Mendocino County Today: Friday 2/28/2025

UNSEASONABLY WARM temperatures will continue through Friday due to a ridge of high pressure over our area. Unsettled and much cooler weather returns Saturday and will remain through the weekend. There will be more chances for additional rainfall and mountain snow during the coming work week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 41F under clear skies this Friday morning on the coast. We might see some high clouds from the south today then light rain returns tomorrow evening into Sunday. Dry on Monday then light rain Tue & Wed. And so on.

ERNIE BRANSCOMB

I hope this “catch-all-comment-section” is the okay-place to mention the February False Spring. Sometimes erroneously called “unseasonably warm weather”. It is not only warm weather, it is predictably likely to happen along the north coast in most Februarys.

The Oldtimers knew it was a false spring and a cruel trick by Mother Nature to catch us off-guard, then blast us with the March snow storms, frosty mornings and then the, also predictable, Equinoctial Storm.

Brace yourself and resist the desire to stick something green and fragile into the ground for it to get frozen.

Navarro Ridge Road, aerial photo (Vern Peterman)

IN-CUSTODY DEATH IN UKIAH, IDENTIFICATION PENDING NOTICE OF NEXT OF KIN

On Wednesday, February 26, 2025 at approximately 7:40 P.M., Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to an apartment complex in the 300 block of Brush Street in Ukiah for a reported 9-1-1 hang-up.

Sheriff’s Office Dispatch received a 9-1-1 call in the area of Brush Street in Ukiah, and nothing was heard on the line. Using GPS technology, the call was traced to the area of an apartment complex in the 300 block of Brush Street in Ukiah. Deputies responded to check for any signs of a disturbance or for anyone needing law enforcement assistance. While checking the area of the 9-1-1 call, Deputies encountered a subject who immediately fled the area upon observing law enforcement personnel. Deputies recognized the male subject from prior law enforcement contacts and had knowledge that he was on Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS). Deputies pursued the adult male subject on foot but lost visual contact with the subject once he ran south of the complex and fled towards the apartments on North Orchard Avenue. The area was extensively checked for the subject with negative results.

Deputies continued to investigate the 9-1-1 call and reviewed video surveillance footage from the incident where the adult male subject fled from law enforcement. Upon reviewing the video surveillance footage, the male subject was positively identified as a 29-year-old male from Ukiah who was confirmed to be on active Post Release Community Supervision in Mendocino County. Deputies determined the male subject arrived at the apartment complex in a pickup that was reported as stolen to law enforcement in Contra Costa County. The stolen pickup was recovered and towed as a part of this continuing investigation.

After investigating the incident and reviewing all applicable footage, an order to arrest the adult male subject was issued to neighboring law enforcement agencies to include charges of 496d(a) Possession of a Stolen Vehicle, Resist, Delay, or Obstruct a Peace Officer, and 3455 PC Violation of Post Release Community Supervision.

On 02-26-2025 at approximately 10:15 P.M., Deputies responded to the area of the Orr Creek Bridge near Brush Street due to the Ukiah Police Department receiving reports of a male subject yelling in the creek area. This area is south of the apartment complex on Brush Street from the prior incident and in close proximity to the area where the male subject fled from Deputies earlier in the night.

Deputies, Ukiah Police Department Officers, and California Highway Patrol Officers all responded to the incident at Orr Creek to investigate and requested medical personnel to respond and stage in the area due to the nature of the call. Upon arrival, law enforcement located the 29-year-old male subject from the earlier 9-1-1 call and gave orders and commands for the subject to exit the creek. The male subject did not comply with the orders from Deputies, as a result law enforcement personnel entered the creek to arrest the subject and escort him out of the water and creek bed. The male subject was handcuffed and was exhibiting symptoms of an altered level of consciousness while being arrested.

Law enforcement personnel physically carried the male subject from the creek to the nearby bank and determined the subject was experiencing a medical emergency and became unconscious. Due to the medical emergency, the handcuffs were removed from the subject and numerous doses of Narcan were administered to the subject, who displayed a positive reaction to the treatment. Medical personnel were requested to the scene as the male subject continued to experience a medical emergency, so law enforcement continued life-saving measures on the male subject. Medical personnel arrived and continued emergency life-saving efforts on the male subject, who was immediately transported by ambulance to the Adventist Health Ukiah Valley Emergency Room.

At the emergency room, life-saving efforts continued for approximately 30 minutes until the 29-year-old male subject was pronounced deceased by medical professionals at 11:04 P.M. Wednesday night. Due to the circumstances of this incident, Detectives from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office responded to take over the investigation and conduct the coroner’s investigation. The Sheriff’s Office contacted Investigators from the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office and administrators from other law enforcement agencies involved in this incident. The Mendocino County Officer-Involved Fatal Incident Protocol was initiated due to the decedent being in law enforcement custody at the time of death.

At this time, the official cause and manner of death is pending further investigation and a post-mortem examination (autopsy) has been scheduled for Monday, March 3, 2025. This investigation will continue while awaiting the autopsy report and the results of other forensic examinations and tests. A Forensic Pathologist will determine the official cause and manner of death once the investigation has been completed.

The name of the decedent is being withheld at this time to properly identify and notify the legal next-of-kin for the 29-year-old male. Additional information will be released as it becomes available during this continuing investigation.

Anyone with information regarding this incident and investigation is requested to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, the primary investigating agency for this case. Information can be provided by calling the Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086 (option 1) and can also be provided anonymously by calling the non-emergency tip-line at 707-234-2100.

PANTHER MEN’S VOLLEYBALL: In our first ever boys volleyball game, the Panthers played to five sets against Ukiah, with Ukiah narrowly escaping with a win. The rematch is next Thursday in Our House. Fill the Gym!

HAPLESS HASCHAK’S WATER EXTRACTION REGULATION PROPOSAL REJECTED BY ALL FOUR OF HIS COLLEAGUES

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday said insufficient resources were the reason to reject a proposed ordinance that sought to regulate water extraction and commercial sales by water haulers and private companies in the county.…

https://mendovoice.com/2025/02/after-years-of-discussions-board-of-supervisors-reject-ordinance-to-regulate-water-extraction-and-selling/

JUST IN FROM THE WINDSOR POLICE DEPARTMENT

(Tweekers were ab poaching near Elk.)

February 26th at approximately 10:30pm, a Windsor Police Department Deputy contacted the subjects of an occupied vehicle on the 700 block of Shiloh Rd. The deputy learned the male driver identified as Jason Ramos (46) from Santa Rosa was on active Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS) and misdemeanor probation. Ramos was detained without incident to complete a compliance check pursuant to his PRCS terms. It was also learned Ramos had two outstanding misdemeanor warrants issued from Lake and Mendocino Counties.

The passenger of the vehicle was contacted and identified as Nichole Lee (35) from Santa Rosa. As she was being escorted, the deputy inquired if she was in possession of anything illegal and she divulged she had methamphetamine and associated drug paraphernalia. The deputy detained Lee to continue his investigation.

During the search of the vehicle, methamphetamine, numerous hypodermic needles, and other associated paraphernalia were located. A continued search of the vehicle located approximately 35 live abalone, a northwestern pond turtle, wet clothing, and tools used to remove the abalone from rocks. The deputy contacted Fish and Wildlife Officers, and they assisted with the investigation. Ramos admitted to poaching the abalone near the town of Elk in Mendocino County. Ramos stated he picked the abalone for personal consumption.

Red abalone is a large, edible sea snail native to California. The harvesting of abalone has been a long-standing tradition for indigenous communities and recreational harvesters. Abalone are considered a delicacy and has long been a target of poachers. There is an extensive black market which pays poachers a premium for illegally taking the abalone. The recreational harvesting of abalone was closed permanently in 2017 due to catastrophic environmental stressors. This decimated the abalone population which have an extremely slow reproductive rate. Any illegal taking of abalone harms the population and the return of recreational harvest.

Ramos and Lee were both transported and booked at the Sonoma County Jail. Ramos was booked for his outstanding warrants, 3455(a) PC -Felony PRCS Violation 1203.2 PC -Violation of probation, and 2002 FG- Possess creature unlawfully taken.

Due to the condition of the abalone and location, unfortunately they could not be returned to their natural habitat and were disposed of. The pond turtle was turned over to animal control and returned to the wild.

Lee was booked 11377(a) HS- Possession of controlled substance.

Big abalone bust on Mendo Coast; keep your eyes open and call CAL TIP (Frank Hartzell)

https://mendocinocoast.news/windsor-police-arrest-man-for-huge-elk-illegal-abalone-haul-many-undersized/

IS MENDO GOING BROKE AGAIN?

by Mark Scaramella

In 2024 the Supervisors, lead by Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams, insisted that Mendocino County had a multi-million dollar structural deficit. Williams went so far several times to say that Mendo was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Then, early this year when Acting Auditor Sara Pierce closed the books for the previous fiscal year (ending last June 30) Mendo suddenly declared that it had about $11 million in unspent carryover surplus funds (mainly derived from chronic staffing vacancies which were never explained).

On Tuesday, CEO Antle was back to frightening the children again with another “I am very concerned” introduction to the mid-year budget report, citing Trump, declining sales and cannabis taxes and pending salary increases putting the squeeze on County finances. She also implied that public safety, historically resistant to local budget cuts, might also be jeopardized.

Antle: “As we all know there has been a change in national leadership. My office is closely following potential cuts in federal programs. Counties play a major role in administering federal programs that support the most vulnerable populations in our community through social services and other programs. Indirect reductions could impact the Sheriff’s Office, fire and the District Attorney’s office. The Governor and the state legislators will need to determine how California will respond. The County of Mendocino receives approximately $55 million in federal funding across several departments. I start with this [bad news] as we continue to find this county in another year of fiscal uncertainly. In this [current CEO] report you will see and hear from the team that there is a significant reduction in state and county sales tax which immediately impact the Sheriff’s office, Juvenile Hall, the District Attorney and fire districts. Cannabis tax is down approximately $700,000. On a somewhat positive note, we are projecting to use only $4.2 million of $7 million in one time funds built into this budget for 24/25. I am very concerned about the impact as we roll into the third year of wage increases set to hit fiscal year 25/ 26. That impact is expected to be significant.”

None of the Supervisors responded to Antle’s warning. No budget action was discussed, proposed or suggested for future agendas. At Supervisor Williams prodding, they bickered a bit about whether the CEO should provide meaningful budget reports more than twice a year. But, as usual, in the end they decided not to require such unimportant (to them only, apparently) things, neither the meaningful reports — just the reports from whatever happens to be entered into the computer at the time of report generation — or even quarterly, much less monthly reports from the CEO who has never been required to provide current, meaningful budget reports, despite the fact that the departments do it on their own without reporting to the Board. As with the Cubbison matter, as Judge Moorman pointedly noted, the Board and the CEO prefer “willful ignorance.”

THE CUBBISON AFFAIR, an on-line comment: Wait, the DA wanted to use forfeiture money for a steakhouse dinner? Oh man, I thought this was all small-town politics at its worst before and now I know it was. LOL

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT’S VERSION: Mendocino County Auditor Returns To Work After Judge Dismisses Felony Case Over Misused Funds

Chamise Cubbison had been charged with misappropriation of public funds involving money paid to a former payroll manager. A judge dismissed the case Tuesday.

by Colin Atagi

Mendocino County Auditor Chamise Cubbison returned to work Wednesday, one day after a judge dismissed felony charges against her and a former subordinate accused of misusing $68,000 in public funds, her attorney said.

The ruling followed a preliminary hearing that shed light on the case’s key figure: overworked and underpaid payroll manager Paula Kennedy, who had used an obscure pay code to collect compensation.

On Tuesday, Mendocino County Judge Ann Moorman determined Kennedy had received permission from county officials to use the code and she had properly documented the payments. Cubbison, meanwhile, was unaware of the arrangement and acted appropriately by flagging concerns when she discovered discrepancies.

