Mendocino County Today: Thursday 8/7/2025

By AVA News Service on August 7, 2025

TEMPERATURES near seasonal averages expected through Today. Risk for heat-related impacts increase Friday through Monday in the interior. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A warm 54F under mostly clear skies this Thursday morning on the coast. Kind of a mix of cloud cover out there will likely move in & out today while the forecast is for mostly sunny. Next week is looking a bit foggier.

TRIPLE-DIGIT HEAT to bake Mendocino and Lake Counties this weekend

by Matt LaFever

A stretch of hot, dry weather is expected to return to Mendocino and Lake counties beginning Friday and building through the weekend, according to the National Weather Service. While the coast will remain relatively mild, inland valleys are forecast to heat up significantly, with temperatures reaching well into the triple digits and little overnight relief.

In interior Mendocino County, places like Ukiah, Willits, Covelo and Laytonville are expected to hit the mid-to-upper 90s on Friday, with Ukiah forecast to reach 102 degrees. The heat will persist into early next week, with highs ranging between 100 and 104 degrees and nighttime lows hovering in the 60s and low 70s. The northeastern and southeastern corners of the county will see some of the hottest conditions, while even more moderate inland zones like Boonville will peak in the mid-90s.

The heat extends east into Lake County, where residents of Lakeport, Clearlake and Middletown can expect highs between 98 and 103 degrees starting Friday and continuing through the weekend. Overnight temperatures there are also expected to remain high, staying above 65 degrees for several nights in a row—conditions that can increase heat stress, especially for people without air conditioning.

While inland areas will bake, the Mendocino Coast will remain largely shielded from the worst of the heat. The forecast for Fort Bragg and Point Arena calls for sunny skies, with highs in the upper 60s to low 70s and lows in the 50s. Light to moderate northwest winds are expected to persist, keeping temperatures seasonably cool.

The National Weather Service is urging residents across the region to take precautions as the heat intensifies. In a statement, forecasters said, “Hotter weather is forecast to return Friday and build this weekend. Hot and dry conditions will likely continue into early next week.” They recommend drinking plenty of water, wearing lightweight clothing, and avoiding strenuous outdoor activity during peak afternoon hours.

Officials also stress the importance of never leaving children or pets in parked vehicles, checking on elderly or ill family members and neighbors, and making sure animals have access to shade and water.

(mendofever.com)

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

SALARY CUTS? WHAT SALARY CUTS?

by Jim Shields

It was disappointing but not unexpected that the Supervisors at their July 29th meeting, with the exception of District 3 Supervisor John Haschak, refused to cut their budget by 6 percent even though they are requiring all other county departments to do so. The BOS budget would only have been reduced by $20,500, which is an insignificant amount. At minimum, the county wastes 20 grand on a daily basis.

Likewise, Haschak proposed that the annual salary of the Board of Supervisors be reduced from $110,715.00 to $103,008. Again, another trifling amount. $7,707 reduction per Supe or $38,535 for all five.

In total the BOS Budget would have been reduced by $59,035

But again a majority of Supes (Mo Mulheren, Madeline Cline and Bernie Norvell) voted no, while Haschak and Ted Williams voted yes. Williams and Haschak’s more than accurately reflect that of most of county residents.

Haschak’s argument was given the dire straits of a deficit budget, balanced only by $6 million of one-time funds, coupled with the unknown fiscal effects of a so-called “strategic hiring freeze”, the Supes needed to get onboard and do their part sharing the pain of these tough economic times. But a majority of his colleagues refused to make even a minor sacrifice.

By the way, the CEO’s office estimates that the county is looking at a $16 million structural deficit in next year’s budget.

Go figure.

Anyway, while the Supes were discussing the proposed salary cut before they took the vote to reject the motion, District 4 Supervisor Bernie Norvell asked CEO Darcy Antle how the cuts “would be rolled out” if it was approved.

Antle said, “It would require administrative time, County Counsel time, to the change the ordinance. Also we would have to look at the Department Head Memorandum of Understanding, which you are tied to as well, for salary increases … the soonest this (paycut) would come into effect would be January of 2026. So you would be gaining just a half-year of savings.”

She told the Board that any supervisor “can reduce their wage, it just requires a smiple note to HR (Human Relations Department), and we can rescind that for any one of you without doing the ordinance change.”

Norvell then opined, “And there was a lot of opposition when this happened [a year ago when the Supes voted to bump up their pay]. And the way it is set-up now it eliminates that.”

The CEO responded, “That’s right.”

The only problem with both of their pronouncements is they were and are dead wrong.

A year ago last June when the Supes by a 3-2 vote (Haschak, Williams opposed) voted to approve their raises, I wrote the following and have repeated this explanation a number of times since then:

“The Supervisors salary raise has two main components, plus a special provision that, take my word for it as a licensed Labor-Management Relations practitioner, will prove to be extremely problematical and fraught with all sorts of legal thorniness.

“1. The first component is a two-step pay increase. Step one will occur in late September-early October [2024] when Supe pay increases to $103,008 from its current $85,500. The second step occurs in July 2025 when pay gets bumped to $110,715.

“2. Following the July 2025 raise, Supe salaries will be automatically determined by what us labor relations practitioners call a “Me Too” clause or agreement.

“Here’s the County’s version of its “Me Too” provision: “The Board of Supervisors compensation for services shall be increased or decreased commensurate with the terms and conditions in any future Department Head Association’s Memorandum of Understanding that are applied to all positions represented by the Department Head Association. Such applicable terms and conditions include, but are not limited to, cost of living adjustments (COLA’s), and provisions for compensation changes based on compensation surveys conducted on all positions, as identified in any future Department Head Association’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).”

“Of course, the Supes still will be determining their compensation since they have to approve the Department Head Association’s MOU on compensation. So that’s how this ‘Me Too’ agreement works. It’s an indirect method for compensation benefits to flow to the Supes without appearing on the surface that they have control over all compensation-related matters.”

Later in the meeting, County Counsel Charlotte Scott, confirmed my explanation of the “Me Too Agreement” requiring Board of Supervisors’ approval for any salary increases for the County’s highest paid employees, the Department Heads.

So, as I correctly interpreted the Me Too Agreement, if the Supes approve pay increases for their department heads, they are still deciding their very own salary increases, notwithstanding that the facts don’t cooperate with Norvell and Antle.

Following the Board majority rejecting Haschak’s proposed salary reduction, a miffed District 2 Supervisor Mo Mulheren had the following exchange with Haschak, revealing her state of upset over the entire subject of pay cuts for the Board. I want to thank Mark Scaramella for transcribing their dialog.

“After the vote Supervisor Mulheren had this testy exchange with Supervisor Haschak:

“Mulheren: We have many conversations up here on the dais and some of them are, um, agenda items and some of them we talk about them when we talk about the budget. I just think that in consideration of the processes and in consideration of staff time and consideration of, um, the way that the, uh, county moves forward as an agency, I would personally appreciate it if we would not have agenda items come forward multiple times after they were already not approved.

“Haschak: How many times have you seen this agenda item on an agenda?

“Mulheren: I’m not asking to have a conversation or a debate about it. We have…

“Haschak: But your comments were…

“Mulheren: We have had conversations…

“Haschak: How many times have you seen this as an agenda item?

“Mulheren: This is the first time that this has been an agenda item, Supervisor. But it is not the first time that the discussion has been had by this Board this year.

“Haschak: I understand. But it’s the first time it’s come as an agenda item. OK? (Stares at his computer)

“Supervisor Cline: I just want to pause for a second and ask that this board make a conscious effort not to interrupt speakers in the middle of comments. I have seen that happen multiple times by different individuals and I just ask for some decorum.”

Evidently Cline has taken on the role of “decorum monitor” for the Board. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with supervisors vigorously arguing their respective positions on matters before them, even if there’s a bit of “interrupting” occurring.

My advice on the decorum subject is drop it as we all know there are so many other more important things the Supervisors should be paying attention to.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, [email protected], the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

ED NOTES

FROM a recent TWK column: “Does this mean she’s more upset about the way I fold towels than she was when I gave her the leaf blower for Christmas? Meaning, I think, that the towels in our house, the ones we mostly use to dry things, had undergone mal-folding. Mis-folding. Wrongly folded up and maybe put on shelves upside down.”

AS A LIBERATED MAN fully committed to gender equality, I’ve always tried to do my share of the household chores. But early on in my marriage, especially as I insisted I should regularly do the dishes, the little woman was suspiciously attentive. I could feel her disapproval as I scrubbed, rinsed and stacked.

WE had only been a team for a couple of months, and it was just the two of us. There weren’t many dishes to wash, but she finally said, “I don’t want you to do the dishes. You don’t stack them properly.”

SMALL irritations can grow into large ones, and washing and stacking the dinner dishes wasn’t an issue I was willing to go to the wall for.

GIVING up responsibility for kitchen duty wasn’t much of a sacrifice, but it quickly expanded to an informal kitchen ban. She simply didn’t want me in there unless summoned. In her view, if I wasn’t strictly supervised things were sure to go awry. The knives might get thrown in with the spoons, a lid might not be returned to its pot, crumbs could be maliciously left on a countertop.

THE KITCHEN BAN quickly expanded to the rest of the house. “You don’t care if your socks are in your underwear drawer?” Nope. “You just throw your trousers in with your shirts?” Yup.

(NOTE: In Marine Corps boot camp, circa ‘57, I learned that women wore pants, men trousers, a lesson I’ve never unlearned.)

MY HOUSEHOLD HEEDLESSNESS soon ended. She did it her way. Home management was hers. A feminist of the more judgemental type would write off my non-participation in household responsibilities as one more phallocratic stranglehold men have on women, nevermind that this particular woman had insisted that, in-house, I stay in my lane.

OBJECTIVELY, an outsider might consider our marriage improbable. Educated in British mission schools, Ling’s English was perfect, strictly considered better than mine. She knew very little about America or Americans. I was the first Yankee anybody in our jungle outpost had seen. I was a big hit, I can tell you, the first pale face to join right in with local society. The Brits had stuck to their own.

IN THE COURSE of adjusting to each other, Ling, an elementary school teacher, asked me if I knew how to diagram sentences. I was young but it had been years since I’d been force fed predicates and subjects as they were explicated on long ago grammar school blackboards. “Frankly, my dear, I never saw the point, but give me a sentence and I’ll try.”

