Mendocino County Today: Monday 11/25/2024

Basketball Panthers | Active Weather | Drewry Documentary | Radio Training | Ed Notes | Point Arena Cove | Thanksgiving Turkeys | Ukiah on Ice | Yesterday's Catch | Ives Toys | Save Tracks | Arthur Miller | Ray Charles | The Weekend | Immigrants Scramble | Reg Murphy | Fraud Ring | Cable Car | Game Grades | Disgusted Fish | Dem Mistakes | Eat | Campaign Promises | Lead Stories | 800 Women | Omnicide Joe | The Rebel | Riverkeeper Betrayal | Immortality Backwards | Trouble | More Conservative | Woman's Work

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ACTIVE WEATHER with occasional rain, snow above 4500 feet, isolated coastal thunderstorms and periods of gusty winds are expected through tonight. Showers will taper off through the day on Tuesday, followed by drier weather and colder temperatures for the remainder of the week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): First we had an 80% chance of showers all weekend with hardly a drop falling. Then just after 3pm yesterday all heck breaks loose giving us an overnight total of 2.97"!, & I'll bet there are much higher amounts recorded in higher elevations. I have no explanations for this event? I'll go with a chance of showers today going into tomorrow morning then clearing for the rest of the holiday week, but as you can imagine I offer the forecast cautiously. Even the last 24 hours satellite loop does not offer any insight?

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HIGH COUNTRY MURDER: A NEW DOCUMENTARY LOOKS AT THE KILLING OF HUMBOLDT/MENDOCINO RANCHER, DICK DREWRY

A new documentary short, High Country Murder, revisits the 2021 unsolved homicide of 85-year-old rancher Richard “Dick” Drewry, whose property straddled the Humboldt and Mendocino County line. The 21-minute film, directed and produced by sisters, Keely Brazil Covelo and Michaela Brazil Gillies, explores the circumstances surrounding Drewry’s death, including quoting a social media post from the daughter of a man locals have long suspected of being involved.

Members of Drewry’s family reached out to us about the video and the rumors of who shot their loved one.

“We know who did it and are still waiting on forensic evidence,” said Patrick Drewry, Dick’s son. “But the video took me back to the day I saw my dad laying in the road with a body bag over him getting snowed on. Really messed me up.”

Drewry’s family had been ranching in both Humboldt and Mendocino Counties for generations. Patrick explained to us for an earlier article, “His great grandfather settled the ranch in the 1860’s and [it] has stayed the same through 5 generations.” Drewry, lived in the very northern part of one county, Mendocino, but maintained deep connections to the neighboring county, Humboldt as his ranch sprawled across the border. Drewry even graduated from South Fork High School in Miranda. Many in the Southern Humboldt community, including this reporter, knew him and his wife, Phyllis.

On January 26, 2021, Drewry, well-liked in the community, was found dead from a gunshot wound slumped in his truck on Bell Springs Road, near Island Mountain Road. Initially, authorities considered the possibility of suicide; however, the absence of a firearm at the scene led the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office to classify the death as a homicide. Despite investigations by both Humboldt and Mendocino County law enforcement agencies, no arrests have been made, and the case remains open.

The documentary delves into various theories surrounding Drewry’s murder, including alleged ties to disputes over water rights and the illicit marijuana trade. in the video, Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal tells the sisters that the case has “all of the Hollywood makings of a hit.”

High Country Murder seeks to shine a spotlight back on the case. The community wants to know a murderer does not walk free among them. And, the Drewry family seeks justice for the death of the head of their family before the snows of another winter melt.

If anyone has any information about this case, please contact the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department at (707) 445-7251.

(KymKemp.com)

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ED NOTES

A READER WRITES: “’Reefer Madness has taken over Mendo’.” Why, or how, is that news? Did you know there is a demographic of men for whom smoking pot is the only thing that keeps them from violent behavior? I had a couple as neighbors in Sausalito who were fine as long he stayed stoned. When he ran out of weed he beat her up. Not that pot suppresses this tendency universally, but in some cases it does, and that’s enough for a prescription if you ask me. The greatest sin of most stoners is that they are crashing bores. An apropos haiku by John Stephens:

morning in Bolinas

would-be poets

lean on their ballpoint pens

A MISTAKE to argue with them but it still comes up all these years later, and if you’re trapped by a nut re this particular non-conspiracy, as gently as you can (they can be volatile) point out that a conclusive study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found, basically, that Building 7’s steel burned so thoroughly that its crucial underpinnings collapsed.

NOT that the Building 7 nuts were deterred. They still claim that September 11th was the work of Bush and Cheney, the whole show, right down to fake Arabs flying fake airliners into the World Trade Center. They say the buildings were blown up by, well, Cheney. Mike Berger of 9/11 Truth, predictably denounced the government’s Building 7 findings: “Their explanation simply isn’t sufficient. We’re being lied to.”

ME AND RALPH. I was delivering papers one morning when I saw a tan colored, chihuahua-like male dog, no collar, trotting suicideally back and forth across busy Highway 128 from the Redwood Drive-In to Boont Berry Farm. Southbound traffic twice stopped to allow him safe passage. If he’d kept it up, he’d soon be one with the pavement.

I LOOKED AROUND for possible owners. Nobody claimed him. I beckoned. “Come here, Ralph.” The little dog trotted right up to me, wagging his tiny tail. Somebody had to own this dog. He was too well fed, too trusting for his own good, what with his casual traverses of 128 and his unhesitating embrace of a dubious stranger.

WHAT ELSE could I do but tuck Ralph into my car and drive back to the Boonville General Store where I bought him a small, gourmet salami. Ralph went to work on the sausage while I delivered papers all the way to the Navarro Store and back to Boonville. He sat beside me like he’d always been there.

IT WAS STILL EARLY. I was going to call Cheryl Schrader, Anderson Valley’s one-woman animal rescue center and turn Ralph over to her when the civilized hour of 9am arrived. In the meantime I took Ralph to my house to give him a drink of water.

THE CATS I reluctantly babysat viewed Ralph with extreme suspicion. Most of them were bigger than him. A female calico I call Bob because she’s so aggressive and has no tail, ran up in Ralph’s face and gave him a swipe. Ralph, with Biblical disdain, turned the other cheek. He’d obviously been raised with cats. No dog is that mellow around cats unless he’s used to them.

I WAS CONSIDERING permanently annexing Ralph. He was growing on me, although I’m partial to big dogs. I associate little dogs with incessant yapping, but in the hour I knew him Ralph never said a word. I wondered why such an affectionate, well-cared for little animal didn’t carry an ID collar.

MULLING over what to do with the little guy, I fed the cats while Ralph did an exploratory round of the property. When I looked up and called out, “Ralph. Come here, buddy,” he was gone. I scoured the acre for him. No Ralph. The cats looked pleased. I drove to my office half a mile away. “That’s that,” I thought, already missing my briefly adopted pal.

THE PHONE rang as I walked through the door. A distraught-sounding man said he was calling all the newspapers in Mendocino County because he’d lost his dog at Lake Mendocino. The distraught man’s description of Ralph fit the little dog of my fleeting acquaintance right down to his amiable disposition.

