Off the Record 6/10/2025

THE STORY about the sale of the Press Democrat to the predatory hedge fund which has already destroyed local papers here in oblivious Mendo, soft-pedals criticism of the paper's current owners, Darius Anderson and former congressman Doug Bosco. Of course Bosco and Anderson sold to the highest bidder, and anybody who thinks these two local predators have ever had the slightest interest in the well-being of local journalism is naive even by local Democrat standards. The irony here is that the PD was always worshipful at the feet of this pair of hustlers even before they owned the paper.

BOSCO also managed to rip off the remaining viable parts of the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad, which Bosco maneuvered into his front organization, NorCal's Democratic Party, a dozen or so shot callers who bring us the parade of mediocrities who grow rich “representing” us at all levels of government.

AMONG the lesser swindles of Bosco and the Democrats’ railroad cash-out, count the present site of the new Mendocino County Courthouse that no one wants except the royal family of our 9 (count 'em) superior court judges for our tiny popu;ation of 90,000 people, half of whom can be presumed to be children. (8 of our judges are Democrats. Cindee Mayfield, last time I looked, is a Trumper.)

THE WEEKLY DEMONSTRATIONS against Trumpism at Fort Bragg, Ukiah and even Boonville, come without criticism of our present Bosco clone, Jared Huffman, who blithely signs off on funding for the Palestinian genocide safe in the knowledge he can count on eternal re-election by the “progressives” of the Northcoast.

SPEAKING of the grotesque occupant of the White House, the difference between his and Biden's obvious dementias is volume; Trump does and says something absolutely batshit every day, while Biden's handlers severely limited his disastrous public appearances as they kept to the Democrat's decadent liblab agenda, which also included, and continues to include, removing from existence the Palestinian people. (Note to Mendo proggies: A vote for Democrats like Huffman is a vote for mass murder. If you can't even pull the plug on the blandly complicit Marin cipher, spare us your weekly anti-Trump demonstrations.)

SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN ON THE COUNTY BUDGET SITUATION (facebook):

“I like to put stuff in real life terms. I was thinking about comparing it to, like, Mom and Dad and family vacation and Dad says we can’t go to Disneyland this year. So where can we go? Can we go to Six Flags and eat peanut butter and jelly in the car and we’ll share the big soda and we’ll fill up on popcorn and we don’t have to spend a lot of money? Like, how do we work together to come up with ways and ideas to save money so that we can still accomplish the goals that we want to have and not have it be this us-versus-them dynamic that we seem to always get into? … Workin’ on it.”

INLAND WATER AGENCIES LAY OUT POTTER VALLEY PROJECT PLANS

by Jim Shields

I attended a special joint meeting via zoom on May 29th. The various parties (Supervisors, City of Ukiah, and probably a half-dozen or so water agencies, were present to be briefed on the current situation regarding the status of PG&E’s abandonment of the Potter Valley Project. It was actually a very informative meeting. There’s a long way to go before anything is finalized. The consultants who handled the briefing estimated the soonest any construction, including PG&E’s demolition of Cape Horn dam, could occur wouldn’t be until 2031-34. There are a lot of moving parts and numerous players with conflicting agendas, so you can count on litigation slowing things down.

I don’t have any discretionary time right now, so I’ll leave it to others to report on the details of what occurred at the joint meeting. But as I said, there was beaucoup information and details presented at the session.

I've also attached screen shots of current diversion infrastructure, proposed diversion infrastructure, and a few other charts of potential interest.

READER SHERRI PATTEN HENSE-BROWN OF UKIAH WRITES:

I read your article re: the annexation. I thought you might know the answer to this. Maureen Mulheren is currently the Chairman of the LAFCO commission that will eventually review this and reviewed the western hills annexation. Her main representative base is Ukiah and could have benefits related to this review. Would this be a conflict of interest if she served on the LAFCO review as chairman for the annexation application?

MARK SCARAMELLA REPLIES: Yes. In fact, one could argue that Supervisor Mulheren should never have been assigned to the secret ad hoc tax sharing committee in the first place for the same reason. But 1. I doubt this proposal will ever get to LAFCO (at least not in its present form), and 2. If it does (perhaps in some significantly scaled back form), conflicts of interest have a habit of being overlooked when it’s convenient for Supervisors. After all, no one brought up the conflict/appearance of conflict when Mulheren, a former Ukiah City Councilperson with friends who are City officials, was assigned to negotiate the agreement. A few years ago I filed a conflict of interest claim with the Supervisors and with the State Fair Political Practices Commission calling on Supervisor Glenn McGourty to recuse himself from all inland water meetings and discussions because McGourty was voting on inland/Russian River water decisions while at the same time he owned a profit-making vineyard which depended on Russian River water for its profit. McGourty, then-County Counsel Christian Curtis and the FPPC all ignored my complaint. I also filed it with the Grand Jury at the time but they too ignored it: https://theava.com/archives/159457#2

