Mendocino County Today: Thursday 2/13/2025

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Laytonville 1.37" - Ukiah 1.31" - Hopland 1.14" - Boonville 1.07" - Yorkville 0.92" - Covelo 0.86"

FLOOD WATCH remains in effect through this afternoon.…A storm system will continue to promote moderate to locally heavy rainfall and gusty southerly winds through tonight, with showers activity through Friday afternoon. There is a slight risk of urban and small stream flooding for the southern half of the area. Heavy snow above 2000 feet in Trinity County, before rise above 3500 feet this afternoon and evening. Dry weather on Saturday, before the next frontal system impacts the area Sunday into early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): It is a dark & stormy Thursday morning on the coast, I have a fresh .92" of rainfall from overnight & a much warmer 50F. Rain & some wind today then clearing returns on Valentine's Day. Mostly dry Saturday then showers Sunday & into Monday morning. Scattered light showers again mid-week, or so they say.

ADAM GASKA on reduced wine grape harvest: No shocker there. There are a lot of unpicked grapes. Lots of vines getting yanked, some vineyards getting mothballed for a season or two waiting to see what happens. Even for people that picked, many were squeezed down on price. It's going to be bad the next few years and it doesn't seem like it will fully recover. We will just produce less.

KATHY WYLIE

The preliminary design of the new Eel-Russian facility promises free passage for fish, preventive measures for flooding and reduced diversion of water from the Eel River watershed to the Russian River. (Screenshot/Humboldt County Public Works)

“What is great is that the dams will come out. That’s about it,” said chair and 2nd District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell before the board voted 5-0 to sign the agreement.

The diversion agreement, part of PG&E’s dam removal process in the Potter Valley Project, spells intentions to continue water diversions from the Eel River, which started over a century ago — but the volume of water diverted would be lower than historic rates, according to presentations from Humboldt County’s public works department.

The agreement supports the removal of infrastructure to return a free-flowing Eel River, which will involve taking out the Scott Dam and Cape Horn Dam and other infrastructure. A new agency made up of water users and the Round Valley Indian Tribes called “the Eel-Russian Project Authority” plans to build the “Eel-Russian Diversion Facility” to continue to take water from the Eel and Russian rivers south to Mendocino, Marin and Sonoma counties.

HISTORIC PACT REACHED ON FUTURE EEL RIVER WATER FLOWS INTO RUSSIAN RIVER

Eel River interests, Russian River consumers reach accord for continued diversions of Eel River water into the Russian River but at reduced rate, in exchange for funding and support of Eel River restoration activities.

by Mary Callahan

Officials from three counties and the Round Valley Indian Tribes have reached a historic agreement that paves the way for continued diversions from the Eel River to bolster flows in the Russian River.

The agreement represents a critical development for anyone whose water comes from the Russian River.

The complex accord resulted from years of negotiations to preserve supplemental flows in the Russian River, the water lifeline for residents, ranchers and wildlife in Sonoma and Mendocino counties. The agreement also supports the restoration and fish recovery in the Eel River, which was crucial to securing support from environmental interests, tribes and Humboldt County residents.

It is, at last, the “two-basin solution” envisioned by regional stakeholders in 2019 and even earlier, when Pacific Gas & Electric first raised questions about whether to continue operating the small, aging hydroelectric plant in Potter Valley through which redirected Eel River water flows.

The utility is now on track to decommission the plant, tear down Scott Dam, which impounds Lake Pillsbury in Lake County, and Cape Horn Dam 12 miles downstream, where Eel River water has long been diverted.

Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Lynda Hopkins called the compromise on future diversions “a small miracle” ― part of “a very delicate balancing act” to satisfy widely differing goals of its seven signatories.

They include the Sonoma County Water Agency, known as Sonoma Water, the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, Humboldt County, the Round Valley Indian Tribes, Trout Unlimited, California Trout and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“I feel like we’re tired of using the term ‘unprecedented’ in Sonoma County,” Hopkins said, “but this is truly unprecedented because everyone who is part of it has different interests.”

Grant Davis, general manager if Sonoma Water, said that in his opinion “this was the last, best opportunity to preserve the diversion and the water supply for more than 600,000 people. The very water supply and resilience was dependent on a successful negotiation.”

But changes are in the works. And it won’t be cheap.

Russian River stakeholders are looking at a ballpark investment of $50 million to build the diversion infrastructure needed to direct Eel River water into the Russian River once PG&E is out of the picture.

The new agreement also means reduced flows into the Russian River, establishing flow levels that allow diversions only when there is enough water in the Eel to support the seasonal life stages of federally protected salmon and steelhead trout. That means any diversions would be limited to the winter and spring months in years they are allowed.

It also pushes users in the Russian River watershed to develop new water supply and storage solutions so they can be self-reliant in the future and no longer in need of contributions from the Eel River at all.

Under the pact, a new Eel-Russian diversion facility currently being designed would operate for an initial term of 30 years, with the possible renewal for a 20-year-term after that, based on a series of conditions that must be met.

Any operation of the diversion system after that would be contingent on negotiations between parties in existence at that time.

In the meantime, Eel River water rights currently held by PG&E are to be transferred to the Eel-River Project Authority, which was formed in late 2023 by Sonoma County, Sonoma Water, the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission and the Round Valley Indian Tribes, whose reservation in northeast Mendocino County is on the Eel River’s Middle Fork.

The water rights are then to be handed immediately to the Round Valley tribes, which will collect $1 million a year from the Eel-River Project Authority in exchange for diverted water that for the past 117 years has been free.

The authority also agrees to pay the tribe $750,000 a year, and later up to $1 million, for river restoration to reverse the decline of federally protected fish species in the Eel River.

A representative for the tribes was not available for comment Wednesday, but others said it was important for an entity connected to the Eel River to hold the water rights, and for the tribes, in particular, given historic injustices and long-term impacts of diversions on the river system.

“It’s the right thing to do,” said Charlie Schneider, senior project manager for California Trout, a party to the accord and a partner with the Round Valley tribes on river restoration efforts. “From Cal Trout’s perspective, it was really important for Round Valley to have the water rights,” Schneider said.

“We have very similar interests and want to see restoration of the Eel River, and in the bigger picture there’s just that restorative justice that I think is really important for them,” he added.

Parties involved credited Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, for first assembling stakeholders to pursue a two-basin solution in 2017.

“This agreement is a milestone on the path to achieving a two-basin solution that balances the needs of salmon in the Eel River with communities’ need for water along the Russian River – a balance achieved for the first time in 100 years,” Huffman said. “This is what is possible when people do the hard work to find ways to support each other instead of fight each other.”

State Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham shepherded the last year or two of negotiations, in part to ensure disputes over diversions did not interfere or slow PG&E’s regulatory progress toward removing the dams.

(pressdemocrat.com)

CAPE HORN DAM SITE (before & after)

SUPES MAKE NO DECISION ON WEED EXPANSION

by Jim Shields

This past Tuesday, February 11, the Board of Supervisors once again took up the issue of a so-called “re-interpretation” by Cannabis Department staff of a provision in the Weed Ordinance that restricts cultivation areas to a maximum of 10,000 square-feet. According to the un-elected bureaucrats, none of whom by the way were involved with the drafting and final approval of the ordinance, the 10,000 square-foot cap can actually be doubled. The only problem with that development is there is no language in the ordinance to support it.

This issue has been hanging fire now for 10 months.

At Tuesday’s meeting, instead of Supervisors taking direct action re-affirming their vote on September 10, 2024, where they directed staff “to draft language to maintain the original intent of Mendocino County Code section 10.A.17.070(D) and limit it to one 10,000 square foot cultivation site per parcel for mature plants …”, they instead voted 3-2 (Ted Williams, Mo Mulheren, opposed) to refer the “Cannabis Cultivation Limits to the General Government Committee.”

Their refusal to make a final decision on this matter is disappointing, to say the least.

I can tell you as someone who held elective office for many years, the last eight as president of an international labor union representing airline employees in both the U.S. and Canada (try keeping that multiple mix of peoples and geographic regions and countries happy), I never once dodged a vote for any reason.

Once the deliberative process is completed, you owe it to your constituents to make a decision.

I’ve always believed the worst characteristic, aside from dishonesty and crookedness, in an elected official is indecisiveness.

As I’ve said many times, this County has spent more time (10 years and still counting) and money (untold millions of dollars) on this pot issue. Even the county agrees with that assessment. Problems just don’t happen, people make them happen. Yet here we are today dealing with another in a long line of cannabis problems caused by people (the Supervisors and their staff) whose job, Numero Uno, is to solve problems.

What follows is a letter I sent to the BOS for Tuesday’s meeting. It provides useful detail and background on this issue.

To: Mendocino County Board of Supervisors

Subject: 4b) Discussion and Possible Action Including Referral of Cannabis Cultivation Limits to the General Government Committee

Dear Chair Haschak,

As you are aware, at our Town Council (Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council) meeting on Jan. 22nd, we voted unanimously to support the following proposed action on our agenda:

“D.3. Discussion And Possible Action To Approve Request To The Mendocino County Board Of Supervisors To Place On The Agenda, As Soon As Possible, The Following Item: ‘Discussion And Possible Action To Approve That Pursuant To The County’s Cannabis Ordinance, The Maximum Area Of Cultivation Has Always Been And Remains To Be 10,000 Square Feet Per Legal Parcel, Without Any Exceptions.’

Our Council was asked to support efforts by folks who are concerned about Cannabis Department staffers action to “re-interpret” a provision in the Cannabis Ordinance.

The effect of this new “clarification” is that it would double the existing cultivation area, which has always been 10,000 square feet. There is absolutely no authority under existing law or the Mendocino County Cannabis Ordinance for anyone, including County staff, administrators, or the Supervisors to “reinterpret” where the result is to re-write or amend, in whole or in part, provisions of the Cannabis Ordinance. Such changes would have to be accomplished by the Supes taking formal action at a public meeting.

For purposes of providing relevant background on this issue, I have prepared the following timeline of events and actions.

Expansion Re-Interpretation Timeline

On June 27, Supervisor Dan Gjerde sent a memo to Steve Dunnicliff, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, who evidently now oversees the Cannabis Department. It’s Dunnicliff’s position that the so-called “re-interpretation” of the disputed ordinance provision is compliant with the existing ordinance. In a June 27 memo, Dunnicliff explains, “I am reaching out to provide clarity regarding cannabis density rules. The attached procedure was implemented on April 25, 2024. It is based on the express terms of the County’s Cannabis Cultivation Ordinance and does not involve any expansion of or require any amendment of the ordinance.”

