Mendocino County Today: Thursday 12/12/2024

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Laytonville 1.60" - Covelo 1.29" - Ukiah 0.88" - Hopland 0.88" - Boonville 0.85" - Yorkville 0.56"

SHOWERS will continue across the area today. The heavier showers will be in interior Humboldt and Mendocino counties. Rain is expected to taper off this afternoon. More rain is expected late tonight through Saturday afternoon. Snow above 3000 to 4000 feet is expected in Trinity county. Snow levels are expected to be higher elsewhere. Strong southerly winds are expected on Friday as well. Sunday is expected to be dry with another round of rain on Monday. Drier weather is possible Tuesday and Wednesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Our first of 3 systems has gone thru already but not before leaving a healthy 1.30" of rainfall. I currently (4:50am) have clear skies & 47F this Thursday morning on the coast. A lot more rain is forecast thru Monday but there will be breaks between systems. The Saturday system looks to be the strongest.

FLOOD WATCH: An atmospheric river will bring periods of moderate to heavy rain Friday afternoon through Saturday afternoon. (NWS)

MYRNA LEE OGLESBY

September 29, 1935 – November 17, 2024

Myrna Oglesby, a truly remarkable, special woman, devoted mother, wife, grandmother and great-grandmother, accomplished attorney and respected member of her community passed away peacefully at her home on November 17, 2024.

Born in Ukiah, California to Earl Victor Snook and Ruby Alice Phillips Snook, she was born to humble beginnings. The family lived in several rural locations in Northern California, following her father’s various promotions doing highway maintenance. Myrna and her family lived off the land, hunting, fishing, raising chickens and gardening.

In the early 50’s the family moved to Willits. Myrna married John Reitzell, moved to Ukiah, and they had two children, Deborah Perkins (Chris) and Jerry Reitzell Oglesby (Isabel). Myrna married Neal Oglesby in 1964, and their blended family included Keith Oglesby (Jane), Donald Oglesby and Linda Ross (Kelly). Myrna and Neal travelled the world and made memories in many foreign and exotic places. Myrna shared her love of travel with her children and went on cruises to some lovely destinations.

Myrna’s career path spanned from waitress to secretary to attorney, with no college degree and she “read for the bar” instead of going to law school. She passed the California Bar exam on her first attempt and became a lawyer in 1983. She was a partner in the law firm of Rawles, Hinkle, Carter, Behnke & Oglesby, where she had been a secretary and office manager, then began her own practice when the partnership dissolved. She served on the boards of several local organizations, belonged to local service organizations and helped many others with pro bono services or advice.

Neal passed away in August of 2000, and Myrna continued her work for several years living alone until she found love again and married Donald Howard, a widower whom she had known for many years, gaining wonderful relationships with his four children. Myrna and Don had a loving marriage for 12 years until he recently passed away on October 14, 2024.

Myrna is preceded in death by stepson Donald Oglesby, and husbands Neal Oglesby and Donald Howard. She is survived by her brother Walter Snook, daughter Deborah Perkins, son Jerry Oglesby, stepson Keith Oglesby, stepdaughter Linda Ross, grandsons Colby Standley and Jeremy Standley, granddaughter Savanna Oglesby, stepgrandsons Dale Oglesby and Noah Oglesby, great-grandson Carson Standley, and great-granddaughter Kailani Skye Standley.

A memorial gathering will be held sometime next year. Please make any donations to Hospice of Ukiah, 620 S. Dora St., Suite 101, Ukiah, CA 95482

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

REDWOOD CREDIT UNION REVIVES PLANS FOR EMPTY BUILDING IN UKIAH

by Justine Frederiksen

The Ukiah Planning Commission Wednesday will consider a permit submitted by Redwood Credit Union to turn the former Savings Bank of Mendocino County building on East Perkins Street into its new branch in Ukiah.

Jessie Davis, Chief Planning Manager for the city of Ukiah, told the Design Review Board at a special meeting Nov. 21 that Redwood Credit Union had applied for a Minor Use Permit in order to make changes to the vacant building at 414 E. Perkins St.

“This item has been under discussion for some time now, and it is for the renovation and re-utilization of the former Savings Bank of Mendocino County, the Pear Tree Center branch, which has been vacant since 2016,” said Davis, describing the building as currently “non-conforming with the Downtown Zoning Code,” meaning that the city’s codes have changed since the building was first approved in 1981.

And while the intended use may not conform exactly with existing code, Davis said it does fulfill a priority of “re-using existing buildings (because it seeks) to re-use a building that was previously used as a bank facility.”

An RCU representative explained repeatedly when a new branch was being first considered for the corner of Main and Perkins streets, this site had been their preferred choice from the beginning, but the former owner had stipulated that another financial institution could not occupy the building.

However, an RCU representative told the DRB in November that “the owner of the building was able to make an exception (for RCU) to the lease agreement item that would not allow financial institutions to occur, (so) we felt there was an opportunity to use this building in the manner that it was designed, (though) there is a fair amount of work to be done on the building. But it’s an existing structure with good bones, and it has the ability to be re-purposed.”

As for planned upgrades, the representative explained that RCU has tried to be respectful of the building’s “interesting triangular and angular geometry, as well as providing some texture and differentiations.” There were no plans to significantly change the parking layout, but to “enhance the landscaping, create greater pedestrian connectivity and … we’re proposing on closing the back door and focusing on the front entry that sits on Perkins Street.”

In place of the current “sun room structure,” RCU hopes to create an “ATM area, as there is an extra sidewalk, and it seems like a good alcove area to have two ATMs.”

The DRB, with members noting that they were pleased to see the building being re-used, recommended that the project be approved, with a few suggestions about minor changes.

The Planning Commission is scheduled to consider the project at its next meeting Wednesday, Dec. 11, which will be held at 6 p.m. both at the Ukiah Civic Center Council Chambers at 300 Seminary Ave., and online at: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/91264543193.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

FORT BRAGG COUNCIL PICKS JASON GODEKE AS NEW MAYOR

by Frank Hartzell

A divided Fort Bragg City Council picked two already serving councilmembers for city leadership positions: Jason Godeke as mayor and Marcia Rafanan as vice mayor. A Pomo, Rafanan becomes the first self-identified Indigenous person to serve as a leader of the council.

But controversy flared Monday night at Fort Bragg’s Town Hall during the voting. The dispute was between relative newcomers Godeke, Rafanan, and Scott Hockett on one side and veteran councilmembers Tess Albin-Smith and Lindy Peters on the other.

In the Nov. 5 election, longtime councilmember Peters and newcomer Hockett won seats in a four-person race to join the three sitting councilmembers: Godeke, Rafanan, and Albin-Smith. By tradition, Fort Bragg picks its new mayor and vice mayor at the first meeting in December, then takes the end of the year off for a holiday break. The vice mayor serves as mayor in the mayor’s absence, such as when the mayor must recuse her- or himself because of a conflict.

Hockett had no time to just sit back and see how it all works. Thirty minutes after being sworn in, he became the decisive vote over how Fort Bragg would choose its mayors going forward. Albin-Smith and Peters wanted the job to rotate every year or two so both voters and the city would benefit from diverse voices and leadership ideas. And although there have been numerous women on the council, none has been picked for mayor…

FRANK HARTZELL of the Mendocino Voice relays the entire store here: https://mendovoice.com/2024/12/fort-bragg-council-picks-jason-godeke-as-new-mayor/

ED NOTES

WHOA! Feudin' and fussin' on the Fort Bragg City Council this week. Councilperson Tess Albin-Smith on her colleague Marcia Rafanan: “Marcia is a very nice person, she’s very friendly, but she’s definitely not a leader, not comfortable with public speaking, and sadly, we know that she is swayed by certain people who tell her what to say. So she doesn’t have original comments. The job of mayor and vice mayor is too important to give to a person who has no leadership skills. We need someone with a firm hand, quick decision-making ability, fortitude, and who doesn’t need or allow others to tell them what to say. I don’t think Marcia is qualified.”

MS. RAFANAN COUNTERED: “I know what it takes to live here. We need more jobs, not more walking trails. I understand this is a diverse community. I am part of that working-class majority of Fort Bragg here, and like so many of us we need two jobs to get everything done. That’s who I represent. I’m not a polished politician, I’m not a public speaker. I do have disagreements with you. I have my own mind… We don’t need another polished politician. We need somebody that’s real, somebody who knows the struggle to live and work here. That’s me.”