I TRIED to fake it, but stumbled badly at sub-clauses in a long sentence she found in Jane Austen. Ling triumphantly corrected my diagramming scaffolding. “Aren’t you a college graduate?” Yes, but…

ONE night, which falls like a curtain on the equator — it’s light one minute, dark the next, and the wild things begin singing and whooping in the nearby jungle. (A brazen monkey the size of a chimpanzee, regularly made its way into our primitive kitchen. I caught the intruder one night, startling both of us, me into a scream, him into a truly frightening growl. He kept at it. Ling left bananas out for him, and I pretended not to hear him. )

I SUFFERED a terrible fright one afternoon on the town’s outside basketball court when, out of the corner of my eye, I’d caught a glimpse of a giant Monitor Lizard running upright. I sprinted in the opposite direction, to the huge merriment of the kids I’d been hooping with. I’d never heard of Monitor Lizards, let alone seen one about thirty feet from me. The wildlife could be intimidating.

ONE EVENING, as the little woman did the dishes, she dropped a plate, exclaiming, “Fuck a duck.” I froze. I guess I’d assumed she was familiar with the do’s and don’ts of basic English language profanity. I was wrong. “Hey! Watch it! Better not say that.”

“WELL,” she replied, “you say it all the time.” I’m not what you’d call a rhetorical role model, my dear, and the f-word is to be deployed cautiously and sparingly. She’s never dropped an f-bomb since.

OUR UNION was a long process of social adjustment, mostly on Ling’s part. We landed in the USA in 1967, by which time the few beatniks I remembered in North Beach had segued into a whole new beast, the hippie. Even I, as a native son, was a little disoriented. They were everywhere, especially where we rented an apartment at 199 Frederick in the upper Haight-Ashbury. The mainstem hippie accumulation was just down the street, but they wandered uphill at all hours.

LING was afraid to go outside without me. I assured her the hippies were merely harmless exhibitionists, not at all dangerous, but it took her weeks to get over the shock of coming from a traditional, conservative third world milieu into the first stages of the American crack up.

UKIAH VALLEY WATER AUTHORITY TO VOTE THURSDAY ON $13.6 MILLION SAFER GRANT APPLICATION

The Ukiah Valley Water Authority (UVWA) will vote this week on whether to move forward with submitting a grant application that could provide significant state funding to help improve regional water management. At its upcoming Executive Committee meeting on Thursday, August 7, UVWA leadership will consider next steps for formally submitting a $13.6 million grant application through California’s SAFER (Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience) Program.

If awarded, the grant would fully fund the planning, engineering, and design work needed to connect infrastructure across UVWA member agencies - improvements that would enable more flexible and efficient use of available water supplies. Without the state grant, this work would need to be paid for by local water agencies and local ratepayers.

“This is a significant opportunity for our region to tap into available state resources to help modernize our local infrastructure and ensure we have the systems in place for improved water reliability and drought resiliency,” said Sean White, Director of Water Resources for the City of Ukiah.

At the July 28 meeting, UVWA staff presented the draft grant application to the Executive Committee, outlining how this first phase of funding would support technical and planning work. Thursday’s vote will determine whether UVWA formally submits that application to the State Water Resources Control Board. Construction funding would be sought under a subsequent grant application once project plans are ready.

The SAFER Program is designed to help local water agencies improve system reliability, support regional consolidation efforts, and make clean water more accessible and affordable for all Californians.

For more information about the Ukiah Valley Water Authority and its regional water initiatives, visit cityofukiah.com/uvwa

MENDO RANKS SECOND TO LAST FOR HOUSEHOLD INCOME IN CALIFORNIA

by Matt LaFever

In the latest ranking of median household incomes across California, Mendocino County came in 49th out of the state’s 58 counties—placing it firmly near the bottom of the list when it comes to earning a living.

According to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau compiled by Stacker, Mendocino’s median household income is $64,688—more than $15,000 below the national average of $80,610, and a staggering $27,000 less than California’s statewide median of $91,905 (based on the latest Census data).

It gets worse. Nearly 1 in 5 households in Mendocino—18.8%—earn less than $25,000 a year, one of the highest poverty brackets in the state. Only Lassen County reported a lower median income.

The counties with the highest household incomes—Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Marin—report median earnings more than twice as high as Mendocino’s, painting a stark picture of California’s economic divide.

While 30.9% of Mendocino households earn over $100,000 a year, in Santa Clara that number jumps to 67.9%. In San Mateo, it’s 66.9%.

While Mendocino remains known for its natural beauty and rural charm, the numbers point to a harsher economic reality: paychecks here just don’t stretch as far. Compared to the wealth concentrated in California’s coastal tech hubs, Mendocino is grinding it out on the margins—where even six-figure incomes are the exception, not the norm.

‘WE GOT LUCKY’: BELL SPRINGS FUEL REDUCTION PUT TO THE TEST

A remote community in rural Mendocino County is grateful for a fuel reduction project, after a vehicle fire by a newly maintained roadside was quickly doused.

Late in the morning of July 13, an RV caught fire near a private driveway about two miles up Bell Springs Road in Laytonville. “When vehicles burn, especially something like an RV or a trailer…they put out very toxic smoke, and they burn very hot,” explained Bell Springs Fire Department Chief Will Emerson. “This thing was fully engulfed.”

Fortunately, CAL FIRE and volunteer firefighters from Laytonville and Leggett got to the scene and suppressed the flames. Thanks, in part, to recently completed fuel reduction work along the first five miles of Bell Springs Road it was relatively easy work.

Emerson described what the scene of the incident looked like, just a few months ago. “In this case, where the vehicle fire was, probably within about five feet of it, had been very thick brush and ladder fuels under a live oak tree and a fir tree,” potentially a recipe for a conflagration, he recalled. “There is no doubt if that material had still been there, it would have burst into flames from the radiant heat and taken off into the trees.” Embers were also flying across the road from the RV into what had been thick brush along a steep dropoff. Emerson believes that, “There’s a very good chance that if that brush had still been there, then the fire would have caught in there and then raced up the hill. There’s a number of houses up above that, so that could have been very bad.”

Travel on Bell Springs Road is precarious all year round. The narrow, tree-lined route rises about 1500 feet for the first three miles off of Highway 101 in the northern reaches of the county. It climbs the steep sides of a canyon, along the edges of vertical dropoffs before it flattens out along the ridge and starts to open up.

The Neighborhood Fire Safe Council, which is closely associated with the local fire department, has been concerned about the thick vegetation along that road for a while. In the spring of 2025, the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council got a CAL FIRE grant to thin the first five miles, up to fifty feet away from the road. Emerson was satisfied with the work by all parties, reporting that, “The crew that did it, Elk Ridge Tree Service, are all local people, so they really took pride in their work and did a great job. Of course, the Fire Safe Council was great in organizing it. To help make it happen, the neighborhood group needed to help secure permission from roadside landowners to reduce the fuels fifty feet from the road onto their property.

It’s not the first time there has been a vehicle fire on Bell Springs. Emerson recalled an instance years ago, when a flatbed truck with a heavy load and mechanical problems tried to climb the steep grade. It got out from under the trees before internal combustion became external, narrowly avoiding disaster. Luck played a role in that incident, as it always does when there’s a fire on the mountain that does not end in disaster. This year’s RV fire struck when there was still some moisture in the ground, during an unusually cool summer, on a day when firefighters didn’t have a lot else going on. But preparation is even more important, as shown by this community that got organized, worked with its Fire Safe Council, and succeeded in removing a mass of brush that would have been next to this RV when it ignited.

Managing vegetation in areas at a high risk of fire is one way to reduce the role of luck if it does come to a fight. And Emerson knows there’s plenty more to do. “All this land is overgrown,” he reflected. “It needs to be thinned and managed. That’s the work ahead.”

There is a benefit for the Bell Springs Volunteer Fire Department on August 30, 2025 at Tan Oak Park in Leggett, from 4:00 pm until it’s over. There will be food, music, craft beer and cider, and a raffle. First prize, Emerson promised, is a cord of wood, cut by a firefighter.

If you’d like to learn how the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council can help your community apply for funding and organize fire resiliency projects, you can visit firesafemendocino.org.

WHY ONE EPIDEMIOLOGIST WON’T LET HIS KIDS PLAY ON ARTIFICIAL TURF FIELDS

by Michael J. Coren

Yale epidemiologist Vasilis Vasiliou won’t let any of his five children play on artificial turf fields.

His research on the infill for synthetic turf — typically ground-up tires — identified the presence of dozens of known carcinogens, hormone disrupters, toxic metals and phthalates. What’s really needed, he said, are rigorous studies showing the extent to which those chemicals find their way into young players’ bodies and what that might mean for their health over time.

Until then, Vasiliou said, “I would not recommend parents let their children play on there. Period.”

Given how fast we’re replacing grass with turf, it’s safe to say Vasiliou’s views remain in the minority. North America has about 18,000 synthetic turf fields, with about 1,500 added each year. If kids want to play soccer, football or lacrosse, chances are good they’ll be playing on plastic grass.

The turf industry pitches its product as a way to save money and extend playing time, while pointing to studies that show no link between artificial turf and health problems in children. “Synthetic turf is a safe and highly effective surfacing option that provides accessible year-round play, lowers maintenance costs, and reduces water needs and herbicide and fertilizer use,” Melanie Taylor, CEO of the Synthetic Turf Council, wrote in an email.

But skeptics like Vasiliou say existing studies weren’t designed to capture the potential health and environmental risks of toxins in turf. Critics also question turf’s alleged advantages over grass, especially the cost-savings claims.

So how should a community decide what to install on new fields — or whether to rip up what they have? And how can worried parents decide if their kids should play on turf?

Here’s how to navigate the turf wars.

More playing time, except when it’s hot

Synthetic turf made its professional debut at the Texas Astrodome in 1966. The dense nylon carpet was then rolled out at stadiums across the country, eventually swapping out its Monsanto brand name ChemGrass for AstroTurf.

The updated version that has taken root on youth playing fields is essentially a plastic layer cake. First, a gravel, asphalt or concrete base is topped with a shock-absorbing pad. Next is a backing layer that anchors “grass” fibers made of polypropylene, polyethylene or nylon. Finally, several tons of loose infill are dumped between the blades.

Most commonly, that infill is “crumb rubber,” made of ground-up tires, with a typical field requiring about 40,000 tires. But as some local governments, including in Washington, have banned crumb rubber, alternatives have emerged, such as coated sand, cork, nutshells and coconut fibers.

One of the winning arguments for turf has been that it doesn’t end up muddy after rain or snow, which expands potential playing time — as much as 3,000 hours per year compared with 1,200 or so for even the best grass fields.

But hot weather is a big problem. Turf absorbs heat from the sun, while lacking grass’s ability to transpire water to cool off. That means playing time can be limited in the summer and especially during periods of extreme heat.