Responding to Dunnicliff’s memo, Gjerde asks, “Can supervisors receive an opinion from the County Counsel's Office confirming County Counsel believes this new interpretation of County Code is consistent with State law and County Code? The memo is not signed by County Counsel.”

Gjerde also gets to the crux of the dispute when he says, “Mendocino Planning and Building Department has a long history of preparing memos on planning matters. My understanding is the purpose of such memos is to insure consistency in how department personnel apply County Code. The new interpretation of County Code, as outlined in this memo, appears to me to go beyond scope of PBS memos, at least as I understand their purpose and scope. For me, the memo does not appear to be consistent with County Code, or what I believe was the understanding of board members or the public at the time of code adoption. What is the process for this memo to be agendized for discussion at a board meeting in July? I would like to see this item on a board of supervisors agenda, where these issues can be addressed.”

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

What is left unanswered at this juncture is what or who prompted Mr. Dunnicliff and the Cannabis Department to take it upon themselves to rewrite and amend an ordinance under the clumsy guise of a “re-interpretation.”

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

You should also know that at our June 26, 2024 meeting, our Council unanimously approved the following action:

“The Council Hereby Approves Support For The May 9, 2024 Letter From The Willits Environmental Center To The Board of Supervisors Re: “Re-Interpretation” By Staff of Section 10A.17.060 Of The Cannabis Ordinance, as well as the June 2024 Petition/Statement By The Concerned Redwood Valley Citizens (CRVC) Regarding The So-Called “Re-Interpretation.”

At our August 28, 2024 meeting, the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council (LAMAC) unanimously approved and endorsed a letter from Ms. Traci Pellar regarding the so-called “Cannabis Reinterpretation” issue. We urge the Board to reject this “backdoor” attempt to circumvent an unambiguous provision in the Ordinance. There is absolutely no authority under existing law or the Mendocino County Cannabis Ordinance for anyone, including County staff, administrators, or the Supervisors to “reinterpret”, in whole or in part, provisions of the Cannabis Ordinance. It’s widely accepted by constituents that such action gives the appearance of Cannabis Ordinance administration being an insider’s game played by staff and a self-selected few in the local cannabis industry.

We agree with the Willis Environmental Center: “This “re-interpretation” turns seven years of understanding on its head and dramatically alters a fundamental tenant of the ordinance and the underlying justifications of its Mitigated Negative Declaration — and all without any public process. Less than two years ago, citizens of Mendocino County mounted a referendum against adopting a new cannabis ordinance that would have allowed just the kind of expansion that this re-interpretation would now make possible.”

On Oct. 22, 2024 at a another BOS meeting where the so-called “expansion re-interpretation” issue was discussed, Supervisors John Haschak and Dan Gjerde opposed it, saying the provision cited by the Cannabis Department has been in effect for years, and everyone understood that grows were limited to 10,000 sq. ft., and it did not become an issue until new Cannabis Department staff raised it in April 2024.

Haschak and Gjerde had it right a hundred percent.

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

Elected officials are supposed to carry out the wishes/demands of clear majorities of constituents.

It’s not the Supervisor’s job to substitute their judgment for that of their constituents when those constituents overwhelmingly demand a different course of action than that contemplated by staff of the Supervisors.

We urge the Board of Supervisors to reject in whole this proposed re-interpretation of Section 10A.17.060.

Thank you for taking this matter under consideration.

Respectfully,

Jim Shields

Chair

Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

MENDOCINO COUNTY BOS APPROVES FUNDING, REVIEWS FINANCIALS, AND ADDRESSES POLICY ISSUES

During the February 11, 2025 meeting, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors made several key decisions, including approving funding allocations, accepting the annual financial report, and addressing policy matters impacting the community.

Item 3g) Fire District Funding Approved - The Board approved quarterly allocations of over $1.3 million for Prop. P, Measure D and Prop. 172 for fire districts in Fiscal Year 2024-25. Annual funding is projected to total over $4.9 million, reinforcing the County’s commitment to supporting emergency response services and public safety.

Item 3s) Annual Financial Report Accepted - The Board accepted the Fiscal Year 2023-24 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR), ensuring financial transparency.

Item 3v) Measure B - The Board approved transferring $7 million back to Measure B, withdrawing its previous allocation for the Behavioral Health Wing of the Jail and requesting funding from the Fiscal Year 2023/24 carry forward instead.

Item 4b) Cannabis Density Regulations - The Board engaged in discussions regarding cannabis density regulations, ultimately referring the matter to the General Government Committee (GGC) for further review and recommendations.

Item 4c) Public Expression - The Board confirmed that public expression will remain at the start of meetings, with a three-minute limit per speaker, overall public comment remains unlimited. This ensures a fair and efficient process for community input.

Item 4d) Inland Low Intensity Camping - Direction was given to staff based on a staff memo regarding inland low-intensity camping. Public outreach meetings will be scheduled to gather input on the proposed regulations.

Item 4g) Supervisors’ Reports – During Supervisors’ Reports, each Supervisor shared in-depth updates on their ongoing efforts and contributions across a variety of committees, highlighting their dedication to serving the community and addressing key issues.

These decisions reflect the Board's ongoing commitment to supporting public safety, maintaining financial transparency, and engaging with the community on key policy issues. For more information on today’s meeting and future agenda items, please visit

https://mendocino.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx.

(County Presser)

Mark Scaramella Notes:

The above seemingly AI-generated “press release” from the Supervisors/staff is obviously the product of the recent “advice” the Board got from their $5k workshop facilitator/consultant who told the Board to “celebrate their successes” (as defined by them). As a glossed over summary of the Board’s actions it is correct as far as it goes (not very). But when they pompously declare that, “These decisions reflect the Board's ongoing commitment to supporting public safety, maintaining financial transparency, and engaging with the community on key policy issues,” they drift into crass propaganda, expressing their own high opinion of themselves and not a report of the meeting, undermining the usefulness of the press release. We their constituents will be the judge of whether their actions demonstrate any kind of “commitment” — not them.

KZYX PROGRAMMER PETITION TO THE KZYX BOARD

If any current or former programmers would like to add their name, please contact me off list, thank you!

Chris Skyhawk

hawkwork@mcn.org

We, the undersigned current and former KZYX programmers, are deeply distressed with the current direction of the station and are very concerned that the station is losing the trust of our community.We are, of course, referring to the recent (seemingly arbitrary) dismissal of our beloved Operations Director, Rich Culbertson, and this follows the recent firing of program director Alicia Bales, b. Both of these staff members enjoyed , a high level of trust among programmers , and the community. Both have been dismissed by station managers,

We all very much enjoy contributing to our community, through our current or previous work here, and to see this happen to dedicated and competent staff is disheartening , even devastating to us, as is the lack of transparency around these actions.Therefore we insist the Board take the following action(s)

Immediately rescind Dina Polkinghorne’s authority to hire and fire staff, with the authority to be renewed upon the hiring of a permanent GM
Offer Rich Culbertson his job back
Publicize KZYX grievance procedure, and identify the how and why of these firings, as the community needs to know what is going on inside their community radio station, and all other applicable policies that will assure listeners of transparency
the next BOD seat that comes open be filled with an election and not an appointment

Jes Sloan, Jimmy Humble, Chris Skyhawk, Annie Esposito, Jeff Blankfort, Maria Gilardin, Steve Scalmanini, Sharon Garner, Jill Hannum, Karen Ottoboni, Alicia Bales, Larry Hacken

BOB AYRES BIG BAND LIVE

Looking for a fun night out? The Bob Ayres Big Band is playing live at Tall Guy Brewery in Fort Bragg on February 15th, 2025. Show starts at 6:30 PM. No cover charge.

Classic big band tunes to get you swinging and swaying!

It’s the perfect chance to grab your sweetie, bring your friends, or just enjoy a night of great music, good vibes, and awesome craft beer.

Mark your calendars, and don’t miss out on this fun night with the Bob Ayres Big Band!

ANTIQUE STERLING FLATWARE JEWELRY

March Featured Artist Margaret Paul, antique sterling flatware jewelry and .999 fine silver jewelry

Cloud Nine Art Gallery, 320 N Franklin St. in Fort Bragg

First Friday, March 7, from 5-7

Margaret Paul has been creating unique sterling and fine silver jewelry for the past 15 years. Many of the patterns used in her spoon/fork jewelry are over 100 years old. She enjoys working with precious metal clay to create one-of-a-kind fine silver earrings and pendants. On First Friday, March 7, at 6pm, Margaret will give a brief talk about her creative process followed by a Q&A.

Join us for a glass of bubbly, mingling with friends, listening to the background guitar music of Chris Cisper and seeing what's new at Cloud Nine Art Gallery.

POLEEKO ROADHOUSE then 1960s (Feeps), and now May 2019

SPRING IN PARIS: The Father-Daughter & Family Dance Returns

MCRPD is thrilled to bring back the Father-Daughter / Family Dance! Get ready for an unforgettable evening filled with music, dancing, and cherished memories.

Date: Sunday, March 9th

Time: 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Location: Town Hall, Main St, Fort Bragg

Theme: Spring in Paris - Dress to impress!

Cost: $10 per person | $12 at the door

This special event is open to all families-fathers, daughters, mothers, sons, and friends alike! Dance to classic hits, enjoy a magical atmosphere, and celebrate together.

Don't miss out on this beautiful tradition!

Jamie Campione, Business Manager, Mendocoastrec.org

ED NOTE

IF YOU remember Maggie's in Yorkville you can call yourself Almost An Old Timer. Ditto if you enjoyed tacos at Leo's in Yorkville where Leo, a wonderful performer, always had the latest jokes and even sang and danced a bit. I remember stopping in at Maggie's one afternoon for a beer when Maggie, an elderly woman inevitably propped up at the door as if to bar entrance to undesirables, of which there were many in her opinion, was still angry at a young man she said had just streaked the place. “He just ran in here naked and ran out again,” Maggie complained. Maggie was No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service to the max, as was the lunatic proprietor of Navarro-At-The-Beach in the same fraught era. He'd run hippies off at gun point, and he'd posted a sign outside that read, “I don't mind the hippie movement so long as they keep on moving.” I'd heard he'd done time for murder, and one terrifying day this guy denounced a combat Vietnam Vet friend of mine as a hippie and ordered him to leave before we'd even sat down. I was able to bear hug my chum out the door before he could jump the counter where Mr. Nut Cake surely kept a loaded weapon. Those were the days.

