Mendocino County Today: Monday 2/17/2025

Mossy Knob | Schmizzle | AVUSD News | Cubbison Case | MTA Service | Water Deal | Native Land | Open Mic | Golfo Compromiso | Ed Notes | Wine Safari | Yesterday's Catch | Meaningless Distraction | Cough Syrup | Sparky Sperm | Mind Something | Zen Now | Gringo Takedown | Girlie Show | Anti-Trump Demonstrations | No Idea | PG&E Profit | Devil Girl | Unrepentant Holmes | Forgive People | Cutting Waste | Acceptable Opinion | Perfectly Happy | Historical Comfort | Lead Stories | Tesla Square | Vance Speech | Trade War | Literacy Defense | Live Oak

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SHOWERS activity persist through the day, followed by briefly drier and calm weather on Tuesday. Additional rain is expected Tuesday night and Wednesday. A long period of dry and warm weather is expected to start settling in by end of the work week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A much warmer 48F with cloudy skies this Monday morning on the coast, I just has a brief shower a few minutes ago but nothing on radar? .15" from yesterday's "schmizzle" as Ted would say. Clearing skies today & dry tomorrow. Some rain into Wednesday then clearing into Saturday afternoon, then maybe a weekend shower? we'll see.

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AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

We hope you had a wonderful time as a family over the four-day weekend! Both Anderson Valley Elementary School and Anderson Valley Jr/Sr High enjoyed Valentine’s festivities last week. At AVES, Valentine art was all around and our youngest students enjoyed making their goodie bags. At AV Jr/Sr High students enthusiastically celebrated Spirit Week.

February is also Black History Month. Did you know….

• In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified, guaranteeing the right to vote in the USA, regardless of race
• In 1954, the Supreme court unanimously struck down segregation in public schools, sparking the civil rights movement.
• Rosa Parks helped to ignite the civil rights movement in the USA when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955.
• Many black scientists and inventors have made our lives better, including: Garrett Morgan (traffic light), George Washington Carver (peanut innovations), Marie Van Brittan Brown (home security systems), and Ktherine Johnson (mathematician crucial to NASA’s early space missions).

District Updates…

DLAC & Information About Immigration & Student Privacy

We hope to see you there!

When: February 20, 2025 at

Where: AVES Cafeteria at 5:00-6:15

English Invitation

Spanish Invitation

We Value ALL Our Families: Immigration Support and Updates

Please find links to additional information for families below:

Mendocino County Office of Education: Immigration Resource Page

Immigration and California Families: State Immigration Website

National Immigration Law Center: “Know Your Rights” (English | Spanish | Additional Languages

Congratulations to Our FFA Public Speaking Champions!

On February 11, 19 AV FFA members participated in the Mendo-Lake Section FFA Public Speaking Contests at Mendocino College.

• Three members memorized and presented the FFA Creed.
• Three members memorized and presented the FFA Creed in Spanish.
• Three members participated in Impromptu Speaking.
• Three members presented their prepared six minute speech on an agricultural topic.
• Seven members developed a cover letter and resume to participate in the Job Interview contest.

Results are:

• Impromptu Speaking - Zoe 1st place, Aliya 3rd place,
• Prepared Public Speaking - Samantha 3rd place,
• Spanish FFA Creed, Blue Division- Mariluna 1st place.

These FFA members are advancing to the North Coast Regional contests!

Ms. Swehla and Mr. Bautista are so proud of ALL these FFA members for their willingness to step up their leadership skills!

We love to see parents at our events, supporting their kids. If you would like to be more involved, please contact your school’s principal, Mr. Ramalia at AVES or Mr. McNerney at AV Jr/Sr High, or our district superintendent, Kristin Larson Balliet.

We are deeply grateful for our AVUSD families.

With respect,

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CUBBISON CASE

Jean Arnold:

I’ve been shocked by how few people have heard about or been following this case. It appears that our elected D.A., David Eyster, developed a vendetta against Ms. Cubbison because she refused to let him charge the County for a “training” event dinner at Christmastime for his employees and their partners at a steakhouse. He repeatedly submitted the receipts, and was repeatedly rebuffed, as he had been by prior auditors in prior years.

He came up with a whole scheme to get her out of his way, outlined in a memo that popped up during discovery, most of which has backfired spectacularly and to the citizenry’s great expense.

Highlights: Got the BoS to fire her without proven cause or chance to defend herself. The Board had to give her that, but then let her go again as Eyster filed criminal charges against her. Eyster presented himself as a hero protecting the County’s coffers, but remember, HE’s the one who was trying to look like a big, generous boss by having all of us pay for his employees’ (and their partners’!!) dinners (and I assume drinks, etc.) out of those same coffers. He wanted to prosecute Cubbison himself, but media coverage made that awkward on the grounds of basic ethics. So now we’re paying for outside counsel to prosecute her ($400/hr.).

Conveniently, a bunch of emails went missing that should have shown Cubbison’s involvement or lack thereof, after a sheriff’s lieutenant went through them then failed to save them, even though he knew they were evidence in a criminal case(!).

No one has shown any evidence that Cubbision did what she’s accused of*, and meantime she’s not only without pay, but is paying for her defense. The question is whether Cubbison approved this, or whether her predecessor, Weer, did it. Fingers have been pointed in all directions, and stories have changed over time, too.

Should she be found not guilty, which looks likely, or should the case be dropped, Cubbison is well within her rights to sue the county for wrongful termination and back pay, and that can be expected. If I were a lawyer, I’d take her case on spec in a heartbeat.

We’re already into this for over $100K, which is a lot more than the amount that went to Kennedy for overtime pay. So much for protecting the coffers. Eyster has not stepped down, and the BoS has not apologized or tried to get the D.A. to drop the case -- at least not publicly.

It’s really a remarkable story, and the writer the Beacon/Advocate have on it is doing a great job. I can’t do it justice (but then, it appears neither can Eyster!). Please check it out! And please correct me if I got something(s) wrong.

Jean

PS. She’s accused of approving/allowing an employee (Kennedy) working under her to use an unusual method of paying for overtime that everyone agrees she worked. Cubbison, everyone agrees, gained nothing.

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Liz Helenchild:

Slight correction--from a Ukiah person who has attended all the proceedings: Chamise wasn’t actually terminated; she was put on unpaid leave of absence by the BoS, and without any due process.

Her civil suit against the County is already underway. (And some of the testimony in the case against her has already been formally saved for use in her civil case.)