ANY PUBLICLY visible person is going to take his or her lumps. In this county, elected people seldom hear so much as a whisper of criticism, except here in this fine publication. Threats are routine in public life and certainly common in the news biz, which any media slime will verify, and which is why the large circulation papers have guards on their ground floors and uninvited persons never, ever get upstairs to complain directly to a reporter, editor or columnist.

THE ALWAYS MOIST SCOTT SIMON of NPR, a man who has taken audio ass kissing to pornographic levels, has described Biden as “astonishingly eloquent.” Which Biden isn’t. The only time Biden got anywhere near eloquence was when he ripped off a saccharine speech by Neil Kinnock, a British labor politician who was talking about how he was the first person in the thousand year history of the Kinnock family to go to college. Biden was too lazy to look for real eloquence to rip off, riffing on Kinnock to say that he, Joe Biden, was the first person in his family to go to college in fifty million years, I think it was. Without a teleprompter Biden's non-verbal, and even with a teleprompter he's only marginally coherent, angrily slurring his remarks like a raving street drunk.

RECOMMENDED READING: “Off Mike, A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life” by Michael Krasny, which it absolutely is, that and much more, the much more consisting of candid, often very funny, typically self-deprecating, consistently interesting, frequently poignant autobiographical revelations along with Krasny's encounters with an array of writers and intellectuals.

KRASNY retired from his morning slot on KQED Radio a few years ago, and his absence is filled with….. well, un- interesting happy talkers. I listened to Krasny’s talk show on KQED for many years because he’s one of the few radio talkers I could listen to without beating back murder fantasies. I heard him a few times years ago when he was just starting out on KGO, wondering at the time how long a civilized, deeply intelligent man might last in a line-up of blatherers, people who knew all the stories but none of the history and absolutely none of the literature.

SO MASTERFUL that he set the standard on commercial radio, and still sets the standard on public radio, Krasny tells us in “Off Mike” that he was once tempted to move on to the NPR mothership; fortunately for us in NorCal he didn’t because in San Francisco Krasny had control of who he talked with. At NPR he probably would have had to endure interviews with the movie stars and non-verbal musicians Terry Gross specializes in. NPR’s inflated rep as an audio oasis of smart talk is wildly inflated for an unlistenable fact.

OF COURSE when I read in the Chron that Krasny had a book out called ‘Off Mike’ I assumed it would consist wholly of interview transcripts, a very good thing by itself if that’s what it was. But what Krasny has done is to weave his life story in with the interviews, sprinkling these intertwined memories with behind-the-scenes anecdotes of his encounters with famous people, all of them revelatory, some of them startling, some of whom (surprise!) are not very nice.

TAKE the writer Richard Ford who spit on a young black writer named Colson Whitehead and got away with it because, I guess, Whitehead was intimidated by the alleged literary splendor of the older man, a man whose stuff, the best known of which is “The Sports Writer,” has always seemed to me about ten degrees removed from the truth of things. In real life the guy’s a pompous, drunken fool who’s probably gotten away with bad behavior for many years because he’s an “artist” and, you know, “artists” are “eccentric.” Whitehead should have clipped him one, but was apparently so startled he didn’t react. Ford’s an extreme case, and Krasny admires quite a few writers I emphatically don’t, and there are many literary judgments and implications in his book which, if we were having a cup of coffee, we’d argue about in Krasny’s uniquely generous but firm manner, as he moved the conversation along so seamlessly it never bogged down in repetition or simple tedium, and he'd do it without ever being rude, although as is clear from his book where he politely evens some scores, he’s often been sorely tempted.

ONE PROVOCATION I disagreed with: “No one reads any of the work Faulkner produced after forty.” I do. I liked ‘The Reivers’ best of all Faulkner’s books, a book written late in Faulkner's career, and I hope Krasny will get around some time to the Bay Area’s best unknown writer, August Kleinzahler, and he never did get around to interviewing the pivotal Warren Hinckle, the only editor in America who’s never produced a boring publication, a central figure, certainly, in the political-cultural life of Northern California, and a fine, lively writer, too.

KRASNY describes Todd Gitlin as an “old lefty,” which is true only if one conflates “left” and the better Democrats. But I was with Krasny all the way on the removal of the Taliban government of Afghanistan while figures like Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dorn, a pair of sixties bomb throwers spared lengthy jail terms out of simple class privilege, both of them being descended from or connected to the wealthy old left who paid their legal bills for them opposed it. (Only in America can you be opposed to capitalism and get rich off it simultaneously.) Nobody paid Joe Remiro’s legal tab, and he’s buried, forgotten, at Pelican Bay, a Vietnam vet who, in the slogan of the time, literally brought the war home, but did it without the support networks enjoyed by Ayres and Dorn, most of whom re-entered with a vengeance, and if you’re surprised they became Clintonoids and, now, Kamala-ites, you weren’t there.

THE GREAT TALK JOCK took a ton of abuse over his Afghanistan position as only the lockstep left can dish it out, but continued to present guests who didn’t agree with him on the subject, and you’ll be dead and buried before you’ll hear comparably dissident opinion on Pacifica.

ONE REASON Krasny was so grounded, as the therapists say, is his background, which is blue collar Cleveland, not the Berkeley Hills and red diaper summer camps. Just thinking about the book winds me up, and how many books do that for you? If you admired Krasny’s radio work, and more than a million daily listeners did, you’ll enjoy the heck out of his book.

STEPHANIE MARCUM:

Times are tough. Living in Boonville is rough. Your comment about Boonville pricing struck a nerve with me though. The stores here get hit with higher delivery fees and a fuel charge for bringing goods out this way. Big box stores are pushing out the mom n pop businesses because they can order so much bulk and have many more customers, that their pricing CAN be cheaper than in a small store. You mentioned $16 mayonnaise but I think you need to realize that the store that purchased that case of mayonnaise probably isn't making much of a profit on it when you figure they're being charged 13 a jar +delivery+fuel.

The valley isn't the same as when I was a kid. People are rude and their kids are rude. There's no respect for other people's things. I heard about the gunshots but didn't hear them myself, but could have sworn I heard some last night (12.10)

My suggestion to everyone is stop remembering Boonville the way it used to be and don't leave anything you want to keep, where someone can take it

The mentality that we're dealing with now is, “I wanted it so I took it and I didn't hurt anyone, why you complaining?” Get cameras if you can afford it. Put a bat by your front door and sadly be prepared to use it.

Sorry long winded rant.

CHAY PETERSON: Did you see these for sale at Rossi Hardware?? Handmade stick horses created by Julie Winchester just in time for Christmas! I already have one so I thought perhaps y’all might want one too!

BUCKET BRIGADE BLOOD DRIVE MENDOCINO FIREHOUSE DECEMBER 17

A reminder that the Mendocino Fire Protection District and Volunteer Fire Department will be hosting the 19th annual Bucket Brigade Blood Drive on December 17, 2024 from 1:30 pm to 5:00 pm at the Fire House, 44700 Little Lake Road, Mendocino.

The Bucket Brigade is a friendly competition among local fire departments to see which can host the largest blood drive. All donors receive a Bucket Brigade T-shirt as a thank you gift.

The Blood Drive will again be run by Vitalant Blood Services, a non-profit that supplies blood to local area hospitals. They encourage donors to make an appointment to minimize wait time. This can be done online at Vitalant.org or by phone: 877-258-4825.

Give the gift of life this Holiday Season. We had a great turn out last year - hope to see you there.

Sandy Schmidt

Administrative Assistant

Mendocino Fire

RUN FOR COVER

by Mark Scaramella (December 2008)

The Board of Supervisors, two of them departing, held a “strategic planning” workshop on December 15th. The County's twenty or so department heads attended. The County's brain trust had assembled to discuss their “accomplishments” and to consider Assistant CEO Alison Glassey's “action plan” for, presumably, more accomplishments.

But County accomplishments, of which there were nearly none by any adult standard and some were clearly negative, shouldn’t have taken longer to list than Glassey's alleged action plan, the latter consisting of workshops and meetings, known in the outside world as bureaucratic paralysis.

The Action Plan, however, was pushed aside and no one paid much attention to anything but outgoing Supervisor Jim Wattenburger whose clinical-quality paranoia became the whole show.

