Mendocino County Today: Saturday 1/4/2025

Partly Sunny | Frosty | Bad Faith | Bowling Balls | Trash Service | Catfish Conviction | "Slow" Down | Anchor Management | RCS Treatment | PIT Count | Senior Lunches | Ed Notes | Saltgirl Apparel | Catholic Crabfeed | Piano Concert | Planning Cancelled | Old Ukiah | Yesterday's Catch | Old TVs | Marco Radio | Cult | Safe Havens | Bookworm Group | Immigration Policy | Watch Drinks | Prop 36 | Normal Burnout | Paying Purdy | I Believe | Didion Books | Suspected Killer | Charles Willeford | Dog Stays | Healthcare Rage | Hey Nonny | Mind Control | Dimwit Trumpsters | Caffeine Spectrum | Disparaging Donald | Captain America | Adelson Video | Dark Drawer | Odious Villain | Ruffles Conundrum | Class Action | Beatnicks | Lead Stories | Just Energy

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STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Morning rain, late morning clearing skies, then an afternoon big rain brought us .38" for an unusual weather Friday. A partly cloudy 44F on the coast this Saturday morning, A 20% chance of a shower tonight then clear skies until further notice, good.

INTERMITTENT LIGHT RAIN is expected today in Del Norte and Humboldt, with additional periods of light rain Sunday and early Monday. Dry weather and warmer temperatures are expected starting on Tuesday and lasting through much of the upcoming week. (NWS)

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‘BAD FAITH’: CRUCIAL COURT HEARING SET MONDAY IN CUBBISON CASE

by Mike Geniella

Key witnesses in a criminal felony case targeting suspended Mendocino County Auditor Chamise Cubbison are expected to testify Monday during a court hearing on defense attorneys’ bid to have the case dismissed.

Retired Auditor Lloyd Weer, Sheriff’s investigator Andrew Porter, and Tony Rakes, head of the county’s IT services at the time of a collapse of the county’s email archival system, are under subpoena to appear to offer their versions of events surrounding an alleged felony misappropriation of $68,000 in public funds for extra pay for former county Payroll Manager Paula June Kennedy. The hearing before Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Monday in Courtroom E of the Ukiah Courthouse.

Cubbison lawyer Chris Andrian said the roles of Weer, Porter and Rakes “need to be cleared up.”

Special prosecutor Traci Carrillo, hired by District Attorney David Eyster to press a case against the suspended county Auditor who had questioned his own office’s spending, could not be reached Friday for comment.

Since Eyster filed criminal charges in October 2023, the high-profile Cubbison case has slowed to a crawl.

After 15 months, a preliminary hearing – the most basic step in any criminal prosecution – has yet to be held. The Cubbison case has instead experienced a slew of court hearings, the DA’s withdrawal in favor of hiring outside prosecutor Carrillo at the rate of $400 per hour, the discovery of thousands of missing internal county emails because of an alleged collapsed internal archive system, and rising questions about the possible role of retired Auditor Weer who was in still in charge of the office when Kennedy started drawing the extra pay.

“It seems this case is all about internal procedures, and not theft,” said Andrian this week.

Andrian said he believes Monday’s hearing will lead to a clearer understanding of who authorized the extra pay, whether internal county emails that might have supported who decided what, and perhaps to what extent politics played in the decision to prosecute.

DA Eyster and Cubbison had been at odds over his office’s spending, and he took the extraordinary steps of publicly denouncing her before she was elected to succeed Weer. He blocked Cubbison from being appointed interim county Auditor by the Board of Supervisors when Weer decided to retire in September 2021.

Eyster accused Cubbison and Kennedy of scheming to use an obscure county payroll code (470) to illegally allow the disputed extra pay over a three-year period. Kennedy was a salaried management employee at the time, and not entitled to extra compensation unless authorized by the Board of Supervisors.

Cubbison has insisted from the beginning that she was not party to the extra pay agreement. She has contended that it was reached between Kennedy and Weer who was still in charge of the office at the time payments began in October 2019. When questioned by law enforcement investigators Weer denied any involvement, although he eventually admitted that he in fact had talked with Kennedy about extra pay.

While Kennedy and Cubbison are co-defendants in the criminal case, they had a volatile work relationship before charges were filed, according to court documents. Kennedy chose to blame Cubbison for allegedly giving verbal permission to use the obscure pay code in question, although she acknowledges she cannot document her claims.

On December 16 Public Defender FredRicco McCurry, Kennedy’s new lawyer, filed a motion supporting Andrian’s bid to have the case tossed. In it, further details about the case’s background emerged.

McCurry stated that Cubbison periodically requested flex/compensatory time for Kennedy due to the excess hours the payroll manager was working without compensation. “Those requests were denied,” said McCurry.

McCurry said Kennedy sent an email to Cubbison declaring she had worked 390 unpaid hours, and that if she were not compensated, she would “resign her position and seek legal action.”

Cubbison “reported the email to the County Counsel’s Office, which resulted in the current investigation and eventual criminal charges.”

Sheriff’s Investigator Andrew Porter was assigned the case, which eventually led to Kennedy being placed on administrative leave and her county electronic devices and payroll files confiscated. Kennedy has denied any wrongdoing.

McCurry contends in his motion that Cubbison told Porter she was unsure how serious to take the threatened lawsuit because Kennedy was “often overwhelmed.”

Cubbison said she discussed with Kennedy her frustration of working too many hours but being exempt from receiving overtime pay. “Cubbison discussed the issue with Weer and HR (Human Resources) representative Heidi Dunham. Cubbison tried to get Kennedy additional compensation.”

Cubbison, however, contends she did not know what the ultimate results were from the discussion but that she “assumed that Weer addressed the issue directly with Kennedy and that the 470 code payments were the solution approved by Weer.”

Court documents show that Weer initially denied any agreement with Kennedy, and that he contended to investigator Porter that Cubbison was Kennedy’s “direct supervisor.”

“Weer confirmed he knew Kennedy was overworked, but that he had not approved and had no knowledge of the compensation,” according to McCurry’s motion.

Yet McCurry found that when Kevin Bailey, former chief investigator for Eyster, had a final interview with Weer, the retired Auditor “confirmed that he had a conversation with Kennedy in which she told him about two county employees who had figured out how to get additional pay. Weer told Kennedy they should find out how and see if it could be used to benefit Kennedy.”

Of equal concern at Monday’s hearing will be Investigator Porter’s role in failing to preserve internal county emails among Weer, Cubbison and Kennedy at the time the extra pay was emerging as an internal issue. The defense attorneys believe the missing internal documents could explain the conflicting explanations offered by Cubbison, Kennedy and Weer.

“Weer, Cubbison and Kennedy have conflicting and inconsistent versions of the events in this case. Emails from Weer, Cubbison, or both, to Kennedy or each other would have established whether Kennedy acted unilaterally in receiving the 470 code payments, or if she were authorized the compensation by her supervisors,” McCurry argued in his motion to dismiss.

Prior to February 2024, after Eyster filed felony charges against Cubbison and Kennedy, the county email accounts for the defendants were set aside presumably to preserve them as evidence. Oddly, no email accounts for Weer were set aside.

Then 11 months ago, the defense attorneys were informed of an alleged email archive failure that made it impossible to secure any emails prior to June 2020, the critical period when documents might have shown what led up to the 470 code payments.