The next preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb 24 at 10:00 AM, during which the last person to testify will do so, and actual arguments on all the testimony will probably begin.

$$$$igh,

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MTA SERVICE ALERT

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LYNDA HOPKINS (Sonoma County Supervisor)

It’s not every day that you get to take part in a historic moment. Today was one of those days where I had to pinch myself and ask, is this real life? Is this really my day job?

Today, an MOU was signed between the Round Valley Indian Tribe, Mendocino County Inland Power & Water Commission, County of Humboldt, Trout Unlimited, CalTrout, Sonoma Water, and the California Department of Fish & Wildlife. This couldn’t have happened without the leadership of Secretary Wade Crowfoot and California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham.

This MOU will support water security for Sonoma County. It will allow us to continue to provide more than 600,000 people in Marin and Sonoma Counties with drinking water. It will support agriculture in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties. In the lower Russian River, it will support maintaining our minimum instream flows which is critical for native fish and our summertime economy. This is a big deal for us here locally.

But much more importantly… this MOU will begin to right a wrong that started one hundred and twenty-five years ago.

Ground was broken on the Potter Valley Project in 1900. Think about that: 125 years of the Russian River Watershed taking, without asking, from the Eel River Watershed, all because some guy had the bright idea to punch a hole through a mountain. 125 years of impacts to Tribal culture, fisheries, riparian and estuarine ecosystems. 125 years of a transactional relationship that only went in one direction. The Eel River was treated like a bank that we only ever withdrew funds from.

Today we committed to taking water only in high flows. This is known as the “run of the river” solution, and the “two basin” solution. And what’s more: we committed to compensating the People and the lands that have been harmed by this transfer for more than a century. The sovereignty of the Round Valley Indian Tribe is honored as the holders of the water rights. The Tribe will be receiving annual payments for as long as the water flows between the watersheds. Additional annual payments will go towards an Eel River Restoration fund.

In my 8 years in government I’ve never witnessed such diverse interests come together to make the world a better place. Tribal leadership. Local governments who were on opposite sides of a 125 year deal (with some of us benefitting, and some of us being harmed). Environmental groups. A state agency more accustomed to regulating than creating. We all stepped out of our comfort zones and did something today. Was it a compromise? Absolutely. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. We still have a long way to go — to honor our agreement, and to ultimately transition to a self-sufficient Russian River watershed.

But it felt like the arc of the universe bent a little bit more towards justice today. And it was an honor to be there and be part of it. We CAN change the world. It starts with respecting and honoring each other, and history.

PS: Oh, and earlier this week, Save the Redwoods League went public with an acquisition that many of us have been working on for years — to permanently preserve and protect 1,500 acres in Monte Rio and turn it into a Regional Park that will connect with other public lands all the way to the coast. So it’s been a pretty amazing week. I know sometimes it feels like the world is spinning out of control, but y’all, I promise… there’s good news, too!

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POTTER VALLEY TRIBE ADDING, PRESERVING LANDS IN WESTPORT, CASPAR

by Frank Hartzell

Many California tribes have been buying lots of land – and not for Casinos

Two markers in the southwest corner of the ocean blufftop Westport Cemetery tell how Native people, once banished in both life and death, recently returned to rest in a favorite spot of their ancestors. “Our ancestors from this place lived in harmony with this land. Returned to rest in peace in 2014 Sherwood Valley Rancheria,” one plaque says. The two markers are tucked together just a few feet from a precipitous drop to the ocean 60 feet below in a cemetery otherwise for setters of a town that ran off all the Natives in favor of a burgeoning lumber town full of saloons and hotels.

Next to that first terse marker is another simple stone plaque, stating that in 2004, unidentified male and female Indigenous persons had been reinternred there. That was a rare Native American display in Westport, which was beloved by many tribes for millennia as a shared foraging spot.

Not anymore.

Stand next to those two markers now and look across State Route 1 to 200 acres of newly purchased tribal land. While it is private property, the tribe that bought it plans to use it to expand a successful summer camp program for Native American youth from all tribes and to use it to rekindle traditional practices, as well as for their enjoyment.

The Potter Valley Tribe purchased 200 acres from Lorene Sosa for $800,000, closing the deal on Dec. 16, 2024.

The tribe now has four different significant properties in the works, three on the Coast and one on the Eel River.

A careful reading of land sales shows tribes all over California are buying lots more property, separate from the state and federal governments’ land back movements.

The Potter Valley Tribe’s property near Pudding Creek in Fort Bragg was their first acquisition on the Coast.

Now three more interesting properties have been acquired or are being acquired to enjoy and use in traditional activities like foraging, seaweed gathering, traditional sustainable forestry, and other teachings of ancestral ways.

“We’ve been making use of funding that is out there to purchase ancestral lands. This opportunity is here for now and we don’t know for how long so we are making use of that opportunity,” said Rosales.

The Potter Valley Tribe is one of just 574 recognized tribes in the USA. Many more have tried to become recognized but failed to meet the rigorous criteria. Potter Valley is one of the smaller recognized tribes. The largest is the Navajo Nation, which has 400,000 members.

California has the second largest number of Indigenous people among the 50 states. California natives historically had much fewer people in each tribe and far more tribes than indigenous peoples in the Southwest, Great Plains or on the East Coast.

Some of the larger tribes were recognized by Congress as much as a century ago or established their federal status by having negotiated treaties with the federal government. This became a bigger deal in the 1980s when lots more tribes began building casinos. Then, being in a recognized tribe could be a literal goldmine. Con artists had to be blocked by strict ancestry tests. Even well-known tribes without a recognized burial ground or other required items needed for federal recognition were denied.

