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FROST ADVISORY remains in effect until 9am this morning . . . Clear and calm weather will continue through the weekend. Unsettled weather will return by Tuesday evening with gusty south wind, followed by rain through the day Wednesday. Snow levels will most likely drop below 2000 feet Wednesday evening with lighter rain continuing late in the week. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): I hear there is some patchy fog out there? but I have clear skies & 42F this Saturday morning on the coast. Cold nights & dry days thru Tuesday now with rain returning about Tuesday evening ish. The rain amounts have increased once the rain does arrive. The details of the next round is still developing leaving us keeping an eye on matters until then.
ATTEMPTED MURDER STABBING IN WILLITS
On Thursday, March 6, 2025 at about 10:10 P.M., Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Deputies were dispatched to the 100 Block of Kawi Place in Willits, for a report of a stabbing victim. Upon arrival, Deputies contacted the victim, a 47-year-old male from Willits, and provided medical aid while medical personnel responded to the scene. Additional Deputies, Wardens from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Willits Police Department Officers arrived on scene and began searching the area for the suspect, who was as identified as Jason Ryan Omholt, 47, of Eureka.
An ambulance arrived on scene, provided the victim with emergency medical assistance, and transported the victim to a hospital for further medical treatment. It was determined the victim suffered life-threatening injuries and there was substantial evidence located at the scene to corroborate that a violent assault had occurred.
Once the victim was transported, Deputies began conducting an assault investigation along with Detectives from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. During the investigation, it was learned Omholt had an active felony arrest warrant out of Humboldt County for Vehicle Theft. Additionally, Deputies learned of possible location where Omholt was possibly staying.
Deputies responded to a residence located in the 2600 Block of Mitomkai Way in Willits, where they were able to locate Omholt hiding in a bedroom. Omholt initially refused to come out of the bedroom but after further negotiations, Omholt surrendered and was taken into custody without further incident.
A search warrant was obtained and served at the residence where Omholt was staying. At the conclusion of the investigation, Omholt was placed under arrest for Attempted Murder, Resisting arrest, and the out-of-county felony arrest warrant.
Omholt was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he is being held in lieu of $125,000 bail.
Mendocino County Sheriff's Office would like to thank the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Willits Police Department for their assistance during this investigation.
This incident is actively being investigated and anyone with information regarding this investigation is requested to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086 (option 1). Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the non-emergency tip line at 707-234-2100.
AV SKATEPARK PROJECT NEWS
In October, we traveled to Monte Rio in west Sonoma County to learn from the architects who developed the Monte Rio Community Park and Skatepark. It was incredibly helpful to learn from the example of a small, unincorporated community, similar to Anderson Valley, with a park also managed by a Special District!
AV students have been working to design for the future mosaic wall that will welcome visitors to the AV Community Skatepark! Community Park Art Director Martha Crawford has been lending her expertise to guide the process, including hands-on experience with mosaic.
Our wonderful architect Alex Korn and septic engineer Chris Rau are working to custom-design the public bathroom that will be developed in conjunction with Skatepark development. The ADA accessible design includes two flush toilets, with a convertible vault design for future connection to Boonville's new public septic system.
Thanks to everyone who came by to cheer on the students at their AV Skatepark Project booth at the Holiday Bazaar in December!
(Noor Dawood, Project Manager)
MRS. BEHAVIOR AT AV UNIFIED?
Editor,
This letter was sent to the school board, principal, and superintendent: Being accused of attacking a teacher because I don’t like the way she teaches, is crazy! I did NOT attack a teacher. I questioned her ability of teaching and not be a dictator with our kids! However, it was never mentioned what she did to be questioned. She is rough with the kids and inappropriate! So, here is what happened! They want to shut me up and for me to accept an FAKE ASS apology that she was forced to give to me because she thinks she did nothing wrong! I sat through a parent teacher conference for my child’s wellbeing and was asked multiple times if this issue was resolved. However, IT’S NOT! So, for everyone she spoke to here is the truth! You attack my child and I will speak up for her!
Sent: February 28th, 2025
Good morning, everyone,
Hello, my name is parent. I am the mother of student, who attends Anderson Valley Elementary School. She is currently in grade, and her teacher is (no name because I want to protect MY CHILD) . Student calls her Mrs. . I grew up in this beautiful community and attended preschool through high school in the Anderson Valley School District. Throughout my many years at school in AV, I was guided with love, care, and RESPECT—something for which I am deeply grateful to everyone involved in my life. I have so many amazing memories to share about my principal, Ms. Zimmerman, my preschool teacher, Kathy, Furgenicia, all the teachers who cared for me and guided me, yard duty Charlene Swanson, and our library staff, Claire and Marilyn Pronsolino. I also remember Terrie Rhodes, our wonderful food service high school teacher. The list goes on. Now, almost 36 years later, I can still recall Kathy's smile as I walked in with my pink backpack. This is what I want ALL the children in this school to remember: that they were guided with love, care, and, most importantly, RESPECT.
On Tuesday, February 25, 2025, STUDENTS, who is an (not disclosing publicly for her safety) year-old (-) grader in Mrs. class, came home from school upset. She asked if we could go exercise and stop eating because Mrs. had weighed her, measured her, and the other students in front of each other. Mrs. then wrote all the students’ weights and measurements on a chart in her classroom, making it visible to everyone who entered. When the kids went to recess, (My child) was made fun of and humiliated by her classmates because she is heavier and taller than everyone else in her classroom. The type of HUMILIATION my child endured under the supervision of a teacher who is supposed to guide and provide a safe, respectful environment for ALL the children in her care—not just MY child—is disgustingly disrespectful, hateful, and discriminatory. This kind of treatment can damage a child's health and mental state, leaving long-lasting effects on how MY CHILD—and indeed all the children present—will live their lives.
On Wednesday, February 26, 2025, at 11:00 a.m., I drove to the elementary school and met with Ms./Mrs. Superintendent and Mr. Principal. I made them aware of the incident and requested a follow-up email regarding the matter, along with a picture of the chart with all the kids' names blacked out except for My Child’s weight and measurements for my records. To this day, February 28, 2025, at 10:25 a.m., I have not heard back from anyone regarding this issue! I have given ample time for the appropriate parties to look into this matter, but it seems that it is not a priority for anyone.
Mrs. behavior towards the children we are supposed to be protecting is alarming! I am alarmed that it is acceptable to treat anyone the way these kids were treated. I have previously spoken to Mrs. about another matter involving bullying among the kids, and at this point, it seems that the bullying is now coming not only from the students but also from Mrs. herself! Yes, I am informing you all that Mrs. is bullying the kids and creating an atmosphere of bullying, harassment, and hostility for my child and the rest of the kids in her classroom! Her behavior is not only inappropriate but also appears intentional, demonstrating poor judgment. If Mrs. cannot exercise good judgment and exhibit appropriate behavior, she should NOT be teaching ANY child. This issue is no longer just about her job; it is about the lifelong effects on my child!
Fourteen percent of students have thoughts of suicide, and seven percent actually attempt it! I mention this statistic to emphasize that body-shaming and bullying are completely unacceptable, especially coming from a teacher toward under 10 year-old students.
I will always advocate for my child, and I will continue to speak up for her. I know I am not the only parent who is upset about this!
Please do something and do better! Speak up for our future generations!
With great disbelief that this even happened,
Anonymous Parent
Anderson Valley
FROM THE OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF RULING IN CUBBISON CASE
by Mike Geniella
Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman’s Feb 25 decision to toss out the felony prosecution of Mendocino County Auditor Chamise Cubbison and former Payroll Manager Paula June Kennedy is a damning indictment of how the controversial criminal case was managed from the beginning.
An official court transcript of Moorman’s findings is worthy of publishing verbatim.
The Cubbison case outcome is being celebrated by supporters of the reinstated County Auditor, and Kennedy. The two veteran county workers were accused of criminally misappropriating public funds to pay Kennedy about $68,000 in extra pay over a three-year period during the Covid pandemic.
Cubbison and Kennedy’s professional reputations were shattered and their personal lives put in upheaval during a 17-month long ordeal that ended with Judge Moorman’s strongly worded dismissal.
Judge Moorman in her decision makes no direct note of District Attorney David Eyster’s actions in the politically laced case, and his secret attempts to assist county supervisors and executives in a plan to force consolidation of the two key county financial offices, do away with their elected positions, and eventually shift control to the Board of Supervisors.