In January 2024, missing email accounts of Weer, Cubbison and Kennedy were found and uploaded to a secure network location but by August the county informed the court that when access was attempted it was discovered not all emails were present and “some of the folders were empty.”

The missing emails included Cubbison’s account from 2019, and emails from all three from January 2020 to June 2020.

Judge Moorman hired a special referee to review approximately 10,000 emails from county email boxes assessed to Cubbison, Weer and Kennedy that were recovered.

In a special report filed December 4 Moorman stated that the referee reviewed 6,341 emails dated between 2018 and 2022 among the three, and found that some should be placed on three separate thumb-drives (accompanied by two printed emails) and turned over to the defendants, their lawyers, and the special prosecutor for review. However, it did not divulge how many emails, or their contents.

“To reiterate, this review and production should not be interpreted to either confirm or undermine any claim,” stated Moorman in her report.

Andrian and McCurry argue that Porter was fully aware of the conflicting accounts by the three principals involved in the case – Weer, Cubbison, and Kennedy – but that he made no attempt to preserve the documents as evidence during his review.

“The very fact that Porter sought the emails supports that they were relevant and contained exculpatory evidence for at least one of the parties. The emails should have been preserved and available to the defense as part of the discovery process,” stated McCurry in his motion supporting Andrian’s bid for dismissal of the case.

“Porter’s failure to preserve the emails goes beyond mere negligence, and hits the level of bad faith,” wrote McCurry.

Andrian, in his final filing before Monday’s hearing, zeroed in on Porter’s decision not to independently preserve the emails when he had access to them.

“On September 8, 2022, he was granted access by (IT Director) Tony Rakes. He recognized the value of such evidence early in the investigation,” stated Andrian.

Andrian wrote, “However, it is clear that throughout the investigation Porter decided that Mr. Weer had no involvement in the payments and was in no way responsible. Porter initially gathered the evidence, showing he recognized its importance. However, he failed to preserve it in any way or apparently even review them at all.”

Andrian concluded, “This amounts to bad faith.”

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GARY LEVENSON-PALMER

Is this correct? Coastal garage pick-up north of the Navarro is $33.39 per month - that includes a small garBage can, the blue recycle can, and the green waste can. The price south of the Navarro is $72.21 per month - that includes a small garage can, the blue recycle can, and NO green waste can. Can people confirm? Seems a bit of an inequality if in fact this is the case. We have the bigger trash can and our bill is now $88 per month. Some neighbors have "in and out" service (that is Redwood Waste Solutions takes the cans to the street and back to where they are stored) and their bill is now just shy of $100 per month.

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MENDOCINO COUNTY JAIL NURSE CONVICTED IN ‘CATFISHING’ SCAM

The former lead nurse at the Mendocino County Jail was recently convicted of several sex-related felonies “initiated and perpetrated through an online scam known as catfishing,” the Mendocino County District Attorney reported.

According to the office of DA David Eyster, Blake Dylan Bradley Cox, 28, of Ukiah, pleaded “no contest” last week to “eight sex-related felonies and one misdemeanor in one case, and two additional firearm felonies in a second case.”

In what the DA describes as a “dogged investigation by the Ukiah Police Department that initially involved an allegation of misdemeanor domestic battery, it was also discovered that the defendant was in possession of eleven illegal assault weapons and twenty-seven other firearms.”

While that case was being tried, the DA reports that “the UPD continued analyzing seized evidence,” which included Cox’s cell phone, which reportedly had “overwhelming evidence of sex-related crimes, involving both juvenile and adults, that the defendant had initiated and perpetrated through an online scam known as catfishing.”

The DA described catfishing as “when a person, ‘the catfish’, uses false information and images to create a fake identity online with the intention to trick, harass, or scam another person. It is often found on social media or dating apps and websites, and is a common tactic used to form online relationships under false pretenses.”

According to the DA, Cox used “naked female images to create a fake female identity/persona (‘Jessica’) to trick male victims online into believing they are in a real online friendship and a developing sexual romance with the mysterious Jessica. The victims were eventually then lured by Jessica into meeting up with ‘one of her male friends’ (defendant Cox) and filmed in the backseat of a vehicle participating in oral and other sex acts with Cox (and the pictures were then) supposedly forwarded to Jessica.”

The DA explains that “the lure was that the victim would be sexually rewarded by Jessica for ‘helping out her male friend’ and ‘she’ promised that when they ultimately got together that she would participate in and fulfill any and all of the victim’s sexual fantasies; however, once Cox had a successful ‘meeting’ with Jessica’s suitor, the defendant’s online Jessica persona would disappear and the defendant would then ghost his victims.”

The DA notes that along with the “catfish conversation threads, pictures and videos, the defendant’s cell phone also contained images of illegal child pornography, as well as videos from a hidden camera placed to film an unsuspecting under-aged relative in all stages of disrobement.”

The DA explains that “the law enforcement agencies that diligently worked the cases against defendant Cox are the Ukiah Police Department and the DA’s in-house Bureau of Investigations, (with) special thanks extended to the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office for assisting with specialized report review and charging recommendations. Special thanks also to the California Attorney General’s Office working on behalf of the California Board of Nursing, (which) successfully obtained a court order to withhold the defendant’s nursing license while the defendant’s Mendocino County criminal charges are pending.”

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A READER WRITES (regarding Redwood Community Services’ well-paid executive staff as disclosed on their IRS non-profit Form 990):

Quite a matriarchy the old girl has going there, and I don't see her and hubby's take listed. And since it's a private corporation we'll never know the quality of services rendered. Camille [Schraeder] and her husband, I believe, are categorized as part of "Anchor Management," so they would not be listed on RCS's pay roster. Anchor Management is NOT a "non-profit." They're some kind of umbrella corp. Nobody said Camille was stupid. Anchor Management used to be Redwood Quality Management. But they were removed from the picture when the County switched "oversight" from Anchor to Jenine's own county admin department last year. Maybe Camille was ready to retire and turn the RCS op over to her daughter Victoria Kelley and her friends. There wasn't much of announcement about it, but Anchor/Camille never complained as far as I know.

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JOHN SAKOWICZ:

“The executive salaries at Redwood Community Services are appalling, to say nothing of the nepotism. Mendocino County gets no value for this money. Homeless 5150s run rampant in the County and the MCSO first responders continue to do all the work. Treatment? Treatment did you say? The focus at Redwood Community Services is treatment? What a joke!”

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MAZIE MALONE:

Happy New Year AVA’ers.

PIT Count… Do you suppose the outcome will be up or down? LOL. We have more and more homeless by the day. My personal opinion is we have around 30 mental health/homeless service providers including the jail, who on the daily provide services to our unhoused people, the numbers are right there except a few that are strewn about staying out of sight. I understand the need to provide numbers for funding but honestly is going out at weird hours to find people necessary? All you really have to do is set up a central location. Might I suggest the middle of the rail trail with food and provisions, the homeless will come, they are cold and hungry?! Plus one location will prevent the problem of over/under counting people.

Pro-Publica is a very cool sight check it out.

I think 2025 is going go be a great year!

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ED NOTES

THE MENDOCINO COUNTY MUSEUM, Willits, deserves to be better known. Given its limited funding, the Museum not only offers both a terrific display of County artifacts, it boasts a growing archive of disparate collections of County records and donated private papers; among the latter those of former supervisor Norman deVall and the late Judi Bari, to name persons whose names might be generally recognized.