LORETTA SWIT, who played Major Houlihan on TV’s “MAS*H,” dies at 87 (via Fred Gardner)

RECOMMENDED READING: “A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption and American Culture” by Alexander Cockburn. Cockburn, a frequent visitor to Boonville, was the last of the political writers who was also a very good writer, much better than Christopher Hitchens to whom he was often compared and, unlike Hitchens, Cockburn was a true enemy of empire to the end. There aren't many political writers I go out of my way to read. (None, at the moment.) Today, it's all term-paper prose. Cockburn often complained to me about what bad writers many of his CounterPunch contributors were, and how much time he had to spend doing basic editing of their stuff. Cockburn was always a writer I'd read the instant I got it, a writer I always looked forward to. His prose was alive. He was alive, what used to be called an “all-outer.” He was robbed of another decade or so, but in the seven he lived he probably packed in more than ten people. He uniquely combined information with a lively and even elegant prose. And not just on politics; he was lively and interesting on a whole range of subjects. What you won't read in all the reviews of his last book is how Cockburn, in the final ten years or so of his life, was non-personed by much of the left, especially the lock-step sectors at places like the Pacifica Network, the sanctified Amy Goodman and Democracy Now. The Nation cut his word count way back as it went all the way over to a spine-free Clinton-Obama-ism. They wanted him to take it easy on Democrats because, boiled down, Democrats are better than Republicans! And so on, as left media disappeared faster than the left itself. He was often scathing about the personalities of the talk show left, the people who've become rich “speaking truth to power,” in the fatuous phrase of the self-aggrandizing, and why the publisher chose to apply that turgid quote from Greg Palast to Cockburn on the book's back cover means Cockburn didn't get a look at it before he died. No way he'd have approved it. Cockburn was the real thing, a lion of opposition all his days. The would-be little Lenins hated him of course, and he mopped the floor with mainstream media figures on those occasions he was permitted to go head-to-head with one of them. He was intransigent, never gave one inch all his days, and this book conveys him perfectly.

“THE DREARIEST place on any campus is the J-school, and whenever any young person comes to me to write a testimonial for them to get into journalism school I rail bitterly at their decision, though I concede that these days a diploma from one of these feedlots for mediocrity is pretty much mandatory for anyone who wants to get into mainstream journalism.”

COCKBURN said that, that and many other right-on assessments of contemporary reality, never hesitating to criticize his allies. He'd call me up when I'd written some faulty something to let me know about it, which means he called me a lot, and that's what I think I admired most about him, that he never let anyone slide. Every minute with that guy was an adventure. I'll always be proud we were friends.

ADMINISTRATIUM

by Fred Gardner

Investigators at a major research institution have discovered the heaviest element known to science. This startling new discovery has been tentatively named Administratium (Ad). This new element has no protons or electrons, thus having an atomic number of 0. It does, however, have 1 neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons, and 111 assistant vice neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by a force called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since it has no electrons, Administratium is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. According to the discoverers, a minute amount of Administratium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would normally take less than a second.

Administratium has a normal half-life of approximately three years; it does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons, vice neutrons, and assistant vice neutrons exchange places.

In fact an Administratium sample's mass will actually increase over time, since with each reorganization some of the morons inevitably become neutrons, forming new isotopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Administratium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as the "Critical Morass."

FRED GARDNER: Behind lock & key at a Safeway in Santa Rosa. Prices range from $12.99 to $20.99.

About all the Tide behind lock & key at the Safeway… I should have added that two-pound bags of Peet’s coffee –much easier to shoplift than big plastic bottles– were on sale for $21.99 and stacked near the entrance. The difference? Laundry soap is a necessity (and twice as expensive at the laundromat than at the grocery store). So the Tide is a target for the poor, the Peet’s isn’t. Poverty causes crime!. (Sure, there are exceptions to this rule, maniacs commit crimes… But it’s the simple truth: Poverty Causes Crime.)

AI ENCOUNTER

by Fred Gardner

I've had my first encounter with AI. I was at the Cafe Mac in Sonoma when an email arrived from a site called "Academia," purportedly linking to an AI podcast of an article that ran in O'Shaughnessy's Winter/Spring 2013 issue. (Cafe Mac is where old folks go with their computer problems. O'S is a publication I produced for a pro-cannabis doctors' group.) 

The article summarized by AI was headlined, "Doctors stress need to document anti-cancer effects of Cannabis 'oil.’” Foolishly assuming that the podcast would be an accurate summary of the article, I emailed some knowledgable friends wondering who would be making money off my work. When I then listened to the podcast, I stopped wondering and denied Academia permission to post it.

I didn't record the verbiage before telling them not to display it. The voice was that of an Englishman, and what he said was antithetical to my POV. The voice had me extolling randomized clinical trials. Capital-M Medicine has made a cult of clinical trials, according to the real me.