Strewn among his typically rambling remarks, Wattenburger got everyone's attention when he suddenly volunteered, “Someone mentioned insults, safety, etc. and as we had an incident earlier in the year of an actual threat that was conveyed to us [an unnamed man allegedly pointed a finger to his head while looking at Supervisor John Pinches] I’d like to see somehow in these tough fiscal times that safety for both the board members and public be improved in the board’s chambers as a direction into the future. We talked about that several months ago and I hope that continues… I hate to say it and I hate to admit it, but I was packing a gun at a lot of Board meetings and it was not a situation that I enjoyed. But in one instance I was glad I had the safety net right underneath my desk and I'm sure a certain supervisor [Pinches] feels the same way, that he was glad I had it also.”

Pinches, who is not crazy, and seems to be the only all-the-way-sane supervisor of the five, replied, “I don't know. I've never seen you shoot.”

As the room dissolved in laughter, Pinches continued, “Well, Mr. Chairman, that threat you were referring to in the board room, I didn't take it that seriously. I’ve been shot at twice in my life and that guy didn’t even have a gun, so I wasn't too worried about it.”

Wattenburger came back with, “I’ll put you in front of me, then.”

And everyone laughed again.

But the news that a person who imagines threats to his safety regularly carried a gun to public meetings wasn't a laughing matter.

Wattenburger doesn't have a concealed weapon permit. He knew he was violating the concealed weapon law because he said he was operating outside the law last year on KZYX. The Ukiah-area supervisor retired early from CalFire on a mental stress disability. Wattenburger has previously claimed, with no confirming evidence, that he and his wife have been threatened. Wattenburger did not report these threats to the police, but he suggested they originated with (1) pot people, or (2) opponents of the proposed mall north of Ukiah. In other words, hippies crazier than him.

District Attorney Lintott would not return media calls asking if she intended to prosecute Wattenburger for the misdemeanor offense of carrying an unpermitted concealed weapon.

Ukiah Police Captain Trent Taylor, implying that Wattenburger was lying about having a gun in the Board chambers, told the Press Democrat: “It's not illegal to simply say you have a weapon.”

However, brothers and sisters, if one of us were to walk up to a cop and say, “Officer, I'm carrying a loaded gun,” we could expect to be loudly and repeatedly accused of intercourse with our mothers, handcuffed, thrown to the pavement, picked up and thrown to the pavement again by the entire Ukiah Police Department while Officer Hoyle trampolined our heads and the Sheriff's Department lurked in the background as “backup.”

Having confirmed to the world that our supervisors may be America's wackiest elected body, and Wattenburger having announced he's ready round the clock to commence firing, the rest of the “strategic workshop” was anticlimactic. It was little more than an opportunity for department heads to tell a disbelieving public – the few people in the County who pay any attention to County business – what a swell job they're doing.

Alexander Cockburn and Fred Gardner admiring an edition of the mighty AVA. (Fred Gardner)

THE MURDER OF SHERIFF SMITH, December, 1905

AVA News Service/compiled from archival newspapers…

One of the most deplorable tragedies in the history of Mendocino County occurred last Friday morning when Sheriff Henry Smith was shot and killed by Frank Willard. The tragedy occurred in the judge's chambers just after Willard had been committed to the state hospital. Drs. Dickison and Bond, the examining physicians, Clerk McCowen and attorneys Judge Mannon and T. J. Weldon, had left the courtroom and Judge White, Undersheriff D.M. Gibson and the sheriff were still in the room.

As is the custom the judge had inquired whether the prisoner had any money on his person and in reply to an affirmative response had ordered him to deliver it to the custody of the sheriff. Willard did not like to give his money up and protested stating that it “was a hard thing to do to commit a man to the asylum and then take his money away from him too.” Sheriff Smith was talking with him and urging him to comply with the wishes of the judge and Willard had given him three five dollar gold pieces.

He was still arguing about giving up his silver when the telephone rang and Sheriff Smith stepped over to answer it, telling Undersheriff Gibson to get the silver. Willard suddenly rose from his chair and pulled a pistol from his pocket and started for the door. Sheriff Smith turned from the telephone just as Willard was reaching the door and made a rush for him to prevent his escape. He grabbed him just as he was going through the door and Willard turned and shot the sheriff. He quickly whirled and shot at Judge White but fortunately in changing aim the jamb of the door casing came in line and spoiled his aim, the shot barely missing its intended mark.

Judge White slammed the door and locked it and turned to Sheriff Smith to see if he was hurt. Smith was still standing but was unable to speak. The judge then led him to the lounge and lain him down where he died in a few minutes without being able to speak. Undersheriff Gibson rushed to the door and downstairs calling to the people that the sheriff had been shot and asking them to apprehend the assassin. The murderer had rushed down the stairs from the judge's chambers brandishing his smoking revolver and calling that he would kill the first man who interfered with him. Assessor Thomas heard the noise and opened his door only to have the pistol flourished at him. A number of county officials rushed to the court room and the news that Sheriff Smith was murdered spread rapidly.

Willard ran across the court house square and down by the Bank of Ukiah passing through Stitt's lumber yard and taking off across the fields to the river. A mob of citizens were on his track almost immediately but were armed with only shotguns and pistols and their shots proved ineffective and the fleeing man was gaining distance from them. Rufe and Tom Lucas and Deputy Clerk Ganter divined his intention of reaching the river and started for the Vichy crossing in a delivery wagon coming up with the pursuing citizens just as Willard was entering the Vichy canyon.

Being informed of his whereabouts they continued up the road and a few yards further on came in sight of him. Willard seeing he was closely pursued left the road and started over the hill, Tom Lucas jumping from the wagon and following him. Rufe opened fire but was unable to get a good shot as the man was running through the brush. Willard saw that further attempt at fight was useless and threw up his hands, later throwing away his pistol and surrendering to Tom Lucas just as Auditor Caughey and Fern Gray came up, the rest of the crowd closing in almost immediately.

The prisoner was placed in the delivery wagon and surrounded by armed guards was started for this Ukiah to be lodged in jail. Just as they were entering town they were surrounded by a mob and only through the greatest efforts of the guards was the mob prevented from lynching the captured man. When the jail was reached another mob surrounded the guards and their prisoner and another attempt at lynching was made. A large rope was secured and willing hands were there to use it, but Auditor Caughey and several other citizens addressed the mob and succeeded in quieting them.

The crowd remained around the jail for some time and the situation still looked bad. As soon as the people had begun to disperse and the street in front of the jail was well cleared, a rig was brought and the murderer was placed in it and rapidly driven to the asylum by William Ornbaun, William Gibson and Tom Lynch.

Frank Willard had come to town Thursday and was acting queer having visited the law offices of Mannon & Mannon and stated that he wished to have the legal authorities take his case and have the parties who insisted in throwing the X-ray on him restrained. He imagined that he was working for Governor Pardee and was commissioned to keep order and suppress a certain tough element that he said had been creating disturbances.

It was noticed that he did not appear right and the matter was reported to Sheriff Smith and he accordingly hunted Willard up and asked him to come around to his office as he wished to talk with him. Smith left him sitting by the firehouse talking to Deputy Sheriff Gibson and William Ornbaun while he went to get the warrant for his arrest. He was asked if he carried a pistol and replied that he did not but supposed that he should. He was then taken to the judge’s chambers where the tragedy took place soon after.

District Attorney Duncan when interviewed in the matter stated that he would make an attempt to bring the murderer to trial as soon as a Sheriff was appointed and there was someone to serve the papers. The hardest part of the case will be to prove Willard's sanity. According to the law a man proved insane cannot be tried for a crime. Some believe that he was playing insanity and that he came here with a pre-arranged plan to kill Sheriff Smith and Judge White as it is said that he had threatened to do so on several occasions.

Willard has twice before been confined in the asylum. Once he was committed from Santa Rosa and once from Hopland. He was suspected of having been connected with the murder of his stepfather at Hopland some years ago but nothing was ever proven against him as the authorities could secure no evidence in the case. However the case may go, it is safe to say that the sympathy of the people will be with the prosecution.

Quiet and unpretending, almost dreading publicity, Sheriff Smith went about doing good, helping the needy or relieving the distressed.

No one deserving help and making their needs known to Henry Smith was ever turned away empty handed. Especially characteristic was his careful avoidance of anything in word or manner that might offend anyone or leave any feelings of ill will.

