Rain | Trillium | Reimbursement Tussle | State Audit | Turkey Tails | CCC Petition | Pre-Loved Vehicles | Water Future | Palace Hotel | Hobby Lobby | Education Fundraiser | Lunar Therapy | Spring Fling | Ed Notes | William White | $5 Club | Yesterday's Catch | Arrest Not | Faye Ollison | How Much | Zoom On | Rock Quarry | CA Lobbyists | SJ Bees | PE Sting | Smarter Cabinets | Doge Duce | Dem Huddle | 442nd Webpage | Lawyer Leeches | McBird | Fighting Oligarchy | Dorothy Vaillancourt | First Crocus | JFK Release | U Up? | Lead Stories | Ukraine Stamps | Unlawful Detentions | Keep Going | Your Parents | Meat Extenders | Have Everything | Get Garden
STRONG WINDS and waves of rain will continue to impact the are through the day with calmer winds but more consistent rain tonight. Conditions will briefly clear and calm Saturday but stormy conditions return Sunday and persist through most of the first week of April. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Cloudy & breezy with 49F this Thursday morning on the coast. I have .46" collected, a lot more than the forecast .10". Light rain is forecast today & Friday, mostly dry Saturday then it gets much wetter next week. Yep. We also have a high surf warning in place.
THE ORIGINS OF THE GET CUBBISON PROJECT
STATE AUDIT TO EXAMINE MENDOCINO COUNTY OPERATIONS AND 2024 ELECTION ISSUES
The County of Mendocino will be working with the Office of the State Auditor over the next several months to complete a comprehensive audit of all county operations and departments, along with examining the organization’s contracts and procurements processes. It will also include an audit of the 2024 elections in Mendocino County, when incorrect ballots were mailed to the county’s 52,800 registered voters.
“All sides agree this action is needed. The upheaval surrounding administrative operations in Mendocino County is unsustainable and this comprehensive audit of all county departments and accounts will provide some much-needed daylight and help establish a roadmap for long-term stability,” said Senate President Mike McGuire (D-North Coast).“We’ll be working with the Board of Supervisors and County leadership to ensure the findings of this audit will be implemented, and provide all involved with the facts and recommendations to make sound decisions going forward.”
Last year, County staff developed a corrective action plan to improve internal control over payroll, establish necessary policies and procedures, and file timely financial reports and statements.
“We’re grateful to Sen. McGuire for advancing this state funding for a full and thorough audit of Mendocino County’s operations and accounts. We’ll be working hand-in-hand in the coming months to pinpoint any challenges or areas for improvement, and look forward to further strengthening the County’s position moving forward,” said Mendocino County Board of Supervisors Chair John Haschak.
The funding for the state audit was approved as part of the 2024-25 state budget signed by the Governor last year. The State Auditor is required to report their findings to the Legislature by January 1, 2026.
COASTAL PROTECTION PETITION SUPPORT SOUGHT
Coast residents and supporters,
Please consider this petition to support the CA Coastal Commission, the agency that protects our coast from overdevelopment and closing of public access: https://epic.salsalabs.org/cal-coastal-commission
Sierra Club will be asking for your support for the CCC as well. If you’re interested, please reply to join a mailing list for this issue.
Thanks,
Rixanne Wehren
Coastal Committee chair
Sierra Club Mendocino Group
THE PRE-RECORDED telephone message from Thurston Autoplaza yesterday told me that they had dozens of “pre-loved vehicles” for sale. I guess that means they cost at least $1,000 more than the equivalent used car. Or maybe more than that if you factor in the new auto tariffs. (Mark Scaramella)
RISING COSTS, EXPANDING MEMBERSHIP: The future of water in Ukiah Valley
by Monica Huettl
At the March 6, 2025, Ukiah Valley Water Authority (UVWA) meeting, the Board welcomed its newest member, the Calpella County Water District, and swore in two new representatives. The discussion quickly turned to potential expansion, as several small mutual water companies expressed interest in joining. The Board also voted to approve a $147,750 comprehensive rate study that could pave the way for regional water consolidation, while tackling future challenges like PG&E’s plan to abandon the Potter Valley Project. As the Board works to secure water for the future, the weight of rising costs and strained resources looms large.…
PALACE HOTEL PHOTOS
by Karen Rifkin, Palace Hotel Advocate, Ukiah
HOBBY LOBBY SET TO TAKE OVER FORMER JCPENNEY IN UKIAH
by Matt LaFever
Hobby Lobby is set to bring its arts and crafts empire to Ukiah, taking over the former JCPenney building on North Orchard Avenue. The arrival of the national retailer marks a major shift for the shopping district, filling a space left vacant when JCPenney closed in May 2024.
Jesse Davis, Ukiah’s chief planning manager, confirmed that Hobby Lobby submitted a building permit application in mid-February to renovate the property at 205 North Orchard Avenue.
“As part of this comprehensive renovation, accessibility features will be upgraded to meet current standards,” Davis said in a statement. “The building, originally approved in 1978, was home to JCPenney for most of its history, with a short-term seasonal tenant in 2024.”
Davis stated that the city is currently reviewing the plans. The proposed renovations will not expand the building’s footprint but will include “minor modifications to the storefront entry and associated signage.”
“Because the use remains consistent with the Community Commercial zoning district—and no new structure, expansion, or substantial exterior modifications are proposed—the project is proceeding through the standard building permit review process,” Davis explained.
Hobby Lobby’s move is part of a broader wave of retail and dining shifts in Ukiah. Just days before this news broke, it was revealed that Habit Burger, a Southern California-based fast-casual chain, will open in the former Denny’s location.
Hobby Lobby has yet to confirm a projected opening date. We reached out to the company for comment and a timeline but did not receive a response.
(mendofever.com)
BOONVILLE HOTEL: We are getting ready to host the Anderson Valley Education Foundation annual Sunday supper fundraiser Boonville Hotel on Sunday, April 13th! We hope you can join us for a beautiful meal and come learn all about the great programs being done to expand educational opportunities for the youth of our sweet valley!
LUNAR THERAPY
New Moon & Eclipse Circle at the Shala
Join us this Friday, March 28th at 6pm for a deeply nourishing New Moon & Eclipse Sound Bath and Circle at The Shala, guided by Justine Lemos, PhD.
This celestial event marks a powerful time to pause, reflect, and reset. Through the magic of sound healing, intention setting, and community connection, we’ll align ourselves with the rhythms of the cosmos and welcome in the energy of new beginnings.
What to Expect: Guided meditation and intention setting Gentle movement, A restorative sound bath experience
This is a beautiful opportunity to slow down and tune in as we move into a new lunar cycle and navigate the transformative energies of the eclipse.
Reserve your spot here: Sign Up Now https://app.arketa.co/theshala/checkout/2pchUPS6NQWV3gGx3jwK (this is the link to sign up in person or online)
Space is limited and fills quickly, early registration is encouraged. We look forward to gathering with you under the New Moon.
With love,
Justine Lemos justine@at1yoga.com
The Shala Team https://theshala.love/
ED NOTES
GALINA GOES INTERNATIONAL. Galina Trefil is the young-ish Coast woman burning up facebook with allegations that her father, Jon Trefil, is a serial killer and life perv. These tributes to her Dad have, predictably, garnered widespread attention and, natch, mobilized the perpetually aggrieved on Galina’s behalf. Meanwhile, thoroughly basted in libels, Dad lies dying at Sherwood Oaks in Fort Bragg, unaware, we hope, of his daughter’s lies.
Hi Bruce Anderson,
My name is Sheila Flynn, and I’m working on a story about the Galina Trefil claims and her colorful family history. I saw you first met the woman years ago, and I’d love to chat with you about your experiences with her and any other observations or insights you might have had in the intervening time period. I can be reached at any point at the below contact info, and I hope to hear from you soon! Thanks so much,
Sheila Flynn, Senior Reporter, DailyMail.com
BRUCE ANDERSON REPLIES: Unfortunately for me and probably lucky for you, I’ve been left voiceless after a recent throat surgery, but I can say that the police have found zero evidence that Galina’s charges are true. In England, I understand, a person can be jailed for wasting police time. Galina would be doing life without if we had that law here. Unlike many garden variety nut cases, Galina is articulate, hence the huge, approving attention she’s received from the legions of Neurosis International. I first met Galina years ago when she was still in high school, as I recall. I wish I could be more helpful but this is about the extent of my knowledge of Rabbi Trefil.
Best to you, Bruce Anderson, editor, Anderson Valley Advertiser, Boonville, Ca
BILL KIMBERLIN quotes MLK: “I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.” — Martin Luther King
THEN MR. K OBSERVIES: I believe the editor here recently has stated that joining the military can be a good thing as the likelihood of being killed is remote. He does not mention that giving up every right you have as a citizen will cause you to do things under order that will most certainly appall you.
YEAH, the editor said that. He’s always been promiscuous with his opinions, many of them dubious he concedes. But in the context of his dubious opinion cited by Mr. Kimberlin the editor was referring to the common case of the high school kid with no skills and a bleak future, especially in the context of our country’s ever more specialized economy with its fewer options than ever for the under-educated, unskilled young person. Yes sir, the Army seems like a viable option in the circumstances. I forget the exact ratio, but for every person at the front, ten or so soldiers are in the rear with the gear, besides which in today’s volunteer military the fighting is done by elite volunteer forces, the guys who are really good at it and really love it, meaning the average enlisted dude in it for job security is unlikely to ever be in a position to be appalled or to commit the appalling.
THE LATE LEONARD CIRINO and I even enjoyed what you might call an ironic political relationship. Back a few decades, Leonard was appointed to the County’s Mental Health Advisory Board before the inland fascisti got their hands on Leonard’s mental health history. THE LATE Marilyn Butcher, then functioning as a County Supervisor, soon declared that she thought it was a little much that a man who’d decapitated his daughter would be considered for, of all things, an appointment to a mental health board, not bothering to point out that Leonard, a recipient of mental health services, would occupy the “client” seat.