THE CALLER said Ralph’s real name was “Rascal.” He speculated that Rascal had been scooped up at Lake Mendocino by someone like me, someone concerned for his welfare. The distraught man, who said his name was Stan, was convinced that Rascal, who falls in love easily, had gone off with a stranger and, upon reaching Boonville, had again simply jogged off for new adventures. The caller left his number. Ask for Stan or Amanda. “We miss Rascal real bad.”

I’VE ALWAYS hoped Stan and Amanda were reunited with their fetching pooch. He was a charmer.

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POINT ARENA COVE (photos by Lois Berrettini)

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ASSIGNMENT: UKIAH - THANKSGIVING FOR THE THANKFUL

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Here comes Thanksgiving, a once-grand holiday of sharing and gratitude, slowly having the joy wrung out of it by the usual mob of angry dimwits who spend their days moaning and weeping over the fact they aren’t happy, and weep and moan to prove it.

You know the drumbeat: The world isn’t perfect, there are differences in wealth across the globe, America is a criminal enterprise and turkeys are being murdered while Dick Cheney goes free.

Not that there isn’t anything to complain about during the holiday season; Pumpkin Spice has a lot to answer for. Pumpkin Spice beer, for one, followed by Pumpkin Spice cologne, Pumpkin Spice toilet paper and probably Pumpkin Spice turkeys.

So let’s talk turkey: I promised a Thanksgiving column in the first sentence and can’t go wrecking my credibility in the fifth. Some say it’s a crime that turkeys are born only to die and get eaten. These folks want you settle down next Thursday to a delicious meal of gourds, gruel, succotash, a napkin and some dead lettuce from a garbage can behind Applebee’s.

Yes, turkeys are indeed bred to be eaten, but that’s a much more agreeable scenario than the reverse: big hungry birds chasing me down and tearing my flesh to shreds (“Would you pass me a wrist, Butterball? More pancreas, Diestel?”).

I prefer things as they are. In 1824 I’d have had to kill some poor beast to feed my family. Here in 2024 we give grateful thanks to Safeway’s fine meat department.

I don’t regard eating meat as immoral and I don’t grant turkeys the same ethical value as I do Auntie Petunia. Turkeys aren’t gurgling infant babies, nor are they cute bunny rabbits or dolphins (who by reputation are smarter than you). Turkeys are the dunces of the animal kingdom, the only ones I know of whose IQ goes up when you cook them.

The fine folks at PETA may quibble. But consuming a turkey isn’t the end of it with people who want Thanksgiving to be as miserable for everyone else as it is for them. They’re also the ones to lecture us about other nonsense, such as:

1) Our ancestors arrived on the eastern shores of the Indigenous Peoples world and bought some land with beads. Then they used a rather obscure concept called “adverse possession” to take “legal” possession of the midwest. Soon Native Americans were sipping Pumpkin Spice lattes like everyone else in America. I honestly apologize.

2) Anyway, once those bad white men got here (without being invited!) they had a big holiday party, and asked their Indigenous Peoples friends to come share the bounty. This was a clever alternative to white folk being hunted down and eaten. I think it disproves something, but it doesn’t make much sense anyway.

3) Pilgrims learned about fertilization techniques from the wise stewards of the land who came before them, and then used that newfangled agricultural knowledge to invent the Dow Chemical Corporation, which later caused global warming.

4) From there it was just a matter of time until shopping, commercialization, Black Friday sales at Walmart and inflatable Thanksgiving-themed yard decorations swept the land. This ruined everything the anti-holiday grumps didn’t like, so what’s the complaint?

5) Complaint? No, nothing other than the Pumpkin Spice stuff, and we’ve already covered that. Thank you.

Things you didn’t know:

1) The amount of carbon in earth’s atmosphere is 0.04 percent.

2) The Measure B committee, assigned to improve mental health practices a few decades ago and now sitting on many millions of dollars, has released its 32-page report detailing which members get preferred parking for meetings.

3) The Cleveland Rams of the NFL moved to LA in 1945.

4) “All Along the Watchtower” is the most frequently played song through more than 60 years of concerts in Bob Dylan’s career.

5) Joe Allen, former Mendocino County DA has been disbarred by California’s State Bar Commission.

(Tom Hine has Happy Thanksgiving wishes to all his many readers and admirers. TWK only says what Mr. Hine allows him to say.)

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CATCH OF THE DAY: Sunday, November 24, 2024

TIMOTHY IRVING JR., 46, Ukiah. County parole violation.

HECTOR DIAZ, 55, Oroville/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MANUEL DURAN, 44, Willits. Knowingly furnishing false information for electronic firearm transfer, perjury.

BEAU JAMISON, 35, Ukiah. Assault, battery, Probation revocation.

DANIEL KOWALSKI, 54, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

BOBBY ROSTON, 40, Ukiah. Criminal threats, parole violation.

JOSHUA VIAYRA, 36, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, controlled substance.

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BILL KIMBERLIN:

This is an Ives toy catalog from 1910. The front and back covers are extremely well done. The art world has always looked down on illustrators like Norman Rockwell, for instance. In fact, when I first started taking photographs, the museums would not accept any color photos. The reasoning was that color photos smacked of an advertising style of which they disapproved. They also don’t like Representative art. So, I am hoping that the new Lucas Museum in Los Angeles will throw them into a hissy fit. The Boontling term for that would be, "cankicky".

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McGUIRE’S TRUE COLORS

Editor:

In a recent letter to Editor of the Press Democrat, Ed Booth highlights an important issue that is being pushed by state Sen. Mike McGuire — the elimination of the rail right of way up to Willits.

I too ask why the senator would push to permanently demolish the opportunity to revive regional train service to Willits, and then to Fort Bragg, by ripping out the tracks.

Recently I attended his town hall in Windsor where I asked a serious question about our newly funded rail line. I spoke to him about the importance of keeping the rails in place from Cloverdale to Willits, i.e., rails with trails to protect our future regional transportation options. This has become a more important issue now that we know SMART will be operating to Healdsburg within the next few years, and then Cloverdale.

Rather than discuss this issue, the senator reacted negatively, going into defensive mode about his trail.

With SMART progressing rapidly, it is time that North Bay residents look seriously at what they see as their future transportation needs. As Booth writes and I support, “save those tracks, bring them back to life.”

Richard C. Brand

Santa Rosa

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ARTHUR MILLER was one of the 20th century’s brightest intellectuals, a playwright of supreme talent, having won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for ‘Death of a Salesman.’ He was also the man who broke the heart of Marilyn Monroe.

Barely a month after divorcing his wife Mary, Miller wed the Hollywood darling. At the wedding, friend and writer George Axelrod joked that he hoped the couple’s future children would have Miller’s looks and Monroe’s brains—a joke that Monroe probably did not like, given how bothered she was by the “dumb blonde” image that haunted her throughout her life.

Monroe claimed that she discovered a diary entry of Miller’s. In this entry, he described how disappointed he was in his actress wife, fearing she would stifle his creativity. Their marriage would not survive this betrayal; they divorced in 1961. 19 months later, Monroe died of a drug overdose.

Miller himself died in 2005, leaving behind several decades worth of incredible, unbeatable work. Even post-humously, Arthur Miller was heaped with awards, cementing his place as one of the greatest dramatists of the 20th century.