When Washington Post reporters visited Barcroft Park in Arlington, Virginia, on a 94-degree day last week, a thermal imaging camera showed the turf to be significantly hotter than both grass and asphalt, measuring above 142 degrees.

Hot turf has been known to melt cleats. It can also burn skin and contribute to heat stroke and heat exhaustion.

Once turf temperatures rise above 120 degrees or so, many schools and local governments ban or restrict activities. That means that on hot summer days, some expensive turf fields are available only in the early mornings and evenings. Night games and activities, said one sports facilities manager, are the only way to make these fields economical relative to grass, which can generally be used all day.

New field designs using water-cooling systems and organic infill materials such as cork or engineered wood may help — but those measures add to the cost.

What’s known about the other health risks of turf

Many synthetic fields, especially those using crumb rubber, contain PFAS, lead, phthalates, cadmium, benzene, nickel, chromium and arsenic. Among those ingredients are several known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.

But so far “very limited evidence” links synthetic turf use to adverse health outcomes, according to a review published this year in the journal Epidemiologia. A 2024 Environmental Protection Agency study found “a range of chemicals” associated with recycled tire crumb rubber in the air, on surfaces and on the skin of participants, but the study did not detect elevated levels of those chemicals in their bodies.

What does this prove? Not much, argues Yale’s Vasiliou. Neither of those studies drew conclusions about the health risks (they were not designed as comprehensive epidemiological studies), and both explicitly cautioned against doing so.

According to the Children’s Environmental Health Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the research remains “inconclusive,” with “significant gaps in the evidence supporting the safety of artificial turf products.” Given these uncertainties, the group “strongly discourages” artificial turf playing surfaces.

Turf saves water but adds waste

The Synthetic Turf Council calls the industry “environmentally friendly,” citing lower water and pesticide use, along with along with the diversion of more than 20 million tires from landfills.

But critics such as the Sierra Club and the European Union have flagged turf as a significant source of microplastics released into the environment. Academic studies have found artificial turf fibers floating in nearby waterways. And mountains of plastic waste associated with synthetic turf end up in landfills and other dumping sites.

Turf fields are known to have limited lifespans, but it is hard to find options for recycling their materials. When I wrote Target Technologies International, one of the few U.S. firms that accepted turf for recycling in the past, the company said expensive container shipping rates meant it was “no longer cost effective.” An investigation last year by the Boston Globe also discovered that allegedly “recycled” fields were abandoned in warehouses.

The Synthetic Turf Council would not share the percentage of turf fields recycled in the United States annually, but it pointed to operations by companies such as TenCate Grass. The firm responded by email that its Louisiana facility had received more than 100 fields and “successfully completed a pilot program, processing more than 50 fields.” That’s the same number announced in 2022, equivalent to about 7 percent of the more than 750 fields estimated to be retired annually in the United States. “We are actively continuing our recycling efforts,” wrote TenCate spokesperson Erica Rumpke, “and will continue to accept and process fields.”

How to decide between grass and turf

Jeff Graydon managed a mix of artificial and grass fields at Princeton University for two decades. What surface would he want his own children to play on? “A well-maintained grass field,” he said.

If you’re calculating up-front costs, grass is almost always cheaper. While turf generally costs well above $1 million per field, grass fields range from $200,000 to $800,000, depending on their quality.

But Graydon, who now helps schools and cities decide on turf and grass, said maintaining natural grass to withstand constant use can send costs soaring — especially in the Northeast, where the weather isn’t ideal for year-round grass. Many organizations, he said, feel they have little choice but to turn to turf. “Synthetic turf provides opportunities for play,” he said.

While health and environmental risks remain, Graydon said that “synthetic turf has come a long way since the first field was built” in the ’60s.

Irvine, California, recently spent more than $4 million building two synthetic turf fields expected to host hundreds of games each year. To address health and environmental issues, wrote Alex Salazar, the city’s acting deputy director of public works, it replaced synthetic infill materials with a “100 percent mix of coconut fibers and other organic materials” and incorporated an irrigation system for evaporative cooling and high-efficiency washing.

“While the initial investment for converting grass fields to synthetic turf is higher,” Salazar wrote, “the long-term benefits, such as significantly reduced maintenance costs and the ability to increase usage time, ultimately make it a more economical choice.”

But Irvine is an outlier. Roughly 85 percent of synthetic turf fields in the United States still use recycled tire infill, as do many playgrounds.

What should you do if you or your kids can’t avoid artificial turf? The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends washing exposed skin afterward, limiting play on very hot days and avoiding eating or drinking beverages while directly on synthetic surfaces.

On hot, sunny days, frequent water breaks will take you only so far on turf. Parents and coaches need to learn to watch for early signs of heat exhaustion. And we’ll need to get used to the idea that sometimes it’s just too hot to play.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/08/05/artificial-turf-heat-health-environment-cost

THIS WEEK AT BLUE MEADOW FARM

Tomatoes are bustin’ out !

Heirloom, Early Girl & Cherry tomatoes

Bumper crop of sweet Walla Walla Onions

Corno di Toro, Bell, Gypsy & Pimiento Peppers

Jalapeno, Padron, Anaheim & Poblano Chilis

Eggplant, Zucchini, Basil

Lisbon Lemons, local Olive Oil

Sunflowers & Zinnias

Blue Meadow Farm
3301 Holmes Ranch Rd, Philo
(707) 895-2071

KMUD SHOW ON NUCLEAR THREATS 80 Years After Hiroshima and Nagasaki

OUR SHOW

On Thursday, August 7, at 9 am, Pacific Time (12 noon EST) our guest is John Steinbach, co-founder of the Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area.

For the past 41 years, the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area has been organizing for the abolition of nuclear weapons and power and in support of nuclear victims. They believe that if the world is to avoid repeating the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we must strive to keep alive the memory of the bombings. The atomic bombings serve as a warning to humanity of the genocidal nature of nuclear weapons, and the pressing need for their abolishment. The Committee links their work for nuclear disarmament with their opposition to militarism, oppression, social injustice, and environmental degradation.

The U.S. government dropped atomic bombs 80 years ago this week on Hiroshima on Aug. 6 (Wednesday) and on Nagasaki Aug. 9 (Saturday).

An atomic cloud billows, following the explosion of the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare, Hiroshima, Japan, 6 Aug 1945.

JOHN STEINBACH

Steinbach said today: “On the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings, the world is again facing multiple simultaneous global crises, any one of which could result in nuclear war. The Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area is planning several commemoration activities calling for the abolishment of nuclear weapons.” See list of events in D.C. beginning Tuesday evening.

Steinbach continued: “While we have succeeded in preventing the direct use of nuclear bombs since World War II, Daniel Ellsberg and others have highlighted that the U.S. government has used nuclear weapons repeatedly since 1945, like a thief uses a gun. It doesn’t have to detonate the weapon over a city, simply threatening to do so achieves a strategic purpose.” See piece by Ellsberg: “U.S. Nuclear Terrorism.”

Steinbach added: “Similarly, Israel’s nuclear threat may be directed at Iran and other states, through what is sometimes called the ‘Samson Option,’ but also to compel the United States government through 'nonconventional' compellence.”

See news release featuring Steinbach: “Is Israel Using Nuclear Blackmail Against the U.S.?” His 2008 in-depth paper “The Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program” gives a detailed analysis of Israeli nuclear policy.

KMUD

Our show, "Heroes and Patriots Radio", airs live on KMUD, on the first and fifth Thursdays of every month, at 9 AM, Pacific Time.

We simulcast our programming on two full power FM stations: KMUE 88.1 in Eureka and KLAI 90.3 in Laytonville. It also maintains a translator at 99.5 FM in Shelter Cove, California.

We also stream live from the web at https://kmud.org/

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— John Sakowicz

GREAT DAY IN ELK 2025

The 49th annual Great Day in Elk will be held on Saturday, August 23, from noon until dusk. The noontime parade will travel through downtown Elk to the Greenwood Community Center for the day’s festivities.

All afternoon there will be game booths with prizes and do-it-yourself crafts projects for children, plus a greased pole with a $100 bill at the top. Watermelon-eating contests, sack races, and an egg toss will be held throughout the day.

This year’s live entertainment features belly dancing and live music by 2nd Hand Grass. There will also be a silent auction, a cake auction and a raffle.

Lunch options include tamales and Caesar salad (with or without chicken), hot dogs and focaccia with Moroccan lentil soup, and the Civic Club’s ice cream sundaes topped with fresh berry sauce. Drinks include fresh-pressed Greenwood Ridge apple cider, Elk’s famous margaritas, soft drinks, beer and wine.

This year’s dinner will be udon noodles with spicy chicken or tofu, prepared by Chris of Mendocino’s Gnar Bar. It will be served from 4 to 7.

So, come to the little coastal village of Elk and enjoy a fun-filled family day, while supporting the Greenwood Community Center, five miles south of Highway 128 on Highway 1. Please leave dogs at home.

For more information email Mea Bloyd at [email protected] or visit the Elk community website — www.elkweb.org.

TONY SUMMIT:

The old J.T. Farrer store was still in business when we came to town in the early 50’s. When old man Farrer (JT) was tending the counter downstairs one day, my cousin Gary Waggoner was going to teach my younger brother Davíd Summit how to get some chocolate chunks of candy at a sharply discounted price. The chunks, to those who are old enough to remember were kept ón the counter on a large jar right next to the large half moon dish type weight machine. The key, Gary was to show and teach David, was to put your chunks on the weight machine dish and hold your finger under the dish as it pushed down to register the weight thereby the cost would show on the clerks side. He did this and old man Farrer (who wore coke bottle bottom glasses and shuffled instead of walked) bent down real close, looked, then looked again and said “according to what I can fígger here, it looks like I owe you some money”. Gary had pressed way too hard upward…….uh oh…busted……never tried that one again.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, August 6, 2025

JEREMY AUMAN, 41, Laytonville. Probation revocation.

KYLE BOUGHTON, 26, Willits. Furnishing pot to minor, unspecified offense.

ADAM CHAVIRA, 42, Redwood Valley. Probation revocation.

DAVID COMSTOCK, 49, Ukiah. Narcotics for sale, contempt of court, offenses while on bail.

MICHAEL DEATON, 41, Willits. Failure to appear.

KIMBERLY JONES, 54, Ukiah. County parole violation.

ANDREA KIDD, 36, Ukiah. Petty theft with two or more priors, stolen property, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

TREVER MILANI, 54, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

COLE MOYLE, 19, Willits. Domestic abuse.

ALBERT O’NEIL, 48, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation, disobeying court order.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ, 39, Redwood Valley. Vandalism, contempt of court, offenses while on bail.