He wished to be everyone's friend and he wished everyone to be his, and he succeeded as few men can ever expect to do.

As a public official he discharged every duty of sheriff with conscientious care and with an exacting regard for the requirements of the law, adjusting and interpreting all things for the best interests of those concerned.

The funeral Sunday afternoon was one of the largest ever known in Ukiah and everyone was a grief stricken mourner at the bier of a departed friend, blending their tears of sympathy and sorrow with those of the broken-hearted wife and family.

John Henry Smith was born in Solano County February 14, 1856 and was brought to Mendocino County by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. John T. Smith, in 1857, making his home here continually ever since.

In 1879 he was married to Miss Belle Milne, who survives him. To them four children were born, Charley, Madge, Claire, and Ronald, all of whom are living.

He was next to the oldest in a family of ten children, three boys and seven girls, and all attended the funeral except one, Mrs. Helen Reeves, who is in Los Angeles and could not come.

The floral offerings were the most beautiful ever seen in Ukiah, completely covering the grave and transforming it into a bower of beauty over six feet high.

Some of the elegant pieces were those given by the county officers, the Odd Fellows' Lodge, and the telephone employees, and there were hundreds of others from loving friends far and near.

The funeral services at the house Sunday afternoon were attended by everyone who could do so, the procession extending from the cemetery to Orr Creek Bridge. There were over two hundred vehicles in line.

The services were held under the auspices of the Odd Fellows and Rebekah Lodges, of both of which he had been a member for many years.

From Willits, Potter Valley, Calpella, Hopland, Boonville and almost every hamlet in the county came friends to pay respect to the memory of the man whose life was full of acts of kindness. There were also many present from Santa Rosa and San Francisco who had learned to love and respect him.

The services at the house were conducted by the Rev. George D. B. Stewart, of the Presbyterian Church, and then the friends of the deceased began to file into the house to take a long, last view of the remains. There was scarcely a dry eye in the vast concourse of people that passed by the bier. Strong men, old and young, came forth convulsed with grief as they thought of some act of kindness conferred upon them by the one who lay silent in death. For the needy and sore, distressed were often the beneficiaries of his deepest humanity.

The ceremonies at the grave were under the auspices of the Odd Fellows, of which organization the deceased had long been an honored member. The largest concourse of people that this city has ever seen marching to the silent city of the dead followed the remains of John Henry Smith to its lasting resting place. When the hearse had arrived at the grave the last buggy had not yet left the home of the deceased, and by the time the last carriage had reached the cemetery the services had been concluded.

While words utterly failed to console the heartbroken family, it must have been some consolation to them to see the great manifestations of reverence and respect in which the dead husband and father was held by the people of his hometown. Henry Smith was a big hearted, broad minded man and loved his family and home. He was a loving husband and a most devoted father.

He left an estate of about $15,000 in real estate, $15,000 in money, notes, mortgages, and other personal property and $8,000 life insurance. He had deeded the real estate to his wife and the deeds were recorded today.

Besides countless friends and a number of relatives, he leaves a grief stricken wife, three sons, Claire, Ronald, and Dr. C.H. Smith, of Cloverdale, and one daughter, Madge, a graduate of the state university, to mourn his tragic end.

The floral tributes in their beauty and magnificence spoke volumes of the tenderest sympathy and love for the man whose friends are legion. Never before has Ukiah witnessed such a varied and choice array of blossoms. And today he sleeps under a wilderness of flowers, remembered always by the many acts of charity and the great human sympathy shown to the lonely and desolate.

BILL KIMBERLIN:

This is my friend Nick, I was able to have him and his wife up to Boonville last summer. They are both paleoanthropologists at the University of Indiana and have their own research center there called, "The Stone Age Institute" of which I am on the advisory board.

I think that in order to answer the three most important questions of mankind, which are…"who are we, where did we come from, and why are we here?", we must study early man. For the most part paleoanthropology has now answered those questions.

PS. The allegations in the indictment of Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the election of 2020 represent the American Founders’ nightmare. A key concern of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton was that demagogues would incite mobs and factions to defy the rule of law, overturn free and fair elections and undermine American democracy. “The only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1790. “When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper…is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity,” Hamilton warned, “he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, December 11, 2024

JOSEPH ANDERSEN, 37, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, false personation of another, failure to appear.

AGUSTIN BALANDRAN, 34, Cloverdale/Ukiah. DUI, resisting.

CHRISTOPHER BECK, 27, Ukiah. Probation violation, resisting.

MICHAEL CRAIG, 62, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

JOHN DOYLE, 36, Ukiah. Controlled substance, bad check.

EDUARDO GARCIA, 31, Ukiah. Parole violation.

RICARDO GARCIA-GARCIA, 29, Ukiah. Protective order violation resulting in injury.

OMAR GUZMAN, 22, Ukiah. Sexual penetration with force or fear, sexual battery by restraint, domestic abuse, false imprisonment, domestic violence court order violation.

LIAM MILLER, 24, McKinleyville/Piercy. DUI.

CHRITOPHER MORENO, 28, Lakeport/Ukiah. Vandalism, parole violation.

SARAH ORR, 46, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

NATHAN OXFORD, 24, Fort Bragg. Possession of drugs or alcohol in jail with prior.

ADAM VASQUEZ, 34, Hopland. Probation revocation.

Chaco Canyon remnants, 1000-1250 AD (Randy Burke)

DESPERATELY SEEKING SLEEP SOLUTIONS

by Paul Modic

An out-of-town visitor stopped by yesterday afternoon and we talked for an hour. The banter was freewheeling, free-flowing, revealing, and neither of us were complaining, just sharing ideas, impressions, and experiences. That night I had my first great night’s sleep in three months, making me think: Could regular social interactions help me sleep better? (I had made a long list of possible reasons this insomnia had come roaring back recently and loneliness and isolation had been in the secondary category of long shots. I had read my neighbor the list but he’d poo poo’ed my woo woo.)

I decided to give it a try, make an effort to create one social interaction a day, and see if I could make it two days in a row of good sleep.

I had told Jenny that I wanted to take her out for a cuppa coffee, or something, to celebrate the moment when we had first met last February, when I had been in the post office putting up my first SSI-Info flyers and she was checking her work poster on the bulletin board.

(We were talking for a while when Joe, the editor of the Independent came in and said that some people had told him that my SSI article the week before had been informative. We bantered a bit, I tried to assess his SSI eligibility, and as he was about to leave I said, “What’s it take to get a column in your paper?” He gave me one right there, 600 words, while Jenny looked on.)

I got in contact with her, we arranged to meet at the park later in the afternoon, and when I got there she was sitting on a bench by the parking lot with her little dog jumping around her.

“Oh, I almost stepped in some dog shit,” I said, dodging the pile as I walked over to her.

“That was Sadie,” she said, motioning to her yappy dog, who kept trying to jump up on me as she tried to control it. We talked for a while but after about fifteen minutes the bench was too uncomfortable without a backrest and we decided to drive up to town for a cuppa coffee at Bellini’s.

When she got in her car I almost said, “Aren’t you forgetting something?” But I didn’t, as I’m trying not to be my usual confrontational, provocative, judgmental, critical, and honest self. I need these people, whatever their faults are, so I’m going to have to compromise, right? (After we drove away I decided to go back the next day to pick up the shit myself.)

At Bellini’s she set up a big pillow for her dog outside which eventually attracted several passersby and other dog-lovers, petting and admiring the cute puppy, I guess. I hadn’t been in there since it was “Flavors,” a favorite hangout for trimmers, greenrushers, and everyone else back in the day, about ten years ago. It seemed expensively redone and the menu was full of anything and everything you could want, even milkshakes and root beer floats, though there were few customers. (We stuck to our mint tea, I had called earlier asking if it was all right just to hang out with a friend for a cuppa coffee, and they had said certainly.)

We talked about the local economy, her mother wanting to borrow money with no way to pay it back, her recent move to Southern Humboldt, and I told her some stories, like the one about my endless gift certificate at the Woodrose Cafe, for which I had traded the owner, Pam Hanson, mini-buds. She mentioned the African countries where she had been a missionary, how she wanted to travel again, but wasn’t able to because of finances and her job.

After a while I told her about my experience the day before, how I was attributing my great night’s sleep to my surprise visitor, and confessed that I was using her in this experiment to see if increased social contact would make a difference with sleep and insomnia. (She didn’t seem to mind being used.)