FORMER volunteer archivists Russell and Sylvia Bartley have all this stuff coherently stored in user-friendly format to the rear of the public displays where they can be viewed by appointment. (The true Bari archive resides at www.theava.com. If the old girl had told the truth about anything related to her adventures in Mendocino County, her ex-husband would be living out his days in federal prison rather than comfortable self-exile in New Zealand.)

THE MUSEUM'S DISPLAYS are a fascinatingly eclectic collection ranging from Indian artifacts to an archetypal lunch counter familiar to all of us over the age of 60, and even include the late Andree Connors’ hippie van along with a page from her diary which begins, “I first came to the Mendocino Coast in 1977 because I was a moth and Mendocino was a lamp.”

ILLUMINATION is where you find it in Mendoland, but for County history the Held-Poage Library in Ukiah and the County Museum in Willits are two crucial venues without which Mendocino County’s collective memory would be much hazier than it is and, as readers of this fine publication are already aware, we’ve teetered on the brink of local mass amnesia for at least a decade.

I RECALL a happy visit with my friend Don Morris when we especially enjoyed film footage provided by the Northwestern Pacific Railroad of the Eel River flood of 1964 when the rampaging Eel devastated great swathes of rail line and destroyed whole communities in Humboldt County.

I FOUND as much to hold my interest at the County Museum in Willits as I’ve found in any of the Frisco museums. Ditto for Held-Poage in Ukiah. As hard times get harder it will be a struggle to fund the County Museum, but if it’s allowed to crumble Mendocino County’s history will be that much more opaque.

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MINDY BARVITZ

Fort Bragg Rotary & Mendocino Coast Sports Foundation Annual Crab Feed Fundraiser

We are excited to highlight Saltgirl Apparel for their wonderful support! Saltgirl Apparel is dedicated to celebrating the women in our fishing communities—our Saltgirls—who are the pillars of their families and communities. Whether you’re pulling in crab pots or enjoying a yoga class, Saltgirl provides comfortable and functional clothing that embodies the spirit of Fishergirl Tuff.

Inspired by the hearty, resilient, and fierce women of the Pacific Northwest, Saltgirl Apparel encourages everyone to embrace their inner Saltgirl.

Explore their collection and learn more at https://saltgirlapparel.com/

Thank you, SaltGirl, for your support of the Fort Bragg Rotary & Mendocino Coast Sports Foundation Crab Feed which is on January 25, 2025!

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ST. ELIZABETH SETON CRABFEED is happening on February 8th. I have tickets (707-895-3053). Hope to see you there. (Tickets: John Schultz cell: 801-580-1851)

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OPUS CONCERT WITH RACHEL BREEN!

Pianist Rachel Breen, returning from Germany, will present an eclectic program featuring one of Schumann’s masterpieces, the Fantasy op. 17, as well as an intentionally arranged set of piano etudes by composers from all time periods. These etudes will come together to form a unified narrative. Expect to be surprised!

Rachelbreenpiano.com

Full program description and tickets available at symhonyoftheredwoods.org

Sunday January 12th at 3 PM, Preston Hall, Mendocino.

Coffee, tea and cookies available during intermission and 30 minutes before the concert.

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NO PLANNING, BUT CLUES WE GOT

Cancellation Notice for Planning Commission Meeting (1-16-25)

Dear Interested Parties,

The cancellation notice for the January 16, 2025, Planning Commission meeting is now available on the department website at: https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/planning-building-services/boards-and-commissions/public-hearing-bodies/public-hearing-bodies#!

Please contact staff if there are any questions.

Thank you

James Feenan, feenanj@mendocinocounty.gov

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MORE OLD POSTCARDS from Ebay (via Marshall Newman):

Ukiah, circa 1930s

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Looking southeast - I think - from the old court house. Circa late 1930s.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, January 3, 2024

THOMAS COOK, 61, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MELISSA CROW, 37, Willits. Public nuisance.

DEREK DAVIS, 42, Covelo. Failure to appear.

KENNETH DOUGLAS, 41, Willits. Concealed weapon, controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, felon-addict with firearm, ammo possession by prohibited person, failure to appear, unspecified offense, resisting.

JESUS GONZAES, 49, Ukiah. Under influence, parole violation.

SHANNAH GRIFFITH, 33, Ukiah. Trespassing, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

KENDALL JENSEN, 38, Ukiah. Domestic violence restraining order violation, probation violation.

BRITTANY KOHLMANN, 34, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

AARON ORESCO, 39, Ukiah. Burglary, unspecified offense.

ALFONSO OROZCO, 44, Ukiah. DUI.

ARSENIO SINGLETON, 37, Alameda/Ukiah. Domestic violence restraining order violation.

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

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 6pm or so. Or send it whenever it's done, after that, and I'll read it on the radio next week. Or maybe tonight anyway if I look at email on a music break.

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

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

Backward in high heels. Colors come vaguely in the right order, though with a few hiccups. https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2017/06/25/ok-go-skyscrapers/

Here's your Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire calendar project right here. https://www.vintag.es/2025/01/the-band-wagon.html

And two words: screw top, how about, for the putrid soda pop. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2016/12/champagne-opening.html

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

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CAN CALIFORNIA KEEP ICE AWAY FROM SCHOOLS?

Lawmakers want to try as crackdowns loom. California legislators want to limit deportation actions at schools, but they can’t ban immigration officials.

by Carolyn Jones

California lawmakers are proposing steps to protect K-12 students and families from mass deportations — although the real value of those proposals may be symbolic.

A pair of bills in the Legislature — AB 49 and SB 48 — aim to keep federal agents from detaining undocumented students or their families on or near school property without a warrant. The bills are a response to President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to deport undocumented immigrants, a move which could have major consequences for schools in California, which funds its schools based on attendance and where 12% of students have at least one undocumented parent.

Both bills would make it harder and more time-consuming for agents to enter schools or day care centers. But they can only delay, not stop, arrests.

“In no way can these bills override federal law,” said Kevin Johnson, a law professor at UC Davis. “But the bills respond to a great concern in the community that it’s not safe to take your children to school. … I can’t emphasize enough how important this is, how vulnerable undocumented immigrants feel right now.”

AB 49, proposed by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance, would require immigration agents to obtain written permission from the superintendent before coming onto school property. It also bars agents from being in rooms where children are present. SB 48, introduced by Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach, would prohibit local police from cooperating with federal agents — such as assisting in arrests or providing information about families’ immigration status — within one mile of a school. It also bars schools from sharing student and family information with federal authorities.

School districts have also doubled down on their efforts to protect students and families. Los Angeles Unified has partnered with legal aid organizations to assist families and instructed schools not to ask students about their immigration status. San Francisco Unified has similar policies.

“(San Francisco Unified) is a safe haven for all students regardless of citizenship status,” Superintendent Maria Su wrote to the community after the November election. “SFUSD restates our position that all students have the right to attend school regardless of their immigration status or that of their family members.”

Schools As Safe Havens

Schools have long been safe havens for immigrant students. Under a 1982 Supreme Court ruling, public schools must enroll all students regardless of their immigration status and can’t charge tuition to students who aren’t legal residents. And since 2011, federal guidelines discourage agents from making immigration arrests at schools, hospitals, churches, courthouses and other “sensitive locations.”