A COUPLE of years later, I applied for an appointment to the same board. The County’s mental health bureaucrats were looking for people to fill numerous vacancies and I’d hoped to get an inside look at services I suspected ranged from non-existent to incompetent. The Board itself existed as the usual funding pretext public agencies require to keep state and federal monies rolling their way. (Mendocino County has at least 50 of these phony advisory boards, few of them at any one time with a full complement of stooges.)
I WAS SURPRISED to be invited to be interviewed by a panel of “clients,” meaning the tamer crazy people Mental Health trotted out Potemkin-style as living testimony to their sterling work with the mentally ill. I went over mondo-boffo with the certified clients. They unanimously approved me for the Mental Health Board, but their opinion was ignored by the “sane” people on the board who voted me down. I didn’t get the appointment, Leonard did. He and I both thought it was funny.
A STORY in the Chronicle issued this invitation: “Grand tour of BART’s bathrooms — from the pristine to the pathogenic.” Pathological is more like it? Even the automated French jobs in the city are frequently fetid. Public bathrooms should all be privatized, one to each entrepreneur who would agree, as part of the deal, to work on-site for a minimum number of hours a week to ensure quality control. Rather than enter the toxic dank of the typical public lavatory, wouldn’t you pay a buck to use scrupulously clean facilities manned or womaned by a smartly uniformed attendant who hosed you down afterwards and handed you a fresh towel? Why, think of it! The national transformation of the public bathroom experience! Clearly an opportunity for free enterprise!
MENDOCINO COUNTY WAY BACK WHEN
by Ron Parker
Taken from the Redwood Journal May 1, 1950 page 1 and 8.
Deputy Sheriff William A. White; was shot and killed Saturday night while engaged in investigation of reported sheep stealing in the sparsely settled country eight miles southwest of the village of. Hopland; Deputy White was killed in an exchange of shots with Carl Burgess Jr., 25, and John R. Kelly, 23, at the old Burgess ranch near the headwaters of Feliz creek. Burgess is at the Ukiah General Hospitalwith a bullet hole through his body.
In company with Game Warden Garrie Heryford of Ukiah, Deputy White went into the Feliz creek section Saturday night to continue investigation in which they had engaged for more than a month and which involved reports of game law. violations, as well as sheep losses by the Berger and Hines ranches, and others. Parking their car some distance from the Burgess home, the officers separated with White going to the house and Heryford taking up his investigation in another direction. They agreed to meet again at the car.
Deputy White went to the cabin where Burgess and Kelly slept and posted himself in the orchard near the cabin window for the purpose of listening to their conversation. The window was open and Kelly went to it and looked out and saw White.
According to Kelly’s story, he picked up an unloaded shotgun and leaning out the window called to White, telling him that he had him covered. It had been the purpose of the officers to keep their identity from becoming known to the men they had under surveillance and White moved away from his position to a spot behind a rocky knoll, which was covered with brush. Here he was concealed when Burgess and Kelly converged from different directions, with Burgess coming up from below and Kelly climbing the knoll.
Again, Kelly’s story showed him to have a shotgun; Burgess was armed with a .22 rifle. Kelly claims that a noise like the breaking of a twig in the brush where White was concealed touched off the shooting. He says he fired three shots from the shotgun, aiming high, while calling to White to come out. Burgess fired into the brush and in turn received the fire from the deputy’s revolver. In the exchange, White was hit in the right side, just below his arm, the bullet piercing both lungs and; injuring his spine.
It is said that on order from Kelly, White dropped his empty revolver and came out of concealment telling Kelly who he was, and saying "I want to talk to you." White approached Kelly, then said, "I can’t talk any more," and collapsed. This occurred at approximately 9:30 o’clock.
Burgess, meanwhile, had reached the house where his parents and grandparents live and told them he had been shot. They put him to bed, and Kelly arrived at the house to tell them of White’s condition. Kelly and the elder Burgess tried to take White into the house, but were unable to move him more than a few feet. They brought out a blanket to make a sling in which to move him, but White was dead before they could put the plan into effect.
Kelly went to the C. E. Cooper ranch home where he telephoned to the sheriff’s office in Ukiah, telling of the shooting, without giving more of the facts than that the wounded man kept calling "Garrle," before he lapsed into unconsciousness.
Game Warden Heryford meanwhile, had finished his trip and had returned to the car and was seated in it when a radio call was put through to him from Ukiah. He went to the Burgess house and took charge until the arrival of Sheriff Broaddus and deputies.
The city ambulance was sent out for Burgess and the Eversole Mortuary brought in the body of Deputy White. The officers remained at the Burgess home most of the night to complete their investigation and just as they were winding up the affair a quartet of youths from San Francisco arrived to visit Kelly.
Kelly, who was taken into custody as a material witness, was released Sunday, but rearrested after Sheriff Broaddus and deputies had conducted a daylight investigation of the scene of the shooting. He may be charged with attempted murder. Doubt as to Kelly’s story of shooting high followed discovery of buckshot marks on White’s revolver and of marks on his gun hand which Sheriff Broaddus believes were made by shot from the gun fired by Kelly.
Investigation of the surroundings were made and marks of shotgun slugs were found among the brush surrounding, the spot where White stood Sheriff Broaddus is satisfied that it was Kelly who held and fired the shotgun.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, March 26, 2025
DEREK BARKLEY, 35, Willits. Domestic abuse.
PARIS BEACHAM-VANDERPOOL, 33, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.
RICARDO GARCIA-GARCIA, 30, Ukiah. Burglary, domestic violence court order violation, paraphernalia.
MANDY GRINSELL, 49, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, ammo possession by prohibited person.
GUADALUPE GUTIERREZ, 36, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, failure to appear.
SHELLY LEGGETT, 43, Covelo. Probation revocation.
RICARDO MANZO, 24, Ukiah. Resisting.
RICHARD NEAGLE, 45, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.
KATHLEEN NELSON, 64, Willits. Probation revocation.
RANDY PIKE JR., 33, Point Arena. Ammo possession by prohibited person, county parole violation.
DANIEL VANHORN, 25, Fort Bragg. Assault with firearm, use of firearm, robbery, domestic battery, stalking and threatening bodily injury.
A READER WRITES: I bought this a few years back and it actually has worked quite well.
FAYE OLLISON, PRESENTE!
Photos from the Edge, by David Bacon
Faye Ollison was 92 when she died last week.
It wasn’t an easy death because not having money puts you at the mercy of a healthcare system where money is everything. As her son Terance said over and over, "It’s all just about the money."
Faye had health insurance, but it was United Healthcare, a plan she’d kept up from her time working at the UC Berkeley Rad Lab. When she couldn’t get out of bed at home, Terance took her to the hospital. The nurses were great, but from the beginning the hospital wanted the bed back. So first they put her on a list for hospice care. When her doctor pointed out that they hadn’t been feeding her, and she began to bounce back after eating a little, United Healthcare said she’d have to be moved to a skilled nursing facility. The hospital was too expensive. "But we know all about United Healthcare," her hospital caseworker told us.
The nursing facility was full of patients. Terance had already had bad experiences with two other ones, from a crisis a year earlier. "They’re all understaffed," he said bitterly, "because money is the only thing that counts to the people that own them." To United Healthcare too.
Faye was holding on. She’d recognize us and try to talk a little. But eating was a problem. Her hands, calloused from a lifetime at the lab and then cleaning houses, were too frozen to hold a fork. A nurse’s aide would help her, or Terance would bring a protein shake she could drink with a straw. But then United said they were cutting off money for the nursing home, to force her into hospice care at home.
Terance and I cleaned a space for the bed in her cluttered apartment. The patient transport van unloaded Faye on a gurney, and brought her in. The hospice nurse was great, giving her the attention she didn’t get in the weeks before. But sleep had overtaken her. The next morning Terance called: "She’s gone." He was crying into the phone. Another hospice nurse came out, changed her clothes and even got her agency to pay for the coffin.
Faye, who never had much love for funerals or memorials, told Terance she wanted to be buried without any ceremony, in a pine box. And so she will be.
Faye Ollison was born in the countryside, outside of Gonzalez, Texas, a small town that used to be part of Mexico. She grew up learning to cook Southern style, with a love of chile that never left her. When we wanted her to eat in the nursing home, we brought her sausage covered in chile flakes, usually her favorite.
Gonzalez was a slave county in a slave state, where 384 slaveholders owned 3,168 human beings in the year the Civil War started. That history was still alive when Faye was growing up - her grandfather remembered his enslaved life. In the 30s and 40s she went to segregated schools, which weren’t desegregated until the mid-60s. By then she’d long since left for California, a single mother with her son. Over the years while Faye worked at the lab and cleaning jobs, Terance found work in the Pile Drivers Union, from which he retired.
My mother and Faye were good friends from the time I was a teenager. When she was trying to get alcohol out of her life, my mom depended on that love and support Faye gave her. Faye knew everyone in my family, and sent us all cards on every occasion, slipping into the envelope a cartoon from The Better Half, and always a 2-dollar bill.
It was hard the way Faye left this world. It should have been kinder and more gentle. Our country has so little respect for the old people who got us all here. Now we’re run by gangsters that Faye, always a radical and a real red in her heart, would call out by name. She knew who they all were, from first to last.
I’m sorry we didn’t change the world in time for you to leave it, Faye. But you would always say goodbye to us by calling out, "We just have to keep on going."
Faye Ollison, presente!
These photographs were taken with Faye’s permission, and with the cooperation of her son Terance Reeves, who wants people to know about his mom and her last days. The last two photos are one from a family album of Faye and Terance as a child, and the other taken on the occasion of Faye’s retirement at the Rad Lab.