However, court records and documents show it was Eyster’s decision to file charges against Cubbison and Kennedy and then hire a special outside prosecutor at the rate of $400 per hour to take the controversial case to trial. The District Attorney did so after conducting his own year-long review of the case including further investigation by DA investigators.
Eyster in the meantime attempted to pressure Cubbison into resigning in return for a misdemeanor criminal filing. Cubbison, proclaiming her innocence, chose to fight.
Eyster filed charges against Cubbison and Kennedy in October 2023. The case dragged on for 17 months before Moorman’s ruling quashed his efforts and Cubbison won immediate reinstatement to her position. Typically, criminal cases clear preliminary hearings and go on to trial because the legal bar is low.
Now, pending Cubbison civil litigation will determine how much damages taxpayers will pay if Cubbison’s claims of denial of due process are upheld against the county Board of Supervisors and a list of “John Does” including Eyster and CEO Darcie Antle.
Moorman’s commentary zeroes in on the evidence and testimony of key witnesses Eyster relied upon and turned over to Special Prosecutor Traci Carrillo of Sonoma County to pursue prosecution.
Moorman’s ruling also underscores the “willful ignorance” she found on the part of county administrators.
Excerpts from Moorman’s ruling focusing on three key figures in the case:
CUBBISON: “Regardless of anything else that I may say today, there's vastly insufficient evidence for -- for the Court to find anybody acted with criminal negligence, whether she had authority to have these payments made. And, again, this was completely transparent.”
KENNEDY: “And the evidence with regard to Ms. Kennedy is that, as Mr. McCurry laid out, working these extraordinary hours, every county employee for the County of Mendocino should be thanking her for having been paid during that time frame.· She was working all nights and weekends, not able to use the CTO that she had accumulated. … The evidence is clear to me that she was frayed emotionally by the time all of this came to light, that she was suffering under an inordinate amount of stress, not only because of the responsibilities to her job but also the stress that she was experiencing because she couldn't get any relief, because she couldn't take any time off because there is no one else to do the job.”
FORMER AUDITOR LLOYD WEER: “And I think Mr. Weer, the evidence of the commencement of the 470 payments that show up from the very first time they were paid, his statements to Detective Porter, his evasiveness on the witness stand, his purported failure of recollection, his willful and deliberate ignorance by not reading his email all to me point to the fact that he said something to her that made her believe she had authority.”
SUPERVISOR JOHN HASCHAK
The County, along with Veterans, Seniors, and many others, is concerned about threats to cut essential programs. When Congress passed their budget, it included $880 billion cuts to Medicaid. This program is MediCal in California. 47% of the residents of Mendocino Co. (41,000 people) are MediCal eligible. These draconian cuts would have a huge impact on our communities and services provided.
The annual Women’s History Gala Celebration was held on March 2. Three women were honored. One was Willits’ Saprina Rodriquez for her many contributions to the city and county. Saprina’s focus on youth issues, sports, and transportation were highlighted. Fiona Ma, State Treasurer, spoke about the impact of federal cuts on all of us. There were also performances of Chinese orchestra music and traditional Mexican dances.
Val Muchowski has been the organizer of these Women’s History events (and many other) activities for 40 some years. She has been a mentor of mine from when we were public education advocates together. Val is an icon in Mendocino County and has always been an energetic, tenacious, passionate advocate of women’s issues and community causes. Best wishes to her as she moves to Sacramento to be near family.
Chamise Cubbison is back at work as Auditor/Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector. Judge Moorman dismissed the case. I cannot say anything else since there is ongoing litigation.
The Board voted 4-1 (I was the dissenting vote) to not continue pursuing an ordinance to regulate water that is sold for commercial purposes. The problem has been that people drill a well, sell the water to a water truck which heads out to the hills. Without proving that the extracted water will not impact the neighbors’ wells, neighbors are at the whims of new wells for commercial sales with no oversight. Former Supervisor McGourty and I had worked with community members from around the County on this draft ordinance. There were issues with it but that is why it was a draft. It failed due to fears of costs and lack of ability to enforce. We will see what happens when the next drought arrives.
I will be at the Brickhouse on March 13 at 10:00 for lively discussions. As always, you can communicate with me at haschakj@mendocinocounty.gov or 707-972-4214.
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
Protest the Fascist Regime and Violence Against Women.
Saturday, March 8 At Noon.
In front of Fort Bragg Town Hall.
TAXPAYERS TO COVER $500M+ IN PG&E RATE HIKES FOR POTTER VALLEY DAM DECOMMISSIONING
Residents from Sonoma to Mendocino County will lose approximately 26 billion gallons of water as PG&E rates skyrocket
by Adina Flores
Recently, California Congressman Jared Huffman’s Senior District Representative John Driscoll confirmed that taxpayers will cover the costs for PG&E to decommission the Potter Valley dams.…
https://adinaflores.substack.com/p/taxpayers-to-cover-500m-in-pg-and
DICK'S PLACE in Mendocino, CA still going strong. It’s pretty much the only place in town open late so everyone ends up there, including perhaps your waiter from dinner, the band you just saw perform the next town over, the locals you met the night before but barely remember your conversation.
COUNTY NOTES
by Mark Scaramella
TUESDAY’S SUPERVISORS AGENDA has what would normally be a routine placeholder item entitled: “Discussion and Possible Action Including Acceptance of Informational Report(s) from the Assessor/Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters, Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector, District Attorney, Sheriff and Various County Department Heads or Designee(s)”
Is it too early to expect both newly reinstated Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector, Chamise Cubbison and the District Attorney, David Eyster whose charges against her were so expensively dismissed to take this opportunity to report to the Board? At the same time? We expect that Ms. Cubbison would be happy to take the podium. Eyster? Probably not. Bad timing and all. It will also be interesting to see what role former Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Sara Pierce assumes now that Ms. Cubbison is back as Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector. Back to the CEO’s office, we assume. Maybe she’ll be in charge of that recently created “department” called “fiscal services.”
COINCIDENTALLY, CEO Darcie Antle will be making a “FY 25/26 Budget Workshop” Presentation for next year’s budget. This will be another opportunity for Ms. Cubbison to re-enter the financial discussion in some way.
CEO Antle’s presentation begins: “Salaries and Benefits (1000 Series) estimated to increase 7% over 24/25 based on current department submissions.”
Unfortunately, although we thought we thought we understood budget jargon and most of the basic concepts, the rest of CEO Antle’s relatively brief budget presentation makes very little sense. So we will have to wait until Tuesday to see if we get a better picture.
ACCORDING TO THE MINUTES of the closed session at their last meeting the Board discussed existing "Litigation: One Case - Cubbison V. County Of Mendocino, Et Al., Mendocino County Superior Court, Case No. 23CV01231,” but “no reportable action was taken.”
This typically uninformative item would usually be ignorable, except for the list of people present for the closed session: “Supervisor Madeline Cline, Supervisor Maureen Mulheren, Supervisor John Haschak, Supervisor Bernie Norvell, and Supervisor Ted Williams. Staff Present: Darcie Antle, Chief Executive Officer; Charlotte E. Scott, County Counsel; Lillian Bearden, Deputy Clerk of the Board; and Atlas M.A. Pearson, Senior Deputy Clerk of the Board.”
Notably NOT present was the County’s outside attorney for Cubbison’s civil suit, Ms. Morin Jacob of Liebert Cassidy Whitmore. Hard to tell if there’s anything serious to read into this, but we’d like to think the Board is considering settlement offers. There’s no point in dragging Ms. Cubbison’s civil suit out any longer than necessary, not that such an obvious observation would occur to these people. Nevertheless, we hope that there’s no settlement until AFTER all the County officials, past and present, are deposed.
LOOKS LIKE SUPERVISOR JOHN HASCHAK intends to appoint Covelo attorney Kay Richards as his Third District Planning Commissioner replacing Alison Pernell on one of the County’s more or less functional boards. Ms. Richards apparently specializes in Family Law and Wills and also serves on the Round Valley Area Municipal Advisory Council. We don’t know why Willits Realtor Pernell is vacating her seat.
THE SOMEWHAT CONTROVERSIAL item in the CEO ordinance (aka job description) that was discussed at the last Board meeting but ultimately left unchanged still says: “The CEO shall report to the Board of Supervisors, not less than semiannually, the status of the budget expenditures and revenues, as available within the main enterprise system, and recommend adjustments as necessary.”
