mammal Commission says.

Floating offshore wind is at a critical inflection point. Wind developers say they need certainty from state and federal partners that environmental policies will remain in place to reassure investors. That’s no problem in California, they say, where state officials have sent strong signals of support, backed by billions in investments to build power transmission and ports. The industry got a $475 million injection for port infrastructure from just-passed ballot initiative Proposition 4.

“In the next few years much of the work that needs to be done to advance offshore wind will focus on state activities,” said Adam Stern, executive director of the industry group Offshore Wind California.

However, while the federal scaffolding to support the industry is already in place, Stern said, there’s no guarantee that support will remain.

“As an industry we want to work with the new administration to help strengthen the state’s grid reliability, continue to achieve energy independence and create new jobs,” he said. “Those issues ought to appeal to both Republicans and Democrats.”

(CalMatters.org)

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PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE!

by Dan Bacher

Below are the words to my song, "Privatize Everything in the Universe," written back in 2000. It can also be read as spoken word poetry. What I meant as satire has become reality in the 24 years since I wrote this.

The photo here is of Ninawa Huni Kui, President of the Huni Kui People's Federation of the Brazilian Amazon, who represents the international resistance to California's carbon trading program, a cornerstone of the privatization program.

Governors Schwarzenegger, Brown and Newsom have pushed through the privatization of California in an array of ways.

They've privatized the oceans, fish and conservation throughout the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (Initiative) to create fake "marine protected areas."

They've privatized the water by promoting the Twin Tunnels, and now Delta Tunnel, as part of the neoliberal "Water Portfolio" to ship more water to agribusiness and Southern California water agencies.

They've privatized the air, water and life itself through the oil industry written cap-and-trade scam that represents an attack on Indigenous Peoples throughout the planet.

They've privatized California government by appointing Big Oil, Big Ag and other Big Money hacks to key positions in the Department of Conservation, and other agencies.

The list of successful privatization efforts by California governors and the California Legislature goes on and on and on…

The privatization agenda was even more aggressively pushed by the first Trump administration, with Westlands/Big Oil lobbyist David Bernhardt at the helm of the Department of Interior and other agencies captured by the very same corporate interests they're supposed to represent.

The Trump administration gutted a biological opinion to protect and restore imperiled Sacramento River salmon populations so that Big Ag could receive more public water. Unfortunately, this “biop” still stands.

You can expect more of the same and worse in the incoming Trump administration starting in January 2025, with aggressive attacks on the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and other landmark environmental laws.

After the election of Donald Trump to his second term as president on November 6, environmental and anti-corporate groups vowed “unprecedented resistance” to his anti-environmental policies on water, land, the climate and fish and wildlife.

“Trump 2.0 is going to get twice the fight from the protectors of our planet, wildlife and basic human rights,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’ve battled Trump from the border wall to the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and in many cases we’ve won. This country’s bedrock environmental laws stand strong. We’re more prepared than ever to block the disastrous Trump policies we know are coming.”

I hope the vow of “unprecedented resistance” becomes a reality.

My satirical song has now become objective reality in California, the United States and throughout the world. I meant "Privatize Everything in the Universe" as a humorous warning about the future. Now it is a song documenting the privatization of California and the U.S. Of course, the same thing is taking place at the global level.

Privatization ultimately comes down to the maximization of corporate profits while the costs are socialized.

Anyway, here's my song:

Privatize Everything in the Universe (by Dan Bacher)

We’ll privatize the water, we’ll privatize the air
We’ll privatize the oceans, we’ll privatize your hair
We’ll privatize the world as we sing this verse, we’ll privatize everything in the universe!

We’ll privatize fish in the sea, we’ll privatize the whales
We’ll privatize sea turtles, we’ll put ‘em up for sale
We’ll privatize the world as we sing this verse, we’ll privatize everything in the universe!

We’ll privatize the corn and wheat, we’ll privatize all seeds
We’ll privatize all life forms, we’ll privatize all weeds
We’ll privatize the world as we sing this verse, we’ll privatize everything in the universe!

We’ll privatize the prisons, we’ll privatize the schools
We’ll privatize the highways, we’ll privatize car pools
We’ll privatize the world as we sing this verse, we’ll privatize everything in the universe!

We’ll privatize your secret thoughts, we’ll privatize your genes
We’ll privatize your emotions, we’ll privatize your schemes
We’ll privatize the world as we sing this verse, we’ll privatize everything in the universe!

We’ll privatize the sun so bright, we’ll privatize the moon
We’ll privatize the Galaxy, we need more living room
We’ll privatize the world as we sing this verse, we’ll privatize everything in the universe!

We’ll privatize religion, we’ll privatize all souls
For our god we’ll appoint, One Big, Bad CEO!
We’ll privatize the world as we sing this verse, we’ll privatize everything in the universe!

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WE’LL SURVIVE: We Study Climate Change. We Can’t Explain What We’re Seeing.

by Gavin Schmidt & Zeke Hausfather

The earth has been exceptionally warm of late, with every month from June 2023 until this past September breaking records. It has been considerably hotter even than climate scientists expected. Average temperatures during the past 12 months have also been above the goal set by the Paris climate agreement: to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.