Cubbison’s attorney, Chris Andrian, of Santa Rosa-based Andrian & Gallenson, said a critical breakthrough came last week when investigators recovered long-lost emails and records from a collapsed county email archival system.

“There was total transparency,” Andrian said Thursday.

Mendocino County CEO Darcie Antle and special counsel Traci Carrillo, who prosecuted the case, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Carrillo reportedly said she respected Moorman’s ruling, emphasizing the importance of preliminary hearings in assessing cases and evidence.

Despite being cleared of wrongdoing, Cubbison is still battling to secure backpay after being suspended in October 2023, following the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office’s decision to file charges. Andrian said she is owed about $247,900 but returned to work to fulfill her duties as an elected official.

“That was her job. She fought for it. She got elected,” Andrian said.

Mendocino County’s official website on Thursday did not show Cubbison on duty; it still listed Sara Pierce as the Acting Auditor-Controller And Treasurer-Tax Collector.

Beyond the legal case, the matter exposed a long-standing rift between Cubbison and Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster, whose opposition to her appointment as Auditor dates back to 2021.

Eyster had argued she was unqualified for the role after former Auditor-Controller Lloyd Weer retired. Their tensions reportedly escalated after Cubbison, then Assistant Auditor-Controller, refused to use public asset forfeiture funds — which come from assets such as cash, vehicles or property seized by law enforcement, typically in connection with criminal activity — to reimburse the DA’s Office for office holiday parties at Redwood Valley’s Broiler Steak House in 2018 and 2019.

Testimony revealed that Eyster later proposed restructuring the county’s financial leadership, consolidating the Auditor-Controller and Treasurer-Tax Collector positions under a single Department of Finance overseen by county supervisors. Despite this, Cubbison ran unopposed in June 2022 and was elected to the newly merged role.

Given their contentious history, Cubbison sought to have Eyster removed from the case, arguing he was biased against her. However, in a Dec. 12 opinion, the California Attorney General’s Office found insufficient evidence of a conflict. A Mendocino County judge also denied a defense motion for Eyster’s recusal.

Nonetheless, Eyster later appointed Carrillo to handle the case, which ended in dismissal this week.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

JIM SHIELDS

AVA,

Mike Geniella, has been doing an outstanding, award-winning series on the now infamous Cubbison affair. Mike’s the OG journalist in these parts and beyond.

God bless Judge Ann Moorman for recognizing that the people who brought this case forward were, at best, being exceptionally economical with the truth. It’s a ploy long practiced in these kinds of politically motivated prosecutions. And usually it works. But not this time.

As Chairman of our Laytonville Town Council at our meeting Wednesday night on Feb. 26, I asked District 3 Supervisor Supe John Haschak several questions regarding the Cubbison matter. Haschak is one of two BOS members who attend our meetings since Council area boundaries include all of the Third District and a portion of the 4th District (District 4 Supervisor Bernie Norvell did not attend).

Without repeating any of the explanatory comments I made at the meeting regarding Superior Court Judge Moorman’s dismissal of the case against Cubbison on Tuesday, Feb. 25, of the legally defective charges brought against Ms. Cubbison and payroll manager Paula Kennedy, I asked Haschak if the County has reinstated the two women to their positions.

Haschak replied that Cubbison was “reinstated yesterday.” (Feb. 25), the same day of Moorman’s ruling. When I asked him about Ms. Kennedy’s status, Haschak replied, “I can’t talk about that.”

When I stated, “I’m assuming you can’t reply because that’s counsel’s advice,” he responded in the affirmative.

I closed off our discussion by asking Haschak if the Supervisors are planning to send Cubbison and Kennedy public letters of apology given Judge Moorman’s dismissal ruling, buttressed by her scathing reproach of the conduct and performance of bullying high-ranking county officials and their criminal justice counterparts who were hell-bent on persecuting two innocent women. Again, Haschak politely declined comment.

SUPERVISORS HOIST BY THEIR OWN WHEREASES

Let’s take a quick look back at the original resolution that the Supervisors passed unanimously back in October of 2023:

Notice that the fourth whereas says that Cubbison’s suspension is effective “until such matter is resolved.”

It’s been “resolved.” The Cubbison criminal case is now officially dismissed. According to the resolution’s own text Cubbison must be returned to office. Immediately. With back pay. (The civil suit will be separate.) Will the Board even honor their own resolution? Will they act professionally and without rancor toward the exonerated elected Auditor? Will they undermine her and her office at every turn, withdrawing or delaying support or funding? Will they resume the Get Cubbison project with a different line of attack? Will they drag their feet in paying her the back pay she’s due? Will they even be courteous? Or will they circle the wagons and stonewall Cubbison’s return? Now that the case has become high profile (by Mendo standards), lots of people will be watching.

(Mark Scaramella)

MALICIOUS PROSECUTION

To the Editor:

The malicious prosecution case against duly elected County Auditor-Treasurer Chamise Cubbison has been dismissed. Now what?

Now, every county actor tainted by the Cubbison affair needs to go.

District Attorney Dave Eyster needs to be sued by Cubbison, and his conduct should be reported to the California Bar Association. CEO Darcie Antle needs to be immediately fired. Supervisors Maureen Mulheren, Ted Williams and John Haschak need to resign or be recalled.

That’s just a start.

Everyone in the County Counsel’s office involved in the Cubbison case needs to go, too.

As a county, we, the people, need to ask: Leading up to Cubbison being charged, who was involved? Who fabricated a case against Cubbison?

And after she was charged, for the next two years, as the case wend its way through court, who obstructed justice? Who didn’t respond truthfully to discoveries? Who destroyed or falsified evidence? Who perjured themselves? Who intimidated witnesses?

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

PS. The people of Mendocino County deserve so much better than the governance we presently have. But nothing ever seems to change. We are governed by the same hacks elected by the same shadowy political machine regardless of the decade…the hacks 25 years ago seem a lot like the hacks we have now. Only the faces change. And county government itself seems like a jobs program for the otherwise unemployable. How to get a county job? Nepotisms and cronyism. Most jobs go to “townies.” Johnny Pinches was the last member of the BOS I truly admired.

DAVID KING:

Hello my name is David King. I am a farmer/consultant located between Ukiah and the Mendocino coast. I am being tasked with designing a Organic Regenerative California apprenticeship program initially for produce and flower farms. I have been contracted by a company called New Opportunity Systems (NOS). There are many people and companies involved in this project, all with the intent to bring funds, resources and services to help small farmers in our region. Currently I am talking to farms and beginning to explore if local farms have needs for training, skilled workers, funds and services. I will be reaching out to Mendocino and Lake County farms in the coming days. Any questions please feel free to reach out. If you are a farm or may know a farm that is interested please feel free to reach out (via facebook). My business doesn’t ask money from farmers.

GOLDENHOUR COLLECTIVE EXPANDING TO MENDOCINO:

Now Hiring for Spring 2025 Opening

Family-owned cannabis dispensary prioritizes employee well-being, family-owned farms, and giving back to the community

Point Arena — Today, the family-owned cannabis retailer Goldenhour Collective announced new employment opportunities at its new Mendocino County dispensary (138 Main Street, Point Arena, 95468), set to open in spring 2025.

Interested candidates should send their resumes to Haylee Parker (hello@goldenhourcollective.org). Applicants with a valid California Security Guard card will be prioritized.

“We’re excited to join the community to provide safe and highest quality cannabis from the best small family farms in the world — right here in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties,” said David Spradlin, CEO of Goldenhour Collective. “Our success stems from investing in our team members and supporting the family farmers who built this industry. When you provide living wages and clear paths for advancement, you’re not just filling positions—you’re building careers that strengthen the entire community.”

Spradlin has a proven track record in designing award-winning patient service programs and raising industry standards. He developed one of the first state-authorized apprenticeship programs and was a trailblazer supporting worker unionization. These initiatives are part of Goldenhour’s broader mission to build credibility and professionalism in a rapidly evolving industry.

The Mendocino location will spotlight cannabis products from family-owned and legacy farmers, ensuring that local expertise and sustainable practices remain at the forefront of the industry. Goldenhour’s commitment to community engagement includes partnerships with local organizations, charitable giving, and consumer education.

(Goldenhour Collective is a family-owned cannabis dispensary in Weed, Calif., that offers the highest-quality cannabis products, ethically grown with love from local and family-owned growers. They are committed to supporting legacy cannabis farming, promoting consumer education and conscious consumption, and giving back to the community. Learn more at goldenhourcollective.org and connect on Instagram (@goldenhour_weed).)

MENDOCINO COUNTY REENTRY PROGRAM HOSTS GRADUATION ON MARCH 5

GEO Reentry Services and the Mendocino County Probation Department will host a transition celebration for program participants who have successfully graduated from Mendocino County Day Reporting Center. The event will be held on March 5 at 5:30 p.m. at the Behavioral Health Regional Training Center, 8207 East Road in Redwood Valley.

Completing this intensive program is a significant milestone for participants as they return to independence in the community.

Staff, graduates, family members and Mendocino County officials and probation officers will attend the event. During the ceremony, graduates will be invited to share their experiences in the program. For program graduates, the celebration follows months of regular reporting to the DRC or its Willits’ satellite location, cognitive behavioral treatment and training and monitoring for substance use.

Media note: If you have any questions about this event or would like to attend, please contact Jennifer Cook, Program Manager at 707-397-9800 or Jennifer.cook@geogroup.com.

Located in the Mendocino County Probation Department at 579 Low Gap Road, the DRC operates a satellite office in Willits also. The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors selected GEO Reentry to open the DRC in 2012 for individuals on probation released to community supervision. The center can service up to 50 adults on probation at one time. The goal of the DRC is to reduce recidivism and overcrowding at the Mendocino County Jail. Participants referred to the center receive evidence-based cognitive behavioral treatment provided to reduce recidivism and create long-lasting changes in behavior.

MARK SCARAMELLA’S MENDO QUIZ:

Within 500 miles, how many square miles comprise Mendocino County?
To within one thousand, what is Mendocino’s population?
Name Mendocino County’s incorporated cities.
Within five years, what year was Mendocino County founded?
Within a thousand, how many acres of grapes are there in Mendocino County?

(Multiple choice: 10,000, 13,000, 15,000, or 18,000?

Name the last five elected District Attorneys. (half point for three)
Name the last five elected Sheriffs. (half point for three).
Which County official is responsible for checking the accuracy of gas pumps?

(Multiple choice: Sheriff, Ag Commissioner, Clerk-Recorder, or None of them — it’s done by the state.)

PEOPLE COMPLAIN that multiple choice answers for the population and size question questions would have been more fair, but The Major replies that the County’s physical size is “merely a matter of applying simple math — just estimate the County’s rectangular dimensions.” The best most people can do on Mendo-knowledge is a pitiable 3.5.

ANSWERS: 1. 3510. 2. 89,108. 3. Ukiah, Willits, Fort Bragg, Point Arena. 4. 1850 (Mendo was a founding County administered out of Santa Rosa for a few years until it was considered ready for self-government, that question remaining relevant to this day 5. About 15,000 down from a high of almost 17,000 a couple of years ago. 6. Eyster, Lintott, Vroman, Massini, Rauckaukas. 7. Kendall, Allman, Broin, Craver, Tuso. 8. The Ag Commissioner, who is also Commissioner of Weights & Measures.

ED NOTES

BRUCE BRUGMANN, founding publisher of the SF Bay Guardian, lamented the death of a very good reporter named Pete Petrakis a few years ago. Brugmann said Petrakis, “developed the stories in the mid-1970s that became known to Guardian readers as the PG&E/Raker Act scandal,” a scandal drawn to Petrakis’s attention by the late Joe Neilands when “Pete learned of the scandal in the mid-1960s as a student of J. B. Neilands, a biochemistry professor and citizen activist at U.C. Berkeley.”

JOE NEILANDS AND HIS WIFE owned, and their son Tor Neilands still owns, a modest home on Nash Mill Road here in Philo, which the Neilands built themselves. Joe was right at the top of Reagan’s hit list when Reagan was governor, but survived that effort to get him as he continued to be a relentless thorn in the side of corrupt power, literally in the case of PG&E.