When we got ready to leave I asked, “So what are you going to do now?”

“Go home and read,” she said.

“Oh, what?” I perked up

“The Bible,” she said, and mentioned the verses she was going to read.

It didn’t work, I had a very normal and annoying night of insomnia, up for three hours thinking and reading. I had turned off all screens a few hours before bedtime, following the rules to combat it, and so I didn’t get to watch the big Warriors game when Klay came back. (Shit, I may as well have stayed up late and watched it, I had insomnia anyway.)

After I made a big three-day salad I drove down to the park and scooped poop for the first time in my life. Yes, exciting moment putting my hand in the bag. squeezing my fingers around the two pieces of squishy rain-soaked turd, tying a knot at the top, and tossing it in the turd bucket, mission accomplished.

(What is it with people who don’t clean up after their dogs, even brazenly with a witness? The rules don’t apply to them, just to everyone else? They’re rebels?)

GO IN PEACE, MY SON

Editor:

Before, and then again after he dropped out of the election, President Joe Biden said he would abide by any verdict and punishment handed down in his son Hunter’s tax evasion and gun possession cases. Six months later he just issued a full, and massively sweeping, pardon for his son, even after he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was found guilty of several felony gun crimes.

What many find troubling is that the pardon was exceptionally broad, not only covering the recent charges but also “those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024 …”

The timeline isn’t random if you recall that Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board in April 2014. Although President-elect Donald Trump pardoned some of his allies during his first term, this is a completely different situation. I would like to know with certainty what may or may not have occurred early in this period since this investigation is effectively closed now. However, based on the reasoning behind this pardon, will the same blanket pardon be extended to Trump?

Greg Seifter

Rohnert Park

CHICO MOURNS ‘DEVASTATING LOSS’ OF HISTORIC BIDWELL MANSION IN EARLY MORNING FIRE

by Aiden Vaziri

Chico is grappling with the loss of its beloved Bidwell Mansion, a Northern California landmark that had stood as a symbol of the city’s heritage for more than 150 years.

The mansion, built by Gold Rush figure and city founder John Bidwell and his wife, Annie, was consumed by flames early Wednesday morning, leaving the structure in ruins, according to local authorities.

Firefighters were dispatched around 3 a.m. after reports of a blaze at the mansion on Esplanade. By the time crews arrived, the fire had engulfed the building, forcing firefighters to adopt a defensive strategy.

“The mansion was fully involved by the time our units arrived,” said Chico Fire Assistant Chief Chris Zinko.

Due to the risk of collapse and the intensity of the fire, responders focused on containing the blaze, which had caused severe damage by 6:30 a.m.

Authorities have declared the structure unstable, with much of the interior burned through.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Although initial reports mentioned the possibility of an illegal burn, authorities have not confirmed this theory. Investigators are exploring all leads, including video footage of an individual leaving the area near the time the fire started.

Mayor Kasey Reynolds called it a “devastating loss” and praised the efforts of Chico’s fire and emergency teams.

“Our firefighters, whether on duty or off, gave their all in the face of this fire,” Reynolds said in a statement.

The city has coordinated with numerous agencies, including the Chico Police Department, Cal Fire and California State Parks, which holds primary jurisdiction over the site.

The Bidwell Mansion, constructed in 1868, had been undergoing renovations for the past year.

The building, which features 26 rooms and a Victorian-era design, had long been a centerpiece of local culture. It played an important role in the history of California State University, Chico, serving as a dormitory and later as a campus building.

“Chico State is saddened by the news that Bidwell Mansion, the historic building adjacent to our campus, was destroyed in an overnight fire,” the university posted to Facebook.

Despite the fire, the campus remained open, though several buildings near the mansion were temporarily closed.

Bidwell Mansion, located at 525 Esplanade in Chico, California, was the home of General John Bidwell and Annie Bidwell. The three-story brick structure is built in an informally romantic version of the Italianate style. Now a museum and State Historic Park, it is California Historical Landmark #329 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“Beyond serving as a beautiful landmark and gateway to the northeastern side of campus, Bidwell Mansion played a key role in the University’s history,” the university added. “Its loss is deeply felt by all of us, and we join the Chico community in mourning the loss of this historic home.”

(SF Chronicle)

TRIBAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS SLAM SITES RESERVOIR PROJECT AS GOVERNOR PROMOTES IT

by Dan Bacher

Governor Gavin Newsom continued his “California Jobs First” tour Tuesday with a press event at a farm in Colusa in the Sacramento Valley where he promoted his Administration’s efforts to build Sites Reservoir, a water project strongly opposed by a broad coalition of Tribes, environmental justice groups and fishing organizations.

“The future of California’s water supply flows right through Colusa County — and with that comes enormous economic opportunity and more jobs,” Gavin Newsom claimed. “Farms like this one and all across the state have led the charge by transitioning to smart water practices that not only save water but also conserve critical habitats.”

“But we have to do more to protect our water supply for generations to come,” stated Newsom. “That’s why we’re building more critical water infrastructure, faster to be able to store and move water for the hotter hots and the drier dries. And it’s why we’re doubling down on efforts to replenish the state’s critical groundwater supplies. It’s going to take an all-of-the-above approach — and that means more water and more jobs for Californians.”

According to the Governor’s Office, “At Davis Ranches, a farm started in the 1800s, the Governor learned about its sustainable operations that help the ranch save water and restore crucial floodplain habitat. The Governor also met with local leaders of the California Jobs First Capital Region collaborative to hear from them about their economic priorities.”

The Governor’s stop today was just miles away from where construction of the controversial Sites Reservoir is planned. The Governor’s Office claimed that Sites Reservoir “is critical to California’s Water Supply Strategy and meeting California’s goal of expanding above and below ground water storage capacity by 4 million acre feet. “

Late last year, the Governor certified the project for so-called “streamlining, saving the project from years of litigation delays.”

Sites Reservoir is a proposed 14,000 acre private reservoir in the lower Sacramento River/Upper Bay Delta near Maxwell, California that depends on large scale water diversions from the Sacramento River, according to project opponents. It would become one of the largest reservoirs in the state. Like the Delta Tunnel, it would be designed to mainly deliver water to Southern California and South of the Delta corporate agribusiness interests. California has promised over $816 million in taxpayer money to the project.

In response to Newsom’s praise for Sites, opponents of the reservoir note that Sacramento River water is “already over-allocated by five times its availability and that the reservoir will add to climate change emissions.” They say the Tribal, water supply quality, and environmental impacts would be “devastating” as Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations move closer and closer to extinction.

"Our governor has decided to sideline our most important public processes in order to build a 1.5 million acre-foot reservoir on lands that are sacred to California Native American Tribes," said Regina Chichizola of Save California Salmon. "All Californians should be concerned about privatization of our public water resources. It is obvious the interests of water brokers, big ag, and Southern California water districts mean more to the governor than justice for Native American Tribes and California's most important public resource, clean water."

Chichizola said Tribes recently testified to address significant concerns regarding the proposed reservoir’s impacts. They highlighted the “lack of meaningful Tribal consultation on the project” and advised that the reservoir would flood Tribal cultural resources, Native American graves and sacred sites, and further degrade water quality and salmon runs, harming an important Indigenous food source and traditional lifeway systems.

They also testified that the reservoir “threatens Tribal water and fishing rights and would build new diversion pumps to take fresh water from the Sacramento River and release warm, polluted water into the Bay Delta.”

“It is offensive that the state so poorly consulted with Tribes and then congratulated Tribes for stomaching the state’s neglect and continued abuse of their requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA),” Sherri Norris from California Indian Environmental Alliance pointed out. “Tribes are still in need of Consultation and this project remains in violation of CEQA regardless of how the agencies want to spin it.”

In addition to the Tribal testimony, scientists testified that Sites Reservoir threatened to release toxic algae, warm water and mercury into the state’s water supply, according to Chichizola. They said discharges of polluted water have the potential to adversely impact downstream Tribal lands and water quality, along with the drinking water for over 25 million Californians and the health of local ecosystems.

"Tribes and other project opponents have valid concerns including contamination of drinking water supplies, salmon extinction, and inundation of lands that hold irreplaceable Native American sacred sites and cultural resources. The Project as proposed will cause irreparable harm to Tribal Cultural Resources, including ancestral village sites and burial sites. Governor Newsom should apologize to Tribes for his statement,” concluded Kasil Willie, Staff Attorney for Save California Salmon.