The Potter Valley Tribe’s community center is at 2251 S State St in Ukiah. In recent years, the tribe has expanded to include:

• 3.9 acres designated by the Department of Interior in 2016 as the tribe’s lands. (not purchased lands) Later, 5.7 acres on Michael Court in Potter Valley, were added to the tribe’s trust holdings, the property is not continuous to the first property, which is also in the same general area..
• Their first big purchase was the 69 acre Noyo Bida Ranch in Fort Bragg adjacent to Pudding Creek and across from the Beachcomber Motel. They purchased it from a bank in 2018 for $1.65 million. For the previous decade attempts were made to rezone the property and develop it with 255 houses. The city rejected this in the end saying they simply didn’t have water for the project. The city has since greatly increased its water supplies but still has limited supplies. The property had once been home to a Model T Racing track and a destruction derby site. The money came from a fund set up by tribes that have casinos for those who do not have gaming like Potter Valley.
• Next, PG&E donated 879 acres of Eel River Wilderness just north of Potter Valley on the main stem of the Eel River to the tribe., While the property includes old-growth trees, it is also very fragile, having been trashed by more than a century of non-sustainable legacy logging. The tribe was chosen for the donatio partly because of its work on restoration in the area, such as a regular sponsor in the annual Eel River cleanup in the summer.
• Next came the 200-acre ranch above and north of the town of Westport on Wages Creek purchased from the Lorene Sosa at the end of 2024. Youths from a dozen different tribes now use the Potter Valley Tribe’s Pudding Creek property during the annual summer camp and for learning traditional camping, foraging, and other traditional skills. There were 250 participants from 12 different tribes in the summer camp at the peak last year, Rosales said. The newly acquired property in Westport will be used for family camping and to expand the summer campout programs for Indigenous teens. Currently, the summer learners have to go to the Ten Mile River to complete riparian curriculum.
• Finally, the tribe is acquiring a 48-acre parcel just south of Fort Bragg, now in escrow. Rosales said the tribe desires the property for the native plants and mushrooms it comes loaded with, which are beloved by his Potter Valley Tribe family as well as a growing number of us relative newcomers. Rosales said that deal will hopefully close in June.

Westport was a critical place for the Yuki, Pomo and other local Native Americans. The tribes who used Westport also migrated from Coast to inland to feast on summer bounty when the ocean was calm enough to allow it then back to Potter Valley, Sherwood Valley, Coyote Valley and other places. Westport was, and still is a place where the tribes shared the incredible resource of mussels, clams, abalone and seaweed. A kind of festival was held each summer before the Russians and Californians arrived for the making and trading of baskets, including some made of seaweed.

When settlers arrived, they came fast and in violent force against the natives.

In 1881 Westport had two mills on Wages Creek, three hotels, six saloons, two blacksmith shops, three stores, two livery stables, two shoe shops, a barber shop, a butcher shop, a post office and telegraph office, according to newspaper accounts from the day. By 1883 a stagecoach ran between Ukiah and Westport. One account claims Westport had 14 saloons in its heyday. Today the post office survives along with a general store and an upscale restaurant.

But natives continued to return to their beloved foraging grounds, a practice which can still be seen in 2025.

(mendocinocoast.news)

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MENDOCINO OPEN MIC

The monthly Mendocino Open Mic Poetry series will be held Saturday, February 22nd.

This series is the last Saturday of every month at the Mendocino Art Center, Stevenson Studio, 4-6 pm.

The series begins with one or two featured readers and a brief break, followed by the open mic.

Feel free to share your work or the work of others.

Featured readers for February are Thomas Roberdeau and Scott Croghan.

Scott Croghan has been an active member of the poetry community since the 1970’s sharing his work at readings and on the radio. Scott describes his approach to poetry as “concerned realism”.

Thomas Roberdeau primarily writes film treatments and screenplays. He currently teaches film production with the San Francisco Art & Film program and poetry on the coast through California Poets-in-the-Schools.

Devreaux Baker, dbaker@mcn.org

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A READER WRITES: How’s this for a compromise?

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ED NOTES

SITTING in a bar the Scotsman says, “As good as this bar is, I still prefer the pubs back home. In Glasgow there’s a wee place called McTavish’s. The landlord goes out of his way for the locals. When you buy four drinks, he’ll buy the fifth drink.” “Well, Angus,” said the Englishman, “At my local in London, the Red Lion, the barman will buy you your third drink after you buy the first two.” “Ahhh, dat’s nothin’,” said the Irishman, “back home in my favorite pub, the moment you set foot in the place, they’ll buy you a drink, then another, all the drinks you like, actually. Then, when you’ve had enough drinks, they’ll take you upstairs and see that you gets laid, all on the house!” The Englishman and Scotsman were suspicious of the claims. The Irishman swore every word was true. “Did this actually happen to you?” asked the Englishman. “Not meself, personally, no,” admitted the Irishman, “but it did happen to me sister quite a few times.”

JOHN STEINBECK saw the Magas coming back in 1969: “America suffers from a subtle and deadly illness. Immorality doesn’t describe it, nor does lack of integrity or dishonesty. What’s been lost are the rules — rules concerning life, limb, and property, rules governing deportment, manners, conduct, and rules defining dishonesty, dishonor, misconduct, and crime. Americans are like highly bred, trained, and specialized bird dogs cooped up in a kennel rather than allowed to hunt. In a short time the dogs become quarrelsome, fat, lazy, cowardly, dirty, and utterly disreputable and worthless, and all because their purpose is gone and with it rules and disciplines that once made them beautiful and good.”

TIBURCIO VASQUEZ was, for a time, the best known outlaw in America and, as described in a fascinating biography called ‘Bandito’ by San Francisco-based John Boessenecker, Vasquez was certainly among the most active highway robbers in America’s flush history of banditry.

Vasquez was a Californio, that doomed race of Spanish-descended Californians who began arriving in the state when it was a northern frontier of Mexico, some of them former conquistadores who rode north to what became San Francisco with Junipero Serra while Serra himself, ever the ascetic, walked the whole way from Mexico City.

It’s always striking how fast our history is moving, especially when you consider that Father Serra staggered into the Bay Area a mere 224 years ago. Serra’s string of missions comprised California for the next 70 years or so until the missions were secularized, i.e., became the private property of connected Mexicans when California became the native home of several thousand rural aristocrats presiding over vast ranchos from San Diego to, of all places, Hopland here in Mendocino County, the whole of it casually administered out of Mexico.

The brief generations of the “Californios” ancestral home was Monterey, which is where Vasquez and, earlier, General Vallejo, were born. The Californios, and their gracefully vigorous rancho lives were overwhelmed by the Gold Rush of 1850 when the Californios aristocracy was dispossessed by the gold-deranged hordes. By then California had been formally annexed by the United States.

Vasquez was one of many dispossessed Californios who spent the rest of his life dispossessing Yankee travelers of whatever valuables they had on them, right down to their boots.

The bandido’s biggest heist occurred when he and his gang robbed an entire town near what is now Fresno.

In between forays holding up stage coaches, rural stores, drinking establishments, and the occasional Anglo whorehouse, and in between stays at San Quentin where he organized an all-time record four break-outs, Vasquez, revered by Californios and Mexicans as a Robin Hood figure, depended on remote settlements of his admirers to hide him from the law, what little law there was from 1850 to 1870 or so. (Lynch law was more prevalent than the courtroom type.)