BRUGMANN CONTINUED: “Neilands had in the late 1950s started the campaign that ended up stopping PG&E from building a nuclear power plant at Bodega Bay. In the process of researching the Bodega Bay story, Neilands came upon an even bigger scandal: the PG&E/Raker Act scandal. After winning at Bodega Bay, Neilands did the research into the scandal and then brought it to me shortly after the Guardian began publication in 1966. This was a huge story and I remember saying, ‘Joe, why are you bringing a big story like this to me?’ He replied, ‘Nobody else will print it because of PG&E. You’re my only hope. If you don’t print the story, nobody will’.”

THAT WAS JOE, and he and Brugmann were on PG&E’s case ever since, a case against the mammoth utility that Joe always hoped to live long enough to see become a true public utility owned by the public and at last operated in the public’s interest.

RECENTLY, in the wake of wildfire disclosures and outrageous rate increases, some Bay Area city council’s have passed resolutions urging state lawmakers to take over PG&E in the public interest. So far, no bills have been proposed.

A READER WRITES: “The Tough Love vs. Spanking argument continues to defy resolution. Most of the American population thinks it improper to spank children, so I have tried other methods to control my kids when they have one of those moments. One method that I found effective is for me to simply take the child for a car ride and a talk. Some say it’s the vibration from the car, others say it’s the time away from distractions such as TV, Video Games, Computer, IPod, etc. Either way, my kids usually calm right down. Eye to eye contact helps a lot too. I have had a few very effective sessions with my son in the past. Proper use works with grandchildren, nieces, and nephews as well.) No thanks necessary. Just want to be of any help I can.”

WE PEGGED IT BACK IN 2011: THE MOTHER OF ALL EYESORES

In May of 2011 the Supervisors’ meeting was dominated by a discussion of the State Court’s plans to build a gold-plated new Courthouse somewhere in Ukiah.

A local advisory committee had worked with the State’s courthouse construction project team to rank possible sites, but not to object to the idea or force the courts to pay for the impact on the County’s auxilliary offices. The new edifice, which we declared a major eyesore before plans had been drawn up, was expected to require at least two city blocks. The Taj MaCourthouse wouldn’t even house any support staff, but would be devoted solely to the convenience and ease of their majesties of the Superior Court. The DA’s office, probation, public defender would stay separate.

The two sites that ranked the highest (by far, reportedly) were the downtown block that contained the library, and the abandoned railroad depot on Perkins, three long blocks east of the present Courthouse, owned by the Democratic Party and former Congresman Doug Bosco through their North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA), since reorganized into the Great Redwood Trail.

The “Library site,” as it was called, would require the acquisition of several separately owned parcels in the two-plus blocks from what they called “willing sellers”; if they’re not willing the site would either be condemned or the Taj would become a high rise of five or so stories.

In 2011 the project was estimated to cost at least $120 million with construction set to begin somewhere around 2014 and to end sometime in 2016, both estimates of course being wildly optimistic.

The project manager for the Taj MaCourthouse who appeared before the Supervisors was a stern, tightly-wound woman from the State’s Administrative Office of the Courts in San Francisco named Anne Ording. Described by one meeting attendee as the AOC’s “dragon lady,” Ms. Ording was confidently brusque, her graying hair pulled back into an almost painful-looking utilitarian, un-Frisco bun. Ms. Ording answered every question put to her with such robotic aplomb that several people were tempted to disagree with her just to see how she’d handle dissent.

San Francisco’s court facilities are lavish beyond all reason. Ms. Ording works for Frisco’s judges. She could be depended on to bring wholly decadent Bay Area standards of judicial comfort to Ukiah.

In 2011 the new Courthouse was already a done-deal. No resistance would be permitted. Everyone in Mendocino County who had any contact with the courts whether from traffic tickets, fines and fees to other miscellaneous “court costs,” have seen their costs go way up to pay for it.

Ms. Ording assured the Board that the design their high-priced, East Coast architect would devise would be “compatible with Ukiah’s downtown aesthetic,” making the thing an even more frightening prospect than we had thought.

Oblivious Fifth District Supervisor Dan Hamburg was more than happy to accept Ms. Ording’s promises that the new courthouse would be attractive. “Please make it fit,” gushed Hamburg. “I know this building won’t be a monstrosity like a couple others downtown. Please make it beautiful.”

There hasn’t been a beautiful public building erected anywhere in this country in many years, and the only interesting one in those many years, also an eyesore, but at least imaginative, is the Marin County Civic Center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and that one houses all Marin’s public functions — all of them. We might have a shot at an attractive building if this County’s architects were permitted to design the new Courthouse, but they don’t charge enough money to get a public contract. Predictably, the Mendo judges’ silence on the issue has been and continues to be deafening, as it was on the Willits “Courthouse,” the ugliest concrete bunker of a structure its size in all of America.

Supervisor Pinches asked if the new courthouse would require more county staff and more county cost to operate.

“I’m not prepared to answer that at this stage,” said Ms. Ording. “But we will insure the operational viability of each design. What we build will be affordable.”

Given that the $120 million courthouse (now estimated to cost tens of millions more than that) is already not affordable, this smooth assurance wasn’t particularly comforting. Since then, seeing how little consideration has been given to Mendo’s ancillary court offices, it’s been shown to be blatantly wrong.

Ukiah City Planning Commissioner at the time, the late Judy Pruden, for many years the only person trying to prevent utter squalor for Ukiah’s public areas was also the only person to ask pertinent questions:

“What happens to the current courthouse?”

“Who pays for demolition or remodel of the current courthouse?”

“What happens to the other offices that are in the current courthouse now?”

Ms. Pruden, however, was speaking as a public citizen and so the Board and Ms. Ording, as usual, simply ignored her, as they did a few other skeptics speaking from the floor.

Fourth District Supervisor Kendall Smith asked if it’s the State’s responsibility to relocate the library if the library site is selected.

Ms. Ording blandly replied, “We have statutory obligations to pay for moving existing buildings. The ultimate development will be compatible. I can’t say exactly what the final design will look like. We will make a wise (sic) decision for the ultimate location of the library.”

It wasn’t even a take or leave it proposition. We’ll handle this thing for you rubes, and you chumps will get whatever Hizzoner Big Bro from the Big City brings you. We are only here to tell you what you’re going to get. Your job is to shut up and accept it.

Ukiah City Councilwoman Mari Rodin, an ongoing, multi-faceted hazard to local progress, was of course giddily enthusiastic about the done deal Courthouse:

“This project is like a gem falling in our laps! We’re so fortunate to have this happen now and to have the wonderful staff and the thinking-outside-the-box advisory committee.” (In all our years in Mendocino County we have yet to hear a decent idea from inside the box, much less an idea coming from outside the box).

Ms. Rodin did at least ask what would happen to the criminal justice staff that needs to be nearby. (But she didn’t demand an answer.) “You need to look at this project holistically,” Rodin declared, “and look at the whole community. This is a very wonderful opportunity.”

Ms. Rodin now sits on the Ukiah City Council where she hasn’t uttered a word about the problems the new Courthouse will bring to her city. The huge boondoggle descends on Ukiah during a time of holistic economic distress everywhere in the land which serves no one but the over-large Mendo judicial delegation whose primary function is to process economically distressed persons in and out of the state prison system.

Curry’s Furniture, a family-owned business on the proposed library site, since abandoned and closed, appeared in the form of the woman who owned the failing store with her husband. She told the Supervisors that the current owner of the furniture store parcel “doesn’t want to sell it. This is a family building in perpetuity. There are no other sites for us to just pick up and move to. This is very stressful for my husband. We were not expecting to give up our business now. We have a long-term lease, 10-12 years. We generate a lot of sales tax and we as a county need it. If we can’t function somewhere else that tax revenue will be lost.” Unfortunately, Curry’s closed a few years later and, like several other old-landmark Ukiah buildings, the classic old furniture store has remained vacant ever since.

As the presentation wound down, Supervisor Carre Brown said she wasn’t happy with the limited amount of information provided and wanted to have the subject re-reviewed in the next few weeks at an upcoming Board meeting. It wasn’t, of course.

But even as early as the project was in 2011 it was already obvious that anyone who gets in the way of Ms. Ording’s courthouse train will wind up dead on her cowcatcher.

There were and remain a number of behind the scenes factors also in play, which, of course, went unmentioned in the public part of the meeting.

Any well-funded state-run project draws great flocks of vultures.

Ukiah uber-realtor Jack Cox, who owns the “Brush Street Triangle” north of town which was once a possible site for a combined “criminal justice center,” which turned out to be too expensive after $200k was spent studying it, was jockeying for the real estate pole position on the courthouse project. Mr. Cox’s daughter, Kerri Vau, along with Mr. Cox and former Supervisor John Mayfield have been constant presences at Ukiah Valley Area Plan meetings regarding the new Courthouse. Cox and Mayfield, along with one of the Thomas brothers, control the Brush Street Triangle, now slightly less triangular after a piece of it was sold by Cox to the Rural Communities Housing Development Commission based, naturally, in Ukiah. Cox and Company made it clear that they’d be happy to sell some land in the Brush Street Triangle for a new courthouse or satellite facilities because their nearby holdings would also be greatly enhanced in value.

But this Republican-dominated Ukiah realty combine didn’t really have much chance at success, even if their idea was priced right.

The long-abandoned North Coast Railroad Authority’s Ukiah depot site, then-owned by the the County’s insider Democratic Party, had at the time and has majorities on the Ukiah City Council and the Board of Supervisors. So when the Democrats/NCRA said they were ready to sell their old train depot if the Courts would pay for the toxic clean-up of the site — which they later did — the highly inconvenient railroad track site was picked.

As we now know, the Black Robes’ monstrosity’s final resting place over by the railroad tracks inspires much holistically entertaining local comment but no public benefit, holistic or otherwise. It was and is a grand farce that could only be pulled off in Mendocino County — without objection and without even trying.

DAVID KNIGHT, AV Panther Class of 1969

SECURITY FIRM IN VIRAL VIDEO OF GOP MEETING IN IDAHO HAS LONG HISTORY IN MENDOCINO COUNTY, EMERALD TRIANGLE

Lear Asset Management has been thrust into the national spotlight after some of its agents forcibly removed a woman. Locally, the firm has been known patrolling illegal cannabis grows.

by Amie Windsor

A private security firm founded in Mendocino County is once again in the national spotlight.

On Saturday, men in unmarked black polo shirts forcibly removed and zip-tied Teresa Borrenpohl of Post Falls, Idaho, during a Kootenai County Republican Central Committee town hall meeting in Coeur D’Alene. Video of the incident went viral on the internet, and several national news outlets wrote about what transpired.

When Borrenpohl refused to leave the meeting, the Kootenai County sheriff gestured to the men, who grabbed her arms and pulled her from her seat. They dragged her out of the auditorium.

The three men have since been identified as agents with Lear Asset Management. Locally, the company is known for descending from unmarked helicopters throughout the “Emerald Triangle” in Trinity, Humboldt and Mendocino counties to clean up illegal cannabis grows.

Former Mendocino County Fish and Wildlife Game Commissioner Paul Trouette, who has a decades-long history in Mendocino County as an environmentalist and hunter, formed the company in 2011.

Trouette started Lear partly in response to the murder of Jere Melo, a Fort Bragg forester and former city council member. Melo was killed by an illegal opium poppy grower in August 2011 while patrolling the forest north of the Mendocino coastal town in his capacity as a security worker for Campbell Timber Management company.

The killing shook Trouette and other hunters.

Throughout 2012 to at least 2014, Lear worked both with and without the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office doing drug raids in the Mendocino National Forest, working to clean up illegal grows deep in the woods by removing cannabis plants and replanting native vegetation.

Often times, the group was hired by private landowners and timber companies seeking support outside of official law enforcement.