In addition to gushing about the Sites Reservoir project, the Governor also used today’s press conference to promote his Delta Tunnel project.

“The redesigned Delta Conveyance Project would upgrade the State Water Project, enabling California’s water managers to capture and move more water during high flow atmospheric rivers to better endure dry seasons,” according to the Governor’s Office. “The tunnel, a modernization of the infrastructure system that delivers water to millions of people, would improve California’s ability to take advantage of intense periods of rain and excess flows in the Sacramento River. It would also help protect against the risk of an earthquake cutting off water supplies to millions of Californians, currently a 72% chance of 6.7+ magnitude in the area by 2043. Several water agencies representing more than 2 million Californians have voted in support of the additional funding for the project, and the Metropolitan Water District is expected to vote on funding today. “

The Delta Tunnel, like the Sites Reservoir, faces widespread opposition from a coalition of Tribes, fishing groups, conservation organizations, business owners and elected officials. Dozens of people from both Northern and Southern California made comments last night during the public comment period at the One Water and Stewardship Committee of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California meeting.

The committee voted to approve $141.6 million for planning for the Delta Conveyance Project after receiving comments from Delta Tunnel opponents urging MWD to vote against the funding or to delay the vote, citing the devastating environmental, economic and cultural impacts of the projects. The full board and executive committee are expected to vote on the $141.6 million today.

Krystal Moreno, Traditional Ecological Knowledge Program Manager for the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, stated, “MWD should draw lessons from the past two decades - demand is down, people are being more efficient with water usage. Costs are up and affordability is a growing crisis."

“This project is being sold on fear and lies. Fear, that without it, there won’t be enough water for Southern California’s economy. Lies, that there is not an affordable alternative,” Moreno noted.

Newsom’s campaign to build Sites Reservoir and the Delta comes as Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations are in their worst-ever crisis. The Delta Smelt, once the most abundant fish species in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, is virtually extinct in the wild, due to massive water exports to agribusiness and other factors over the past several decades. Zero smelt have been caught over the past six years in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Midwater Trawl Survey.

The ocean and river salmon fishing seasons have been closed for the past two years, due to the collapse of Sacramento River and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon populations. Meanwhile, endangered winter and spring-Chinook salmon populations are moving closer to extinction. Butte Creek, once the stronghold of spring run Chinook, saw a record low of 100 fish return to spawn last year and an even lower number of fish this year.

The Delta Tunnel will divert Sacramento River water before it reaches the Delta when what imperiled fish populations need is more water flowing through the Delta, not less. I challenge tunnel supporters to cite a single project in U.S. or world history where a river or estuary was restored after more water was diverted out of that river or estuary.

Coffee break on the job in Chicago, 1964.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Declining birth rates started long, long before “the vax.”

Birth rates declined because birth control gave women other options than being constantly pregnant, equality movements gave women more ability to earn money while pregnancy and motherhood meant less income for themselves and their families. Children are expensive. And retirement benefits meant that children were no longer needed as a hedge against old age. Easy divorce left more women being the sole breadwinner in a household. All things that society found agreeable.

Frankly, people now have the ability to be more self indulgent and contempt for parenthood has skyrocketed. Motherhood is hard and women never got much respect for “women’s work” by society anyway except from their own children. So what sensible person could be so surprised at the result that they explain it by a conspiracy theory?

JAVAN RASELLA:

My home in North West Missouri (Gilman City) near the Iowa border. Small town of 300, one gas station no stores. I paid $39,000 for this 3 bdrm house and 4 acre hay field inside the city limits with city utilities. I get about 14 large round bails of hay a year. The school is across the street K-12 in a three story building. Great grandparents and great grand children all went to the same school. There's zero traffic as we're not on the way to anywhere else, you dont ever see strangers in town. Everyone waves to each other on the roads and there's no crime so no need for a police department. The closest large town is Bethany MO 20 miles away where my wife works at Walmart, Bethany has 3,000 people and is the county seat. We spend most of our time in Jamesport MO 12 miles away, Jamesport is a large Amish Community of 600 people, there's Amish in Bethany, Trenton, Princeton, Chilicothe, and Jamesport all towns of about 500 - 2,000 people. Kansas City is 100 miles south of us and Des Moines Iowa the same distance North of us. It's very peaceful here traffic doesn't exist except at planting and harvest when seeders, sprayers, combines, grain trucks are out on the roads. Soy beans and corn is all your going to see for at least several hours in any direction. Tornados are always a problem. We got a new roof on our house from baseball sized hail as a tornado passed over the town. So that's our life here in the Heartland.

DECEMBER 2024, EYESORE

by James Kunstler

We’re all for adaptive re-use of old buildings, but just maybe consider a little artistry in the execution of the project. This humdinger used to be St. Somebody’s church in Lawrence, Massachusetts, until a developer got ahold of it and dumped a packing crate over its head to build some commodity “housing.” It’s horrible enough brand-new, but imagine how it will age out. Nice treatment of the gothic windows on the original façade. Just brick-em up — with plywood option. Why bother saving it, really? The new windows on the packing-crate addition are remarkable, too, for their complete absence of aesthetic. They are, in fact, just holes in the wall covered in glass. If the units within are condos, as opposed to rentals, then I tremble for the future of the homeowner’s association that comes with the whole package. Flat roof failure warning ahead. Just sayin’. . . .

Thanks to Tom Thomas for the nomination and to Jacob Shell (@JacobAShell) for posting the darn thing on “X.”

LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

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The Gold Rush at the Heart of a Civil War

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THE NEW PEOPLE IN CHARGE IN SYRIA have announced that they’re going to be opening up the nation’s markets and integrating into the global economy, which is one of the least surprising developments in this story so far. This is textbook disaster capitalism which we see in every major imperial power grab on a disobedient nation. Syria is now set to be picked apart and cannibalized by the highest bidder. Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys.

— Caitlin Johnstone

‘DENY,’ ‘DEFEND,’ & ‘DEPOSE’: LUIGI MANGIONE’S MANIFESTO

by Jeffrey St. Clair & Joshua Frank

Below is the alleged short manifesto written by Luigi Mangione, the suspected killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last week.

To our knowledge, no major news outlet has published this in full, found in his backpack when Mangione was captured in Altoona, Pennsylvania. We believe it’s newsworthy enough to share here and insightful about Mangione’s potential motivations. As of September 2024, UnitedHealthcare saw a profit of over $90 billion over twelve months, up from $60 million in 2020. UnitedHealthcare’s so-called “denial rate” is higher than any other health insurer, and the company has been accused of using algorithms to deny medical treatments.

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy? No, the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

(CounterPunch.org)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Having ensured Trump was always personally in the public eye for all the years after he lost the last election by making everything about hating Trump and never about, well, issues, Trump knows now that not only is mindless criticism not harmful, it is of great benefit to him.

ARGUMENTS OVER WHETHER LUIGI MANGIONE IS A 'HERO' OFFER A GLIMPSE INTO AN UNUSUAL AMERICAN MOMENT

Memes and online posts in support of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who's charged with killing UnitedHealthcare's CEO, have mushroomed online.

by Mike Catalini

Is he a hero? A killer? Both?

About the same time the #FreeLuigi memes featuring the mustachioed plumber from “Super Mario Brothers” mushroomed online this week, commenters shared memes showing Tony Soprano pronouncing Luigi Mangione, the man charged with murdering the UnitedHealthcare CEO in Manhattan, a hero. There were the posts lionizing Mangione’s physique and appearance, the ones speculating about who could play him on “Saturday Night Live,” and the ones denouncing and even threatening people at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s for spotting him and calling police.

It was all too much for Pennsylvania's governor, a rising Democrat who was nearly the vice presidential nominee this year. Josh Shapiro — who was dealing with a case somewhere else that happened to land in his lap — decried what he saw as growing support for “vigilante justice.”

As with so many American events at this moment in the 21st century, the curious case of Brian Thompson and Luigi Mangione has both captivated and polarized a media-saturated nation.

The saga offers a glimpse into how, in a connected world, so many different aspects of modern American life can be surreally linked — from public violence to politics, from health care to humor (or attempts at it).

And it begs a question, too: How can so many people consider someone a hero when the rules that govern American society — the law — are treating him as the complete opposite?

