Mendocino County Today: Monday 1/12/2026

HIGH PRESSURE continues to build into the area bringing warmer and dry conditions through the week. Some of the more protected northern valleys will see night and morning low clouds and fog limiting warming. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A foggy? 47F this Monday morning on the coast. I think it's fog, won't know until the sun comes up a few hours. A mix of clear skies, high clouds & fog rule the forecast for the next 9 days. A hint of rain on day 10, we'll see ?

MORE THAN 350 PEOPLE gathered outside Fort Bragg City Hall this weekend for a vigil and peaceful demonstration following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. Organized by Mendocino Coast Indivisible, the local events were part of a nationwide weekend of action calling for accountability. (MV)

AV UNIFIED NEWS

Dear Panther Community,

Happy New Year!! I hope that your families had plenty of time together to relax and enjoy one another. January brings an annual opportunity to reflect, plan, and commit to those things that are most important. We in AVUSD are deeply grateful for our families and students in this tight-knit community.

The new year brings exciting things! Many of our Seniors have completed college applications and will be hearing from universities in the coming months. It is a time of anticipation, dreaming of what may be the “next step” in life. As Spring sports approach, we are thrilled to have a beautiful new facility for soccer and track athletes, and for our families and fans. Wonderful memories will be made there for years to come. Our teachers and staff are refreshed and ready to bring the best learning experiences to all our students over the coming months. We are also thrilled about our district’s new Community Engagement Initiative team, who will be working together to create expanded opportunities for welcoming family involvement in our schools and programs.

Please join us as we embrace 2026 with enthusiasm and commitment to great things for the students of AVUSD!

Upcoming District Events

Jan. 13 at 4:45 School Board Meeting
Jan. 20 at 4:00 AVJrSrHS Exhibitions
Jan. 29 at 4:30 AVJrSrHS School Site Council & ELAC
Feb. 09 at 4:00 AVES School Site Council
Feb. 10 at 4:45 School Board Meeting
Feb. 19 at 5:00 District-wide DELAC

Please Attend Our Events!

The above events are important and we hope to see you at one or more of them! With school funding being tight, we need to be sure we are spending it where it makes the best impact on our students. We are hoping to hear more from our parents! We will make these meetings as short and sweet as possible, and there will be time for parents to talk with each other and with teachers and administrators too. Every parent’s input is so important! We will always have Spanish translation available.

The parent input in 24-25 resulted in improved intervention (academic help) for students in 25-26, as well as an increase in social/emotional supports at both schools. Help us make more decisions like these! Here is a quick explanation of what each meeting is about:

ELAC / English Language Advisory Committee:

This is a very important meeting for parents of English Learners (ELs). Each school has an ELAC, which meets several times per year. The committee learns about, and provides input on programs for ELs at our schools. We focus on how a student is identified as an English Learner, what instructional supports they receive, and how they can “graduate” from the program. We would like to have every English Learner represented by a parent at these meetings, if possible. Your voice counts!

DELAC / District English Learner Advisory Committee

This is an important district-wide meeting for parents of ELs, that happens about 4 times per year. The DELAC committee advises the school board on programs and services for students. A majority of the members of this committee have to be parents or guardians of English Learners. We would like to have at least 5 parents of English Learners from each school for these meetings, and we would welcome many more.

School Board Meetings:

These are and they are mainly about district policies and practices. Parents may wish to attend if they are interested in district-level decisions.

Instruction & Learning

Math and Science Teacher Training

Our AVJrSrHS Math and Science departments will have a training on Monday, so students will have substitutes that one day in Math/Science. This is part of a series of teacher trainings focused on providing engaging and multifaceted tasks, and requiring the students to think critically and collaborate with one another. The teaching strategies are already making a positive impact on student learning! When we teach challenging concepts in ways that are fun and engaging, learning increases fast! Ask your child about their favorite recent lesson in math class. You may be surprised!

At AVES, Math consultants continue to work with our teaching staff on January 27th. On this day, the consultants will be doing “Learning Walks” during class time. This gives teachers the opportunity to observe each other as they implement new and engaging instructional strategies. The staff will discuss what they have observed at end of the day and will make plans for next steps. Math instruction is going strong at AVES!

Essential Standards

AVJrSrHS department teams will work together Jan. 26-30. This means all the teachers in a particular department (i.e. English, History, Science, Math) will get together on a particular day and decide what the most important concepts are for each class. They then make a plan to ensure that all students understand those concepts. This important practice increases our focus and helps us to provide intervention when students struggle and enrichment / additional challenge when needed. Our teachers are awesome and they are working hard!

AVUSD Facilities Improvements

We continue to renovate and improve our school facilities!

Track to Health and Fitness

The track is up and running, and available to the community! It has been fun to see students, parents, alumni, and other community members running on the track over the past couple of weeks. It is a beautiful facility! Please come on out and enjoy it.

Hangar (Storage) Building

You may have noticed that part of the roof and side of the Hangar was destroyed by the storm on December 24th. This is a very old building (built in the 1970s) that was previously used for airplanes and is currently used as a storage building. We have had the insurance company out and the building has been made safe while we determine whether it will be repaired or replaced.

AVES Kitchen

This is finally finished and we are just waiting on the installation of a new water heater before it can be up and running. The kitchen looks good!

New AVES Project

Now that AVJr/SrHS has its beautiful, new facilities, it’s time to focus on AVES! We have sent plans to DSA for a project that will replace old windows and cafeteria flooring and, if the budget works, create two new adult bathrooms, which are very much needed. This is an exciting project that should go out to bid by March!

AVES Garden

With our old fence disintegrating and weeds starting to grow in the old garden space, it is time to spruce it up! We look forward to replacing the fence surrounding it, shoring up the raised planter beds, and preparing the ground for some new plants! Stay tuned: we’ll be doing another Family Work Day in this area and we look forward to seeing you there!

We Care About ALL Our Families!

There is new legislation in California called AB 49 and SB 98, in response to strong concerns about the impacts of immigration enforcement on students, families, and school communities. If you would like more information, see the CDE Resources for Immigrant Families web page at https://www.cde.ca.gov/immigration-toolkit or talk to your school principal or Mrs. Larson Balliet, AVUSD superintendent.

If you would like to be more involved at school, please contact your school’s principal, Ms. Jenny Bailey at AVES or Mr. Heath McNerney at AV Jr/Sr High, or our district superintendent, Ms. Kristin Larson Balliet. We are deeply grateful for our AVUSD families.

Sincerely yours,

Kristin Larson Balliet, Superintendent,

AV Unified School District

JOHN "BUBBA" FELIZ JR.

Chairman John “Bubba” Feliz, Jr., of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians passed away on January 8, 2024. He was 45 years old. John is preceded in death by his loving mother Catherine Cortez, Paternal Grandparents Getrude & Necho Feliz and Maternal Grandparents Leo & Rose Dulay. He is survived by his loving Father John Feliz, Sr., sister Jennifer Feliz, nephews & nieces, Jacob De Los Santos (Renee Beck), Jasmine Mora, Alec Mora, Jasper Ford, Jada Ford, great-nephews, Daniel Munoz, Lucca De Los Santos, Julian Beck and the newest addition, a great niece. Along with many cousins and extended relatives.