THE MILL AT GREENWOOD (ELK) (via Marshall Newman)

A TEXAN VISITS BOONVILLE

by Andrew Ribori

Where the heck do I begin? What an uber burst of excitement to have met both AVA stalwarts in The Bunker, so to speak, and on a perfectly illuminated almost Tuscan Sunday afternoon in July of 2010, us wedged in the ant-stream hordes of wine gawkers and tasters coursing up and down Sonoma, Napa and Anderson Valleys. Boonville was towards the end of our 2500 mile auto tour of the Pacific Northwest and the California North Coast. We had 101’d our way down from Crescent City, after finding the Pacific at the other end of the Drive-thru redwood tree, eagerly unshodding ourselves and racing into the frosty martini of the Northern Pacific, oblivious to the wetsuits all around us and the beachniks layered in blankets and bedspreads. Nothing reminded us of anything we've ever seen from the superheated Gulf of Mexico where we came from, I can assure you. Given a choice between tarballs and blue balls, the tarballs seemed almost alluring!

Limping into Fort Bragg the night before, on fumes, we arrived just at dusk at the Best Western, across the street from where the Noyo River is summer-strangled to a streamlet as it presses vainly onward to the Pacific. In the morning we stepped across its emasculated mouth not failing to notice the fullness of the gorge of its youth.

The weaving, looping coastal ribbons, 15 mph hairpin turns and local vistas kept us in thrall as we wandered south through grove after grove of redwoods. Each time we stopped and settled into an impenetrable cathedral of immensity we reminded ourselves that no man-made church ever granted more serenity, more proof of the miracle of life, then the grove before us or the ones we had left behind. I assert to my several outed religionless friends that all you really need to see of God is there in the morning mist, silently smothering all the cant and oafish self possession which so-often stains the world around us and pulls us down.

Things were getting downright peevish however as I compared my map’s required left-hand turn to Highway 128 with the unyielding immensity of the coastal range to my left, but Highway 1 broke right, across a bridge, while 128 kept straight and we approached the one and only Anderson Valley, geography laid bare in the Advertiser over the past 15 years and began a reconciliation of my imaginings with what actually opened up before us.

At its headlands, it appeared a small place indeed, cleaved narrowly and draped in greens and tans, homesteads poking their wooden prows out into clearings, from time to time. Gradually it widened, allowing glimpses of Navarro, impromptu clusters of houses and scattered piles of discarded paraphernalia husbanded nearby. Philo scarcely remains as a collection of images as the grapevines began appearing on both sides of the road.

We stopped at Gowan’s fruit stand to savor ripe peaches and golden plums, the juice running between our steamy mits leaving ineradicable stains on the rental car upholstery. Unsolicited, I volunteered we were off to view the location and perhaps even steal a glance at the offices of the mighty AVA, the response to which was a puzzled and wrinkled brow and very little encouragement. Lisa thought this an ill omen! I reminded her that “newspapers should have no friends” and the AVA has been a long, long time holding steadfastly to their creed!

By this time the Valley had opened up wide with vineyards of dozens of acres on either side. We could see what remained of the fruit trees, the open, scabby summer scorched hillsides and border ribbons of roses fronting the vineyards flourishing in the midday heat. Eventually the scattered and irregular yards of Boonville began to appear and the traffic, once sparse, became an unbroken beaded chain of people, much like ourselves, who had chosen to thread their lives into a fabric of tasting rooms, unhurried countryside and the occasional clutch of seriously spotless Harley-Davidsons! It was a parade and we were in it! And it threaded through what we had to assume was downtown Boonville! Zounds! We made it! After 15 years of fantasizing, the reality was upon us.

Scrubbed and bright eyed souls, streaming up and down the way, staring into shop windows, fingering the macramé and candles, a veritable hoard of what had to be out-of-towners sat, strolled and shopped, just like every upscaled small town in California. Nobody tweaking, smoking or drunk, at least in public. We were a little unnerved by the normalcy. We had steeled ourselves for semi-disheveled revelry and all we could see around us was the flash of credit cards and jewelry.

At one of the shops, I again invoked the name of the paper and discreetly mentioned the name of the editor. “Go next door,” she urged me, “down the hallway and up the back stairs!” Although it was a stunningly beautiful Sunday afternoon with open doors and windows, we proceeded with the greatest sort of caution, conditioned by the memories of 15 years of fire and brimstone, endless tirades and almost thunderous grumbling. Maybe the guy really did have a loaded shotgun in there. Maybe years of combat had rendered both the editor and his collaborator(s) locked in, freaked out and tending towards the halfmasted.

The outer door yielded with a nudge leading to a short walk to the AVA portal on the right. No way to turn back now, I figured. Knuckles tickle the door, a footstep sounded and a large steady man with a longsleeved work shirt greeted me curiously as I peeked inside. Having been outed, so to speak, I summoned up my courage and asked for the editor. “Bruce,” he said, “isn't here right now, but I'm Mark. Bruce might be in somewhat later!” “As in Scaramella?” I asked and he nodded, appearing, like a good journalist, curious to learn if I was friend or foe.

Well, it is pretty hard to read a newspaper for 15 years that’s 2000 miles away from your home, fly to San Francisco, drive 2500 miles around the Northwest and wind up in a pleasant but very odd little town and just sort of casually walk away from its most influential contributor. Lisa was looking kind of cute and we invited him downstairs for a coffee while we grabbed a sandwich.

The truth is, you can't get a sandwich almost anywhere anymore, leastways in sunny, tony California, so we ordered Panini and Mark drank his coffee and I tried very hard to think of any possible thing that might amuse or interest this man who obviously had very little interest in me because he wasn't easily amused by much of anything, really, and reserved his intelligence for laserlike examinations of local politicians’ expense statements, endless mindnumbing public meetings and miscellaneous subterranean intrigues. All I could easily muster was an exhortation to give us “the rest of the story” of the recently busted 62-year-old grandma! That seemed like safe ground.

A newspaper you can open, close, fold up and put away for a later read. Mark Scaramella was not that easy. The man had gravity. Lots of it. I would not, definitely not, want to be on the other end of the thread he had picked up and wanted to follow, especially if it was attached to anything unflattering. The man looked like he could wait outside the door of someone he wanted to see practically forever.

It was after lunch and he had been kind enough to spend time with us and we were supposed to make it to Lisa's cousin’s house about 30 miles past Sacramento so we scraped our chair legs and thanked Mark and headed for the door. Somewhat short of halfway there he averred that since I really wanted to meet the Editor there was a pretty good possibility that during our visit, Bruce had strolled by, padded up the stairs and might in fact be resident in the Fort!

Now in my mind, over the years, I had etched in a kind of angry, exhausted R. Crumb like image of the Editor into my brain and frankly, I figured I didn't need to press my luck. But Lisa wanted to pay the retail geegaws in the store downstairs and that aspect of Boonville had no interest to me and we had driven a very long way and for crying out loud, the guy couldn't dismiss me too rudely after what we've seen of the Major, so I followed him down the hallway and up the stairs and deep in the misty murk of the stacks of papers and computers and piles of books between the sedimentary layers of 20 or 30 years of newspaper effluvia, blotting out the light in the windows, nearly towering in a Dutchman's straw hat, Hemingway bearded, I was introduced to Bruce Anderson. And for crying out loud, he was smiling! Geez Louise!

The Editor was as gracious as he was composed. Lunchtime began leaking into the afternoon and before I knew it I had to go. Bruce encouraged us to to tour the Hotel, so across the way we went and found an airy, relaxed and inviting interior and exterior which looked every bit as pleasant as it could possibly be!

Next time we will pass a few days there. I have to return soon anyway! We never got to meet Deputy Squires, hoist a few brews at the soon to be reconstituted Brewery and lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I still have to try to look up Emil Rossi! What fun that promises to be! Thank you one and all and a raucous Howdy from Houston, Texas.

By the way gentlemen, thanks for the Mendocino Papers both Blank and Noir! Flat-out spellbinding!

AVHS VARSITY BASKETBALL 1968-69

FLYING TO EUGENE, A SHORT STORY

by Bruce Anderson (August 2010)