HERNAN ROJAS-PEREZ, 24, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. False ID, false personation of another.

ROGER ROTH, 54, Willits. Failure to appear.

ANTHONY SEIGLER, 35, Ukiah. Burglary, negligent discharge of firearm, failure to appear.

MARK SMITH, 32, Ukiah. Paraphernalia.

FRANKLIN WILLBURN, 53, Willits Controlled substance, paraphernalia, concealed dirk-dagger.

WILLIAM WOODRIDGE, 30, Petaluma/Ukiah. DUI, controlled substance, concealed loaded firearm in vehicle, probation violation.

HIGH PRICES ARE HARMING WINE INDUSTRY

Editor:

Who thought up this moronic idea of charging visitors more for wine and other things in tasting rooms. Obviously, somebody thinks there is an endless gullibility of visitors to Sonoma County. I live here and if this becomes reality, I will terminate most, if not all, of my wine club memberships. Obviously, someone thinks that if they can create this pot of money, they can siphon some off for their own advantage.

As a mere consumer, I can tell you why wine sales are down: Greed. Charging $25-$100 for tasting, then charging $50-$200 per bottle for wine, and then, if we’re gullible enough to sign up for membership, benevolently giving us a 10% discount for forced shipments (oh, plus shipping fees), and you want to charge a fee on top of that? Enough.

Steve Haeffele

Santa Rosa

BEN ROUND:

Kamala knew she could be beaten in her run. People don’t like nor relate to her. She’s a weak, mainstream, corporatist, militarist Democrat. (Yes, as said in the article, she’s an expert in ‘word-salad speak’). Her thoughts of running again for President are laughable. She won’t make it out of the primaries. (Last time, in 2020, when running for President, she ended up with exactly 0 (ZERO!) delegates.  As for the others? Porter is my fav so far. Villariagosa, who I phone-banked for in his first run for mayor, is a boring mainstream politician. He has a big ego and not a lot more to offer. As for Kounalakis; anyone who is endorsed by Pelosi is an immediate ‘NO!’ Of the others, I am only familiar with Betty Yee, who I will be listening to.  Rick Caruso is definitely a wildcard. And yes, he switched his party merely for strategy. But with his wealth, and his ability to have produced and air slick TV ads, like when running for LA mayor, he’s likely a contender. But would he risk losing again before running for LA Mayor again?  At least it’s an interesting race now, instead of all the attention going to the failed Ms Harris. Making popcorn as I write this…

READY TEDDY

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Up early to accommodate the weekly deep cleaning at the homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. Took buses to Union Station for a Sbarro’s full breakfast with a large coffee from Starbucks. Continued on to the Martin Luther King Jr. Library whereupon am now on a public computer enjoying South Indian chanting to Laxmi, Goddess of Fortune, (and wife of the god of preservation Vishnu in the Trimurti).

I have given up on the American experiment with freedom and democracy. Anybody established on the spiritual platform gets all of the chaos, madness, and misery that postmodernism has globally produced, and the concomitant opportunity to engage in social activism for the purpose of helping, and environmental activism for the purpose of conserving the big outside and more recently reversing global climate destabilization. If you take this far enough, Self realization may occur, and the few real friends that you have will appreciate you.

At this time, I would like to leave the homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. because I have no further reason to be there. The 16th visit to the District of Columbia to be supportive of the Peace Vigil across the street from the White House is complete. I still drop by because I am part of the group, going back to June of 1991. But it is time for “automatic writing”. I need to go somewhere and set up shop for that. There is $1038.60 in the Chase checking account, and $40.24 in the wallet. General health at age 75 is excellent.

Please contact me if you are enthusiastic to be part of a spiritual writers group. Hey, let’s do it. We will leave that which is spiritually dictated for future generations. I am packed and can be out of the shelter in 20 minutes. I’m ready.

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Thank goodness that all the conservative Big Donors of this fine nation are on the up and up and honest as the day is long and never ever dream of self dealing while upholding the intent and spirit of The Law at all times. They will save the day for all us Little People and all will be well!

CALIFORNIA REDISTRICTING: ‘A DIABOLICAL MASTERPIECE’

by Joe Garofoli

When California handed over the job of drawing congressional maps to a citizen-led, independent commission in 2010, it was billed as a way to rise above the partisan fray and ensure fairness and equity. The subtext was clear: When elected leaders were the ones drawing the maps, redistricting was a slimy mess of partisan gamesmanship.

This week, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas joined Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats in urging a return to politician-led redistricting as a necessary move to counter Texas’ impending gerrymander. Yet many voters might not have a clear understanding of what the map-drawing process used to look like when it was done behind closed doors. Those who were there, however, described to the Chronicle a messy thicket of trades, dealmaking and games of telephone.

Before he became a Bay Area political scientist at UC Berkeley and Stanford, Bruce Cain worked on drawing the maps back in the days when the Legislature did it without citizen input. Joked Cain: “It was an education. That’s why I became a full-time academic.”

After witnessing the process firsthand, Cain said lawmakers itching to do this are in for a big surprise.

“This is the equivalent of incels that fantasize about an orgy but have no experience with sex,” Cain said. “They’re thinking, ‘Oh, this is an orgy. We’re all going to have a great time.’ No, you’re not going to have a great time. You’re going to be fighting with each other. That isn’t going to work out. And moreover, not everybody’s going to get what they want.”

Cain worked on redistricting with former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Brown dubbed himself the “Ayatollah of the Assembly” for his powerful grip on the chamber during his record-setting 15 years as speaker. He presided over three rounds of the process and was integral in a fourth. One key to Brown’s success as speaker was his innate ability to know what a legislator needed in exchange for their support. And never were those skills more valuable than during the process of redrawing the state’s political maps.

Brown, however, did not like to deliver bad news to legislators, Cain said, so he delegated the responsibility of explaining to lawmakers what their districts would look like to Richard Alatorre, a bare-knuckles politician from East Los Angeles. Other lawmakers feared him.

“He was such an offensive operator that people would leave the room before the meeting was over,” Brown said of Alatorre.

The 1981 lines were drawn by then-Rep. Phillip Burton, patriarch of the powerful San Francisco political operation that produced his brother, former Rep. John Burton and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Burton’s map, designed to maximize Democratic power, was “a crazy quilt of lines patching together district pieces, with thin corridors across bays and mountain ranges,” wrote “Willie Brown” biographer James Richardson.

Robert Naylor, the top Republican in the Assembly at the time, said, “one day they’d show you the map and you know you’d been screwed. … It was a diabolical masterpiece.”

But not every Democrat liked the district that had been drawn for them. Cain said it was impossible to anticipate some of the things they wanted included in their districts.

“That’s when you’d hear about (concerns like) ‘This neighborhood hates me. This neighborhood likes me. My mother was buried at the cemetery here, I need to keep that in. I need to keep (the restaurant) where I do my fundraising.’”

The challenging part came when some lawmakers realized they couldn’t win reelection in their newly drawn districts. But Brown still needed their votes to pass the maps. So he had to sweeten the pot.

“You tell them like, ‘You’re not going to win. It’s over. I can get you a judgeship,’” Brown told me. Technically, judges are appointed by the governor, but lawmakers can advocate for a candidate.

He declined to say who received a judgeship in exchange for their vote.

His offer to political enemies: He’d promise to help “put them in Congress,” Brown said. Wait, even Republicans? “Yeah. Get them out of my life. Republicans and Democrats.”

In 1981, legislators needed something more to sign onto the map, Richardson wrote: “State legislators wanted a congressional bill exempting their per diem living allowance of $75 a day from federal income taxes. Burton got Congressman Robert Matsui, who sat on the House Ways and Means Committee, to insert an amendment into a bill, and the tax loophole for legislators quietly became law as part of President Reagan’s 1981 tax bill.”

The Assembly approved the map at 1:20 a.m. on the last night of the session.

But a potential 2025 redraw will be more complicated, primarily because it will likely need voter approval to overturn the 2010 law that created the California Redistricting Commission before state lawmakers can get back in the line-drawing business.

Neither Brown nor Cain thinks voters will support it.

“I don’t think we can sell our voters on a war tactic that is so partisan-laced that the only people voting are going to be those of us who are real partisans,” Brown said. “I’m not sure that we have any luminaries — personalities that can go deliver the message persuasively (that voters should back the plan). You don’t have Bill Clinton. You don’t have Barack Obama. You don’t have Lyndon Johnson.”

What about Newsom?

“He’s going to try,” Brown said.

(SF Chronicle)

Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourne with the Boston Beaneaters giving the finger to the camera during a team photo before a game against the New York Giants on opening day, 29 April 1886 (F.L. Howe, photographer).

GIANTS’ JERAR ENCARNACION EXITS WITH INJURY AFTER CRUSHING 442-FOOT HOMER IN WIN AT PITTSBURGH

by Susan Slusser

One minute, Jerar Encarnacion was belting his second homer in as many days, providing exactly the sort of power threat the San Francisco Giants have needed all year.

The next, it seemed, Encarnacion was leaving with what looked to be a hamstring injury, grabbing his leg as he crossed first base in the seventh. The outfielder had just come off the injured list on Monday and has missed 99 games while out with a broken hand and then an oblique strain.

For a team struggling to score runs, a near-certain third IL stint for Encarnacion is gut-wrenching, but the Giants made do without him in a 4-2 victory over the Pirates that gave them their second road series win in a row.

Encarnacion homered in the fifth, but the Giants didn’t score again until the eighth, when Patrick Bailey opened the inning with a pinch-hit single, Rafael Devers drew his second walk of the day, Willy Adames singled and Matt Chapman launched a sacrifice fly.

In the ninth, the team got some superb at-bats against Dennis Santana. Jung Hoo Lee ripped a one-out double, then Dominic Smith got down 0-2 before delivering a pinch-hit RBI double down the first-base line to extend his hitting streak to 11 games. Bailey singled to send in Smith and provide a bit of padding.

“We talk about playing like we did earlier in the year, and that’s what we did off the good relievers, quality at-bats,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Obviously Dom’s was huge. Bailey coming off the bench to get two hits, driving runs, that’s a good recipe for us that showed up again today. It’s been lacking for a little while. Hopefully it continues.”

Encarnacion’s likely loss still stings, especially with much of the rest of the lineup coming alive. Encarnacion’s homer Wednesday, at 442 feet the second longest by a Giants hitter this season and the longest outside of Coors Field, accounted for San Francisco’s first run; Adames hit the team’s longest homer of the season, a 452-foot shot at Colorado on June 11.