John was born and raised in Redwood Valley, Ca. and lived on the Coyote Valley Reservation where he dedicated his life of service to the Tribe and his community. He was a caring & passionate leader starting his many years of tenure at the age of 12. He became the President of the Pacific Region for the United National Indian Tribal Youth in high school and went on to fill many rolls and capacities within his Tribe and surrounding community. In 2004 he was elected Tribal Chairman for the Coyote Valley Tribal Council at the age of 25, becoming one of the youngest Tribal Chairmans in the Nation. He served this role for two consecutive terms with honor and integrity. As the Tribe’s leader he played a vital role in stabilizing the Tribal Government during a transitional time. He secured the Tribal Rolls and amendments to the Tribal Constitution. He successfully renegotiated the State Gaming Compact to be favorable to the Tribe and the Tribe’s members. Along with many other honorable accolades too long to list. John was then elected to fill the role as the Tribal Chief in 2017 in which he served two consecutive terms. He served many years on the Executive Board for the Consolidated Tribal Health Project, Inc. as well as a delegate to many other organizations throughout the years on the National Congress of American Indians, National Indian Gaming Association, & the Native American Finance Officers Association.

CIRCLING THE DRAIN

State Auditor no fan of hiring freeze and resignation incentives for budget balancing…

by Mark Scaramella

Instead of aggressively pursuing over $30.5 million in delinquent taxes, Mendo has chosen to address its “structural deficit” by not filling random vacancies as they pop up, even going so far as to offering incentives to staffers who voluntary quit.

As we have often pointed out this defeatist approach to budget balancing will result in a significant loss of experienced senior staff, force less qualified people into positions they’re not qualified for, cause random gaps in important services, lower staff morale, create a climate that fewer and fewer people will want to work in, and ultimately leave the county worse off if its revenues ever recover.

In his recent report, the State Auditor agreed, noting that:

“Offering incentives to employees to separate from county employment and pausing non-essential hiring delays spending that will eventually occur if the county finds that it cannot operate effectively without filling those vacancies.”

Trouble is, Mendo management isn’t paying to attention to the effects of their hiring freeze and across the board cuts on departmental budgets. So the people blithely presiding over this random staff reduction process will never realize that Mendo “cannot operate effectively without filling those vacancies.”

Mendo is also postponing facilities repairs, equipment updates and replacements, and road work to save money.

The State Auditor disapproves of this too:

“Delayed maintenance on county assets or equipment will not necessarily result in long-term cost savings. A potential outcome is that the necessary maintenance will cost more if the county performs it behind schedule because of the worsened condition of the asset or equipment or increases to the price of repairs. To reset its base level of spending and truly affect the rate of growth in its expenditures, the county must consider ending some services or operations.”

Of course, the State Auditor didn’t bother to specify what services or operations to “end.”

Besides leaving tens of millions of delinquent taxes uncollected, Mendo is still doing nothing to encourage local economic development other than seeking more grants.

As others have noted, the County itself is a major obstacle to economic development because not only does it take way too long for permits to be processed, but an unknown number of proposals are not even being submitted for fear of delay and/or ultimate denial after thousands of dollars in planning is spent.

Among other recommendations to address Mendo’s persistent deficit, the State Auditor recommended that the Supervisors “create a schedule outlining the steps it will take to address its stagnant tax revenue and increasing expenditures.”

In their response the Supervisors said they “ agree with the recommendation to create a schedule outlining the steps it will take to address the stagnant revenue and increasing expenditures. The Board of Supervisors will be holding a public workshop in the middle of January which will discuss various topics, including this audit and recommendations.”

As is clear from their passive “let’s encourage people to quit and hope for the best” approach to budget balancing, Mendo is structurally incapable of creating any such schedule of specific budget balancing steps. (They’ll be happy to create a list of meetings and workshops, however.) In fact, we’d give at least 10-1 odds that this recommendation from the State Auditor will not even be mentioned as a possibility in the Board’s upcoming budget/Audit Report workshops.

“WHAT CAN WE DO IF WE CARE ABOUT OUR COAST? We do know from direct experience that a rational wave of scientific and economic evidence and a strong public backlash, formulated as intelligent comments about the Interior Department’s offshore drilling proposal, can make a real difference. We have seen this kind of citizen action save our own coast several times in the past, and in fact it just saved the entire Atlantic coast.

Interior has apparently been afraid to show up for another public appearance on the North Coast since their never-ending offshore drilling hearing debacle in Fort Bragg in 1988 attracted over a thousand citizens who signed up to testify continuously night and day for 23 hours, thereby causing the exhausted agency panel to abruptly cancel their proceedings and flee from the town. This same federal agency must now, under the law, actively solicit written public comments, which anyone can easily submit with two clicks at SaveMyCoast.org

Our deadline for providing comments to the Interior Department on its plans for offshore drilling here is Jan. 23.

Although the coast of California is not a commodity, it is in fact not only our home, it’s also our $51 billion GDP coastal-dependent annual economy that reliably provides more than a half-million good jobs.

There is nothing easier than saving our world-class coast if we believe that we can collectively address threats like that posed right now by the petroleum lobby. The California Coastal Commission’s late executive director, Peter Douglas, wisely summarized his own life’s work by phrasing the relevant message very clearly. We can today consider it our privilege to follow his encouraging guidance in reminding us that “The coast is never saved, it’s always being saved.”

What happens next to our coast is now up to every one of us.”

(From Press Democrat opinion post by Richard Charter, via Diane Clouse)

PG&E PLANS TO REMOVE CENTURY-OLD CALIFORNIA DAMS. BUT THERE'S A NEW OBSTACLE: TRUMP

by Kurtis Alexander

Cape Horn Dam in Mendocino County, as photographed in March 2024, is one of two dams in the Potter Valley Project that PG&E is seeking to remove. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle)

The Trump administration is following up on its pledge to try to stop the removal of two dams on Northern California’s Eel River, a move that gives farmers and rural residents opposed to the controversial demolition a welcome ally.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last month filed to intervene in the regulatory proceedings over PG&E’s Potter Valley Project. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is seeking federal approval to retire the hydroelectric enterprise, which comprises the dams in Lake and Mendocino counties, because of the project’s age and high operating costs. Many support the effort as a means of restoring the Eel River and helping struggling salmon runs.

Rollins, siding with critics, argues that the power project, which also contributes water supplies to the region, including Sonoma and Marin counties, is the “lifeblood” of local agriculture. She has cast the facility’s dismantling as a threat to American “freedoms” and accused California’s “radical leadership” of prioritizing fish over “hardworking families.” (The state has little say on the matter.)

Despite the high-profile intervention and forceful language, however, the Trump administration’s influence on the Potter Valley Project’s regulatory proceedings is likely to be limited. Many legal experts say the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the independent agency that oversees hydroelectric facilities, can’t require a private company to keep a project running, no matter who wants it to.