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2025/03/faye-ollison-presente.html
DELTA TUNNEL HEARING CANCELLED AFTER HACKER TAKES OVER ZOOM PLATFORM
by Dan Bacher
A large number of people were scheduled on Monday to testify and comment on the Delta Conveyance Project (DCP), potentially the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history, when a bizarre hacking incident occurred on the Zoom platform that the California State Water Resources Control Board was using for a hearing.
The hearing was regarding the pending petitions for a change in water rights by the California Department of Water Resources that are required to move forward with the Delta Tunnel. The project is opposed by a coalition of Tribes, fishing groups, environmental organizations, Delta counties, Delta water districts, Delta farmers, Southern California water ratepayers and the public.
When the hearing started, one of the attendee windows displayed a graphic obscene video with a synthetic or altered voice saying loudly, “Shut this Zoom Call Down.” The hacker took over the audio so the Hearing Officer could not speak, so she shut the hearing down. …
https://www.elkgrovedailynews.com/delta-tunnel-hearing-cancelled-hacker-takes-over-zoom
FOLLOW UP LETTER FROM STATE WATER BOARD HEARING OFFICER ON DELTA TUNNEL HEARING
by Dan Bacher
This is the latest letter I got from the State Water Board Hearing Officer regarding the hacking of Monday’s hearing on the Delta Tunnel. Policy statements are postponed until a date in mid-May to be determined.
First, I want to acknowledge that, although the State Water Board’s hearing platform was the direct target of this cyberattack, everyone in the hearing room or viewing the proceeding on YouTube was harmed. In addition to the obvious disruption and the offensive nature of the content that was forced on us, the slurs and other abhorrent words and images seem to have been calculated to intimidate and inflict particular injury on certain groups and individuals. I find this aspect of Monday’s events particularly disturbing, as I believe many of you do as well. No one should have to risk being subjected to this type of visual and verbal assault when they participate in a government process. The AHO hearing room should be a space in which I can assure that each of you will be safe and treated with dignity — and during Monday’s hearing I could not. I sincerely apologize. I also wish to thank those of you who sent correspondence with information and helpful comments with respect to this incident over the last day.
The Board’s Hearing Team and Department of Information Technology have identified and are implementing significant additional security measures intended to prevent a similar cyberattack from interfering with this proceeding or any other hearing conducted by the AHO. In addition to implementing additional security measures for AHO hearings, the Board’s Department of Information Technology is conducting a forensic investigation of the incident to develop evidence for referral of the matter to law enforcement.
Going forward, the AHO will be conducting its proceedings using the Zoom Webinar platform, which includes increased security restrictions. Participants in the hearing will be required to register for the hearing and will receive individualized access credentials. With the exception of specific hearing dates and times reserved for policy statements by members of the public, only authorized representatives of parties listed on the service list and identified witnesses will be issued credentials to join the hearing. Only those people joining the hearing under the credentials of an authorized representative or as a witness will be allowed to remain in the hearing room. The AHO will circulate detailed information to the service list about these new procedures, and how to register for the hearing, on *Friday, March 28. *The hearing will continue to be live-streamed and publicly viewable on YouTube.
We will not hear policy statements on April 3. I am, however, committed to providing a fair opportunity for those who intended to deliver a policy statement on March 24 to comment in this proceeding. I will not allow the offensive and disruptive behavior that we experienced to undermine the opportunity for meaningful participation in the public process. The AHO staff are identifying a date in mid-May when a hearing room at the Cal EPA Building in Sacramento is available, and a majority of the Board Members could participate in person to hear policy statements. I will circulate that date within the next few days. We will conduct that day of hearing in hybrid format (in person with a remote option). In case anyone is unable to participate on that date, I will also schedule a subsequent Zoom only day for any remaining members of the public to present policy statements, which will occur at the time Protestants begin presentation of their cases-in-chief later this year. The AHO will circulate more information and instructions as to how interested persons will be allowed to join the hearing on policy statement hearing days and how the Zoom Webinar platform will be monitored to safely receive those statements. Members of the public are also welcome to submit policy statements in writing at any time during this proceeding to: dcp-wr-petition@waterboards.ca.gov.
I look forward to reconvening this hearing, securely, on April 3. Thank you for your patience and cooperation as we implement these new procedures.
Sincerely,
Nicole L. Kuenzi
Presiding Hearing Officer
Administrative Hearings Office
State Water Resources Control Board
nicole.kuenzi@waterboards.ca.gov
BILL KIMBERLIN
This is the location for our shot in, "Back To The Future 3" where in order to get the DeLorean up to 88 miles an hour they characters had to use a steam engine to push it.
The model shop built several sizes of models and two large ones like this one. My boss Ken Ralston was looking for a place where he could shoot this and I said I may know of just the spot. It was an old rock quarry outside Novato where I had hunted squirrels and camped out as a kid. Ken and his wife rode up there one weekend on horse back and pronounced it perfect. So off they went building some track and a railroad trestle.
LOBBYISTS ARE A GROWTH INDUSTRY IN A STATE AS COMPLEX AS CALIFORNIA
by Dan Walters
In the late 1990s, the late Jay Michael and I coauthored a book, published by the University of California, that explored why and how interest groups employ lobbyists to represent them in Sacramento.
Michael was a retired lobbyist who provided innumerable stories about what happens out of public view to shape legislation and other official policy, such as the notorious “napkin deal” Willie Brown brokered in a Sacramento restaurant that changed tobacco liability and other tort law. I framed the process in the context of an ever-changing state and a Legislature undergoing a cultural and ideological evolution.
At the time there were about 1,200 registered lobbyists working the Capitol, not only those who sought to affect legislation but those who concentrated on regulations, contracts and other acts in California’s vast bureaucracy.
As a hobby Chris Micheli, a lobbyist whose firm represents 15 widely varying clients, dives into legislative minutiae and recently generated data on the growth of lobbyist activity.
Micheli found that the number of lobbying firms has grown from 433 to 484 over the last 10 years. More interestingly, the number of registered lobbyists had nearly tripled from 1,270 when Michael and I were writing our book to 3,245 in the current legislative session.
That seemingly huge increase is, Micheli explains, a little misleading because it includes 1,116 newly registered lobbyists in 2011-12 due to a change in law. Reacting to a corruption scandal in the California Public Employees Retirement System, the Legislature required registration of “placement agents,” who persuade the immense pension system to place millions or even billions of dollars into their clients’ investment firms.
“While the number of registered lobbyists has grown by 1,975 over the past 25 years, more than half of those registrations are attributable to the addition of placement agents,” Micheli says.
“Even taking those registrations out of the total figure, the number of registered lobbyists has still grown over 65% during the past quarter century.”
The CalPERS scandal is a stark example of why interest groups employ lobbyists and why their numbers are likely to continue growing indefinitely.
The decisions officialdom makes often have immense financial impacts. The state budget, currently about $300 billion, is just one of those high-impact policy venues. Who gets shares of that money — and who doesn’t — is the subject of perpetual lobbying activity, and there are always winners and losers in what legislators and the governor decree.
In relatively lean times the budget lobbying grows even more intense — a cyclic phenomenon now playing out as politicians wrestle with multi-billion-dollar shortfalls.
However the budget is only one of many venues for the clashes of financial interests, and California’s left-of-center politics spawn an ever-expanding array of laws, agencies and officials with regulatory authority.
Decrees of regulatory agencies, such as the California Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Insurance, can make or break the bottom lines of regulated industries and professions. That’s very evident now as Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara copes with the fire insurance crisis.
Many high-value issues are virtually invisible — such as decisions over which drugs will be included on the Medi-Cal “formulary” and what the state will pay pharmaceutical companies for those medications.
When one combines the state budget with the electric power rates set by the Public Utilities Commission, the insurance premiums that Lara approves and countless other legislative and non-legislative issues, it becomes evident that decisions made in Sacramento control an immense portion of the state’s $3.5 trillion economy.
Therefore those affected believe they need skilled professional advocates, much like anyone facing serious civil or criminal court actions needs a savvy lawyer.
Maybe it shouldn’t work that way, but in a state as immense and complex as California, it does.
(CalMatters.org)
SAN JOSE BEES
PRIVATE EQUITY’S VERSION OF ‘THE STING’
by Eric Salzman
Private equity firms and Wall Street banks loaded American businesses up with debt from leveraged buyouts over the last decade and now they are loading them with more debt to cash out their winnings with an outlandish strategy, the “dividend recap.”
In the classic 1973 movie The Sting, con men extraordinaire played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford hatch a plan to take down a fearsome mob boss played by Robert Shaw in a high-stakes poker game. The cons first pickpocket Shaw, stealing his billfold and then, using Shaw’s own money, outcheat him at cards to take him to the cleaners.
The stakes are a lot higher with Private Equity (PE). While Redford and Newman ripped off a mob boss, PE firms take over companies that provide important services — healthcare facilities and nursing homes, for example — and manufacturers that employ thousands.
PE firms typically hold companies between four and seven years before exiting. Small to mid-size companies are often sold to another PE firm, while large companies are usually taken public with an initial public offering (IPO).
But high interest rates and uncertainty over President Trump’s tariffs policy have made IPOs an unattractive option. For one, high interest rates are bad for a debt-laden company, and there’s concern that tariffs will disrupt global supply chains.
Not to worry if you’re a PE investor. There’s still what’s called the “dividend recap.” Take the case of Clarios International — America’s largest producer of electric vehicle batteries with 16,000 employees. It’s an example that would surely earn the respect of Newman and Redford’s characters.
A PE firm — Brookfield Asset Management — and Canadian pension fund manager Caisse de dépôt et Placement du Quebec bought Clarios in 2019 for $13 billion. About $4 billion of that was funded by PE investors. The new owners had success reducing debt — it dropped by $2.1 billion between 2020 and 2024, according to Fitch Ratings.
