Mendocino County Today: Sunday 2/23/2025

Oak in Winter - Meadow - Big Hendy Grove (Martin Bradley)

STEADY STREAM of moisture and rain will shift northward into SW Oregon this afternoon and evening as a low pressure system intensifies offshore. Strong south winds are expected for the North Coast and interior mountains on Monday with cold frontal passage. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy 50F with .08" in the rain gauge this Sunday morning on the coast. Morning showers today will give way to clearing skies this afternoon only to cloud back up & bring us more showers tomorrow morning. Maybe a sprinkle Wednesday morning then next Saturday is looking wet. The bulk of the rainfall is tracking north currently, good thing, we've had quite enough.

THE INFERNAL ANTI-SLEEP MACHINES, were turned on much earlier than usual this year. Even though the overnight temps never got below 40 degrees, the grape growers’ wind fans were turned on Friday morning, February 21, to the dismay of anyone in Anderson Valley within earshot.

CUBBISON CASE PRELIM RESUMING AMID NEW DISCLOSURES

by Mike Geniella

A preliminary hearing in the Chamise Cubbison criminal “misappropriation” case resumes Monday amid new disclosures about the roles of key County officials who allegedly engaged behind the scenes to oust the embattled Mendocino County Auditor-Controller.

Mendocino County CEO Darcie Antle is expected to face rigorous questioning from defense attorneys when she resumes testimony about events leading up to Cubbison’s suspension by the Board of Supervisors in October 2023. The move against an elected official rocked the local political establishment and fueled a community controversy that continues, now more than 15 months later.

During a month-long pause in criminal proceedings Antle was identified in newly filed court documents of being a key participant with others including District Attorney David Eyster in events leading up to Cubbison’s charging and removal from office. Antle’s role is described in the documents as pushing for Cubbison to be criminally charged in politically laced efforts to force her from office.

According to the documents, Antle was among County administrators who supported the forced consolidation of two independent County financial offices. They hoped to eventually create a new Department of Finance under control of the County Supervisors. The board in fact did force the consolidation of the Auditor-Controller Office with the Treasurer-Tax Collector but the plan to create a new Department of Finance requires voter approval. The political fallout from the Cubbison case has raised doubts about a county-wide election anytime soon.

Besides Antle’s role, the new court filings elaborate on how DA Eyster, who was challenged by Cubbison about his own office spending, secretly presented a three-step plan to force a controversial consolidation plan.

Eyster is alleged to have filed a criminal felony charge of misappropriation of public funds against Cubbison after attempting for a year to pressure her into resigning in return for a misdemeanor criminal case. Cubbison chose to fight the allegations instead, and hired noted Sonoma County attorney Chris Andrian to defend herself.

The new court documents specifically cite the roles of Eyster, Antle, and former County Supervisor Glenn McGourty in embracing the secret three-step forced consolidation plan that the DA outlined to County administrators then, including former CEO Carmel Angelo. Eyster’s plan was part of his successful effort to block Cubbison’s appointment by the Board of Supervisors in 2022 as interim Auditor-Controller.

Cubbison eventually was elected by voters to lead the consolidated offices of Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector but within four months of her being sworn in, the Board of Supervisors suspended her without pay and benefits after Eyster filed the felony criminal case.

That case stems from the county’s former Payroll Manager Paula June Kennedy drawing about $68,000 in unauthorized extra pay over three years during the Covid pandemic. Kennedy is a co-defendant in the Cubbison criminal case that has been making its way at a snail’s pace 16 months after Eyster’s filing.

For now Antle is a key witness in a criminal prosecution that is seething with political tension. So far, the preliminary hearing has been focused on internal county pay processes and lack of oversight rather than hard evidence of any criminal intent. Testimony supports defense claims that Kennedy worked the hours paid for, and that Cubbison did not personally benefit from any of the extra pay.

For weeks Cubbison attorney Andrian has called it a case of “he said, she said, they said” because of the conflicting accounts given by Cubbison, Kennedy, retired Auditor Lloyd Weer, and County administrators about Kennedy’s work, the typical pay process for managers like her, and who may have given her the green light for any extra pay.

Looming large in the background, however, are emerging accusations in an acrimonious war of words related to the civil lawsuit Cubbison filed against the county Board of Supervisors and multiple “John Does.” Cubbison was suspended by supervisors without pay or benefits and locked out of her office by CEO Antle in October 2023 on the same day Eyster filed his felony charge. Four days later, in an off-agenda item, the Boarad of Supervisors suspended Cubbison without oatm benefits, or an opportunity to defend herself.

A team of San Francisco lawyers representing the county in the civil litigation contend supervisors had to do so to “protect” the County treasury, justifying the use of a 1947 state code that is specifically applicable to only a County Treasurer. Cubbison had no connection to the County Treasurer’s Office until after the controversial consolidation, but the County’s attorneys argue the code became applicable to her because of the subsequent merged responsibilities.

Liebert-Cassidy-Whitmore is the San Francisco law firm that so far has been paid about $120,000 to defend County supervisors in the civil litigation.

In a new 26-page court filing, the firm’s attorneys accuse Cubbison of presenting “irrelevant and sensational claims to support a baseless conspiracy” allegedly waged by board members, Antle, County staff, and DA Eyster.

Cubbison and her civil lawyers are making a “libelous claim” that Eyster ensured that the criminal investigation pointed to Cubbison to “remove her from her elected office,” according to the Jan. 31 filing.

Attorneys Morin Jacobs and Madeline I. Cline (no relation to the First District Supervisor) also contend that Cubbison “asserts, without evidence, that the filing of the criminal complaint and her subsequent suspension were part of a coordinated effort.”

Cubbison civil attorney Therese Cannata of San Francisco, a noted labor law lawyer, filed a blistering response a week ago.

In it, Cannata said recorded interviews exist confirming that CEO Antle had “numerous communications with the District Attorney urging him to hurry up and bring criminal charges” against Cubbison.

Eyster, stated Cannata, delayed filing charges for a year while he tried to “extort Ms. Cubbison’s voluntary resignation.”

Cannata contended that during the year-long delay the DA and Antle were in “regular communication in 2022 and 2023 about how to pressure Ms. Cubbison to voluntarily resign from her duly elected office.”

The new revelations lend insight into what was going on behind closed doors at a time when the county board was blaming the Auditor’s office for delays in financial reporting and other updates. Some supervisors publicly suggested the county was failing fiscally but that proved untrue. The forced merger had consequences that senior finance staff warned would happen because of inadequate staffing, loss of experienced personnel, and a faulty computer system.

Eyster, a pugnacious prosecutor who quarreled with other County Auditors before Cubbison questioned his own office spending, has refused to publicly comment on his alleged larger role despite repeated written requests. Antle and other county officials involved also remain publicly mum except while testifying under oath.

Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman will hear final testimony in the preliminary hearing this week and is then expected to rule on whether the criminal case will go to trial. Moorman also could act on two pending motions to dismiss criminal charges that have been submitted by Andrian and Kennedy’s public defender FredRicco McCurry. The motions cite a lack of evidence.

Moorman is also overseeing proceedings in the civil litigation. It is occurring parallel to the criminal case although any outcome could be months away. A March 14 conference between Moorman and attorneys is scheduled.

When CEO Antle returns to the witness stand as the criminal preliminary hearing resumes Monday after a month-long break, she is likely to face a grueling cross examination. Special Prosecutor Traci Carrillo, a Sonoma County attorney hired by Eyster to press his case against Cubbison at a rate of $400 per hour, had said before the break she has no further witnesses.

So far, the preliminary hearing has slogged its way through questions surrounding internal county pay processes, and whether an overworked management employee was entitled to 390 hours of compensation after she exhausted compensatory time off beginning in 2019. A key issue is who oversaw the Auditor’s office payroll at the time Kennedy, who worked from home during the pandemic, began giving herself extra pay using an obscure county pay code.

Retired Auditor-Controller Lloyd Weer was still in charge of the office when Kennedy began to use the “470” code to reimburse herself for hours that everyone testified she worked, including Weer, Cubbison, Antle and lead sheriff’s investigator, Lt. Andrew Porter.