Encarnacion will get an MRI on Thursday. “It doesn’t look good,” Melvin said. “You get hurt in spring training, you’re playing catch-up all the time to get him back, now he finally gets enough at-bats and we see the type of at-bats we’ve been wanting from him, especially off left-handed pitching, and he’s going to be down for a while now, unfortunately. Just ends up being a, so far, really tough year for him.”

Giants starter Robbie Ray didn’t have a perfect day, walking two to start things off and giving up one run as a result, but he limited the damage well. A double play and a strikeout helped him squirm out of the first, and the only other run off him, in the fifth, came when Isiah Kiner-Falefa singled, stole second and scored on Tommy Pham’s sacrifice fly. Ray went six innings, gave up six hits, the two walks and two runs and struck out eight. José Buttó and Ryan Walker worked scoreless innings and Randy Rodriguez, coming off a blown save Monday, had a 1-2-3 ninth.

Wilmer Flores, who turned 34 Wednesday, remained out of the starting lineup because of hamstring tightness, especially notable in a game against a left-handed starter. The team still believes Flores will avoid the IL, given Thursday’s off day, but it’s reasonable to assume there are also provisions in case he needs to miss more time and now the Giants have to consider a replacement for Encarnacion.

While he’s left-handed, so not necessarily a perfect match for Encarnacion or Flores, top prospect Bryce Eldridge is making a major push at Triple-A Sacramento, hitting .333 with eight homers, 24 RBIs and seven walks over his past 13 games. His 26 RBIs since July 18 are the most in the PCL.

President of baseball operations Buster Posey is a big believer in promoting players when they earn it, and Eldridge is Sacramento’s hottest hitter. He might not be quite ready to play first base, but Devers can serve as the lefty option at that spot and Eldridge could get at least some big-league at-bats at DH while Flores is out. It’s purely speculation at this point, because the roster fit is awkward, but his hot streak makes Eldridge an exciting option. Fun to consider, if not the most realistic choice.

A more likely left-handed hitting option — and he’s an outfielder — is newly acquired outfielder Drew Gilbert, from the Tyler Rogers deal with the Mets. He’s 6 for his first 12 with four walks and a steal at Triple-A Sacramento. The right-handed options are a pretty well-known crew: Luis Matos, Marco Luciano and Tyler Fitzgerald.

The Giants aren’t listing a starter for Friday’s game against the Nationals at Oracle Park, but Kai-Wei Teng remains on the roster and would at this point be the man to get the bulk of the innings, even if the team uses an opener. Landen Roupp (elbow) will pitch a bullpen session in the next day or two, and if that goes well he’ll make one rehab outing before returning to the rotation.

Victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima are seen at an emergency relief station in the Otagawa River embankment, 9 Aug 1945.

CALIFORNIA CUT COAL FROM ITS ENERGY SUPPLY; MIGHT PLUG BACK INTO FOSSIL FUELS

by Alejandro Lazo & Jeanne Kuang

California spent decades building one of the greenest power grids on Earth.

It ditched coal, cut fossil fuels, and built so much solar it now runs the world’s second-largest battery fleet to keep clean power flowing after dark.

Now lawmakers are poised to tie that grid to coal-burning states.

With electricity prices rising and pressure to keep the lights on, California is racing to create an expanded power market with other Western utilities to trade vast amounts of electricity. An expanded market could include climate-aligned states such as Oregon and Washington but potentially also coal-burning ones such as Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico.

Supporters said the proposal cuts costs and keeps the grid stable by letting providers trade energy more freely — particularly at peak times of need, like heat waves. They said expanded trading will help renewable energy proliferate as it competes with fossil fuels.

But the plan has split California’s environmental and consumer groups. Backers said it’s key to selling the state’s solar power to others, which would help bring bills down. Opponents said it’s too risky, leaving the state exposed as President Donald Trump pushes markets toward coal and gas.

The idea of a regional market has failed before. This latest push only gained traction after labor unions, once a major obstacle, got on board.

Senate Bill 540, which paves the way, passed the state Senate earlier this summer with bipartisan support and is now before the state Assembly. Gov. Gavin Newsom wants a deal this year.

“This is about affordability, this is about reliability, it’s about us maintaining our authority and autonomy as it relates to our low-carbon, green growth goals,” Newsom said last week, in response to a question from CalMatters. “I am supportive.”

State Sen. Josh Becker, the bill’s author, has urged lawmakers to move quickly. He said that California could lose trading partners to a competing Western market proposed by an Arkansas-based grid operator that does “not care about respecting our climate policies or energy goals or the interests of California consumers.”

“Make no mistake, if we do not act, we will be worse off,” Becker said in June, urging his colleagues to vote in favor.

Critics call the risk exaggerated. The Utility Reform Network, a consumer advocate group, has taken a neutral position on the measure and threatened to oppose it unless California retains some autonomy and a strict procedure to withdraw.

Momentum has stalled in the Assembly, where some former supporters have backed away, warning those changes could make the plan unworkable for other states. Lawmakers have until mid-September to strike a deal as they juggle a broader slate of energy and climate measures.

A seasonal excess of clean power

California already trades electricity with neighboring states but controls its own grid that covers most of the state through an independent system operator whose board is appointed by the governor.

That matters because California is legally required to run on 100% clean electricity by 2045 — while also electrifying cars, homes, and facing surging demand from energy-hungry data centers fueling the rise of artificial intelligence.

By many measures, the state’s energy transition is a success story: Eight out every 10 days so far this year saw wind, water, and solar meet all of the state’s needs for at least part of the day, according to an ongoing tally by Stanford energy researcher Mark Z. Jacobson.

Solar generation last week hit a new high: 21,750 megawatts at peak. That’s enough solar to power 4 million homes when accounting for day and night, and the fact that solar output changes with the seasons.

Still, California’s clean energy boom has contributed to the highest electricity rates in the country outside of Hawaii.

Clean energy costs just over three cents more per kilowatt-hour than fossil power for California’s major utilities — a gap driven mostly by older, more expensive contracts and other market factors. But energy bills have become a slow-burning political issue: A recent poll showed voters support clean power, but fewer are willing to pay more for it.

Environmentalists said renewables will be cheaper long-term because sun and wind are free.

California is also wasting clean energy. On sunny, mild days in spring and fall, grid operators increasingly shut down solar panels that crank out more power than the state can use. Proponents of regionalization said that energy could be sold to neighboring states.

“We need a modern grid to develop and use this much clean power quickly,” said Katelyn Roedner Sutter, state director at Environmental Defense Fund. “While California generates more clean electricity than ever, it has never wasted more.”

Not everyone agrees that building large-scale projects and expanding markets will bring costs down. Building distant plants and new transmission lines will raise costs, not lower them, said Bernadette Del Chiaro, who leads advocacy campaigns in California for the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

Del Chiaro argues that expanding rooftop solar and cutting waste — using better insulation, smarter appliances and shifting when we use power — could curb demand without overhauling the grid.

“It makes no sense,” she said. “We have plenty of resources here.”

Another motivation for regionalization: the risk of blackouts, especially as climate-driven heat waves intensify. California experienced blackouts in 2020 and pleaded with residents to conserve power during a brutal 10-day heat wave in 2022. Michael Wara, a Stanford legal scholar who focuses on climate, backs the regional market plan. He said with renewable energy facing political pushback, it’s essential for California to keep its grid stable.

Without those moves, “I really worry about what, politically, would happen … the day after, or in the weeks after, any kind of a system blackout,” he said.

Sharing power between Western states

California’s plan to connect Western power markets would create a system unlike anything else in the U.S. Under the proposed plan, called the Pathways Initiative, energy providers would trade all their available electricity in a shared market while each state keeps its own energy policies and planning authority.

Smarter coordination means better preparation for extreme weather, proponents said. In winter, California and the Pacific Northwest could tap steady sunlight from the Southwest. On sweltering summer nights, they could rely on inland wind power to keep air conditioners humming.

A group of powerful interests that often butt heads backs the effort. Supporters of SB 540 include unions, utilities and business groups that hold significant sway with lawmakers, having poured more than $20 million into legislative races in the past decade, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

In the past, labor unions opposed plans they feared would outsource lucrative infrastructure contracts to union-hostile red states. Now, one of the most powerful — the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — is all in, eager to build in-state clean energy projects.

Environmental groups once worried that creating a regional grid would flood California with out-of-state fossil power. Now, many are backing the market idea, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, betting it will help unleash more clean energy across the West.

Major industry groups — and tech giants like Google and Microsoft, scrambling to power their AI data centers — are also throwing their weight behind the plan.

PacifiCorp, a six-state Western region utility owned by Berkshire Hathaway, was the first to commit to an expanded market led by California. Portland General Electric, NV Energy in Nevada and Idaho Power are other potential participants.

To make it work, California would have to give up some of its hard-fought control. Other states won’t join a market dominated by a board handpicked in Sacramento. That’s why regional players have long pushed to replace California’s grid operator with a new, independent agency to run the West, and why California players have resisted.

The Pathways proposal, though, is more limited than past proposals for a linked grid: It would shift control only of the market to a regional board made up of other states and utilities. Under the current measure, California would still manage its own power lines and keep the authority to decide how it buys electricity, enforce its clean energy rules and could walk away if the partnership doesn’t work.

Could Trump take control?

Critics said this is the worst time to gamble with California’s clean energy future. The Trump administration is waging an all-out ideological war on climate policy and California is a prime target.

Since returning to office, Trump has moved to dismantle dozens of environmental protections, including perhaps most important for federal climate regulations: the legal foundation for climate action.

In June, he teamed up with congressional Republicans to strip California of its Clean Air Act authority to set clean car and truck emission rules. And last month Republicans gutted the Biden administration’s landmark climate law, slashing solar and wind tax breaks that were helping California power its clean energy transition.

In his first term, Trump tried to force more coal into the power market — and even his own regulators said no. This time, he’s aiming to take full control, and he will likely replace independent experts with loyalists to push fossil fuels, no matter the cost, said Tyson Slocum of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

Slocum warned that, by year’s end, Trump could take control of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He could use that commission — which regulates electricity and gas markets across state lines — to tilt the power market toward gas and coal, under the pretext of reliability.

“That’s why efforts to regionalize the West Coast power market right now is the stupidest thing that California could do,” Slocum said. “Is now the time to partner with the federal government? No. This is the last thing that California should be doing.”

Some environmentalists opposed to the plan argue that while a regional market might help California’s emissions fall it could prompt emissions to rise in the rest of the West.

They point to a decision by the Bonneville Power Administration — a clean energy powerhouse based in Portland, Oregon, that controls power from 31 federal hydroelectric dams — to join the Southwest Power Pool, the grid operator competing with California. That move is key because the power provider’s choices help determine how far and fast the Western U.S. can decarbonize.