But Clarios added debt when it came time to sell in 2025. The company took on about $4.5 billion in loans from a syndicate of lenders led by J.P. Morgan to pay a special dividend to its PE investors.
Bloomberg News broke the story:
“Car battery maker Clarios International Inc. raised debt to pay a $4.5 billion dividend to its buyout-fund backers, one of the largest such payouts on record. That paid for a distribution to investors, including Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. and Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, letting them take the equivalent of 1.5 times their equity out of the deal, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the deal is private.”
Brookfield and its investors ensured a profit by loading the company with more debt. The investors get the money, while the company still has to pay the debt. For Brookfield and Caisse, there is nothing but upside. Investors, to borrow from the Logan Roy character, have already made their nut. Plus, there’s more money to be made if interest rates go down and the demand for their EV batteries remains strong, which could make conditions ideal for an IPO.
Bloomberg compiled data that shows 20 businesses in the U.S. and Europe in 2025 have borrowed to make big payments to their owners.
Now you may be asking yourself, why would JP Morgan and the other loan syndicate members make what seems to be a very risky loan?
They have options. The syndicate can sell into either a structure like a Collateralized Loan Obligation (CLO) or one of the many mutual funds that invest in these loans. As insane as it sounds, these loans are in incredible demand. It’s a lot like the subprime story in the 2000s—the tail is wagging the dog. CLO investors and mutual fund managers hunger for loans so Wall Street can make them without fear.
In fact the lenders make a fee putting the loans together and if they are a CLO underwriter, which they usually are, they get more underwriting fees.
Meanwhile, bankruptcy filings by PE and venture capital-back firms jumped 15% last year, according to an S&P Global study.
“With inflation remaining somewhat stubborn, the Federal Reserve is not expected to lower interest rates aggressively this year, keeping the cost of borrowing high. That could spell trouble for more companies this year,” the study says.
Clarios may still come out whole if the EV battery market remains strong and interest rates eventually go down. However, if neither of those things occurs, Clarios and its employees could pay a steep price while PE investors still walk away flush.
Such a scenario reminds me of the poker game scene from The Sting where Newman’s character says to one of the poor suckers who’s lost all his money, “Don’t worry pal, they wouldn’t let you in this game if you weren’t a chump!”
DOGE
Dear Bruce & Mark,
I've been mulling over this 'DOGE' nomenclature. I've heard it before from history. Not from the name of Elon Musk's favorite crypto-currency, though I've heard that attribution before, too.
What professor Google has enlightened is that Doge is an Italian cognate of 'Duce', derived from the Latin term 'dux', meaning "spiritual Leader" or "military commander".
Sound vaguely familiar?
The Doge was the highest ranked civilian Magistrate in the Italian Republics of Venice and Genoa. We're talking 10th to 15th Century CE here.
The Doge ran it all it all -- everything -- with impunity and absolute sovereignty. Beginning to sound a little bit more familiar?
To put a finer point on this: Trump is President of these United States. Elon Musk is the DOGE. Both pretend to rule with the impunity and absolute sovereignty.
Except they -- regrettably for them -- are trying to reign in -- enact -- a polity that hasn't existed for decades. Centuries. They are doing their utmost to resurrect it now. It ain't gonna float.
The Republican led houses of Congress are supine. All that is needed to silence their (rightful) outrage at the Executive Branch's incompetent shenanigans for the past 2 months is, "Hey, if you disagree or challenge El Presidente's or Doge Musk's political aberrations, then we have all the money we need to confront you with a Primary challenger in the MAGA/DOGE mold. Wanna take our bet against you?
I really don't want to get too far over my skies here, but I see only two stoppers for the Trump/Musk team.
The first are the courts, which have thus far held fast to the fundamental tenants of our Constitution. Gonna finally be up to the Supremes. John Roberts and Amy Comey Barrett just might -- might -- find their ways to protect the Republic from this (toxic) Unitary Executive theory the Heritage Foundation and other monarchical oriented rightists so fervently believe in. They -- the monarchists -- just might be willing to stop at nothing to formally enact a de facto extra-Constitutional DOGE to govern our America. We'll see. So far the courts are not cooperating with them. Whew!
"May you live in interesting times" is both a Chinese curse and blessing. Pick it, or take both. Either way, what's going in in Washington DC is way out of my -- and your -- pay grade. All we get to do is 1) fully inform ourselves, 2) make as much noise as we can, 3) send our Republic's defenders as much money as we can afford and show up to resist this MAGA nightmare in whatever way(s) we can.
Enough from me on this. Anyone care to comment?
Lee Edmundson
DOGE AT WORK
Editor:
In carrying out the president’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion order, the Army deleted the webpage for the 442nd Regimental Combat team, made up of Japanese American soldiers during World War II. Our family was in the Topaz internment camp when the Army called for volunteers to fight in the European theater. My father was one of the first 21 volunteers. He explained to me that he had to do something to free us. He fought in Italy and France, was wounded three times and won a Bronze Star. The 442nd ended up being the most highly decorated unit in American military history. After a public protest, the Army partially restored the webpage. Is this the America that we live in today? If it is, how do we change it back?
Jon Yatabe
Fort Collins, Colorado
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Of course there are probably some decent lawyers out there who do good for people. But the profession at large is a profession that produces nothing, contributes nothing and only takes. Will never forget the check I received for a class action lawsuit against a phone company. The company had to pay out billions. I got a check for $2.65. How much do you think the attorneys got? Yeah, they took 50% of the billions and divvied out the rest with the millions that were the true victims. The letter that came with the check bragged about their victory and how pleased we should all be that we won. Yeah, $2.65 is better than a kick in the teeth but the lawyers are the ones that really got the benefit of that class action. What did they produce? All they did was take.
BERNIE SANDERS IS TAPPING INTO A DEEP VEIN OF ANGER IN AMERICA
by Megan K. Stack
They gathered early in North Las Vegas, waiting under the hot sun in a snaking line in the middle of a workday for their chance to see Senator Bernie Sanders.
With stucco houses and apartment blocks interrupted by strip malls and trash-strewn vacant lots, this is not the Vegas you see in glamorous movies. It was, however, the setting for what Mr. Sanders, independent of Vermont, called the biggest crowd he had ever drawn here. Nevada was the first Southwestern stop for Mr. Sanders, who, along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had set out on what the pair called the Fighting Oligarchy tour.
Packing venues all over the country — in Nebraska, Iowa, Arizona and Colorado — Mr. Sanders appears more popular than ever. His core message hasn’t changed in decades, but it’s hitting harder now. In hours of interviews with all kinds of people at the Nevada rally on Thursday, two unbroken trends emerged: Everyone I met was having money problems. And all of them were frightened, some for the first time, that the country they’d always counted on was sliding away because of President Trump.
If these conversations are any measure, many Americans are reaching a breaking point. Already struggling to make ends meet, people are wondering how much leaner things could get if a recession hits. They see Mr. Trump defy the Constitution and ravage parts of the federal government that have long seemed as unremarkable and permanent as boulders — and they fear that, before all is said and done, he’ll come for Medicaid, public schools, veterans’ services and Social Security, too. Maybe take our freedom of speech, while he’s at it.
It was all there at the Sanders rally: dread, yes, but also an anger and an appetite — a tremendous, largely untapped political energy looking, it seemed, for an outlet.
“I just got the worst of fears,” a recently retired sheet metal worker named Kelly Press told me. “You get up in the morning, you don’t know what you’re going to go to bed losing.”
Mr. Press, a strapping 65-year-old from Detroit who spent his working years bouncing around construction sites in the West, wore a cap from his union (Sheet Metal Workers Local 88), a chunky ring on each hand and dark glasses shading his blue eyes. Moving to Vegas inspired him, at one point, to work as a craps dealer, which gave him a lingering aversion to the cruelties of gambling and sent him scuttling back to the comparatively placid world of construction sites.
If someone got on the stage that very day, he said, and asked the crowd to march all the way to Washington to protest against Mr. Trump, Mr. Press would take that long walk without hesitation — “I swear to God.”
“But there’s nobody like that,” he said. “There’s nobody giving anybody any kind of direction. I think everybody is really scared and lost.”
When he retired two years ago, Mr. Press calculated that he could get by on $1,000 a month for gas and food. And for a while, he could — but prices have crept steadily higher, and his monthly bare minimum has ballooned to $1,400. He understands, in a way, why some of his union friends went for Mr. Trump — Mr. Press said they were tired of paying taxes and union dues and protective of their guns — but he believes they made a grave mistake.
“I can see this whole country being like Russia,” he said. “Where you can’t even speak about elected officials.”
The hunger Mr. Press described — for somebody to stand up to a White House that is flouting judges’ rulings, threatening public services and scoffing at civil liberties — was pervasive in the crowd.
While Democrats agonize over losing the working-class vote, visiting podcasts and TV studios to strategize how to get it back, only Mr. Sanders seems to understand how to tap into the dissatisfaction of the crowds.
Which is interesting, because he’s not really saying anything new. Mr. Sanders’s rally speeches offer the same program he’s been advocating, often for decades: Medicare for all, lowering prescription drug prices, taxing the wealthy, free state college, strong unions, raising the minimum wage. If you follow him, you’ve heard it before.
One could hardly accuse the willful Mr. Sanders of adapting himself to the moment; it’s more accurate to say that the moment has adapted itself to him. Now that his most dire warnings have manifested themselves, gradually and then with sickening speed, he looks, at once, prescient and thoroughly relevant.