But Trump said he plans to eliminate the “sensitive locations” guidelines, and the Heritage Foundation, which published the right-leaning Project 2025 manifesto, is encouraging states to charge tuition to undocumented K-12 students. That could set up the possible overturn of the Supreme Court decision guaranteeing access to school for undocumented students. The foundation’s rationale is that government agencies such as schools are already overburdened and need to prioritize services for U.S. citizens.

“The (Biden) administration’s new version of America is nothing more than an open-border welfare state,” Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, wrote. “No country can sustain or survive such a vision.”

Muratsuchi, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, said he was inspired to author AB 49 just after the election, when he listened to the concerns of immigrant students in the political science class he teaches at El Camino Community College in Torrance.

“It became clear there was more and more fear among my students, not only for themselves but for their families. The fear of families being torn apart is very real,” Muratuschi said. “We want to send a strong message to our immigrant students that we’re going to do everything we can to protect them.”

‘Too Scared To Speak Up’

For most undocumented families, deportation would mean a plunging into poverty and in many cases, violence. Nahomi, a high school senior in Fresno County whom CalMatters is identifying by her middle name because of her immigration status, described the threat of deportation as “a major worry for my family and I. Our lives could change completely in a blink of an eye.”

Nahomi and her parents arrived in California in 2011 from the city of Culiacan in Sinaloa, Mexico, an area plagued by widespread violence. They initially planned to stay until Sinaloa became safer, but once they settled in the Central Valley they decided the risks of returning outweighed the risk of deportation, so they stayed. Nahomi’s father works in construction and her mother is a homemaker, raising Nahomi and her younger sister.

While she and her family fear deportation, Nahomi is not afraid to attend school. She said schools can help families know their rights and help children feel safe.

“I feel very welcomed and safe there,” she said. “It is a very diverse high school and I just feel like any other student. … (But) a lot of these families are probably too scared to speak up about doubts they might have.”

Politically Unpopular?

Patricia Gándara, an education professor and co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, said the risk of federal agents arresting students at schools is probably small. It’s unclear how many children in K-12 schools are undocumented, but it’s probably a relatively small number, she said. In any case, immigration enforcement that affects children almost always sparks public outcry from both parties, she said.

“Some people might say they’re anti-immigrant, but it’s another thing entirely when the family up the street, whom they’ve known for 20 years, suddenly gets deported, or your kid’s best friend gets deported,” said Gandara, who’s studied the topic extensively. “It’s politically very unpopular.”

Still, the proposed bills could send a powerful message that schools are safe places, she said. Immigration crackdowns can have a significant impact on student attendance, a Stanford study found, which can lead to less funding for schools, particularly low-income schools that enroll large numbers of immigrant children.

Immigration crackdowns can also lead to an increase in bullying, anxiety and general uncertainty on campus, not just for immigrant children but for everyone, Gándara said. Teachers, in particular, experience high levels of stress when their students’ safety is endangered, she said.

“Schools are one of the last places immigrant families feel safe,” she said. “But as soon as (federal agents) move into schools, they’re not so safe any more. These bills say, ‘We’re not going to sit back and let this happen. Not all of government is against you.”

California ‘One Of The Best Places To Be’

Both bills are awaiting hearings in the Legislature. Tammy Lin, supervising attorney with the University of San Diego Immigration Clinic, expects California to continue to take steps to protect undocumented families, but political conflicts will be inevitable.

The incoming Trump administration is likely to battle California and other left-leaning states over immigration matters. Even within California, conflicts are likely to erupt between state leaders and those in more conservative regions, or even between agencies in the same area. In San Diego County, for example, the Board of Supervisors ordered the sheriff’s office to not notify federal immigration officers when it releases suspected undocumented inmates from jail, but the sheriff refused to comply.

Lin also said she wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an attempt to overturn the Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing education to undocumented children, potentially paving the way for other immigrants’ rights to be reversed.

“It’s a slippery slope,” Lin said. “Immigrants know this, which is why there’s immense fear and uncertainty right now. But bills like these show that California is still one of the best places you can be.”

(CalMatters.org)

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FULL IMMIGRANT RIGHTS IN FIFTY YEARS?

by David Bacon

For the 50th-anniversary issue of Dollars and Sense, editors asked David Bacon, a contributor for 30 of those years, to imagine what U.S. immigration policy could look like 50 years from now. Here is his answer.

Given the descent of U.S. immigration policy from its high point in 1965 to its current disastrous low, it might seem unrealistic to describe other than a dystopian vision of the future fifty years from now. Today even a Democratic Presidential campaign proposes draconian restrictions and has virtually abandoned any progressive proposals, in order to compete for votes with an even more racist Republican framework.

Yet in 1965 a progressive immigration bill was part of a broad set of transformative legislation, the product of a popular consensus created by the civil rights movement. It drew on decades of organizing and struggle to prioritize the needs of families and communities over employers' contract labor programs. It weakened racial quotas and the racist foundations of immigration restrictions. For a time, the use of immigration policy to punish political radicalism through deportations, and banning the entry of Communists and other dissidents, was ended by a Supreme Court that obeyed the popular will.…

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2025/01/full-immigrant-rights-in-fifty-years.html

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PROP. 36: WHAT TO EXPECT RIGHT AWAY FROM NEW CRIME LAW

by Robert Salonga

California’s Proposition 36 was officially enacted over the holiday break, following voters’ overwhelming approval of the initiative aimed at driving down serial theft and fentanyl crimes through harsher prosecution and more aggressive drug diversion policies.

County prosecutors across the state now have the latitude to more readily charge theft cases as felonies when they involve a repeat offender, treat fentanyl dealers as potential murderers, and leverage jail time to compel certain hard drug offenders, particularly those consuming powerful opioids, to enter treatment programs.

What changes can residents expect to see right away? It will depend on the county in which they live, said Jeff Reisig, Yolo County’s district attorney and one of the architects of the new law.

“It’s a local control issue,” Reisig said. “Each county and each city will be deciding how aggressively and how quickly these changes are implemented. In some counties, local law enforcement will be empowered to start making felony arrests for retail thefts with priors, drug offenses with priors, and can exercise that discretion immediately.”

“We’re going to see more convictions for retail and petty theft,” he added. “Within several months, our hope, and the promise of Proposition 36, is that there will be an obvious deterrent effect that will result in a reduction of at least some of the brazen crime that was witnessed previously.”

The California Police Chiefs Association, whose current president is Pleasanton Chief Tracy Avelar, said the state’s police departments “are ready to ensure a fair but firm response to repeat offenders, balancing rehabilitation with accountability.

“Continued criminal behavior will result in consequences because the safety of our communities is non-negotiable,” Avelar said in a statement. “Overall, if you’re a repeat offender, don’t expect a cite and release.”

Proposition 36 institutes several changes to the state penal code. Regarding serial theft, prosecutors are now allowed to widely aggregate multiple thefts to reach the $950 felony threshold that elevates theft crimes to felonies.

The new law also empowers prosecutors to charge a felony for any theft if the arrestee has two prior theft convictions, whether felonies or misdemeanors. New charging and sentencing enhancements for organized retail theft were also added to the books.

In Santa Clara County, where Jeff Rosen was one of just three California district attorneys to support 2014’s Proposition 47, which established many of the laws now amended by Proposition 36, prosecutors are grappling with the new law.

Rosen’s office has long been strategic with which theft defendants warrant more aggressive prosecution based on serial offenses and the threat they pose to the public, Assistant District Attorney David Angel said. He added that many of the legal tools offered by Proposition 36 can’t be readily implemented.