In 2013, The Willits News reported that Lear found an illegal pot grow on private, rural land in Mendocino County. During the raid, its agents detained two trespassers until Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies arrived.

“Law enforcement just doesn’t have the means to take care of it any longer,” Trouette told Talking Points Memo in 2014.

At the same time Lear patrolled the forest for illegal cannabis grows, Trouette’s nonprofit, Mendocino County Blacktail Association, cleaned up the aftermath of cannabis grows and other destruction in the Mendocino National Forest.

Personnel from both groups were armed with assault rifles.

“We don’t want to give the impression that we’re some vigilante group,” Trouette told Outside Magazine in 2012, at the height of Mendocino County’s illegal cannabis problem.

The goal of Blacktail, he said, was to clean up the land. But, he noted to Outside, “we’ve had standoffs … This is our land. We want to be able to take our families out and recreate on it.”

Blacktail kept busy for a handful of years. In 2018, the Bureau of Land Management gave the nonprofit $85,000 to lead restoration efforts and reduce potentially flammable brush in the Mendocino National Forest near Covelo, a hot bed for illegal grows.

Lear grew, according to its website, expanding its services beyond cannabis grows. It began to offer security services, including monitoring the train tracks for Northwestern Pacific Railroad. In 2017, the security firm reported a fire along the tracks in Willits. Last September, the company donated security services during a clean-up of the Russian River in Ukiah. Employees wore shirts identifying themselves as security guards, according to photos published by MendoFever.

According to its website, the company also offers law enforcement and civilian training throughout the greater Pacific Northwest.

Trouette, who is listed as the president, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Coeur D’Alene Police Department, which is investigating Borrenpohl’s removal, said in a statement, that all citizens are afforded the rights to free speech. The statement also said that Lear Asset Management’s local business license has been revoked because its officers failed to wear uniforms indicating their employees were security guards.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that no Kootenai County Deputy Sheriffs or other personnel were present or involved in the incident.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

REZ NOTES: COYOTE VALLEY

by Eric Enriquez

Many years ago, my great-grandparents, Arthur and Elsie Allen, were given a lot on old Coyote Valley. They cleared it and planted grapes. The pace at which the land was cleared upset the local agent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It seems unlikely that they ever planned to make a life on the parcel. These enterprising Indians sought to better the future for their family through hard work and common sense.

Elsie was a Pomo from Sonoma County whose father was from the Cloverdale/Yorkville area. Arthur was a Ukiah Indian.

I type these things with some reluctance. To characterize my lineage is to offer ammunition to those who would alienate and abandon ties with my family. The government of Coyote Valley followed in the sinister footprints of Pinoleville’s by disenrolling large numbers of my family. Rather than honoring the very real connections among Indian families, all surviving the same trends of colonization, these governments seek to disunite, polarize and destroy the relationships. Instead of seeking ways to highlight the ways in which we belong, these wicked enrollment officers seize any incident or accident that can be leveraged to cause pain.

It wasn’t always like this. Even in my life, things have been handled differently.

When I was a boy, I learned that the Round Valley Indian Housing Authority was planning to develop low-income HUD housing on the new Coyote Valley. My understanding is that the tribe needed us to formally enroll in order to create an adequate head-count for the proposed project. We did enroll. We were accepted. It seemed there was no issue at that time.

Over the next several years, we watched the development process with great anticipation. My grandparents all lived on Pinoleville and we lived in Talmage and the City of Ukiah. When I was a student at Ukiah High, the houses were completed and we moved to Coyote Valley. We were thrilled to live in a new home. We were happy to have more family than ever living so close by. There was a tribal office/community center built with block grants. I got a California Indian Manpower Consortium summer job through the Job Partnership Training Act right down the hill at the tribal offices. We appreciated so much of what we experienced.

But it wasn’t a good fit. We began to realize that the price to be paid for living on a Rez was too great for the sake of the house. I wasn’t able to have visitors without their cars being vandalized. There was always a party going on in one of the houses and the temptation to get off track was too serious to risk. While we are quick to point out that we are far from perfect, the level of sickness was too much to bear.

We moved out of our still-new house and back to Pinoleville. We rescinded our tribal membership at Coyote Valley and signed on at the Pinoleville Indian Community.

Coyote Valley eventually erected the Shodakai Casino as well as a gymnasium that has been a good thing for the community. I worked for a short time at Shodakai, although there never was a chance of me surviving the 90-day probation.

Many of my family members stayed on at Coyote Valley. Several have served on the Council. For most of them, Coyote Valley is their home tribe. They are a good fit, culturally speaking. They have bonded, growing up as neighbors and strengthened the community bonds as much as is possible.

This is why it was so sad when Coyote Valley eliminated them from the membership rolls. I understand why Coyote Valley would never take me back. I am a bigmouth and somewhat of an ingrate at times. These others of my family, though, never put on airs. They didn’t move on in search of something different. They truly became Coyote Valley Pomo. To have evicted them from their homes, fired them from their jobs and relegated them to non-Indian legal status is an unforgivable crime. It was from this cold sickness that my Mother fled with us.

We were once told that an old Indian woman was expected for an engagement at Coyote Valley. When the car that she was in pulled off of 101, she made the driver stop. She refused to proceed, indicating that she saw only hellfire when she looked at the land there. Anybody familiar with local goings-on knows of the alarming rate of meth abuse, molest, cruelty to animals and other such treachery that occurs on Coyote Valley. Something has to be done for the sake of the children. If not for the children, then perhaps for the sake of the dogs. Think twice before locating a casino next to your home. That’s a gamble with very crappy odds.

KQED’s summary of Elsie Allen’s long life: https://www.kqed.org/arts/13882943/the-pomo-woman-who-fought-to-preserve-native-american-heritage

BLANCHE BROWN (L), STORIED LOCAL TEACHER AND WRITER, FOUNDER OF THE ANDERSON VALLEY WILDFLOWER SHOW

Blanche Brown & Hazel Nobles per Norm Clow (Color-Restored)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, February 27, 2025

JORDAN BRIGHT, 34, Ukiah. County parole violation.

AHMARRI BROWN, 18, Eureka/Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent.

PHOENIX EATON, 23, Sacramento/Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, petty theft, false ID, false personation of another.

SAMUEL FINLEY, 42, Ukiah. Suspended license for DUI.

RUSSELL HENRY JR., 34, Reddick, Florida/Ukiah. Conspiracy.

JEREMIAH HOWELL, 33, Cloverdale/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, resisting.

VICTOR LOPEZ, 41, Ukiah. Child neglect-abandonment, unspecified offense.

VICTOR LUCAS, 28, Ukiah. False ID, resisting.

DANIEL MILLER, 33, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-under influence, parole violation.

LATERRAL PETERSON, 49, Ocala, Florida/Ukiah. Conspiracy.

BOBBY ROSTON, 40, Ukiah. Parole violation.

EMILY RUELLE, 38, Santa Rosa/Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse.

ASYA SQUIRES, 26, Sacramento/Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, petty theft, false ID, false personation of another.

VICTOR VARGAS, 26, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

BREE WAKELAND, Upper Lake/Ukiah. DUI.

HOPING

Editor:

Seventy years ago, everyone in the United States smoked, or at least it seemed that way. Today, far fewer Americans smoke. I suspect that social media is headed in the same direction.

Today, it seems as if Americans cannot ignore social media or the telephones that distribute social media, even though they are addictive, bad for the people who use them and bad for those of us who have to be around those who use them. A significant industry has been erected to perpetuate, promote and defend their use.

I suspect that 70 years from now, we will look back on social media in a similar manner: a toxic relic visible mainly in old shows from this time.

Stephen Anderson

Phoenix

DEATH DOULA

by Paul Modic

Though I probably have a few good years left, or a couple decades, it’s time to wonder who’s going to deal with all my stuff, as I have no direct descendants. Going through a loved one’s belongings after they’re gone is probably not something even children eagerly look forward to, for example a good friend died five years ago and his personal effects are still as he left them, his former home full of the evidence of his life.

So how to make the process more organized and easy for whoever has to clean up the mess? Doulas are usually like midwives helping the mother bring in new life, why not one who helps usher out old life? My cleaning lady told me there is something like that, called a “Death Doula,” and she would take the job of clearing out the house when I’m dead and gone.

(She seems willing to do just about anything and recently sewed a leg back on my childhood stuffed bear which fell off thirty years ago, a button on a jacket, and next time she comes I’m hoping she helps me do some some touchup painting on the porch. She also served as unofficial production manager and helped me assemble a few copies of a home-made book, all my stories and essays published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser over the last twenty years.)

How will the Death Doula thing work? Let’s look at my shelf of misc in the living room, nice things I’ve collected over the years: little gifts from people, family photos, stickers and postcards commemorating friends who have died, and even a matchbook from the “Tip Top Club” in Eureka, the non-alcoholic strip club. The nicest thing is a piece of driftwood found down by the river which looks like bird,. (There is also a butt plug, still in it’s package I’ll have you know, which a friend brought back as a souvenir from her hot online personals date ten years ago, an odd gift for me.)

What would my Death Doula do with all the things on that shelf? We could make a list of what might be nice to save, I could will that bird to someone, but face it, everyone has “stuff issues,” at least those of my generation, and probably wouldn’t want to add my knickknacks to their hoard, right?

The Death Doula will dispassionately throw away, give away, or keep for herself anything she might want. Any interested friends or family can consult with and/or meet her at the site to claim items of interest as the process of letting go, like a final shit, unfolds in an organized manner.

Soon every room, attic, and storage area will be gone through, lists made, and when the time comes the Death Doula, probably with an assistant, hauls everything out for disposal. It may sound morbid and premature but like having a will, there could be peace of mind not having to worry about what’s going to happen to all my stuff, granted I’ll probably outlive everyone, this Death Doula included.

(After writing and reading this I realize that “the stuff” will be the easy part, the actual dying is gonna be the bitch, damn, something else to not look forward to…)

JEFF BLANKFORT

While Palestinians in Gaza are still picking the bodies of women and children from the US enabled rubble and their sisters and brothers are being murdered and purged from the West Bank in a continuation of the Judeonazi never ending Nakba, is it not reassuring to know, through the unconscionable assistance of its paid hirelings in the West, that the lives of of a couple of Israeli Jewish children are valued more than those of the thousands of Palestinian children who the Israelis have murdered and whose names, outside of their families and friends, the larger world will never know or care about?

A painter applying a fresh coat of paint on the Golden Gate Bridge. (1956)

INVENTORY ITEM

by Fred Gardner

Steve Howe died way too young. He was 48 when his pick-up truck rolled over on a road in Coachella, California, around dawn on the morning of April 28 [2006]. Riverside County authorities said Howe was doing 70 mph. They even drug-tested him in death. The autopsy was inconclusive but the toxicology report has been sent to a lab for analysis and one day this summer we’ll hear or read a brief item to the effect that Steve Howe, once the best relief pitcher in baseball, rookie of the year when he came up with the Dodgers in 1980, did or did not have an illegal metabolite in his system.

I interviewed him in the summer of 1986 on the sun-baked diamond where the San Jose Bees were loosening up before a game. The Bees were a a motley collection of D-league professional baseball players, rehabbing ex-major leaguers (Mike Norris, Ken Reitz, Derrel Sconiers and Howe), and four Japanese prospects who spoke almost no English.

Howe was affable and restless. His lawyer was standing by, smoking a cigar, as he answered my questions. He grew up in Pontiac, Michigan. He said his social group was “pretty tough guys” who all did drugs and all did time. Howe said he didn’t do drugs or alcohol as a teenager. He thought pot might take the edge off his athletic skills – he knew he was great – and he didn’t like the effect that alcohol had on his father. He said he first did coke one night in New York City after pitching against the Mets. A woman offered him a line and he thought it would pose no problems because “It reminded me of all the Ritalin I’d done as a kid.”

The lawyer cut in with a commentary: “Okay, you’re a kid in New York alone, you’ve just won the big game, you’re a hero, but you’re alone in a hotel room with nothing to do but read Schopenhauer. A beautiful woman calls and says, ‘Come fuck my brains out.’ What would you rather do – you’re a kid in New York – go fuck a beautiful woman or stay home alone and read Schopenhauer?”