Flew to Eugene last weekend to see my new goddaughter, Siska, the first born of Yusra, nee Adi, and Ryan Wise. The infant is a child of Irish, Arab, Indonesian extraction and, I must say, seemed a tiny beauty among the hospital's baby bestiary of great pink blobs. Flying hasn't gotten any more pleasant than the last time I was airborne, whenever that was, but at the SFO end of the journey the Homeland Security team at check-in was positively jolly, one of whom shouted, “Anybody angry here today? Fed up with these procedures? Come to me.” Looking around at my fellow travelers, I don't think I could have hand-picked a more un-fanatical-looking fifty people. We all laughed and dutifully removed our shoes and belts and shuffled through the bomb detector and on into the bowels of SF International where, Eugene being a destination attracting small numbers of passengers, we walked down a long covered ramp leading eventually to the interior of a very small plane. I was on an even smaller plane many years ago in Borneo that put down, without warning, in deep jungle mud. I thought we were landing and suddenly I was up to my armpits in equatorial muck. Another time, in the “land of the headhunters,” I was again in a very small plane, a two engine propeller job, with maybe 15 other people and their chickens and goats when it, too, slid off a jungle grass strip into a mangrove swamp. The pilot, an Australian and clearly drunk, emerged from the cockpit to say to me, the only English-speaker aboard, “I only had one engine, mate. Probably could have made it, but…” I always think about those adventures when I have to get on one of these here flying machines. So, last week my wife and I were halfway down this claustrophobic, chute-like tunnel at SFO as incoming passengers made their way upstream, their luggage giving us outbound travelers a nice pummeling. Botching everything up even more, and delaying our flight a good 20 minutes, were the complicated logistics of getting an enormously fat lady onto our plane. A ground crew had wheeled Yeast Woman onto the tarmac via a kind of forklift, but she was now too wide for the precipitous twenty feet of on-ramp. A dozen uniformed airline people conferred until a take-charge guy appeared with a giant hand truck and two very large baggage handlers. The big guys seemed to knead Yeast Woman onto the handtruck, massaging her bulging body parts into enough balance on the device until, with one big guy pulling, the other big guy pushing, they got her up the ramp and plopped down into several first class seats, first class being no different to my eyes than the sardine-seating me and the missus were assigned to, and I wondered why the ten or so people seated there had paid extra for the purely imaginary luxury of it. The usual half-dozen morons had carried their too-big bags on board but were unable to squeeze them into the overhead bins. They now had to get back to the front of the plane against us, the oncoming foot traffic, banging us as they went, where the lone stewardess, and whatever these women earn it isn't enough, attached green tags to their too-big bags for storage in the cargo area below. The airlines need a big piece of plywood with two holes cut into it, one for luggage that will fit in the overhead, one for luggage that won't fit in the overhead. Prop the sizing board up at the check-in counter for the spatially-challenged so they know, way back at check-in, that their carry-ons either will or will not fit in the overheads. That way the rest of us won't have to play fullback just to get to our seats. At Eugene, darned if Yeast Woman didn't manage to get off the plane and up the tunnel on her own steam. She'd been faking it! Eugene being heavy on donut shops, maybe she kind of stampeded herself on into a dash through the always deserted, over-large terminal beyond which there's a krispy kreme, or facsimile thereof, on every block. Eugene remains Eugene, a liberal enclave of the oppressive type — stingy and scolding — with two Subarus per household and every Subaru sporting some awful cliché like, “War Is Not The Answer” or “Who Would Christ Have Bombed?” War, unfortunately, is often the answer, and Christ would have bombed lots of people, beginning with the money changers and several of His disciples if He'd known the kind of lowdown bullshit they'd pull as soon as He was gone. As Eugene slurbs out in every direction over wetlands and major migratory flyways, most residents seem to identify themselves as environmentalists. The town's daily paper, The Register-Guard, is smarter and more liberal in a staid sort of way than the alternative weekly, which is the usual amalgam of correct thinking we find in weeklies everywhere these days, all of it rendered in unsmiling prose, all of it unreadably grim-gray. (The AVA is readably grim-gray.) The Eugene paper wondered in a cover story, “What's the best pick-up line?” The cretins editing the thing devoted an entire issue to this lame inquiry, coming up with, “Want to fuck?” as the best answer. Being from Mendocino County I was used to lame and stupid, but there seemed to be a whole new dimension of lame and stupid in Eugene. The Willamette Weekly is of course owned by a handful of Democrat Party insiders, all of them wealthy, all of them grabbing what they can while they do imaginary good. In a town schizophrenically devoted to equal parts pious political posturing and big time college sports, there wasn't even a sporting event last weekend, the Ducky Wucks being in Tennessee for their first real football game of the season, not that I didn't get big sport out of the university's new basketball temple, wondering at the university nutballs who build these absurd palaces while they starve their libraries. Left at loose ends for a few hours, I pedaled around town being annoyed. On a bike path running along a fetid creek, I cycled past a guy stretched out on a concrete slab. I knew at a glance he was dead drunk, but I thought he might also be dead-dead. I circled back. The man, burned purplish-brown by the double death helix of booze and direct exposure to depleted ozone, was still breathing, faintly but regularly. He looked like one of those Egyptian mummies, and he was encased in at least three layers of ancient clothes in 80-degree heat. He was as close to being gone as you could get without being gone. I flagged down the next three cyclists, all middle age males, all togged out in several thousand dollars' worth of bicycles, lycra, and shiny accouterments one ordinarily would assume accompanies childhood, none of whom so much as looked my way. A young woman whizzed past as I called plaintively out to her, “Miss! Miss! You got a cell phone?” The girl, maybe 17, turned around. If she were 27 she, too, probably would have kept going. It occurred to me that if she didn't stop I would also move along but, doing a quick moral upbraid of myself for thinking selfish thoughts, I stayed. “Would you dare abandon this casualty of drink in exchange for your own evening of gluttony and torpid excess? If you do, you'll never get to ride down big rock candy mountain.” Fortunately, the young woman stopped. And she had a cell phone. I explained that the doomed wretch stretched face up before us needed an ambulance. The girl called for one, and one came, and the next day my wife and I got on the southbound plane, fought our way to our seats against only two morons stumbling the other way with oversized luggage, and by six that evening, I was back in Boonville where the drunks are ambulatory, and every single one of us calls an ambulance for every single person who needs one.

ANOTHER E-BAY POSTCARD OF LOCAL INTEREST, Circa 1920 (Marshall Newman)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, February 12, 2025

JOSHUA ABLEY, 29, Elk Grove/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

BRETT ADAME, 33, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia, concealed dirk-dagger, resisting, probation revocation.

LINDA ALMOND, 66, Ukiah. Trespassing, probation revocation.

ARIANA ARNOLD, 20, Hopland. Domestic violence court order violation.

RILEY BEAN, 31, Eureka. Failure to appear.

EDGAR CONTRERAS, 34, Windsor/Ukiah. “Proceedings.”

SONJA HOCKEMIER, 48, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

BRANDON LANGENDERFER, 31, Ukiah. Felon/addict with firearm, resisting, failure to appear.

ASHTON MATTOX, 26, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, false imprisonment.

WILLIAM OWENS, 36, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

SHANNON SMITH, 45, Potter Valley. DUI, child cruelty-infliction of injury.

KEVIN TURPIN, 59, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

ASHLEE WILSON, 35, Fort Bragg. Stalking-threatening bodily injury, trespassing.

JASON VIGIL, 44, Point Arena. Probation revocation.

TANNER ROBERTS

Certain areas in California are experiencing declining home values, despite the state’s overall allure and high-profile markets.

Mono County’s home prices have dipped over the past decade from $625,000 to $600,000, reflecting its small population and unique challenges.

Lassen County has seen home values fall from $292,000 to $237,000, indicating a quiet housing market.

Mendocino County shows a surprising drop in home prices from $564,950 to $507,500, despite its picturesque setting.

San Francisco County is also experiencing a pause in its traditionally high real estate prices.

Shasta County has witnessed a decrease in home values from $371,000 to $355,000.

Prospective homebuyers should weigh opportunities against potential risks in these declining markets.

(Source? Some real estate industry sheet)

IN THE WAKE OF WASHINGTON TURMOIL, U.C. DAVIS HOPES TO SEE FEDERAL FUNDING CONTINUED FOR DELTA SMELT CAPTIVE BREEDING PROGRAM

by Dan Bacher

The disinformation about the Delta Smelt spread by President Donald Trump and his Big Ag allies has deluged social media, as well as mainstream and alternative media, in recent weeks.

As an independent journalist who has covered the Delta Smelt and the California water wars for the past three decades, I was intrigued when I saw a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle about the federal funding for the Delta smelt being cut. …

https://sacramento.newsreview.com/2025/02/12/in-the-wake-of-washington-turmoil-u-c-davis-hopes-to-see-federal-funding-continued-for-delta-smelt-captive-breeding-program/

CALL IT WHAT IT IS

Editor:

The consequences of a coup d’état are catastrophic, but that’s what Donald Trump and his unelected shadow president, Elon Musk, are carrying out. People loyal to Trump, without qualifications for running government programs, are being nominated by Trump as heads of government departments. Government webpages have been taken offline, and funding has been suspended for programs critical for the welfare of American citizens, global health and security. Project 2025 alerted us to the plan, and it is being rapidly put into action.

The sooner we recognize this, the more likely we will be able to preserve our liberal democratic institutions.

But we cannot meet this civic responsibility unless we call a coup a coup. In condemning Trump, we will put him, and those who support him, on notice that the battle is on, and that we — the citizens of this democracy — will not forfeit our liberty, now or ever.

The news media will only serve the public interest if they are clear about what is rapidly transpiring. We implore our news media to help us save what is valuable about our nation, including the free press and freedom of speech and assembly. There is not much time to save what we love about our country.

Steven Delue and Beverly R. Voloshin

Petaluma

WAS POP JEWISH?

by Paul Modic

A classmate back in junior high once asked me if my father was Jewish, probably because he had curly black hair and a big nose, and when I told him he got very angry. Not that he was an anti-semite, for years he shared his office in the English department at the local college with the noted Jew Steve Hollander.

Steve was his good friend and Pop’s go-to guy in many respects, and when there was a trip to the hospital for an operation, Steve got up early and took him there, and back home after. (Once when I flew into Indiana to be there during an operation and his recovery, he still insisted that Steve drive him there at 6:00 am.)

Steve smoked up that office for years and probably gave both of them lung cancer, though Pop had quit a heavy smoking habit decades before. When Steve died there was a huge turnout for his funeral at the Jewish Temple, across the yard from my Unitarian church. (When they misspelled his name on the gravestone as Hollnader, Pop said Steve probably would have been amused.)

HISTORY OF THE HAIGHT ASHBURY

Just watched this evening.

Well produced documentary but unfortunately there was little involvement from women. It wasn't my thing although I did visit there a few times. My politics was social change and I wasn't into drugs. I did enjoy lots of the music of the day though. I was too much into social change and politics and my main focus was that, and not the hippie scene.

I visited a few times mainly to visit the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic and get ideas we could apply to our efforts in Fresno at trying to help lost souls, mainly through out 24 hr. Valley Switchboard, ran mainly out of our communal home, the Blackstone House.

L.S.

MITCH CLOGG

1938 seems to me now as long, long ago. The fact that it was the year I was born makes no sense. A living person can't be an antique, no matter how much it seems that way.

Whatever, '38 wasn't a bad year for an American kid to get born. America was about to take its place among nations, to consolidate its place in history. American democracy was about to win the world. I was there, young and dumb, but there, never realizing that it would prove to be a rare time, not until now in 2025. This is the year I looked it up.

Humankind is, give or take, a millionish years old. Don't quote me on this. Nobody actually knows how long it took to grow a modern brain. Like all the other details in the design and making of things, faltering steps forward are followed by frightened steps back. Still, we evolved to a point where we needed governing, when we agreed on human rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--and the need to protect them. We agreed that to do this "governments are instituted among men", and when government seeks to destroy these rights, the people must alter or abolish it and create a new government.

Homo sapiens has built-in flaws. Prominent among them is greed: I want more than I need. This is a potent one, stemming as it does from necessity. If you don't lay in extra, you are in danger of not enough (say, food, shelter & sex). There is no clear dividing line between enough and too much. The New World offered itself as a place where families could have enough, where abundance would not just show on the table, but luxuries could be experienced and enjoyed by regular people.

The ideals Jefferson listed in the Declaration of Independence served as scaffolding for the rules set down in the Constitution of the United States, rules that the document itself violates. Obviously, says the DOI, all men are created equal. The only way to double-back on this assertion, especially in the pressing matter of human slavery, is to declare slaves inhuman. So, God help us, we did that.

Thirteen years after we published the lofty principles of the Declaration, we convened a gathering of leaders and began abdicating them, thus delegitimizing the whole thing. The very basis of the law in this government of the people, this government of laws, was abdicated at that 1787 conference and repeatedly since, until this moment. Written in permanent ink, instead, were mendacity and hypocrisy. Slaves enabled greed, lust for wealth had need of slavery. The shrieking wrongness of these started the USA, and we the people have never officially corrected them. Trump did not get us here, nor did Elon Musk.