For instance, determining at the time of an arrest whether a theft suspect has two prior convictions that would warrant a felony arrest — and corresponding jail booking and review by a magistrate judge — is complicated by the fact that misdemeanor convictions are routinely expunged. An arresting officer, Angel said, might not have immediate access to clarifying information, impeding the goal of swiftly taking serial offenders off the street.

“The way this law has been written, if police did that on every case, it would require an extraordinary amount of time to figure out whether someone had a valid conviction or that it was dismissed,” Angel said.

The other major dimension of Proposition 36 addresses drug crimes. Under the new law, fentanyl dealing and possession of fentanyl while also being armed mandate prison time upon conviction, and murder charges are possible for anyone who sells fentanyl to a person who then dies from the drug.

People charged with repeatedly possessing hard drugs, including fentanyl, also could be presented with the option of entering drug treatment — and dismissed charges upon completion — in lieu of jail time.

The drug component continues to prompt debate over whether many of the state’s counties have enough rehab capacity to handle a potential influx of people who opt for the treatment route; Proposition 36 does not provide any new funding.

Reisig acknowledges that it will be years before treatment options can achieve the goals set out by the law’s co-authors.

“It’s going to take some time, it’s not going to happen overnight,” he said. “There will be slow deployment and a buildup of drug courts over the next year. As the pieces come back together, as services and treatment teams come together, we will see more people go through those programs.”

Angel said nothing in the law addresses the existing limits of treatment capacity, especially in a heavily populated jurisdiction like Santa Clara County.

“There are structural barriers to getting people in treatment. Mainly, there is not enough of it,” he said. “This law does not change those structural barriers, but we hope it will allow us to focus on these high utilizers.”

Silicon Valley De-Bug, a South Bay civil-rights group, sent a letter co-signed by over 70 local social-justice organizations to Rosen’s office, asking local prosecutors to use discretion “to shield the community from the harm Proposition 36 is designed to impose on our people. … The initiative, if implemented without critical protections, will further incarcerate the poor, those suffering from mental health and substance use issues, and disproportionately impact people of color in Santa Clara County.”

Critics of the new law argue that by rolling back provisions of Proposition 47, which reclassified many low-level felonies to misdemeanors, the state is returning to the mass incarceration that led to prison overcrowding, landmark court rulings and the necessity for the reforms.

Reisig again points to the discretion given to prosecutors to apply Proposition 36 and highlights how judges will ultimately be the backstop for any overstepping.

“I’ll use my discretion as soundly as I can, and there’s a judge at the gate,” he said.

(Bay Area News Group/Ukiah Daily Journal)

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THE CASE FOR THE 49ERS NOT EXTENDING BROCK PURDY

by Drew Magary

This post is not a referendum on whether 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is good. There’s nothing more tiresome than an “Is X QB actually good?” argument, especially one that centers around a tiny-ass white dude who was only drafted by the skin of his teeth. Brock Purdy is a good quarterback, even if a few dedicated haters wish he weren’t. I can make the numbers case easily, given that Purdy currently ranks ninth in PFF’s QB metrics (above the likes of Jared Goff and Jordan Love) and given that he set team records by posting over 4,000 yards and 30 passing touchdowns just a season ago. As for the eye test, you saw the guy nearly win the Super Bowl last February, which is something that doesn’t happen for the Nathan Petermans of this world.

So this isn’t about whether Brock Purdy is good. It’s about whether he’s good enough.

When the 49ers’ season ends Sunday, after a meaningless tangle with the NFC West perennial also-ran Cardinals, the team will be free to negotiate a contract extension that keeps Purdy as its franchise QB through the rest of this decade. Because Purdy was the last player drafted in 2022, he’s working under a contract that’s paying him a base salary of $985,000 this season. That contract makes him a ludicrous anomaly among his quarterbacking peers. It’s a pittance, loose change, an insult. Purdy deserves a contract that befits his standing as a top-tier NFL starter, and not one fit for a glorified walk-on.

According to Nick Wagoner at ESPN, the Niners’ braintrust is ready to offer him just that, likely a deal that pays him somewhere between $50 million and $60 million in average annual value. That kind of deal would compensate Purdy fairly while also keeping the team’s QB situation stable and ensuring that Kyle Shanahan won’t draft Quatre Lance with an otherwise vital Day 1 draft pick somewhere down the line. Everyone wins in this arrangement.

Except, possibly, the 49ers. The NFL’s rookie wage scale has made it so that you cannot evaluate any quarterback without factoring in the amount of cap space they eat up. Purdy’s current cap share is so tiny, you’d need an electron microscope to see it. That’s how the 49ers have been able to stack the roster around him over the past three years, to the point where you can make a good (if well-worn) argument that Purdy’s success is more the result of having the best skill position group in football (Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Kyle Juszczyk, and Brandon Aiyuk) at his disposal than it is the result of his own talents. But once Purdy gets his new deal, the bargain vanishes. And given that this was an unprecedented bargain in nature, who’s to say it wasn’t the best thing Purdy had going for him?

If you’re a “the salary cap is fake!” kind of person, you can come back at me by saying that 49ers general manager and spiritual Gruden John Lynch can backload the money in Purdy’s new deal to keep the team relatively flexible, at least for now, with regard to the salary cap. The problem is that the rest of this roster is no longer as impregnable as it once was. McCaffrey has been able to play only four games this season. Deebo is having one of the worst seasons of his career. Left tackle Trent Williams hasn’t played since Week 11. And as for Aiyuk, the star wideout got a new deal right before this season, posted a single 100-yard game across two months of action, and then tore his ACL against Kansas City in October, putting him out for the year. This isn’t Ohio State. If you lose a star player, a new one just doesn’t automatically grow in its place. You have to churn your NFL roster shrewdly; otherwise, it will atrophy.

That atrophy has grown evident throughout the bulk of 2024. And what do s—tty teams do when they’re confronted with the mortality of their core? They just keep bringing the band back year after year, at increasingly higher prices. That includes the quarterback, and just look at the franchise QBs from this season alone who failed to live up to their new deals: Dak Prescott, Trevor Lawrence, Tua Tagovailoa. It was a bloodbath out there, all because teams didn’t cut bait before they should have. And I didn’t even mention Kirk Cousins here, lest I manifest Shanahan making a play for his old, gimpy ass.

It sounds odd to recommend cutting bait on a dude who just turned 25. But the 49ers have over $60M in cap space heading into the offseason. They’ve also got a number of key players — cornerback Charvarius Ward, defensive tackle Javon Hargrave, linebacker Dre Greenlaw, running back Jordan Mason, and safety Talanoa Hufanga chief among them — headed into unrestricted free agency. This roster will churn whether Lynch and Shanahan like it or not, and giving Purdy the keys to Fort Knox means trusting him in full to carry this team when perhaps no other player on it can. If you’re a Niners fan, you fear this prospect just a tad, even if you won’t say so out loud. Purdy, out this week, will have now missed the end of two seasons thanks to a bum elbow. He can’t play in s—tty weather (good thing the Niners don’t play home games in actual San Francisco), he struggles without Aiyuk in the lineup, and he’s not a first-round talent.