“FERC can add conditions, but FERC has never found that it has the authority to force continued operations,” said Karrigan Börk, a law professor and director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “These dams in particular are losing money for PG&E, so it would be very hard to force PG&E to keep operating them.”

Still, many are watching what the U.S. Department of Agriculture does, aware that the Trump administration has a history of unconventional tactics.

“California’s war on agriculture has gone unchecked to the detriment of us all,” Rollins wrote in an op-ed last month, published on the online news site, The Mendocino Voice. “Under the Trump administration, that war ends now.”

PG&E’s plan to surrender its operating license and decommission the Potter Valley Project has grown contentious, not because of the loss of power, but because of the loss of water.

The century-old hydroelectric project is unique in that it generates power by moving water from one river to another, in this case the Eel River, where the two dams collect water, to the East Fork Russian River. In doing so, the enterprise has significantly added to the supplies of communities and farms, mostly vineyards, in the Russian River basin. Without power production, PG&E has no reason to continue providing the supplemental water.

A new agency has formed, with support from PG&E, to keep at least some water moving between the rivers. (The start-up Eel-Russian Project Authority plans to employ a pump station instead of the existing dams and infrastructure to make the water transfers.) The agency’s formation and federal financial commitments, before the Trump administration, have helped many water users accept the loss of the Potter Valley Project. This includes Sonoma County Water Agency, which has long relied on Eel River supplies to accommodate its service area of 600,000 people.

“We don’t have a direct role in passing judgment on PG&E’s license surrender,” said David Manning, environmental resources manager at Sonoma Water. “But we’re doing all the work we need to to continue the diversion after FERC makes its decision.”

Still, many in the region remain opposed to the retirement of the Potter Valley Project, notably those in the grape-growing industry and other agricultural pursuits. Even with the formation of the new water agency, water transfers from the Eel River are likely to be limited and come at a higher cost.

“If you’re trying to run a farm business and all of a sudden water jumps three or four or five hundred dollars an acre-foot, you just can’t pay,” said Adam Gaska, executive director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau. “This is going to disproportionately negatively affect farmers.”

Many residents of Lake County have also been critical, noting that the removal of Scott Dam, the larger of the two dams on the Eel River, will drain a popular reservoir, Lake Pillsbury, which is used for boating and swimming as well as water supplies for firefighting.

Lake Pillsbury in Lake County, as photographed in July 2025, would be drained under PG&E’s plan to remove Scott Dam, as part of the retirement of the Potter Valley Project. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle)

Given the breadth of the Potter Valley Project, legal experts say federal regulators will likely impose numerous conditions on PG&E as it moves forward with the decommissioning. Opponents of the effort have gone as far as suggesting that the utility should have to pay for the new water transfer facility and even preserve Scott Dam — with a new operator put in charge.

The conditions, however, will likely go only so far, experts say.

For one, FERC is generally not responsible for assessing and mitigating all of the harms caused by the loss of a hydroelectric project, beyond the impacts of the physical deconstruction of the facility. Secondly, FERC gives up its jurisdiction once a project is retired, so it tends to limit its requirements to short-term measures.

In the case of the recent dam removal on the Klamath River, the FERC-approved decommissioning plan included the installation of storage tanks, to provide water for firefighting when the reservoirs were drained. Regulators, though, didn’t try to require the dam owner to keep the dams to sustain the storage.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture declined an interview on its authority to stop or limit the shuttering of the Potter Valley Project. But in a statement to the Chronicle, a spokesperson said, “FERC absolutely has the authority to impose conditions to a license surrender and decommissioning; there would be severe and serious consequences to the public if that weren’t the case. There are a number of legal and regulatory failures that deserve to be addressed and USDA is committed to ensuring that PG&E follows the law and accounts for any negative impact that will occur to the public and the federal government.”

In a Dec. 19 letter to FERC, the department asked regulators to reject PG&E’s application for license surrender, citing the “irreversible” impact of lost water to farms. It also noted problems for firefighting, recreation and the natural landscapes of the Mendocino National Forest, where Scott Dam is located. The department manages this national forest.

The letter calls for PG&E to better evaluate the impacts of the project’s closure and offer remedies, should FERC approve the facility’s dissolution.

While it’s not uncommon for a federal agency like the Agriculture Department to comment on a FERC matter, experts on the process say the politically charged opposition has been unusual.

Rollins first revealed publicly her intention to get involved in the issue on social media in September, posting on X that she wanted “to protect our farmers against a weaponized and often radical government.” She blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom for advancing the effort. Although Newsom supports dam removal, he doesn’t have direct say over it.

Lake County Supervisor Bruno Sabatier, who recently met with representatives of the Agriculture Department to discuss his opposition, is pleased to see federal officials intervene.

He says he doesn’t expect that the Trump administration will keep the hydroelectric operation running, but he thinks it can get FERC to require PG&E to do more to head off anticipated problems. Sabatier hopes Scott Dam will be spared.

“You can’t just leave these communities high and dry and say, ‘Good luck,’” he said. “Instead of us all saying let’s move forward no matter what, maybe we can find a way to move forward that benefits everyone, including the environment.”

PG&E officials said in a statement that they expect intervenors in the FERC review process, though they declined to address the Agriculture Department’s objections.

The utility has maintained that it’s done everything legally required to dissolve the project. Even before proceeding with the decommissioning effort, PG&E looked for someone else to take over the operation. It didn’t find any takers.

The company shares the legal opinion that FERC can establish guardrails for the removal of its hydroelectric facility but can’t stop the project from coming down. PG&E has viewed the retirement of the Potter Valley Project as inevitable and said continuing to run the venture would mean passing along the costs to customers through higher rates.

FERC is currently reviewing PG&E’s license surrender application and decommissioning plan. PG&E hopes to get the OK to move forward by 2028. The utility has estimated that the cost of taking down the dams and power facilities, which will be paid by PG&E and its ratepayers, is $530 million.

The removal of the dams has won broad support from tribes, environmental groups and fishing advocates. The undammed 200-mile Eel River would become the longest free-flowing river in California and open new habitat for threatened Chinook salmon and steelhead trout, which have long been blocked from the river’s upper reaches.

The Tribal Council of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, a federation of Native American communities in the region, views the project’s deconstruction as a way to help heal the river and ancestral lands.

While legal precedent suggests that FERC will allow the dismantling of the Potter Valley Project, Börk, at UC Davis, says he’s not taking anything for granted given the current administration.

Börk notes that the U.S. Department of Energy has recently invoked emergency authorities under the Federal Power Act to keep open coal plants that were slated for closure. He says it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that similar strategies are used to maintain the Potter Valley Project.

“The Trump Administration doesn’t seem to play by any rulebook, so it’s hard to guess what they might try to force these dams to stay in place… emergency orders, executive orders,” he said. “It’s impossible to predict.”

(sfchronicle.com)

NONPROFITS CELEBRATE PROFITABLE 2025

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Hello, good evening and welcome everyone to our annual celebration of ourselves and our self worth and our goals and achievements.