That’s right, despite looming budget problems, the Board is officially saying that they don’t need budget status reports any more than twice a year and then only “as available within the main enterprise system,” a ridiculous and irresponsible proviso that basically says the CEO isn’t responsible for any omissions that her own departments may make, intentionally or otherwise.
GOVERNOR HARRIS? Insiders are already speculating that Kamala Harris has the inside track for Governor of California in 2026 after Newsom terms out. No one else polls even close to Harris’s numbers and she’s reportedly been making the rounds of events and funders leading people to assume she’s running. Lt. Governor whatshername has no name recognition but lots of campaign cash from her mega-developer father. The highly vocal Caitlyn Jenner is a possible candidate. State School Superintendent Tony Thurmond is a wannabe pol. Rob Bonta has said he has no plans to run. A couple of SoCal Republicans are considered long-shots. (Mark Scaramella)
A READER WRITES: Whenever I see the word “we” in the modern political context I take it to mean: “Never gonna happen.”
ED NOTES
OAF-ISM is now common at public events, and fairly prevalent in everyday life. And it's gone co-ed. Mass vulgarity kicked in about '67. I remember when it first occurred to me that bad public behavior was with us to stay. I was watching a Giants game with my brother in the leftfield bleachers at Candlestick, his preferred ballgame site. Young guys were constantly in fights all around us. It was obvious that fighting with strangers was the reason they were there. Another contingent of fans constantly yelled obscenities at the nearby left fielders for both teams.
AROUND THAT TIME, at a football game at Candlestick, a couple of people were shot, a guy was badly beaten in a men's room, fat women brawled in the parking lot, numerous fist fights broke out in the stands. The occasion? A 49er-Raider game. The guy beaten in the men's room was wearing a t-shirt that said “Bleep the 49ers.” An offended oaf simply commenced trying to beat the Bleeping 49ers guy to death at the urinal.
CANDLESTICK was never a place you'd want to take Gran and the kids to a football game. Guns at the ballpark were new, Oaf-ism was not. But Oaf-ism is definitely more prevalent everywhere at all kinds of venues, from backyard barbecues to wedding receptions. Fights at ball games were nothing new. Lots of fights at the ballgame were definitely new.
OAF-ISM as a way of life has since caught on big time. There are millions of them out there, big fraidy cats pumped up in the gym looking like Maori warriors with their head-to-toe tattoos. They want us all to know they aren't the puffballs deep down they've got to be. But they look menacing which, I guess, is the point.
PUBLIC PROFANITY, vulgar t-shirts and mass drunkenness are fairly new, and seem to coincide with the end of days vibe inspired by the anxieties innate in late capitalism, early chaos, although way back to the Niners at the old Kezar Stadium of the 1940s criminal behavior by small groups of alleged fans was such a problem that the Niners had to screen the tunnel leading to their locker room to protect players from thrown objects.
AND I remember as a little kid the ballplayers themselves —baseball players — climbing into the stands to slug abusive fans. But up until the late 1960s a guy simply bellowing obscenities in the general direction of the playing field would have been unanimously beyond the limit of acceptable public behavior.
FOOTBALL CROWDS, inevitably, have always been rougher than baseball crowds, but baseball crowds at Candlestick, not that there were what you could call “crowds” at Candlestick very often, always contained knots of Oafs who were there simply to fight and raise hell.
AT&T park is much better managed. There, Oaf-ism gets the Oaf a quick heave-ho, which is as it should be. Ironic, though, how tough and tough talking Americans in the aggregate can seem while politically we're a nation of total wimps, sitting still for the clown show in the White House, massive financial swindles, a government funded by the swindlers, joblessness and wage depression on a scale not seen since the Big Depression, and so on. Where are all the tough guys and battling bimbos where it counts?
MY FIRST AWARENESS that vaccination was up for debate occurred years ago when Alicia Borcich wrote in to the ava: “I was wondering if you have a section listing upcoming events. If so, could you include the following? 'Join writer/researcher Kate Birch at a lecture discussing vaccines and how homeopathy can be used to stimulate your child's immune system at a lecture called ‘Vaccines and Alternatives’ on October 1st from 2-4.30 pm at the Mendocino Rec Center, 998 School Street in Mendocino. Contact Alicia Abuliak for more information at alicia.abuliak@gmail.com or 937-6276 or visit http://vaccinefree.wordpress.com Thank you! Maybe someone would like to cover this as a story as well. Let me know, Alicia Borcich.”
I WROTE BACK: “Dear Ms. Borcich: This isn't a lecture encouraging parents to avoid vaccination, is it? I'm sorry but we consider the anti-vaccination movement beyond irresponsible. Please clarify. Thank you, Bruce Anderson, ed.”
TO WHICH MS. BORCICH responded: “Dear Bruce, This lecture is not encouraging parents to avoid vaccination, but rather will examine a responsible alternative for parents who choose not to vaccinate. The research in this particular line of study indicates that using homeopathic nosodes to immunize your child results in antibody development like allopathic vaccinations. Using blood titer draws on children that have used this alternate immunization method, studies have found that these children are also protected. The primary difference is that these nosodes are non-toxic. On a public health level, in a community where 40% of parents choose not to vaccinate, another method that could protect our our community from epidemics of whooping cough, measles, etc. seems like a worthy topic for further investigation. Thank you for your consideration, Alicia.”
IF THE FORTY PERCENT figure is even half true, it means that not only are the children of the fools who don't vaccinate their own children at extreme risk, the children of everyone else are also at risk. The schools are not supposed to admit children without proof of vaccination, but who knows how diligent the schools are at screening the kids who appear for registration? Not very diligent in Boonville until the remarkable Louise Simson appeared as district superintendent.
WHEN Ms. Simson arrived she discovered that roughly forty percent of students at Boonville Elementary were unvaccinated, or hadn't produced proof of vaccination. The superintendent and the school nurse called the errant families to tell them their children could not attend classes until they were vaccinated. In the meantime, the unvaccinated had to get their schooling on-line, also organized by the superintendent. Annual audits of the schools are supposed to check vaccination records, but these audits are random, probably meaning they miss a lot.
HEADLINE OF THE DAY: “BOE Adjusts the Proposition 19 $1 Million Intergenerational Transfer Exclusion Amount”
MIKE KOEPF:
I began life on a salmon boat age 11. Fished salmon as an adult for 25 years. A salmon fleet of hundreds has now reduced to a handful, and they have not fished for 2 years. Fresh, troll caught king salmon in California are finished. The public now consumes farmed salmon raised in their own excrement and fortified with chemicals, as opposed to the healthiest wild fish in the world. When dams were created for farming during the 1920s, farmers and politicians of those times understood that dams would greatly impact the reproduction of salmon in California. Thus, they created hatcheries, which sustained an abundant and self-sustaining fishery for nearly 50 years. However, with subdivisions, household and auto pollution as well as river warming due to the diminishing of shade trees along river banks as well as LOGGING! (your cherished world) which silted up most of the remaining natural spawning grounds, salmon reproduction fell exclusively back to hatcheries. They’ve not been expanded, they’ve not been maintained. As a matter of fact, Sacramento hatchery salmon were just about all that was left. AND, it took a commercial fisherman, my friend, Michael McHenry, to save them. McHenry pointed out to the California Fish and Wildlife that most of their hatched smolts were not making it to the sea due to warm water and irrigation pumps on the Sacramento River. He took his vessel (the Merva W) up the Sacramento River, loaded hatchery smolts into his flooded hold, and sailed them down to San Francisco Bay for release. (See New York Times) It’s a program now emulated by the last, real Sacramento River hatchery, via tanker trucks. A few Coho’s in your creek or nearby river? Wonderful. Salmon are returning. Isn’t it pretty to think so? But, it’s restoration, dream fodder for environmentalists patting themselves on the back after the millions they’ve received for so-called “salmon restoration.” A couple of hundred coho here and there? Great! Salmon hatcheries produce millions.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, March 7, 2025
CAYLIN COLLICOTT, 27, Eureka/Ukiah. Unspecified offense.
YECSON DELAHERAN-RIVERA, 41, Ukiah. Controlled substance, parole violation.
ENNA HATCHER, 39, Shingleton/Ukiah. Stolen property, controlled substance, conspiracy, probation revocation.
DELISSE JONES, 43, Eureka/Ukiah. Failure to appear.