Now he can tie it all together — the privations people are enduring, the unease they’re feeling and his long-unheeded arguments. Soaring prices, he preaches, are down to the concentration of corporate ownership. Mr. Trump’s autocratic tendencies and emerging oligarchy — personified by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person — are evidence of the senator’s longstanding insistence that staggering wealth inequality will be our collective undoing. He connects Mr. Trump’s attacks on federal bureaucracy to the household budget problems of people clapping along in the crowd. They’re not just arbitrarily dismantling the government, he explains; they’re doing it so they can give themselves a trillion-dollar tax break.
In North Las Vegas, tightly packed under the blue shellac of a desert sky, the audience periodically broke into hearty chants of “Tax the rich.” Music piped through the park: “Everybody wants to rule the world.”
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez warmed up the crowd. She hit out at her own party (“We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us,” she cried out to enthusiastic cheers) and called for everyone from Trump voters to families of trans kids to come together and organize locally.
“This movement is not about partisan labels or purity tests,” she said. “It’s about class solidarity. The thousands of people who came out here today to stand here together and say, ‘Our lives deserve dignity, and our work deserves respect.’”
And then, to the roar of his name, Mr. Sanders appeared. He thundered against Mr. Trump. He took aim at the tech bros, pointing out that the three richest Americans — Mr. Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — own more wealth than the 170 million people who comprise the bottom half of American society. He derided the predatory behavior of a tiny, uber-rich ruling class that he described as frivolously self-indulgent and cloistered from economic realities.
“They have no clue what is going on in the real world,” he shouted.
This, Mr. Sanders likes to remind Americans, is the richest country on the planet.
“No, we will not accept an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires run the government,” he exhorted the crowd.
He railed against Mr. Trump’s attacks on the Constitution and then pivoted to ask the crowd, “What does it mean to live paycheck to paycheck?”
People shouted back, and Mr. Sanders repeated their words into the microphone:
“How to put one’s kids through college.”
“Whether or not you’re going to buy your prescription drugs or pay your rent.”
“Knowing how to pay your credit card when interest rates are 20 percent.”
At that point, a young woman standing near me shot a significant look at the man at her side and muttered, “Twenty percent would be nice.”
Mr. Sanders took it all in, then informed the attendees that their life expectancy is lower than it is for those in other comparable nations and, even worse, that the life expectancy for lower-class Americans is significantly shorter than for their wealthier compatriots.
The message landed. The crowd hung on his words, pumping fists in the air, booing noisily or raising middle fingers when he mentioned Mr. Trump or Mr. Musk. There was a sense of catharsis.
“He brings awareness of what’s going on in the country, and he’s giving voice to those who are voiceless,” a second-grade teacher named Dina Garibay told me. “He wants to stand up for the rights of everybody, and the Democratic Party doesn’t always stand up for that.”
Ms. Garibay, 56, comes from a heterodox political background. She was a Reagan-era Republican who soured on the G.O.P. because she felt it coddled the wealthy. She then gravitated toward the Democrats but has been frequently disappointed there, too. If she voted solely on platform, she said, she’d probably go for the Green Party, but that would be a waste of a vote, because it can’t win.
Under the circumstances, though, she just wants somebody to do something.
“It feels like the rug is being pulled out from under us,” she said.
Ms. Garibay was appalled by Mr. Trump’s efforts to close the Department of Education, which she anticipated would hurt children who have special needs. She’s Latina and was incensed by his talk of mass deportation. She was worried about the rights of the L.G.B.T.Q. people, among whom she counts herself.
At the same time, she is mired in Las Vegas’s affordable-housing crisis, which is one of the most acute in the country. Ms. Garibay moved here a few years ago from Arizona, hoping to buy a house. After a humbling search, she realized that ownership was unambiguously beyond her financial means. She lives with her husband and teenage daughter in a mobile home on a rented plot, pinching pennies as the family’s weekly grocery bill has climbed from around $120 to $200. Some of her colleagues, she said, drive for Uber in the evenings to supplement their salaries.
“Every single teacher I know can’t afford a home,” she told me. “We work very, very hard for our money, and we see it just going into rentals.”
All of that and more — “How long you got?” was a refrain I heard repeatedly when I asked people why they had come — brought her out to cheer for Mr. Sanders.
No need, anymore, for Mr. Sanders to try to get Americans to imagine dark lounges where corporate lobbyists pad the pockets of politicians in exchange for compliance. Mr. Trump has brought it all into plain sight. Mr. Musk’s more than $270 million in campaign spending bought the top job in Mr. Trump’s administration, where the eccentric tycoon who dreams of sending humans to Mars now enjoys a free hand to tamper with federal programs that form an already tattered safety net for elderly people, veterans and poor Americans.
“There’s almost nobody in America who thinks that it is not insane,” Mr. Sanders told me backstage at the rally.
All of that makes it easy for him to fuse his leftist economic analysis to the animating fears of more centrist Democrats, who have been talking about Mr. Trump as an authoritarian spoiler all along. Mr. Sanders can also beckon to working-class swing voters who’d hoped Mr. Trump would at least bring down prices.
Even amid his tirades against Mr. Trump, Mr. Sanders saves some blows for Democrats. He credited the party for advancing civil rights and protecting women and L.G.B.T.Q. people but added that Democrats had, meanwhile, neglected the basic needs of lower- and middle-class Americans.
“I think one of the reasons Trump is doing so well with working people — it’s not because they think we should give tax breaks to billionaires,” he told me. “They’re responding to Trump because Democrats have kind of abdicated the area.”
Mr. Sanders, who pointedly reminded me that he is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress, argues that the Democratic Party should either change to meet the moment (“We’ll see if that’s possible or not”) or prepare to be abandoned.
“My hope is that the Democrats can regain the kind of worldview that they had in the ‘30s and ‘40s under Roosevelt and Truman and become less dependent on corporate interests,” he said. “And if that doesn’t happen, I would hope that people would decide to run as progressive independents, working with Democrats when they can.”
Back in the crowd, I met Sam Laurel, a 33-year-old pool cleaner who’d donned his “Eat the rich” T-shirt for the occasion. He wanted to be part of the crowd, he said, to show “how much we’ve had it with our government bending over for the 1 percent and not doing anything for us.”
Like Mr. Sanders, Mr. Laurel talked about politics in a cascade of Mr. Trump’s misdeeds and his own tribulations: He lives with his parents. None of them can afford to live separately. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Mr. Laurel called “the anti-scam police,” has been kneecapped. He finally has a job with health insurance after years of doing without, and he blamed the stress of those years for the premature silvering of his hair. Mr. Trump is going to attack Social Security and Medicare. Mr. Laurel would like to go to college and become a teacher, but he didn’t know how to pay for it.
“The government should work for us, the many,” he said. “We’ve all just had enough of being sucked dry.”
He spends his days cleaning the tranquil garden retreats of wealthy clients, which brings the problem of economic inequality into sharp and sometimes unwelcome relief. In Las Vegas, a town full of glitter but grounded in dust, he works to keep other people’s chemical waters crystalline, and the Sanders-tinged ruminations about working-class struggles and the mirage of luck can look especially stark. One of his clients is a celebrity who lives elsewhere and just can’t get around to fixing a badly leaking pool. “Draining Lake Mead,” Mr. Laurel mused, shaking his head.
“I like to be alone with my thoughts,” he added. “But I’m alone with my thoughts in rich people’s backyards.”
(NY Times)
A SAN FRANCISCO MOTHER OF SEVEN VANISHED IN 1966. HER MYSTERY IS FINALLY UNRAVELING
by Andrew Chamings
When Penelope Vaillancourt was 15 years old, her mom disappeared. She spent decades looking for her, across San Francisco. While riding the bus down Market Street, she would see women walking on the sidewalk who looked like her mom. “I’d jump off the bus, run after them and look them in the face,” Penelope told SFGATE. “But it was never her.”
Nearly 60 years after she vanished, the mystery of Dorothy Vaillancourt’s disappearance has been solved, after a body found in a red dress on a steep Tiburon hillside in 1966 was positively identified earlier this month as the Australian mother of seven. Once a happy family living in one of San Francisco’s most famous homes — the Blue Painted Lady — the Vaillancourts’ perplexing case involves a brutal attack in Alamo Square, a distant orphanage in Ukiah and a mysterious Nazi sergeant who can’t be found.
Today, a grave in Marin County that was unmarked for six decades finally bears a name, but the revelation has brought little happiness to Penelope. “I went to the spot where they found her, to see if I’d pick up anything,” she said. “But I felt nothing.”
Dorothy Williams grew up in Tasmania, the sparsely populated island off the south coast of Australia. While working as a nurse in Sydney during World War II, she met a handsome American Marine named Francois Vaillancourt. “She was a nurse, and he was a marine on R and R after Guadalcanal,” Penelope said, using military slang for “rest and recuperation,” or a leave period. “She said he was walking down the street in his white uniform, and that was it for her.”
The couple soon married, and as the war ended, they took a 14-day voyage to America, where they briefly lived in Francois’ hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, before heading west to San Francisco.
Francois worked as a painter and Dorothy a nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital, the towering Spanish Renaissance building on the edge of Buena Vista Park. Soon the couple had seven children, including twins Penelope and Pamela, and rented one of the Victorians on what would become known as Postcard Row, at 712 Steiner St.
“We would go for walks through the park. She knew the names of all the plants,” Penelope remembered of the happy times in Alamo Square. “She was highly intelligent and spoke fluent French. She was so kind. I never heard her raise her voice.”
On the morning of Friday, Dec. 18, 1959, violence came to the doorstep of 712 Steiner. “We were getting ready for school, and a lady’s face just appeared in the glass of the door,” Penelope, who was 9 at the time, remembered. “My sister started screaming, ‘Monster!’” According to numerous newspaper reports from the time, a young woman named Susan Corlew was brutally raped and beaten in Alamo Square the previous night, and her life was likely saved by Dorothy Vaillancourt.