But first of all, to start things off, let’s stand, all of you! — all of us! — and congratulate ourselves on an unbelievable 2025 as we look forward to more grants and programs and administrative needs in 2026 Applause, please! It’s for you! And you and you and you! We did it!

Now before anything further let me take a moment for a proper Land Acknowledgment that we might pay respect to those who came before us to this great land in the great state of California and more pointedly to the spiritual home we call Mendocino County

Let us pause to give thanks and praise and salute the Italians who once strode these lands. They are not forgotten!

Italians are the ancestors that traveled the long long journey, the troubling dangerous distances across a very lot of numerous miles, some of them on water or even ice. Maybe jungles.

Anyhoo, they arrived bearing sticks and vines to this new land so they might produce spiritual intoxicants known as Gewurtztraminer, muscatel, spaghetti, bubbly champagne and fashionable wardrobe items. Gucci? Pinot Noir, chardonnay. Whatever. Fiats and chopsticks

They came before us but we hold their memory dear, and their deeds will live forever or until the last gallon jug of dago red holds out!!

A joke. That was, like, a joke.

And right now let’s give a big shout-out to the special group of hard working workers who implemented innovative strategies to dramatically reduce our client base and workload without any negative impact to our already meager budget.

The plan was brilliant. Simply by diverting all our clients to various other local agencies in Willits and Point Arena that provide the same overlapping and redundant services, we were able to free up much needed funding for staff bonuses and conferences in Hawaii and Monterey, plus tonight’s free dinner and drinks!

Let’s offer a toast to ourselves and to another amazing, awesome year of passion, community involvement, transparency, diversity and novel bookkeeping techniques that brought us our best year yet.

As we step boldly into 2026 let us take what we’ve learned and gained and shared with others to make tomorrow a better today.

Always remember, If We Can Dream It We Can Believe It and We Can Achieve It!

Live, Laugh, Love!

Put Cops On The Feet Beat

A great place for Ukiah city cops would be on Ukiah city streets.

Having police officers occasionally roaming around downtown sidewalks and neighborhoods puts some of our best ambassadors among local citizens.

Most cops are easy to talk to, happy to give their time and help, and sure bets to have friendly words and attitudes toward youngsters. Ex-Sheriff Jim Tuso was forever crouching down to talk with little kids at county fairs and the like, giving out gold-and-black MCSO “badges” that peeled off a sticky backing, then remained on a proud kid’s shirt for days at a time.

I can’t remember how long it was from the time Sheriff Tuso pasted a badge on six year old Lucas’s chest to the time I was finally able to put that shirt through the laundry. He knew the washing machine would destroy his badge, and he put up a fight to keep it lookin’ good until he graduated from high school.

Ukiah could use more officers pulling dog treats out of pockets for local canines, and pausing to ask people what they think are problems both in law enforcement and in city affairs. Most people have a few things on their mind and most cops are good listeners.

A knot of teens on School Street? “How you guys doin’?” asks the officer. “Things alright at school? Home? What book are you reading?”

And downtown Ukiah isn’t the only place they might wander. Out near WalMart and Costco are plenty of locals strolling here and there, and Pear Tree Plaza has more. Rotate a few pairs of officers in a handful of locations and I predict nothing but positive outcomes.

(We hope crowds have been gathering downtown on Fridays at 5 p.m. to celebrate our quick, clean invasion of Venezuela, and that there were numerous signs held aloft reading “NO BLOOD! ONLY OIL” as elderly unemployed protesters cheered. TWK and Tom Hine offer jolly waves from far-off North Carolina.)

FROM EBAY, A PHOTOGRAPH OF SEMI-LOCAL INTEREST (via Marshall Newman)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, January 11, 2026

LUKE ANDREWS, 45, Willits. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

JEFFREY ALLEN-VERMILLION, 35, Ukiah. Petty theft with two or more priors, failure to appear.

JAMES BRAY JR., 65, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, elder abuse resulting in great bodily harm or death, contempt of court, probation revocation.

COLE CARBAUGH, 20, Laytonville. DUI.

ERIC CROUCH, 48, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JENNIFER ENRIGHT, 50, Napa/Ukiah. Domestic battery, disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

SAMANTHA KELLEY, 31, Nice/Ukiah. DUI.

JORGE MARTINEZ, 30, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ADAM MOORE, 53, Willits. DUI.

NATHAN MORALES-SALDANA, 35, Covelo. Trespassing, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

CARLOS ORTIZ-GARCIA, 22, Ukiah. Vandalism.

MOISES PABLO-PEREZ, 31, Laytonville. DUI.

DEVON PARKER, 19, Ukiah. Grand theft, contempt of court.

LEE RUPERT, 50, Fort Bragg. Shoplifting, trespassing, failure to appear.

GERALD SIMPSON, 56, Willits. Public intoxication, disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

IT’S ONE OF THE WEALTHIEST PARTS OF THE BAY AREA — BUT CAN MARIN FIX ITS $17 BILLION PROBLEM?

by Tara Duggan

A car drives through floodwaters caused by the king tide along Harbor Drive in Sausalito on Jan. 2. (Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle)

Marin County got an alarming glimpse of its future last week when it experienced some of the worst flooding in decades — and a reminder of the vast climate challenges that await.

With its 70 miles of coastline and 40 miles of bay shore, Marin is one of the counties most vulnerable to sea level rise in the Bay Area. The low-lying areas that flooded over New Year’s weekend — during storms that coincided with king tides — will be inundated more frequently in the future, until some end up permanently underwater.

It will cost an estimated $17 billion to protect Marin County from the 2 feet of sea level rise expected toward the end of the century, according to a recent study, and federal grants for climate change projects have disappeared. The county has to balance both long-term and immediate needs that are increasingly overlapping, such as $25 million to fix an aging levee in San Rafael that was damaged during the recent flooding.

“Sea level rise has crossed from future scenario into a balance sheet risk,” said Janelle Kellman, former mayor of Sausalito, founder of the nonprofit Center for Sea Rise Solutions and candidate for lieutenant governor. “What’s happening now is flooding. What’s coming later is permanent transformation.”

Sea level rise is already having an impact, adding up around 3 inches in the past 30 years. It throws off tide predictions, which are based on earlier sea levels, and exacerbates flooding.

Heath Ceramics, a factory and store on a low-lying part of Sausalito’s waterfront that floods often, experienced its worst inundation on Jan. 3 since 2003, said co-owner Robin Petravic. After a flood that same year, the company built a flood wall and coated the building with waterproof Elastomeric paint.

The adaptations worked until the recent king tides, when waters surpassed the 2003 mark and breached the wall for the first time, damaging tens of thousands of dollars worth of raw materials and other property, Petravic said in an email.

“I expect we’ll all be raising our walls after this one,” he said.

The county is making strides in its plans for coastal resilience, said Rylan Gervase, director of legislative and external affairs at the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the California agency that assists with such planning for communities around the San Francisco Bay, which the state requires individual jurisdictions to complete by 2034. (No Bay Area city has submitted a final plan.)