“The majority of the surplus generation that would be shared is coal, gas, fossil fuels,” said Roger Lin, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “From a climate perspective, it is a bad move.”

Energy Commissioner Siva Gunda told CalMatters the plan wouldn’t further increase California’s exposure to federal regulators, since the state’s grid is already under federal oversight. He emphasized California would still control what power it builds in-state, and argued a larger market could actually accelerate clean energy development across the West by giving other states a stronger incentive to supply California.

“The opening of markets does not open up our ability to have our own destiny — in terms of the resources we want to build in California,” Gunda said.

Estimates of the benefits for a regional market vary, depending on how many entities join. While an expanded market could save Californians nearly $800 million a year, cut emissions by 3% across the West, and reduce natural gas use by nearly a third, that scenario assumes nearly all Western utilities join. Many experts said that is unlikely. An alternate scenario, where the West is divided between two rival markets, would deliver $294 million in savings and far smaller emissions cuts.

Where things stand

Before passing the bill, senators amended it to include more safeguards requested by skeptics.

Those include a newly proposed oversight council, composed of some California appointees and elected officials, which would have to sign off on California’s participation in the market. The council could also direct the state and its utilities to back out in the future — if, say, federal regulation or the new market operator threatens the state’s climate goals.

“It’s about creating an exit strategy,” said Matthew Freedman of The Utility Reform Network. “Given what we’re seeing at the federal level now, we cannot be too careful.”

But the changes have made some of the measure’s original backers balk. The provisions mandate under what conditions California must exit, which market supporters said could send others to the Arkansas market instead. Several environmental groups, businesses and clean energy organizations have said they now oppose the bill.

When lawmakers return from their summer recess on Aug. 18, they’ll have a little less than a month to work it out before they adjourn for the year.

Newsom, state Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Assembly utilities committee chair Cottie Petrie-Norris said they want a bill passed this year. But any further changes in the Assembly will have to go back to the Senate, where Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire insisted on the oversight council.

“It really undermines all of the benefits of joining a Western market if nobody wants to trade with us,” said Sutter, of the Environmental Defense Fund. “If I’m a utility from another state … I’m going to go with the sure thing, not something that is up to the political whims of California.”

(CalMatters.org)

NOTE ON THE FIRE SUIT

Clarifying a point about aliens and Constitutional rights

by Matt Taibbi

I see in the comments to the just-released piece on the FIRE suit against Marco Rubio and the Trump administration, that I may not have clearly explained a key element leaning toward FIRE’s view that Trump’s deportation policies are unconstitutional.

There’s significant precedent arguing that aliens enjoy the same First Amendment rights as citizens. There are multiple cases. Bridges v. Wixon is a closely analogous 1945 case about an Australian labor organizer accused of communist affiliation. Not unlike someone like Mahmoud Khalil, Harry Bridges was a foreigner thought to be here on a specious premise, advancing unpopular beliefs and causing trouble. However, the Supreme Court was clear:

Freedom of speech and of the press is accorded aliens residing in this country.

The court in that same case ruled that foreigners enjoy First and Fifth Amendment rights once they enter the country, noting the Constitution speaks of “persons,” not citizens:

“Once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country, he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders. Such rights include those protected by the First and the Fifth Amendments and by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. None of these provisions acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens. They extend their inalienable privileges to all ‘persons’…”

In the 1953 case Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding, a Chinese-born man who married an American, served in the merchant marines and “proved his good moral character” was detained en route home from a sea voyage, when an immigration inspector deemed him an “alien whose entry was deemed prejudicial to the public interest.” The court cited Wixon in noting that neither the First nor Fifth Amendment, nor the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, “acknowledges any distinction” between citizens and aliens. It added:

It is well established that, if an alien is a lawful permanent resident of the United States and remains physically present there, he is a person within the protection of the Fifth Amendment.

There are a handful of others that generally reference the same concept. What makes the U.S. different from Europe or Canada is that there’s no notion of balancing individual rights and the rights of society. If government can selectively infringe on the “free exercise” of speech for foreigners, it would mean conceding that government has some jurisdiction over speech.

Just wanted to highlight the above cases, which suggest the principle has to apply generally or not at all. It may sound counterintuitive, but if you think about it…

Jim Buck, near Central Park in 1964, is considered the first professional dog walker in New York City. He ran a business in which he and two dozen assistants walked more than 150 dogs a day. (Credit...Neal Boenzi/The New York Times)

LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS

by Matt Taibbi

When I was told Friday that President Trump fired the BLS commissioner due to a poor July payroll report (a less-than-expected monthly job add of 73,000 and very large negative two-month revision of 258,000), I waited for a laugh track that never came.

He did what? Really?

I spent most of the weekend shaking my head and laughing that the president would fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer for a lousy Non-Farm Payroll report.

Then I thought about it a bit more.

Most of us who have been in the markets have probably spent at least six of the 12 first Fridays of the month every year scratching our heads when the monthly report is released. Our staff economist leads us through the various seasonal adjustments, model adjustments, survey participation rates, data revisions to the last two reports and other assorted “kinks” in the reporting, and by the end it usually sounds like nonsense. I believe these monthly reports warrant a good dose of skepticism.

Year-over-year however, I always thought the numbers were relatively accurate, which is why I was pretty surprised when in February the BLS revised the total 2024 non-farm payroll employment level down 598,000, a revision of 0.4%. That’s the largest revision in 10 years. Annual benchmark revisions have averaged 0.1% in the last decade, ranging from less than .05% to 0.3%.

Trump already had his suspicions back in August 2024 when the BLS estimated that the 2024 revision would be a whopping 818,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

A big negative revision for 2024 annual job creation meant that his Democratic opponent had been campaigning on inflated employment numbers.

While it was probably just poor data, as Racket’s Matt Taibbi has been tirelessly reporting, the president has a very justified “trust issue” with other supposedly non-partisan organs of government, so why not the BLS as well? It has not been a good decade for the BLS in the “trust” department. In 2022, BLS investigated a suspicious event and found it did nothing wrong. Then, in 2024, senior BLS officials blatantly lied about a release of material nonpublic information to a select group of people.

‘Super Users’

The New York Times reported that in January 2024 a BLS staff economist engaged in highly inappropriate communication revealing material nonpublic information to a select group of banks and hedge funds. From the Times:

In an email addressed to “Super Users,” the economist explained a technical change in the calculation of the housing figures. Then, departing from the bureaucratic language typically used by statistical agencies, he added, “All of you searching for the source of the divergence have found it.”

To the inflation obsessives who received the email — and other forecasters who quickly heard about it — the implication was clear: The pop in housing prices in January might have been not a fluke but rather a result of a shift in methodology that could keep inflation elevated longer than economists and Federal Reserve officials had expected. That could, in turn, make the Fed more cautious about cutting interest rates.

That kind of information had tremendous value in the wrong hands. There was an uproar when news of the Super User group leaked. When confronted in early March 2024 by news outlets, the BLS called what happened a mistake and denied there was an actual “Super Users” group, but rather a one time reply to multiple inquiries. From Bloomberg News:

“To expedite a response, the employee blind-copied a number of requesters and referred to them as super users — this was a mistake,” said Jeffrey Hill, a BLS associate commissioner.

The New York Times filed a FOIA with BLS, and found there was indeed a “Super User” list, kept by at least one “low ranking” staff economist who was communicating with a number of banks, money managers and hedge funds.

The emails show that the employee did engage in extended, one-on-one email exchanges with data users about how the inflation figures are put together. Such details, though highly technical, can be of significant interest to forecasters, who compete to predict inflation figures to hundredths of a percentage point. Those estimates, in turn, are used by investors making bets on the huge batches of securities that are tied to inflation or interest rates.

In at least one case, emails to super users appear to have shared methodological details that were not yet public. On Jan. 31, the employee sent an email to his super users describing coming changes to the way the agency calculates used car prices, at the time a crucial issue for inflation watchers. The email included a three-page document providing detailed answers to questions about the change, and a spreadsheet showing how they would affect calculations.

“Thank you all for your very difficult, challenging and thoughtful questions,” the email said. “It is your questions that help us flesh out all the potential problems.”

The questions also seemed to have fleshed out for the Super Users important changes to how the BLS was changing their calculations of the CPI two weeks before their official release in mid-February!

The Times identified several ”Super Users.” Among them: Barclays, Nomura, BNP Paribas, Millennium Capital Partners, Breven Howard and Citadel.

Bloomberg News, after reviewing the documents, found JP Morgan, BlackRock and Moore Capital were also part of the group.

In response, an external team of experts was formed to investigate the incidents and suggest improvements.

While the team’s report stated that “none of the incidents were related to the quality or accuracy of the agency’s core data work,” the issue of the Super User group had nothing to do with the quality of the agency’s work. Rather, it had to do with disseminating that work to a select group before it was made public.

Here is what McEntarfer had to say about the Super User incident: It was an idiosyncratically collected group of emails of people who had been asking him questions that he put together against policies and procedures that BLS outlined, so, yeah, it was limited to one person and ceased at the moment its attention was brought to the agency.

Idiosyncratically collected group of emails? I have to give McEntarfer credit for some fantastic, institutionalized bullshit there!

How many times did this “idiosyncratic” behavior take place, who did it take place with, and what was discussed in each of these idiosyncratic exchanges? What did the members of the Super User group do with the information that they knew was material and non-public? Why did the employee provide this service?

Regarding the expert report, the McEntarger concluded:

“I want to emphasize that throughout their conversations with me, the team emphasized that overall, their investigation revealed a really excellent organization with a highly capable staff, deeply committed to their mission and their agency,”

Nothing to see here, please move along.

You might remember that back in 2022, inflation was raging. On the morning of December 13, 2022, the markets were on pins and needles waiting for the 8:30 a.m. November Consumer Price Index report.

About one minute before the release, 10-year U.S. Treasury Futures began to skyrocket, along with equity futures. At 8:30 the BLS reported that inflation for November came in much lower than expected, something that would have caused bond and equity futures to surge higher, like they did 60 seconds prior to the release! The March 2023 Ten-Year Treasury futures saw the buying of 13,000 contracts seconds before the release, a notional value of nearly $1.5 billion.

Interestingly, while there was much hand-wringing, the incident passed without any investigation. This was a bit “disconcerting” since the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) could have discovered who traded right before 8:30 a.m.

The CFTC could have rounded up all the Futures Clearing Merchants and had them divulge which clients placed the trades. It might have taken subpoenas and some investigative work, but the government has folks who do that sort of thing. As far as we know, this was never done, or at least disclosed.