I said, “Ritalin? You just said you didn’t do drugs or alcohol as a kid.” Howe repeated that he hadn’t. Ritalin, in his view, was “medication” because it had been administered by a school nurse, with a doctor’s blessing, in the principal’s office.

Ritalin is the brand name for methylphenidate HCl, a form of speed designed by chemists to be just different enough from amphetamine for exclusive licensing by Ciba-Geigy, the drug company now known as Novartis. Use of Ritalin had flattened in the late 1970s after Peter Schrag and Diane Divoky published their brilliant expose, ‘The Myth of the Hyperactive Child.’ But by the mid-1980s the drug was being pushed successfully in the schools, its use justified by a pharmacological falsehood, i.e., that it had a “paradoxical effect” on the young, calming them down. In fact there is no fundamental physiological change that occurs in the brain during adolescence, and Ritalin has the same effect on adults as it does on kids. It is the classic effect of speed - focusing one’s attention on whatever is directly in front of one’s face, and causing all the expected side-effects, such as sleeplessness, loss of appetite and increasing jitters as it wears off. Ritalin and similar stimulants are now prescribed daily for more than five million American kids.

Doctors no longer rely on “the paradoxical effect” to rationalize prescribing strong speed to kids. For several decades its validity was espoused by pill-pushing addiction specialists and accepted by doctors whose faith in “the medical literature” is unwavering. Did we hear any apologies as its absurdity became apparent? Of course not.

After hearing Howe’s story, I started picking up on similar stories (anecdotal evidence, but lots of it). I looked in vain for a study correlating Ritalin use in childhood and cocaine use in adulthood until I was put in touch with a UC Berkeley psychology professor, Nadine Lambert, who had been tracking people who took Ritalin in childhood. Lambert shared her findings in what would become a 26-year longitudinal study showing that Ritalin use seems to predispose for stimulant use down the road. It’s just common sense that if you give kids a “medication,” the effects of which are supposedly beneficial, and then take it away at age 16, a certain number are going to try to reproduce those familiar “beneficial” effects. Lambert saw Ritalin as a quick fix used with the consent of overwhelmed parents and beneficial only for overwhelmed teachers and unrighteous school administrators. What kids with “attention deficit disorder” need is attention, she said, which doesn’t come in the form of a pill.

Two days before Howe’s car crash, Nadine Lambert died when her car was struck by a dump truck near the UC Berkeley campus. According to her obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Lambert was instrumental in advocating the view that school psychologists should work with teachers to improve the classroom environment to help children succeed, a more successful intervention than simply pulling students out of class for testing or counseling because the number of school psychologists is so limited.

“Professor Lambert also published a controversial study in 1999 showing that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder who were treated with stimulant drugs such as Ritalin were more likely to smoke cigarettes earlier and more heavily and were more likely as adults to abuse cocaine. Her findings - based on a 30-year study of 492 children, half of whom had ADHD - raised questions about the risks of Ritalin and similar drugs.”

When I met him Howe had just moved to Whitefish, Montana, which he thought would be a great place to raise a family. The local Drug Warriors insulted him in 1999 when he offered to be one of the four coaches on his daughter’s school softball team. The Whitefish Superintendent of Schools, a man named Dan Peters, turned him down. Peters must have seen his office as an extension of Major League Baseball, which suspended Howe six times for cocaine use before finally banning him in 1997. Howe appealed to the County Superintendent to overrule the ban. “A lot of damage is being done to these kids and to the program,” Howe commented at the time. “And for what reason, I don’t know.” The County Superintendent ruled that she didn’t have jurisdiction because the appeal wasn’t filed with her office within 30 days of Howe’s rejection. Howe and the Whitefish Softball Association (the other parents) then appealed to the State Superintendent, who affirmed that the original appeal had not been filed on time. School administrators promoted Steve Howe’s addiction to stimulants in his youth and school administrators punished him for it in adulthood.

So Whitefish wasn’t such a great place for the Howe family, after all. At the time of his death, according to Howe’s obit, he resided in Valencia, California. He was driving home from a business trip to Arizona when he apparently fell asleep at the wheel. The business involved making and marketing “an all-natural, high-energy soft drink.” Which sounds like a drink Steve Howe himself could have used and truthfully endorsed.

Howe made it back to the big leagues, as did Mike Norris – for a minute. Norris had already had surgery by the time he landed in San Jose. An elevated dark-purple scar ran like a mountain range across the top of his shoulder and down his right arm. Big-league scouts — paunchy middle-aged men in fishing hats — sat in the stands with speed guns, measuring his fastball, which was about 83 mph. “But I’ve developed three speeds on my curve,” said Norris, hopefully. The ‘86 San Jose Bees’ season could be the basis for a good movie, but Hollywood would do it as a comedy, undoubtedly, and it really wasn’t.

LAKE SUPERVISORS APPROVE LETTERS TO STATE, FEDERAL OFFICIALS OVER CONCERNS ABOUT PROPOSED SCOTT DAM REMOVAL

In a show of unity on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to submit comments to Pacific Gas and Electric, the governor and the Trump Administration regarding the county’s concerns over plans to decommission and eventually remove the Scott Dam.

Built in 1922, the dam created the 80,000-acre-foot Lake Pillsbury, a center of recreation in the northern part of the county as well as a source of hydroelectric power and water that has proved critical for fire suppression during major wildland fire incidents over the past decade.

The dam is part of the Potter Valley Project which extends into Mendocino County. In addition to the Scott Dam and Lake Pillsbury, the project includes the Potter Valley powerhouse, built in 1908, the Cape Horn Dam, a fish passage and steelhead counting station, a tunnel and penstock, and Van Arsdale Reservoir.

The project diverts water from the main stem of the Eel River to the Russian River watershed, and manages water on which 600,000 Californians — in Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma and northern Marin — are reliant, PG&E and county documents explain.

For nearly six years, the dam — located entirely in Lake County, on the headwaters of the Eel River — has been the focus of an effort to remove it after PG&E decided to abandon the hydroelectric project, claiming it was no longer financially feasible.

A group of neighboring counties and wildlife advocacy organizations have joined the effort to advocate for the dam’s removal as part of a “two basin” solution, citing the benefit to salmon and steelhead.

It’s estimated that the dam’s removal could cost $500 million, a figure the board suggested is low if it’s to include restoring the land around the existing lake. At the same time, it’s estimated that an alternative, creating a fish passage, could cost $80 million.

Last month, Congressman Jared Huffman said the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation awarded Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Sonoma County Water Agency $15 million in Inflation Reduction ACt funds toward implementing the two-basin solution. The funding is a “down payment” on construction of a new wintertime diversion to the Russian River following the removal of two salmon-blocking dams on the Eel.

However, both supervisors EJ Crandell and Bruno Sabatier told Lake County News at the time of that announcement that the plan is far from a done deal.

In comments during the hourlong discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, board members noted that a lot of their discussions so far on the matter have been in closed session.

The supervisors and members of the public also questioned PG&E’s claims about the need to stop operating the project because of its profitability, considering the nearly $2.5 billion in profit the utility reported for 2024.

Board members also faulted the process so far, recounting a lengthy history of Lake County being blocked from participation in talks with both PG&E and other counties.

With PG&E releasing its decommissioning plan on Jan. 31 —with a March 3 deadline for public comment — the board voted to submit its own comments on the matter. Their comments include criticizing PG&E for offering less than 21 business days to submit “substantive comments on a 2,086 page document.”

PG&E held one virtual public meeting on the plan on the morning of Feb. 6. Lake County News made a request to the company to hold another for the benefit of the community. The utility has not responded to that request.

Now, faced with a process that appears to be moving swiftly forward largely without the input of the county of Lake or the community members around Lake Pillsbury, the supervisors decided to take the fight to the state and federal levels.

The action they took on Tuesday included approving a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom in which they raise issue with the state taking sides in the process when they said it should have been neutral. Their criticism included pointing out that removal of the Scott Dam contradicts Newsom’s own January executive order on maximizing water storage, and they point out that the state, through the Department of Water Resources, is a party to a memorandum of understanding on the process that does not include Lake County.

Further, the county asks for time to meet with the Governor’s Office to discuss the situation. “Lake County has not been heard, and costs to keep Lake County whole in the face of potential future loss of Scott Dam have been minimized and misrepresented by other parties.”

The supervisors also decided to make the county’s case to the federal government.

In a letter addressed to President Donald Trump’s secretaries of Energy, Interior, Agriculture, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, the board notes it has “grave concern destroying and draining Lake Pillsbury,” which it said “would constitute an expensive and irresponsible gamble with regional water supply in an area that has repeatedly been threatened by catastrophic wildfire events.”

The supervisors ask for the Trump Administration’s “collective support in ensuring the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and your Federal Agencies take seriously the potential for profound human consequences.”

The board also pointed to Lake Pillsbury being a destination for hunting, fishing, camping, hiking and recreation, as well as being used to fight fires in the Mendocino National Forest that surrounds it. “Two of the three largest wildfires in the state of California occurred in the areas surrounding Lake Pillsbury, each within the past decade: the August Complex (1,032,648 acres, 2020) and the Mendocino Complex (459,123 acres, 2018). The August Complex was lightning-caused.”

The letter argues that the dam’s decommissioning puts regional agriculture, fire protection, water availability and the tourism economy at risk.

The county’s most forceful argument is that if the Federal Emergency Regulatory Commission, or FERC, approved the dam’s removal, it would directly contradict Trump’s Executive Order No. 14181, “Emergency Measures To Provide Water Resources in California and Improve Disaster Response in Certain Areas.”

Trump’s order requests that the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce, “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries,” the letter notes.

If FERC approved the decommissioning, the board argued that it would “‘unduly burden’ many communities that rely on Lake Pillsbury, minimizing water deliveries to our farmers and other end users, including water flows in fire hydrants.”

The letter also refers to a second Trump action, Executive Order No. 14156, issued on Jan. 20, “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” in which the president requests increases to the nation’s energy supply.

County officials said they’ve long been kept from having a meaningful part in the discussion process. That’s despite their lobbying efforts as well as an October 2020 attempt from Congressman John Garamendi, then one of Lake County’s members of the House of Representatives, to get Lake County a seat at the table.

Board shares frustrations about process

Supervisor Crandell, also the board chair, said at the start of the Tuesday afternoon discussion that the process regarding the Potter Valley Project has been framed in that decommissioning the dam is the best way to move forward. However, he said the county has always felt there has never been a proper discussion about the option of not decommissioning the dam.

Supervisor Sabatier said that on Feb. 11 a memorandum of understanding was approved by a number of parties, including Sonoma County Water, Humboldt County, Mendocino County Inland Water and others as part of the Eel Russian Project Authority, which has been working with PG&E to be part of the FERC process to keep water diversions going.

“Good for them,”said Sabatier, noting there have been big misconceptions about what is happening in Lake County with regard to the situation.

Sabatier said a lot of people believe Lake County has been involved in the talks with other counties and groups. “Those discussions may have occurred but they are very superficial.”

He said Lake County has been denied multiple times in its efforts to be involved in the conversations about the dam’s future. Sabatier pointed to the county’s efforts to be included in talks involving the two-basin solution as part of the Russian River Forum.

Every time the county asked to present its side, it was denied. Finally, it got the opportunity and that was the last meeting the group ever had, Sabatier said.

“We are in the midst of one of the biggest human climate change experiences and it seems like this project wants to ignore climate change or at least ignore the fact that we have to look at a global perspective to climate change and not try to provide for one and not another,” Sabatier said.

He said water availability and fish passage to their spawning grounds have been presented as a binary choice, and they don’t have to be.

Sabatier said the plan also includes building a new dam elsewhere. He said that’s the only option if Sonoma and Mendocino counties want to have water during the end of summer season or especially during times of drought.

