Off the Record 6/17/2025

SURPRISE! Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison told the Supervisors a few weeks ago that tax delinquency and tax default property sales were still a long way off because of the bureaucrat hurdles involved. But on Wednesday a Ukiah reader informed us that a “Notice of Property Tax Delinquency and Impending Default” appeared in the legal notices section of the Ukiah Daily Journal on June 4, 2025. This should be good news for the County as it represents potential long-overdue tax revenue for something like 190 parcels in the County. It could also mean that there are more sales in the pipeline that could generate more revenue, if not immediately, at least in the next few years. Hopefully, Ms. Cubbison will update the Board on this recent development at an upcoming Board meeting with an estimate of the amount of revenue that it might generate, and when.

(Mark Scaramella)

SHERIFF MATT KENDALL:

In 2023 the legislature decided to run a law through which aligned some elections with the presidential cycle. In essence Sheriff’s and District Attorneys who were elected in 2022 were subjected to the reshuffling of the election dates and instead of a 4 year term we were given a 6 year term which put us on presidential election cycle.

This means all of us sheriffs who lived through his terms will still be in office if he decides to run for president. That likely won’t serve him well as most sheriffs across the state have a long memory.

Anyone who is paying attention have seen the governor seems to be attempting to re-invent himself. This is likely because he is hoping most folks will forget about what has been done in our state. There will likely be 58 County Sheriffs who won’t forget. I know I won’t.

LOUISE MARIANA: Is Hospice Thrift Store Closing?

No. Not for the foreseeable future, but it might. Here’s the situation. Adventist Hospital no longer wants to assume administrative and financial responsibility for the store. They propose closing the store if another entity cannot be found to assume that responsibility.

Right now the best prospect for the store’s survival is the Hospital District’s Board of Directors. However they need to be persuaded to keep the store in the hospital family. You the community can play a critical role in preserving our essential thrift store.

The Board needs to hear from you. There will be a Board meeting at 5 p.m. on June 12 am on Thursday in the Redwood Room on the hospital campus. Public comments will be heard first. Please express your appreciation for the store and all it has offered to the community over all these many many years. Please urge the Board to assume responsibility in order to keep our store open and serving the community. Thank You.

Louise Mariana, Store Volunteer

Fort Bragg

---

HOSPICE THRIFT STORE MEETING

Help keep the store open. Come to the hospital board meeting on this Thursday at 5 pm in the redwoods room in the patient registration building.say a few words and hopefully we can convince the board that they should assume responsibility for the store, since Adventist no longer wants to. Thanks..

Louise Mariana, [email protected]

DISTRICT ATTORNEY DAVID EYSTER

Mendo Never Has Been A ‘Sanctuary Jurisdiction.’

In response to recent local inquiries, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did previously release -- but then quickly withdrew -- a list of purported "sanctuary jurisdictions" which listed 48 of California's 58 counties, a listing that included Mendocino County as one of those sanctuary jurisdictions.

The now-withdrawn list was created based on a presidential executive order requiring DHS and Attorney General Bondi to identify jurisdictions that are perceived to be obstructing federal immigration enforcement.

So, yes, Mendocino County was on the flawed list as a jurisdiction believed by DHS and Attorney General Bondi to be a “sanctuary jurisdiction.”

The bigger question is why Mendocino County and only 47 other California counties were listed versus all 58 California counties is not clear at all.

The answer to that question is not clear because all 58 California counties are subject to the "California Values Act ," a law enacted by the California Legislature in 2017, effective January 2018. SB 54 limits California law enforcement agencies, including school police and security departments, from using money or personnel “to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect or arrest individuals” for immigration enforcement purposes.

To that end, SB 54 bars state and local law enforcement from cooperating with immigration holds that could be placed by the feds against those being held in local jails on local criminal charges and convictions, and further restricts local law enforcement's ability to respond to immigration notification and transfer requests (Govt Code §§7282, 7282.5).