The man had flair. He read poetry and even wrote some. He also sang his way into the arms of many women, married and single.

‘Bandito’ is a lush picture of California as it was from the Gold Rush through the full establishment of a coherent state, which only really commenced about 1880. Vasquez, incidentally, hid out for a while at the Feliz ranch based in Hopland, and there’s an account of him being chased into the hills above Anderson Valley in 1865 by the legendary Mendocino County lawman, Doc Standley.

I was pleased to see that Boessenecker’s fascinating biography of Vasquez is dedicated to the late Jack Reynolds, who died in Willits many years ago. Jack’s late wife, Rosalie, is also cited by the author for her help with his marvelous book. She is fondly remembered by many in the Anderson Valley where she lived for many years following the death of her husband.

The author says the Reynolds, retired from the antiquarian book business, were of huge assistance to him in locating the source material for his project. Boessenecker is clearly a formidable researcher. He has tracked down people, towns and even two-shack hamlets deep in the Coast Range that haven’t existed for a hundred and fifty years. This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in the true history of the Golden State.

BILL HURD of Reidsville, North Carolina, writes: “In Derrick Jensen’s book, ‘Endgame,’ he reports a quote from B. Traven which appeared in the August 18, 2004 edition of the AVA, perhaps on page 8. Would it be possible to obtain from you the exact reference to B. Traven’s work from which the quote was taken? I first became aware of Traven when I shipped as a deckhand on a small, Danish freighter out of Vera Cruz, Mexico, more than 40 years ago. One of the few books in English in the ship’s library was a tattered copy of ‘The Death Ship.’ Later I read and came to love ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.’ This quote might have been from ‘The Death Ship’ but I don’t remember it: ‘Whether it takes me four weeks or 14 hours to get to Hamburg from Munich is less important to my happiness and to my humanity than the question: How many men who yearn for sunlight just as I do must be imprisoned in factories, their healthy limbs and lungs sacrificed in order to build a locomotive? For me the only important thing is: The more swiftly our thriving economy is brought to ruin, the more pitilessly the last remnant of industry is wiped out, the sooner people will have enough to eat and have a small measure of that happiness to which every man has a right’.”

The AVA’s erudite readership will surely be able to tell Mr. Hurd which of Traven’s books this quote came from. We grouped on it here at the office, preliminarily concluding, as The Major put it, “on a best guess basis,” that the quote comes from Traven’s “The White Rose,” in which, we vaguely recalled, there’s a reference to a trip to Munich.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, February 16, 2025

ALEXANDER BARGER, 21, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JESSICA BAUER, 37, Ukiah. Toluene or similar, bribing an executive officer, resisting.

THOMAS BROGAN JR., 39, Ukiah. Under influence, paraphernalia, probation revocation, unspecified offense.

JAMES CLAUSEN, 54, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

WES FELIZ, 23, Redwood Valley. Vandalism, probation revocon.

DONNA KLINE, 68, Mendocino. Harboring wanted felon, failure to appear.

NIKOYA LEAHY, 52, Covelo. Vandalism.

TRINIDAD MAGDALENO-PULIDO, 23, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, criminal threats, paraphernalia, unspecified offense.

MONICA MCDONALD, 57, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

STEVEN MORGAN, 72, Laytonville. DUI.

DANIEL MOSHER, 40, Willits. DUI.

DORTHEA PARTIDA, 37, Ukiah. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15%, probation revocation.

MATTHEW QUINLIVEN, 36, Willits. Domestic battery, child endangerment.

CASSANDRA WESTCOTT, 32, Willits. Domestic battery.

JASON WHITNEY, 44, Fort Bragg. DUI.

SCOTTY WILLIS, 41, Ukiah. Trespassing, criminal threats, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

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CAROLINA CODEINE FIENDS

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Had a cough that lasted so long I was going to name it (“Sputum” has a nice ring, plus it’s an olde family name) but first went to the doctor.

I picked the right one because he was familiar with the condition known as “cough” and knew just what to do to get rid of me. A few minutes later I was at the pharmacy to pick up cough medicine.

Not just any cough medicine. Robitussin is the Cadillac of cough syrup and it had been a long time since I’d had a fat slug of the slurpy stuff.

But to acquire Robitussin is complicated. Here we are in 2025, a time of many scary drugs, but Robitussin is one that demands antiquated 19th century purchasing procedures. Maybe addicts are different in North Carolina, but when I told the nice cashier lady I had come to pick up Robitussin she turned from the counter and disappeared.

Many minutes later she returned hauling a great big leather-bound book with lined yellowed pages. She wrote down the date, the Rx number, asked for my driver’s license, jotted down a few more things, and turned it 180 degrees for me to sign. For cough syrup.

I mean, excuse me, but . . . cough syrup?

Given the competition for consumer dollars in a marketplace thick with druggies, addicts, users, losers and all the rest of the flotsam, do authorities think the most menacing of drugs is cough medicine?

In a world of glue sniffers, fentanyl abusers, Red Bull, pot heads, Vicodin, Valium, Vodka, Viceroys and Vicks Vapo-Rub, sudafed, paint huffers and oxycontin, the most closely monitored drugs are cough suppressants?

Is the South troubled by codeine fiends? I can’t imagine anyone but a poor old granny who’d run out of snuff wanting to pour herself a bracing nighttime tumbler of grape-flavored, codeine-enhanced cough syrup, and that would have been around 1915.

The capper: I was given a four-ounce bottle of Robitussin, barely enough for the short walk home, then phone in a refill. There was a time in my life that four ounces of codeine-enriched Robitussin poured into a 16 ounce can of beer would have made a nice flavoring agent.

And a prescription refill? Sorry. No can do. No refills. You gotta go back to the doc and get a fresh order.

Better idea: Score a quart of street NyQuil from some guy in an alley.

LADYBUG, LADYBUG

Lying in bed, barely awake, the morning light filtering through shades, I stared at the ceiling. I saw a ladybug.

Some background: Two years ago I spotted a dark nub in a corner of the same ceiling and, mildly alarmed, hurried downstairs for a ladder and some Raid.

I climbed the stepladder, which at my age is equivalent to a 100 mph twisting, screaming amusement park ride, and realized my tight little bundle was a big herd of ladybugs all huddled up.