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MOVIE REVIEW: RAY CHARLES — DISTRUSTFUL GENIUS

by Mark Scaramella

Ray Charles distrusted people, naturally. But it was, well, eye-opening to realize how his blindness lead to his distrust.

We recently had a chance to re-review the movie-biography of Ray Charles, simply called “Ray.” It holds up well. It shows that his generally unknown level of distrust manifested itself mostly in financial matters. Early on Ray Charles demanded that he be paid for his musical performances in $1 bills so he could count them himself and be sure of the total. But even then, his self-selected “manager” — an older black woman with a sexual and financial interest in the talented young pianist — was taking advantage of his blindness. Soon the savvy Charles had extended his distrust to all of his managers. Then he decided to become his own manager.

The movie captures Charles’ distrust very well, adding several other vivid elements to the capsule biography. The sets and casting are well done, particularly during the early days in the 40s and 50s — based, at least, on my own experience as a beer-dive and audition/studio backup pianist for several years in the late 60s in southern cities like Pascagoula, Mobile, Dauphin Island, Biloxi, Gulfport and the French Quarter in New Orleans. (I was stationed at Keesler AFB in Biloxi from 1968 to 1973 and often moonlighted as a musician.)

There are also some very funny scenes.

In one scene towards the end of the film, the camera pans away from a large, Montovani-style violin orchestra. At first, you wonder if the projection room has suddenly switched reels; it was jarring. Then as some whitebread singers kick in, you realize that the schmaltzy strings are playing the introductory bars of “Georgia On My Mind.” The camera slowly pans over to Ray Charles sitting at a white gilt-edged Liberace-style grand piano with candelabra in front of a huge string section of violinists dressed in tuxedos, and Jamie Foxx, lip-syncing Ray Charles, breaks into Charles’ signature tune. The Liberace-style kitsch is such a jolting mood change, both for the movie to that point as well as for Ray’s earlier music career, that the scene makes you laugh. What is this? Has some corporate suit forced the down-home rhythm and blues musician into this grotesque anodyne arrangement just to make money from the larger white audience?

Then as the camera continues to pan farther back, one of Ray’s many girlfriends appears in the recording room scene, walks up to one of Ray’s long-time associates and quietly asks, “What’s with this?” Ray’s associate shrugs and replies: “It was Ray’s idea.”

This simple scene effectively shows that Ray Charles had made himself into a unique combination of old-school Republican businessman/salesman/promoter and musical genius. The scene was perfectly constructed to make that point.

Another important feature of ‘Ray’ was that, like most men, Ray Charles was defined largely by the women in his life — his mother, his wife, his many girlfriends and mistresses, his backup singers the Raylettes, etc. All of the women cast for these roles gave excellent, very believable performances. In fact, while Jamie Foxx was good in the title role, the supporting actresses seemed even better in their attitude, energy, look, talent, and intensity of attraction to Ray Charles.

The film even manages to work in some extemporaneous un-PC blind jokes and anecdotes.

I don’t remember the blind jokes in the film off-hand. But I do remember a great old anecdote about the greatest pianist who ever lived, Art Tatum, who, like Ray Charles, was blind.

When Art Tatum was a teenager growing up in Toledo, Ohio, he and his brother were pulled over by a white Toledo cop for speeding. As a prank, Art and his brother switched places just after pulling over. When the cop walked up to the car, he asked the blind Tatum, “Do you know how fast you were going?” The 16-year old Tatum replied deadpan: “I can’t even see the speedometer, officer.” The officer wasn’t amused, and asked for some ID. Art supplied the ID and the officer recognized his name — Tatum already had a local reputation in Toledo for his backup appearances on a popular weekly radio music show and his many club performances as a performer and accompanist. “You’re Art Tatum?,” asked the cop. “Yes,” replied a no-longer joking Tatum. The cop then let the Tatum brothers go with a warning — after accepting Tatum’s invitation to an upcoming performance.

The movie even had a brief scene where a young Ray Charles enters a Harlem jazz club where Art Tatum was on the stage. Ray recognizes him, correctly, with awe — Tatum was the apotheosis of the 40s jazz piano world. But the guy who was portraying Tatum was not very good. He wasn’t playing anything, just noodling in random 64th notes up and down the keyboard. The scene was too short too, making it impossible to comprehend Charles’ reverential reaction to being in the same room with The Great One.

In fact, the movie missed its opportunity to show that Charles could play jazz piano with the best of them. There wasn’t even a hint of Charles’s top notch instrumental jazz piano skill, inspired by Tatum and others. Of course, Charles’s few jazz recordings never made the money that the more popular genres did.

Also noteworthy was the way director Taylor Hackford recreated what were originally improvised scenes and made them seem as if they were being made up on the spot. Anyone who remembers the “improvisational” street dancing scene in the underappreciated 80s movie “Tap” will know what I’m talking about.

Tough as the film is on Charles’s drug abuse and womanizing, to his additional, posthumous credit, Ray Charles approved the screenplay and casting in advance before he died. He wanted the film to be honest, like himself.

Another flaw was the flashback dream scene toward the end where Foxx plays a sighted but younger Charles. It just doesn’t work. Without his eye-prosthetic or shades, you see that it’s Jamie Foxx playing Ray Charles and are reminded that you’re watching a movie. Bummer.

But overall “Ray” is an outstanding film biography of the best performer of his generation.

“The way I see it, we’re actors, but musical ones,” Charles once said. “We’re doing it with notes, and lyrics with notes, telling a story. I can take an audience and get ‘em into a frenzy so they’ll almost riot, and yet I can sit there so you can almost hear a pin drop.”

The movie can too.

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IMMIGRANTS ACROSS U.S. RUSH TO PREPARE FOR TRUMP CRACKDOWN

Donald Trump’s promise to carry out mass deportations has driven fearful immigrants to seek protections and advice.

by Miriam Jordan

President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to slash immigration — both legal and illegal — and ramp up deportations on Day 1.

Immigrants are racing to get ahead of the crackdown.

Foreign-born residents have been jamming the phone lines of immigration lawyers. They’re packing information meetings organized by nonprofits. And they’re taking whatever steps they can to inoculate themselves from the sweeping measures Mr. Trump has promised to undertake after he is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

“People that should be scared are coming in, and people that are fine with a green card are rushing in,” said Inna Simakovsky, an immigration lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, who added that her team has been overwhelmed with consultations. “Everyone is scared,” she said.

People with green cards want to become citizens as soon as possible. People who have a tenuous legal status or who entered the country illegally are scrambling to file for asylum, because even if the claim is thin, having a pending case would — under current protocols — protect them from deportation. People in relationships with U.S. citizens are fast-tracking marriage, which makes them eligible to apply for a green card.

In total there are about 13 million who have legal permanent residency. And there were an estimated 11.3 million undocumented people in 2022, the latest figure available.

“The election result put me in a state of panic that propelled me to immediately find a permanent solution,” said Yaneth Campuzano, 30, a software engineer in Houston.

Brought to the United States from Mexico when she was 2 months old, she was eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Obama-era program that has allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants who entered the country as children to remain in the country with work permits.