“Marin has a chance to be really innovative and look at some interesting solutions,” he said. “It is going to be expensive, and it’s not going to be easy.”

Despite Marin’s wealth, its most low-income communities are the most at risk, such as unincorporated Marin City and the densely populated Canal District in San Rafael, Gervase said. The latter is considered the community most impacted by sea level rise in the entire region.

Along with its long stretches of coastline, Marin’s steep terrain means that most of its development is concentrated in its flatter, lowest-lying areas, compared to other parts of the region with more gradual-sloping landscapes, according to Jack Hogan, coastal resilience leader at Arup, a global engineering and design consulting firm that helped develop sea level rise plans for Marin’s transportation sector, published in May. Those areas were often built atop fill on former wetlands that are sinking, increasing flood risk even more.

The county is also prone to compound flooding, meaning that water comes from multiple fronts at once — in the form of high tides, groundwater, rainfall that swells creeks and rivers, and sometimes storm surge and waves coming off the bay, he said.

“That all coincides in areas where we have our infrastructure, our schools, our houses, our businesses,” said Hogan, who grew up in Marin and lives in San Rafael.

Complicating matters is the fact that so many different entities occupy Marin’s bay shoreline, including CalTrans, water treatment districts, unincorporated areas for which the county is responsible and multiple cities, from Sausalito to Novato, said Talia Smith, interim deputy county executive.

There is no single solution, such as a massive sea wall, but the county is working on creating a governance structure, similar to the organization called OneShoreline in San Mateo County, that will help municipalities collaborate on projects.

One area of focus is transportation, since it impacts everyone — and many of the county’s most important highways and roads are prone to flooding. The Marin Transportation Authority identified the Highway 101 and 580 interchange at San Rafael, the Lucky Drive exit to Highway 101 at Larkspur — which flooded during the king tide — and Highway 37 and Highway 1 as some of its most vulnerable roadways in its coastal adaptation report published last year.

Solutions throughout the county range from what is called “gray” infrastructure — traditional levees and pump stations — to green, such as restored wetlands, said Hogan of Arup.

Hogan suggested that some projects could start small. Rather than spend tens of millions of dollars — and wait years for permit approval — to elevate a roadway 4 feet for end-of-century sea levels, officials could choose to elevate it 6 inches when doing a repaving project, and then elevate it again incrementally over the decades.

Smaller-scale projects may be the norm after the Trump administration killed funding for climate change-related infrastructure projects approved during the Biden administration. In Marin, it blocked funding applications for $13.5 million to prevent flooding during high tides at the Highway 101 exit into Marin City and $18 million to strengthen the Santa Rafael levee that was recently damaged, the Marin Independent Journal reported. Congressman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, vowed to “claw and scratch and fight for that funding” during a tour of flooded areas in Marin last week.

“We know that it’s been a scorched-earth campaign of cancellation and retraction for infrastructure funding by this administration,” he said.

One alternative is state funding such as from Prop. 4, a climate bond voters passed in 2024, with $1.2 billion out of the $10 billion bond is set aside for coastal resilience projects in the San Francisco Bay — though Marin County’s slice of that would be a fraction of the $17 billion it needs. (The total cost of preparing the Bay Area for sea level rise is estimated at $110 billion, according to the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.) California’s Ocean Protection Council and Coastal Conservancy also offer related grants.

Under Prop. 4, 40% of funding must provide a meaningful benefit to disadvantaged communities. In Marin, that could include the Canal District, where residents are predominantly low-income and speak English as a second language.

Kristina Hill, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning, said that the Bay Area should invest first in places like the Canal District where people can barely afford to live and yet are critical for the workforce in the region.

“What happens to them is going to be a bellwether for other areas that are at risk,” she said.

The county has already suggested that individual communities like Stinson Beach increase parcel taxes to raise money for climate measures. San Rafael may need to do the same to fix its failing levee, though voters may be reluctant to do so, said Smith, the interim deputy county executive.

“It’s hard to sell flood infrastructure on a sunny summer day,” Smith said. However, she said, events like recent flooding “can reinforce the need to have more resilient infrastructure to protect people’s homes.”

(sfchronicle.com)

ROOT FOR THE LAUNDRY!

In 49ers’ win, familiar faces and new Niners pluck Eagles

by Scott Ostler

The mighty San Francisco Laundry marches on.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld memorably said that because sports teams have so much player turnover, a team’s fans are really just rooting for the uniform, for the laundry.

The San Francisco 49ers are taking that concept to the extreme. In the face of a heartbreaking laundry list of injuries that should have wiped out their season, the 49ers, whoever they are, march on.

The 49ers came from behind Sunday to beat the Philadelphia Eagles, the defending Super Bowl Champs, 23-19, on a cold and gusty day in Philly.

The 49ers scored the winning touchdown on a 4-yard pass from beleaguered quarterback Brock Purdy to beat-up Christian McCaffrey. Then they held on to stop the Eagles on their final drive.

The Eagles’ last gasp, a desperation pass by quarterback Jalen Hurts on 4th-and-11 at the 49ers’ 21-yard line, was broken up by laundry. Middle linebacker Eric Kendricks, signed to the 49ers’ practice squad in November, is the fourth guy to man that crucial spot for the 49ers this season, after superstar Fred Warner and then his two successors were lost to injury.

And where the 49ers are, against all logic and long odds, is marching bravely into the second round of the playoffs, next weekend against the Seahawks in Seattle. Seems like a new “Mission: Improbable” for the 49ers, who were beaten soundly by those Seahawks in the regular-season finale, but reality has been reduced to a minor role by these 49ers.

The football gods left just enough healthy 49ers to get the job done on Sunday. Even after losing tight end George Kittle to an Achilles injury in the first half, a potentially fatal blow, the 49ers persisted. Their leading receiver on the day was Demarcus Robinson, six catches for 111 yards. More laundry. Robinson was a factor only because Ricky Pearsall was out with an injury and Brandon Aiyuk was lost long ago.

Realistically, the 49ers’ next challenge seems daunting. The Seahawks beat the 49ers mercilessly and decisively just over a week ago, while the 49ers’ injury woes continue to mount.

But why inject reality into a really fun story?

In reality, when you keep losing star players, the people who fill their spots just can’t be expected to collectively maintain an elite level of team performance. But right now, there’s magic in that laundry, whoever wears it.

The Eagles should have been following this story. Instead, they looked at the cold facts and numbers, and rested their starters in the final game of the regular season. In essence, they tanked their chance for a higher seed, perhaps reasoning that they would rather face the depleted 49ers than the dangerous Packers.

It seemed like a smart move, considering that the 49ers crashed so badly in that last game against the Seahawks. The 49ers’ defense, inexperienced to start with and now even more injury-ravaged, with three total strangers starting at linebacker, was clearly vulnerable.

The Eagles’ gamble looked solid in the first half, when they shut down the 49ers’ running attack, limiting McCaffrey to 13 yards on eight carries. And then the 49ers lost Kittle, who landed awkwardly on his only catch, and was carted off the field. The 49ers got an early start on next season’s injury woes, since that injury could cost Kittle all of 2026.