Weer denied giving any direct authorization although he testified he was aware of the chronic long hours Kennedy put in to single handedly produce the payroll every two weeks for 1,200 county employees, some of whom were themselves working from home. Weer acknowledged meeting with Kennedy and learning from her about two other salaried county managers who were receiving extra pay.

“I told her to look into it and maybe we could use the forms they were using,” Weer acknowledged.

Kennedy, a close office colleague of Weer, initially told investigators she never discussed the pay issue with him and pointed the finger instead at Cubbison for agreeing to the extra pay scheme.

Cubbison, a 16-year county veteran, with a reputation for being no-nonsense and stickler for process, has denied giving the green light to Kennedy. She maintains that the payments began two years before she became Weer’s successor, and at a time when she was swamped with County board demands to step up financial reporting and prepare for the threatened forced merger of the County’s two key finance offices.

Cubbison joined other senior county staff in opposing the merger, which was pushed through by County supervisors, and unknown until recent court filings, supported in the background by DA Eyster.

Attorney Cannata said it is clear that “several county officials” including Eyster targeted Ms. Cubbison and “took deliberate steps to derail” her career starting in the fall of 2021.

Eyster “devised a three-step plan to remove Ms. Cubbison from the Auditor’s Office and to appoint a Director of Finance, which is described in excruciating detail in an email to a sitting member of the Board of Supervisors,” according to Cannata’s most recent filing.

Former County Supervisor Glenn McGourty is identified in the email as the recipient of Eyster’s plan. McGourty has denied ever seeing it, suggesting “maybe it went to spam.”

However, in the new filing Cannata contends that the Eyster email landed in the hands of Antle, who was then Assistant Chief Executive Officer under former CEO Carmel Angelo. The email at the time was not made part of the Board of Supervisors’ minutes.

“This, and other emerging facts, support the inference that Ms. Antle, the Board of Supervisors, and other members of the executive office coordinated with Mr. Eyster to target [Cubbison] by concealing from the public any evidence of each other’s involvement,” according to Cannata’s filing.

“Even though Mr. Eyster’s plan was crafted in 2021, Mr. Eyster’s continuing campaign against Ms. Cubbison is evident in the way in which he directed a biased and incomplete criminal investigation in 2022, and his collaboration with Ms. Antle to pressure Ms. Cubbison to resign and, and later effect Ms. Cubbison’s suspension in October 2023.”

The County’s attorneys counter that Cubbison’s “reliance on unsupported and irrelevant claims is not only a distraction but indicative of the lack of substantial legal merit in her positions.”

Their legal brief argues that “The alleged conspiracies and grievances she raises, such as unfounded accusations about the District Attorney and Board of Supervisors conspiring against her, are entirely irrelevant to whether the board lawfully exercised its authority to suspend her” pursuant to a disputed state statute – Section 27120.

“The law does not mandate a pre-suspension hearing, and none of the speculative or sensational claims made by [Cubbison] alter that reality,” the San Francisco lawyers declare.

The government code, adopted by the state Legislature in 1947, is in dispute because it only identifies a County Treasurer who may be suspended by a Board of Supervisors “if an action based upon official misconduct is commenced.”

Some government attorneys argue that Section 27120 applies to the treasurer only, not the auditor and for good reason. A county Treasurer is entrusted to keep and invest public funds whereas an Auditor’s role is monitoring and approving disbursement of public funds.

They say that the reasoning is to ensure a system of checks and balances. A justification for an emergency suspension is obvious: a need to protect public money from a potentially dishonest Treasurer. Since the Auditor doesn’t have access to the actual public treasury that concern is not present, according to that theory.

County attorneys counter that later legislative action independent of that specific code allows for consolidation of county finance offices, thus providing a path for Cubbison to be suspended only two months after she was formally sworn in to oversee a newly consolidated Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector office forced by the Board of Supervisors.

The county’s law firm dismissed other contentions about Eyster’s role, including a chronic tug-of-war with the Auditor’s Office over his office spending practices, including staff dinners that skirted County prohibitions by labeling them “training sessions.”

“Whether or not the District Attorney sought changes to accounting practices for the benefit of his office is irrelevant to determining whether the Board of Supervisors had the authority to suspend [Cubbison] based on an ‘action’ for ‘official misconduct’.”

As for contentions that the DA conspired with board members and county administrators to remove her from office, the county attorneys dismissed the claim as “outlandish and relies solely on gossip blogs and online editorial articles, not factual evidence.”

Finally, county attorneys conclude that “A court cannot issue a writ of mandate that requires the county to do more than is required by law.”

On behalf of Cubbison, Cannata is seeking a writ to at the very least compel Antle’s deposition in the civil proceeding.

Cannata says Antle’s sworn testimony in the civil case is essential based on her declarations and documents produced during the criminal proceedings.

Among the issues cited by Cannata are:

Antle’s rush to contact Eyster in September 2022 to initiate a criminal investigation into potential financial misconduct.
Antle’s apparent “urgent desire” to see Cubbison face criminal charges.
Antle’s coordination with the District Attorney to physically eject Cubbison from county offices.
Antle’s presentation of an unnoticed, off agenda item to suspend Cubbison at the Oct. 17, 2023, meeting of the Board of Supervisors.

“The speed of which Ms. Antle and Mr. Eyster acted to suspend Ms. Cubbison from her position was breathtaking,” concluded Cannata.

Cannata said in fact “there is no sufficient evidence to support to Board of Supervisors’ decision to suspend Ms. Cubbison. The decision is arbitrary and capricious, and the decision is not supported by the evidence that has surfaced to date.”

Cannata is asking Judge Moorman at the very least to allow “more time for Ms. Cubbison to obtain additional discovery.”

ADDENDUM

Cubbison was locked out of her office by Antle on the same day Eyster formally filed his felony charge. Four days later, the Board of Supervisors, in an off-agenda action, suspended Cubbison without pay, benefits, or the opportunity to defend herself.

UKIAH MOVES FORWARD WITH PRESERVING AG LANDS, OPEN SPACE

by Justine Frederiksen

The Ukiah City Council this week approved moving forward with an ordinance to help “preserve and protect agricultural lands” as the city prepares for more potential annexation of land currently in Mendocino County jurisdiction.

“This ordinance would align the city’s zoning standards with select sections of the Mendocino County code, supporting both agricultural preservation and future annexation efforts,” Planning Manager Katherine Schaefers told the council when beginning her presentation at the Feb. 19 meeting.

“This alignment is important because it reduces regulatory confusion for property owners and agricultural operators, while supporting efficient land-use planning and potential future annexations, and ensuring a clear and consistent framework for all Ukiah Valley stakeholders,” Schaefers said, also noting that the ordinance promotes “orderly growth by prioritizing infill, preserving open space and minimizing land-use conflicts.”

The written staff report prepared for the meeting explains that “on Dec. 7, 2022, the City Council adopted the Ukiah 2040 General Plan, which included an Agriculture Element highlighting the importance of collaborative approaches to agricultural resources and the need to align Mendocino County and city policies regarding the preservation of regional working lands. Furthermore, the General Plan recognized that consistency across city and county standards reduces administrative complexity for property owners and operators, creating a shared and efficient regulatory framework.”

In December of 2024, the “Ukiah Planning Commission evaluated the proposed amendments to the Ukiah City Code and unanimously recommended approval to the City Council.” Since then, city staff note that they revised the ordinance to reflect “changes identified by stakeholders — particularly the Mendocino County Farm Bureau — that were discussed with the Planning Commission.

In terms of cannabis cultivation, staff note that the ordinance “anticipates evolving land-use needs by incorporating certain Mendocino County provisions for outdoor commercial cannabis cultivation while maintaining alignment with the city of Ukiah’s discretionary permitting requirements for cannabis businesses. This ensures that discretionary review processes are required for outdoor commercial cannabis cultivation. Although the ordinance primarily focuses on agricultural alignment, it is critical for the city to refine commercial cannabis regulations to ensure compliance with state requirements, given California’s dual regulatory system and evolving regulatory landscape. No other cannabis uses or cultivation standards are to be modified.”