He said PG&E’s plan is to destroy not just the dam but the Lake Pillsbury community and water storage, and likely destroy another community somewhere in Mendocino or Sonoma counties because they will have to flood somewhere in order to create a new basin for another dam.

Sabatier said the conversion has been “very myopic,” rather than looking at the whole situation.

Crandell, along with Sabatier, has represented the county in what discussions there have been with the state government and other counties and agencies, but he said they haven’t really had meaningful discussions.

He said it’s also been the case that when Lake County brings forward its concerns, 20 to 30 agencies have arranged to pile up on the county, never acknowledging its concerns but only arguing back.

Crandell said county officials believe the dam is actually helping the fish survive, noting that last year, one of the agencies wrote a letter to FERC asking them to convince PG&E to raise the gates.

“Just giving you an example of the frustration that we’ve had,” Crandell said.

County staff present information

Sabatier praised county staffers for their effort to research the situation, recognizing Deputy County Administrative Officer Matthew Rothstein, County Counsel Lloyd Guintivano and Treasurer-Tax Collector Patrick Sullivan. He also praised the Lake Pillsbury community for being an “amazing partner throughout this entire journey.”

Rothstein explained that the county contracted with SLR International Corp. to analyze the effects of the proposed dam decommissioning. As part of the work, the company conducted a thorough review of PG&E’s draft surrender application and provided detailed comments for the board to include in its letters.

He said SLR also provided technical concerns such as slope stability at each stage of the proposed dam removal and risk of landslides in the area of Scott Dam, which he said should be better understood before the project proceeds.

The study confirmed that Lake Pillsbury has been an important fire suppression asset that has helped to keep wildfires small and that it indicates PG&E should provide resources and create a plan to improve firefighting response times.

Other recommendations included PG&E consulting with the county of Lake to obtain correct tax information and incorporate that information into their analysis.

Rothstein said SLR also remarked that the way of life for residents surrounding Lake Pillsbury will likely be adversely affected during and post construction and PG&E should therefore identify proper compensation for those who are to be affected.

Sullivan said that throughout the process it’s often been indicated that Lake County has been accommodated or concerns have been addressed but, he added, “it’s clearly not the case,” nor does there appear to be a restoration plan for Lake County that’s being contemplated.

SLR staff were on Zoom to answer questions. In their brief comments, as well as in the response letter they prepared for the county, the consultants noted that there are about 20 “unavoidable consequences” PG&E has cited in its surrender plan, but SLR said those needed to be more thoroughly evaluated as required by state and federal law in order to find scenarios to minimize those impacts to the county and enhance recreation, ecosystem and fire suppression benefits.

Their letter recommended PG&E discuss with the County of Lake such “likely options” before the final application for surrender of license is submitted on July 29.

Crandell said he appreciated SLR’s synopsis, as they want those issues addressed before moving forward. He said it’s been frustrating that the county has not been able to have the dialogue or to come together with the other parties and have potential action. Rather, the county has been told to take a wait and see approach.

Supervisor Helen Owen said she was concerned about environmental impacts of the dam removal, including sludge deposits. She said it’s her understanding that quicksilver mining had been done in the area where the lake nowsits.

Members of the public weigh in

Nicole Whipple, a member of the Round Valley tribe and a Lake County resident, said her tribal people and their water rights were harmed with the dam’s creation. She said the fishery was so strong that it was of economic value to “the colonizers” to take not only the water source but the fishery and to forcibly move her people off their ancestral aboriginal territories onto reservations.

Lake County Chamber Executive Director Amanda Martin emphasized “the critical importance of including Lake County in the decision making process,” adding, “It is vital that as the dam and the lake are within our county’s borders, the people in businesses of Lake County have a voice in this discussion.”

Martin said any decision made about the future of Scott Dam will have “significant implications to our community and it is only fair and just that we are given an opportunity to participate in a process that will shape our environment and economy for generations to come. We believe that decisions about the lake must include those who live here, work here and rely on the lake for their livelihoods. The exclusion of Lake County from these discussions has been both unfair and short-sighted as it overlooks the direct impact such decisions will have on our local economy, tourism and quality of life.”

Ray Todt, a Lake Pillsbury resident, said he’s seen firsthand how valuable Lake Pillsbury is for firefighting. To remove the dam would be a “man-made environmental disaster,” he said.

Todt reported that PG&E has threatened to close all of the recreational facilities and campgrounds around Lake Pillsbury.

In response, Sabatier said there was a deal struck between PG&E and the Mendocino Land Trust in 2022, brought forward by the California Public Utilities Commission, that there will be a conservation easement on the entirety of the Potter Valley Project that only allows the maintenance of what is already there. That easement, he said, is so restrictive “that there is no such thing as Lake Pillsbury 2.0.”

He said he’d never seen the ability of other agencies to cancel the county’s economic development without the county being able to comment. It’s a process that he called “absurd.”

Former Lake County Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Officer Melissa Fulton spoke of her efforts to work against the proposal. She said she found it “extremely disturbing” that Congressman Huffman, whose district doesn’t have any tie to Lake County, began the project to dismantle the dam. Fulton noted that Lake County has been sorely missing at the table; she recalled contacting Huffman’s office in early 2019 to ask for a meeting about the matter and was told that wasn’t possible.

She thanked the board for its efforts, noting the county’s letters “express very well the issues that Lake County has faced in trying to address an issue that is totally within their boundaries.”

Carol Cinquini, a Lake Pillsbury community leader who has fought the dam removal, also thanked the board. She said PG&E is under no obligation to forward community comments to FERC.

“It’s going to be really important that we continue this, stay strong and be very prepared during the FERC process which will open July 29,” she said.

Crandell said he has no ill will towards any of the other agencies, tribes or government. “I think they’ve all been put in the same position we have, they need a source of water, so they’re doing what they feel they need to for their constituency.”

He said the process frustrates him, pointing to the transparency issues and not being allowed to be involved in the early years of the process. Some of the animosity might have died down if Lake County had been able to be a part of it. Yet, he said the county was kept out even after it paid a required $100,000 to participate.

During the August Complex, Crandell said he was at Lake Pillsbury Ranch and watched the helicopters go over to bring in water. He said hotshot crews on the fire told him the county would have been toast if it hadn’t been for Lake Pillsbury as a water source.

On Zoom, Frank Lynch said Lake County has been slighted throughout the process. He saluted the board for trying to stay engaged.

Lynch echoed Sabatier’s comments about trying to find the economic balance, and he said an effort to examine finding another entity to take overoperation of the lake is warranted.

Jonathan Cronan said Lake County needs Lake Pillsbury for fire mitigation. He said wildlife — including bears, otters and mountain lions — will perish when the dam is removed.

“We also have paid $7.5 billion in California for a new additional water storage which would be nice if we could apply that towards refurbishing the dam,” Cronan said. “I use Lake Pillsbury for recreation. It’s a beautiful area and I hate to see that dam come out.”

Crandell offered more time to speak, and Whipple returned to the microphone. “You guys can’t even take care of this lake here,” she said in an apparent reference to Clear Lake, advocating for letting the Eel be a free flowing river. “Having another bacteria infested cesspool is not getting us anywhere.”

She accused the county of coming into the talks about the lake and acting “entitled.”

Crandell said he wasn’t going to respond to Whipple’s comments because it would take all day.

Written comments to the board on Tuesday appeared unanimously against the dam’s removal.

Board holds short deliberation

Supervisor Jessica Pyska said she had watched a Humboldt County meeting from a few weeks ago, noting they were the only MOU party that has had a public discussion. However, they didn’t talk about issues like sediments, potential structural collapse due to instability, and she suggested there are issues that they may not be aware of.

“Again, everyone is looking out for their own interests. But, I can’t wrap my head around that this dam has to come down to build another reservoir somewhere else, in this day and age when we’re so focused on water capacity and storage and recharging groundwater, that’s exactly what this project already does,” Pyska said.

She added, Humboldt County also didn’t discuss the potential for the rivers to dry up every year, which it’s known happens. “I think there could have been a lot more collaboration between all of the parties, a better conversation, better work product,” because if there had been, Pyska said they wouldn’t be where they were.

Vice Chair Brad Rasmussen also thanked the board members and staff for their work. “I know there’s a lot of stakeholders with concerns but I don’t feel like the Lake County concerns have been listened to and I have a lot of concerns about the impact on our community here so I’m in support of sending these letters as written.”

Sabatier made three separate motions, to approve the comments to PG&E in response to its draft application to surrender the project license, as well as the letter to Newsom and to the Trump Administration, with Owen seconding all three.

The board voted 5-0 on all motions.

On Tuesday evening, Newsom’s office released a statement celebrating the Trump administration’s announcement that it had released more than $315 million of obligated money to create new water storage at the future Sites Reservoir in the northern Sacramento Valley and at the existing San Luis Reservoir.

“We are grateful for this shared priority with the Trump Administration as we move forward together to build critical infrastructure to improve water storage,” Newsom said.

(LakeCoNews.com)

LEGENDARY ACTOR GENE HACKMAN, WIFE BETSY ARAKAWA AND THEIR DOG WERE DEAD FOR SOME TIME, WARRANT SHOWS

by Susan Montoya-Bryan, Felicia Fonseca & Brian Melley

Santa Fe, N.M. — Oscar-winner Gene Hackman, his wife and one of their dogs were apparently dead for some time before a maintenance worker discovered their bodies at the couple’s Santa Fe home, according to investigators.

Hackman, 95, was found dead Wednesday in a mudroom and his 63-year-old wife, Betsy Arakawa, was found in a bathroom next to a space heater, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office detectives wrote in a search warrant. There was an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on a countertop near Arakawa.

Denise Avila, a sheriff’s office spokesperson, said there was no indication they had been shot or had any wounds.

The New Mexico Gas Co. tested the gas lines in and around the home after the bodies were discovered, according to the warrant. At the time, it didn’t find any signs of problems and the Fire Department found no signs of a carbon monoxide leak or poisoning. A sheriff’s detective wrote that there were no obvious signs of a gas leak, but he noted that people exposed to gas leaks or carbon monoxide might not show signs of poisoning.

The gruff-but-beloved Hackman was among the best actors of his generation, appearing as villains, heroes and antiheroes in dozens of dramas, comedies and action films from the 1960s until his retirement in the early 2000s.

“He was loved and admired by millions around the world for his brilliant acting career, but to us he was always just Dad and Grandpa. We will miss him sorely and are devastated by the loss,” his daughters and granddaughter said in a statement Thursday.

Worker found bodies of Hackman and his wife

A maintenance worker reported that the home’s front door was open when he arrived to do routine work on Wednesday, and he called police after finding the bodies, investigators said. He and another worker said they rarely saw the homeowners and that their last contact with them had been about two weeks earlier.

Hackman appeared to have fallen, a deputy observed. He was wearing a blue t-shirt, gray sweatpants and slippers. A pair of sunglasses and a cane were nearby.

A dead German shepherd was found in a bathroom closet near Arakawa, police said. Two healthy dogs were found on the property — one inside and one outside.

The Associated Press left email and phone messages Thursday for sheriff’s officials seeking more details. A spokesperson for the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, which runs the state’s medical examiner operations, declined to comment on whether the cause and manner of deaths had been determined.

Actor known for his versatility

Hackman routinely showed up on Hollywood list of greatest American actors of the 20th century. He could play virtually any kind of role, from comic book villain Lex Luthor in “Superman” to a coach finding redemption in the sentimental favorite “Hoosiers.”

Hackman was a five-time Oscar nominee who won for “The French Connection” in 1972 and “Unforgiven” two decades later. His death comes just four days before this year’s ceremony.

Tributes quickly poured in from Hollywood.

“There was no finer actor than Gene. Intense and instinctive. Never a false note. He was also a dear friend whom I will miss very much,” actor-director Clint Eastwood, Hackman’s “Unforgiven” co-star, said in a statement.