Now in 2025 my solo ladybug clambers along in her busy slow way across and criss-cross my ceiling. Up this, over that, north for 12 or so inches, a left turn across hilly beadboard seams, then a stop that lasts 30 seconds. Maybe a minute. She turns and heads back the way she’d come.

The ceiling runs maybe 25 feet north and south and about 15 feet wide. A comparable playing field for you and me might be a hundred miles one way and not much less the other. Considering the size of a ladybug compared to you is what I mean. She’s as big as a red pea and has to walk the ceiling upside down. Although, to her advantage she’s got like eight or twenty legs.

She’s marooned on this great big white island with no family, no companions, and no food and no map. If she has eyes, the horizon must look like the Sahara Desert or the surface of the moon. No matter where she walks she’s nowhere.

And she sure does walk. Whenever I go upstairs I check to see if she’s there. Affirmative; present and on duty.

By Sunday morning when you read this it will be 14 days of me watching my tiny anonymous insect work her way round and round the ceiling. She goes over near the heat register, circles out to the chandelier, then meanders around some more in no particular pattern.

Also, whenever I come into the room and look up I am always staring right at her. She’s a tiny speck in a massive playground but I always spot her without having to scan the ceiling.

I’m not saying we have a psychic connection. I haven’t even considered naming her, and besides, Sputum is already taken.

But whenever I look up she’s right there, no bigger than a ladybug.

(TWK and his employer, Thomas Hine, are now in the Carolinas where it has been mostly cold and rainy. This message brought to you by the Ukiah Chamber of Commerce.)

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STOP, YOU SILLIES!

Happy Presidents Day, Bruce Anderson

Stop identifying with the body and the mind, and your problem is solved! The Absolute works through the body-mind complex without interference. Give the mind something to do, such as prayers, or chanting mantras, or positive affirmations, as an alternative to random discursive thinking. You have nothing left to achieve. I am available on earth for revolutionary ecological and peace & justice action.

Happy Presidents Day~

Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

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TED DACE

One day Prof Verdu told us about the Zen view of time. He said Zen is all about the now, but the now is not so simple. He wrote the word on the blackboard twice, one with a lower case n and the other capitalized. The lower case now is what a clock tells us, say, 8 o’clock. A minute later it’s 8:01. An hour later it’s 9. The lower case now keeps changing. The capital now, on the other hand, is always the same. No matter what the clock says, it’s still Now. It’s not as if five minutes ago we were standing around waiting for the present to arrive. He pointed out that time is often likened to a river, but this is only the lower case now. The Now is more like a pond. Then he asked us a Taoist question: which has more power, the river or the pond? Of course we all thought it was the river, but he explained that the pond has more power because it’s not continually giving it all away like the river. Instead it holds it in reserve. The river, yang, gives the impression of power, but the real power is yin.

The first lesson I drew from this is that the river is the now of the senses, the world of space and matter, while the pond is the inner Now. Consciousness projects the Now onto whatever time the clock happens to read. But it wasn’t until years later that I equated the pond with potentiality and the river with actuality. A potential state can remain present indefinitely. Only by actualizing does it descend to the fleeting present and the permanent past. As soon as a piece of music is created it begins to age. Only the inspiration at its root never gets old. In and of itself a quantum system such as an atom is a set of potential values of properties such as position, momentum and energy. Only when an external force intervenes in the atom does it actualize for an instant in a tangible state, after which it reverts to its default state of potentiality. This back and forth process is repeating all the time all around us. The inconceivably rapid oscillation of quantum systems between solitude and interaction constitutes the ever flowing stream of time. Rather than the timeless eternity of traditional metaphysics, the pond represents the essence of time, its ever renewing source. The recognition that metaphysics must embrace time rather than expel it is the great contribution of Parisian philosopher Henri Bergson.

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LAS PALMAS TAKEDOWN

by Paul Modic

I have been coming to this restaurant, sitting at the same table and writing my memoirs with coffee before breakfast for forty years. As I’m leaving and heading north manana I thought it would be nice to give everyone who worked here a twenty peso tip, about a dollar. (The noted author Paul Theroux also stayed at Motel Las Palmas a few years ago, twice, when traveling around Mexico researching his excellent book On The Plain Of Snakes.)

I started with the waiters, then cashiers and administration, then I sought out the maids and maintenance workers. I was walking the grounds for over an hour and by the time I went back to my room at the far end of the compound I had dispensed about twenty-six twenty peso notes. (One more thing probably no one else was doing anywhere, well in Mexico anyway, okay at least in Matehuala.)

Around 9pm there was a knock on my door. I looked through the peephole and saw some guy I didn’t know and said “No quiero.” (Loosely translated: I don’t want.) I turned away then heard a loud crash, the flimsy door jamb splintered, the door flew open and three men walked in.

“I hear you’re throwing money around,” the first guy said in perfect English.

“Oh, you didn’t get your twenty pesos?” I said. The leader saw my wallet on the bureau and picked it up. He thumbed through the bills and put it in his pocket. I had a couple hundred bucks in pesos and a couple hundred in dollars.

“Do you have any more?” he asked. I pointed to my laptop case where there was another $300 stashed in another wallet.

“Nice,” he said. “Would you like to come with us?”

“No, that’s okay,” I said. (In other cultures “that’s okay” means yes, but in ours it means no.)

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Can I get dressed first?” I said.

“What’s that?” he said, pointing to my bed.

“That’s lube, some pretty good stuff too,” I said. “Actually I should be the spokesman for the company. There’s probably no one who gets more out of ‘Good Clean Love’ than I do. Maybe they would give me a free life-time supply.”

“Yeah, you stick to the lube,” he said. “Who you think you are, King of the Jerk-offs?” The others hovered menacing around and I was terrified. “You see all our hot Mexican women? They have one thing in common: none of them want to fuck you.”

“Well, there’s one who might,” I said, thinking I might have to marry her first.

“Who?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“You’ll tell us later. Does she have money too?”

“Not much.”

“Well you’d probably have to marry her then. Get in your truck. How much money you got back home?” The two other men gripped my arms and they lead me out to the carport.

(Before I left California I had gone to the bank and withdrawn some cash which I gave to my friend to hold. I jokingly told him it was a ransom fund in case I got kidnapped. Unfortunately he’d already spent most of it for my mother’s nursing home bill.)

One of them tied my hands behind my back and hustled me into the passenger seat of my Toyota. The main guy pulled his jacket open, showing a silver pistol. “Don’t try anything, “he said. “We just want our money.”

“Well the truck is worth ten grand in the states,” I said. “You can have it.”