After staff’s presentation, Council member Susan Sher asked for clarification regarding the allowable lot size for cannabis grows, stating that she was “aware of this ongoing controversy in how the county is interpreting the size of cultivation lots: the cannabis regulations say the area of cultivation is a maximum of 10,000 square feet, but then some county staff are interpreting that regulation to double the amount to 20,000 square feet.”

Chief Planning Manager Jessie Davis responded to Sher’s question by noting that the county uses a “ministerial process, meaning that their permits are based on a non-discretionary process, not subject to public review through hearings, it’s just a building permit and a by-right process. We deviate from that standard by requiring that cannabis-related businesses require a use permit, and that will be the same in this instance – it would still require a discretionary review, meaning that the site-specific considerations for that cultivation site are reviewed and discussed in a public forum.”

“So do we have any maximum lot size?” Sher asked, to which Davis responded: “We do not, in part because we’re looking at site-specific criteria that would inform whether or not it was appropriate for cultivation, and those (criteria) vary in terms of the type of cultivation and the lot size. So we don’t apply a specific standard, we apply a discretionary standard that evaluates every application on a case-by-case basis.”

“This is so great,” Council member Mari Rodin said of the ordinance. “That we’re planning ahead to have ag land within city limits; that (we’re stating) we care about ag land, that we want to preserve it, and we’re codifying it in our code – I think it’s pretty unique.”

“This is a solid step forward in realizing and implementing the General Plan, and taking steps to being thoughtful about annexation of agriculture and open space,” Davis said. “And it recognizes our infrastructure assets as well. Recycled water is an increasingly important commodity for agricultural purveyors. And while we do not have agricultural lands in the city presently, we are contemplating them moving forward, and we are prepared to regulate them as an effective practitioner because of our relationships that we’ve developed. Everything we are doing is well-structured to move us forward as a city.”

The council then unanimously approved “the introduction by Title Only of an Ordinance Modifying Ukiah City Code to Preserve and Strengthen Agricultural Uses In and Around Ukiah Consistent with the Ukiah 2040 General Plan.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

MAUREEN MULHEREN:

Here is a photo from this week of the progress at the Psychiatric Health Facility. Along with the Behavioral Health Wing of the jail, these facilities will help local residents that are having challenges with their mental health.

ED NOTES

THE DAFFODILS are rising. Daff lovers are annually thrilled by their sudden merry yellow appearances at the Anderson Valley Health Center, Reilly Heights, the Little Red School House.

HARRY MERLO (remember him?) was once named Oregon’s Tree Farmer of the year, 2010 by, ta-da, by the World Forestry Center, founded by Merlo in 1989 about the time ol’ Har was mopping up a broad swathe of Mendoland’s forests. The former CEO of timber goliath Louisiana-Pacific whose cut and run practices in Mendocino County put an end to the local timber industry, Merlo famously said of L-P’s local forests, “It always annoys me to leave anything on the ground when we log our own land. We don’t log to a 10-inch top, we don’t log to an 8-inch top or a 6-inch top. We log to infinity. It’s out there, it’s ours, and we want it all. Now.” Until he died in 2016 at the age of 91, Merlo owned and managed 12,000 acres near LaGrange, Oregon. No clearcuts on Har’s ranch, I bet.

MR. QIONG WANG was the most committed poacher to prey on Mendocino County in years, perhaps operating under the prevalent Asian delusion that all Asians look alike to us Round Eyes. Deputy Craig Walker busted Mr. Wang for possession of 36 (!) abalone, half of them under legal size and all of them out of season. Fresh abalone can bring upwards of $100 each from Asian restaurants in the Bay Area. Deputy Walker had stopped the San Francisco resident for speeding south through Boonville. The purloined delicacy was clearly visible in all its flagrantly illegal abundance in Mr. Wang’s vehicle, and Mr. Wang was duly arrested and booked into the Mendocino County Jail. Mr. Wang quickly bailed, but his booking photo and the details of his aborted Mendo foray were printed here.

SCARCELY A WEEK LATER, alert Philo residents spotted Mr. Wang driving west towards the Mendocino Coast. They’d recognized Wang from his photo in our paper. Deputy Walker was quickly alerted that Wang was back, the deputy promptly alerted Fish and Game and, as incredulous game wardens looked on, Wang strode out of the surf near Mendocino with what turned out to be 50 abs (!!), at least half of which were again under size and all of which were again out of season. The determined Wang had rented dive gear and had returned to the scene of the prior week’s crime to poach more abalone. And he was busted again, and booked into the County Jail again. And here’s his photo again, and if you ever see him again headed west on 128, call Fish and Wildlife.

SUPERVISOR JOHN McCOWEN still deserves high marks for pulling an ongoing Brooktrails scam off the Supervisor’s consent calendar early in his tenure as Supervisor. Roughly 2,000 of the 6,000 lots in the Brooktrails subdivision northwest of Willits were never buildable. The lots can’t be connected to sewer and will never have water available to them because the Brooktrails sewage disposal system is maxxed out, as is its available water and, besides, certain blocs of perennially available lots are not “served” by either sewer or water. But the unwitting buy these lots from unscrupulous real estate firms, many on-line, that sell them again and again when their owners, many of whom have bought them sight unseen, cease making payments on them or paying taxes. The County of Mendocino then forecloses for back property taxes, the unscrupulous real estate firms again buy the lots in bulk at auction and again sell them. And the whole show just kept rolling along, the same lots being sold over and over again to annual crops of duped buyers. Mendocino County thus became complicit in the scam by foreclosing on the same unbuildable parcels over and over again, making it seem to the fresh crop of suckers that the lots are viable properties because the County has foreclosed on them and sold them, sold them to the same crooks who had been buying the lots cheap and selling them high for years. Of, say, 70 properties auctioned off by the County, 40 or 50 were in Brooktrails back in the early 2010s. McCowen rightly thought that the County should make sure that the deeds to these turkeys should say that they do not have sewer or water hook-ups available to them.

BACK IN 1996, the County moved to reduce Brooktrails lots to a total of 6,000 with an ultimate goal of 4,000 by combining the eternally unbuildable lots. The company benefiting from the foreclosure racket made a property rights issue out of this commonsense proposal, gulling the easily gulled into believing that the reduction in the number of lots was interfering with the American dream of a home in the country. There are people who believe that there will eventually be a break in the water moratorium, but people who already live in Brooktrails have never been keen on the prospect of 2,000 more neighbors even if water and sewage service magically appears where none has been.

BROOKTRAILS was subdivided in the mid-sixties. The County eventually assumed responsibility for the subdivision’s roads as, old timers believe, some major monkey business qualified those roads as soundly engineered enough to be included in the County system. Ditto for the subdivision’s sewer system. But our information is that one County man was told it would be to his financial benefit if he signed off on the sub-standard Brooktrails road complex and, when he refused, he was fired. The developers soon found a more amenable fellow and here we are many years later with probs everywhere you look at Brooktrails, from 2,000 unbuildable lots to existing homes hollowed out for indoor grows which remain hollowed out though the industry has collapsed.

A FORT BRAGGER is rightly alarmed that some of the children in her community are not being vaccinated. Needless to say, Mendocino County is home to quite a number of deluded parents who think all kinds of scientifically implausible thoughts about vaccination, ranging from government plots to grow children with two heads to schemes by the pharmaceutical companies to exploit the fruit of their loins as chemical funding units. Anyway, before a child can be legally enrolled in either kindergarten or again by the 7th grade, that child has got to be inoculated against tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis and measles. Unfortunately, however, 7th grade parents can opt out by signing a form that they don’t want their kid to get his shots, which is a heckuva note and perilous as heck to the entire community. Fort Bragg, says our correspondent, is way behind on the paperwork, meaning a lot of little toxics are running around the playground.

WHY so much anti-vax opinion? IMO it’s because only us ancients remember when our friends and neighbors died from disease. I won’t ever forget classmates confined to iron lungs from polio.

FROM THE SF CHRONICLE of February 23rd, 1936: “Marijuana — a dread name, with terrifying implications — has appeared on the American scene to give officials of the United States Bureau of Narcotics a more difficult problem than the treacherous opium of the Orient, morphine, cocaine or heroin. From this unusual plant, so these officials say, may be traced many of the most horrible crimes in recent history. Once almost totally unknown in the United States, marijuana has become so common that it has been dubbed the ‘roadside weed.’ This commonplace weed is known by various names — hay, greelo, muggles, Mex hashish and loco-weed. The fight to stamp out the weed is handicapped by the fact that there is no federal law controlling it.”