Hackman and Arakawa settled in Santa Fe

Hackman met Arakawa, a classically trained pianist who grew up in Hawaii, when she was working part-time at a California gym in the mid-1980s, the New York Times reported in 1989. They soon moved in together, and by the end of the decade relocated to Santa Fe.

Their Southwestern-style ranch on Old Sunset Trail sits on a hill in a gated community with views of the Rocky Mountains. The sprawling four-bedroom home on six acres was built in 1997 and had an estimated market value of a little over $4 million, according to Santa Fe County property tax records.

Hackman and his wife also owned a more modest home next door.

Hackman also co-wrote three novels, starting with the swashbuckler, “Wake of the Perdido Star,” with Daniel Lenihan in 1999, according to publisher Simon & Schuster. He then penned two by himself, concluding with “Pursuit” in 2013, about a female police officer on the tail of a predator.

In his first couple decades in New Mexico, Hackman was often seen around the historic state capital, known as an artist enclave, tourism destination and retreat for celebrities.

He served as a board member of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in the 1990s, according to the local paper, The New Mexican.

Hackman’s later years

In recent years, he was far less visible, though even the most mundane outings caught the attention of the press. The Independent wrote about him attending a show at a performing arts center in 2018. The New York Post reported on him pumping gas, doing yard work and getting a chicken sandwich at Wendy’s in 2023.

Aside from appearances at awards shows, he was rarely seen in the Hollywood social circuit and retired from acting about 20 years ago. His was the rare Hollywood retirement that actually lasted.

Hackman had three children from a previous marriage. He and Arakawa had no children together but were known for having German shepherds.

Hackman told the film magazine Empire in 2020 that he and Arakawa liked to watch DVDs she rented.

“We like simple stories that some of the little low-budget films manage to produce,” he said.

(AP)

ESTHER MOBLEY: What I’m Reading

Before the influencers started hawking raw milk, there was a long tradition of drinking unpasteurized milk spiked with alcohol in western Mexico. The Los Angeles Times’ Daniel Hernandez reports on the clandestine pajarete gatherings of Mexican American communities in Southern California, after spending more than a year attending them. (Interestingly, the deaths linked to spiked pajaretes in Mexico have been attributed not to the raw milk but to “tainted homemade liquor.”)

The red grape variety Carmenere is best known in Chile, and it’s scarcely cultivated anymore in its native France. But an Italian winemaker believes it has a future in the Veneto region’s limestone-studded soils. Robert Camuto profiles the unusual effort in Wine Spectator.

Napa Valley’s Simon Family Estate, which received the top bid at last week’s trade auction Premiere Napa Valley, bought a new vineyard, reports Wine Business. The owners paid $4 million, according to county records, for the 12-acre Collinetta Vineyard in Coombsville.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Republicans are living and operating in a post-truth world. One obvious example of the lies and fraud they foist upon the public concerns the efficiency of two of the largest government programs designed to directly benefit the public: Social Security and Medicare.

The overhead and administrative costs to run Medicare are less than 4 percent of its spending; Social Security overhead and administrative costs are less than 1 percent. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency considers those statistics signs of waste and fraud is working to “improve” them by privatization, where overhead and administration costs run much higher.

Programs like Medicaid and Social Security show why government exists in the first place. The state performs essential functions that the private sector isn’t capable of doing or chooses not to do. It also protects the public and the public interest from private sector abuses; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which President Trump and his cabal have moved to shut down, is one of the agencies no longer looking out for individuals.

“I found it’s just very, very useful to not be a journalist. I mean, journalists drop into a situation, ask a question. People sort of tighten up. Whereas if you sit down with people who just say, hey, what makes you happy? What’s your life like? What do you like to eat? More often than not, they will tell you extraordinary things, many of which have nothing to do with food.”

— Anthony Bourdain

LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

Conan O’Brien Is Terrified of the Oscars. (He’s Hosting Anyway.)

Iowa Lawmakers Pass Bill to Eliminate Transgender Civil Rights Protections

After Insults and False Claims, Trump to Host Zelensky for Minerals Deal

Trump Says Canada and Mexico Tariffs Will Go Into Effect Next Week

Mexico Transfers Dozens of Cartel Operatives to U.S. Custody

Netanyahu Sends Team to Cairo as Days Dwindle in Gaza Truce

In Syria, Comedians Explore a Stage With No Limits. For Now

LAYOFFS START AT NOAA

The Trump administration has moved forward with job cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), following similar cuts at other departments and agencies.

As you know, NOAA is the U.S. government agency that manages our nation’s fisheries, monitors and forecasts our weather, charts our oceans, and protects our coastal communities and infrastructure. It has set the standard for fishery management around the world.

Beth Lowell, Oceana U.S. Vice President released the following reaction:

“Our oceans have become political carnage, but the real victims are hardworking Americans — the people you care about — and our future generations. These are American jobs that warn us about severe weather, protect our most vulnerable marine life like whales and turtles, ensure abundant fisheries, and maintain a healthy ocean for those whose livelihoods depend on it. We’re calling on Congress to save NOAA from these disastrous cuts, while also protecting American jobs, communities, and the oceans.”

TRUTHOUT:

President Donald Trump has posted an AI-generated video on social media depicting a version of Gaza that has been colonized by the U.S. and made into a beach resort for the rich — a disturbing show of his desire to forcibly displace Palestinians from the region and create a billionaires’ playground on the rubble of Israel’s genocide.

The 33-second video shows what appears to be the enactment of Trump’s “Riviera” plan — a plan for the total ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

At the beginning, the video shows the words “Gaza 2025” and “What’s next?” overlaid on AI-generated video of Palestinians walking through rubble and being pursued by armed soldiers.

It then shows artificial footage of a white sandy beach resort with a sprawling skyline, bustling streets and buildings like Dubai’s Burj Al Arab.

The scene is chilling and surreal, depicting a genocidal fantasy of a U.S.-owned Gaza where Palestinians have been erased and rich people vacation on the rubble of their homes, cultural sites and graveyards.

The resort appears to be called “Trump Gaza.” There are glitzy monuments to Trump scattered throughout, including a roundabout with a massive gold Trump statue in the middle and a wall displaying rows of Trump figurines. The video also depicts a child holding a large balloon of a gold Trump face.

Excessive wealth is a focal point of the video. Elon Musk is shown eating on the beach in two clips; in another, he is being showered with money at the resort. The sea is littered with yachts and the streets full of cars resembling Teslas.

The video also shows Trump himself vacationing there. It includes a scene of him dancing with a woman in a club, and ends with a clip of him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lounging in swimsuits next to a pool with drinks.

An eerie AI-generated song plays over the video, the lyrics touting “Trump Gaza.”

“No more tunnels, no more fear, Trump Gaza is finally here,” the song lyrics say. “Feast and dance, the deal is done. Trump Gaza, number one.”

The video is a show of Trump’s utter disregard for Palestinian lives and his willingness to celebrate and exploit genocide in order to bolster his own image and profits. It is just the latest example of Trump pushing his plan for the forced, permanent expulsion of over 2 million Palestinians from Gaza — a plan only feasible through military force and yet more mass brutality by occupiers.

Trump’s plan for Gaza has been roundly condemned by Palestinians and human rights experts across the globe.

Earlier this month, a group of UN human rights experts said that Trump’s plan would constitute numerous “blatant violations” of international law. If enacted, it could plunge the world into the “dark days of colonial conquest” and threaten the very structure of international order, the experts said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has previously called out the heinous nature of the plan, noting that it would displace millions to create a “billionaire’s paradise.”

“It is grotesque. It is almost unspeakable,” Sanders said.

Palestinians in Gaza have said that Trump’s plan will fail, as they will not comply with orders to flee their homes, even if those homes have been reduced to rubble.

“America and Israel have always been doing their best to ‘clean out’ lands by force or facilities, but they also always fail as our souls are connected to the sand of this land,” Zaid Ali, from northern Gaza, told Middle East Eye last month.

Trump: “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump declared at the press conference with Netanyahu. “We’ll own it, get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area….do something different, just can’t go back, if you go back, it’s gonna end up the same way it has for 100 years.”

HOW THE WARFARE STATE PAVED THE WAY FOR A TRUMPIST AUTOCRACY: A TRUE COST OF WAR

by Norman Solomon

Donald Trump’s power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war. The runaway militarism of the last quarter-century was a crucial factor in making President Trump possible, even if it goes virtually unmentioned in mainstream media and political discourse. That silence is particularly notable among Democratic leaders, who have routinely joined in bipartisan messaging to boost the warfare state that fueled the rise of Trumpism.

Trump first ran for president nearly a decade and a half after the “Global War on Terror” began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The crusade’s allure had worn off. The national mood was markedly different than in the era when President George W. Bush insisted that “our responsibility” was to “rid the world of evil.”

Working-class Americans had more modest goals for their government. Distress festered as income inequality widened and economic hardships worsened, while federal spending on war, the Pentagon budget, and the “national security” state continued to zoom upward. Even though the domestic effects of protracted warfare were proving to be enormous, multilayered, and deeply alienating, elites in Washington scarcely seemed to notice.

Donald Trump, however, did notice.

Pundits were shocked in 2015 when Trump mocked the war record of Republican Senator John McCain. The usual partisan paradigms were further upended during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump denounced his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as “trigger happy.” He had a point. McCain, Clinton, and their cohort weren’t tired of U.S. warfare — in fact, they kept glorifying it — but many in non-affluent communities had grown sick of its stateside consequences.

Repeated deployments of Americans to war zones had taken their toll. The physical and emotional wounds of returning troops were widespread. And while politicians were fond of waxing eloquent about “the fallen,” the continual massive spending for war and preparations for more of it depleted badly needed resources at home.

Status-Quo Militarism

President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represented the status quo that Trump ran against and defeated. Like them, he was completely insulated from the harsh boomerang effects of the warfare state. Unlike them, he sensed how to effectively exploit the discontent and anger it was causing.

Obama was not clueless. He acknowledged some downsides to endless war in a much-praised speech during his second term in office. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he affirmed at the National Defense University. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer hailed that instance of presidential oratory in a piece touting Obama’s “anguish over the difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society.” But such concerns were fleeting at the White House, while sparking little interest from mainstream journalists. Perpetual war had become wallpaper in the media echo chamber.

President Bush’s messianic calls to rid the world of “evil-doers” had fallen out of fashion, but militarism remained firmly embedded in the political economy. Corporate contracts with the Pentagon and kindred agencies only escalated. But when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, being a rigid hawk became a negative with the electorate as pro-Trump forces jumped into the opening she provided.

Six weeks before the election, Forbes published an article under the headline “Hillary Clinton Never Met a War She Didn’t Want Other Americans to Fight.” Written by Doug Bandow, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, the piece exemplified how partisan rhetoric about war and peace had abruptly changed. Clinton “almost certainly would lead America into more foolish wars,” Bandow contended, adding: “No one knows what Trump would do in a given situation, which means there is a chance he would do the right thing. In contrast, Clinton’s beliefs, behavior, and promises all suggest that she most likely would do the wrong thing, embracing a militaristic status quo which most Americans recognize has failed disastrously.”

Clinton was following a timeworn formula for Democrats trying to inoculate themselves against charges of being soft on foreign enemies, whether communists or terrorists. Yet Trump, deft at labeling his foes both wimps and warmongers, ran rings around the Democratic nominee. In that close election, Clinton’s resolutely pro-war stance may have cost her the presidency.

“Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump,” a study by scholars Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen concluded. “Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.” Professors Kriner and Shen suggested that Democrats might want to “reexamine their foreign policy posture if they hope to erase Trump’s electoral gains among constituencies exhausted and alienated by 15 years of war.”

But such advice went unheeded. Leading Democrats and Republicans remained on autopilot for the warfare state as the Pentagon budget kept rising.

On the War Train with Donald Trump

In 2018, the top Democrats in Washington, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, boasted that they were fully aligned with President Trump in jacking up Pentagon spending. After Trump called for an 11% increase over two years in the already-bloated “defense” budget, Pelosi sent an email to House Democrats declaring, “In our negotiations, congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense.” The office of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proudly stated: “We fully support President Trump’s Defense Department’s request.”