That last part matters. If you look at the current DVOA ratings, the Niners are the only top-10 team without a starting QB who was drafted in the first or second round. In fact, the only second-rounder on that list is Eagles QB Jalen Hurts, who’s passed for over 300 yards exactly once this season. Every other team contending for a Super Bowl has a QB with a first-rounder’s size, agility and arm talent. These are players who can act as one-man offenses when times get lean. There’s no guarantee that Purdy will be able to work similar magic if he has only slobs to throw the ball to. You can’t know for sure until you extend him. And are you willing to take that chance, especially when you know that the 14-2 Vikings are on a heater thanks to signing a QB in Sam Darnold who was in the 49ers’ building just a season ago? Because you’re up s—t creek if you’re wrong about Purdy.

And you could be. We all could be. That’s what makes the idea of bringing him back so daunting. That’s why extending Purdy now would be a mistake. He’s still under contract for next year, although he’ll almost certainly hold out from training camp this summer. The Niners should let him and then see what happens. There’s risk in that, but there’s an even greater risk in giving Purdy everything he wants. We know he’s good. The decaying Niners are going to need more than that.

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WILLIAM C. TROUT

If you’ve read much Joan Didion, you’ve almost surely come across an observation or phrase that has changed the way you look at California, the media, or the culture of the late 20th century — or indeed, changed your life. But if life-changing writers have all had their own lives changed by the writers before them, which writers made Joan Didion the Joan Didion whose writing still exerts an influence today? Conveniently enough, the author of Play It as It Lays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and The White Album once drew up a list of the books that changed her life, and it surfaced on Instagram a few years ago:

• "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway
• "Victory" by Joseph Conrad
• "Guerrillas" by V.S. Naipaul
• "Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell
• "Wonderland" by Joyce Carol Oates
• "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë
• "The Good Soldier" by Ford Madox Ford
• "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Márquez
• "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• "Appointment in Samarra" by John O’Hara
• "The Executioner’s Song" by Norman Mailer
• The Novels of Henry James: "Washington Square", "Portrait of a Lady," "The Bostonians," "Wings of the Dove," "The Ambassadors," "The Golden Bowl," "Daisy Miller," "The Aspern Papers," "The Turn of the Screw"
• "Speedboat" by Renata Adler
• "Go Tell It on the Mountain" by James Baldwin
• "Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin
• "The Berlin Stories" by Christopher Isherwood
• "Collected Poems" by Robert Lowell
• "Collected Poems" by W.H. Auden
• "The Collected Poems" by Wallace Stevens

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CLOVERDALE GIRL’S SUSPECTED KILLER WAS INTERVIEWED BY POLICE IN 1982, TESTIMONY SHOWS

James Unick is accused of killing Sara Ann Geer in May 1982. He was charged last year in Sonoma County Superior Court.

by Colin Atagi

Shortly after Sara Ann Geer’s body was discovered in a Cloverdale alleyway, police interviewed the man charged more than four decades later in the 13-year-old’s death.

James Unick denied killing Geer May 24, 1982, and claimed he was with friends the night she died, Lawrence Pina, a retired Cloverdale police officer, said Thursday in Sonoma County Superior Court.

Pina, 84, testified in Unick’s preliminary hearing, which is ongoing Friday and will determine whether there’s sufficient evidence for the defendant to stand trial.

The former officer said his interview with Unick in 1982 was brief and “friendly,” but no one verified his alibi.

“There was nothing to follow up. No evidence to show a follow up was needed,” Pina said.

Investigators said they ultimately relied on DNA evidence to link Unick, now 64, to Geer and he was arrested in July while living in Willows in Glenn County.

The Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office charged him with one count of murder with an enhancement for committing lewd or lascivious acts on a child and/or kidnapping.

Geer was a Washington School seventh grader in 1982 and police at the time said her death was Cloverdale’s first homicide to their recollection, according to Press Democrat coverage from that year.

Investigators said Geer had spent the weekend with friends before being dropped off at home on a Sunday evening. Instead of going inside, she continued downtown and was last seen at a video game arcade on Cloverdale Boulevard.

Her body was discovered behind an apartment building at the end of an alleyway along Main Street, between Second and Third streets.

An autopsy showed she’d died from “manual traumatic injuries” from a beating or strangulation.

Prosecutors on Thursday presented photos from 1982 showing abrasions covering her mostly nude body. Her shorts were “knotted around her neck,” Pina testified.

Pina said it appeared Geer had been dragged toward Third Street, leaving behind a path in the gravel that filled the alleyway.

The investigation went cold and Cloverdale police reopened it in 2021.

Pina was the first witness to testify Thursday and at least three others are expected to take the stand Friday.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

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CHARLES WILLEFORD, singular author of hardboiled literary noir, was born on January 2, 1919.

“It must have been around a quarter to eleven. A sailor came in and ordered a chili dog and coffee. I sliced a bun, jerked a frank out of the boiling water, nested it, poured a half-dipper of chili over the frank and sprinkled it liberally with chopped onions. I scribbled a check and put it by his plate. I wouldn’t have recommended the unpalatable mess to a starving animal. The sailor was the only customer, and after he ate his dog he left. That was the exact moment she entered.”

So opens Willeford’s second novel, 1954’s Pick-Up, the story of two lost and self-destructive drifters—a failed painter working as a counterman in a cheap diner and a woman in flight from domestic violence—trying to find a place for themselves in the back streets of San Francisco. Called “a razor-sharp narrative that rips open the genre” by critic Woody Haut, this explosive noir culminates in an ending that still sends readers reeling.

Willeford’s varied life had novelistic scope all its own. In addition to penning more than 20 books, he rode the rails during the Great Depression, served as a tank commander in World War II, and worked as a professional horse trainer, boxer, radio announcer, and painter.

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DID THE MURDER OF AN INSURANCE CEO MAKE YOU ANGRY? MAYBE THAT’S A GOOD THING

by Joshua Pederson

On the day that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was brutally murdered in New York City, I received a letter from my insurance company.

About a month ago, and out of the clear blue sky, we learned that my son has a rare and particularly aggressive type of pediatric cancer. There is a tennis ball-sized tumor growing rapidly on the left side of his ribcage that will kill him if we don’t act quickly. To treat it, our doctors said, we need to know what it is, so our oncology team promptly ordered a series of genetic tests that would help identify both the type of cancer and the most effective way to cure it.

Our insurance company, however, didn’t agree. The tests our doctors needed were not “medically necessary” and, therefore, wouldn’t be covered. So while we were still wrapping our heads around a life-or-death medical diagnosis for our first-born son, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts was dropping a denial-of-coverage letter for a set of tests whose cost, according to our doctor, often runs into the five figures. I was livid, and part of my rage boiled over onto UnitedHealthcare, which reportedly denies fully one third of the claims it receives.

In the days following Thompson’s death, researchers at Rutgers University tracking online reactions were surprised to see that the characteristic response was not sympathy but rather rage — a streak of anger that was rapidly curdling into celebrations of the CEO’s killing.

Since then, there has been a lot of hand-wringing in the legacy media as authors lament these angry reactions to Thompson’s death, deriding them as a “terrible coarsening” of American society that should “ring all alarms.” I disagree, because a vibrant strand of philosophical thinking suggests that rage at Thompson and the industry is an understandable — and perhaps vital — response.

Take Aristotle as a first example. Contra later medieval thinkers who would categorize anger — or wrath — as a deadly sin, Aristotle saw it as natural and sometimes even laudable. Indeed, in his seminal work the “Nicomachean Ethics,” he suggests that in certain circumstances, stifling anger is the real error. (If someone insults your spouse or harms your friend or promises to care for your child and doesn’t, you ought to feel angry.)