But DACA was a target of Mr. Trump’s during his first term and is being challenged in a lawsuit that could help him end it. Given the program’s precarious state, Ms. Campuzano and her fiancé, an American neuroscientist, have expedited plans to marry. They will wed next month — before Mr. Trump takes office. “Only after my status is secure will I be able to breathe again,” she said.

Voters of both parties were frustrated by chaos at the border under President Biden. Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, and last week said that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to accomplish his goal. His top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, has said that “vast holding facilities” would serve as “staging centers” for the operation. This week, the state land commissioner in Texas offered the federal government more than 1,000 acres near the border to erect detention centers.

Deportations are not uncommon. Mr. Trump deported about 1.5 million people during his first term, according to analysis by the Migration Policy Institute. President Biden has removed about as many. President Obama removed 3 million in his first term.

But not since the 1950s has the United States sought to deport people en masse, and it has not previously created a vast detention apparatus to facilitate expulsions.

Sergio Teran of Venezuela has legal permanent residency. After five years as a green-card holder, Mr. Teran, 36, who lives in Lakeland, Fla., became eligible for U.S. citizenship in late July. The uncertainty surrounding the election was one of the factors that pushed him to recently apply. “I wanted to do it quickly,” Mr. Teran said.

“I am an upstanding community member,” he said, “but with a green card you can still be deported. I feel much more secure knowing my citizenship is in process.”

In addition to Mr. Miller, the president-elect has tapped other immigration hawks for key roles, including Thomas Homan, a veteran of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to be “border czar.”

Mr. Homan has said that the administration will prioritize the removal of criminals and people with outstanding deportation orders. But he has also said that workplace raids and other tools will be deployed to round up undocumented immigrants, many of whom have lived in the country for decades.

Even in California, whose leaders restricted cooperation with immigration authorities during Mr. Trump’s first term and have pledged to do so again, immigrants are worried about enforcement going into overdrive.

“This time we are more afraid, because of everything Trump says that he will do when he regains power,” said Silvia Campos, an undocumented Mexican farmworker who lives with her husband and three children, two of them U.S. citizens, in Riverside County.

Everywhere she turns, on Spanish-language radio, TV and social media, she said she is slammed with information about his intentions.

“It’s all everyone talks about,” said Ms. Campos, 42, who crossed the border with her husband 18 years ago. “We have to prepare for the worst.”

That is why she asked her manager for the day off from harvesting vegetables to attend a “know-your-rights” session last Tuesday at a nonprofit.

Among the tips: You have the right to remain silent. Only open the door to immigration agents who produce a search warrant from a judge. Do not sign anything without a lawyer. Make a family plan, in case you are detained and separated from your children.

After the session, Ms. Campos completed an affidavit authorizing her children to receive medical attention, if necessary, and to be cared for by her sister, a U.S. citizen, in her absence. She had three copies notarized, and on her return home, she sat down her children, 11, 14 and 17.

“We don’t want to create more fear, but we want them to be ready for anything,” said Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC Legal Center, which began holding the sessions, many of them standing room only, after its hotline was clogged with calls following the election.

The organization has been sending teams to brief workers on farms in Southern California’s agriculture-rich corridor that relies on immigrant labor, much of it undocumented. On Thursday morning, all 30 laborers at a farm in Lakeview took a break from picking and packing leafy greens to go to a presentation, the fourth held that day.

In Dallas, Vinchenzo Marinero, 30, a DACA beneficiary, has been frantically exploring avenues to remain in the country lawfully.

Stripped of DACA, he would lose his job, his driver’s license and, perhaps, his three-bedroom house. He has started a family with a fellow DACA beneficiary, and they have a 7-month-old baby.

“Without DACA, I wouldn’t be able to provide for my family,” said Mr. Marinero, who works for a faith-based broadcaster as a systems engineer.

He hopes the company will sponsor him for a skilled-worker visa, but that could not occur until next year. In the meantime, his lawyer advised him to renew his DACA for another two years, even though it expires in June 2025.

“By the time Trump takes office, I hope mine gets renewed so I have two more years,” Mr. Marinero said. “That gives me more time to plan.”

While few university leaders have spoken out about the Trump administration’s immigration strategy, many campuses have been quietly weighing steps to protect their international and undocumented students.

More than 1,700 university administrators and staff attended a webinar on Nov. 15 about how to support them.

“Our message is that the time to act is now,” said Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonpartisan group of private and public colleges and universities that hosted the event.

Many institutions are considering sponsoring DACA beneficiaries for work visas, she said, which would give them a temporary solution that could eventually put them on the path to permanent legal status. They are seeking to take advantage of new guidance under the Biden administration that has provided faster processing for those who qualify.

A particular concern is the upcoming winter break when many international students may visit their homelands. On his first day in the White House in 2017, Mr. Trump banned people from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, creating chaos at airports. It was challenged in court, but a subsequent version of it survived.

The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has issued a travel advisory to all international students, faculty and staff, urging them to “strongly consider” returning to the United States before Inauguration Day, and said that students could move into their dorms early.

Wesleyan University, a private university in Middletown, Conn., emailed its international students on Nov. 18 with similar advice. It said that being in the country around Jan. 19 was “the safest way to avoid difficulty re-entering the country.”

(NY Times)

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STEVE TALBOT:

Reg Murphy led a stellar journalistic career. I had forgotten he had once been kidnapped at gunpoint by a rightwing lunatic. Read all about his life in this obit: Editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution, editor of the San Francisco Examiner during the Patty Hearst kidnapping insanity, publisher of the Baltimore Sun, which won two Pulitzers during his tenure, president of the National Geographic Society, and author of a book about Nixon's racist "Southern strategy" in the 1968 presidential election.

A young, earnest Murphy happens to appear in the opening scene of my film, The Movement and the "Madman". Here's the transcript:

ID: 1968 Presidential Campaign

Announcer: Tonight, from Atlanta, live and in color: “The Nixon Answer.” Tonight, Richard Nixon in person is going to face a panel of citizens asking the questions they want answered. (applause)

Richard Nixon: Thank you very much, thank you. Hi. How are you? Thank all of you in the studio audience for your warm welcome, and I just hope my campaigning’s a lot better than my putting (laughs). So we’ll start over on this side with Mr. Murphy from Atlanta.

Reg Murphy: Mr. Nixon, General Curtis LeMay became Governor Wallace's running mate today, and he immediately said that he would use a nuclear bomb to win in Vietnam. How do you feel about the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam or elsewhere?

Nixon: I do not believe that nuclear bombs or nuclear weapons should be used in Vietnam, I do not think they’re necessary to be used in Vietnam. And we should not risk a nuclear war in Vietnam by any matter or means. (audience applause)

Title cards: That was his campaign promise. But Nixon had a secret plan to end the war.

Voice of Morton Halperin, Defense Department: We learned pretty quickly that his secret plan was to threaten the North Vietnamese with nuclear weapons. That was his plan. And he was convinced that the way to make the threat credible was for the North Vietnamese to fear that he was crazy and might actually do this.