By then, fraying social safety nets and chronic fears of economic insecurity had become ever more common across the country. The national pattern evoked Martin Luther King’s comment that profligate military spending was like “some demonic destructive suction tube.”

In 2020, recurring rhetoric from Joe Biden in his winning presidential campaign went like this: “If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever alter the character of our nation.” But Biden said nothing about how almost 20 years of nonstop war funding and war making had already altered the character of the nation.

At first glance, President Biden seemed to step away from continuing the “war on terror.” The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan by the end of August 2021. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly weeks later, he proclaimed: “I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years, with the United States not at war.” But even as he spoke, a new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University indicated that the “war on terror” persisted on several continents. “The war continues in over 80 countries,” said Catherine Lutz, the project’s co-director. The war’s cost to taxpayers, the project estimated, was already at least $8 trillion.

Biden’s designated successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, displayed a traditional militaristic reflex while campaigning against Trump. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention she pledged to maintain “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Such rhetoric was problematic for attracting voters from the Democratic base reluctant to cast ballots for a war party. More damaging to her election prospects was her refusal to distance herself from Biden’s insistence on continuing to supply huge quantities of weaponry to Israel for the horrific war in Gaza.

Supplementing the automatic $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, special new appropriations for weaponry totaling tens of billions of dollars enabled mass killing in Gaza. Poll results at the time showed that Harris would have gained support in swing states if she had called for an arms embargo on Israel as long as the Gaza war continued. She refused to do so.

Post-election polling underscored how Harris’s support for that Israeli war appreciably harmed her chances to defeat Trump. In 2024, as in 2016, Trump notably benefitted from the unwavering militarism of his Democratic opponent.

Overseas, the realities of nonstop war have been unfathomably devastating. Estimates from the Costs of War Project put the number of direct deaths in major war zones from U.S.-led actions under the “war on terror” brand at more than 900,000. With indirect deaths included, the number jumps to “4.5 million and counting.” The researchers explain that “some people were killed in the fighting, but far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of war, such as the spread of disease.”

That colossal destruction of faraway human beings and the decimation of distant societies have gotten scant attention in mainstream U.S. media and politics. The far-reaching impacts of incessant war on American life in this century have also gotten short shrift. Midway through the Biden presidency, trying to sum up some of those domestic impacts, I wrote in my book War Made Invisible:

“Overall, the country is gripped by war’s dispersed and often private consequences — the aggravated tendencies toward violence, the physical wartime injuries, the post-traumatic stress, the profusion of men who learned to use guns and were trained to shoot to kill when scarcely out of adolescence, the role modeling from recruitment ads to popular movies to bellicose bombast from high-ranking leaders, and much more. The country is also in the grip of tragic absences: the health care not deemed fundable by those who approve federal budgets larded with military spending, the child care and elder care and family leave not provided by those same budgets, the public schools deprived of adequate funding, the college students and former students saddled with onerous debt, the uncountable other everyday deficits that have continued to lower the bar of the acceptable and the tolerated.”

While the warfare state seems all too natural to most politicians and journalists, its consequences over time have been transformational for the United States in ways that have distinctly skewed the political climate. Along the way, militarism has been integral to the rise of the billionaire tech barons who are now teaming up with an increasingly fascistic Donald Trump.

The Military-Industrial-Tech Complex

While President Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power, many other tech moguls have rushed to ingratiate themselves. The pandering became shameless within hours of his election victory last November.

“Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory,” Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. “We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration.” Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, Whole Foods, and the Washington Post, tweeted: “wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”

Amazon Web Services alone has numerous government contracts, including one with the National Security Agency worth $10 billion and deals with the Pentagon pegged at $9.7 billion. Such commerce is nothing new. For many years, thousands of contracts have tied the tech giants to the military-industrial complex.

Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and smaller rivals are at the helm of corporations eager for government megadeals, tax breaks, and much more. For them, the governmental terrain of the new Trump era is the latest territory to navigate for maximizing their profits. With annual military outlays at 54% of all federal discretionary spending, the incentives are astronomical for all kinds of companies to make nice with the war machine and the man now running it.

While Democrats in Congress have long denounced Trump as an enemy of democracy, they haven’t put any sort of brake on American militarism. Certainly, there are many reasons for Trump’s second triumph, including his exploitation of racism, misogyny, nativism, and other assorted bigotries. Yet his election victories owe much to the Democratic Party’s failure to serve the working class, a failure intermeshed with its insistence on serving the industries of war. Meanwhile, spending more on the military than the next nine countries combined, U.S. government leaders tacitly lay claim to a kind of divine overpowering virtue.

As history attests, militarism can continue for many decades while basic democratic structures, however flawed, remain in place. But as time goes on, militarism is apt to be a major risk factor for developing some modern version of fascism. The more war and preparations for war persist, with all their economic and social impacts, the more core traits of militarism — including reliance on unquestioning obedience to authority and sufficient violence to achieve one’s goals — will permeate the society at large.

During the last 10 years, Donald Trump has become ever more autocratic, striving not just to be the nation’s commander-in-chief but also the commandant of a social movement increasingly fascistic in its approach to laws and civic life. He has succeeded in taking on the role of top general for the MAGA forces. The frenzies that energize Trump’s base and propel his strategists have come to resemble the mentalities of warfare. The enemy is whoever dares to get in his way.

A warfare state is well suited for such developments. Pretending that militarism is not a boon to authoritarian politics only strengthens it. The time has certainly come to stop pretending.

(Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and most recently War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine (The New Press). He lives in the San Francisco area. This article was originally published by TomDispatch.com.)

A DANGEROUS MOMENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY

by Bernie Sanders

Sanders Opening Statement in Hearing to Advance Chavez-DeRemer Nomination

We are in an unusual and dangerous moment in American history.

We have a situation where, today, we have more income and wealth inequality then we have ever had in the history of this country. Three people on top have more wealth the bottom half of American society and the gap between rich and poor is growing wider.

We have a situation where people all over this country understand that joining a trade union is a way to get better wages and working conditions. Millions of workers all over this country say, “I want to join a union.” And yet we have large corporations acting illegally to deny workers the right to join unions, which is why one of my major priorities and the priority of many members on this side of the aisle is to pass the PRO Act.

Today, tens of millions of American workers are earning starvation wages. $12, $13 an hour. Nobody in any part of this country can survive on $12, $13 dollars an hour. And yet the minimum wage – the federal minimum wage of $7.25 – has not been raised in a very, very long time.

So what we need is a Secretary of Labor who is going to stand up and say we are going to take on powerful special interests. We are going to stand with the working class of this country.

Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, Ms. Lori Chavez-DeRemer is not that person.

And the most important point of this hearing is: Today, we are not voting on who the next Secretary of Labor is. The next Secretary of Labor, the next Secretary of Education, the next Secretary of Housing, the next Secretary of the Treasury is Elon Musk. Let us understand that reality and not play along with this charade.

Does anyone here really think that any Secretary of Labor, any Secretary of Education, is going to make decisions by himself or herself?

Just yesterday, the president held a meeting with his cabinet. And who was the star of the meeting? Was it the Secretary of the Defense? Was it Secretary of State?

No, it was an unelected official who happens to be the wealthiest person on Earth. It was Elon Musk.

And at that meeting, President Trump asked his cabinet, “is anybody unhappy with Elon? Well, if you are, we’ll throw them out of here.”

In other words, if any cabinet official has courage to stand up to Mr. Musk and disobey his edicts, they are gone. So, Mr. Chairman, my request to you is a simple one. Let’s be honest. The American people understand it, and it’s time that we understood it as well.

If you want to discuss policies in the Department of Labor, let’s bring in the real secretary. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully request that this committee bring Elon Musk before this committee so that we can really hear what’s going on with the government.

ODE TO FEBRUARY

Even in week

one you show up

scuffed and muddy

it’s just your nature

and no one

likes you

but we drive

through your town

of boot and

bouillon factories

into March with

its shoe store

and soup restaurant.

Forty-five years

ago a friend

advised I dress

up for you or

be an emotional

goner—so true!

From within the

walled city of your

calendar month

the special editions

sail back over

unread because

being more experienced

than us who look down

our noses at you

you take

the high ground

and cultivate compassion

grant us permission

to not look

yet again at

the photos or relive

the country’s

close call;

having been doled

the fewest days

you know enough

is enough of

the year before

so I vote you as

officially starting

the year

and resolve to see

your strengths. Even

your two r’s

analogy for

the way we stub

our toes getting

through time—

how like real life

you are. We are

hopeful creatures;

what covers up

the mess also

feeds the bulbs

and we need that

to elevate our

self-image which

can be terribly low

just now, so

thank you.

(Jessica Greenbaum)

9 Comments

Paul Modic February 28, 2025

Hey Ernie, re false Spring, I’m happy to watch my lettuce starts growing safely in my sunny window, safe from bugs, rats, extreme sun, wind, rain, and shitting cats…

Paul Modic February 28, 2025

Concerning “lays” and “lies,” I could never get them straight and still can’t.
When my English teacher father was on his deathbed, I made the mistake one more time and he managed one last grimace at my bad grammar, as he died…

Me February 28, 2025

In today’s UDJ (2-28-25) classified section, legal notice, Co of Mendo is amending Title 2 CEO duties. Amending what? Giving the CEO more power or reigning her in? Hmmmmm

Call It As I See It February 28, 2025

Chamise Cubbison’s job now begins. Think about it, she returns to work with all the players who tried to defame and have her charged with a crime. She is going to need eyes in the back of her head.

All the brass are pissed with Ann Moorman’s decision, it exposed their possible crimes. Remember the definition of a crime in most cases revolves around the word intent. And if you think these people aren’t capable of trying some new plan, then I got some ocean front property in Arizona. From my front porch you can see the sea! Love George Strait.

Oops February 28, 2025

Darcie and the BOS continue to not respond to reporters. Unacceptable. The best we get is Jim Shield’s report out from a meeting with Haschak. They also wont even issue a simple short press release saying Cubbison has returned to office? “Run silent run deep” is the strategy from Darcie and the gang. Convenient timing for this case to resolve and its exculpatory evidence to surface after 17 months and after the election, the only time the general public pays any sort of critical attention to county politics. They have a functional runway of another 17 months for this story to be forgotten by the voters before the next election season. Run silent run deep. I also find it strange that that Darcie is now only required to provide two budget reports per year? Quarterly is a standard amongst almost all local governments.

Jurgen Stoll February 28, 2025

Now that DOGE has taken on the NOAA, I’m wondering how the firings affect the personnel at our local NOAA office at Woodley Island. A lot of fishermen here, both commercial and sport, are MAGAs and don’t want to pay taxes for anything. The Satellite Buoys and Bar wave predictor in Humboldt are indispensable tools for getting in and out of the Humboldt Bay safely. Wonder how they’ll feel about losing those assets, or having to pay for them through privatised corporations. Also who will pay for dredging the entrance now? Is it going to be another blow it up and then Trump will come up with “some concepts” deal, that will be way better than what we have now and so much cheaper.

- Jurgen Stoll February 28, 2025
  
  Some surf music to go with your next bar crossing…………https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9alKoLrgEc&list=PLjppdWymG1Jh8LoN_yNNZ2bAh-ijRiwN8
  
Mike Jamieson February 28, 2025

After today’s disaster, the 2026 midterms need to provide a major Democratic Party majority in the Senate in order to convict Trump & Vance and install the Speaker as potus. Despite the fighting words of those 2 idiots, keep ur thoughts and actions NONviolent. Yes, those 2 are assholes but do no harm.

Yes, the Trump/Vance episode today with Zelensky will cause more deaths. We can hope the mostly pro Ukranian GOP Senators will start breaking with this administration.

George Hollister February 28, 2025

The two abalone busts might be a good news, bad news situation. The good news might be the abalone are coming back, the bad news is so are the poachers. The photos suggest big, and healthy abs. Hope so.

9 Comments

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