LILLIAN KEAHON, 34, Garberville/Laytonville. DUI.
JASON OMHOLT, 47, Willits. Attempted murder, resisting.
SESARIO RIOS IV, 44, Hopland. Stolen property, conspiracy, probation revocation.
DYLAN RUMBLE, 25, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, disobeying court order, failure to appear.
ALWOOD SMITH, 24, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury, vandalism, parole violation.
KRYSTAL WILLIAMS, 34, Willits. Conspiracy.
INTRODUCTION TO THIS LETTER PROJECT
by Paul Modic
When covid hit I was recovering from a hip replacement and was very hesitant to hit the road. Instead of going up to Washington to visit my mother in the nursing home, I decided to write to her every day and snail mail it to her in the afternoon. I did that from June to January, six days a week the first couple months then five days a week for the rest of them.
When I had the production line humming I would first choose the photos, print off a pile of thirty to fifty, write the letters on the back of the photos, then pick out a page of essays to include. I stapled the whole mess together, folded it up and put it in a standard envelope, and mailed it off. (For added incentive I shuffled the photos and didn’t look at which one I’d chosen until I was done writing on the back of that page.)
After my mother died, my sister brought the letters back to me and as I was preparing for an open mic I thought about reading from some of them as part of my act. I didn’t do that, stuck with poems, stories, and dialogs, and then came up with the idea to create this compilation of about 150 letters. I was planning to just make one copy with the original letters and now that one is done I’m thinking of making a few more, for family and maybe the library.
MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio show all night tonight on KNYO and KAKX!
Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is 5pm or so. And if that's too soon, send it any time after that and I'll read it next Friday.
Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino. Tonight on KNYO, MOTA follows the Steven Bates Band playing live at 7pm, 365 N. Franklin; waltz right in like you own the place, for that.
Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. You'll finds plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with, such as:
Vital organs. (via Neatorama)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/eight-places-to-experience-a-movie-like-its-1925-180986144
Swing jazz on hurdy-gurdy.
https://laughingsquid.com/jazz-on-hurdy-gurdy/
And out-dumbing ignorant bigots. (15 min.)
Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
A 250 FT. WALL OF WATER ON THE TRINITY RIVER IS STILL A BIG THREAT
by Dan Bacher
Trinity Dam has been a source of anxiety ever since Oroville Dam on the Feather River almost failed during the megastorms of 2017. Both are earth-fill dams, and both are vulnerable to overtopping.
“If Oroville had overtopped, the surging water would’ve rapidly eroded the dam, ultimately unleashing a massive flood down the Feather and Sacramento Rivers,” according to a press release from the California Water Network. “The same scenario applies to Trinity Dam, its downstream earth-fill sister structure, Lewiston Dam, the Trinity River, and the Lower Klamath River.”
“Trinity and Lewiston Dams actually pose a bigger threat than Oroville because they have such poor outlet structures,” said Tom Stokely, a Board Member of the California Water Impact NetFor a reservoir of Trinity’s size, said Stokely, “That’s completely inadequate – especially because a failure at Trinity would dump the water into Lewiston Reservoir, which would likewise fail, adding to the downstream flood.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Stokely observed, “If Trinity and Lewiston Dam failed it would send a wall of water 250 feet high down the Trinity River and Lower Klamath River. You’d lose all the towns along the way – Lewiston, Douglas City, Junction City, Willow Creek, Requa – and all the homes and farms between them. Highway 299 would be destroyed. It would be a massive disaster.”…
THIS WILL BE THE YEAR OF CALIFORNIA WINERY CLOSURES
by Esther Mobley
About a year ago, one prominent Napa vintner told me, “A lot of brands are dead, but they don’t even know it right now.”
At that point, last spring, it was becoming clear that the American wine industry was facing a major reckoning. It just wasn’t clear how intense that reckoning would become.
One of the clearest ways to understand this moment for American wine is in looking at winery closures: For the first time in a generation, the number of U.S. wineries declined in 2024. The West Coast’s winery count dropped by 4.3%, according to Wine Business Analytics.
In the Bay Area, we began to see notable wineries announcing closures in the middle of last year (Edmunds St. John, Carlisle, Brendel, Tarpon, Sbragia). The first three months of 2025 have delivered even more fallen soldiers, notably Napa’s Newton Vineyards. A slate of others — Brian Arden, Arista — have sold off their facilities while hoping to keep the brands alive in a different form.
“It’s going to be a slow decline,” said Dale Stratton, managing director at Napa consulting firm Azur Associates. “The 20-year run that we had as a wine category was phenomenal. As all of that consumption growth was happening, infrastructure was growing along with it to support it. As we see consumption moderate, we’re going to see some of that infrastructure” — vineyards, production facilities, tasting rooms — “go away too.”
In other words, there are too many wineries in the U.S. for the amount of wine that Americans currently want to drink. And just as vineyards across California are now being ripped out in an attempt to achieve market equilibrium, many wine producers will need to shut their doors too.
Some distressed wineries won’t close; they’ll sell. There’s been plenty of merger-and-acquisition activity in the wine industry in the last year, though Azur estimates that the total value of it, at $2.6 billion, was down in 2024 from the previous year’s $3 billion. Some of that was skewed, Stratton said, by the extremely discounted assets of Vintage Wine Estates, a major conglomerate that filed for bankruptcy in the summer.
Stratton expects to see a flurry of acquisitions in the coming year. He addressed the widely circulating rumor that Constellation, the country’s fifth-largest wine company, is trying to sell off all of its wine brands, which include Robert Mondavi, the Prisoner, Woodbridge and Domaine Curry, as reported by leading wine trade publication Wine Business. If true, Stratton said, it wouldn’t surprise him: “When you look at financial results, their beer business seems to be in a much stronger position,” he said. (Constellation sells Modelo and Corona.) “There have been analysts suggesting that maybe the wine business isn’t a great place for Constellation.”
Beer now represents nearly 82% of Constellation’s sales, according to the company’s annual earnings report, compared with wine’s 15.6%, a divide that has widened: Beer sales grew by 3% year-over-year in the third quarter of last year, while wine dropped by 14%. Strong as the beer business may have looked, however, Constellation was just dealt a blow by President Trump’s tariff announcement. All of its beer that is produced in Mexico will now be subject to a 25% tax.
There is historical precedent for a diversified beverage company exiting the wine business. Coca-Cola and Nestle both invested in wine in the 1970s when they acquired wineries including Napa’s Sterling and Beringer, respectively. Both got out of wine in the following decades. Diageo, once a formidable wine corporation, sold off all of its wine brands in 2016 to focus on spirits.
How much worse can it get? “I would say that we seem to have leveled out in negative territory,” said Stratton. “As long as conditions stay where they are, we’ll continue to see activity in the M&A market and, more than likely, some people just shuttering facilities.”
(You’re reading the Drinking with Esther newsletter. Reach Esther Mobley: emobley@sfchronicle.com)
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
by Fred Gardner
Before Diversity, Equity & Inclusion there was Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action programs took off at the end of the '60s in direct response to the civil rights movement. The bosses set aside for Black people a certain number of slots in government agencies, corporations, union apprenticeship programs, medical schools and other institutions in which "minorities" had been "traditionally underrepresented." It was a tactic to defuse the revolutionary potential of the black movement by buying off an articulate, ambitious ten percent. It was brilliant and effective.
Affirmative Action put everybody in a bind. Black people were in a bind because things got steadily worse for the community as a whole, but better for the privileged few. Many sensed that people attributed their success –a promotion at work, admission to medical school– to the supposed "advantage" of race. (I heard more than one Black med student express this unease when I worked at UCSF years ago.)
White people were in a bind because they knew that their chances of getting a scholarship, or into the fire department, were diminished by affirmative action. They'd say, "I'm not a racist and my ancestors weren't slave-owners, in fact, they were immigrants and got discriminated against, too. Why must I lose out on a job?"
The Blacks replied, "How can you compare the discrimination suffered by an Italian immigrant with being ripped from your homeland, your family, and brought over here in chains, deprived of all rights, whipped, lynched, systematically segregated, undereducated, jailed, hated for the color of your skin…"
Everyone was divided, everyone defined their politics in terms of ethnicity, gender, or some other "special issue." The fake left of course played a very bad role in all this. They promoted political activity based on everybody's separate-interest trips – African Americans, women, Hispanics, Pilipinos, prisoners, Native Americans, gays, fat people, pot smokers– instead of building a party that could bring about meaningful change.