My most knowledgable correspondent, an engineer, emailed back: "The cost of crawling through posts and doing AI 'podcasts' is negligible, fractions of a cent in all likelihood and no human being was in any part of the chain, it was all a program that does the same thing millions of times a day. It isn't initiated by the AI companies themselves (it's just another data point for a garbage scraping consolidation site to inflate their numbers)… Live with the comfort that no one will ever listen to that or read your article from that garbage source."

FRANK HARTZELL: Tribe closes spectacular Inn in Elk
https://mendocinocoast.news/amador-county-tribe-pulls-plug-on-sacred-rock-resort-in-elk/

GRACE HUDSON 1889; The Sun House, Ukiah; and Grace Carpenter Hudson in her Studio (Ron Parker)

A NEW (JANUARY, 2025) VIDEO SUMMARY OF THE BARI BOMBING CASE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrsI592K4B8

ED NOTE: Pretty good overview of the case despite a few minor errors and one major error: I did not create the website sweeneydidit, although I think it's obvious he did it. I've also always understood that Sweeney was never seriously investigated by the FBI.

“THEORY IS TAUGHT so as to make the student believe that he or she can become a Marxist, a feminist, an Afrocentrist, or a deconstructionist with about the same effort and commitment required in choosing items from a menu.”

–Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993)

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] I'm to the point where I don't care who is in or out of the Hall of Fame, because I don't care that it exists in the first place. People played pro baseball. Some of them were really, really, good at it. Some were just good at it. They were all better at it than the average person, and all fun to watch. Leave it at that.

[2] The LAST person I would support to solve this mess… is Trump who will become a dictator…eventually… if he isn't already, but just being held back from total fruition by various political antics by his detractors. Face it, there is no one that can fix this mess. We are all going to eat shit and die until Mother Nature and gravity can bring it back to the way it's supposed to be.

[3] Give Trump credit for being the most successful con man and branding genius in our history, far surpassing Ponzi, PT Barnum and all those who preceded him. From "MAGA" to "waste fraud and abuse" to "wide open borders" to "lock her up!" to "Biden crime family", he and the Republican party have mastered the art of gaslighting with pithy taglines. If our higher education system survives Trump's current onslaught, MAGA will make for a plethora of case studies in every curriculum: business, politics, sociology and psychology. Frankly, if we as a nation survive his onslaught.

[4] I live in Florida. I don't need NOAA or the National Weather Service to tell me a hurricane's coming. And I don't need them to tell me what to do. We've been doing this for a long time. We have hurricane shutters on all doors and windows. We evacuate if our relatives in Miami tell us it's coming our way. Those guys you see on TV are selling air time for sponsors. Florida people aren't watching the guy with the rain hat and umbrella.

[5] The average person does not want war. A nice life filled with supportive people… a couple kids to leave your property to… meaningful work… a roof over our heads… food in the belly… and a little fun on the weekend is all most ask for. Nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong that is – except for the Ruling Class that seems to have a perpetual death wish for the Planet. Not for themselves of course because they are basically sore-afraid cowards who hide behind heavy office doors and thuggish security people so their mostly wasted lives are kept safe and secure. No, it is death for a great deal of humanity that they seek.

And why? Because they hate what they are – human beings. They are a human-species-hating deformity in the human family. They do not even see themselves as human but more like faux gods that rule over the collection of The Worthless as just so much garbage.

They hate everything human so much that they are committed to either cleansing the Planet of humanity – or fully merging us with machinery so that we become better and more compliant slaves for Them. How nice for them.

They seem to have no souls. And so, They do not want the rest of us to have any, either.

We did not sign up to live out our lives among such Madman and Madwomen but here we are. We stubbornly refuse to accept the hellscape that They have planned for us and we go about our lives anyway… finding as many supportive people as we cam… having kids if we so choose… engaging in meaningful work (or deciding to waste our lives with eyes forever glued to the screen of the Little Magic Box of Dancing Pixels)… finding food for our belly… and as much fun as we can squeeze out of life in between the madness and hellscape that we find ourselves in.

No one promised us a Rose Garden. But it could be said that neither did they promise us lives filled with nothing but Thorns and Pests constantly eating away at us.

Where there’s Life there’s Hope, so they say. Let’s hope so… because living without Hope doesn’t seem to bring happiness… or food for our bellies.

[6] Watching starving people shot trying to get food, watching children, babies and whole families blown up, over and over, is extremely painful for anyone who has empathy. Seeing this makes me ashamed to call myself a human. I don't blame Jewish Americans. I love my Jewish friends. I blame the state of Israel, I blame Hamas and I blame the Trump and the Biden administrations for supplying weapons and political cover to Israel and treating the Palestinians as lesser humans. And I also blame the American media for failing to publish detailed, personal accounts of the Palestinian who were senselessly killed. All those who remain silent are complicit.