The 49ers managed to stay close, trailing 13-10 at the half, but their hopes soon grew dimmer. On the 49ers’ first possession of the second half, Purdy didn’t see Jauan Jennings wide open over the middle, instead throwing to the left side, into coverage, for an interception.

That one didn’t cost the 49ers, because their defense held, then they took the lead on a brilliant Kyle Shanahan play, a trick pass from Jennings to McCaffrey, that gave the 49ers a 17-16 lead.

But Purdy’s second interception, early in the fourth quarter, did cost the Niners; it led to an Eagles field goal and a 19-17 Philly lead.

Down to one more shot, the 49ers marched 66 yards and won it on Purdy’s 4-yard touchdown pass to McCaffrey with 2:54 remaining. And then the 49ers’ defense held.

The Eagles did what they wanted to do, which was dominate the clock, as Seattle did the week before, forcing the 49ers’ defense to beat them. The Eagles had the ball 35:39, to the 49ers’ 24:21. Like the injuries, somehow the 49ers overcame the disadvantage.

After a win like this, the 49ers are taking on a team-of-destiny feel. They still have some very key guys, like Purdy and McCaffrey, but they’ve lost so many playmakers on both sides of the ball, and now Kittle.

The 49ers are easily the most unbalanced team in the league, with a strong offense and a wobbly and patchwork defense. All of the great 49ers teams of the past have been superbly balanced, with future Hall of Famers lining up on defense.

This defense is like the old soul group, Question Mark and the Mysterians.

The 49ers would seem to be facing huge odds going to Seattle. But so far in these playoffs, the laundry is undefeated.

San Francisco 49ers’ Alfred Collins tackles Philadelphia Eagles’ Saquon Barkley in 1st quarter during NFL Wild Card Round game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, January 11, 2026. (Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle)

49ERS GAME GRADES: Defense’s big effort paves the way to a playoff win

by Sporting Green Staff

The San Francisco 49ers overcame a cross-country trip, a hostile environment and another devastating injury to beat the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles 23-19 on Sunday.

OFFENSE: B+

It took some time for the offense to get going — 61 yards on its second play, then 26 on its next 10 — but the 49ers overcame the potential gut-punch loss of TE George Kittle to an Achilles injury to do just enough to win. Brock Purdy (18-for-31, 262 yards, 2 TDs, 2 INTs and a fumble) was far from perfect, but did a great job spreading the ball around. The Niners had four players with at least 45 receiving yards, including Demarcus Robinson who pulled in six of his seven targets for a season-high 111 yards. Christian McCaffrey was stymied most of the day when running (48 yards on 15 carries), but caught six passes for 66 yards and a pair of TDs — including one on a throw by receiver Jauan Jennings.

DEFENSE: A

Plain and simple: the defense won this game for the 49ers. Eagles running back Saquon Barkley collected 106 yards, but needed 26 carries to do so. Philly QB Jalen Hurts completed 20 of 35 passes, but for a paltry 168 yards. Take a bow linebacker Eric Kendricks. Signed in November, Kendricks — who had a combined six tackles in the 49ers’ final three regular-season games — earned his check with a 10-tackle day (two for losses) and a game-sealing pass breakup on Hurts’ 4th-and-11 pass intended for Dallas Goedert. With the offense wallowing early, the defense kept San Francisco in the game by forcing punts on three consecutive drives covering the end of the second quarter and beginning of the third.

SPECIAL TEAMS: B-

The video from this one won’t make the career highlights recap for punter Thomas Morstead, who averaged a measly 34.3 yards on three boots — included a wind-jostled 25-yarder that bounced backward. Wind also affected kicker Eddy Piñeiro, who — like Philly’s Jake Elliott — missed an extra point (after the go-ahead TD with 2:54 to play). But Piñeiro made two other extra points and a 36-yard field goal. The return game was all but absent (6-yard average on two punts, 21.2 on five kickoffs).

COACHING: A

The call of the year from Kyle Shanahan came on the first play of the fourth quarter when he reprised his trickery from the Super Bowl two years ago and had Jennings toss a TD pass to McCaffrey. More broadly, but equally surprising — at least to the Eagles, apparently — was his use of Robinson, whose receiving output doubled anything he had done all season. And then there’s Robert Saleh. Had the 49ers lost Sunday, it might have been the second swan song in Santa Clara for Saleh whose who-are-they unit pushed to four the number of games in which it has allowed 21 or fewer points.

OVERALL: A

A loss to the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles would not have been a surprise, and might have been expected considering the injury-ravaged roster that took the field Sunday. Instead, the 49ers head to Seattle next Saturday to face the NFC top-seeded Seahawks. The difficulty factor will increase tremendously, but the fact remains that this team is — incredibly — just two wins away from playing in the Super Bowl on their home field.

(sfchronicle.com)

San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle is carted off the field after an injury during the first half of an NFL wild-card playoff football game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Philadelphia. (Derik Hamilton/AP)

49ERS FANS GO TO WAR WITH EAGLES BAR IN PHILADELPHIA

by Grant Marek

On Wednesday, Philadelphia sports bar Ladder 15 posted a screenshot on Instagram of a snarky email reply to a 49ers fan group looking to bring 200 road-tripping fans ahead of the Wild Card playoff matchup between the 49ers and Eagles on Sunday.

“After very little consideration, we cannot in good conscience host anything that has to do with the 49ers,” the email read. “We're Birds fans til the end. We Bleed Green. We Back our team even when it comes at a cost. Only reason I wish you luck, is because the 49ers are going to need it. Enjoy your time in City of Brotherly Love.”

The 17-year-old Philly bar’s owners thought their 5,000 Instagram followers would enjoy the light ribbing, not realizing they had just kicked off an internet-wide fan firestorm. The post quickly went viral, amplified by Eagles fans and blasted by 49ers fans. By Friday, the email was being discussed on the most popular sports podcast in America, "Pardon My Take."

“We got a voicemail to the bar. This guy calls and he says, ‘Hey, I want to order a cheesesteak, and after you get it, shove it up your ass,’” Ladder 15 manager Steve Dowling told SFGATE. “That guy called back later and left another message. ‘Hey, I want to order two more cheesesteaks, and I want you to take them to the steps by the Rocky statue, walk up the steps and shove ‘em up Rocky’s ass.’”

Review bombing of the bar by 49ers fans got so bad Yelp was forced to lock down their page. “We’ve temporarily disabled the posting of content to this page as we work to investigate whether the content you see here reflects actual consumer experiences rather than recent events,” an unusual activity alert read on Ladder 15’s Yelp page.

“I get the Google reviews directly to my email, so Wednesday night I’m sitting at home, and at like 10:30 at night, I hear bink, bink, bink, and it’s all of these 1-star reviews. 'This place is s—t,' stuff like that,” Dowling said. “One girl said she got dragged out of the bar by her hair into the street. I just went through and started clicking 'report review,' 'report review,' 'report review.' It took me 45 minutes to an hour to get through all of them. It was like 120 reviews, and I had to report them all.”