ONE OF THE STRICTEST HOMELESS CAMP BANS IN THE U.S. just passed in the Bay Area

by Olivia Hebert

Fremont has enacted one of the most restrictive homeless encampment bans in California, sparking backlash from advocates and nonprofits who fear the ordinance could criminalize efforts to help those who are unhoused.

The move follows a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling this past June allowing local officials to ban people from camping in public places. Fremont’s measure could be the Bay Area’s most aggressive response yet — potentially setting a precedent for other cities.

Late Tuesday night, the Fremont City Council voted 6-1 to approve the ordinance, with Vice Mayor and District 2 Councilmember Desrie Campbell being the only dissenting vote. The ordinance will prohibit camping on all public property, including sidewalks, streets, and parks. Violators face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. But the law also goes a step further than other bans in the state by making it a misdemeanor to “aid or abet” a homeless encampment — raising alarm among nonprofits that distribute food, water and other essentials.

City officials insist the measure will not penalize those providing food or clothing, instead targeting people who supply shelter materials such as tents or makeshift housing.

“It says that you can’t camp on public property and that you cannot store your property on public property, so those are the violating acts,” Fremont City Attorney Rafael Alvarado Jr. said during the meeting. “So if you aid and abet those acts, then you could be subject to penalty under this ordinance.”

Alvarado defended the provision by saying similar language exists in municipal codes nationwide. “The vast majority of cities we reviewed in developing our ordinance included similar language,” he said, adding that Fremont already bans camping in parks without making arrests for assisting those who are homeless.

Mayor Raj Salwan, who serves on the council, expressed reservations about the wording, saying, “Yeah, I think I would like to see the ‘aiding and abetting’ removed, but we’ll have further discussion on that.” Despite those concerns, though, he voted with his colleagues to pass the ordinance without amendments rather than delay the vote for further revisions.

Public comment during the nearly five-hour council meeting was heated, with hundreds attending to voice their concerns. Critics argued the law does little to address the root causes of homelessness and could further displace vulnerable individuals.

“This is not a solution,” Thaddeus Sprinkles-DeBacker, a Fremont resident, told officials during the comment period. “We have no solution with this. All we’re doing is moving them around, moving them from place to place.”

Advocacy groups also sharply criticized the ordinance. The nonprofit Abode Services, which provides homeless services across seven Bay Area counties, called it the most restrictive encampment ban they have seen to date.

“I haven’t seen anything, certainly in the Bay Area, as strict,” Vivian Wan, the chief executive of Abode Services, told the Mercury News. “It’s definitely the harshest.”

Despite the backlash, supporters pointed to growing concerns over fire hazards and pollution, arguing encampments have become a public safety issue. A petition backing the ban garnered almost 1,700 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon.

Fremont, the fourth-largest city in the Bay Area, has an estimated 612 unhoused people who rely on makeshift encampments, according to an Alameda County 2024 point-in-time count.

The council had the option to delay the vote to refine the language but opted to pass the ordinance without amendments. It is slated to take effect in 30 days.

(sfgate.com)

HOW A THEFT IN THE COW PALACE PARKING LOT BECAME PART OF BAY AREA SPORTS LORE

by Alex Simon

This weekend, the sports world will convene in the Bay Area, as NBA All-Star Weekend hosts dozens of events and parties across venues in San Francisco and Oakland. The Chase Center will host the Rising Stars game, the 3-Point and Slam Dunk Contests and the All-Star Game itself, while the Warriors’ old home, the Oakland Arena, will host the Celebrity Game, practice for the All-Stars and the HBCU Classic. It’s yet another entry in the Bay Area’s rich basketball history, which goes all the way back to the first-ever women’s college hoops game between Stanford and Cal in 1896.

The first time the Bay Area hosted the NBA All-Star Game, in 1967, things were a little different. For starters, the whole production was a lot smaller. The game was held on Tuesday, Jan. 10, and the festivities began the night before with a banquet for the players, local celebrities and dignitaries and more. (The host for that year’s banquet was a rising television star at the time: Bill Cosby.) The entire All-Star break was just two days in total, and tickets were sold for $2 to $6 in the month before the game, with a day-of seat available for about $3.

“It was nowhere near the big deal that it is now,” Golden State Warriors legend and 1967 All-Star Rick Barry told SFGATE. The Hall of Famer later added, “We had dinner the night before, you played the game the next afternoon and then you go out and play another game on the road the next day.”

This year’s main event will be hosted at San Francisco’s Chase Center, freshly opened in 2019, with some of the ancillary events taking place in Oakland as a nod to the Warriors’ East Bay history. But back in 1967, the Oakland Arena was a new, state-of-the-art venue, having opened in the fall of 1966, yet then-Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli refused to play the game there. His logic? “The name of the team is the San Francisco Warriors,” he said, per the June 11, 1966, edition of the Chronicle.

And so the game was held at what is perhaps now the region’s quirkiest and most humorous-sounding venue: the Cow Palace.

Of course, the Cow Palace itself is not located in San Francisco either but rather just south of the city’s southern border in Daly City (though a corner of the parking lot is in SF). That fact was pushed aside for the chance to play in a much bigger venue, as the Cow Palace allowed the Warriors to sell far more seats than the team’s usual home, the Civic Auditorium.

Heading into the exhibition, the East had won four games in a row against the West and 11 of the 16 All-Star matchups overall. The East team was stacked with future Hall of Famers — including Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson and Willis Reed, with Bill Russell coming off the bench — and the prior year had absolutely annihilated the West 137-94.

“We were definitely an underdog, without question,” Barry said.

The West had their own standouts, led by Jerry West and Elgin Baylor from the Lakers, but the consensus was that the East was far superior. The stakes were higher in 1967 than they’d been in previous years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s day-of-the-game story: Unlike in previous years, when all All-Stars received the same gift, the winners of this game were due to take home a videotape recorder worth approximately $500, while the losers would get a portable television, stereo and radio set that was only worth about $250.

The players took part in a practice the day before the game, which the Examiner quipped was “sketchy,” but the outlet also noted one player who stuck around the longest to get up extra shots: Barry. “That’s what makes Rick so great,” West coach Fred Schaus said to the paper at the time. “He’s a great perfectionist who never is satisfied to do less than his best.”

The extra work paid off for Barry. In front of a nearly sold-out crowd of 13,972, he scored 11 points in the first quarter to help the West pull ahead and then saw Pistons star Dave DeBusschere make 8-of-9 shots in the second quarter to give the West a 10-point lead at the half. When the East cut the lead down to six in the third, Barry responded with a Steph Curry-esque flurry, scoring 11 straight points to help the West to pull away for good. He added another 9-point burst in the fourth for good measure.

Rick Barry of the San Francisco Warriors leaps through the air past Oscar Robertson of the Milwaukee Bucks as he shoots for the basket.

In total, the then-22-year-old Barry scored 38 points on 16-for-27 shooting and took home MVP honors in what some consider the biggest upset in All-Star Game history.

“There were people who said we couldn’t beat those guys (the East) in a million years,” Barry told reporters at the time.

The game also stands out in NBA All-Star Game history for another reason: It remains the only time a coach has been ejected from a game. Celtics legend Red Auerbach had moved into a front office role while making Russell player-coach for Boston, but he made what the Examiner called a “one-game ‘comeback’” to coach the East All-Star team.

He didn’t last the whole game, though, getting hit with a technical foul by referee Willie Smith for cursing in the second quarter. When Auerbach disputed another call in the third and Smith hit him with a technical once again and sent him packing, one Chronicle reporter wrote that Auerbach didn’t seem to realize he could get kicked out of an All-Star game.

“Russell was almost convulsed with laughter as his former coach took the long walk to the corridor at the Cow Palace,” the Chronicle’s game story read on Jan. 11, 1967. The Examiner concluded, “Exit Auerbach, just as he entered. With a growl.”

More drama was revealed in the Jan. 11, 1967, edition of the Examiner: Barry had some of his belongings stolen out of his car while it was parked in the Cow Palace parking lot. The thieves snatched his traveling bag, according to the story, which included “his Warriors’ and All-Star Game uniforms and other important gear.”

“I’d appreciate it to get back my equipment,” Barry told the Examiner at the time. “I wouldn’t press charges because I know whoever took it wanted some mementos. I’d only be too happy to exchange some souvenirs for return of the two bags.”

Barry brought up the theft unsolicited to SFGATE about 58 years later when recalling the night. He shared that decades later, a random package arrived containing the shorts from that 1967 exhibition game. There was no indication of who the sender was. The jersey top? That’s still missing.

“I’d like to have it because it’s probably worth a lot of money in today’s world of collectibles,” Barry said with a laugh.

(SF Chronicle)

ALTHOUGH IT APPEARS this gentleman may have hostile intentions, it turned out to be anything but that.

On July 3,1948 in the 6th inning of a Red Sox/Athletics game a fan jumped from the 3rd base stands and made his way out to Ted Williams who stood his ground not knowing what was coming next. The fan approached Ted and said “You don't remember me but I was in the service with you. I think you're a great guy and I wanted to tell you so personally.” Ted laughed and shook hands with his admirer and they talked for a minute or two before the fan, later identified as Ed Carlson from Dorchester, was escorted from the field.

I LOVE AMERICA more than any other country in the world and, exactly for that reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

— James Baldwin

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Buffy St. Marie. A sad thing, really. All that wonderful, powerful music, and her life was based on a lie.

She performed in Covelo, must’ve been twenty years ago or so. Folks were so excited, she was idolized. And the concert was fantastic.

Now…I think a lot of people feel betrayed and ripped off. Rightly so. Shame on her.

FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE SUPER BOWL: NO REST FOR THE WRETCHED

They were 22 men who were somehow more than men. They were giants, idols, titans…Behemoths. They stood for everything Good and True and Right in the American Spirit. Because they had guts. And they yearned for the Ultimate Glory, the Great Prize, the Final Fruits of a long and vicious campaign.

Victory in the Super Bowl: $15,000 each. They were hungry for it. They were thirsty. For 20 long weeks, from August through December, they had struggled to reach this Pinnacle… and they were ready. To seize the Final Fruit.