HE WAS NEVER SEEN AGAIN. Eric Christopher Grant, 30, was a biologist with the Mendocino Redwood Company. He was single and lived alone in Fort Bragg. No known enemies, not a drug guy or otherwise likely to have been impaired. Grant’s MRC truck was found on October 27th 2011, in the parking space called Navarro Headlands Vista Point near the junction of Navarro Ridge Road and Highway One. He was last seen at about noon in the King’s Ridge area off Navarro Ridge Road’s east end. Grant’s truck was found about 6 p.m. that day at the vista point lot where Grant was known to take lunch breaks.

FOR SALE at the Boonville General Store (Falcon)

AV WINEGROWERS

Yesterday we held the third annual Anderson Valley Pruning Contest at Roederer Estate where dozens of our farm workers showed their skills and competed for cash and other prizes, sponsored by @Bahcotools.

This event has become one of our favorite member programs of the year. We love to honor the community who helps us produce some of the best wine in the world. A sincere thanks to each of them, as well as to the volunteers who helped us run the event

Lunch by @strictlyvineyards
Breakfast by @casa_cristal_nursery
Gift baskets by @cavineyardsupply
Vine prep & venue hosting by @roedererestate
Shade trailers and vests by @atlasvm
Board sponsorship by Norman Kobler @philovineyardsolutions

Congrats to the three winners, all from Team Roederer:

1st: Gabriel Navarro

2nd: Adalberto Javier Meta

3rd: Lamberto Magana Perez

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE: List of Events

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Socks is an adorable, energetic gal with loads of personality. She seems friendly with all people she meets, loves toys, and when introduced to a male canine guest, she was polite and indicated she was up for some play time. Socks is a strong dog and will need basic obedience and leash work, but she's treat motivated and eager to please. Our clinic is currently treating Socks for a skin condition. She's a little itchy, but on the road to recovery! And did we mention how adorable she is??? Socks is a Pittie mix, 2 years old and a sturdy 53 pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and the occasional goat, sheep, tortoise, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com. Join us the first Saturday every month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.

Please share our posts on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

THE UNITY CLUB

The first Unity Club was formed in New York in 1868. 21 years later they joined with similar clubs in other states to form a Federation subsequently known as the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC). According to their brochure, they deal with legislative issues such as violence against women, child labor, health care, human rights and automobile safety. They also claim to be responsible for the establishment of 75% of America’s public libraries. Nationwide, the Club boasts 168,400 local club projects. Locally, our Unity Clubbers are responsible for the popular annual Wildflower Show, the Community Library, annual high school graduate scholarships, and a variety of other community-bolstering activities.

A READER WRITES: TO JOHN TOOHEY, Panther Athletic Director, When I was class president at what I call Boonville High, we controlled the popcorn machine for all the high school sports games. If there is not one still at the school, I suggest you get one. The profits from that machine fuled many a drunken party as well as gas for our hot rods. I notice the students no longer have hot rods. Without hot rods how does one learn to not be subservient?

Sun Dappled Ferns - Hendy Woods (Martin Bradley)

OPEN LETTER TO CONGRESSMAN JARED HUFFMAN

Dear Congressman Huffman,

I read that the President, without cause, intends to fire the governing board of the United States Postal Service and have his Commerce Department take over the Postal Service.

Don’t let him do it. I depend on the friendly neighborly efficient cheerful and professional service now long provided by the USPS’s local Postmistress and her staff at my Post Office a mile away from me in Little River. The President’s word is no good. I can’t depend on him or his Commerce Department to deliver anything approaching the same great service.

Legislative power belongs to Congress, not the President. U.S. Const., art. 1,
sec. 1. Congress’s legislative power includes the power to establish the laws that provide for our postal services. U.S. Const., art. I, sec. 8, clause 7 (the “Postal Clause.”)

Congress has used its power to make postal laws by enacting Title 39 USC sec. 201 which establishes the United States Postal Service as an independent agency to provide postal services. To govern the USPS’s operations, Congress has enacted Title 39 USC sec. 202, establishing the USPS’s governing board composed of 11 governors who can’t be fired without cause.

Don’t let the President swipe your legislative power by just letting him fire the USPS’s governing board members without cause.

Call the President out and prevail upon the Republicans who are your fellow brother and sister Congressmen and Congresswomen to call him out too. Stand up for Congress, the Constitution and our country. Stand up to stop this unlawful threat to your legitimate Constitutional power and the authority that we have elected you to exercise on our behalf. The United States Postal Service is your baby, Congressman, not Trump’s. Don’t let him or any of his Chainsaw Massacre Boys anywhere near it.

Respectfully, your constituent,

Jim Luther, Mendocino

LOCAL EVENTS

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, February 22, 2025

FIDEL BARRALES, 43, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

JESSICA BAUER, 37, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JENNA COGGINS, 30, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, metal knuckles.

DANIEL DURAN, 26, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

JOHN FITTS, 47, Willits. Domestic battery, probation revocation.

MIGUEL GONZALEZ-RAMIREZ, 31, Ukiah. DUI, no license.

RACHEL KUNTZ, 25, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

JEREMY MILLER, 43, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

GEORGE RATHWICK, 62, Riverdale/Ukiah. Stolen property, resisting, unspecified offense.

JULI ANN ROGERS, 40, Fort Bragg. DUI.

DREW SMITH, 29, Redwood Valley. Grand theft-firearm.

MANDY VANARSDALE, 48, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

Marie & Charles A. "Cat" Tarwater, enhanced & colorized, after whom present day Octopus Mountain was called Tarwater Hill. (via Vern Peterman)

MEMO OF THE AIR: Crazy, man, crazy.

Marco here. Here's the recording of last night's (Friday, 2025-02-21) seven-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org (and, for the first three hours of the show, also 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino) This show features almost all the usual local writers and also some big-time science fiction writers, like C. Stuart Hardwick, and Gary Shockley. In fact, Gary Shockley mailed me a heavy box of his work, and I'll be reading something from that every week for years. This time, to kick that off, I read his poignant alien-planet war adventure The Coming of the Goonga. It's all here: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0632

Coming shows can feature your story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

Crazy, man, crazy. "There ain't no jelly doughnut on the other side of that window, only death." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHB4ei5dJJM

Ever wonder what /you/ would have done had you lived in Germany in the 1930s? You're doing it. "Certain symbols have been blurred to avoid any issues." https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2025/02/colourized-1930s-berlin.html

And the way I see it: Somebody threw out some old bearings. One child got an idea and it spread. So clever. They don't hurt their little hands on the pavement; I'm telling you now so you can enjoy this without worrying. There is a crash near the end, when the picture goes black, but nobody sounds upset, so. When I was little in both city and rural Southern California there were so many children everywhere. We ran in unsupervised packs and had whole days like this, especially in summer. And we had old broken lawnmowers and skates and caster-carts and other things with wheels to take apart and make vehicles to careen down the hill on. I ripped my leg open once crashing into a Corvair. Forty stitches. I haven't thought about that in quite a while. Let me just adjust my pants, here, and see if… Yup, the scar is still visible. Shaped like a big number seven or rotated ell, which is appropriate because it's my left leg. I kick for power with my right leg, but my left leg can kick higher. Where Julie Smalley hit me in the mouth with her drink glass only needed two stitches. https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2025/02/cuban-kids-having-fun.html

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

DOWN AND ALMOST OUT AT ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL IN SF

by Jonah Raskin

“The hospital,” George Orwell wrote, “is the antechamber to the tomb.” Orwell knew whereof he spoke. For much of his life he was in and out of hospitals because of serious health issues. For decades, he suffered from tuberculosis, but his first time in a hospital was in Spain during the Civil War in the late 1930s. He was wounded in battle by a sniper’s bullet.

Born Eric Blair and the author of Homage to Catalonia, Down and Out in Paris and London, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four,Orwell died in University College Hospital in London on 21 January 1950. He was 46. The cause of death: a pulmonary artery rupture due to complications of TB.