Dowling said the bar estimated it was turning down around $5,000, but thought the reputational hit for hosting 200 Niners fans likely would have been worse.

“We’re a block off Broad Street,” Dowling explained. “When a celebration happens, like in 2025, 2018, everybody is at our bar because of the proximity to Broad. We are an Eagles bar — Cooper DeJean was in here a month ago. We’ve got a good relationship with Jordan Mailata. We’ve had a good connection with Eagles players throughout our history. It was a no-brainer decision. We had a line down road on Friday; if we would’ve had 150 49ers fans walking in there, we would’ve gotten absolutely destroyed. It was a smarter business decision.”

Dowling said he’s not mad at the visceral reaction from 49ers fans.

“But do I think it was a s—tty move? Yeah. We’re a bar run by four guys since 2009. We’re not a big money-backed bar. We work hard together, we all have families, all of our employees are like family — I just didn’t like it because of my staff. Kind of hitting our livelihood.”

He described Philadelphians as “s—t talkers but also s—t takers,” and had some praise for 49ers fans generally, especially the one who left the cheesesteaks voicemail, which they recorded for posterity.

“I want to buy him a beer and a cheesesteak,” he said. “That’s the one thing I appreciated about 49ers fans, how he went at us. I was happy he was out there showing his allegiance. I want to meet this guy.”

The Eagles host the 49ers at Lincoln Financial Field in the Wild Card round at 1:30 p.m. Sunday on Fox. If the Niners win, they travel to play the Seahawks in the Divisional Round in Seattle next weekend.

(sfgate.com)

Bob Weir walks the field before the NFL Super Bowl 58 football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday, Feb. 11, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

GOODBYE BOB WEIR

Editor,

"In the land of the dark, the ship of the sun is driven by the grateful dead."

… The quote was on the first album, although Jerry Garcia had it obscured because he thought it was pretentious. Much later, I have seen Phil Lesh talking about rediscovering the quote.

This oft talked about quote does not exist in any translations I have ever seen it in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, nor the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as some have claimed. But the quote resurfaces during the Grateful Dead's 1978 trip to the Great Pyramids in Giza, Egypt.

… Tonight, I remember the quote yet again, as Bob meets up with those in the Grateful Dead who went before him: Jerry, Phil, Pigpen, Brent, Keith and Donna Jean.

Thank you, Bob Weir, for everything.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

MARILYN DAVIN:

Marketing News Flash! Sales of women's cosmetics, especially of the more unsubtle and garish kind, skyrocketed following DHS Secretary Kristi Gnome’s much anticipated CNN interview about the Minneapolis murders. Due to the cloying weight of Gnome’s mascara she was unable to bat her eyes, but otherwise looked like her usual self: a resplendent icon to slutty, “your place or mine” chic. (Sorry, Cory Lewandowski, you’re evidently not the only stud in her stable, where she shoots her horses in the head for fun when the spirit moves her. Here’s to Christian family values! Sales of pancake make-up, which have languished for decades, also roared into the black; Gnome’s new line, guaranteed to conceal all facial features, comes with a trowel. Crying discrimination, manufacturers of over-sized cowboy hats were bitter that Gnome didn’t wear her usual topper. One cowboy-hat store owner cried foul at the slight; fearful that an ICE storm trooper would ram his house with a tank, where he lives with his tow-headed American-citizen wife and children, he only spoke to us on background, in a heavily synthesized voice. Long live Gnome and all gnomes-in-waiting for their key support of this critical market segment!

WHO WILL STOP TRUMP?

Editor,

This year is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I wonder what its main writer, Thomas Jefferson, would have thought of President Donald Trump’s recent invasion of Venezuela to seize its leader (however corrupt he is) without congressional approval.

As it happens, we may have an idea from a letter dated May 17, 1818, that Jefferson wrote to John Adams about the independence movement in South America: “Surely it is our duty to wish them (the South American states) independence and self-government, because they wish it themselves, and they have the right, and we none, to choose for themselves.”

Jefferson’s words resonate in the 21st century. But whether there are enough members of Congress today who believe in Jefferson’s words on independence and self-government to try to stop an imperialistic president from invading other countries with impunity and without authorization is, remarkably, an open question.

Bob Ryan

San Francisco

*The Twist* (1964) by Thomas Hart Benton

CAN ICE ARREST YOU?

What the law says about agents’ actions and protester rights

by Bob Egelko

After a federal immigration officer fatally shot a Minneapolis woman who appeared to be trying to drive past the officer in her car, questions have arisen about the rights of people who are being increasingly confronted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on city streets.

Renee Nicole Good, 37, was shot blocks from her home Wednesday when ICE officers told to get out of her car. She refused and was starting to drive away when an officer near the front of her vehicle fired gunshots into it at point-blank range.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Good “attacked” the officer and was engaged in “domestic terrorism” but provided no evidence. President Donald Trump said Good “viciously ran over the ICE officer,” a claim contradicted by video footage.

Since the Supreme Court’s Dec. 23 ruling that barred Trump from sending National Guard troops to Chicago, the president has halted his deployments of federal forces to Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and other cities. But he says they’ll be back, which raises questions about the rights and obligations of everyday people who encounter federal officers.

Here is a look at the laws guiding how immigration agents are allowed to interact with the public, and those they suspect of immigration law violations.

Can You Be Arrested For Protesting ICE?

Not for peaceful protests that do not interfere with immigration enforcement. Protesters can be arrested for violence against government officers, destruction of property or acts of obstruction, such as blocking the path of an officer’s vehicle.

While law enforcement officers are entitled to use force when necessary, they are not immune from prosecution for unjustified acts of force. In September, before Trump backed off from his previously announced “surge” of federal forces in San Francisco, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she was prepared to bring criminal charges under state law against any ICE agent or federal officer who used excessive force.

“If the agents cross the bounds of the law … then I have an obligation as the district attorney to ensure that they’re held accountable,” Jenkins told the Chronicle.

Can You Legally Film ICE Agents On The Street?

Yes, according to every federal appeals court that has considered the issue. The First Amendment is generally understood to protect people’s rights to film in public.

And a 2015 California law prohibits police from charging people with obstruction for filming officers’ activity that takes place in public.

“Some of the videos can be effective in showing abuses,” said Kevin Johnson, an immigration law professor at UC Davis.

But Noem, whose agency oversees ICE officers in the Trump administration, says filming the officers is both illegal and dangerous.

“Videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations” is “encouraging other people to come and to throw things, rocks, bottles,” Noem told reporters in July. A month earlier, ICE agents had grabbed and tackled a man who was using his phone to film an immigration raid in Los Angeles. He was released the next day and has sued the government.

Does ICE Have Authority Over U.S. Citizens?

“Once they know you are a citizen, they have no authority over you,” said Bill Hing, a University of San Francisco immigration law professor. But “if a citizen interferes with ICE work, then the citizen needs to follow orders to get out of the way” to avoid being charged with obstructing law enforcement.