Hilariously, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre contorted herself into a pretzel later in the afternoon, essentially telling the press it was no big deal and if it was, the White House wasn’t the leaker!

The Labor Department conducted an initial investigation as to whether the data was hacked and dismissed the possibility of a data leak. The BLS denied any awareness of an early release of the data. Not exactly The Inquisition!

What is true is the report got into the wrong hands at the wrong time.

Either somebody at BLS leaked the report, or it was a very senior official from either the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, or the president and/or his senior economic advisors. The odds point to the former. Either way the BLS seemed to want no part in finding out the answer to this mystery.

Personally, I don’t think that the July Non-Farm Payroll report was rigged. However, I do think the BLS has a credibility problem, which unfortunately extends beyond its statistical acumen. Once the lying and potential covering up begins, credibility is shot. There has been much talk this week about how casting doubt on our economic data is another blow to democracy. Interestingly, I have not seen any mention of either the “Super User” or the December 13, 2022, scandals in the reporting. The timing and optics of Commissioner McEntarfer’s firing could have been much better, but it’s past time to clean house at the BLS.

A high school student works out a calculus equation on the chalkboard at Walnut Hills High School in Ohio, 1957.

LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

Staggering U.S. Tariffs Begin as Trump Widens Trade War

Trump Threatens 100% Tariff on Chips, With a Big Caveat

Trump and Putin to Meet in ‘Coming Days,’ Kremlin Aide Confirms

A G.O.P. Congressman Faced Hometown Voters. It Wasn’t Pretty

Another Pakistani Woman Is Killed for ‘Honor,’ but She’s Not Forgotten

How Ozempic’s Maker Lost Its Shine After Creating a Wonder Drug

26 LOLITA EXPRESS FLIGHTS. 17 WHITE HOUSE VISITS. AND THAT PAINTING.

Bill Clinton’s Sordid History With Epstein Is Better Documented Than Any. The Game May Finally Be Up

by Ben Ashford

They schmoozed, flew on private jets together and grinned for photos in the White House.

But for years Bill Clinton has insisted he had “no knowledge” of Jeffrey Epstein‘s dark web of child sex crimes.

Republicans will now put that denial to the test after issuing a shock subpoena to the 42nd President of the United States on Tuesday.

The 78-year-old Democrat and his wife Hillary, 77, are among a swath of elite political figures and DOJ officials targeted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Ex FBI Director James Comey and former US Attorney General Merrick Garland will also be grilled about the pedophile financier under oath in October.

This push for additional Epstein testimony comes amid heightened media scrutiny over unreleased Department of Justice and FBI files relating to the dead sex offender.

Clinton has been linked to Epstein for decades. He was listed in the billionaire’s contact book of powerful pals, hosted him at the White House and flew multiple times on his plane nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

According to Epstein’s longtime accuser Virginia Giuffre, Clinton was even spotted reveling in the company of “two lovely girls” on Epstein’s Caribbean Island.

Clinton has dismissed the accusation – just as he claims that he and Epstein were nothing more than occasional acquaintances with a shared interest in philanthropy.

Democrats might prefer to focus instead on President Donald Trump’s once-chummy friendship with Epstein, who committed suicide in jail in 2019 while facing sex-trafficking charges.

But, as the Daily Mail can reveal, it’s perhaps Clinton who has more to fear if the full contents of the so-called “Epstein Files” ever see the light of day.

Follow The Trail

Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have come under massive pressure to publish an alleged ‘client list’ supposedly lurking deep within the Epstein Files.

But the names of many alleged associates – including one William Jefferson Clinton – can already be found buried in paperwork in a 2015 defamation case filed by Virginia Giuffre against Epstein’s right-hand woman Ghislaine Maxwell.

According to Giuffre’s lawyers, Clinton was “a key person in the lives” of the billionaire pervert and his jailed madam, the trio enjoying a “close relationship.”

In one especially incendiary filing, a 2016 deposition from another Epstein victim, Johanna Sjoberg, she recalled Epstein telling her that “Clinton likes them young,” referring to girls.

When asked about the two men’s alleged friendship, Sjoberg added: “I knew he had dealings with Bill Clinton.”

Elsewhere in the since-settled suit Giuffre claimed that Clinton once intervened to stop a magazine exposé about Epstein.

Maxwell’s lawyers asked her about a 2011 email exchange she had with a reporter friend in which they discussed the merits of selling her now-infamous photo with Prince Andrew to Vanity Fair.

Giuffre had written: “It does concern me what they could want to write about me considering that B. Clinton walked into VF and threatened them not to write sex trafficking articles about his good friend JE.”

Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has insisted the incident “categorically did not happen.”

Perverts’ Paradise

Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most persistent and brave accusers, died by suicide on April 25 this year at her home in Australia.

But she left behind further tantalizing clues in her unpublished memoir “The Billionaire’s Playboy Club.”

Giuffre’s book claimed that Ghislaine Maxwell spotted her working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in mid-2000 and groomed her for a job as Epstein’s travelling masseuse.

She claimed she was 15 at the time but later revised this to 17 in a deposition.

Giuffre also recalled attending a “big dinner party” on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, Little St James – widely known as Pedo Island.

The guest of honor was, according to Giuffre, “the one and only Bill Clinton.”

“Sitting across the table from us was Bill with two lovely girls who were visiting from New York,” Giuffre wrote in her memoir, an unsealed exhibit in her defamation case.

“Bill’s wife, Hillary’s absence from the night made it easy for his apparent provocative cheeky side to come out,” Giuffre continued.

“Teasing the girls on either side of him with playful pokes and brassy comments, there was no modesty between any of them. We all finished our meals and scattered in our own different directions.

“Strolling into the darkness with two beautiful girls around either arm, Bill seemed content to retire for the evening.”

Clinton has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s “terrible crimes” and says he never visited his island.

Frequent Liar

Epstein went from university dropout to mercurial money manager, acquiring all the trappings of a billionaire playboy and majestic homes in New York, New Mexico, and Palm Beach, Florida.

He bagged influential friends along the way, many of whom were listed in his “little black book” of contacts – where he noted down 20 numbers and addresses for Clinton.

Despite repeatedly distancing himself from the child predator and his crimes, Clinton was allegedly close enough to be a frequent flyer on the Lolita Express.

Flight logs suggest that Clinton flew on Epstein’s Boeing 727 on 26 occasions, traveling to an array of exotic locations including Brunei, Norway, Russia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, the Azores, Africa, Belgium and China.

The Daily Mail has previously published never-before-seen images of the former Leader of the Free World receiving a neck and shoulder massage from Epstein victim Chauntae Davies during a stopover in 2002.

Davies, then a 22-year-old massage therapist who claimed she was recruited into Epstein’s circle by Ghislaine Maxwell before being raped and abused, insisted that Clinton was “charming and sweet” on the humanitarian trip to Africa that also included Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker.

Clinton’s camp insisted he took a “total of four trips” from 2002 to 2003 on Epstein’s aircraft, which last flew in 2016 and is slowly corroding at an airfield in Brunswick, Georgia.

Staffers and Secret Service agents were present each time, they said.

In his memoir, ‘Citizen: My Life After The White House,’ Clinton wrote: “Even though it allowed me to visit the work of my foundation, traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward. I wish I had never met him.”

Crossdresser-In-Chief

They say a picture speaks 1,000 words.

But anyone who stumbled across Epstein’s life-size portrait of a crossdressing Clinton would likely have been left speechless.

The bizarro artwork depicts the former Commander in Chief lounging on a chair in the Oval Office in blood red heels and a figure-hugging blue dress.

The outfit was said to resemble the semen-stained garment that Monica Lewinsky famously handed over to the Starr Investigation To Test For Clinton’s DNA.

It was also strikingly similar to one worn by wife Hillary at a 2009 gala dinner for Kennedy Center Honorees.

The painting was called “Parsing Bill” and was created in 2012 by fledgling Australian-American artist Petrina Ryan-Kleid.

It’s not clear whether Epstein owned the original or a print, but the image was spotted hanging up inside the pedophile’s $56 million New York townhouse in October of that year.

Quite why Epstein would have such a lurid likeness of the former president in his home has been open to much speculation.

“It was absolutely Bill Clinton. It was shocking – it was definitely a painting of him,” a source said to the Daily Mail when we revealed the portrait’s existence in 2019.

West Wingman

Bill Clinton has owned up to six meetings with Epstein dating back to 2002. These include four flights on Epstein’s plane, a visit to his Harlem office and a brief appearance at the pedophile’s New York home.

However, as the Daily Mail has previously revealed, Epstein enjoyed extraordinary access to the White House throughout the Clinton administration, a decade earlier.

The deep-pocketed predator stopped by the West Wing just a month after Clinton’s inauguration in January 1993.

It was the first of 17 visits in three years, according to visitor logs, and he was accompanied by eight different women.

These included Maxwell, who at the time of the first visit was 32, and Celina Midelfart – a 21-year-old Norwegian heiress who once dated Donald Trump – and another former girlfriend Eva Andersson-Dubin.

Epstein and Maxwell returned on September 29, 1993 to attend a reception organized by the White House Historical Association after he donated $10,000 to help renovate the building.

It was one of the earliest instances of Epstein using philanthropy to gain access to powerful men, a tactic he deployed extensively to negate his 2008 conviction in Florida for having sex with underage girls.

Photos from the event show Epstein and Clinton shaking hands with both men smiling broadly.

The bulk of Epstein’s visits came in 1994 when he went on a dozen occasions, meeting a variety of aides including Mark Middleton, a special assistant to the President.

Suicide Riddle

Middleton’s curious cameo doesn’t end there.

Cops say he took his own life in 2022, but the gory suicide raised more questions than answers.

The married father-of-two, who worked for his family’s HVAC business after leaving politics, was found hanging from a tree on farmland in Perryville, Arkansas.

“I could see that he had a gunshot wound to the chest and that he had a knot tied in an extension cord that was around his neck, and it was attached to the limb directly above him,” noted a deputy.

A search of Middleton’s BMW turned up three boxes of buckshot and a gun case – but no weapon. The 59-year-old’s death was nonetheless recorded as a suicide.

In 1996, one year after leaving the White House, Middleton was accused of abusing his access to impress business clients and was barred from the executive mansion without senior approval.

According to the Arkansas Times, Middleton’s family said he was suffering from depression when he died.

(DailyMail.uk)

People walk past destroyed buildings at Aioi Bridge, Hiroshima (Oct 1945).