I walked into the single-trap with eyes wide open when I decided to cover the medical marijuana movement in the late '90s. (To make a living as a journalist you need a niche.)
One Saturday afternoon in the autumn of 2002 (I think) I went to hear Rep. Barney Frank give a talk at the Autumn Moon Cafe in Oakland. The Massachusetts Congressman was revered by the higher-ranking pot proponents. He had come to raise funds for the Democrats and to get out the vote.
Barney Frank was a few years ahead of me at Harvard. I remember him, overweight and unathletic, umpiring a softball game between The Crimson (the newspaper) and the Lampoon (a humor magazine). He stood behind the pitcher and kept up a very funny patter throughout the game. He could have been a successful stand-up comic. But by the time I caught his act in Oakland, he was a pompous bore.
“Speak truth to power,” Barney told the assembled cheese nibblers in Oakland. “Pragmatism and idealism are not incompatible,” he said, as if he was living proof.
He blamed the dismal state of the nation on Ralph Nader and expressed concern that the Greens might somehow cost the Democrats control of the House in the upcoming election. “Anyone who can’t tell the difference between Nancy Pelosi and Tom Delay has been on another planet,” he fumed. He contrasted the destructive Nader to admirable Jesse Jackson, whose loyalty to the Democratic Party had convinced Bill Clinton not to abandon Affirmative Action. “Thanks to Jesse Jackson working within the framework of the Democratic Party, we won that fight,” said Frank.
Some pot proponents actually clapped their hands. They had come to the Autumn Moon to thank him for sponsoring a bill that would move their favorite plant from Schedule I to Schedule II and acknowledge the right of states to enact medical mj initiatives. As Barney was receiving their expressions of gratitude, your correspondent asked why marijuana belonged in Schedule II, along with morphine and cocaine, rather than in Schedule III, with Marinol –or lower.
“What planet have you been on?” he sneered, repeating his banal put-down. He read my name tag and changed tone slightly. "Do you know how hard it’s been to get the very few votes we have for that bill?”
The same planet as Ralph Nader, I said. The sneer came back. “All you care about are symbols,” he lectured. “My bill is a pragmatic first step. Then there can be other steps.”
No, Barney, the reforms you pass off as first steps always turn out to be final steps, the limit to what we’re going to get in response to our demands. Affirmative Action is a perfect example. In the ‘60s the cities were burning from Newark to Watts and Black people were demanding power. So it was decided to cut them in —not en masse, of course, just the most articulate, the potential leaders. Ten percent (at the very most) would get slots at the big corporations and government agencies and union apprenticeship programs. Affirmative action supposedly represented the triumph of the civil rights movement, as if “a piece of the pie” for a fortunate few had been the goal all along. The first step turned out to be the end of the march.
In Oakland, Barney Frank accepted the gratitude of the medical mj "activists" as if it were his due. He didn’t ask anybody about the raids on their gardens or their pending court cases. He kept looking over their shoulders in case there was somebody more important in the room. His parting words in my direction were, “If you think marijuana should be schedule III, find another Congressman to sponsor a bill."
In the star chamber night
Forgotten are the scents of old Tonkin
Four hundred and twenty to one
For WAR what's another forty billion?
Where was Barney Frank, where was Pelosi?
Just you, Barbara Lee
Just you, Barbara Lee, just you
FAN NOTE FROM THE SUPERBOWL
by Nick Paumgarten
By now, the regular fans, who, although not quite working stiffs, were obliged to recognize the traditional boundary between week and weekend, were arriving in New Orleans, and the proceedings were morphing from a corporate convention and media event into a mass happening and citywide bacchanal. The hotel district teemed, in the vicinity of Caesars casino, where you could pick up your wagering menu: forty small-print pages of possible bets and scenarios. The French Quarter was in full Brueghel, inside a makeshift Green Zone. The Louisiana State Police, in combat gear, had set up blockades on the cross streets, to guard against an attack like the one that had killed fourteen people on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day.
At an Eagles-fan party in the Garden District—cheesesteaks from Yinzer’s, soft pretzels, and Tastykakes—I met a young lawyer who worked for a legal-aid organization in the city, who preferred that I not use his name, lest he get fired. He told me that Louisiana, under the direction of Governor Jeff Landry, a conservative Republican, had—under the powers made permissible by the Supreme Court’s recent decision, in Grants Pass v. Johnson—swept the city streets of indigents, in preparation for Super Bowl week. Law enforcement had cleared the homeless encampments under the interstate between the convention center and the Superdome and bused scores of people to a temporary shelter in Pontchartrain Park. So the New Orleans of the Super Bowl, both guarded and scrubbed by the state police, was, he said, a Potemkin New Orleans that called to mind what the Chinese Communist Party had done during the Beijing Olympics. Certainly, most of the locals I talked to disdained this particular tourist invasion, especially the way that so many of the events were private and invitation-only, in contravention of the come-one, come-all ethos of New Orleans. And the local businesses that weren’t reserved for such occasions were doing hardly any business at all. The locals I saw were lying low and waiting for the Super Bowl crowd to leave town.
“As soon as you all fuck off,” one said, “it’s Mardi Gras.”
That local took me to see the Dirty Dozen Brass Band at Tipitina’s, the venerable club uptown. Inside, the Eagles chants persisted. Upstairs, by the bar, before hearing my second “Go to the Mardi Gras” of the day, I met a cluster of fans: two Bucks County fathers named Bill, with their college-age daughters, Brynn and Maria, all four in Kelly-green tracksuits but as yet ticketless, and then Al Zone (as in calzone), Sr., and Jr. Zone the younger ran a zoo in Norristown, and was the keeper of the team’s “official live mascot,” which is actually a pair of bald eagles, Noah and Reggie, who do suite appearances at home games. “They wouldn’t let us bring them,” Zone, Jr., said.
My father played boarding-school football. My mother once went to watch a game, and her abiding recollection was of his having burned himself badly with a tanning lamp, in preparation for her visit, and hardly being able to put on his helmet. My younger brother took up the sport in prep school, and the memory I have of him, as a ninth grader with the thirds (the team below junior varsity), is from the opening kickoff, in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Ludicrous in his pads, like Peter Boyle in “Young Frankenstein,” he ran full tilt downfield and caught the runner clean, knocking him cold. “Jesus,” I said. I have never played a down.
By now, we know the case against football. The violence and the carnage, the shattered bodies and brains it leaves in its wake. The N.F.L. retirees, hounded by addiction and depression, driven to harm others, or themselves, or both. Though the pay is great, the job security is not. The contracts aren’t fully guaranteed, and an N.F.L. career lasts on average about three years. They call it a business, but the business is the grinding up of young men’s bodies, the majority of them Black. The owners are nearly all white billionaires whose franchises balloon in value much faster than the athletes’ shares. Then again, many people grumble about the players, too, the football guys everywhere, their legacy of wild or violent behavior in high school and college and beyond, the coddled jocks, the tribal entitlement, the sexual violence. A dozen years ago, when the concussion scourge came to the fore, with a class-action suit featuring thousands of ex-players, many commentators and scolds predicted that the league was in jeopardy, that good-hearted educators would phase out the game—soccer’s ascendance, at last!—and that ultimately this would deprive the league of bodies to grind up. Instead, the league has boomed. Violence sells: quelle surprise. Or maybe it’s the gambling, now legal in most states and profitable in all, though not for the gamblers.
I know all this—and the first glimpse of the games each autumn, with the crack of the helmets and the car-wreck collisions, always stuns me afresh—and yet I continue to tune in. I love the sport itself, the complexity of it, the variety of bodies and roles, the grace amid the peril, the sacrifices, the story lines, the religious devotion to the fate of a team and a city that’s not even my own.
(New Yorker)
WHAT AM I AFRAID OF?
The silence, the thoughts
that come with it, the sinking
suspicion that something more
is wrong with me than anyone
knows, including myself, including
the doctor who hooked me up
to the EKG machine and said
that though my heartbeat was irregular,
the irregularity was normal.
It was nothing to worry about.
The doctor told me there are two kinds
of people: unhealthy people who refuse
to get help, and healthy people
who always think they’re dying.
Nobody’s in between. But I’ve met
so many kinds of people:
people who stretch before
they get out of bed, people
who walk through life unstretched,
people who think their body
is a house and people who don’t
think of their body at all.