We know human activities are largely responsible for the long-term temperature increases, as well as sea level rise, increases in extreme rainfall and other consequences of a rapidly changing climate. Yet the unusual jump in global temperatures starting in mid-2023 appears to be higher than our models predicted (even as they generally remain within the expected range).

While there have been many partial hypotheses — new low-sulfur fuel standards for marine shipping, a volcanic eruption in 2022, lower Chinese aerosol emissions and El Niño perhaps behaving differently than in the recent past — we remain far from a consensus explanation even more than a year after we first noticed the anomalies. And that makes us uneasy.

Why is it taking so long for climate scientists to grapple with these questions? It turns out that we do not have systems in place to explore the significance of shorter-term phenomena in the climate in anything approaching real time. But we need them badly. It’s now time for government science agencies to provide more timely updates in response to the rapid changes in the climate.

Weather forecasts are generated regularly come rain or come shine. Scientists who do near-real-time attribution for extreme weather are also able to react quickly to tease out the effect of global warming on any new event.

But climate science research is more used to working on approximately seven-year cycles to produce reports that summarize the evolving science about the long-term changes in climate. The data that went into the latest round of climate model simulations are based on observations that only run through 2014, and so they don’t reflect recent changes such as newer pollution controls, volcanic eruptions or even the effects of Covid. Similarly, the forecasts are stuck with scenarios that were common in the early 2000s. Business (and everything else) has changed sharply since then.

As a result of all of this, a gap has opened up between what the general public and policymakers want and what is available.

To fix this, we need to create a better way for climate models to reflect new observations. That means more comprehensive and faster data gathering from satellites, in situ measurements and economic statistics, converted by analysts for the climate and weather models. This needs to be matched by a commitment by the roughly 30 labs around the world that maintain the models of the earth’s climate system to update their simulations each year to reflect the latest data.

Some of the information that goes into climate models currently take years to produce. For instance, while data on greenhouse gas levels and energy from the sun are available within weeks of their observations being taken, emissions of industrial and agricultural air pollutants need to be estimated from economic data, and this can take years to collect and process.

Scientists should be able to provide “good enough” estimates of these inputs faster using reasonable assumptions. Just as economic analysts frequently update statistics after an initial announcement, such as a quarterly jobs report, scientists could provide data for industrial emissions of pollutants, the activity of the sun, the impacts of volcanoes and greenhouse gas levels on two or more tracks — an initial estimate using as much data as is available quickly, and a fully revised estimate later once more data is in.

We think that a goal of analyzing data in under six months is achievable if the data-gathering and climate-modeling labs prioritize it. This entails a small shift by the U.S. agencies, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association and the Department of Energy, and international agencies such as Copernicus, the European climate service provider, toward sustained funding instead of one-off research grants.

Other groups, such as weather forecasters, would also be able to take advantage of this new data stream. When they’re doing seasonal or longer-term forecasts, they are also not working from the most up-to-date information and would be able to use this to improve the forecasts.

The public would benefit from more definitive knowledge on what is going on, too. Water-resource managers and urban planners could be more confident that they were using the most current scenarios and projections, helping them avoid underestimating or over-preparing for future change. If climate projections were better calibrated to recent changes, we could narrow the likely range of future impacts.

Some of the unease that people feel about climate change comes from a sense that things are out of our control — that the climate is changing faster than we can adapt. However, many of the most dire risks lie not with the most likely outcomes but in the worst-case possibilities, for example, the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, or the drying up of the Amazon and other potential tipping points. But there is a lot we don’t know about if and when those tipping points will come to pass.

The good news is that climate science could easily become more agile in understanding the rapid changes we are seeing in the real world, incorporating them into our projections of the future and, hopefully, reducing that uncertainty.

(Gavin Schmidt is a climate scientist in New York City. Zeke Hausfather is the climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth.)

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WOMEN'S MARCH

Saturday, Jan 18, 2025

Washington DC

and other locations across the nation.

https://www.womensmarch.com

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THURSDAY'S LEAD STORIES, NYT

Republicans Win Control of House, Cementing a G.O.P. Trifecta Under Trump

Matt Gaetz Is Trump’s Pick for Attorney General

Trump and Biden Make Nice at the White House, at Least for 29 Seconds

Inflation Ticks Up, as the Fed’s Victory Remains Incomplete

After Deadly Car Rampage, Chinese Officials Try to Erase Any Hint of It

2,100 Fakes Rounded Up in Art Forgeries Bust

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TRUMP has named Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz as his nominee for Attorney General, a move seemingly designed to outrage much of Congress, Republican and Democrat, not to say millions of Americans who know Gaetz as a Q-Anon nutpie. And nevermind that Gaetz is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and bribery.

“It is my Great Honor to announce that Congressman Matt Gaetz, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The Attorney General of the United States. Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice,” Trump said.