— Hunter S. Thompson, February 15, 1973

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN INTRODUCES BILL AUTHORIZING TRUMP TO ACQUIRE GREENLAND AND RENAME IT 'RED, WHITE AND BLUELAND"

by Dan Bacher

The sheer madness of President Trump and his Republican acolytes appears to have no bounds. Witness the case of Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) who introduced a bill on Feb. 11 authorizing President Trump to “acquire” Greenland and renaming it “Red, White, and Blueland.”

“America is back and will soon be bigger than ever with the addition of Red, White, and Blueland,” said Carter upon introducing the bill. “President Trump has correctly identified the purchase of what is now Greenland as a national security priority, and we will proudly welcome its people to join the freest nation to ever exist when our Negotiator-in-Chief inks this monumental deal.”…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/12/2303239/-Republican-Congressman-Introduces-Bill-Authorizing-Trump-to-Acquire-and-Rename-Greenland

NOTHING NEW

One moment when the dust to-day

Against my face was turned to spray,

I dreamed the winter dream again

I dreamed when I was young at play,

Yet strangely not more sad than then —

Nothing new —

Though I am further upon my way

The same dream again.

— Robert Frost

LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

How Can My Valentine’s Flowers Show the Earth Love, Too?

Trump Says Call With Putin Is Beginning of Ukraine Peace Negotiations

Some Migrants Sent by Trump to Guantánamo Are Being Held by Military Guards

Family of Venezuelan Migrant Sent to Guantánamo: ‘My Brother Is Not a Criminal’

Gabbard Sworn In as Top Intelligence Official

Trump’s Federal Resignation Program Moves Ahead After Court Win

State Dept. Plans $400 Million Purchase of Armored Tesla Cybertrucks

Republicans Love Trump’s Spending Cuts. Just Not in Their States

Ozempic Can Curb Drinking, New Research Shows

NO, FEDERAL WORKERS ARE NOT VILLAINS. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT ONE

by Jack Ohman

As Elon Musk unconstitutionally terrorizes the U.S. government with college dropouts and teenagers on Red Bull, I want to tell you about being the son of a former federal employee.

My dad first served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War for three years. He was a staff sergeant, a radio operator and an instructor, and was awarded the Bronze Star with a “V” device — for valor. He met my mom at a USO dance at Fort Carson, Colo., in 1953 and they married six months later.

He then went to grad school on the G.I. Bill and got a doctorate in plant pathology from the University of Minnesota in 1961.

The U.S. Forest Service hired him as a research scientist. His area of expertise was tree diseases of the northern hardwoods states.

I can see your eyes glazing over, but the fact is, thousands of federal employees do essential work that you’ll never see, appreciate or care about.

You should.

The architect of Project 2025, who also now happens to be the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, said this in 2023:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. … When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

Villains.

One thing I can tell you about my dad is that he wasn’t a villain. He was a hardworking kid from St. Paul, Minn., whose parents died before he was 19. He volunteered for the military. His parents were second-generation Norwegians and Swedes.

His dad worked at Packard Motors as a steel buyer, mostly for the British Spitfire fighter plane’s engines during World War II.

He was not a villain, either.

Federal employees do a lot of different things. Your mail carrier is a federal employee. Your air traffic controller is a federal employee. Your park ranger at the Lincoln Memorial is a federal employee. Your food inspector at the Food and Drug Administration is a federal employee.

They are not villains.

My dad did a lot of things you never saw. When I mentioned that he was an expert on the tree diseases of the northern hardwood states, that meant he knew a lot about tree fungi and tried to prevent them from decimating and killing forests.

You know what comes out of forests, right, in case you’ve forgotten? Houses. Decks. Roofing. Stuff like that. No wood, no 2-by-4s.

It’s pretty elemental stuff.

So if Dad managed to figure out how to cure a tree disease, you got to buy lumber at a reasonable price and not have it imported.

Boring? Maybe.

Let me also clue you in about the other things he did for the American people.

He would get on hundreds of airplanes every year, fly to U.S. Forest Service facilities in places like Rhinelander, Wis., and Carbondale, Ill., and make sure the government scientists were on track, spending your tax dollars properly. Sometimes those flights were in blizzards, in thunderstorms and in very small planes that would scare the hell out of you.

But he did that for the American people.

You’re probably wondering how much this villain in the federal government who Russell Vought wants to traumatize earned.

He was in the senior executive service and was in charge of all the research in the Forest Service. When he retired, he made about $75,000 per year — probably $150,000 in today’s dollars.

Not that much. He used to say he could have made twice as much at Weyerhauser.

You know something else? He was a Republican for most of his life.

He was an Eisenhower guy. He voted for Nixon over Kennedy in 1960. Voted for Reagan, too. He later became a Democrat when he saw where the Republican Party was going, but his impulses were frugal. He didn’t like us taking long showers, and why would he hire someone to mow the lawn when he could do it himself?

Yeah, a real enemy of the people, my dad. A villain.

When he went on those trips, he also left his two sons and his wife behind, sometimes for weeks at a time. In 1968, he went to Huntsville, Ala., a lot. That’s where NASA built the Saturn V rocket that went to the moon.

He was on a government task force to make sure the American people and, by extension, the Earth, wouldn’t be exposed to potentially deadly bacteria that may have been on the lunar surface.

Villainous.

When the late President Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, he also made a special point of bashing federal employees as part of his campaign promises. This did not endear him to my dad. When Reagan took office, he was also an enthusiastic federal worker abuser.

Reagan used to joke that a phrase you shouldn’t believe is, “I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help.”

Well, let me tell you something.

My dad was, in fact, here to help. All the Carter org charts, the Reagan jokes and the Vought speeches in the world wouldn’t stop Dad from doing vital, quiet work for the American people.

He finally retired in 1987, and he died in 2011. Honestly, he felt pretty unappreciated.

Maybe even a little villainized.

But he should have been proud.

He did more for the American people on a coffee break than Elon Musk and his IT punks will ever do.

(Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at https://substack.com/@jackohman)

MY STATEMENT TO CONGRESS

by Matt Taibbi

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Two years ago, when Michael and I first testified before your Weaponization of Government Subcommittee, Democratic members called us “so-called journalists,” suggested we were bought-off “scribes,” and questioned our ethics and loyalties. When we tried to answer, we were told to shut up, take off our tinfoil hats, and remember two things: one, there is no digital censorship, two, if there is digital censorship, it’s for our own good.

I was shocked. I thought the whole thing had to be a mistake. No way the party I gave votes to all my life was now pro-censorship. Then last year I listened to John Kerry, whom I voted for, talk to the World Economic Forum. Speaking about disinformation, he said “our First Amendment stands as a major block” to our ability to “hammer it out of existence.”

He complained that “it’s really hard to govern” because “people self-select where they go for their news,” which makes it “much harder to build consensus…”

I defended Kerry when people said he “looks French,” but Marie Antoinette would have been embarrassed by this speech. He was essentially complaining that the peasants are “self-selecting” their own media.

What’s next, letting them make up up their own minds?

Lastly, “building consensus” may be a politician’s job, but it’s not mine as a citizen or as a journalist. In fact, making it hard to govern is exactly the media’s job. The failure to understand this is why we have a censorship problem.

This is an Alamo moment for the First Amendment. Most of America’s closest allies have already adopted draconian speech laws. We’re surrounded. The EU’s new Digital Services Act is the most comprehensive censorship law ever instituted in a democratic society.

Ranking member Raskin, you don’t have to as far as Russia or China to find people jailed for speech. Our allies in England now have an Online Safety Act which empowers the government to jail people for nebulous offenses like “false communication” or causing “psychological harm.” Germany, France, Australia, Canada, and other nations have implemented similar ideas.

These laws are totally incompatible with our system. Our own citizens have been arrested in some of these countries, but our government hasn’t stood up for them. Why? Because many of our bureaucrats believe in these laws.

Take USAID. Many Americans are in an uproar now because they learned about over $400 million going to an organization called Internews, whose chief Jeanne Bourgault boasted to Congress about training “hundreds of thousands of people” in journalism. Her views are almost identical to Kerry’s.

She gave a talk about “building trust and combatting misinformation” in India during the pandemic. She said that after months of a “really beautifully unified Covid-19 message,” vaccine enthusiasm rose to 87%, but when “mixed information on vaccine efficacy” got out, hesitancy ensued.

We’re paying this person to train journalists, and she doesn’t know the press doesn’t exist to promote “unity” or political goals like vaccine enthusiasm. That’s propaganda, not journalism. Bourgault also once said that to fight “bad content,” we need to “work really hard on exclusion lists or inclusion lists” and “really try to focus our ad dollars” toward “the good news.”

Again, you don’t know the fastest way to erode “trust” in media is by having government sponsor “exclusion lists,” you shouldn’t be getting a dollar in taxpayer money, let alone $476 million. And USAID is just a tiny piece of a censorship machine Michael and I saw across a long list of agencies. Collectively they’ve bought up every part of the news production line: sources, think-tanks, research, “fact-checking,” “anti-disinformation,” commercial media scoring, and when all else fails, censorship.

It’s a giant closed messaging loop, whose purpose is to transform the free press into a consensus machine. There’s no way to remove the rot surgically. The whole mechanism has to go.

Is there “right-wing misinformation”? Hell yes. It exists in every direction. But I grew up a Democrat and don’t remember being afraid of it. At the time, we didn’t need censorship because we figured we had the better argument.

Obviously, some of you lack that same confidence. You took billions from taxpayers and blew it on programs whose entire purpose was to tell them they’re wrong about things they can see with their own eyes. You sold us out, and until these “rather tiresome” questions are answered, this problem is not fixed. Thank you.

A Brief Note on Today's House Hearing

Hours into my latest turn as a witness in Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee, I tried to pass the time by playing a game. Every time a Democratic member described the digital censorship as a joke or a non-issue, I scratched a notation. By the end, I had a notebook page full of entries:

“Bullshit.”

“Distractions.”

“Wasting time.”

“Induces insomnia.”

“Dumb.”

“A waste of time.”

Ranking member Jamie Raskin in his opening mentioned I’d been deamplified by Elon Musk, and suggested he hoped to ask me about that. Ultimately he didn’t, possibly remembering that Committee Democrats were busy threatening me with jail around that same time. Democrats hit three themes: Musk, Trump, and weirdly, the price of eggs.

Republicans went after the Biden administration and Europe. At times it devolved into pure crosstalk, but Jordan at least tried to call attention to suppression of non-conservatives, bringing up figures like New York Times reporter Alex Berenson. Democrats engaged exclusively with witness Craig Aaron of Free Press (this one, not that one). The only question a Democrat asked me was if Congress is part of government. Michael Shellenberger, Rupa Subramanya (of the other Free Press) and I were repeatedly told any non-Trump, non-Musk censorship story was both “debunked” and in the past.