Corlew had been beaten to within inches of her life, in a case described by police as the “worst in memory,” according to the Oakland Tribune. To save herself, she dragged herself half-naked to the Vaillancourt’s home, “pounding on the door and crying for help,” the Chico Enterprise-Record reported. Dorothy took the girl in, wrapped her in a blanket and called the police, according to the Oakland Tribune. “She just collapsed on the floor,” Penelope remembered of Corlew. “But she survived.”
Soon after, the Vaillancourt’s family life broke apart. Francois and Dorothy divorced, and Dorothy struggled with alcoholism, landing her in a halfway house in San Francisco, her daughter said. “She was drinking a lot,” Penelope said. “She was a wonderful person to be around, but an alcoholic too.”
With their mother unable to care for them and their father working full time, the children were sent to an orphanage in Ukiah, an establishment run by Catholic nuns named the Albertinum Orphan Asylum. It was rife with abuse, Penelope alleged. After just a year there, the Vaillancourt children were “kicked out for being incorrigible,” Penelope said, and moved back to an orphanage in San Francisco’s Bayview.
Around this time, Dorothy met a mysterious German named Hermann Hess. The couple married and bought a home in Fairfax in Marin County. “They bought a house on top of the hill. It was a nice little town,” Penelope said. “It was really cute, but the drinking kept going, and she was married to the Nazi.”
Hermann Hess is a figure almost impossible to track down in public records — and not only because his name is so similar to that of the famous “Siddhartha” author. What information is available shows Hess was born in 1911 in Germany, and he and Dorothy married in San Francisco in June 1964. Penelope remembered Hess showing her a palm-sized photo of him in Nazi sergeant regalia during the war, though SFGATE was not able to find records of his military service.
The Vaillancourt children moved from the orphanage in San Francisco into the house on Toyon Drive in Fairfax. It was an unhappy home.
When Penelope was around 14, a fight broke out in the house between Hess and the kids, in which her stepfather punched her in the face, she alleged. She said her brother then threatened to shoot Hess, at which point she ran upstairs and called 911. Hess then attempted to strangle Penelope, she alleged.
“I heard a knock at the door and was so relieved. The cop was so big, he took up the whole door,” Penelope remembered. “The officer saw him with his hands reaching around my neck. So they arrested him and took him there and then.” (SFGATE was unable to find Hess’ arrest record by time of publication.)
After Hess’ arrest, the children moved back in with their father in San Francisco and heard little more from their mom, who stayed in Marin with her husband. In November 1965, Hess and Dorothy were court-ordered to sell their home due to an $800 debt in San Francisco, records show.
A few months later, Dorothy Vaillancourt would be dead — a fact that somehow went unknown for over half a century.
On Dec. 18, 1966, a 15-year-old Marin boy who was shooting an air rifle near the Tiburon shoreline found a badly decomposing body in the underbrush, around 20 feet down the hill from Paradise Drive, newspapers reported. The woman was found in a red cotton dress, tan raincoat and white slip. The coroner assessed that she had been dead for around two months, but no cause of death was clear. The identity of the woman stumped Marin investigators and journalists; no missing person matching the deceased had been reported. Statewide bulletins were dispatched. Numerous stories ran in the Independent Journal detailing the case. Reports speculated that the same woman had been seen in a nearby motel or that she had been a patient at a psychiatric ward in San Francisco.
None of those leads panned out, but a local fireman appeared to provide a solid sighting.
Three days after the body was found, a Tiburon fireman came forward and told the sheriff he had met the woman in the tan raincoat three months earlier at the Trestle Glen fire station, around 2 miles north of where her body was found. He said the woman had told him she had no money for a taxi and had asked to stay at the fire station, which he refused. She then asked to borrow his car, which he also refused. He last saw her walking down Tiburon Boulevard.
Dorothy suddenly stopped answering her children’s calls, and for years, they searched for her.
Penelope approached strangers in the street and turned her head whenever she heard an Australian accent in San Francisco. “I went to the Australian embassy and asked them if they knew where my mom was,” Penelope remembered. “They had no answers, and they just said that she would not be allowed to go back home if she had seven children.” Other family members searched for gravestones at Bay Area cemeteries and reached out to the FBI and San Francisco cold case investigators, to no avail.
Penelope concluded that her mom must have disappeared with Hess, “because where is she? Why doesn’t she call? Why doesn’t she do something?” she asked herself.
Through the 1970s and early 1980s, Penelope was part of the creative scene in the Castro district, reading her poetry at coffee shops, living in a home with activist Dennis Peron and putting on shows at the Castro Street Fair, while always looking for her mom. She left the city behind in the ‘80s and moved to Vacaville with her husband and became a teacher. “Too many of my friends were dying from AIDS,” Penelope said.
As the Vaillancourts’ decades-long search for their mom continued, in an adjacent world, amateur investigators were attempting to identify the 1966 “Marin County Jane Doe.” Websleuths users speculated as to what took her to that remote road and threw out the names of known missing people. Her profile was added to the NamUs register, and in 2022, Doe’s DNA was sent to a forensic laboratory by the Marin County Sheriff’s Office.
Meanwhile, after retiring from teaching, Penelope started investigating her ancestry online as a hobby, as so many do.
“I was kind of bored, and so I thought I’d do Ancestry, because I was kind of interested,” Penelope said. “It said, ‘Do you want to share your DNA?’ I just clicked the box. Didn’t think anything of it.”
A few months later, on Dec. 18, 2024, Penelope got a call from the Marin sheriff telling her that her DNA matched a 1966 Jane Doe found on the Tiburon Peninsula. (In a strange coincidence, it was on Dec. 18 in 1959 that Susan Corlew dragged herself up to the Vaillancourts’ front door on Steiner Street, and on Dec. 18 in 1966 that Dorothy’s body was found in the brush.)
Thanks to ultrasensitive DNA sequencing by Othram Labs in Texas, and the fact that Penelope decided to track her family tree, the 58-year mystery on the Marin hillside was solved. But for the family, it was confirmation that their loving mother died a premature, lonely death.
“At first, it felt sickening,” Penelope said. “Mind-numbing.”
She drove out to the spot on Paradise Drive where her mother had been found. It’s now Paradise Beach Park, a pretty and peaceful 19-acre space with a pier and views across the bay. “I didn’t feel anything when I got there,” Penelope said. “I don’t know how she ended up there. Was she killed? Did somebody hit her with a car? Did she slip and fall?”
The cause of death was never ascertained, and Dorothy had no broken bones. On her wrist was a Westclox watch, and her shoes were found placed next to her body.
Surviving family members have varying theories. Some suspect that the elusive and allegedly violent Hermann Hess, who is almost certainly now dead, killed her. (A Hermann Hess who died in 1985 is buried in Colma, but SFGATE could not confirm that it is the same man.) Others wonder why that fireman came forward just to announce that he had turned away a woman in need of help.
What we do know is the kindness and humanity Dorothy Vaillancourt showed a bloodied and beaten girl, in her time of need at the steps of the Blue Painted Lady, was not paid forward to her seven years later, on that lonely Tiburon road.
THE LATEST JFK DOCUMENTS RELEASE: A QUICK GUIDE TO THE PERPLEXED
by David Price
Last week, President Trump authorized the rapid release of almost 80,000 pages of previously classified or heavily redacted CIA and FBI documents relating to investigations into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But these documents are not likely to reveal much new information about the assassination. Most of these documents do not even directly relate to JFK’s assassination; those that do are often FBI or CIA efforts to trace down rumors, or only secondarily relate to the assassination. Many records in this collection were originally collected by the US House Select Committee on Assassinations (1976-1979), which included investigations into the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of these released documents appear to have grown out of the committee’s efforts to do background research on individuals, organizations, or intelligence operations mentioned in documents collected by the committee.
This is a disorganized, eclectic collection of crumbs, but even crumbs can contain useful information, though anyone expecting answers to the question of who killed Kennedy is going to be disappointed. Like many other Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) scholars I have been somewhat randomly sampling this massive collection trying to get some feeling for what is here. After 30-some hours of rapid sampling I have started to get a preliminary idea of the range of documents in this release. If I were forced to estimate at this point of reading, I’d wager that far less than 20 percent of these documents directly relate to JFK’s assassination. My guess is that Don DeLillo’s novel Libra, provides as good an idea of what the CIA knows at this point about the truth of JFK’s assassination, which means we’re going to be left with a lot of questions.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about these documents is that they are mostly unredacted. This includes not bothering to protect information that might have legitimately been protected under the Privacy Act. Trump’s hasty order to release all these documents without removing things like CIA officers’ home addresses, SSN, birthdates, and other information reasonably understood to be protected by the Privacy Act perhaps made him some new enemies within the intelligence agencies he hopes to weaponize for his own uses.
Some of these documents that have made headlines include unredacted segments of the CIA Crown Jewels report, extensive CIA personnel files, and documents showing that during the Cold War, almost half of the political officers in US embassies abroad were CIA operatives. While the presence of CIA officers in US embassies has long been known, the size and scope of this admission is impressive. John Marks’ classic 1974 article “How To Spot A Spook,” developed useful techniques using US Government State Department directories to identify CIA officers inside embassies and consulates; and these newly released documents confirm the validity of Marks’ methodology.