Mangione is in a Pennsylvania jail cell as he awaits extradition to New York on murder charges. Little new information is available about a possible motive, though writings found in Mangione’s possession hinted at a vague hatred of corporate greed and an expression of anger toward “parasitic” health insurance companies.

That detail came after earlier clues showed some bullets recovered from the scene had the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose,” reflecting words used by insurance industry critics. A number of the posts combine an apparent disdain for health insurers – with no mention of the loss of life – with a vague attempt at what some called humor.

“He took action against private health insurance corporations is what he did. he was a brave italian martyr. in this house, luigi mangione is a hero, end of story!” one anonymous person said in a post on X that has nearly 2 million views.

On Monday, Shapiro took issue with comments like those. It was an extraordinary moment that he tumbled into simply because Mangione was apprehended in Pennsylvania. Shapiro's comments — pointed, impassioned and, inevitably, political — yanked the conversation unfolding on so many people's phone screens into real life.

“We do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” the governor said. “In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.”

But to hear some of his fellow citizens tell it, that's not the case at all. Like Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, D.B. Cooper and other notorious names from the American past, Mangione is being cast as someone to admire.

Regina Bateson, an assistant political science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has studied vigilantism, the term to which Shapiro alluded. She doesn’t see this case as a good fit for the word, she says, because the victim wasn’t linked to any specific crime or offense. As she sees it, it's more akin to domestic terrorism.

But Bateson views the threats against election workers, prosecutors and judges ticking up — plus the assassination attempts against President-elect Donald Trump this past summer — as possible signs that personal grievances or political agendas could erupt. “Americans are voicing more support for — or at least understanding of — political violence,” she said.

Shapiro, apparently fed up with the embrace of the killing, praised the police and the people of Blair County, who abided by a 9/11-era dictum of seeing something and saying something. The commenters have Mangione wrong, the governor said: “Hear me on this: He is no hero. The real hero in this story is the person who called 911 at McDonald’s this morning."

Even shy of supporting violence, there are many instances of people who vent over how health insurers deny claims. Consider Tim Anderson, whose wife, Mary, dealt with UnitedHealthcare coverage denials before she died from Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2022. “The business model for insurance is, Don’t pay,” Anderson, 67, of Centerville, Ohio, told The Associated Press.

The discourse around the killing and Mangione is more than just memes. Conversations about the interconnectedness of various parts of American life are unfolding online as well, propelled by the saga. One Reddit user said he was banned for three days for supporting Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted after testifying he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot two people in 2020 during protests. “Do you think people are getting banned for supporting Luigi?” the poster wondered.

The comments cover a lot of ground. They include people saying the UnitedHealthcare slaying isn't a “right or left issue" and wondering what it would take to get knocked off the platform.

“You probably just have to cross the line over into promoting violence,” one commenter wrote. “Not just laughing about how you don’t care about this guy.”

Taken together, the comments make one thing clear: The case — and now Mangione himself — have captured the American imagination, at least for the moment. And when that happens in a nation of phones and memes, a lot of people are going to have opinions — from anonymous commenters on Reddit to the governor of Pennsylvania himself.

(AP)

DANIEL PENNY RAILS AGAINST FAILED POLICIES, PROSECUTORS’ ‘ARROGANCE’ IN REVEALING FIRST INTERVIEW SINCE FATAL SUBWAY CLASH

by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon

Marine vet Daniel Penny blamed a failed criminal justice system for forcing him into his highly-charged encounter with vagrant Jordan Neely on a crowded subway train — and slammed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for taking him to trial in the case.

Penny, 26, speaking to Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro in his first interview since a jury acquitted him of negligent homicide charges, said prosecutors seem to have their heads in the sand.

“It really showed their arrogance in kind of their lack of understanding of what’s really happening and, really, what public perception of crime [is],” he said. “And no matter whatever anyone says on the news, it’s pretty prevalent. It just showed their arrogance that they were going to get me on something.

Daniel Penny told Fox Nation host Jeanine Pirro that he sensed trouble just 15 seconds after Jordan Neely showed up on a Manhattan subway train last year.

“It was disheartening for sure — and I don’t mean to get political,” he told Pirro. “These are their policies that have clearly not worked, that the people, the general population are not in support of.

“Yet, their egos are too big just to admit that they’re wrong and they can’t reverse what they’ve done, because that’s a political suicide for them, I guess,” Penny said.

He said he was taken aback by how far the city subway system had deteriorated upon his return from active military duty when he began living and studying in the five boroughs.

“Definitely different from what I remembered it to be before the Marine Corps. Before the Marine Corps pre-COVID, it was pretty tame, pretty safe,” he said. “I guess I was pretty innocent to all the things that were going on.

“And then I got here and this whole new, I guess, perception of what happened or the perception of safety here in New York is was changed,” Penny added.

Penny, who grew up in West Islip and had two deployments while in the Marine Corps, said he was on his way home from classes at City Tech in Brooklyn when he found himself in the middle of the heated subway scene on May 1, 2023.

The May 1, 2023 fatal encounter between Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely on a Manhattan subway train last year devolved into a racially charged and polarizing criminal trial.

“Once the jacket was thrown, he didn’t say anything prior to that, at least I don’t remember him saying anything prior to that,” he said. “It was — it was really at that point, too, there was that feeling that vacuum, that I’d never felt before in any situation.”

He said he took off his earbuds as things quickly unfolded “to keep an eye on the situation” as Neely began screaming and threatening straphangers, loudly making demands from frightened passengers for fast food and drinks, and warned that he was willing to kill someone and go to jail.

“Within those 15 seconds, I mean, there was contemplation,” Penny told Pirro. “Should I just wait? Should I go to a different car? Should I move away? But I saw the looks on — on the mother, on the, on the school kids, on the other passengers, women, children.

“The threats were imminent and something had to be done,” he said. “[Passengers] were holding each other and just — and people were stuck to their chairs. They felt pinned, and I felt pinned. I felt nervous, I felt scared.”

Daniel Penny told Fox host Jeanine Pirro that he felt he had to protect straphangers from an “aggressive” Jordan Neely.

He said that’s when he decided to act.

“When we first get to the ground, he lands on my chest. He knocks the wind [out of] me. I hit my head on the … subway floor,” Penny told Pirro. “There’s a moment of calm. A feel of a tension in his body.

“It’s almost like he was shocked that someone did something. And that lasted like a second or two. And I would — I was — in that second or two, I was hoping that that would be it,” he said. “Didn’t happen… [Neely] planted his feet on his ground and arched back. He was able to like lift me up and pedal his feet.”

Penny, who called Neely “extraordinarily strong,” said he wrapped his legs around him and hung on — sensing the vagrant’s strength came in part from smoking the synthetic drug K-2.

“I look over my shoulder and one of the things I say is, ‘where are the police?’ I’m exhausted, I’m tired,” he said. “I was swimming a mile a day and I was still, could not believe that his level of endurance.

A Manhattan jury on Monday found Daniel Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in Jordan Neely’s death.

“At some point the thrashing ended” and police arrived — but didn’t tell him Neely had died when detectives later brought him in for questioning, he said.

Penny was later indicted on manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the case. On Friday, with a jury hopelessly deadlocked on the top charge, prosecutors asked that the manslaughter count be tossed for jurors to deliberate only on the negligent homicide charge.

On Monday the jury acquitted Penny on that charge.

(Reuters)

PEOPLE WHO SAY VIOLENCE is never the answer are usually ignoring some massive and hugely consequential forms of systemic violence which gave rise to the violence they’re denouncing. It happened with October 7, and it happened with the health insurance CEO.

Yesterday I asked my Twitter followers to complete the following sentence: “Instead of physically attacking the abusive plutocrats who expand their wealth and power by ruining lives and killing people, ordinary citizens should use the other options that are available to them to address such injustices, such as ______.”

The responses were interesting. I got a lot of angry replies from people saying I was encouraging violence by posing this question, which is actually pretty revealing if you think about it. I didn’t actually encourage violence, I just asked people to list what the alternative options to violence were. If these respondents were aware of options besides violence for dealing with the abuses of wealthy oligarchs, it would never have occurred to them to see my question that way. They themselves see no way to resolve these abuses besides violence; they just think people should submit to continued abuse.