While many in local law enforcement do not agree with the "means to the end" being used elsewhere in the country that are being reported on nightly on the evening news to "enforce" federal immigration laws, one thing is crystal clear. Mendocino County is not nor has it ever been a place providing sanctuary to criminals who also happen to be in the country illegally.

THE NEW HEAD of Homeland Security’s Terror Prevention Office, Thomas Fugate, is a 22-year-old former gardener and “Cross Functional Team Member” at a Supermarket in Austin.

Fugate has no background in counter-terrorism or much of anything, frankly, except being a self-described Trump sycophant since the age of 13. Feel safer, now? Maybe the “terror threat” from the border (or anywhere else) isn’t all it’s hyped up to be…

— Jeffrey St. Clair

ED NOTES (for the marvelous and intuitive Mazie Malone)

AS A KID, I never missed the televised fights on Wednesday and Saturday nights brought to me by the Gillette Blue Blades I was too young to use. I think the fights were among the most popular shows on early television. Carmen Basilio! Jersey Joe Walcott! Sugar Ray Robinson! Jake LaMotta! Rocky Marciano! Boxing's Golden Age!

I WAS plenty old enough for the Griffith-Paret fight, but I've always wished I hadn't watched it. Everyone who saw it remembers it because Griffith had Paret helpless on the ropes and, as I recall the awful scene, by the time the referee pulled him off, Paret was probably dead. You knew you were watching something awful, a murder really. The Times said that Griffith hit Paret 17 times in five seconds, 24 times in that flurry without a single counterpunch from Paret.

NORMAN MAILER had it perfectly: “The right hand whipping like a piston rod which has broken through the crankcase, or like a baseball bat demolishing a pumpkin.” It seemed to take forever for the ref to react, and by the time he did, Benny “The Kid” Paret was gone, and died a few days later.

PARET, during the weigh-in, had called Griffith a “maricon,” the Spanish word for “fag,” a fatal insult as it developed. Griffith was gay, and always denied he was out to kill Paret, but if you watch the film of that terrible event (or the excellent documentary from a few years ago which includes the film and the dramatic aftermath, “Ring of Fire,” you'll see that Griffith was out to kill.

THE ART COLLECTOR. Twice one week, a forlorn sixty-ish woman had appeared at my Frisco door, suitcases in hand. “Is Mr. Anderson the art collector in?” she asked in a British accent. My wife, suppressing a laugh, said that there was indeed a man by that name living at this address, but he could hardly be described as an “art collector.” The English woman shuffled off into the summer fog, But showed up again the next day to ask, “Do you know of a place I might stay?”

SHE PRESENTED, as they say, as a respectable person of the secure middle classes, not, in any obvious way, one of the small army of roving mental cases loose in San Francisco. We offered the usual menu of unappealing options: city-run shelters, Glide, and so on, none of them suitable for a person unlikely to do well in tough places among tough people. I would have liked to have known what disaster, or series of disasters, had made the English woman homeless, but with that kind of curiosity also comes the existential bogeymen: If I asked what had happened to make her a refugee, the next step would be an obligation to help somehow. Then would come the excuses: “I'm a person of ordinary means. My place is barely big enough for me and the little woman. We couldn't possibly take on another person. The government's supposed to help out. Where the government?”

THE GOVERNMENT, of course, has abdicated, and charity is stretched to the limit. There's not only no room at the inn, there's no inn.

ANYBODY who walks around The City can't help but see that there are lots of people living as they can, often in their vehicles, but still trying to lift themselves up and out. And every day we're told by the big white perfect teeth on television that the “Economy has turned the corner. The recovery is weak but we're headed in the right direction.” If a downward plummet is the right direction, we're certainly on the way. No doubt about it.

THE ENGLISH WOMAN didn't return. I have no idea how she got onto me, but we were still thinking and wondering about her for weeks after. This kind of thing is unsettling, isn't it? Her odd visit also had me wondering if my “art collection” added up to anything grand enough to be called a collection.