I’m still alive and 84, but I have often agreed that a hospital is the antechamber to the tomb. I was recently admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital in San Francisco because I was dizzy and had shortness of breath. I have heart issues and have been monitored closely by a cardiologist for decades. I take meds.

If I had to do it all over again I would not have gone into St. Mary’s. I would have toughed it out at home. Or gone to a Sutter Hospital where I think I would have received better treatment. True, I had a private room at St. Mary’s, but for four days I was roused at all hours of the night by nurses who took my blood pressure and samples of my blood for testing. They seemed to think they had the right to poke and pinch. I felt like a guinea pig in an experiment to see how much abuse a patient could endure. The food was awful and the noise loud and disorienting.

Day after day I begged to be released. I also suggested that the cardiologists at St. Mary’s contact my own cardiologist and hear his suggestions. I trust him. I didn’t trust the cardiologists at St. Mary’s. Four of them looked after me in a superficial way. They couldn’t agree with one another and they never gave me a diagnosis.

After four days they agreed to release me if I wore a defibrillator which would send an electric current to my heart if and when it stopped beating. I accepted the offer. It took two days for my health plan to approve of the “life vest” as it’s called and more time for the case manager at St. Mary’s to provide her stamp of approval.

Once a technician brought the vest and showed me how it works and how to put it on and take it off, it seemed to take forever to get to the first floor in a wheelchair. But finally I got into a Lyft and returned home. The other day someone from St. Mary’s called, and asked for my evaluation of my time there. I said, “The hospital needs improvement.”

The best thing about St. Mary’s was the view from the window in my room on the eighth-floor. I liked the chaplain who visited and the occupational therapist who helped me bathe and shave. She called the hospital “a bureaucracy.” I also liked the Black nurse from Georgia named Georgia who made me laugh. My advice: think twice or more before you enter a hospital. To be decommissioned might take days. Hospitals can be antechambers to the grave.

MEIN KULTURKAMPF

by David Yearsley

The increase in AI-generated images of Donald Trump presages yet another crude campaign to extract profits from the MAGA masses. The payoff could be far greater than that yielded by TrumpCoin, and certainly more lucrative than the flogging of Trump Bibles at $59.99 a copy ever hoped to be.

Having learned that a major auction devoted exclusively to AI art is scheduled at Christie’s New York, the President and his curators now furiously pad their catalog in the rampant pursuit of cash and adulation: Trump as guitar hero, as monster truck driver, as golden-boy surfer, as green-jacketed golf champion of Arnold Palmer proportions.

On Wednesday, the White House issued a grinning, glowing portrait depicting Trump as King on the cover of Time, as if the magazine were lauding the Malign Despot for having just “freed” Manhattan from the tyranny of congestion charges.

The sale of collectible etchings (digital and “real”) duplicated in their millions; robot-made paintings in gaudy, gilded frames; 3D-printed busts of every size: all of these scams are not just possible, but inevitable. Thanks to the AI “revolution,” Trump now commands a billion-brush stable of court painters—legions of pliant Gilbert Stuarts, Norman Rockwells and Leroy Neimans. If Morris Katz, the “King of Schlock Art” capable of knocking out 100 portraits in twelve hours, were alive today and in Trump’s employ, he would have already received the following message on Truth Social from the reigning President: “You’re fired!”

In contrast to the monarchs of yore who had to spend long hours perched on their thrones when their portraits were taken, fidgety Trump doesn’t have to sit still for a minute now.

It is fitting that the first of the AI “artworks” to gain the notoriety that is the perquisite for personal enrichment styled Trump as an orchestral conductor. Pretext for the image was the Night of Long Knives at the Kennedy Center, home to the National Symphony, among other organizations and offerings. As Trump’s TRUTH dispatch put it, the institution and its program were to be cleansed of those “who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”

After the seizure of power, it is not only the populace that must be rid of undesirables, intruders, and resistance. The machinery of government must also be radically retrofitted, the Deep State purged. Police, military, government, education—all require transformation, molding by and into the image of the Leader. The political maneuverings of fascist transformation go fist in glove in the crafting of a renewed conception of the People—das Volk. Crucial in this transformation is culture, which must be returned to its mythic past, must be made Great Again.

The parallels between a Commander-in-Chief and Conductor-in-Chief are revealing in ways that Trump’s image-makers are utterly unaware of.

When an orchestra is on stage, it is the conductor who is the only one who doesn’t make any music. In rehearsals, press conferences and fundraisers, the conductor can instruct, charm, bully, and brag. But the truth (not the TRUTH) is that in the performance itself, the musicians will go on whether or not he (or rarely, she) waves his (or her) arms.

There is no clearer proof of this than Leonard Bernstein winding up the well-oiled machine of the Vienna Philharmonic and then letting it run without conducting at all.

Another Trumpian tactic is on display here: that of taking credit for something which is not his, by mugging for the cameras. Bernstein’s grimaces and gestures are not unlike Trump’s swayings and sneerings to the disco beat of “Y.M.C.A” at campaign rallies and inaugural balls.

The unseen pit orchestra of Project 2025 plays on as efficiently as the Vienna Philharmonic, regardless of the antics of the maestro.

Many conductors have violent tempers. Long-time director of the NBC Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini was terrifyingly abusive. After Sir John Eliot Gardiner punched one of his singers for exiting the stage in the wrong direction, the British conductor and friend of King Charles resigned as head of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras that he had founded. Trump/Hydra-like, Gardiner is now back at the head of another musical establishment newly formed by and for him. Trump’s motions, manners, and moods have long had a conductorly imperiousness to them.

Bernstein opened the Kennedy Center in 1971 with his Mass, a work commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy. Richard Nixon gave the event a miss, angry at the composer’s opposition to the Vietnam War.

Not so, Trump. He doesn’t have the patience to sit through an entire concert, never mind conduct one. But had he been in the White House back then, his repetiteurs would have informed him that Bernstein was gay and man of leftist sympathies, and that his inaugural work for the Kennedy Center was way too woke, as in:

Sing God a simple song: Lauda, Laude …

Make it up as you go along: Lauda, Laude …

Sing like you like to sing

God loves all simple things.

The G. Gordon Liddy and his Proud Boys would have extraordinary-renditioned Bernstein before he got within a mile of the Potomac. Unlike the current President, Nixon was quite musical, but lack of talent or training wouldn’t have stopped Trump from taking the podium himself if just for a few marquee moments of a last-minute replacement of Bernstein’s Mass—the 1812 Overture.

Trump’s predecessors in the exercise of absolute power pursued similar strategies of preemption. Fredrick the Great summarily fired musicians who displeased him and packed his opera house in Berlin with soldiers when ticket sales flagged.

The recently dismissed performers, administrators, and board members at the Kennedy Center may hope that Trump’s grandstanding about the rot of drag shows and kindred depravities enacted by the woke brigades will not spur the MAGA hordes to thunder to the Kennedy Center to hear “America’s tenor” and Trump favorite Christoper Maccio in an Evening of Patriotic, Family-Friendly Songs.

Other are quite sure that the faithful will indeed be lured hence by rumors that the Conductor-in-Chief might be seen to wave his arms at a hundred supplicant strings accompanying a Black-and-Decker crooner hymning the most blessed among women: “Ave, Melania.”

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)

FRED GARDNER

More than 20 years ago I bought a pack of cards that I never opened… till just now. I always assumed I’d play poker again, but I never did after leaving the DA’s office. And I had finally figured out how to win!

As you bemoan the pack installed by the Donald, don’t forget Karen Hughes’s explanation of why “we” had to overthrow the Taliban: “In Afghanistan, women aren’t allowed to read ‘Gone With the Wind’.”

‘I’M REALLY SCARED FOR THE FUTURE OF WILDLIFE’: A FIRED YOSEMITE WORKER TELLS HER STORY

by Kurtis Alexander

Last week, Andria Townsend led a team of biologists in search of one of the West’s most elusive creatures: the Pacific fisher.

Then the ax fell.

The 36-year-old supervisory scientist at Yosemite National Park was among the many National Park Service employees abruptly fired from their jobs — and her efforts to find and ultimately protect the endangered fisher were abandoned.