Aristotle discusses anger in much greater detail in another of his treatises, the “Rhetoric.” First, he suggests that anger is a painful emotion that is aroused most frequently when one is slighted — or rather, when someone treats something that is important to you as if it is of no importance. Crucially, Aristotle lists “disregard of […] illness” as a key form of slighting. Which is exactly what that Blue Cross letter felt like for me. In her recent book on anger, historian of ideas Barbara Rosenwein identifies the feeling of being “disregarded, dismissed, disrespected” as being a main cause of the culture of anger in which we now live.

But, you say, we shouldn’t be angry at Thompson; we should be angry at the system. For Aristotle, however, we can’t be, because anger isn’t free-floating; it attaches itself to a particular person. This is why the murder of Thompson aroused such rage; finally, so many people with pent-up frustration had a person to aim it at. That patients navigating the American healthcare system frequently don’t have such a target is a feature, not a bug. My family’s denial of coverage didn’t come from the insurance company itself but from another company — Carelon — contracted to determine whether the genetic tests my son needed were covered. And even Carelon wouldn’t take full responsibility for the decision, instead putting the onus on a minor functionary in the company.

The insurance industry doesn’t want us to be able to have a face at which to direct our rage; Thompson’s killer gave us one.

But here’s the thing: Our rage might not only be acceptable; it may be necessary. For a string of European philosophers beginning with David Hume, it is our emotions that drive our moral judgment. Our anger at Thompson is a reliable sign that that system he represents is unjust. Or, as Agnes Callard puts it, negative emotions like anger are the “fundamental mechanism of moral accountability.”

Healthcare in the United States is the most expensive in the world, but it delivers some of the worst outcomes among developed countries. And CEOs pocket the difference. Take as just one example Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre, who was taking private jets between his many vacation homes as patients died from repossessed equipment at his hospitals. If you’re not angry at that, you’re not paying attention.

I’m deeply sorry for the family of Brian Thompson, and I wish he weren’t dead. But I am angry at him — and his industry. And I’m not going to feel bad about it.

(Joshua Pederson is an associate professor of humanities at Boston University.)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Regular people - even those pushed to the brink - don't tend to commit these kinds of New Orleans acts. Sure, they might murder someone in a fit of pique when drunk, etc. But even that's rare if you look at the stats. No, it takes a particularly screwed up mind in order to commit one of these attacks, and I can almost guarantee it that they have some connection to mind control of some sort.

That the attacks have also risen in sync with the internet also gives us a clue. Really easy to program people electronically rather than in person.

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MITCH CLOGG

Election Eve Eve – Talking with Ellie, I ask if she’s ever, EVER seen a refined person who, when interviewed, said she or he was a Trump supporter. “Refined” has a snooty sound. I mean slightly more than “civilized”. I mean “well-spoken”, “attentive”. She says no.

I think of the commonplace observation by psychologists and other social scientists that everybody thinks he or she is smarter than average. Half of those are obviously wrong, and Trumpsters are certainly no exceptions.

I guess maybe a refined Trumpster would not make as lively an interview as a boorish one, so maybe the observation is skewed by the interviewer’s selection.

Whatever the case, the Trumpsters I see on TV are generally pushy, quarrelsome and illogical (which makes them very entertaining interviewees).

However filtered are the people on TV, what I see of MAGA crowds are mostly dimwits. This is nobody’s fault. Let any statistician-friends correct me if I need it, but this seems to be a normal distribution.

Probability favors Harris.

Whatever the election outcome, this is an unparalleled chance to size up my fellow citizens, and Harris, or any well-intended public servant, has a lot to do.

I was too young to know anything about fascism or anything about current events before World War 2. America had lots of Nazi fans, especially among the ownership classes. They quickly adjusted their preferences when the war started. Only the stupidest among us will continue to sport their MAGA hats when and if Trump loses.

However things go, this Trump era has provided the nakedest litmus test I have ever seen. We will all know more about our national make-up than we ever could have imagined. Observers, scholars and others will remember and record much of what’s being exposed about us. It’s probably better that our collective American memory, at least in this instance, is a sieve.

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LAY OFF HIM

Editor:

Disparaging Trump…

I really don’t understand the benefit of consistently printing letters that deride the president-elect. It seems that every day there is at least one letter that disparages Donald Trump. I fail to see what good this is doing. It is actually making the public more divided.

Without going into specifics, there are many letters that could have been written about Joe Biden’s decline. Kamala Harris was tied to an unpopular administration after running a very unpopular campaign herself in 2019. And although much of the Democrats’ platform was rebuked across the country in the last election, it would not serve the people to condemn it in letters to the editor. So why do we find it necessary to bash Trump on a daily basis?

California has failed its citizens on many levels, so perhaps we should pick what battles we choose to start with the new administration instead of starting them across the board before they even take office.

Dan Pizza

Healdsburg

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JEFF BLANKFORT

The Democrats are responsible for Trump being elected president in 2016 and again last November, thanks to their devotion to Israel? How so?

Well there is and was a video on YouTube of Sheldon Adelson, the uber Zionist who selected Trump to be the Republican candidate after two candidate auditions at his Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, had previously been filmed and recorded on the say he launched Israel Hayom, his "free paper" (to help Netanyahu) in Israel, apologizing for having served in the US Army and not the IDF but was glad his wife had been in the IDF and hoped that his son would grow up to be a sniper for Israel.

Can one imagine what such a statement the words of this traitor would have had on US veterans and current members of the US military to see and hear the main promoter of Trump utter these words? But it didn't happen because the Democrat National Committee had already sold their souls to Israel, as well, and so paved the way for two Trump presidencies.

Thanks to Alison Weir of "If Americans Knew" for keeping this video available on You Tube!

https://youtu.be/2TFi-9wnspk?si=kScySJ_3XfdQP-np

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THE TWILIGHT OF TWILIGHT

by James Kunstler

“Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, in 2024, agreed to play out their roles as uncontactable zombies, baying for the blood of Americans at the altar of a dying Moloch.” — Celia Farber

I hope that the first lesson of the Bourbon Street massacre is not lost on you: There is no end of opportunity now for Jihadis and other maniacs to attack soft targets across the land. Americans are sitting ducks. And there is no shortage of jihadis and maniacs at large in our land, thanks to “Joe Biden” and Alejandro Mayorkas.

Do you have any idea how much carnage can be created with what are called small arms, meaning, light weapons, guns, rifles, grenades, and improvised explosives used tactically in public places by enemies of our country? It looks like we are going to find out. And just regular motor vehicles, too, as in New Orleans and Las Vegas. Among the millions of foreign vagabonds ushered across the border illegally are perhaps tens of thousands fanatically avid for mayhem, many of them surely organized into cadres trained to carry out atrocities, just hanging back with their US government-issued debit cards, enjoying DoorDash deliveries in their government supplied hotel rooms, waiting for the signal to activate themselves.

Do you think we can harden the millions of targets out there, make them secure? Forget about it. Many of these are plain old streets in the cities, countless bridges and tunnels, endless runs of railroad track and highway, hundreds of airports, not to mention malls, schools, big box stores, office buildings, restaurants, sports venues, cruise ships, skating rinks, theaters, churches. It would only take a couple-three more episodes like the New Orleans incident to paralyze public life in America just as badly as the Covid-19 op did. Are tourists rushing back to Bourbon Street now? Will they return for Mardi Gras on March 4?