I'VE GOT two paintings by my friend Mary Robertson whose wonderful work has steadily grown in value, a collage by Winston Smith, once of Ukiah (hah!), a Crumb miniature of Devil Girl, some old prints that may or may not be fairly rare, and a World War Two artifact I bought years ago at a Ukiah garage sale.

THAT ARTIFACT, I learned, when, in a time of dire need, one of many over a long, impecunious life, I took this object to an appraiser. He offered an on-the-spot grand for it. “A one-of-a-kinder,” the appraiser said, “and very nicely done.” Which caused me to keep it. My aesthetic had been officially validated!

YOU'D HAVE TO SEE this thing to appreciate it, but the instant I spotted it in that Ukiah backyard with a twenty dollar price tag on it I couldn't believe my good fortune. I pounced. The garage saler was an elderly woman who explained that her late husband had served in the occupation of Japan immediately after World War Two. He'd brought the unusual little diorama home with him from Yokohama. Judging from the other art she had on sale, she was heavy into unicorns and chipmunks, which, come to think of it, are ubiquitous art forms in our County seat. I remember her saying of my treasure, “I never liked the thing. I made him hang it out in the garage.”

I LOOK at it all the time, and it endlessly rewards my attention because it's so intricately done, so sad in its desperate tribute to Japan's conquerors. I imagine the old Ukiah guy making a special trip out to his garage to gaze at his prize, perhaps geisha memories also warming him all those years after the biggest events of his life, 1941-46.

SO, what are we talking about here? We're talking about a tableau recreating the appearance of a triumphant American destroyer in Yokohama harbor set in a mahogany frame that was probably once home to some other iconic Asian item. It's about six inches deep, two feet long, a foot high. The frame is embossed with Japanese characters which, translated, hail the Yankee conquerors. Inside the frame is a plastic mini-replica of a destroyer with gray human hair serving as smokestack smoke, behind which the artist has meticulously painted in bright colors his hillside home town and, beyond, Mount Fuji. The whole of it is vaguely reminiscent of Grandma Moses and some Haitian street art I've seen. The Japanese, like the Germans, eked out existences as best they could in those first grim years after the war their disastrous leaders brought on, and I've always assumed my prized possession was made by a man surviving however he could.

RECOMMENDED READING: “Spy Rock Memories” by Larry Livermore. The Mendocino County literary oeuvre is pretty thin, although there are lots of good writers in our beloved mother county. This book helps make up the deficit, and is the best thing I've read on the general subject of Back To The Land in that fraught decade — 1970-80 — when the city had become so violent that thousands of people fled north where they bought logged over land in remote areas up and down the Northcoast and settled in, radically underestimating what pure hard work it is to carve out a homestead where there's no developed water, let alone a power grid. Livermore was not your generic back-to-the-lander. A gifted writer, he describes in vivid detail his struggles to establish himself in the infamous outlaw stronghold of deep Spy Rock, the wild outback northeast of Laytonville where he established himself on both the land and with his neighbors. While still a newcomer in a place where suspicion came with the primary occupation — marijuana production — Livermore began producing his pioneering zine, The Lookout, which instantly made him persona non grata with both his mountain neighbors — as pot growers they didn't like the attention — and the residents of Laytonville, who didn't like Livermore's descriptions of their town as an unpromising collection of ramshackle buildings strewn haphazardly along 101 with a lot of ramshackle personalities to go with the architecture. Then he became famous, and then he became rich and famous. I knew Livermore was famous when a Boonville kid asked me if I knew Livermore. “Yup, known him for a long time. We're good friends. He writes for my paper when the spirit moves him.” The kid looked at me with renewed respect, but I had to tell him twice before he believed me. By then Livermore had formed or managed a bunch of famous bands, including Green Day, which made him and them gadzillions. His pioneering zine, The Lookout, was nationally distributed. I have to admit that I still haven't heard much of the music apart from an a-rhythmic ditty Livermore gave me many years ago called “Fuck You and Die,” to which, try as I might, I've never quite been able to dance. But apart from his fascinating accounts of establishing his home above the snow line on Spy Rock, including some harrowing trips home by snowshoe, I found Livermore's stories about how his zine grew and the genesis of his life as a music entrepreneur absolutely fascinating. “Spy Rock Memories” will be of great interest to the thousands of people of the Northcoast who've carved out lives for themselves in the vast backcountry of Northern California, and of equivalent interest to the general reader who simply likes good stories well told.