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FRAUD RING

by Fred Gardner

Intro: I voted for Jill Stein, of course, but I was rooting for Kamala Harris. Not for any noble reason, like “the lesser evil,” but for a crass reason: a possible book contract. Kamala was a pivotal character in those pieces I wrote for the AVA about working in the San Francisco DA’s office under Terence ‘Kayo’ Hallinan. Maybe I could pitch it as a memoir… Too bad all my connections are dead, or retired so long ago that their connections are retired, or else I criticized them in a leaflet 52 years ago for which I was never forgiven. Oh, well… Kayo is looking pretty good in the rear-view mirror. If he had taken my advice and promoted her… If there had been a smooth transition of power at the end of his second term…. Maybe a novelist could do something with that. I’ll never rise above public information officer.

Feb. 22, 2001 For Immediate Release

Grand Jury Indicts Nine in Fraud Ring

San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan announced today that his office, along with the California Department of Insurance, obtained an indictment Feb. 6, charging nine people with conspiring to commit a variety of fraud-related offenses. The investigation is the largest of its kind ever conducted by the SFDA. It targeted “cappers” (persons who bring in clients for medical providers and lawyers), medical professionals, and law offices engaged in wholesale insurance fraud.

According to records on file with the court, at the hub of the largest case is Susana Esquivel, 53, who was a longtime employee of the San Francisco Police Department Record Room, and Rolando ‘Rollie’ Meneses, 52, allegedly the main “capper” in the case.

The ring, or “mill,” came to light when civilians involved in car accidents were allegedly “capped” by Meneses, who tried to refer them to certain doctors and lawyers. Troubled that Meneses had access to the personal information contained in their accident reports, many of these citizens contacted law enforcement.

Not knowing the source of the leak of the reports, SFDA investigators, with the full assistance and cooperation of the San Francisco Police Department, inserted fictional auto accident reports that reflected undercover operatives as accident victims into the normal channels, including the SFPD record room where Susana Esquivel worked. Esquivel allegedly then provided the reports to Meneses and, within days, undercover operatives listed in the reports were “capped,” either by Meneses himself, or by Leila Cordova or Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Salumbides or Jose ‘Joe’ Calderon.

Some of the cappers allegedly referred the agents to Chiropractic Clinic, a business owned by Ulrich Moelgaard, for treatment, and to the Law Offices of Michael Goldfeder and the Law Offices of Buchanan & Field. The various players were surreptitiously recorded by the operatives and many of these tapes allegedly reveal coaching by Meneses and law office personnel to try to encourage the undercover investigators to complain of “pain” in order to inflate insurance claims. The law offices submitted claims to insurance companies that were anywhere from three to five times the medical bills.

“I am particularly pleased with the results of this investigation because it led to the apprehension of every link in the chain of fraud,” said District Attorney Hallinan, “Organized rings like this don’t just damage business interests, they also hurt the consumer, who has to pay premiums that are inflated because of fraud.”

The operation was launched because of a concern that large, organized insurance-fraud rings, (which are commonplace in southern California) were beginning to gain a foothold in San Francisco. Documents filed with the court show that two of the law offices that were targets of the investigation are satellite offices, whose main offices are in the Los Angeles area.

The nine people charged are: Rolando ‘Rollie’ Meneses, age 52 of South San Francisco; Susana Esquivel, age 53, Daly City; Alfredo ‘Freddy’ Coh, age 44, San Francisco; Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Salumbides, age 60, San Francisco; Cora Crisologo, age 37, Daly City; Leila Cordova, age 52, Richmond; Cora Luna, 42, San Francisco; Ulrich Moelgaard, 31, Denmark, and Jose Calderon, 31, Los Altos. They are charged in an 80-count complaint, that charges 14 conspiracies, including conspiracies to solicit others to file fraudulent insurance claims; referral of business with reckless disregard of whether insurance fraud will be committed; theft of official documents; assisting others in making false statements in support of insurance claims; workers’ compensation fraud; and illegal referral of legal clients, or “capping,” as well as the target offenses themselves. The charge carrying the most severe penalty is insurance fraud, which can result in a sentence of 2, 3, or 5 years in state prison. If convicted, Meneses could face in excess of 11 years in state prison, plus fines.

The investigation involved close cooperation between the SFDA and the state Department of Insurance and the San Francisco Police Department. The inter-agency operation was initiated by Robert Ring, former managing attorney of the Insurance Fraud Unit. Hallinan singled out for praise senior investigators Richard Hong and Duane Hadley and investigators John Arguello and James Montoya (supervised by John Auvinen.) The case is being prosecuted by Laura Meyers, who is assigned to the Insurance Fraud Unit of the Special Operations Division of the DA’s office.

The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the Fraud Division of the Department of Insurance have acknowledged the Daly City Police Department, California Highway Patrol, State Compensation Insurance Fund, C.N.A. Insurance Company, California Casualty Insurance, Kemper Insurance, and the National Insurance Crime Bureau for their assistance in this investigation.

Anyone who has been the victim of an accident, or who is a medical or legal professional, who has been contacted by Rolando ‘Rollie’ Meneses, Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Salumbides, Leila Cordova, or Jose ‘Joe’ Calderon, or anyone else, is encouraged to contact D.A. senior investigator, Richard Hong at…

For more information contact Laura Meyers at…

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49ers GAME GRADES: Niners put the ‘F’ in failure in Packers’ blowout win

by Michael Lerseth

Little went right for the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday in a mistake- and penalty-filled 38-10 loss to the Packers in Green Bay that left the Niners with a 5-6 record.

Offense: F

If the 49ers have any hopes of saving the season, they need Brock Purdy back on the field ASAP. Backup QB Brandon Allen finished 17-for-29 for 199 yards with one TD, a lost fumble and an interception that went through the hands of Deebo Samuel (four targets, one catch for 21 yards). Christian McCaffrey regressed significantly in his third game of the season, accounting for only 68 total yards — including 31 rushing yards on 11 carries — and losing a fumble on his third catch of the day. Telltale sign of a bad day: the offense didn’t collect a first down until 6½ minutes before halftime.

Defense: F

Josh Jacobs made like the 2023 version of McCaffrey by gashing the 49ers for 106 yards — 91 in the first half — and three touchdowns. The day’s most frequent occurrence was missing tackles — including 10 in the first quarter, an NFL season-high for the opening period — as Green Bay rolled up 325 yards on its way to a season-high point total. Rookie cornerback Renardo Green had a game to forget: a pass-interference penalty in the end zone that set up Jacobs’ second TD and dropping a should-have-been INT (as did Ji’Ayir Brown). With Nick Bosa out, Leonard Floyd had the 49ers’ two sacks.

Special Teams: F

The season of sloppiness continues unabated. In the first half, Isaac Guerendo fumbled a kick return (which the 49ers recovered). In the third quarter, the 49ers lost 120 yards in returns when Samuel’s second half-opening 87-yard kickoff runback and punt returns of 13 and 20 yards by Ricky Pearsall were negated by penalties. Jake Moody made a 48-yard field goal (and an extra point) and Pat O’Donnell averaged 49 yards on three punts.

Coaching: F

Missing Purdy, Bosa and Trent Williams was absolutely going to hurt, but they fill just three spots on a 53-man roster. Kyle Shanahan and every coach on his staff will spend this week looking for solutions to a growing pile of problems after the 49ers looked disorganized and undisciplined in every aspect with a season-high-tying three turnovers and nine penalties — including consecutive infractions for having 12 men on the field.