The weasel-like fisher, which lives in trees and hunts porcupines, hares and mice, was largely wiped out by humans. Today, by some estimates, its numbers in California’s southern and central Sierra are as low as 150. The animals are rarely seen.

Since late fall, however, Townsend’s crew at Yosemite has trapped 17 fishers, fitting them with GPS collars for monitoring, while confirming 13 den sites where the animals are reproducing. The team’s success at inventorying the carnivore has helped the park develop safeguards to ensure survival of one of the animal’s few enduring populations.

“I feel like the work we do is really important,” Townsend said. “Now I’m not able to lead the capture efforts.”

Townsend’s firing and the inevitable setback for Yosemite’s fisher program is another fallout of the widespread staffing cuts and hiring freezes at the federal government made by the President Donald Trump’s administration. The recent moves have rattled employees at Yosemite and threatened the park’s routine operations, including maintenance, recreation services and visitor education.

More fundamentally, the hit to the fisher program is part of a broader conservation blow across the National Park Service. Many of the jobs that have been paused or eliminated at the agency and at partnering agencies deal with, at least partially, the preservation of the natural environment that uniquely exists in national parks.

“People think these parks are just protected natural areas that don’t need management,” said Beth Pratt, regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation, who lives outside Yosemite. “But the parks do require people to keep the landscape and the wildlife safe.”

The park system, which spans 433 sites in the U.S. across 85 million acres of mountains, forests, deserts and swamps, is home to 1,600 endangered or threatened plants and animals.

“This is what a lot of people come (to parks) to see,” said Bart Melton, senior program director for wildlife at the National Parks Conservation Association. “We need to be making sure the bison, the bears, the butterflies are there in the future. But if the biologists aren’t there, this is not guaranteed.”

The Trump administration has said downsizing the government, which is being done across numerous federal agencies, is necessary to boost efficiency and reduce spending.

Neither the National Park Service nor the Interior Department, which oversees the park service, has said how many jobs have been eliminated or put on hold. The agencies did not respond to questions about cuts from the Chronicle. Still, the reach of the cuts, which have been estimated by union officials, lawmakers and park advocacy groups, is believed to be significant. Firefighting and law enforcement positions have been largely spared.

Most hiring at the park service was frozen shortly after Trump took office last month. Notably, thousands of seasonal park positions maintained during busy periods, which can constitute more than a third of the staff at some parks, were put on hold.

The freeze has since thawed, but hiring is yet to broadly resume. Typically, many summer jobs are filled by this time of year or in the process of being filled, leaving parks worried now that they won’t be able to do the recruiting and staffing in time for the coming peak season.

Existing employees, meanwhile, have been offered buyouts and early retirements amid warnings that workforce reductions will continue.

The latest cuts came last week when probationary employees, generally those new to their jobs and with little employment protection, were terminated. About 1,000 workers at the park service, or about 5% of the agency’s total workforce, were let go, according to estimates.

Townsend, the former supervisory carnivore specialist at Yosemite, got her termination letter via email on Feb. 14. Although she was technically within her probation period, Townsend has run the park’s fisher program for almost two years and has a host of other relevant experience, including work at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“It was a little shocking to receive the letter,” she said. “I felt really sad.”

Townsend took issue with the letter’s claim that she hadn’t performed well in her position, having earned, she said, only positive performance reviews. She also disputed the notion that her job wasn’t worth government funding when most of her salary, if not all of it, had been paid by private grants.

A member of Townsend’s crew was similarly let go last week, as were a handful of others who work in natural resources management at the park.

In total, 11 employees on probation at Yosemite have lost their jobs. A large number of the park’s 200 to 300 seasonal positions scheduled for summer haven’t been filled, as is the case with some permanent positions. An unknown number of employees have taken buyouts. The park typically employs about 750 people at the height of the summer season.

Yosemite administrators, concerned about insufficient staffing come the busy summer months, have already delayed the sale of reservations at five campgrounds that can’t be operated without an adequate number of people on the job.

Meanwhile, a permanent day-use reservation system that was scheduled to take effect this year, to reduce traffic, was put on hold for Trump administration officials to review. If the reservation system doesn’t launch before summer, a lot more visitors will have to be accommodated by the diminished staff.

Yosemite, with its snowy peaks, vast granite cliffs and towering waterfalls, remains one of the most popular sites in the park system. Before a trial day-use reservation system was introduced in 2020, the park regularly saw more than 4 million visitors annually. Traffic backups at entrance stations and full parking lots were common.

Pratt, with the National Wildlife Federation, said having adequate staffing to control the crowds, from rangers to groundskeepers to interpreters, is vital not only for helping people enjoy their experience but for protecting the natural environment.

For example, she said, visitors need to be steered away from ecologically sensitive areas and educated about how to interact responsibly with wildlife.

“What’s the saying? A fed bear is a dead bear,” she said, referring to the consequences for bears that become too acclimated to humans. “Education is so important in the parks. … We’re playing with our national heritage. We’re playing with our wildlife. Do we really want to risk this?”

For Townsend, who doesn’t yet know what her next job will be, the fear is that staffing cuts will be too great to manage Yosemite’s unparalleled wilderness.

“I’m hoping that this is just a small thing that happens that Yosemite will recover from,” she said. “But I’m really scared for the future of wildlife.”

(SF Chronicle)

‘DISTRESS FLAG’ HUNG HIGH IN YOSEMITE TO PROTEST FEDERAL JOB CUTS

by Gregory Thomas

A group of frustrated Yosemite National Park staffers hoping to draw attention to the federal government’s sweeping workforce cuts have hung an upside-down American flag thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan.

The 3,000-foot granite cliff looms above Yosemite Valley and thousands of eyes were on it Saturday evening for the dramatic stunt: It’s the last weekend of the annual firefall spectacle, which brings scores of onlookers to Yosemite.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of large telephoto cameras set up by visitors Saturday in a viewing area on the valley floor were trained high on El Capitan to capture the ephemeral moments when the day’s last light illuminates Horsetail Fall as if it were a cascade of lava pouring over the cliff.

The upside-down flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — was strung near the falls and clearly visible.

“We’re bringing attention to what’s happening to the parks, which are every American’s properties,” Gavin Carpenter, a maintenance mechanic with Yosemite and disabled military veteran who supplied the flag and helped hang it Saturday, told the Chronicle. “It’s super important we take care of them, and we’re losing people here and it’s not sustainable if we want to keep the parks open.”

Eleven of Yosemite’s full-time staffers, including the park’s sole locksmith, a biologist, an HVAC specialist and others, received a termination email on Feb. 14 — along with thousands of federal lands workers across the country, some of whom have spoken out about the pain and dejection they feel being summarily dismissed from jobs they love. Yosemite staffers typically live in employer-provided housing in the park, so a termination can carry the added burden for many of losing their residence.

“Since these cuts came, a lot of people are really uneasy and worried about what’s going to happen to them,” Carpenter said.

Yosemite visitors offered mixed reactions to the flag Saturday.

“At first thought the upside-down flag was for Trump support, but then realized it was to support the national parks, and I was for it,” said Tina Alidio, visiting from Las Vegas.

“If the flag is for national parks, I am all for it,” said Joe Amaral, also from Las Vegas. “We have been to 32 national parks. We think they are short on resources as it is, and now you want to take away more. It isn’t right.”

But Rebecca Harvey of Greeley Hill (Mariposa County) said: “I would rather see nature — no hand of man.”

Separate from the flag demonstration Saturday afternoon, Jackson Fitzsimmons, who said he was wilderness ranger with Sierra National Forest until he was terminated in the widespread staffing cuts, stood in front of Yosemite’s welcome center to relay a similar message to visitors passing by.

“There are people who, with no warning and no cause, have lost their jobs, are going to have to move, are going to have to struggle to survive with their families,” said Fitzsimmons, who wore a ranger uniform.

The group of six flag demonstrators rigged ropes at the top of El Capitan and rappelled down the cliff face to unfurl the flag, which measures 30 by 50 feet. Carpenter said they’d leave it up for a few hours until around the time of the firefall event, then roll it back up and leave — enough time for it to register with viewers in the valley but not so long that it would ruin the photos they came to take of the famous natural spectacle.