(http://larrylivermore.com/?p=2861)

HERE IN DENVER I haven’t yet personally encountered any Political Correctness. But in this neighborhood, diversity we’ve got. Next door is a black man and his Jewish rabbi wife, and they are right across the street from the young gay Mexican fellow. More Spanish than English is spoken on this block. This is what used to be commonly called a “mixed” neighborhood, and that's what it is. If it were transported to Marin County, it would be “diverse” in PC terms but more realistically considered “ghetto.” No one on this very “diverse” street appears to be the slightest bit concerned with the notion of PC. People are too busy living for such nonsense. If memory serves adequately, I seem to recall that PC is something occurring almost exclusively among middle class white people, most of whom have been exposed to one or another post-60's New Age sort of thing, from “experimenting” with marijuana before it became mainstream — espresso and wine are the drugs of choice now — to gurus from India, the likes of Wavy Gravy and more serious dispensers of wisdom like Dr. Wayne Dyer and Byron Katie, seminar hustlers like Werner Erhard, tarot cards and so forth. PC boils down these days to denial of all stereotyping (in theory although reality can sometimes intrude), earnest trash recycling, calling oneself “progressive” while hypnotically voting for mainstream democrats, and cultivation of gay friends (for some reason gay women seem generally a bit safer to have at the suburban dinner party than gay men). And so on. Our Esteemed Editor has joked, off the record, that the ultimate political correctness would be expressed in a transgender cripple as president of the US. Off the record only, since the warm-and-fuzzy PC legions, what the AVA sometimes calls The Nice People, would be horrified at the statement although delighted at such a reality, even though we have now seen that the first non-white president is strictly political business-as-usual or worse. And there is no reason to imagine that a disabled person of indeterminate gender would be any different, since anyone aspiring to the presidency is thoroughly corrupted well before getting near the possibility. National Lampoon did a goof on Joan Baez in the 70s, a sound-alike singing “Pull the triggers, niggers, we're with you all the way, just across the bay… Just because I can't be there, doesn't mean I don't care…” (Google 'Pull the Triggers' to find it on youtube.) This is PC distilled right down to its essence, despite deployment of the hot-button “N” word.

— the late Jeff Costello, 2011

HOW DID UKIAH’S “annexation” proposal balloon to include an astounding 2600 unincorporated county parcels north and south of city limits when, during last year’s tax sharing agreement discussions, Ukiah gave County authorities the impression that Ukiah only wanted to annex a few parcels on the fringes of existing city limits? Of course, we’re not privy to the City’s real motivations, but some close observers believe it has to do with 1. The city accumulating a lot debt that can’t be covered by existing tax revenue forecasts which in turn jeopardizes the city’s credit rating and future borrowing capacity, and therefore they need more projected future revenue (i.e., taxable parcels) to continue borrowing, and 2. When they started looking at what parcels to annex, it became clear that cherry-picking a few here and there was impractical because behind the scenes special district boards in the Ukiah Valley (but outside city limits) representing overlapping water, fire, school, and sewer districts didn’t want to give up a few prime parcels in their districts piecemeal, jeopardizing their own (much smaller) taxable parcels while not reducing their costs and making those Board’s almost irrelevant.

So the annexation grab sort of snowballed into grabbing entire districts and tax rate areas just to get the few that Ukiah wanted at first. By the time they were done, however, the proposed annexation not only was unwieldly and impractical, but increasingly irrational because conflicts with the existing district boundaries didn’t really go away, they just got farther and farther from existing city limits.