To give you some idea of the range of documents in this JFK release, I provide some brief descriptions of sample documents, with links to the documents at the National Archives. None of the below-linked documents have earth-shattering revelations, but they represent a decent sample of the types of documents made public in this JFK release. These include things like: records identifying Chamber of Commerce staff working as CIA operatives, documents detailing psychological warfare on Chile, instances of the CIA recruiting a TWA employee for intelligence gathering, 1963 requests for high explosives by Cuban operatives; unredacted details on establishing “backstop covers” for CIA operatives (including details on how the IRS was used to maintain cover), unredacted case officer reports on running Cold War agents in Germany and elsewhere; a CIA covert staff requisition order for a CIA safehouse in Silver Spring, MD (Safehouse #405); Over 300 pages of unredacted personnel file materials of James Walton Moore (recipient of CIA’s Career Intelligence Medal, 1977), whose many years as CIA officer in Dallas Texas and New Orleans made him naturally of interest to JFK assassination investigators, E. Howard Hunt’s personnel file, investigations of American students who in 1957 traveled from the Moscow Youth Festival to China, A rare copy of the CIA’s publishing secrecy agreement; 1997 CIA documents letting people know their names could be in JFK doc release; details of US intelligence agencies Cold War monitoring of mail correspondence between peoples of the USSR and the USA; an FBI report on a Russian source code named KITTY HAWK who claimed that Soviet disinformation campaign tried to blame LBJ for JFK assassination; a memo discussing concerns that the release of JFK documents could reveal Ford Presidency covert actions including meddling in elections and foreign labor unions; or an FBI report on journalist Drew Pearson’s claim that CIA’s McCone knew of plot where Oswald was paid in Mexico for the assassination.
As a scholar who, during the last three and a half decade,s has read over 100,000 pages of declassified CIA and FBI FOIA documents, I find that the most interesting documents in this release are short, unredacted memos—complete with names of CIA and FBI agents, informers, budgets, addresses, and other information routinely redacted in FOIA releases. These unredacted documents detail covert operations that scholars have long known about and documented, but usually, these FOIA-released documents have small but key details missing. Below are summaries of two such simple documents. The first is a short CIA memo detailing using American businesses to provide cover as part of a CIA “backstop operation,” the second describes the CIA’s creation of a fake Marxist political group to try and monitor and influence radical Arabs in the United States.
CIA Using Corporations for Cover
Since 1967, we have learned a lot about the CIA’s use of pass-throughs, backstops, and front organizations to run a variety of CIA operations during the Cold War. In 1964, with little public notice, Congressman Wright Patman first accidentally discovered the CIA’s use of foundations and front organizations to fund various projects. It wasn’t until 1967, after Ramparts Magazine exposed the CIA’s funding and control of the National Student Association that widespread exposure of dozens of these CIA fronts occurred. I spent much of the last decade documenting how the CIA created and used The Asia Foundation as a CIA-controlled front from 1951 until the New York Times exposed its receipt of CIA funds in 1967. Though the Times stopped far short of exposing the extent of the CIA’s control of the foundation, after this disclosure, the CIA severed its ties to the Foundation. While working on my book, Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA I read hundreds of archival and FOIA documents relating to the mechanisms of CIA funding front finances, yet these new JFK documents provide some of the clearest, non-redacted views of how Cold War CIA fronts contacted and used US corporations and masters of industry to provide cover and launder funds.
The CIA’s golden age of pass-throughs and front organizations was between 1951 and 1967, and the JFK release includes a somewhat routine 44-page CIA document recording CIA staff efforts to use existing businesses to disguise the CIA’s flow of money and people. While this is a routine enough document from this era, the lack of redactions hiding names, dates, and other vital information gives a taste of just how different such documents would be for scholars to work with if the government routinely released such documents in full.
This memo describes how the CIA contacted personnel at the Research Institute of America (RIA) to arrange using it as a “backstop” (providing cover) for William J. Acon, who would soon be working for the CIA overseas. Acon has “been a research analyst on economic and financial problems in Italy.” Acon’s unredacted resume is included and shows the sort of international economics background the CIA often used in its Cold War international operations. A secret transmission from New York City to Washington, D.C. confirms that at the CIA’s meeting, RIA President Leo Cherne (who would later serve on the US Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, 1973-91) agreed to provide this requested CIA cover. These documents also include a similar request for cover being made to Mr. William A. Barron, Chairman of the Board of Gillette Safety Razor Company, and Mr. John E. Toulmin, Senior Vice President of the First National Bank of Boston. Barron was unwilling to use the Gillette Safety Razor company for CIA cover, while “Mr. Toulmin, on the other hand, was most cooperative.” A thickly bureaucratic paper trail of memos documenting meetings, form letters, a denial to provide any document confirming this backstop arrangement, and documents establishing the planned funds transfers provide an unobstructed view of how (without the usual redactions) such CIA transactions were finalized.
Having done extensive FOIA and archival research into two CIA funding fronts (the CIA codenamed DTPILLAR’s Asia Foundation, 1951-1967, and MKULTRA’s Human Ecology Fund, 1955-1965), I have read dozens of fragmentary accounts of such transactions. However, these unredacted releases provide an unusually clear picture of how such routine transactions developed.
The CIA’s fake “Union for Revolution”
A newly released February 13, 1970 internal FBI memo from D.J. Brennan, Jr. to S. J. Papich describes how the Central Intelligence Agency had recently established an organization known as the “Union for Revolution.” This organization was created and managed by the CIA, but it pretended to be a “communist-oriented” revolutionary organization seeking to “develop penetration and/or courses in revolutionary Arab groups in the Middle East.” This FBI memo was written after the CIA alerted the FBI to the existence of this CIA operation to prevent the Bureau from interfering with the Union for Revolution should FBI agents stumble upon it.
The Union for Revolution operated out of Post Office boxes in Philadelphia and Boston. The memo states that its primary “activity in the U.S. will be restricted to the production of propaganda in the form of pamphlets, etc., which material will be mailed to various Left Wing groups in foreign countries.” There was reportedly no Union presence in the US beyond these mailing operations which were being run by CIA officers using “fictitious names.” The CIA hoped “that once the propaganda begins circulating, Arab groups will become interested and will endeavor to establish contact with ‘officials’ of the organization. If this develops, CIA will then proceed to use its own personnel under ‘suitable’ cover to make the contact. From then on, the CIA will maneuver to penetrate the target group.” This information was provided to the FBI by the CIA’s Norman Garrett. Because the CIA’s charter prohibits its involvement in domestic operations and the obvious likelihood that this propaganda spread to domestic audiences, this appears to be an illegal CIA operation. The CIA wrote to the FBI’s Liaison Agent that the CIA would provide the FBI with samples of propaganda from this operation. As Edward Said’s FBI file shows, during this same era, the FBI was intensifying its spying on a variety of Arab-American groups, such as the Arab-American University Graduates or the Palestine-American Congress; but this document shows the CIA moving beyond monitoring to the role of agent provocateur.
Like many of the fragmentary documents that are part of the latest batch of JFK release, more questions than answers arise from these documents. Chief among these relate to how this CIA propaganda effort spread within the United States, what was the blowback from this effort to nurture Arab radicals? Did the CIA yet again feed a political movement that later generated conflict or violence?
There are thousands of unredacted memos on hundreds of other subjects that can similarly provide new details on topics unrelated to JFK’s assassination. I know that the lack of documents answering key questions about JFK’s murder is disappointing to many people. If such government records ever existed, it seems unlikely they survive, or that they would ever be released. In some very real sense, that isn’t what this collection is really about, though the secrecy surrounding all these non-JFK-related documents raises its own questions given what it does not contain. It is important to remember that the size of this collection makes it difficult to immediately understand what important details may emerge as people carefully sift through these pages. Nothing definitive about JFK’s assassination will likely emerge, but with the elimination of widespread redactions, other details unrelated to JFK will emerge, shedding new light on elements of American intelligence operations.
(David Price is an anthropologist living in Olympia, Washington. His latest book is Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and CIA, published by University of Washington Press. CounterPunch.org.)
LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT
Farewell to Gaia, the Milky Way’s Cartographer
Trump Announces 25% Tariffs on Imported Cars and Car Parts
Intelligence Officials Face a Fresh Round of Questions About Signal Leak
Elmo and Elon Musk Are Cited as G.O.P. Lawmakers Grill PBS and NPR
Trump Administration Abruptly Cuts Billions From State Health Services
H.H.S. Scraps Studies of Vaccines and Treatments for Future Pandemics
Federal Government Detains International Student at Tufts
UNLAWFUL DETENTIONS
by Karen Rifkin
Georgetown University graduate student Badar Khan Suri, originally from India, was detained last Monday night at his home in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. Masked agents said his student visa had been revoked.
Brown University Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese citizen in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, was detained and deported this month as she arrived back in the U.S. at an airport in Boston
Ma Yang, a 37-year-old Hmong-American, had been living in the U.S. since she was a baby and was a legal resident with a green card. However, the mother of five was detained and then deported to Laos, a country she had never been to and where she says she doesn’t know anyone and can’t speak the language.
Rebecca Burke, 28, a Welsh artist, was detained on February 26 after she “set off on the trip of a lifetime across North America.” She was reunited with her family this month after spending 19 days in a processing center.
Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by federal agents despite being a lawful permanent resident with a green card after he was involved in last year’s protests and encampments in support of Palestine at Columbia University.
Canadian actor and entrepreneur Jasmine Mooney was detained at the border in San Diego as she legally went through the process of trying to get a work visa. She was detained for about two weeks. "There was no explanation, no warning.”
A gay Venezuelan asylum seeker was recently deported to an El Salvadorian torture facility for allegedly having tattoos affiliated with a terrorist group. The man was among 260 Venezuelans accused by the presidential administration of being members of Tren de Aragua, a terrorist group, though Venezuela’s interior minister has said that none of the deportees are members of the group.
Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, was seen on surveillance footage on a Somerville street as masked, plainclothes officers approached and handcuffed her on Tuesday.The reason for her detention was not clear as of Wednesday afternoon.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
—Martin Niemöller
(Karen Rifkin)
IN HONOR OF INTERNATIONAL POETRY DAY
This Be The Verse
by Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
YOU HAVE YOUTH, confidence, and a job’, the older waiter said. ‘You have everything.’