People who peel their carrots,
people who don’t. People who
stand on the roof and let the wind
make them cry. People who are afraid
to cry. People who step on all the leaves
on the sidewalk, people who look
straight ahead. There are people
who aren’t like me, they
don’t know the names
of all the different apples.
Once when I was cashiering
a woman said to me, “Wow,
you really know your kale.”
And once, at the butcher shop,
a man said to his dog, “That’s
the nice lady who smells like meat.”
I’m afraid I don’t know
what kind of person I am.
I thought I would get a chance
to do my life over in all the ways
anyone could think of: dying
would be like changing the channel.
I hate that you can’t hold on
to anything. I was washing an apple
and then I was coring it
and then it was cut—
and that was weeks ago now.
It was a Honeycrisp, and it lived up
to its name.
— Sasha Debevec-McKenney
IN THESE DARK TRUMPIAN DAYS, LOOK FOR THE FIRST SHOOTS OF COLLECTIVE ACTION
by Anne Lamott
A cartoon in the New Yorker decades ago showed two prisoners chained to the wall at the wrists and ankles, well off the ground, in a jail cell, in a cave. One man turns to the other and says, “Okay, here’s my plan….”
I thought of this after reading the news with my coffee. Outside a thick, fuzzy, gray sky loomed. The ridge was almost obscured. Panic seemed to sit on my chest and admire its polished fingernails. All of my older friends express this anxious hopelessness off and on. We feel older these last few months as the chaos and cruelty escalate. We are more tired and forgetful, noticing an increase in food stains on our shirts, strange streaks on our good pants.
We blame Elon Musk.
The brooding weather mirrored my present state, which is, let’s say, concerned, with the usual random pockets of happiness, and hope in the goodness of people and that silly old Constitution. I still experience life as a great gift, in a mixed grill sort of way. Once when Carrie Fisher was in a long period of sobriety, an interviewer asked her if she was happy now, and she replied, “Happy is one of the things I am most days.”
Where is our North Star, pointing home? We have never lived in a country where men behave like this. While we wait to see whether Musk and President Trump defy the coming court orders, while we wait for the mass protest marches and general strikes to begin, my friends and I are taking care of each other and our families. We give to the ACLU and Oxfam. We check in with each other: The system works because we are not all freaked out on the same day. Someone always feels hopeful about the future. It is me, quite often. I know in my Sunday-school teacher’s heart that goodness surrounds us, that grace bats last and that things are not going to end up well for these guys. Yay, karma.
Millions of people are being damaged. Direct action is needed, is happening, is beginning to grow. We watch and hope.
We savor all that still works, the beauty all around us, small moments. Of course, in my cranky case, some are vengeful: Watching the little Musk boy scold Trump in the Oval Office gave me a new lease on life. I laughed for days at the look on Trump’s face, like someone trying to be polite on a bad first date. As Musk raved on to the press, you could see Trump wanting to be supportive of this strange little billionaire. You could see him thinking, “Why did I agree to this; and who do I fire?”
Some moments are practical: crisp clean sheets on the bed as often as possible, lying in between them like a delicious sandwich filling.
Some are cultural. Edward Norton as Pete Seeger in “A Complete Unknown.” Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter singing a duet of “Homeward Bound,” the old genius and the new green sprout that has broken through the concrete.
One recent morning in the gloom I called a friend who can sometimes offer hope, but he refused to talk about the latest news: The day before, Trump had accidentally fired the nuclear weapons staff — oh, well. This was the final straw for my friend. “You big baby,” I said. “Pick pick pick.” I asked what his plans for the day were. He said, languidly, “I think I’ll just sit back and try to enjoy the fascist paradise.” I burst out laughing, somewhat hysterically, perhaps like Blanche DuBois on crack cocaine.
Picturing him reclining by the pool on a chaise longue with a frosted lime rickey and a long cigarette holder lifted my spirits all morning.
My friends and I are looking around for hope, answers and maybe a prophet or two. We peek around like worried children. The author Barry Lopez wrote: “We’re all searching for the boats we forget to build.”
My great friend, the writer Mark Yaconelli, visited a working community in one of the most destitute areas of Glasgow, called Gal Gael, of lost young people, recovering addicts, homeless folks and war veterans, building a sailboat in the old ways. They chipped and carved and planed with ancient tools, and no nails. They wedged slabs of wood together, slotted them perfectly. They were happy. They had purpose and each other. Their boat-building was about cultural pride, and a reconnection with lost roots.
Mark asked the director, “What will you do with this boat?” After a minute, the man replied, “We’ll go sailing.”
Maybe we need to build a bunch of little boats. We can start or join projects to feed and protect those most in danger now, meals and community organizing, getting to know each other. My friends and I recall going to Vietnam protests in the ’60s where 12 people showed up, but ultimately we stopped the war. Will large and small demonstrations make a difference? They’re good for the soul. We have to continue to act on our understanding of what is right. We need to perform acts of compassion that are missing in the current nasty public sphere.
When anyone sees people like us respond in a human and compassionate way, it’s a check against the feral thing we all carry inside.
When I got sober in 1986, a man said to me that at the end of his drinking, he was deteriorating faster than he could lower his standards, and this was me exactly. I honestly and deeply think that this is happening now in the Capitol. We are hitting bottom, where there’s nothing left to do but to give in to what you can’t control. It’s time for trust and surrender. The clenched muscles let go since there’s nothing left to clutch. The letting go gives a taste of peace, long overdue, and that’s when the shift occurs, maybe not at first in the scary situation, but internally.
Usually a story that begins with gloomy weather and a heavy heart ends with the sun coming out, but something better happened the day of the fuzzy gray morning. A fine curtain of raindrops began falling, and it made me so happy. We are all parched for moisture, inside and out. Puddles and the first paperwhites, well worth the chill.
(Anne Lamott, an author of fiction and nonfiction, lives in Marin County. Her latest book is “Somehow: Thoughts on Love.”)
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
The best Gong Show Presidency Money Can Buy: According to documents obtained by Wired, corporate leaders and business tycoons are paying as much as $5,000,000 for meetings with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Earlier this month, Mar-a-Lago hosted a “Candlelight Dinner.” The cost to reserve a seat started at $1,000,000.
Unlike many in the ranks of the Left (and I’m never quite sure whether, as they say in the French Quarter, I’m part of their number), I have great admiration for Zelensky. If not for his politics, then for his courage in standing up to two of the three biggest bullies of our time, Putin and Trump. (If only we could set him loose on Netanyahu.) So I was pleased to see him give no ground when he was set-up at the White House in an ambush staged for TV by Trump and the increasingly ridiculous JD Vance, where I’m pretty sure Trump counted on him folding before the cameras. He didn’t and I’m sure he’ll end up paying the price. But it was Trump and Vance who looked weak, not Zelensky.
One of the most amusing aspects of the entire debacle was Trump’s apparent outrage over Zelensky ignoring his “order” that he wear a business suit to his own execution. This is especially amusing considering how Elon Musk dressed to attend Trump’s first meeting with his new cabinet.
LEAD STORIES, SATURDAY'S NYT
‘You Can’t Pin Him Down’: Trump’s Contradictions Are His Ultimate Cover
Elon Musk Is Making Republicans Sweat and Giving Democrats a New Target
Trump Allies Seek Pardons From an Emboldened White House
Inside the Explosive Meeting Where White House Officials Clashed With Musk
INSIDE THE EXPLOSIVE MEETING WHERE TRUMP OFFICIALS CLASHED WITH ELON MUSK
Simmering anger at the billionaire’s unchecked power spilled out in a remarkable Cabinet Room meeting. The president quickly moved to rein in Mr. Musk.
by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman
Marco Rubio was incensed. Here he was in the Cabinet Room of the White House, the secretary of state, seated beside the president and listening to a litany of attacks from the richest man in the world.
Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Mr. Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff.
You have fired “nobody,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting on Thursday in front of President Trump and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest.
Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department.
Mr. Musk was unimpressed. He told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.
After the argument dragged on for an uncomfortable time, Mr. Trump finally intervened to defend Mr. Rubio as doing a “great job.” Mr. Rubio has a lot to deal with, the president said. He is very busy, he is always traveling and on TV, and he has an agency to run. So everyone just needs to work together.