Overall: F

There isn’t enough lipstick to make this pig look good. The 49ers were fortunate to be down by only 10 points at halftime, but myriad mistakes and missed opportunities in the second half scuttled any chance of winning. The slide into also-ran status may pick up speed next week when the 5-6 Niners travel to Buffalo, where the Bills will take the field with a 9-2 record after enjoying their bye week.

(SF Chronicle)

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LAWFARE AND NONSTOP SMEARS FROM DEMOCRATS ONLY CONTRIBUTED TO TRUMP’S TRIUMPH

by Michael Goodwin

If Democrats honestly sort through the debris of the election, they will find a slew of key issues where they were far out of step with voters.

Their misguided economic policies led to sky-high inflation, they opened the border to millions of unvetted illegal migrants and adopted a radical approach to cultural issues, all of which Donald Trump seized on in his commanding victory.

It certainly didn’t help that Dems fielded two weak candidates, starting with President Biden. His cognitive decline, which the party tried to hide, led leaders to belatedly give him the hook, and Kamala Harris, despite spending nearly $2 billion, was mercilessly exposed as lacking the right stuff for the Oval Office.

These policy and personnel issues obviously contributed to the result, and some Dems, however grudgingly, are starting to come to grips with them.

But there is another dimension to the race that helps explain Trump’s triumph, and I don’t believe any Dem dares to touch it, at least yet.

These issues revolve around the party’s decision to launch a personal war against the Republican, which featured nonstop charges that he was a racist, a fascist and a wannabe Hitler.

It was created out of whole cloth and was despicable, and it was only part of the assault. The other part was the decision to weaponize the Department of Justice and state prosecutors to knock Trump out of the race by bringing a slew of criminal charges and civil suits.

No former president had ever been charged with a single crime, but Dems went full jihad and charged him with a total of 94 felonies in four different federal and state cases.

Relentless Lawfare

There was also an effort to bankrupt him in New York and a plot to ban him from the ballot in a dozen blue states, a disgraceful bid that would have deprived voters of choice.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court stopped it.

Displaying not an iota of shame, the activist Dems carrying out these unprecedented assaults routinely accused Trump of being a threat to democracy. It was one of the greatest cons of all time.

Still, there is a lesson in defeat if the Dems have the courage and decency to learn it.

Although it is fair to say that Trump won despite this unprecedented raft of dirty tricks, it is more accurate to say that he won because of them.

Polling showed that each new indictment boosted his support as the attempt to destroy him with flimsy charges backfired.

His conviction in the only criminal case to come to trial, the Manhattan bookkeeping saga, was such an egregious miscarriage of justice that many legal experts, including some who intensely dislike Trump, said the case should not have been brought.

I agree, and hope the judge overseeing it, acting Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, finally gets the point and dismisses the case before Trump takes office.

To leave it hanging over Trump for the next four years would be the height of injustice, demean the presidency and bring further shame to New York’s politicized courts.

Although there is no evidence leading Dems are ready to admit the effort to “otherize” Trump was a main reason for defeat, there is a noteworthy change. All the claims that Trump would be the next Hitler have suddenly vanished.

The outrageous charge, including from Biden, that a Trump victory would mark the last election in American history is no longer mentioned.

Fascist Fairytales

Armageddon apparently has been postponed.

Take former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who insisted that Trump is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person in the country.”

But last week, Milley was singing a very different tune, declaring “America’s going to be OK.”

“There is a lot of waves out there,” Milley continued, “but this is a big, strong country, 380 million people. Great institutions, great people, great workforce, and a great younger cohort of people that are gonna protect America.”

Biden himself has come a long way. Before the 2022 midterms, he set the stage for the party’s scare tactics at a garish red Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where he called Trump and his supporters a “threat to our country” who “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

Yet two days after the presidential election, Biden admitted that “The American experiment endures, and we’re going to be OK.”

He invited Trump to the White House where, before the assembled press, he smiled, stuck out his hand and said, “Welcome back.”

Perhaps we’ll hear a similar climb-down from retired Gen. John Kelly, the Trump-hating former chief of staff who tried to become the October surprise by telling The Atlantic magazine that Trump said “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had” and that Trump fits “the general definition of fascist.”

Harris, searching for a political kill shot, seized on Kelly’s claim to declare that “voters don’t want a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

Will Harris recant when, or if, she returns to the White House from a vacation in Hawaii?

Kelly’s claim gave the media a week of feverish headlines, and a chance to pretend they were engaged in serious inquiry about how bad a second Trump term would be.

“What is fascism? And why does Harris say Trump is a fascist?” asked the biased Associated Press, being careful to use the word as many times as possible.

All An Act On MSNBC

None of it worked, and references to Hitler and fascism also have disappeared from the media.

Two of the most persistent purveyors, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC, even went to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago, saying it was an attempt to “reopen” lines of communication.

But as Jon Stewart reminded them, “you said he was Hitler.”

Stewart is on to something — how could anyone visit with Trump if they really thought he is Hitler?

The question answers itself: Scarborough and his ilk never actually believed what they were saying. It was all just a talking point, one aimed at covering up the deficiencies of Biden and Harris.

Even allowing that politics ain’t beanbag, what the Dems and the propaganda media did had serious consequences. Those who made the comparisons to Hitler and Nazism bear responsibility for the spate of assassination attempts and plots against Trump.

Recall that just days before the Pennsylvania attempt, where the former president was wounded, Biden said “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

After the attempt, Biden said he shouldn’t have said it.

But what about the lawfare assault, which was cheered by Dems and most media. Did they believe any of that?

Not for a minute.

Beyond being justified on policy grounds, Trump’s victory is the right outcome for anyone who values fair play and respect for American history.

He heroically fought a corrupt empire and voters rewarded him.

So raise a glass to his glorious triumph, one that will be a lesson for the ages.

(New York Post)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Remember the old joke about Ayn Rand going into a bar for a drink and 2 hours later dies of poisoning.

No regulations.

Did you read about the recent tourists in Laos dying from drinks laced with methanol?

Think we should get rid of the FDA?

Trump is going to do all these things but has yet come up with any plans to implement them.

Let’s see how many campaign promises he keeps. He made about 99 last I heard.

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MONDAY'S LEAD STORIES, NYT

Trump’s Cabinet: Many Ideologies Behind the Veil of ‘America First’

Trump Is Running His Transition Team on Secret Money

On the Outskirts of Beirut, a Crowd Watches the War, and Waits for Its End

How Universities Cracked Down on Pro-Palestinian Activism

They Investigated Pandemic Fraud, Then Earned Thousands

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IN 1663, FRANCE SENT 800 WOMEN, known as the "Filles du Roi" ("Daughters of the King"), to Quebec to marry settlers. This initiative was successful and doubled the population within ten years. Today, two-thirds of the French-Canadian population can trace their ancestry back to these women.

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OMNICIDE JOE?

Whether heralded or reviled, Biden’s supposed restraint during the Ukraine war has steadily faded, with more and more dangerous escalation in its place.

by Norman Solomon

President Biden has never wavered from approving huge arms shipments to Israel during more than 13 months of mass murder and deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Biden’s crucial role earned him the name “Genocide Joe.”