Shortly after hanging the banner, the group sent out a statement:

“The purpose of this exercise of free speech is to disrupt without violence and draw attention to the fact that public lands in the United States are under attack,” it reads. “The Department of the Interior issued a series of secretarial orders that position drilling and mining interests as the favored uses of America’s public lands and threaten to scrap existing land protections and conservation measures. Firing 1,000s of staff regardless of position or performance across the nation is the first step in destabilizing the protections in place for these great places.”

The statement continues:

“These losses, while deeply personal and impactful, may also be invisible to visitors and members of the public — we are shining a spotlight on them by putting a distress flag on El Capitan in view of Firefall. Think of it as your public lands on strike.”

It’s uncommon that people use El Capitan to deliver such messages, in part because of the technical know-how required to access the sheer cliff face. But it has happened a couple of times in recent years.

Last summer, a group of demonstrators temporarily hung a banner reading “Stop the genocide” from the cliff in an effort to bring awareness to the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

(SF Chronicle)

RHETORICAL DEVOLUTION

Editor:

This ‘ridiculous’ war…

As I thought about the Presidents Day holiday, I reread Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. His words on the battlefield at Gettysburg during the Civil War are still very moving. He asked the assembled crowd to remember the men who gave their lives to save the union: “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”

In contrast, President Donald Trump, the leader of the free world, can only write, “It is time to stop this ridiculous war, where there has been massive and totally DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russian and Ukraine.” Is this all he can say about the men and women of Ukraine who died to save their country? A “ridiculous” war? Has Trump so quickly forgotten that there is only one person, one person alone, Vladimir Putin, and only one country, one country alone, Russia, who invaded Ukraine and brutally killed thousands of its citizens? Ask Ukrainians if it has been “ridiculous.”

Greg Jacobs

Sebastopol

THE PRICE OF EGGS

Editor,

One of the main reasons people voted for Donald Trump was the price of groceries, specifically eggs.

A slim plurality of voters went Republican for cheaper eggs.

How’s that working for us? Eggs are nearly twice the price they were when Democrats lost the presidential election. Some blame bird influenza; some blame inflation.

Despite inflation being tamed by President Joe Biden, the price of eggs was still a bit higher in November 2024 than before the COVID pandemic, which killed over 300,000 needlessly during Trump’s first presidency.

Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is unlikely to control the bird flu since he is a vaccine skeptic. If the bird flu jumps into the human population, thousands more people will die.

You can thank Republican senators who confirmed RFK Jr.’s nomination along with the other incompetent cabinet secretaries, whose only qualification is to follow Trump into oblivion.

Do you think Republican policies will bring cheaper eggs? You’ve been fooled again.

Bruce Joffe

Piedmont

Robert Crumb and Edward Abbey at Arches National Park, 1985

A READER NOTES:

Re: Caitlin Johnstone. Periodically I read all or part of the Caitlin Johnstone pieces you publish. Today my curiosity led me to look her up. Readers might be interested to read what she has to say about her project: https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/about

It’s an oddball web address but is a copy/paste from her site. The personal info is toward the bottom of the page.

LIBERALS HATE SOCIALISTS for the same reason socialists hate liberals: because socialists are the thing liberals pretend to be. Socialists stand for truth, justice, peace and equality while liberals only pretend to stand for these things, and they both know it. Liberals know their favorite political party supports war, militarism, oligarchy and inequality and is rife with power-serving corruption, and socialists know it too, so they can critique these dynamics in ways that have the unpleasant sting of truth.

Liberals don’t mind it when some dopey right winger criticizes their ideological faction, because the rightist has no idea what they’re looking at and offers up the dumbest and least relevant criticisms imaginable. When a socialist critiques that same faction they do it in ways the liberal knows are true, and it causes the liberal to experience cognitive dissonance. If you love AOC it’s not going to bother you when a rightist calls her a woke commie terrorist lover, but someone to the left of you pointing out the various ways she serves the ugliest aspects of the US empire will grate against some of your most deeply treasured belief systems.

Most liberals secretly hate socialists more than they hate rightists, because while rightists attack their political agendas, socialists attack their egos. They expose core identity structures for the sham that they are. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, and nobody enjoys feeling like they’ve been exposed as a phony.

That’s what liberal left-punching is really about. It’s not about “political pragmatism” or any of that nonsense. It’s petty, vindictive egotistic meltdowns dressed up in reasonable-sounding words. It’s never anything nobler than that.

— Caitlin Johnstone

TAIBBI AND KIRN

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, how you feeling? Any better?

Walter Kirn: Well, yeah, I’m recovering from my mystery respiratory ailment, but it has caused me to have to live in a large Las Vegas hotel casino for a week as I pamper myself and recover my breath. And I think this morning when I went down at 6:45 AM to get a cup of coffee in the lobby or in the casino, I realized that I was going crazy. It’s a little bit like being on a spaceship. A hamburger costs about 50 bucks, and the rituals and cycles of the Las Vegas casino world are not those of ordinary middle class life in America.

So, for example, this morning, the ladies of the evening we’re streaming out in their morning wear, which is the same as their evening wear, as I got my cup of coffee. They looked good. Not any of the worst for wear, going home to wherever they go to before they come back out at 1:00 in the morning, or night. And I just-

Matt Taibbi: More like probably 7:00 in the evening, I would think. But, yeah, go ahead.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, 7:00 in the evening, whenever. My mom was a night nurse, and it’s a lot like being a night nurse in a major hospital, except the hospital is that of white businessmen in their 60s who attend the-

Matt Taibbi: Touchy white businessmen.

Walter Kirn: … yeah, the conventions and gatherings of Las Vegas. But anyway, having been saturated by this atmosphere for over a week while being in my room taking strong antibiotics, I’m now officially insane. Much more than you usually catch me on the show. And it’s 7:00 in the morning here, so let’s rock and roll.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Well, look, casinos are designed to disorient you so that you don’t know that it’s time to step away from the table and go to sleep or feed your children, or whatever it’s you’re supposed to be doing. You’re not supposed to see the windows.

Walter Kirn: Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: So, the desired effect has been produced. So, yay casino.

Walter Kirn: Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: All right. It’s been yet another avalanche of stuff just pouring out this week. We did a show on Monday that was largely in reaction to the confrontation over Europe and JD Vance’s speech.

Walter Kirn: Right. Right.

Matt Taibbi: And then the 60 minutes lunacy afterwards. We missed a few things, apparently, from that show it turns out because there was some other weirdness that went on there. But the headline right now continues to be just this avalanche of stuff that’s coming out about how government operates. Now, there’s two different… There’s a couple of quick stories that we should probably get to before we get into the meat of the matter.

One, there was a story that came out actually last week about the UK demanding that Apple give it backdoor access to personal information. And interestingly enough, the Washington Post broke this story. And not only did they break the story, but Ron Wyden of the Democrats asked that the United States stand up to the UK and ask that Tulsi Gabbard stand up to these requests. There was also, I believe it was Amnesty International did a press release about this.

So, a lot of these organizations and people who haven’t been there through a lot of these international censorship/surveillance controversies are suddenly showing up, which is interesting. Here’s Amnesty’s, “Encryption order threatens global privacy rights.” They’ve been okay on this issue, but not great.

So, just so that people know, the law that’s being invoked by the British here is called the Investigatory Powers Act, and it’s a real thing. We encountered it in the Twitter files. Oddly enough, through a series of communications about UK’s football policing unit, Britain wanted backdoor information about soccer hooligans. And there was a big internal discussion in Twitter about it. And then there was another discussion when Australia was thinking about pushing a similar law to this Investigatory Powers Act, which is like the template for how you get the super private encrypted information. So, this is a real thing.

But what’s interesting, Walter, is the whole idea that Vance speech was the United States standing up to these repressive, intrusive laws that are designed to either censor material or conduct surveillance or make blacklists or break encryption, right? That’s what the whole arrest of Pavel Durov was about, right? The telegram, CEO in France. That was considered somehow a partisan thing at the time. So, what do you think? I mean, is there a sea change? Are Americans suddenly deciding to stand up for privacy again?