“We already got it, Gringo,” one of them said with a laugh. I had some cash stashed in my place up in the mountains, an hour from Matehuala, but wasn’t sure how to get my hands on it without putting a friend in danger.

As we were about to take off, Marco came by, the friendly guy who guided the guests to their rooms on his bicycle at night, and who they sent to change a lightbulb or anything else needing to be fixed in the rooms.

“Oh you got him, alright,” Marco said. The leader peeled off one of my hundreds and gave it to him. “Yeah, good tip,” he said.

“Shit, Marco, thanks a lot. I thought we were friends,” I said. “Well, now I know you’re in on it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said in his dusky cigaret voice. “They going to kill you anyway.”

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BAY AREA GEARING UP FOR NEW ROUND OF TRUMP PROTESTS, BUT THE MOOD HAS CHANGED

by Joe Garofoli

Ezra Levin became a leader of the 2017 resistance against Donald Trump when Levin co-founded the Indivisible organization, which sprouted local affiliates nationwide.

But Trump 2.0 is unfolding more aggressively, Levin said in advance of a new round of anti-Trump demonstrations scheduled for noon Monday in San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento.

“Donald Trump wants you and everyone else to feel like they’re powerless. Many congressional Democrats want you to feel like they’re powerless to stop him,” Levin told me. “Both are not true.”

Instead, activists say, there couldn’t be a more urgent time to publicly push back against Trump’s efforts to expand executive power far beyond his constitutional authority into acting like a king. It shouldn’t be a surprise. Many aspects of Trump’s first few weeks in his second term have unrolled just as conservatives promised in the Project 2025 blueprint they created should Trump retake the White House.

“Every single aspect of Project 2025 is currently being enacted before our eyes,” said Brad Bauman, a veteran Democratic strategist who worked with several resistance groups aligned against Trump in his first term. “And if we’re not acting with that same intention, we’re just going to get smoked.”

Bauman and I were talking recently in suburban Baltimore at Roots Camp, a gathering of 330 grassroots activists representing 161 progressive organizations, each trying to figure out their next step. Bauman offered a road map.

“Everyone from activists, lawyers, pundits, elected officials and every single one of those needs to be at the table and acting with unanimity — I don’t want to say solidarity,” Bauman told me. “They need to be working in concert with one another, because you simply cannot resist this without each and every one of those pieces working in concert with one another.”

Unlike the Pussy Hat era of resistance, when marches were coordinated on Facebook, this round of demonstrations is being organized on Reddit and Discord, a platform popular with gamers, using pseudonyms and making demonstration plans at the last minute. The 50501 group successfully orchestrated a nationwide set of demonstrations on Feb. 5 that showed the anti-Trump movement had a faint pulse.

But the problem with organizing on the sly is that few are hearing about the protests, undermining the power of mass demonstrations as a show of force against the imperial tone of Trump. Organizers expect Monday’s noon protests to draw only a few dozen in front of San Francisco City Hall, a few hundred on the west side of the Capitol in Sacramento, and an unknown number at Circle of Palms Plaza in San Jose.

Part of the challenge is that this is a decentralized movement with no national leaders. One organizer insisted on being referred to by a pseudonym, fearful of retribution if he used his real name. Instead, the events are being created locally by real people with real day jobs who are new to mass organizing. They, like many Californians, are freaked out by what’s going on in Washington, and couldn’t remain silent any longer.

“This is more from the bottom up, where we just got a bunch of people who wanted to make change, and just sort of are trying to organize ourselves,” said Alex Wiest, an organizer of Monday’s rally in San Francisco.”But a lot of us are new to this, so it’s a process getting it going.”

The goal Monday, Wiest said, “is to just emphasize that presidents are supposed to be presidents, elected by the people working for the people, not what Trump is trying to turn this into. And we can’t emphasize enough that this will be a peaceful, nonviolent event.”

(SF Chronicle)

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PG&E REPORTS PROFIT OF MORE THAN $2 BILLION FOR 2024

Utility expects to collect even more in 2025

by George Avalos

PG&E reported on Thursday that it had a profit of just under $2.48 billion in 2024, an increase from the $2.24 billion the company earned in 2023.

Looking ahead to 2025’s results, the investor-owned utility predicted it was poised to outpace 2024, a new report shows.

Despite total profit rising for the year, during the October-through-December fourth quarter PG&E earned $647 million, which was down 29.6% from the company’s profit of $919 million for the same quarter in 2023. Calculating only items and operations that are PG&E’s core business, the utility posted a fourth-quarter profit of $658 million, down from the $1.01 billion during the same quarter the year prior.

“In 2024, we continued to progress in ways that matter to both customers and investors,” said PG&E CEO Patricia Poppe. “We delivered energy safely. Our system has never been safer.”

For the second consecutive year, no major wildfires occurred that were caused by PG&E’s equipment, the company stated.

However, a different streak was on the minds of some consumer advocates, who criticized what they see as an ever-lengthening stretch of PG&E profits.

“This is the second year in a row of record-breaking profits for PG&E,” said Mark Toney, executive director of consumer group The Utility Reform Network. “The shareholders are getting a lot of love. But while PG&E investors are feeling the love, the customers are only feeling the pain.”

PG&E and the state Public Utilities Commission have been under fire from critics because of the company’s steadily rising profits and bills. According to state law, the commission is tasked with regulating PG&E.

“If the PUC doesn’t address the outrageous profits for PG&E coming from outrageously high utility bills, then the state legislature must do it,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Action. “Ratepayers at California’s investor-owned utilities deserve more affordable electricity.”

State lawmakers are pondering multiple measures aimed at tackling rising profits at PG&E and other utilities in California.

“When you keep adding to the rate base with higher bills, you keep adding to earnings,” Toney said. “The record-setting profits will give the legislature the incentive to pass bills to control shareholder profits and protect customers.”

PG&E investors are poised to enjoy another good year, as indicated by the utility’s guidance for earnings.

The Oakland-based company posted a profit of $1.15 a share in 2024. For 2025, PG&E predicts that its profits will range from $1.30 to $1.36 a share. The midpoint of that estimate would point to a 16% increase in per-share profits.

PG&E noted multiple benchmarks in its earnings report and in additional information sent to this news organization.

• The utility completed 366 miles of system hardening, consisting of 258 miles of underground power lines and 108 miles of stronger poles and overhead components.
• PG&E connected nearly 14,000 new customers to the electric system, approximately 30% more than the company had expected.