There’s another third, more speculative factor that some Ukiah-ites mention: Ukiah City Manager ‘Seldom-Seen’ Sage Sangiacomo has megalomaniacal tendencies (by Ukiah standards, of course) and tends towards the grandiose gesture rather than practical smaller steps.

Add this to the bureaucratic hurdles involved, the negative impact on County finances, and the general unpopularity and disrespect that the public and the affected property owners have for Official Ukiah and the County and the suspicion that the annexation will only makes things worse, and you start to see why Ukiah’s over-sized annexation idea is facing ever-expanding opposition as the affected parcel owners realize that there’s nothing that will benefit them in the deal.

(Mark Scaramella)

ANN JOVICH:

Streaking is alive in Fort Bragg! Mike and I went to Breakfast very early this morning and then to Harvest Market to grocery shop. When we got done there we had to go to Safeway for a few items. As I was waiting in the car, a man came running through the parking lot buck naked and no shoes running at a good clip, his junk swinging everywhere, and headed towards Starbucks where he slowed down a bit, (probably thinking he needed a coffee) but instead continued running down the alley! It pays to be Early Birds! Well that’s my entertainment for the morning! Now what to do?

“FOR NEARLY FOUR YEARS you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1936

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] The same president who ruined the former stately Oval Office with tacky golden chotchkes plastered all over the place? Weirdly enough, I just watched a documentary featuring recently murdered Russian whistleblower, Navalny, in which he does one of the things that got him killed -- exposing the massive palaces and other industries that Putin owns and built with money he took from the Russian Treasury. Navalny’s smuggled photos featured interiors in Putin’s over the top obscenely lavish palatial digs that had some of the exact same golden doodads on walls that Trump had stuck on the fireplace and walls in the Oval Office.

[2] I’ve been an internet addict to various degrees since 2005. I know a dopamine rush when I feel one. The kind of hit you can get from having real time dialogue with a chatbot that is customized to be exactly the kind of friend or lover you crave most… is more than anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s like switching from dirty heroin to pure fentanyl. Watch out!

[3] There's no public figure on the stage today worth believing in or supporting. The system is so hopelessly corrupt that it needs to die. Apologies for the utter nihilism - it is what it is, bubbs. I'm just pissed that my nephews are going to have to put up their lives to salvage something that's no longer theirs - was stolen from them far before they were even born. But we're going on a rafting trip next week, so the little moments make it all worth it, I guess.

[4] Watching this unfold is unbelievable, frightening and very sad. How can this be? The US was the world leader and was admired and looked up to by every other nation. Now, there is no decorum, no gravitas, it's lawless and cruel, governed by a mad man and a cabal of incompetents. It's like a whacky and dangerous version of a reality tv show - with real life critical implications for the entire world.

[5] Until the Democrats shed their embrace of failed, absurd and, above all, widely unpopular progressive policies on immigration, crime, identity politics, homelessness and trans demands, all the power and political theories in the world will not make a difference for them.

[6] The current situation might be compared/contrasted with September 1957, when Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard (against the protests of segregationist Democrat Gov. Faubus) and mobilized the 101st Airborne to restore order in Little Rock after Faubus tried to use the National Guard to prevent integration in defiance of the Supreme Court. At the time a white mob was attacking the Black children who were trying to enter the local segregated high school, and Faubus was using the Guard not to disperse the mob but to keep the Blacks out of the school. Without Eisenhower’s action, which he justified in part on the Insurrection Act, the mob would have won and nothing would have changed. It is ironic that in 1957 we had a Republican President enforcing a liberal court decision against a mob of conservative Southern Democrats — things have definitely changed!

[7] Face it, America has a dark, sick soul, represented by the darkest and sickest soul ever elected President. Does it matter if one resists or protests? Probably not, because the dark soulless sickness is the personality of most of America. Anti- Trump and anti-MAGA's will need to keep their own company. We are outsiders, and while protests and resistance won't do much good, we need to live in a separate society, either formally or informally. We need to accept the permanent division in America and adjust accordingly.