Walter Kirn: Well, Vance has made it an issue, and I think he did so without partisan considerations, but also because it makes him distinctive. And I think he sees that things are going to get worse and have already gotten terrible. I’m cheered that Ron Wyden, who I saw at the Kennedy RFK hearings being extremely partisan, is able to find common cause that makes me happy. But whether or not we push back in general, I’m still worried we won’t…

https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-feb-21-2025-looking

FIRED EPA WORKER: “I know I’ll bounce back and land another job. I’m grateful that I’m young and that I have support and I’ll be OK. The thing that I can’t get over is that the actual richest man in the world directed my fucking firing. I made $50k a year and worked to keep drinking water safe. The richest man in the world decided that was an expense too great for the American taxpayer.”

LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

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Trump Appointees Fire Hundreds at U.S.A.I.D. Working on Urgent Aid

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The Death of Competition in American Elections

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“MEN WHO LOOK UPON THEMSELVES born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interest, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”

– Thomas Paine, ’Common Sense’

MUSK SAYS GOVERNMENT WORKERS MUST DETAIL THEIR WORKWEEK OR LOSE THEIR JOBS

Elon Musk has drawn inspiration from his 2022 takeover of Twitter with the tactic. His threat on social media of termination did not appear in an email to federal workers requesting the work summaries.

by Kate Conger, Eileen Sullivan and Christina Jewett

Elon Musk deepened the confusion and alarm of workers across the federal government Saturday by ordering them to summarize their accomplishments for the week, warning that a failure to do so would be taken as a resignation.

Shortly after Mr. Musk’s demand, which he posted on X, civil servants across the government received an email from the Office of Personnel Management with the subject line, “What did you do last week?”

The missive simultaneously hit inboxes across multiple agencies, rattling workers who had been rocked by layoffs in recent weeks and were unsure about whether to respond to Mr. Musk’s demand. Officials at some agencies, including the F.B.I., told their employees to pause any responses to the email for now.

Mr. Musk’s mounting pressure on the federal work force came at the encouragement of President Trump, who has been trumpeting how the billionaire has upended the bureaucracy and on Saturday urged him to be even “more aggressive.”

In his post on X, Mr. Musk said employees who failed to answer the message would lose their jobs. However, that threat was not stated in the email itself.

“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished this week and cc your manager,” said the Office of Personnel Management message that went out to federal employees on Saturday afternoon. The email told employees to respond by midnight on Monday and not to include classified information.

The email was received by workers across the government, including at the F.B.I., the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Personnel Management, the Food and Drug Administration, the Veterans Affairs Department, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to copies seen by The New York Times.

Some agency leaders welcomed Mr. Musk’s move. “DOGE and Elon are doing great work! Historic. We are happy to participate,” Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., whom Mr. Trump has nominated to run the office on a permanent basis, wrote in a message to his staff.

But in a sign of the upheaval and potential legal issues caused by the demand, officials at some federal agencies told their staff to hold off on responding and await further guidance.

Among them was Kash Patel, the new F.B.I. director. “The F.B.I., through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with F.B.I. procedures,” Mr. Patel wrote in an email to staff obtained by The Times. “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.”

For rank-and-file workers, the latest move by Mr. Musk underscored a climate of instability and fear inside the government. One staff member at the National Institutes of Health, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said she was shocked by the message, which she said left her with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. When she found out more of the context, she said, she messaged a colleague: “They’re terrorizing us.”

In response to Mr. Musk’s demand, the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said it would challenge any “unlawful” terminations. The union told workers that it “strongly believes” the Office of Personnel Management did not have the authority to direct employees in this way and advised them to seek guidance from a supervisor.

“Once again, Elon Musk and the Trump administration have shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people,” Everett Kelley, the union’s president, said in a statement.

“It is cruel and disrespectful,” he said, “to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life.”

The demand raised significant legal issues, experts said.

“There is zero basis in the civil service system for this,” said Sam Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget. “This is obviously designed to intimidate employees. Musk and DOGE and the Trump administration are persistently acting in a way that disregards civil service rules and they are just counting on the courts not being able to catch up and clean up after them.

“They are counting on employees saying, ‘This is too much, I can’t keep doing this,’” he added.

The message questioning workers’ output repeated a tactic Mr. Musk used to cull the work force at his social media company. He has repeatedly drawn inspiration from his 2022 takeover of X, then known as Twitter, as he works to overhaul the federal government with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. With the support of the Trump administration, Mr. Musk has ordered layoffs across the federal government and effectively shuttered several agencies.

“Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him be more aggressive,” Mr. Trump said in a post Saturday on his social media site.

Mr. Musk quickly accepted the challenge. “All federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Mr. Musk wrote in a social media post on Saturday, saying his actions were “consistent” with the president’s demands. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” he added.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the email to federal workers, and whether workers would be fired if they did not reply.

The Office of Personnel Management, which sent Mr. Musk’s deferred resignation offer to employees with the subject line “Fork in the Road” last month, sidestepped the question.

“As part of the Trump administration’s commitment to an efficient and accountable federal work force, O.P.M. is asking employees to provide a brief summary of what they did last week by the end of Monday, cc’ing their manager,” McLaurine Pinover, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in a statement on Saturday. “Agencies will determine any next steps.”

The demand left many workers reeling.

Most of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s work force had recently been placed on leave as Mr. Musk gutted the agency, and have been instructed not to work — leaving them with no accomplishments to report, a worker there said.

Mr. Musk’s allies in government have suggested using artificial intelligence to identify budget cuts, and workers at several agencies worried their responses would be assessed by A.I.

The approach echoed one Mr. Musk took with executives and employees at Twitter. In April 2022, Mr. Musk was set to join the board at the social media company, but bickered with Parag Agrawal, its chief executive at the time, over his public criticism of the company. When Mr. Agrawal asked Mr. Musk not to post detrimental things about Twitter, Mr. Musk responded in a text, “What did you get done this week?” and then told Mr. Agrawal he would buy Twitter outright.

The exchange led to Mr. Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the company, which he completed in October 2022. Mr. Musk claimed he fired Mr. Agrawal immediately, although Mr. Agrawal contested the circumstances of his departure and sued Mr. Musk for withholding severance payments.

Shortly after the acquisition, Mr. Musk told employees to print out code they had written recently — an exercise intended to prove how hard they worked. When executives at the company raised privacy concerns, Mr. Musk instructed employees to shred the code they had printed.

On Saturday, Mr. Musk acknowledged the similarities. “Parag got nothing done. Parag was fired,” he wrote in an X post about the message he intended to send to federal workers.

(NY Times)

4 Comments

George Hollister February 23, 2025

Harry Merlo: “It always annoys me to leave anything on the ground when we log our own land. We don’t log to a 10-inch top, we don’t log to an 8-inch top or a 6-inch top. We log to infinity. It’s out there, it’s ours, and we want it all. Now.”

City people would fail to recognized this statement as a reflection of a well established land ethic that exists all over the world for people connected to the land. Don’t waste the resource. Don’t kill any more than you need. Fully utilize everything you do kill. I don’t view a forest, or the timber in it as a resource, but most people do, including city people. The result is a boneheaded stand off between between those who want to exploit, and those who want to preserve. What Harry Merlo was saying was, this is my land, and I am going to treat the resource right, not like others think I should. I know, people disconnected from the land don’t get it. That’s fine.

Christina Aranguren February 23, 2025

To call Fish & Wildlife: #1-888-334-CALTIP (#888-334-2258).

Bruce McEwen February 23, 2025

Telling,isn’t it? The way readers can immediately tell, without any byline, title or hints, that they are reading Caitlin Johnstone.

Her style is concise and her point made with alacrity.

And today we have this nice juxtaposition between the hard-hitting bit by Caitlin Johnstone and the vague verbosity of Matt Tiabbi and Walter Kim.

In the first twenty words we are told their names a dozen times. Then we have to hear about how they slept, how much they paid for a burger, their various health issues and if we are not bored to distraction by now (by which time Caitlin would have finished up) we start to get a few hints as what this double-barreled blast of blather might possibly be about, but still, the slogging through to the end—wait wait, don’t tell me— it doesn’t end here? There’s more? Sure, they go on and on archly dropping hints and making vague generalizations but never arrive at any definitive point.

Jeff McMullin February 23, 2025

Well put Bruce!

4 Comments

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