And now, of course, the matter of drones has been brought to your attention. How many thousands (millions?) of these ingenious toys have been sold over recent years. You can walk into Best Buy today and get one, ranging from a couple of hundred bucks to models with advanced guidance electronics at several thousand bucks. Timers are cheap. C-4 and Semtex plastic explosives are easy to purloin from military bases, or just traded on black markets. Drones can be launched from anywhere, including out of windows anywhere. They can be launched in swarms.

You must also imagine that these Jihadis and other maniacs are primed to let loose on the imminently incoming Trump admin. The “Joe Biden” regime years were just the set-up period. Why open up with terror ops and show your hand prematurely while “JB” offered so much free and easy assistance in preparing the battlefield? And anyway, since so much of what “Joe Biden” was up to on his own initiative was obviously damaging to the USA in three dimensions — economically, strategically, and psychologically — then why interrupt all that serendipitous mishchief?

In the twilight of his twilight presidency, “Joe Biden” makes his final moves — that is, the people in the shadows behind “Joe Biden” make their moves — to fortify the progress he made working to destroy his own country, really anything that might hamper Mr. Trump’s ability to correct the deliberate desecration of our national life. And, of course, to shelter any of those persons responsible from a legal reckoning in the future.

In a most garish example, “JB” awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to former Rep. Liz Cheney for her role on Congress’s J-6 committee. This, you understand, was done in defiance of what is already known and alleged about the treasonous misconduct of that body — withholding and destruction of evidence, tampering with evidence, coaching witnesses, lying to the media about testimony received, and obstruction of justice. You might lay a conspiracy charge over all those misdeeds, since they involved the formal agreement, discussion, and knowledge of it all among committee members. That is, it was done clearly in concert.

The plea there is transparently and obviously mendacious, yet The Times, being the mouthpiece of the nervous DC blob, can’t resist laying out the game: how can you prosecute somebody for acts they’ve been given a presidential award for committing? Of course, a pardon will signal that Liz Cheney is, ipso facto, a criminal. And would “Joe Biden” then have to pardon every member of the J-6 Committee — since, being a conspiracy, are they not all culpable for the same crimes? But then, the J-6 Committee crimes against the people of America comprise only a small portion, a side dish, to the many other crimes committed by the officials working under “Joe Biden.” If he pardons Liz Cheney, won’t this president also have to pardon hundreds of other officials from Mayorkas, Wray, Garland, Fauci, Walensky, Austin, Blinken, Sullivan on down?

“Joe Biden” will no doubt wait until the morning of January 20 to issue those pardons, if he dares to, and he might well include himself in the package as having committed bribery and treason. Since his dementia is not total, he probably has enough brain left to reason fallaciously that the country will be too distracted by the Trump inaugural to notice what he did. He will think that he has acquired magic powers of invisibility. Not to history, of course. And history will resume at noon on January 20. From that moment on, “Joe Biden” is certified as the most odious villain in our nation’s history.

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WHY CONGRESS MEMBERS FACE A LAWSUIT FOR FUNDING ISRAEL’S WAR ON GAZA

by Norman Solomon

On the last day of 2024, the deputy general counsel for the House of Representatives formally accepted delivery of a civil summons for two congressmembers from Northern California. More than 600 constituents of Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson have signed on as plaintiffs in a class action accusing them of helping to arm the Israeli military in violation of “international and federal law that prohibits complicity in genocide.”

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it conveys widespread anger and anguish about the ongoing civilian carnage in Gaza that taxpayers have continued to bankroll.

By a wide margin, most Americans favor an arms embargo on Israel while the Gaza war persists. But Huffman and Thompson voted to approve $26.38 billion in military aid for Israel last April, long after the nonstop horrors for civilians in Gaza were evident.

Back in February — two months before passage of the enormous military aid package — both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that, in the words of the lawsuit, “the Israeli government was systematically starving the people of Gaza through cutting off aid, water, and electricity, by bombing and military occupation, all underwritten by the provision of U.S. military aid and weapons.”

When the known death toll passed 40,000 last summer, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights said: “Most of the dead are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war.” He described as “deeply shocking” the “scale of the Israeli military’s destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship.”

On Dec. 4, Amnesty International released a 296-page report concluding that Israel has been committing genocide “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity” — with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians,” engaging in “prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention.”

Two weeks later, on the same day the lawsuit was filed in federal district court in San Francisco, Human Rights Watch released new findings that “Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide.”

Responding to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Thompson said that “achieving peace and securing the safety of civilians won’t be accomplished by filing a lawsuit.” But for well over a year, to no avail, the plaintiffs and many other constituents have been urging him and Huffman to help protect civilians by ending their support for the U.S. pipeline of weapons and ammunition to Israel.

Enabled by that pipeline, the slaughter has continued in Gaza while the appropriators on Capitol Hill work in a kind of bubble. Letters, emails, phone calls, office visits, protests and more have not pierced that bubble. The lawsuit is an effort to break through the routine of indifference.

Like many other congressional Democrats, Huffman and Thompson have prided themselves on standing up against the contempt for facts that Donald Trump and his cohorts flaunt. Yet refusal to acknowledge the facts of civilian decimation in Gaza, with a direct U.S. role, is an extreme form of denial.

“Over the last 14 months I have watched elected officials remain completely unresponsive despite the public’s demands to end the genocide,” said Laurel Krause, a Mendocino County resident who is one of the lawsuit plaintiffs.

Another plaintiff, Leslie Angeline, a Marin County resident who ended a 31-day hunger strike when the lawsuit was filed, said: “I wake each morning worrying about the genocide that is happening in Gaza, knowing that if it wasn’t for my government’s partnership with the Israeli government, this couldn’t continue.”

Such passionate outlooks are a far cry from the words offered by members of Congress who routinely appear to take pride in seeming calm as they discuss government policies. But if their own children’s lives were at stake rather than the lives of Palestinian children in Gaza, they would hardly be so calm. A huge empathy gap is glaring.

In the words of plaintiff Judy Talaugon, a Native American activist in Sonoma County, “Palestinian children are all our children, deserving of our advocacy and support. And their liberation is the catalyst for systemic change for the betterment of us all.”

As a plaintiff, I certainly don’t expect the courts to halt the U.S. policies that have been enabling the horrors in Gaza to go on. But our lawsuit makes a clear case for the moral revulsion that so many Americans feel about the culpability of the U.S. government.

To hardboiled political pros, the heartfelt goal of putting a stop to the arming of the Israeli military for genocide is apt to seem quixotic and dreamy. But it’s easy for politicians to underestimate feelings of moral outrage. As James Baldwin wrote, “Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.”

Organizing together under the name Taxpayers Against Genocide, constituents served notice that no amount of rhetoric could make funding of genocide anything other than repugnant. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson are the first members of Congress to face such a lawsuit. They won’t be the last.

In recent days, people from many parts of the United States have contacted Taxpayers Against Genocide (via classactionagainstgenocide@proton.me) to see the full lawsuit and learn about how they can file one against their own member of Congress.

No one should put any trust in the court system to stop the U.S. government from using tax dollars for war. But suing congressmembers who are complicit in genocide is a good step for exposing — and organizing against — the power of the warfare state.

(Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, is published by The New Press.)

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WILLIE NELSON:

"Death is not the end of anything…

I believe we are all just energy that becomes matter…

When the matter is gone…

The energy still exists…

You can't destroy it…

It never dies…

It manifests elsewhere."