Today reminded me why Democrats of this generation will always scare me more. They genuinely don’t see the issue, and that lack of self-awareness makes them more dangerous. There’s of course a layer of partisan politics here (Republicans are laser-focused on sins of the left, while Democrats say everything is either Trump’s or Musk’s fault), but the deeper issue continually came out in Democrats’ statements. Whether it was references to “referees” throwing flags on misinformation, or pleas about how Trump’s behavior on J6 cost lives, or especially Raskin’s closing about America being a society of determinable “facts,” it’s plain these members really think truth is a mathematical entity that righteous minds can determine with precision.

As Rupa mentioned, polls in recent years have shown a big change in attitudes on this question. 55% of Americans now endorse laws against wrong information. To favor such measures one has to believe both that identifying disinformation is logistically possible, and that government should hold that role. The former idea is metaphysically crazy, the latter unconstitutional. Members in both caucuses used to have roughly similar thoughts on that score, but the cult of binary thinking that’s conquered Europe and Canada and Australia has spread here to constitutional lawyers like Raskin. These people believe. Worse, they believe something stupid, i.e. in this creepy dream of global factual consensus.

Fifteen years ago I interviewed a Democratic Senator. The instant my tape clicked off he relaxed and he began firing jokes like a person. There’s no hidden human underneath Dan Goldman or Ted Lieu. What you see is what you get, all the way down. The characters in Flatland are more complex. It never stops being a surprise.

Lastly, there was a time when members took their jobs seriously and respect was earned across the aisle when investigations were well done. Republicans behind the scenes were always impressed by Carl Levin’s finance probes, and even Democrats who disliked Chuck Grassley’s politics conceded his team knew how to protect whistleblowers and dig for Pentagon corruption. Jordan’s team worked its ass off on this issue. Their fight to get documents out of the likes of Facebook and Stanford will go down as classically impactful congressional inquiries that reflect well on the whole institution. I could swear I sensed tinges of collegiality at these moments in the past. Now, not so much. It’s a shame.

TRUMP: THE MEANNESS AND MENDACITY OF BEING

by Melvin Goodman

All presidents bring their own characteristics and governing styles to the White House. Lyndon Johnson, who assumed the presidency in the most awful of circumstances, was infatuated with himself, taking a LBJ bust to the Vatican to present to the Pope. Ronald Reagan arrived at the White House so grossly ill informed that a Washington Post reporter remarked that the “task of watering the arid desert between Reagan’s ears is a challenging one for his aides.” Reagan’s principal biographer, Lou Cannon, wrote that Reagan “may have been the one president in history of the republic who saw his election as a chance to get some rest.” George H.W. Bush was particularly nasty during the 1987-1988 campaign, so he had to prove he was really a good guy. Bush was only the third president in two centuries to be inaugurated with both houses of Congress in the control of the opposition, so he had to reach out to Democrats.

In our 250 years of history, we have never had to endure as president as ignorant and uncouth as Donald Trump. His rancid and irredeemable character was unveiled in his second week in the White House when an Army helicopter collided with a commercial airliner over the Potomac River. The day after the tragedy, Trump blamed the Federal Aviation Authority for hiring disabled people as air traffic controllers, saying they suffered from “intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

Trump didn’t mention that on his first full day in the White House, he had fired all members of the aviation security advisory committee that had been created in 1989 after the terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland. Instead of leading and performing the traditional presidential duty of consoler-in-chef, Trump chose to be combative and point the finger of blame.

Trump’s favorite target is the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs throughout the government, particularly in the Pentagon. In his second day in office, Trump issued an executive order to eliminate DEI programs throughout the federal government. Trump has falsely accused the Agency for International Development (AID) of funding a DEI musical in Ireland; a “transgender comic book” in Peru; and financing sex changes and “LGTB activism” in Guatemala. As DEI programs are designed to widen the act of hiring to pull in more diverse applicants, Trump’s actions are an expression of his white supremacist agenda.

In taking steps to dismantle AID, Trump froze all foreign aid for 90 days, which endangered the lives of participants in AID trials for new medicines and procedures. The dismantling of AID, which distributes tens of billions of dollars’ worth of foreign aid annually, assures the spread of disease as well as delays in the development of vaccines and new treatments. TB alone kills over one million people per year and makes an additional ten million people ill.

As a candidate, Trump pledged to get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools” and “keep men out of women’s sports.” On his first full day as president, he signed an executive order barring transgender athletes, thus “restoring biological truth to the federal government. In doing so, Trump’s bigotry regarding transgender athletes in women’s sports stopped 10 transgender athletes from competing against more than 530,000 women in the NCAA, which amounts to .000056 of those participating in college athletics. (Overall, transgender women represent just 0.6 percent of the American population.)

Donald Trump is particularly unusual, applying a style of meanness and mendacity that has worsened in his second term in the White House. On his second day in office, Trump fired the Coast Guard commandant, Linda Fagan, who was given 60 days to move out of her house at Joint Base Anacostia. But Trump ordered her to leave her quarters in three hours, leaving the commandant little time to remove all of her personal effects. What could be more petty and personal?

Trump’s meanness and mendacity over a period of several weeks have violated a congressional law that structured AID as a stand-alone agency; a congressional law that stated 30 days’ notice and “substantive rationale” were needed to remove inspectors general; First Amendment rights that blocked the freezing of domestic grants and other government spending; the Impoundment Control Act that prevents a freeze on most foreign aid; and the ban on birthright citizenship that violates the 14th Amendment.

Trump’s revenge and vengeance campaign has led to the nomination of a number of unqualified and unsavory individuals to important Cabinet posts and senior positions. One of the worst of them is Anthony Tata, a retired brigadier general, to become undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Tata has a history of Islamophobia and other inflammatory comments, once calling former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader.” Meanwhile, Trump’s revenge campaign against the Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, NSA and the Pentagon continues apace, while uncleared moles in the name of Elon Musk rummage through private and classified personnel files.

(Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.)

WHAT THE OLIGARCHS REALLY WANT

by Bernie Sanders

We we are living in an extremely dangerous time. Future generations will look back at this moment – what we do right now – and remember whether we had the courage to defend our democracy against the growing threats of oligarchy and authoritarianism. They will remember whether we stood with President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg who in 1863, looking out at a battlefield where thousands died in the struggle against slavery and stated that; “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that a government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Do we stand with Lincoln’s vision of America or do we allow this country to move to a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires?

But it’s not just oligarchy that we should be concerned about, and the reality that the three richest people in America now own more wealth than the bottom half of our society – 170 million people. It’s not just that the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider, and that we have more income and wealth inequality today than we’ve ever had.

It is also that we are looking at a rapid movement, under President Trump, toward authoritarianism. More and more power resting in fewer and fewer hands.

Right now, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is attempting to dismantle major agencies of the federal government which are designed to protect the needs of working families and the disadvantaged. These agencies were created by the U.S. Congress and it is Congress’ responsibility to maintain them, reform them or end them. It is not Mr. Musk’s responsibility. What Mr. Musk is doing is patently illegal and unconstitutional – and must be stopped.

Two weeks ago, President Trump attempted to suspend all federal grants and loans – an outrageous and clearly unconstitutional act. As I hope every 6th grader in America knows, under the Constitution and our form of government the president can recommend legislation, he can support legislation, he can veto legislation, but he does not have the power to unilaterally terminate funding passed by Congress. It is Congress, the House and the Senate, who control the purse strings.

But it’s not just Congress that’s under attack. It’s our judiciary.

This weekend, the Vice President, a graduate of Yale Law School, who clerked for a Supreme Court Justice, said that: “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Really? I thought that one of the major functions of the federal courts is to interpret our Constitution and, when appropriate, serve as a check on unconstitutional executive power.

Mr. Musk, meanwhile, has proposed that “the worst 1% of appointed judges be fired every year,” and demanded the impeachment of judges that have blocked him from accessing sensitive Treasury Department files. No doubt, under Mr. Musk’s rule, it will be him and his billionaire friends who determine who the “worst” judges are. And no, Mr. Musk, you don’t impeach judges who rule against you. You may or may not know this, but under the U.S. Constitution, we have a separation of powers, brilliantly crafted by the founding fathers of this country in the 1770s.

So, we are seeing an organized attack on Congress and the courts.

But Trump and his friends aren’t just trying to undermine two of the three pillars of our constitutional government – Congress and the courts. They are also going after the media in a way that we have never seen in the modern history of this country.

Every member of Congress will tell you that people in the media, and media organizations, are not perfect. They, like everyone else, make mistakes every day. But I hope that every member of Congress understands that you cannot have a functioning democracy without an independent press – non-intimidated journalists who can write it and say it the way they see it. And in that regard, I want to remind my colleagues what this president has done in recent months.

President Trump has sued ABC and received a $15 million settlement. He has sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and received a $25 million settlement. He has sued CBS, and its parent company Paramount, is apparently in negotiations over a settlement. He has sued the Des Moines Register, and his FCC is now threatening to investigate PBS and NPR.

In other words, we have a President of the United States who is using his power to go after media in this country who are saying and doing things he doesn’t like. How are we going to have an independent media if journalists are looking over their shoulders, fearful that their reporting will trigger a lawsuit from the most powerful man in the world?

Now is the time to ask a very simple question. What do Mr. Musk, Mr. Trump and their fellow billionaires really want? What is their endgame?

And in my view, the answer is not complicated. It is not novel. It is not new. It is what ruling classes throughout history have always wanted and have always believed is theirs by right: more power, more control and more wealth. And they are determined to not allow democracy and the rule of law to get in their way.

For Mr. Musk and his fellow oligarchs, the needs, the concerns, the ideas, the dreams of ordinary people are simply an impediment to what they, the oligarchs, are entitled to. That is what they really believe.

This is not the first time we’ve seen this in our country’s history.

In pre-revolutionary America, before the 1770s, the ruling class of that time governed through a doctrine called the “divine right of kings,” the belief that the King of England was an agent of God, God appointed him, and he was not to be questioned by mere mortals.

In modern times we no longer have the “divine right of kings.” What we NOW have is an ideology being pushed by the oligarchs which says that as very, very wealthy people – often self-made, often the masters of revolutionary new technology and as “high-IQ individuals,” it is THEIR absolute right to rule. In other words, the oligarchs of today are our modern-day kings.

And it is not just power that they want. Despite the incredible wealth they have they want more, and more and more. Their greed has no end. Today, Mr. Musk is worth $402 billion, Mr. Zuckerberg is worth $252 billion and Mr. Bezos is worth $249 billion. With combined wealth of $903 billion, these 3 people own more wealth than the bottom half of American society — 170 million people.