The meeting was a potential turning point after the frenetic first weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term. It yielded the first significant indication that Mr. Trump was willing to put some limits on Mr. Musk, whose efforts have become the subject of several lawsuits and prompted concerns from Republican lawmakers, some of whom have complained directly to the president.
Cabinet officials almost uniformly like the concept of what Mr. Musk set out to do — reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government — but have been frustrated by the chain saw approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent coordination.
Thursday’s meeting, which was abruptly scheduled on Wednesday evening, was a sign that Mr. Trump was mindful of the growing complaints. He tried to offer each side something by praising both Mr. Musk and his cabinet secretaries. (At least one, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has had tense encounters related to Mr. Musk’s team, was not present.) The president made clear he still supported the mission of the Musk initiative. But now was the time, he said, to be a bit more refined in its approach.
From now on, he said, the secretaries would be in charge; the Musk team would only advise.
It is unclear what the long-term impact of the meeting will be. Mr. Musk remains Mr. Trump’s biggest political financial supporter — just this week his super PAC aired $1 million worth of ads that said, “Thank you, President Trump” — and Mr. Musk’s control of the social media website X has made administration staff members and cabinet secretaries alike fearful that he will target them in public.
But if nothing else, the session laid bare the tensions within Mr. Trump’s team, and news of the sharp clashes spread quickly through senior ranks of cabinet agencies after it was over. This account is based on interviews with five people with knowledge of the events.
In a post on social media after the meeting, Mr. Trump said the next phase of his plan to cut the federal work force would be conducted with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” — a clear reference to Mr. Musk’s scorched-earth approach.
Mr. Musk, who wore a suit and tie to Thursday’s meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Mr. Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance, defended himself by saying that he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves.
But he was soon clashing with members of the cabinet.
Just moments before the blowup with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Mr. Musk.
Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?
Mr. Musk told Mr. Duffy that his assertion was a “lie.” Mr. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly. Mr. Musk, asking who had been fired, said: Give me their names. Tell me their names.
Mr. Duffy said there were not any names, because he had stopped them from being fired. At another point, Mr. Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back and Mr. Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Mr. Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.
The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from M.I.T. as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.
The secretary of veterans affairs, Doug Collins, has been dealing with one of the most politically sensitive challenges of all the cabinet secretaries. Mr. Musk’s cuts will affect thousands of veterans — a powerful constituency and a core part of the Trump base. Mr. Collins made the point that they should not wield a blunt instrument and cleave off everyone from the V.A. They needed to be strategic about it. Mr. Trump agreed with Mr. Collins, saying they ought to retain the smart ones and get rid of the bad ones.
In response to a request for comment from The New York Times, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement: “As President Trump said, this was a great and productive meeting amongst members of his team to discuss cost-cutting measures and staffing across the federal government. Everyone is working as one team to help President Trump deliver on his promise to make our government more efficient.”
Tammy Bruce, a spokeswoman for the State Department, responded, “Secretary Rubio considered the meeting an open and productive discussion with a dynamic team that is united in achieving the same goal: making America great again.”
A Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman said, “As President Trump has said, it’s important to increase efficiency and reduce bureaucracy while keeping in place the best and most productive federal employees. V.A. is working with DOGE and the rest of the administration to do just that.”
In a post on X on Friday, Mr. Duffy praised Mr. Trump and the work Mr. Musk’s team is doing and said it was an effective cabinet meeting. He added that “the DEI Department at the FAA was eliminated on day 2” and that Mr. Trump’s “approach of a scalpel versus a hatchet and better coordination between Secretaries and DOGE is the right approach to revolutionizing the way our government is run.”
Mr. Musk, who later claimed on X that the cabinet meeting was “very productive,” seemed far less enthused inside the room. He aggressively defended himself, reminding the cabinet secretaries that he had built multiple billion-dollar companies from the ground up and knew something about hiring good people.
Most cabinet members did not join the fray. Mr. Musk’s anger directed at Mr. Rubio in particular seemed to catch people in the room by surprise, one person with knowledge of the meeting said. Another person said Mr. Musk’s caustic responses to Mr. Duffy and Mr. Rubio seemed to deter other cabinet members, many of whom have privately complained about the Musk team, from speaking.
But it remains to be seen how long this new arrangement will last.
DEMS & BLOB TOGETHER
by James Kunstler
If the Jacobins of Paris, 1794, had not been bum-rushed to the “national razor,” perhaps they would have acted-out as clownishly in defeat as America’s Democratic Party does right now after their election debacle of 2024. Imagine Robespierre in Harlequin drag riding backwards on a goat over the Pont Neuf to do handsprings and a juggling act in the Parvis de Notre-Dame. Alas, foiled by the guillotine. . . .
Now imagine Rep. Al Green (9th Texas Dist) shaking his cane and hollering curses at the rostrum in Tuesday night’s joint session of Congress. Two days later, he carried on again in the well of Congress as Speaker Johnson read out his bill of censure and a motley mob of Mr. Green’s fellow Dems gathered ‘round to sing We Shall Overcome — the once stately Civil Rights movement reduced to abject farce. Such things are really happening.
The Dems’ game has been revealed. The revenue stream for their national wrecking operations is suddenly cut off and it’s game-over. Everybody can see how this worked now. You funnel vast amounts of US taxpayer dollars into Non-Governmental Organizations, NGOs, spin off more NGOs below them, and add extra layers of subsidiary NGOs, and all of them pay their staffs of Dem Party foot-soldiers for do-nothing jobs — leaving plenty of time for riots and real-estate investing — a splendid racket that worked for years to support the insane antics of the Woke-Jacobin revolution. (And you paid for it.)
The catch is: an org that gets government money is hardly non-governmental. Wouldn’t you think there’s some law against that? Thus, Exhibit A: in September 2022, Dem luminary John Podesta was put in-charge of a $369-billion fund out of “Joe Biden’s” so-called Inflation Reduction Act, tagged for climate change action. Conceptualize further: that’s three-hundred-seventy-nine-thousand-million dollars (!), a lot of millions, disbursed among tens of thousands of NGOs and their contractors. It boggles the mind that the government could even manage to cream-off such a fortune out our nation’s alleged aggregate productivity.
It was, in reality, money conjured out of thin air: debt. Before long, you are going to find out where it all went, and the picture will not be a pretty one: Into the NGO laundromat and straight out to Democratic Party members’ bank accounts, one of the greatest grifts in our history. Of course, your grandchildren are on the hook for all the debt behind it. Do you think our DC Federal District judges would serve better presiding over these matters than spending years hunting down J-6 “paraders”?
Without that bonanza of conjured money for laying trips on the rest of us, the Democratic Party has nothing, not a single credible idea, not any plausible leadership, really no reason to exist. It has been for years nothing more than a gigantic grift engine extracting the remaining wealth out of our republic. So, what you are seeing acted out on the DC streets and the well of Congress and on the angst-filled cable news networks is the kind of ghost-dance that attends the death of a great political machine. Buh-bye…
The symbiote of that parasitical organism is the “blob” of war profiteers, pharma profiteers, seditionists, traitors, lunatic ideologues and assorted criminals lodged in the DC bureaucracy and Congress. For instance, former CIA Director John Brennan (appointed by Barack Obama), a veritable US Communist Party activist in his youth and all the above in age. After 2020, Mr. Brennan might have thought all he had to do was kick back in a comfortable retirement, make a little extra “walking-around money” doing hits on MSNBC, and enjoying the esteem of his former colleagues as a legendary blob poobah. Likewise, Mr. Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff, Chair of the Hillary Clinton 2016 election campaign, and many other distinguished perches. Likewise, Senator John Warner, RussiaGate promoter as Vice-Chairman of the Senate Intel Committee; and likewise, Senator Adam Schiff, chief engineer of Trump Impeachment No. 1; and likewise, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, rumored to have enabled the J-6 riot by denying National Guard reinforcements for the Capitol Police; and likewise, former AG Merrick Garland, the Torquemada of lawfare, and likewise, FBI Director Christopher Wray for concealing the far-ranging criminality of his Bureau in a long list of hoaxes and ops against the public, and likewise, Gina Haspel, who ran the CIA through the high times or RussiaGate hoaxdom; and likewise, “Biden,” Blinken, and Sullivan in Ukraine and the fate of $300-billion-plus in purloined aid — all these people just a small sample of the depraved officials who operated with such gross impunity against the citizens of this land, soon to collide with the wheels of justice.