28 Comments

Harvey Reading August 7, 2025

CALIFORNIA CUT COAL FROM ITS ENERGY SUPPLY; MIGHT PLUG BACK INTO FOSSIL FUELS

Amazing how human monkeys avoid the obvious solution: Get human population numbers down to at least carrying capacity of human habitat. That solution has been around for decades, but greedy, plundering human monkeys refuse to accept it, relying instead on the will of their gods, created by themselves and in their own image. The imaginary god will be the death of us, including the so-called “chosen ones” (chosen by themselves, of course…).

Reply
- Norm Thurston August 7, 2025
  
  First, I am in agreement that overpopulation is the cause of many of our ills. However, our major economies all seem to be based on growth as the main feature, and those with the most money want more.
  
  My concern about energy has to do with joining a regional group. Because Enron and out-of-state energy regulators deliberately created serious power outages in California in 2000-2001, I believe it is essential that any agreement contains provisions that would prevent those types of manipulations in the future. Other than that, a regional alliance sounds good. And I honestly do not think it would result in more fossil-fuel energy production, even if California occasionally received some. On a side note, Wyoming could probably power the entire country with wind-produced electricity alone. ;-)
  
  Reply
  - Harvey Reading August 7, 2025
    
    Ever look at a windmill farm? They are ugly as sin. Wyoming already has too many of the con-artist gadgets already. They have to be replaced about every 20-30 years and apparently are NOT recyclable. Similar for solar panels. And, how much non-“renewable” energy does it take to make them, from mining to refining to manufacturing to end-of-expected lifetime, followed by replacement? “Renewable energy” my butt, just more kaputalist greed in action. Similar for electroeggmobiles. We are being peddled a bill of goods by greedy kaputalists…as always–but, it WILL come to its bitter end.
    
    Reply
    - Marshall Newman August 7, 2025
      
      Tomorrow is not today. Many of those issues you mention will be addressed within the next decade. In the meantime, renewables are essential to moderating climate change.
      
      That said, a different windmill design, probably similar to the one created by Flower, would be more aesthetically pleasing than today’s huge fans and towers.
      
      Reply
      - Harvey Reading August 7, 2025
        
        Population reduction to get the world human population down to carrying capacity of its habitat would be a more reasonable long-term solution. Start by encouraging vasectomies, tubal ligations, and abortion.
        
        You have far more faith in kaputalists than do I. I trust them to do anything to make more money…like what they’re making and what they’ll make in the future, courtesy of the bonanza of “renewable” energy scams.
        
        Reply
        
        Marshall Newman August 7, 2025
        
        Money will do no one – rich or poor – any good if the planet becomes too hot to be livable. Despite roadblocks by the current administration, solar likely will be the power source of the future. Expect it to be be scaled up in a hurry as artificial intelligence, crypto mining (don’t get me started on crypto) and electric vehicles expand.
        
        Reply
        
        Harvey Reading August 7, 2025
        
        All those gizmos (that require lots of energy and resources to construct, along with fancy programming won’t help for long unless the population decreases dramatically. We’re not nearly as intelligent as we’re told, or we never would have overpopulated the planet to begin with nor invented gods that “think” like we do. It’s weird that,as a kid (raised by Southern Baptists), I was certain I would live long enough to experience the “end times” I’m afraid now that I might have been right, though it will be more horrifying than what the true believers seem to still think.
        
        Reply
        
        Norm Thurston August 7, 2025
        
        If the issue is distilled down to new energy sources vs. population reduction, I’m putting all my money on new sources. Short of draconian measures, reducing the world population would be difficult, at best.
        
        Reply
Chuck Dunbar August 7, 2025

NEVER AGAIN

Full page ad in the New York TImes yesterday, by the American Jewish Committee—made me furious at its omissions, apparent assumptions, at its so-clear lack of humanity.

The ad showed two photos of the same man, first—normally clothed and nourished; second— clearly thin and malnourished, shirtless. Ad read: “This is Evyatar, 24 years old. He went to a music festival on 10/7/23. He was kidnapped and is being starved and kept in brutal conditions by Hamas right now in Gaza. Help bring Evyatar and all the remaining hostages home.”

No mention of the hundreds of thousands of human beings in Gaza—non-Jewish, but still human beings— in brutal conditions, starved, bombed, badly injured and killed, made homeless, by the Israeli IDF. No word of the genocide being waged against a people. Are the lives of the tens of the Jewish hostages worth any more than the lives of thousands and thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, especially women and children? The answer is NO.

How about this as the final sentence instead of the head in the sand one above:

HELP BRING AN END TO THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA BY ISRAEL, AND, YES, HELP BRING THE JEWISH HOSTAGES HOME.

Reply
Stephen Dunlap August 7, 2025

the “Accidental Picture” speaks to me, what’ya suppose MK would take for it ?

Reply
Matt Kendall August 7, 2025

The editor outdid himself today! He definitely hit the nail on the head with the recital of a man attempting to do household chores!

Prior to meeting my wife. I had moved through life with a belief that I was doing OK on most things. My finances were stable my home was warm and for the most part acceptably clean. I made it to work on time daily. I truly believed I was meeting muster on all things.

Little did I know my overall rating was based on my standards, standards which I was grading myself on and therefore I could be lenient on the things I found to be less important.

After I met my wife I learned there was an entirely different level of what is acceptable. I also learned although I didn’t believe myself to be a complete slob and screw up, that was simply because I didn’t have an additional rater in the mix. So ks and handkerchiefs may be co-mingled but don’t try that with T-shirts and trousers!

I have attempted to complete my share of household chores, only to watch these tasks be repeated and completed “properly”. I often will vacuum the living room carpet and leave the vacuum cleaner dead center in the middle of the room for all to see. It becomes a beacon of my accomplishment which the wife is certain to see when she arrives home from work.

She often points out the fact I feel the need for a marching band and a round of applause each time I complete a task like vacuuming, the living room or mowing the lawn.

I do know one thing for certain. I can cut, split and stack firewood in a fashion most men can only dream of.

Each fall I find a reason to parade my spouse past the wood shed knowing full well there will be some kudos bestowed upon me!

Reply
- Chuck Dunbar August 7, 2025
  
  Excellent notes by the Editor and you on the role of husbands in care of the home. I learned similar lessons when I married a mere 20 years ago. Thought I knew house care stuff, that, it turned out, I needed further professional instruction in. Still trying after all these years. Thank God for women who work hard to train and civilize their guys. It takes a lot of patience…,
  
  Reply
- George Hollister August 7, 2025
  
  A while back I mentioned to a well spoken lady that some men marry up. Her response was, “They always do.” Bruce obviously did. Lucky him. Another bit of wisdom from my late grandmother, “He chased her, until she caught him.”
  
  Reply
  - Chuck Dunbar August 7, 2025
    
    Good one, George. Told my wife that bit about men marrying up–“They always do.” She gave me a sly smile, knew it herself for sure.
    
    Reply
Chris Hart August 7, 2025

LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS
Thank you for posting this article. Regardless of whether or not it is correct, I think it provides an idea what led to the Administration firing the guy form the Bureau of Labor & Statistics.

Reply
Katherine Houston August 7, 2025

Loved the photo of the editor and lovely wife Ling. Also enjoyed the early marital history of household chores in the Anderson home. Thank goodness my spouse came pre-trained in many household duties, but is so easygoing that he didn’t mind my adjustments.

Reply
- bharper August 7, 2025
  
  I miss Ling and her copy shop. But mostly her.
  She always seemed content even as her husband inflamed the extremist on both sides.
  
  Bill Harper.
  
  Reply
Richard Weinkle August 7, 2025

Who gives a flying foop about Bill Clinton’s past peccadilloes? Fer God’s sake, he admitted to getting blow jobs in the Oval Office. This ain’t gonna change his life.

This is, however, gonna change Trump’s life.

Reply
- Bruce McEwen August 7, 2025
  
  I do. I think pedophiles should suffer an ignominiously fatal punishment of particularly gruesome intensity and duration. But it looks like the democrats are willing to minimize their Cho-mo’s guilt just like the republicans will minimize theirs in their own turn; partisan voters, you see, are only outraged if the Cho-mo belongs to the other party.
  
  Reply
  - Norm Thurston August 7, 2025
    
    What evidence is there to conclude that Clinton is a pedophile?
    
    Reply
    - Casey Hartlip August 7, 2025
      
      Both Clinton’s are scumbags and guilty of many terrible things. 23 rides on Epsteins planes certainly smells of bad behavior. But the powerful always get away with EVERYTHING!
      
      Reply
      - Norm Thurston August 7, 2025
        
        23 rides? Link, please.
        
        Reply
    - Bruce McEwen August 7, 2025
      
      What evidence is there to conclude that Trump is a pedophile? Perhaps you could reread my post and take note that I did not accuse either president of what everyone in America knows very well to be the case. I did not say King Billy was a child molester, nor did I cast that aspersion on Emperor Trump. All I said was how I thought they ought to be punished in the impossible event either of the scumbags should ever be brought to trial and convicted. But my larger point is that it was a partisan issue and the abused girls can go hang (if they haven’t already been “disappeared”) while the likes of you and Casey rally to the defense of your preferred child rapers, that’s all.
      
      Reply
      - Norm Thurston August 7, 2025
        
        Bruce, you were responding directly to a comment about Clinton. The inference was clearly that you thought Clinton is a pedophile. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it.
        
        Reply
        
        Bruce McEwen August 8, 2025
        
        And you know very well he is. Look at the way Queen Lizzy handled her majesty’s favorite prince, Andrew. When she found out he was on that plane she disowned him and stripped him of all income and titles. She didn’t need no proof and neither do I. If you think that randy old dog King Billy is above veneral indulgence with a minor, you are in partisan denial.
        
        Reply
        
        Norm Thurston August 8, 2025
        
        Fair enough. Personally, I do not think I have enough evidence to pass judgement on any of them, except Epstein and Maxwell. All credible investigations need to be released ASAP.
        
        Reply
Steve Heilig August 8, 2025

A belated appreciation for Our Editor’s report from the home front.

One quote, from anon, I’ve used in performing weddings is “ The most important four words for a successful marriage: ‘I’ll do the dishes.”. People laugh, but later some report, “You know, that was the smartest thing you said!”

My very best, with thanks, to Bruce and Ling.

Reply
mariamerica August 9, 2025

Toma toes

I went looking for that farm, but ended up at that farm goin’ through Anderson Valley, yesterdi. Ooo-boy, struck 🪙🥇gold, there, too. But, my neighbor took ’em when I got home, darn.

I would appreciate more specific directions from Farmers. Google mapping is good, but not that good.

Reply

Mendocino County Today: Thursday 8/7/2025

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