That nickname might seem shrill, but it’s valid. Although Biden will not be brought to justice for serving as a key accomplice to the horrific crimes against humanity that continue in Gaza, the label sticks — and candid historians will condemn him as a direct enabler of genocide.

Biden could also qualify for another nickname, which according to Google was never published before this article: “Omnicide Joe.”

In contrast to the Genocide Joe sobriquet, which events have already proven apt, Omnicide Joe is a bit anticipatory. That’s inevitable, because if the cascading effects of his foreign policy end up as key factors in nuclear annihilation, historians will not be around to assess his culpability for omnicide — defined as “the destruction of all life or all human life.”

That definition scarcely overstates what scientists tell us would result from an exchange of nuclear weapons. Researchers have discovered that “nuclear winter” would quickly set in across the globe, blotting out sunlight and wiping out agriculture, with a human survival rate of perhaps 1 or 2 percent.

With everything — literally everything — at stake, you might think that averting thermonuclear war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, would be high on a president’s to-do list. But that hardly has been the case with Joe Biden since he first pulled up a chair at the Oval Office desk.

In fact, Biden has done a lot during the first years of this decade to inflame the realistic fears of nuclear war. His immediate predecessor Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of two vital treaties — Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Open Skies — and Biden did nothing to reinstate them. Likewise, Trump killed the Iran nuclear deal negotiated during the Obama administration, and Biden let it stay dead.

Instead of fulfilling his 2020 campaign promise to adopt a U.S. policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, two years ago Biden signed off on the Nuclear Posture Review policy document that explicitly declares the opposite. Last year, under the euphemism of “modernization,” the U.S. government spent $51 billion — more than every other nuclear-armed country combined — updating and sustaining its nuclear arsenal, gaining profligate momentum in a process that’s set to continue for decades to come.

Before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, Biden showed a distinct lack of interest in actual diplomacy to prevent the war or to end it. Three days before the invasion, writing in the Financial Times, Jeffrey Sachs pointed out: “Biden has said repeatedly that the U.S. is open to diplomacy with Russia, but on the issue that Moscow has most emphasized — NATO enlargement — there has been no American diplomacy at all. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has repeatedly demanded that the U.S. forswear NATO’s enlargement into Ukraine, while Biden has repeatedly asserted that membership of the alliance is Ukraine’s choice.”

While Russia’s invasion and horrible war in Ukraine should be condemned, Biden has compounded Putin’s crimes by giving much higher priority to Washington’s cold-war mania than to negotiation for peace — or to mitigation of escalating risks of nuclear war.

From the outset, Biden scarcely acknowledged that the survival of humanity was put at higher risk by the Ukraine war. In his first State of the Union speech, a week after the invasion, Biden devoted much of his oratory to the Ukraine conflict without saying a word about the heightened danger that it might trigger the use of nuclear weapons.

During the next three months, the White House posted more than 60 presidential statements, documents and communiques about the war in Ukraine. They all shared with his State of the Union address a stunning characteristic — the complete absence of any mention of nuclear weapons or nuclear war dangers — even though many experts gauged those dangers as being the worst they’d been since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

With occasional muted references to not wanting a U.S. military clash with nuclear-armed Russia, during the last 33 months the Biden administration has said it did not want to cross its own red lines — and then has repeatedly proceeded to do so.

A week ago superhawk John Bolton, a former national security advisor to President Trump, summarized the process on CNN while bemoaning that Biden’s reckless escalation hasn’t been even more reckless: “It’s been one long public debate after another, going back to ‘Shall we supply ATACMS [ballistic missiles] to the Ukrainians at all?’ First it’s no, then there’s a debate, then there’s yes. ‘Should we supply the Ukrainians Abrams tanks?’ First it’s no, then there’s a long debate, then it’s yes. ‘Should we supply the Ukrainians with F-16s?’ First it’s no, then there’s a long debate, and it’s yes. Now, ‘Can we allow the Ukrainians to use ATACMS inside Russia?’ After a long debate, now it’s yes.”

Whether heralded or reviled, Biden’s supposed restraint during the Ukraine war has steadily faded, with more and more dangerous escalation in its place.

Biden’s recent green light for Ukraine to launch longer-range missiles into Russia is another jump toward nuclear warfare. As a Quincy Institute analyst wrote, “the stakes, and escalatory risks, have steadily crept up.” In an ominous direction, “this needlessly escalatory step has put Russia and NATO one step closer to a direct confrontation — the window to avert catastrophic miscalculation is now that much narrower.”

Like Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken as well as the Democratic and Republican phalanx of Ukraine war cheerleaders on Capitol Hill, Bolton doesn’t mention that recent polling shows strong support among Ukrainian people for negotiations to put a stop to the war. “An average of 52 percent of Ukrainians would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible,” Gallup reported last week, compared to only 38 percent who say “their country should keep fighting until victory.”

Biden and other war boosters have continued to scorn, as capitulation and accommodation to aggression, what so much of the Ukrainian population now says it wants — a negotiated settlement. Instead, top administration officials and laptop-warrior pundits in the press corps are eager to tout their own mettle by insisting that Ukrainians and Russians must keep killing and dying.

Elites in Washington continue to posture as courageous defenders of freedom with military escalation in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands have already died. Meanwhile, dangers of nuclear war increase.

Last week, Putin “lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks,” Reuters reported, “and Moscow said Ukraine had struck deep inside Russia with U.S.-made ATACMS missiles…. Russia had been warning the West for months that if Washington allowed Ukraine to fire U.S., British and French missiles deep into Russia, Moscow would consider those NATO members to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine.”

For President Biden, the verdict of Genocide Joe is already in. But if, despite pleas for sanity, he turns out to fully deserve the name Omnicide Joe, none of us will be around to read about it.

(nationofchange.org)

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A RFK JR. BLAST FROM THE PAST - THE DEATH OF SATIRE: RIVERKEEPER

by Dan Bacher

Political satire in the United States officially died on April 14, 2010.

That’s when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, honored Arnold Schwarzenegger, the worst governor for fish and the environment in California history, for his “environmental advocacy.”

No late-night comedian, inflammatory radio talk show host or other practitioner of political satire could come up with a scenario this bizarre no matter how they tried. Reality, particularly in Schwarzenegger’s California, has become a self-parody, a living satirical comedy that knows no bounds.

Schwarzenegger was honored at the “Riverkeeper’s Annual Fishermen’s Ball” at Pier Sixty on the Hudson River in New York City at a dinner fundraiser. Spike Lee also presented an award to HBO during the event.

Ten demonstrators, including two active Riverkeeper watchdogs, passed out fliers and unfurled a banner, “Shame on the Riverkeeper — Arnold Is A Fish Terminator” as guests entered the event.

The demonstrators said that honoring Schwarzenegger is a betrayal of the Riverkeeper movement and undermines grass-roots movements for clean rivers. Three of them were arrested, according to Robert Jereski, a Riverkeeper watchdog from the Safe Water Movement.

“In honoring Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for his continuing devastation of California’s rivers and their threatened and endangered fishes, Riverkeeper has betrayed its stated mission on the Hudson and the cause of rivers everywhere,” said Robert H. Boyle, Riverkeeper founder, who left the organization 10 years ago.