The utility believes additional connections will help lighten the average load for ratepayers by spreading the system’s costs among more customers. The January bill cycle produced a respite.

A typical PG&E residential customer who receives both electricity and natural gas services paid an average of $295 a month starting last month. This was $1 higher than the $294 a month that typical residential customers were paying for combined services in January 2024.

It was also a turnaround from the increases ratepayers had experienced in recent years.

“We stabilized combined gas and electric bills for residential customers,” Poppe said. “And we connected more new customers to our grid than we have in decades.”

(Eureka Times Standard)

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ELIZABETH HOLMES STILL ISN’T SORRY

In a new prison interview, the disgraced Theranos founder didn’t back down

by Katie Dowd

In a recent interview from federal prison, disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes made one thing apparent: She’s still not taking responsibility for defrauding countless people with her fake blood-testing devices.

After dropping out of Stanford in 2004, Holmes threw herself into creating Theranos, a Palo Alto company that billed itself as the future of health care. Holmes boasted that her revolutionary blood-testing machines required just a drop of blood, and she partnered with Walgreens to bring the devices to patients nationwide, becoming the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire in the process.

Unbeknownst to investors and patients, the so-called Edison device rarely worked, and most of the testing was done with traditional machines. The house of cards came down in 2015, when Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou published an expose of the company. A few years later, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California charged Holmes with fraud. She was found guilty and sentenced to over 11 years in federal prison.

Holmes, who once lived in a mansion in Atherton, now calls Federal Prison Camp, Bryan home. Last week, she gave People a rare interview from the minimum-security facility located about 100 miles from Houston, Texas.

When pressed about her “mistakes,” People wrote that she still “defiantly maintains her innocence.” “Theranos failed,” Holmes said. “I take responsibility for that failure. Failure is not fraud.”

Former co-workers testified that Holmes was well aware that the machines gave inaccurate results but continued to let patients use them. The inaccurate test results caused some people to be prescribed the wrong medication, and others were reportedly led to believe they may have had cancer.

Anyone awaiting Holmes’ mea culpa will be left disappointed. She told People she plans on reforming the criminal justice system when she is released. “She has drafted a bill — a seven-page handwritten document titled the American Freedom Act — which she says would change criminal procedure, with the goal of bolstering the presumption of innocence,” the outlet reported.

Holmes, now 41, is expected to be released on April 3, 2032, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The sentence reduction is due to good behavior.

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“Muhammad was a great natural talent, and he would have been a great champion without me. I’ll be the first one to say it wasn’t me - he was the guy and outside the ring, it was him who taught me. He taught me patience, he taught me decency. I watched how he reacted to everything. I saw things done to him that made me sick to my stomach and all he’d say was, you’ve got to forgive people.”

— Angelo Dundee

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CUTTING WASTE

Editor:

Watching the ranting and raving of politicians regarding the actions of an unelected bureaucrat to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse is ironic beyond belief. Three points:

Elon Musk is acting under the direction of an elected official who, as a major part of his campaign, promised that DOGE would be created under the direction of Musk, who would be doing exactly what he has been doing. A plurality of voters voted for the politician who made this promise and his program.

For as long as I can remember, politicians of every stripe campaigning for federal office promise, if elected, they will eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, typically when explaining how their proposed programs will be paid for.

Finally, most of the fraud, waste and abuse results from actions of unelected, long-entrenched bureaucrats functioning under their interpretation of legislation.

Jim Haberkorn

Santa Rosa

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The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

— Noam Chomsky, ‘How the World Works’

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THE GREATER PART of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.

— Aldous Huxley

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Given that atheism has increased with human wealth and power and prosperity, we can say that some people who adopt this stance are doing so from a perspective of historically unusual comfort, in a society that fears pain and death as special evils in part because it has contrived to hide them carefully away. And such a society, precisely because of its comforts and its death-denial, might be uniquely prone to overrating the unbearability of certain forms of suffering, and thereby underrating the possibility that a good God could permit them.

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LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

Left Out of Ukraine Talks, Europe Races to Organize a Response

First Test of Trump’s Power to Fire Officials Reaches Supreme Court

Musk Team Seeks Access to I.R.S. System With Taxpayers’ Records

At Least 10 Dead in South After Rainstorm Pounds the Region

Meet the Champion Who Memorized 80 Numbers in 13.5 Seconds

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J.D. VANCE’S SPEECH IN MUNICH

One of the things that I wanted to talk about today is, of course, our shared values. And, you know, it’s great to be back in Germany. As you heard earlier, I was here last year as United States senator. I saw Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now. But now it’s time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples, to use it wisely to improve their lives.

And I want to say that I was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours, and I’ve been so impressed by the hospitality of the people even, of course, as they’re reeling from yesterday’s horrendous attack. And, the first time I was ever in Munich was with my wife, actually, who’s here with me today, on a personal trip. And I’ve always loved the city of Munich, and I’ve always loved its people.

I just want to say that we’re very moved, and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful community. We’re thinking about you, we’re praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come. Thank you. I hope that’s not the last bit of applause that I get. We gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security. And normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many, many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine — and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense — the threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.

I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.

Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves, because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.

We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them. Now, within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that cancelled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not.

And thank God they lost the Cold War. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty, the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, invent, to build. As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. And we believe those things are certainly connected. And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the cold war’s winners.

I look to Brussels, where EU Commission commissars warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest: the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be “hateful content.” Or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of “combating misogyny” on the internet.I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant — and I’m quoting — a “free pass” to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.

And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of his unborn son.

He and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law, which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution. Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no. This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.

Free speech, I fear, is in retreat and in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.

So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that.

In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square. Now, we’re at the point, of course, that the situation has gotten so bad that this December, Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbours.

Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections. But I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with. Now, the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear.

And I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still. Which, of course, brings us back to Munich, where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again, we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say. But when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.

Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.

Now, this is a security conference, and I’m sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new target. And that’s great, because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent. We don’t think you hear this term “burden sharing,” but we think it’s an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger.

But let me also ask you, how will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don’t know what it is that we are defending in the first place? I’ve heard a lot already in my conversations, and I’ve had many, many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room. I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course that’s important. But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me, and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?

I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges. But the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years. Have we learned nothing, that thin mandates produce unstable results? But there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens. If you’re going to enjoy competitive economies, if you’re going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains, then you need mandates to govern because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things.

And of course, we know that very well. In America, you cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail. Whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like, who gets to be a part of our shared society.