Watching all the widespread support for the CEO’s suspected killer Luigi Mangione reminds me of a 2014 essay by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer titled “The Pitchforks Are Coming For Us Plutocrats” warning what he termed his “fellow zillionaires” that “No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality.”

“The problem isn’t that we have inequality,” Hanauer wrote. “The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.”

“If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us,” warned Hanauer. “No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.”

Hanauer wasn’t speaking out of compassion or altruism but basic self-concern. He wasn’t trying to help the poor, he was trying to avoid meeting his maker at the business end of a guillotine blade.

All the rage and bloodlust directed toward these plutocrats does seem to be approaching the boiling point he warned of. I don’t know how this is going to play out, but I will say we’re at a fascinating point in history.

— Caitlin Johnstone

BODIES

by Alex Abramovich

Security footage showed the suspect stopping at a Starbucks before the shooting. He’d worn surgical gloves to handle his coffee cup. While the police were searching for him, something else — a “a ceaseless feast of schadenfreude” — was spreading online: “Prior authorization is required for thoughts and prayers”; “Does he have a history of shootings? Denied coverage.”

Some pointed out that the NYPD’s reward for information, $10,000, was less than the average UnitedHealthcare deductible. The observation that justice had become as transactional as American healthcare – a system in which companies like UnitedHealthcare routinely imposes $14,000 deductibles on families – spread quickly, because it wasn’t really news to anyone. On social media sites, UnitedHealth Group had to disable comments after tens of thousands of users reacted to Brian Thompson’s death notice with the “clapping” emoji.

The body has always been one of America’s primary political frontiers, a place where our deepest contradictions play out. A nation founded on radical freedom, built on radical bondage; a constitution that proclaimed liberty and enshrined chattel slavery, reducing human bodies to property, labor to capital. The contradiction persists in new forms, in a world where algorithms and actuarial calculations determine which lives matter and which don’t. UnitedHealth’s 32 per cent claim denial rate – double the industry average – isn’t a bureaucratic statistic; it’s a “death sentence by spreadsheet,” as one user on Reddit had it. In Texas, the state offers private citizens $10,000 to sue anyone who helps provide an abortion. The methods vary but the logic remains the same: some bodies must be controlled, and everyone must be enlisted in maintaining that control.

It isn’t that we lack the traditional warning signs. The torchlit parades, chants of “blood and soil,” are still part of our political repertoire. But our endless debates about whether fascism is coming – our fixation on these spectacular displays – obscure the ways that corporatized state violence has been here all along. That so many progressive Americans took such satisfaction in the death of a middle-aged father of two suggests how thoroughly each side has absorbed the other’s logic – and the media’s bafflement at this response reveals its continued inability to come to grips with men (Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Elon Musk) and movements (MAGA, Project 2025) that have telegraphed their intentions at every turn.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr frames vaccine mandates as violations of individual freedom while championing restrictive abortion policies that place bodies under state control. The pandemic turned schools into battlegrounds where public health measures, driven by legitimate concern for safety, collided with deeply personal questions of autonomy.

In Texas, the lieutenant governor said:

“No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”

Suggestions that older Americans, essential workers or the immunocompromised should have sacrificed themselves for the economy crystallized how thoroughly our bodies had become instruments of political will. Along with inflation, these are the faultlines – between personal freedom and state control, protection and coercion – that drove the American election.

The pattern repeats everywhere that power meets flesh. At the border, migrants become data points in a vast bureaucratic machinery, their bodies tracked, detained and processed according to algorithms that determine their value. In state legislatures, lawmakers dictate which bathrooms people can use, which medical care they can receive, which sports teams they can join, as if identity were something to be authorized or denied, like an insurance claim.

Even public health, meant to protect life, becomes another system of sorting and control. Essential workers. High-risk populations. Pre-existing conditions. Each category determines whose bodies matter, whose labor is necessary, whose lives are expendable, whose murders make headline news. The language changes as the underlying system resets: bodies must be classified before they can be controlled.

Fascism doesn’t start where the body ends; it begins by absorbing the body entirely – “everything within the state, nothing outside the state” – and this absorption happens at a physical as well as a psychological level. The wave of euphoria over Thompson’s murder signals something beyond anger at a broken system. His death became a kind of collective revenge fantasy, his body transformed from person to symbol. As if here, too, some bodies must be sacrificed for the collective good.

Santa Leaving Bar (NYC), 1968. Photo by Bruce Gilden

14 Comments

Amen December 12, 2024

Response to Paul Modic…

Ditto on weird sleeplessness.

- Paul Modic December 12, 2024
  
  Yeah, seems to be a universal issue, my latest plan: Just one cup of coffee in the morning and stop watching the smart TV in the afternoon…
  
Jacob December 12, 2024

Re ED NOTES

You misquoted Tess because you omitted the middle of her tirade against Marcia where her most offensive language exists. Tess accused Marcia of not being able to read and write on her own and how she wasn’t even a voice for her local tribe. You should provide all the language or note an omission with a ellipses where you omitted the middle of her statement.

- Bruce Anderson December 12, 2024
  
  I was working off Frank Hartzell’s piece wherein Tess’s assessment seemed quite severe enough. Feel free to pile on.
  
  - Jacob December 12, 2024
    
    Frank is sometimes inaccurate and thus not a good source, IMO. He didn’t even get several basic facts straight in one of the pieces he wrote about Monday. I recommend watching the video if you want an accurate quote. Marcia is misquoted too. The ridiculous statement from Tess, which she prepared beforehand and read, starts a little after 40 minutes into the meeting video if you watch the version on the City’s website and after the 50 or 52 minute mark in the version on Facebook. Tess spoke right after Lindy made his pitch for himself for vice mayor, which was a little rude but nothing compared to Tess.
    
    - Bruce Anderson December 13, 2024
      
      You really should run for the Council your own self, Jacob, rather than work so hard on subversion. You’ve cost Fort Bragg a lot of time and money, not to mention the people you’ve driven out of their jobs.
      
Craig Stehr December 12, 2024

Regarding the photo of Santa leaving the bar in midtown Manhattan, it is obvious that he was on a pee break, not alcohol binging. Wake up, AVA!!

Call It As I See It December 12, 2024

We live in a world where, Luigi Manigone is considered a hero and Daniel Penny is a villain.

Think about that, one guy cowardly shot another in the back for a cause, the other defended a subway car of women and children from a crazed individual who was threatening to kill them.

This is exactly why we are failing as a nation. No common sense!

- Harvey Reading December 12, 2024
  
  We are a failed nation because we allow ourselves to be ruled by wealthy scum who rip us off and propagandize us 24-7 via their nooze media,
  
Mike Williams December 12, 2024

The Sheriff Henry Smith murder story is quite the ripping tale! Complete with courtroom drama, a flash of violence, hot pursuit, and a near lynching. Ukiah was just past it’s frontier status. Kudos to whoever dug up this one.

McEwen Bruce December 12, 2024

Esteemed Editor,
Looks like they found an old AVA up in Chico, one with the “Burn the Palaces” epigram below the banner and took it literally. I’ve been by the now burnt mansion many times in recent years and I do hope some of those fabulous roses survived the blazes. As an admirer of flowers, Chief, you would love ‘em. In June, especially.Tall as trees and great huge enormous big bountiful blooms bowing overhead like you were on acid or something…!

Betsy Cawn December 12, 2024

“BODIES” — in the system of “redistribution” of federal tax dollars to states for provision of programs serving older disabled adults, every “reimbursable” action is a “Unit of Service.” That’s who and what we are, faceless and impersonal. Your body receives “Units of Service” that are recorded and reported by the bloated state bureaucracy that metes out the remains of pilfered Social Security funds, while the bureaucrats themselves are paid for their eventual retirement pensions. Do not, for heaven’s sake, actually look at what those Units of Service consist of — it’ll make you ill.

- McEwen Bruce December 12, 2024
  
  We wait in our exorbitant retirement condo until we can be judged unable to care for ourselves any more then we graduate to the assisted living facility and from thence to the nursing home where we abide until all our resources are drained away and then at last we can take the last step down to oblivion with scarcely two zinc pennies on our eyelids to pay Charon to pull us across the river Styx!
  
Chris Dawson December 12, 2024

Could not agree more with comments about Michaet Krazny. I miss his radio show, but I do enjoy his current podcast, “Grey Matter”, same Michael Krazny, same hour long conversation with someone worth listeg to.

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