In fact, a Riverkeeper spokesman would only speak on the condition of anonymity to reporters from the Sacramento Bee, and the Tarrytown-Sleepy Hollow (New York) Patch to explain why they would honor Schwarzenegger in spite of such widespread opposition to his environmental policies.

“The group is honoring Schwarzenegger specifically for his work on climate change, according to a press contact who declined to be named for this post,” reported Kevin Yamamura in his article in the Sacramento Bee on April 13.

Kennedy and the Riverkeeper gave the governor this award in spite of the deluge of letters and phone calls from conservationists, fishermen and environmental justice advocates blasting them for honoring Schwarzenegger.

The Riverkeeper’s mission is “to protect the ecological integrity of the Hudson River and its tributaries, and to safeguard the drinking water supply of New York City and the lower Hudson Valley.”

Founded by commercial and recreational fishermen in Tarrytown 40 years ago, the Riverkeeper has spawned a nationwide network of more than 150 groups, including many in California, that lobby for clean water and other environmental initiatives.

Since Schwarzenegger took office in 2003 in a recall election, he has waged a relentless war on salmon, salmon fishermen and the environment in California that is diametrically opposed to the Riverkeeper’s mission of protecting the ecological integrity of rivers. His administration has become known for its numerous conflicts of interests, corruption and violation of the state’s environmental laws.

In the latest Field Poll, California voters gave Schwarzenegger the lowest rating of his career, with his approval dropping to only 23 percent in March, down from 27 percent in October. This is as low as Gov. Gray Davis’s rating was in 2003 before he was recalled in a special election.

I suspect that Schwarzenegger may have received the award because of his close relationship to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other Kennedy family members through his marriage to Maria Shriver.

Regardless of the reasoning behind it, the honoring of Schwarzenegger in an insult to the fishermen, Indian Tribes, environmentalists and others who have been under assault by his policies. Kennedy and the Riverkeeper, by giving “green cover” to Schwarzenegger, are in effect endorsing his war on fish and fishermen.

Since being elected in 2003, Schwarzenegger’s record includes the following examples of “environmental advocacy”:

He allowed the Department of Water Resources to pump record levels of water out of the Delta from 2004 to 2007, resulting in the current collapses of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, striped bass and threadfin shad. The largest annual water export levels in history occurred in 2003 (6.3 million acre feet), 2004 (6.1 MAF), 2005 (6.5 MAF) and 2006 (6.3 MAF).

He has consistently slashed funding for game wardens while California has the lowest ratio of wardens to residents of any state in the nation.

He directed the Central Valley Regional Water Control Board to continue to grant waivers to agricultural polluters, in spite of the dire condition of Delta fisheries.

He has vetoed numerous environmental bills, including a badly needed bill by Lois Wolk that would provide for emergency fish rescue plans.

Since 2004, he has fast-tracked a controversial Marine Life Protection Area (MLPA) process filled with conflicts of interest and corruption that kicks sustainable fishermen, Indian tribal members and seaweed harvesters off the water while refusing to deal with pollution, coastal development and other human uses of the ocean that have lead to fishery declines.

He recently introduced a bill that would allow the lame-duck governor to choose 25 development projects each year that would be exempt from the state’s strict standards under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

However, Schwarzenegger’s greatest “environmental passion” is campaigning with Sen. Dianne Feinstein for a massive peripheral canal and more dams that will cost an estimated $23 billion to $53.8 billion at a time that California doesn’t have enough money to pay for its teachers, game wardens and health care for children.

In November, Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders pushed through a controversial water policy/water bond package that creates a clear path to the peripheral canal and new dams. If not stopped, the canal will likely lead to the extinction of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations.

In addition, at photo opportunities and in press conferences Schwarzenegger has continually attacked the court-ordered biological opinions for Delta smelt and Central Valley salmon. These plans conclude that current water-pumping operations of the state and federal water projects should be changed to ensure survival of Delta smelt, winter and spring-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, the southern population of North American green sturgeon and southern resident killer whales.

Although I have admired RFK Jr. and the Riverkeeper for their efforts to restore the Hudson River, they have badly damaged their credibility by honoring the “Fish Terminator” for his “environmental advocacy.”

“The award is a farce,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director of Restore the Delta. “Schwarzenegger is perpetuating a water-delivery system that will wipe out what’s left of California’s salmon run and will deal the final death blow to the Delta. This award is a classic example of greenwashing.”

“Governor Schwarzenegger’s term has been a disaster as far as protection of water quality and fisheries in California is concerned,” said Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and former Deltakeeper, who emphasized that he has enormous respect for RFK Jr., and his environmental work. “Schwarzenegger has used his stance on air quality as a cover and shield for the harm he has done on water issues.”

Jennings, whose organization has 55 pending appeals and several lawsuits directed against the Schwarzenegger administration, and others are puzzled why the Riverkeeper, an organization that focuses on water quality, awarded the governor for his stance on air quality.

Jereski criticized the Riverkeeper for not only greenwashing Schwarzenegger’s abysmal record in California but for the organization’s actions at home. On the East Coast, natural gas extraction using horizontal hydrofracking — the process of drilling down into shale and then turning the drill horizontally to tap pockets of natural gas — threatens rivers and aquifers from New York State to Tennessee.

“By not joining environmental groups opposing hydrofracking and instead calling for protection of just the New York City watershed, Riverkeeper has sided with unscrupulous politicians and the gas industry willing to sacrifice the rest of rural New York State to industrialization and contamination of waterways,” Jereski said. “Riverkeeper fails to honor its founding mission.”

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"By the age of 70, he who doesn’t read will have lived only one life. He who reads will have lived 5000 years. Reading is immortality backwards."

— Umberto Eco

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TROUBLE

Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando’s daughter hung in the Tahitian bedroom of her mother’s house, while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes you can look at the clouds or the trees and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground. The performance artist Kathy Change set herself on fire while Bing Crosby’s sons shot themselves out of the music industry forever. I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped from an apartment window into the world and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead roles, leaped off the ‘H’ in the Hollywood sign when everything looked black and white and David O. Selznick was king, circa 1932. Ernest Hemingway put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree and overdosed on phenobarbital. My brother opened thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body until it wasn’t his body anymore. I like the way geese sound above the river. I like the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they’re beautiful. Sarah Kane hanged herself, Harold Pinter brought her roses when she was still alive, and Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite in his own mouth though it took six hours for him to die, in 1887. Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned and so did Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Virginia Woolf. If you are traveling, you should always bring a book to read, especially on a train. Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died in prison, naked, a bag around his head, while in 1815 the Polish aristocrat and writer Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet. Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of blues after drawing a hot bath, in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins beneath the water. Larry Walters became famous for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet and then he landed. He was a man who flew. He shot himself in the heart. In the morning I get out of bed, I brush my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best. I want to be good to myself.

— Matthew Dickman

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PEOPLE WHO SAY you get more conservative as you get older are just projecting their own personal shittiness onto everyone else. I get more radicalized by the year. It’s not even about older people having more wealth to protect; I’m making more money than ever before and I still want to obliterate capitalism.

You get more conservative and right wing as you get older if you fail to grow as you age. It just means you’ve been wasting your time on this planet and allowing yourself to become intellectually lazy and morally stagnant.

— Caitlin Johnstone

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