And of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And of course, it’s gotten much higher since.

And we know the situation. It didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place?

It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. Unity. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction? No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they are voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. Now, I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don’t have to agree with me. I just think that people care about their homes, they care about their dreams, they care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children.

And they’re smart. I think this is one of the most important things I’ve learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what you might hear a couple of mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don’t generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy. And it’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. And it is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box.

I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy. Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference. Even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential. And trust me, I say this with all humor — if American democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk. But what no democracy — American, German or European — will survive, is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief, are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.

Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t. Europeans, the people have a voice. Europeans, the people have a choice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future.

Embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you. And that, to me, is the great magic of democracy. It’s not in these stone buildings or beautiful hotels. It’s not even in the great institutions that we built together as a shared society.

To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little. As Pope John Paul II, in my view, one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other, once said: “Do not be afraid.”

We shouldn’t be afraid of our people even when they express views that disagree with their leadership.

Thank you all. Good luck to all of you. God bless you.

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IN DEFENSE OF LITERACY

by Wendell Berry (1972)

In a country in which everybody goes to school, it may seem absurd to offer a defense of literacy, and yet I believe that such a defense is in order, and that the absurdity lies not in the defense, but in the necessity for it. The published illiteracies of the certified educated are on the increase. And the universities seem bent upon ratifying this state of things by declaring the acceptability in their graduates of adequate—that is to say, of mediocre—writing skills.

The schools, then, are following the general subservience to the “practical,” as that term has been defined for us according to the benefit of corporations. By “practicality” most users of the term now mean whatever will most predictably and most quickly make a profit. Teachers of English and literature have either submitted, or are expected to submit, along with teachers of the more “practical” disciplines, to the doctrine that the purpose of education is the mass production of producers and consumers. This has forced our profession into a predicament that we will finally have to recognize as a perversion. As if awed by the ascendency of the “practical” in our society, many of us secretly fear, and some of us are apparently ready to say, that if a student is not going to become a teacher of his language, he has no need to master it.

In other words, to keep pace with the specialization—and the dignity accorded to specialization—in other disciplines, we have begun to look upon and to teach our language and literature as specialties. But whereas specialization is of the nature of the applied sciences, it is a perversion of the disciplines of language and literature. When we understand and teach these as specialties, we submit willy-nilly to the assumption of the “practical men” of business, and also apparently of education, that literacy is no more than an ornament: When one has become an efficient integer of the economy, then it is permissible, even desirable, to be able to talk about the latest novels. After all, the disciples of “practicality” may someday find themselves stuck in conversation with an English teacher.

I may have oversimplified that line of thinking, but not much. There are two flaws in it. One is that, among the self-styled “practical men,” the practical is synonymous with the immediate. The long-term effects of their values and their acts lie outside the boundaries of their interest. For such people a strip mine ceases to exist as soon as the coal has been extracted. Short-term practicality is long-term idiocy.

The other flaw is that language and literature are always about something else, and we have no way to predict or control what they may be about. They are about the world. We will understand the world, and preserve ourselves and our values in it, only insofar as we have a language that is alert and responsive to it, and careful of it. I mean that literally. When we give our plows such brand names as “Sod Blaster,” we are imposing on their use conceptual limits that raise the likelihood that they will be used destructively. When we speak of man’s “war against nature,” or of a “peace offensive,” we are accepting the limitations of a metaphor that suggests, and even proposes, violent solutions. When students ask for the right of “participatory input” at the meetings of a faculty organization, they are thinking of democratic process, but they are speaking of a convocation of robots, and are thus devaluing the very traditions that they invoke.

Ignorance of books and the lack of a critical consciousness of language were safe enough in primitive societies with coherent, oral traditions. In our society, which exists in an atmosphere of prepared, public language—language that is either written or being read—illiteracy is both a personal and a public danger. Think how constantly “the average American” is surrounded by premeditated language, in newspapers and magazines, on signs and billboards, on TV and radio. He is forever being asked to buy or believe somebody else’s line of goods.

The line of goods is being sold, moreover, by men who are trained to make him buy it or believe it, whether or not he needs it or understands it or knows its value or wants it. This sort of selling is an honored profession among us. Parents who grow hysterical at the thought that their son might not cut his hair are glad to have him taught, and later employed, to lie about the quality of an automobile or the ability of a candidate.

What is our defense against this sort of language— this language-as-weapon? There is only one. We must know a better language. We must speak, and teach our children to speak, a language precise and articulate and lively enough to tell the truth about the world as we know it. And to do this we must know something of the roots and resources of our language; we must know its literature. The only defense against the worst is a knowledge of the best. By their ignorance people enfranchise their exploiters.

But to appreciate fully the necessity for the best sort of literacy we must consider not just the environment of prepared language in which most of us now pass most of our lives, but also the utter transience of most of this language, which is meant to be merely glanced at, or heard only once, or read once and thrown away. Such language is by definition, and often by calculation, not memorable; it is language meant to be replaced by what will immediately follow it, like that of shallow conversation between strangers. It cannot be pondered or effectively criticized. For those reasons an unmixed diet of it is destructive of the informed, resilient, critical intelligence that the best of our traditions have sought to create and to maintain—an intelligence that Jefferson held to be indispensable to the health and longevity of freedom. Such intelligence does not grow by bloating upon the ephemeral information and misinformation of the public media. It grows by returning again and again to the landmarks of its cultural birthright, the works that have proved worthy of devoted attention.

“Read not the Times. Read the Eternities,” Thoreau said. Ezra Pound wrote that “literature is news that STAYS news.” In his lovely poem, “The Island,” Edwin Muir spoke of man’s inescapable cultural boundaries and of his consequent responsibility for his own sources and renewals:

Men are made of what is made,
The meat, the drink, the life, the corn,
Laid up by them, in them reborn.
And self-begott en cycles close
About our way; indigenous art
And simple spells make unafraid
The haunted labyrinths of the heart …

These men spoke of a truth that no society can afford to shirk for long: We are dependent, for understanding, and for consolation and hope, upon what we learn of ourselves from songs and stories. This has always been so, and it will not change.

I am saying, then, that literacy—the mastery of language and the knowledge of books—is not an ornament, but a necessity. It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power. Longer perspective will show that it alone can preserve in us the possibility of an accurate judgment of ourselves, and the possibilities of correction and renewal. Without it, we are adrift in the present, in the wreckage of yesterday, in the nightmare of tomorrow.

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