‘And what do you lack?’
‘Everything but work.’
‘You have everything I have.’
‘No. I have never had confidence and I am not young.’
‘Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up.’
‘I am one of those who like to stay late at the cafe,’ the older waiter said. ‘With all those who did not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.’
— Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Ugh. Hobby Lobby? Really?
Here’s a more detailed look at the issues:
Religious Freedom and Contraception:
The company’s owners, the Greens, argued that the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate violated their religious freedom, leading to the landmark Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, stating that for-profit corporations could assert religious freedom claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). So they refuse to provide contraception and reproductive health care.
Allegations of Discrimination:
Hobby Lobby has faced multiple lawsuits alleging discrimination, including a lawsuit by the EEOC for failing to accommodate a service dog for a part-time clerk with disabilities.
The company has also been criticized for antisemitism, homophobia, LGBTQ discrimination, attempts to evangelize public schools, and endangering employees during the coronavirus pandemic.
Hobby Lobby provides financial support for organizations that promote anti-LGBTQ+ agendas and conversion therapy.
Christian Nationalism: Hobby Lobby’s owners have been accused of promoting Christian nationalism, seeking to reshape democracy into a Christian version of the Taliban.
Illegally Smuggled Artifacts:
Hobby Lobby was involved in a scandal involving the illegal smuggling of ancient artifacts into the US, leading to the seizure of an ancient tablet by the DOJ. The artifacts were purchased from an ISIS backed group, meaning they literally funded terrorists.
I don’t want this company doing business here, and I will boycott this business and encourage others to do so also.
If a business believes that providing contraceptives to its employees goes against their faith, then why force it on them? Employees are not being forced to work there, either. It seems to me state governments could be providing these relatively non controversial contraceptives for free. That would rid us of the argument.
I would boycott the company. They’re a business, not a religion and should not force their beliefs on employees. Your nonsense about businesses being “forced” and employees not being forced to work for them is nonsense. Maybe in an ideal world, but the neofascist U.S. business system, particularly small business peddlers, is hardly part of an ideal world. Typical conservative thinking on your part, the kind of authoritarian thinking I have abhorred for all my working years.
Screw the peddlers’ “faith”. It’s a business, not a damned religious undertaking.
I have a better solution, Medicare for all. Business owners would be free of any responsibility for providing health care/contraceptives for their employees. They could concentrate on making their business profitable without the headache and expense of having to fund their employee’s health care.
About that photo of Schumer and Pelosi discussing the “massive Republican fuck-up…” The supposedly inadvertent email link to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic–the voice of the establishment– was a big misdirection play. The so-called leak to Goldberg occurred on Monday, March 24. Next day, while the media were pre-occupied with the Administration’s inexplicable blunder, the Associated Press reported “President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive action to overhaul U.S. elections, including requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and demanding that all ballots be received by Election Day. The order calls on states to work with federal agencies to share voter lists and prosecute election crimes. It threatens to pull federal funding from states where election officials don’t comply.”
This is obviously a much bigger story than the mysterious link to Jeffrey Goldberg (of all people). The AP story went on, “The Republican National Committee launched a massive effort to probe voter registration lists nationwide.”
Today Waltz, who made the so-called blunder, is scoping out the real estate in Greenland with Mrs Vance. He was not disgraced at all.
Greenland’s a clean land
Denmark failed to exploit it.
Servers need the cold.
‘Tis all a game of Whist
Where the President
Trumps all the tricks
And puts all the losers
On his Deportation List.
That List
It’s long and detailed–
That dreaded Deportation List
Targets those who’ve caused
Mr. Trump to be real pissed.
Let’s hope our loyal AVA
Folks escape his fury—
Don’t want to lose all hope,
But that’d make us worry.
Quote for Caitlin Johnstone’s plight:
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”
— Voltaire
…and over here on the Monopoly board, as Mr Gardner has astutely noted, the US appears to have negotiated a real estate trade wherein Putin may annex Ukraine if Trump can annex Greenland and Canada—deal…?
A media plot, as he said
Trump said it was a media conspiracy
knowing the bleating sheep and braying jackasses of the codependent party
Would never take him seriously,
The trumpeting elephants
And rampant rinos will take what
Like and the party of wimps have mustered
Their too bravest little mice,
,AOC & Bernie to face the rampaging herd!
More editing time is needed for doggerel comments, please make a note of it.
Trumpeting elephants
and rogue rinos
Will take what they want
and the wimps send out
two wee mice
Bernie and A O C
to face the rampaging herd.
RISING COSTS, EXPANDING MEMBERSHIP: The future of water in Ukiah Valley
Try reversing the expansion, and live within carrying capacity of your habitat, sans dams and diversions. Humans are the stupidest beings ever to evolve. Their greed and self-entitlement are out of control, and they will pay the price for their arrogance and greed as a result…
For months, beginning in 2023, Karen Rikfin wrote stories and published photographs of the decaying Palace Hotel. Rifkin was the mouthpiece for restaurateur Matt Talbert and the Guidiville Rancheria’s plan to secure $6.6 million in taxpayer funding to tear down Ukiah’s most prominent historical landmark. She relentlessly quoted Talbert and supporters’ contentions that suspected contamination at the Palace site made demolition a necessity. Then Rifkin published a book on the Palace’s history and launched a speaking tour. Now, Rifkin is labeled “Palace Hotel Advocate,” photographing the admirable work contractor Tom Carter and crew have done to stabilize the Palace in hopes a developer can be found to refurbish the downtown icon.
I’m happy Rifkin is finally on board with efforts to preserve the Palace. I keep waiting, however, for her mea culpa for advocating its demolition at a critical juncture in its history. The City of Ukiah issued a demolition permit, partly in response to Talbert, Guidiville, and Rifkin’s public efforts to show that its rehabilitation was not possible.
Regarding the Palace Hotel work. I initially was impressed by that beam from the back door, until I realized it was laminated. Nevertheless, a nice bit of work. Back decades ago, Don Van Zandt told me that, in the 1920s, he hewned a redwood beam: 12 inches by 12 inches by 79 feet long!
Awoke early at the Adam’s Place Homeless Shelter in northeast Washington, D.C. Am now on a guest computer at the MLK public library, about to go forth to the Washington, D.C. Peace Vigil in front of the White House. I’ve already eaten breakfast at Whole Foods on H Street, including a turmeric latte, and have purchased a LOTTO ticket for the next draw. Have taken the anarchist publication Slingshot, which had been sent to me from Berkeley, to share at the vigil. In the midst of the American society’s total meltdown, such an alternative view was well received. A minority of residents in the USA still value basic sanity. I am no longer attached to anything at all. All offers for enlightened community, which includes individual housing of course, will be considered. I’d like to leave the homeless shelter. Let’s face it, after a half century of radical environmental/peace & justice frontlining, at age 75, even a crazy society owes me the basics.
Contact me at:
Craig Louis Stehr
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
Telephone Messages: (202) 832-8317
Snail Mail: 2210 Adams Place NE #1 Washington, D.C. 20018
March 27th, 2025 Anno Domini
Re: Palace Hotel photos. Here’s a picture taken inside the White House 75 years ago. They hollowed it out all the way to the skin and built a whole new mansion inside, while President Truman and his wife stayed in Blair House, across the street.
https://tinyurl.com/GuttedWhiteHouse
While Truman was taking a nap in Blair House, two men set out to assassinate him. Details via ChatGPT:
The attack was carried out by Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, who were members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Their goal was to draw attention to the fight for Puerto Rican independence from the U.S. They planned to storm Blair House in broad daylight. Both were armed with semi-automatic pistols: Collazo had a Walther P38, and Torresola had a Luger. They planned a pincer-style assault—one attacking from the front, the other flanking.
2:15 PM, November 1, 1950, the two men approached Blair House, which had plainclothes Secret Service agents and uniformed police officers stationed outside. Torresola approached from the west side, catching White House Police officer Leslie Coffelt off guard and shooting him three times at close range. Collazo tried to storm the front steps, but was spotted by Officer Donald Birdzell, who was just coming on duty. As Collazo fumbled with his pistol’s safety, Birdzell drew his gun and fired, hitting Collazo in the chest. Torresola, an experienced marksman, turned to fire on Special Agent Stewart Stout, hitting him in the knee. He then wounded another officer, Joseph Downs, who was trying to draw his gun. Officer Coffelt, despite being gravely wounded, managed to draw his revolver and fire a single shot at Torresola, hitting him in the head. Torresola died instantly. Collazo, wounded and out of ammunition, was subdued and arrested.
At the time of the attack, President Truman was inside Blair House on the second floor, taking a nap. The gunfire woke him, and he actually looked out a window during the shooting, momentarily exposed to danger. Secret Service agents immediately pulled him away from the window and secured him inside.
Photoshopped or AI, Steve McQueen balanced on his Triumph for a stupid pic?
Pretty sure that’s not shopped. And isn’t that a Metisse Desert Racer?
To Paul M. – Try reading (or better yet listen to, since it’s read by the author) Tibetan Peach Pie, by Tom Robbins, before you go to sleep. It’ll make you laugh and maybe some of his imaginative fantasies will filter through to your dreams.
Hey Doobie, I bought that book thinking it was fiction, and had a glorious read anyway…(The way he got married instantly to a stranger who proposed to him in a bar was priceless!)
Bruce – one of the better comebacks (to the Daily Mail reporter) I’ve read in bit. Thanks for the laugh
I am really unsure, just like high school math, but I think it’s $170.
Also not sure, but I think the store only lost the original $100 taken from the register. After that everything was above board (store got the $100 back in exchange for pants and change).
$100. Merchandise loss + $30 change
The $100 taken is returned and the merch is stolen + $30.
This is why I flunked math, but yeah, I think you’re both right — it’s $100.