The Democratic Party is no longer in a position to defend them, and conversely the blob actors are in no position anymore to protect their allies in the Dem Party. It is a mutual aid society suddenly turned into a suicide pact. The real action hasn’t quite commenced yet as a new officialdom warily finds its place — Bondi, Patel, Kennedy, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Musk — to address a complex agenda of reform for that matrix of appalling agency corruption. We await a flood-tide of greatly disturbing revelation and concrete actionable allegation.
Between all that and the cascade of truth finally emerging about Covid-19 and its dastardly vaccine program, America’s elite managerial class — Dems and blob together — find themselves like Pharoah’s Army of old, trapped by an onrushing flood of destruction. All they have left is making faces and screeching like ghouls.
A LEGAL IMMIGRANT tells the truth about liberal crocodile tear compassion:
Not long after I came to America I was exposed to the narrative that the Democrat Party was the party of the little guy and the only party with genuine care and compassion for the average American. Fortunately because I grew up under a dictatorship I could not be easily fooled by socioeconomic shackles masquerading as compassionate public policy. The truth is there is no compassion like Democrat compassion, it is the kind of compassion that lets people shoot illicit drugs into their body with the government's assistance. It is a kind of compassion that sees assisted suicide as a moral virtue. Democrat compassion is a kind of compassion that lets you rob the innocent in hardworking businesses in your neighborhood and walk out with impunity with no fear of prosecution.
Democrat compassion is a kind of compassion that tells vulnerable women it is their right to abort and sacrifice their unborn children on the perverted altar of female empowerment and convenience. Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that tells children they were born in the wrong body and encourages and subsidizes their mutilation. Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that lets boys unfairly compete against girls taking their records, their opportunities, and their scholarships and invade their private spaces turning back Decades of hard-fought gains… and progress Democrat compassion is a kind of compassion that allows homeless people to defecate on sidewalks and sleep in tense in public parks while watching them as they abuse drugs and suffer through mental illness…
IN THE WEST we have the saying “talk is cheap”, but what’s funny is that there’s absolutely nothing in western society that reflects this as our actual position. The politicians who talk the biggest talk are the ones who get into power. The promotions, investments and business loans go to the people who talk the best game. Our whole society is perpetually marinating in propaganda where skillful manipulators use words to influence the way people think, speak, vote, work, spend, and behave at mass scale.
Talk is not cheap in western society. Talk is highly valued and handsomely rewarded. Talk is our most prized product.
Interestingly I have read that in China the exact opposite is the case. Very little value is placed on talk. The politicians who are elevated to prominence are the ones who have proved themselves with accomplishments over the years. Western businessmen sometimes struggle in China because their whole careers they’ve learned that making big deals comes down to talking big talk, but Chinese businesses are only interested in whether you have a solid track record of coming through with the goods. Even between family members and romantic partnerships there’s a lot less emphasis on saying “I love you” and a lot more emphasis on showing your love with deeds, because in China, talk really is cheap.
And funny enough that’s how we’re seeing things play out on the world stage: the west pouring immense amounts of resources into propaganda, cultural domination and soft power influence operations while China quietly surges ahead in more and more fields every year. We’re talking while China is doing.
— Caitlin Johnstone
OAF-ISM has been with us forever. The historic Boonville Lodge was one example going back into the early 1950s. The combination of alcohol, and redneck culture are the key ingredients for OAF-ISM behavior.
Well, George, bless your heart, that’s rather blue blood of you. Once upon a time, I had a drink or two at the old Boonville Lodge with the working folks there. Hard to forget Amie Bloyd behind the plank, when she flashed them. Hard to stay on your stool. Evelyn’s Oasis in Elk was much the same. Tip Top in Fort Bragg; Dicks when the loggers came off shift, and there was fisherman’s bar down on the Noyo flats, the Round House. Lots of tall tales about the sea, fishing and women. Lots of lies and laughs to boot.
“Redneck.” George, did you know that the term originated as a derogatory term for white farmers who had sunburned necks from working in the fields? It became common in the 1930s. Also, the term goes back to the West Virgina coal wars…miners versus rich, coal mine owners. In 1922 in the Battle of Blair Mountain where the striking coal miners were besieged by the National Guard and bomb dropping bi-planes, the miners all wore red bandannas around their necks to identify friend from foe. A good portion of the miners were black men. Nonetheless, the hi-tones of America disparaged the strikers as “rednecks” just as they did hard-working farmers. Signed: Oaf.
That is the origin of redneck, but how it evolved to the current meaning of ScottsIrish culture, I can only guess. Cracker, and hill billy also describe the same. The ScottsIrish, and the Yankees have held mutual distain, coupled with mutual prejudices for each other for many centuries, and to some extent still do. A person using a Southern dialect is assumed to be ignorant. A person using a New England dialect is assumed to be uppity. Southern black culture has many aspects of redneck culture. Thomas Sowell wrote a book about that titled “White Liberals, and Black Rednecks”.
The term redneck started much earlier. It originated in the 1800’s and was used by Dutch Afrikaaners to describe British immigrants to South Africa. Their term was rooinek which means red neck.
The Dutch and British in South Africa eventually fought as Dutch Republics fought against the British empire in a few wars called the Boer Wars. The British empire eventually won.
In 1939 Germany launched a massive bombing campaign against London. FDR responded with material and polical support, voicing sympathy and empathy for their situation.
Today, our current president rationalizes the brutal Russian attack on civilians in Ukraine. Truly disgusting. So much for the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Hell, the US has been doing that since the end of the second war of the world. It’s become a standard operating procedure in our lie-based wars.
NIXON LEAVING
That last helicopter ride—the man at least had the decency to know when it was over.
Oh Lord of Things Political—May history repeat itself…
Greenland is twice the size of California and has fewer inhabitants than Lake County.
Mr. Rosenberg – or perhaps the folks at Politico – do not know the difference between “reign” and “rein.”
You often see educated people making this mistake. It’s “rein,” like horse reins, like reining in a horse. Maybe some of the young editors at prestige publications are too “green” (another horse term) to realize this. Signed, a lifelong horse owner and avid reader.
Tomorrow the Dan Farah produced documentary Age of Disclosure is to be first shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Distribution via streaming services is still being arranged.
As noted by Farah in an interview with Hollywood Reporter and also detailed today in People Magazine, this documentary had to be very quietly produced as there are covert operators who would seek to derail it. He reported that some high level officials cited safety as reasons not to be included.
In this documentary we will learn what keeps Marco Rubio up at night. Altogether statements from 33 other high level officials, such as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, may open the door to more robust examinations by Congress and the press of this oft ridiculed and denied subject (a dynamic of engineering via media contacts such a suppressive atmosphere set up by the February 1953 CIA Robertson Panel of physicists and Air Force Generals).
We shall see if this can break thru the dramatic degrading conditions currently playing out on multiple fronts now.
Caitlin Johnstone’s warning in yesterday’s edition not to turn traitor over the promise of a golden age meant the battle was lost… we are so defeated… how defeated are we? We are so defeated my blue chambray work shirts came with P O W stenciled on the back.
She’s saying aligning with right wing populism is not the anti establishment stance that many assume it is.
Our currently unfolding drama may be a messy transition to what the Hopi say will be our fifth stab at creating a stable and mature human culture. The catastrophic factors in this time of transition are climate change impacts displacing whole populations, wars and pandemics. (Apparently the last transition, to this the 4th world, was the flooding, etc of the Younger Dryas event 12,000 plus years ago.)
It looks like that we are transitioning possibly to playing in a larger milieu of galactic civilizations.
If we make it thru this mess.
The ideologies dominant now will likely give way to approaches that have for example been described by integral philosophies and perspectives informing new politics, economics, law, etc.
Your interpretation of Caitlin’s plain, honest words into all this abstract surrealism is the gift of gab she addresses in today’s column. You’ve been mucking out the jackasses’ stalls so long your hands slip off the horns of the dilemma and you’d best stand down for your own safety. You’ve been given enough rope to hawser a frigate on this skylarking Universe Next Door fantasy but the ship of state is under a right hard horse of a flogging captain now and you’ll be keelhauled or walk the plank if you keep it up.
I’m especially not impressed with her bad habit of a generalizing put down of Democrats, and in today’s case her nonsense re the Chinese and their wonderful “doings”.
I’m also not impressed with threats in this the temporary milieu of Daddy Trump.