Not surprisingly, since Trump was elected, their wealth has soared. Elon Musk has become $138 billion richer, Zuckerberg has become $49 billion richer and Bezos has become $28 billion richer – since Election Day.

Meanwhile, while the very rich become much richer, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, 85 million are uninsured or under-insured, 25% of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 or less, 800,000 are homeless and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth. And real, inflation adjusted wages for the average American worker have been stagnant for 50 years.

Do you think the oligarchs give a damn about these people? Trust me, they don’t. Musk’s decision to dismember U.S. AID means that tens of thousands of the poorest people around the world will go hungry or die of preventable diseases.

But it’s not just abroad. Here in the United States they’ll soon be going after the healthcare, nutrition, housing, and educational programs that protect the most vulnerable people in our country – all so that Congress can provide huge tax breaks for them and their fellow billionaires. As modern-day kings, who believe they have the absolute right to rule, they will sacrifice, without hesitation, the well-being of working people to protect their privilege.

Further, they will use the enormous media operations they own to deflect attention away from the impact of their policies while they “entertain us to death.” Mr. Musk owns twitter. Mr. Zuckerberg owns Meta – which includes Facebook and Instagram – and Mr. Bezos owns the Washington Post. Further, they and their fellow oligarchs, will continue to spend huge amounts of money to buy politicians in both major political parties.

Bottom line: The oligarchs, with their enormous resources, are waging a war on the working class of this country, and it is a war they are intent on winning.

Now, I am not going to kid you — the problems this country faces right now are serious and they are not easy to solve. The economy is rigged, our campaign finance system is corrupt and we are struggling to control climate change — among many other important issues.

But this is what I do know:

The worst fear that the ruling class in this country has is that Americans — Black, White, Latino, urban and rural, gay and straight, young and old — come together to demand a government that represents all of us, not just the wealthy few.

Their oligarch’s nightmare is that we will not allow ourselves to be divided up by race, religion, sexual orientation or country of origin and will, together, have the courage to take them on.

Will this struggle be easy? Absolutely not.

And one of the reasons that it will not be easy is that the ruling class of this country will constantly remind you that THEY have all the power. They control the government, they own the media.

But our job right now, in these difficult times, is to not forget the great struggles and sacrifices that millions of people have waged over the several centuries to create a more democratic, just and humane society. Think about what people THEN were saying.

Overthrowing the King of England to create a new nation and self-rule. Impossible.
Establishing universal suffrage. Impossible.
Ending slavery and segregation. Impossible.
Granting workers the right to form unions and ending child labor. Impossible.
Giving women control over their own bodies. Impossible.
Passing legislation to establish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, a minimum wage, clean air and water standards. Impossible.

In other word, as Nelson Mandela told us, everything is impossible until it is done.

RANSACKED

by Selma Dabbagh

On November 8, 2023, Mahmoud Muna, “your bookseller in Jerusalem,” was recommending The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamed to readers here, while enjoying the “immense privilege” he had to kiss his daughters goodnight and put them to bed. He reflected on how stuck foreign correspondents would be if his bookshop were to close. Where would they get their hundred-page primers on the Palestine-Israel conflict – or their cappuccinos – without the Educational Bookshop?

On February 9, 2025, two branches of the Muna family’s bookshops were ransacked by Israeli police. They entered in civilian clothes, used Google translate to decipher the titles of the English language books and confiscated box loads, picking out in particular any with a Palestinian flag on the cover. CCTV images show black bin bags being filled with books to be used as evidence against the Munas. The police arrested both Mahmoud (in front of his eleven-year-old daughter, Leila) and his nephew Ahmad, and took them to the notorious Moscobiyya interrogation center in West Jerusalem. Mahmoud, who has edited an anthology of Arabic short stories for Granta (2020), is due to speak on a English PEN panel with me at the London Book Fair next month.

Ahmad and Mahmoud were conditionally released yesterday. Charges of disrupting public order are being levelled against both. One of the books used by the prosecution at Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court as evidence of “incitement” is a children’s coloring book by a South African illustrator, Nathi Ngubane, called From the River to the Sea. Other confiscated books include works by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé and Banksy. Ahmad described his arrest as “brutal” and lacking in clarity. “I’m feeling very tired, I’m anxious, I’m stressed,” he said. Both men are under house arrest for five days and forbidden from returning to the bookshops for twenty days. They have been fined 5000 shekels (approximately £1100).

Palestinian cultural and political organizations in East Jerusalem have been under constant attack. Sometimes it’s bureaucratic (impossible registration and licensing requirements combined with punitive taxation); sometimes it’s violent. Israeli police stormed the Yabous Cultural Center in August 2024 during a screening of a film on Gaza, forcing out the audience and sealing the building. Earlier, in October 2022, security forces had raided the home of the center’s director, Rania Elias, beating her sixteen-year-old son, Shadi, until he passed out. He was dragged away “barefoot and blindfolded” and held in detention, where he was tortured, for 41 days.

“Artists are being attacked all the time,” Ahmed Tobasi, the artistic director of the Jenin Freedom Theater, told me:

“They are the first to be arrested, the first ones being watched and censored from both governments, the Palestinian Authority and Israel. It started with the human rights organizations and then the artistic cultural organizations, before a physical attack on the people and the land and so by then no one can notice, or talk.

The Israel army has forcibly displaced more than 26,000 people in the West Bank in two weeks. Jenin refugee camp, which had a population density of 57,712 people per square kilometer in 2023, has been “emptied,” according to UN officials, who estimate that 80% of Tulkarem refugee camp residents have also been forced out. Nablus has been bombed. More than 20 buildings have been destroyed in Jenin, its hospital besieged and its roads bulldozed. Footage is coming of Qalqiliya showing men being marched down the road, stripped to their underwear and tied together. More than 66 people are reported to have been killed in the West Bank since the beginning of the year and a coalition of NGOs has written to the UK government demanding action to de-escalate the violence.

“Almost half of all Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the occupied West Bank since records began were killed in the past two years,” Save the Children reported from Ramallah on 7 February.

The Israeli aerial bombing of Gaza may have stopped, but the killing of Palestinians there has not. More than a hundred people have been killed since the ceasefire by gunfire and tank shells. Hamas argues that this is a breach of the ceasefire agreement by Israel and has frozen the release of hostages.

Atef Alshaer is a lecturer in Arabic literature at Westminster University. His family were forcibly displaced to Khan Younis when Israel attacked Rafah in May:

My family are a kilometer from Rafah in Khan Younis. Anyone who comes close to the border between Egypt and Gaza is shot at. My brother says they haven’t really benefitted from the ceasefire except that it is a bit quieter, fewer people being killed, which is good. But as for being able to return to their houses, that’s not possible. My nephew tried to return, but the tanks were shooting everywhere. He hid in a partially destroyed building and was OK, but no one has tried to return since. Another relative tried to return to Rafah, a week and a half ago, and he was killed…

In terms of day-to-day living, the harshest aspect for my family is that the wind has blown away their tent several times. They end up running around like mad trying to find a place to cover themselves. It is hard for the children. The weather conditions are difficult. It has produced a lot of grief, particularly for one of my brothers who already lost his son and has gone through so much already. Everything is still very expensive. Prices have come down since the ceasefire, but nowhere near where they used to be…

Before the ceasefire a lot of people were around them in Khan Younis and although it felt very crowded, there was solace in being with other people living under the same conditions. It made them feel human. Now that people have gone to the north, those who remain feel deserted…

Some of my brother’s friends who have gone back to the north say there is nothing to return to. Some have kept some family members in the south with their tents as a fall-back option. Only a few homes still have running water. There are people who deliver water in tanks, sometimes they charge for it, sometimes it is free through charities. It has been amazing hearing of people rebuilding wells and mending pipes. Some remarkable work. For poor families it is extremely hard. If you don’t have someone abroad to support you, your chances of eking out a living are extremely limited. Living conditions are very bad. There’s a lot of dependency on others. Recently, it has become increasingly hard to get money in. It terrifies me as there are three families that we are trying to support. It may get to the point where we can’t deliver money at all.

My friend Marwa (who last month sent me a picture of the contents page of the anthology Daybreak in Gaza, which Mahmoud Muna coedited for Saqi, as she had spotted my name there) has been reunited with her mother in northern Gaza after more than 15 months of separation. The journalist Bisan Owda smiled as she returned to her apartment building, burnt out and gutted, but still standing.

Owda and others are calling for accountability and the rebuilding of Gaza, as the Hague Group is formed, an initiative “aimed to address the failures of international law and the need for collective action against injustices in Palestine.” Meanwhile Dutch MPs have withdrawn an invitation to the UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese to speak to them, and Donald Trump has called for all hell to break loose, followed by a US takeover and displacement of all the residents.

(London Review of Books)

Owens River Gorge (2024) by Phyllis Shafer

6 Comments

Stephen Dunlap February 13, 2025

the “Incest Ball” – really ?

- Barbara Ortega February 13, 2025
  
  Scrolled down immediately to say this, thanks for beating me to it. Jesus Christ, do better AVA.
  
- Eric Sunswheat February 13, 2025
  
  Misspelled. Insense Ball?
  
  insense
  transitive verb
  To make to understand; to instruct
  
Ted Stephens February 13, 2025

The “Historic Pact” doesn’t seem like a good plan to me. It seems like those that are going to pay for this, and expect to use the resource, should have the water rights. I don’t see why one would do the investment if another party holds the rights (unless they are forced to).

It seems like everywhere I turn we are looking for more electricity (appliance mandates, AI, EVs, computers, et al) and want to move away from fossil fuel. Doing it is another’s back yard is sorry leadership. If CA is going to stay competitive, and promote low carbon sources, it would seem wise to keep the clean energy production we already have.

Everywhere I look we need more water too. For fire protection, new housing, making it so agriculture can stay ag open space (rather than sell out to a developer). Turning an existing source into a maybe seasonal water supply doesn’t seem very visionary to me.

Perhaps I am just too old to appreciate the “new math”, but this seems more of what has made us worse than made us better.

At one time in the golden state we had it all, it was “can do” attitude, now it seems we are hell bent on choking the chicken that laid the golden egg. I view this “Historic Pact” as another round of chicken choking.

Harry Bolz February 13, 2025

Hello Everyone

Dale Carey February 14, 2025

what did buffy saint marie do??

6 Comments

Leave a Reply to Dale Carey Cancel reply