In multiple cities where the federal government has conducted aggressive immigration enforcement operations, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., prosecutors have accused people of assaulting or hindering federal officers, only to see those cases crumble under scrutiny or be dismissed. Many of those cases also revealed that federal officers lied about the circumstances that led to protestors’ arrests.

Can Immigration Agents Stop And Question People Based On How They Look And Speak And Where They’re Seen Working?

That’s not completely clear, despite a Supreme Court ruling in September that allowed ICE agents in Los Angeles to arrest people they suspected of being undocumented immigrants because they looked Hispanic, were heard speaking Spanish or English with a Spanish accent, and were spotted working at low-paying jobs like car washes.

The only member of the court’s 6-3 majority to expressly endorse those standards was Justice Brett Kavanaugh, while the other five simply allowed the arrests to resume while a racial-profiling lawsuit was being heard in lower courts. And Kavanaugh, in last month’s ruling in the Chicago case, said immigration officers stationed away from the border can’t stop someone solely because of their “race or ethnicity” but must have grounds for “reasonable suspicion of illegal presence.”

Conduct that creates a “reasonable suspicion of illegal presence” might consist of presenting a false ID, running away when agents approach or associating with known smugglers of undocumented immigrants. Noncitizens in the United States have constitutional rights, however, and, according to most judicial rulings, cannot be arrested solely because of their appearance.

Still, said Pratheepan Gulasekaram, an immigration law professor at the University of Colorado, “millions of citizens share the characteristics of the stereotypical unlawfully present person that ICE agents have in their mind,” and many have been detained under the current policy.

What Can You Do If An Immigration And Customs Enforcement Agent Stops You On The Street Or Knocks On Your Door?

You can ask for identification, which an officer must show upon request. If none is provided, you can walk away. Otherwise, you still have the right to remain silent. And you can ask for an attorney, and refuse to speak until legal counsel is provided. If you answer the officer’s questions, anything you say could later be used against you in court.

The American Civil Liberties Union, in its “Know Your Rights” primer, advises people to stay calm. Don’t run, argue, resist or obstruct an officer, even if you believe your rights are being violated, and keep your hands where the officer can see them.

If You Are A Noncitizen, Can You Protect Yourself In Advance Of Being Stopped?

If you are 18 or older, you can carry your immigration papers with you at all times, and show them to an agent who asks to see them. If you are asked for your papers and don’t have them with you, you can tell the officer you want to remain silent or consult a lawyer before answering any questions.

You cannot be searched unless you consent, or unless the officer has a basis for concluding that a search will produce evidence of illegal presence or criminal activity.

What Can You Do If ICE Officers Come To Your Home?

You don’t have to let them in unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. Otherwise you can close the door and walk away.

And it must be a judicial warrant. ICE agents have been known to present papers that are labeled warrants but are actually administrative documents, such as an I-200 “Arrest of Alien” warrant or an I-205 “Warrant of Removal/Deportation,” which are produced by the agency and do not entitle the agent to enter your home.

Do ICE Officers Need A Warrant To Stop And Question You Outside Your Home?

Not if they have reasonable grounds to believe you are undocumented — for example, if you try to flee when the officer approaches you in a public place such as a street, park or store. But you can then ask the agent if you are free to leave, and, if not, can refuse to answer any questions without speaking to a lawyer.

Can Immigration Agents Conceal Their Identities With Masks And Face Coverings?

A new state law, Senate Bill 627 by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, which took effect Jan. 1, prohibits local and federal law enforcement officers in California, including ICE agents, from wearing masks on the job, with exceptions for undercover operations.

The Trump administration has sued to overturn the law, arguing that it violates federal authority over immigration enforcement. And Trump himself has publicly encouraged ICE officers to continue wearing masks to conceal their identities, regardless of state laws.

In the wake of Wednesday’s fatal shooting in Minnesota, Wiener has proposed new legislation, SB747, that would allow Californians to seek damages in state courts against federal officers who violate their constitutional rights. “If federal officers can shoot a woman in broad daylight and face no accountability, our rights are doing little to protect us” in federal courts, he said.

In the meantime, said USF’s Hing, “You should ask, ‘Show me your identification’” if approached by someone claiming to be an immigration agent. “However, the best thing is to remain silent and calm.”

If ICE Agents Come To Your Workplace Looking For You, Will They Be Allowed In?

Your employer could refuse to let them in without a warrant.

As Gulasekaram of the University of Colorado told the Chronicle, “Employers who want to protect their employees — regardless of immigration status — should be demanding their full spectrum of Fourth Amendment rights (against unreasonable searches and seizures) before cooperating with federal agents. They are under no obligation to cooperate or make ICE’s job easier.”

KANSAS CITY

Will:
I got to Kansas City on a Frid’y.
By Sattidy I l’arned a thing or two.
For up to then I didn’t have an idy
Of whut the modren world was comin’ to.
I counted twenty gas buggies goin’ by theirsel’s
Almost ev’ry time I tuck a walk.
’Nen I put my ear to a Bell telephone,
And a strange womern started in to talk!

Aunt Eller:
Whut next!

Boys:
Yeah, what?

Will:
Whut next?

Ev’rythin’s up to date in Kansas City.
They’ve gone about as fur as they c’n go!
They went and built a skyscraper seven stories high—
About as high as a buildin’ orta grow.

Ev’rythin’s like a dream in Kansas City.
It’s better than a magic-lantern show.
Y’ c’n turn the radiator on whenever you want some heat,
With ev’ry kind o’ comfort ev’ry house is all complete,
You c’n walk to privies in the rain an’ never wet yer feet—
They’ve gone about as fur as they c’n go!

All:
Yes, sir!
They’ve gone about as fur as they c’n go!

Will:
Ev’rythin’s up to date in Kansas City.
They’ve gone about as fur as they c’n go!
They got a big theayter they call a burleekew.
Fer fifty cents you c’n see a dandy show.

One of the gals was fat and pink and pretty,
As round above as she was round below.
I could swear that she was padded from her shoulder to her heel,
But later in the second act, when she began to peel,
She proved that ev’rythin’ she had was absolutely real—
She went about as fur as she could go!

All:
Yes,sir!
She went about as fur as she could go!

— lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II (1943)

CAN AMERICAN CHILDREN POINT TO AMERICA ON A MAP?

In “The Cradle of Citizenship,” the journalist James Traub finds that the biggest crisis in education is not what kids are learning, but whether they’re learning anything at all.

by Mark Little

It is hard to think of a period in American history when there were not angry controversies over public education. Still, by any measure conflicts in America today, over everything from history curriculums to school library collections, have become wild and destructive. At bottom, people still ask the right questions — about what kind of country we are and what kind of citizens we want our children to be. But the screamers at school board meetings and the national politicians riling up anxious parents are hardly setting a good example for our children.

In the midst of all the cannon fire, it is good to have a cleareyed, unflappable observer like James Traub, the author of “The Cradle of Citizenship,” an illuminating portrait of America’s current education landscape. A few years ago, Traub, a former contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, had the excellent idea of heading out to visit a number of publicly funded schools across the country to see how teachers and school districts are managing. The good news: Most are trying their best.

There were partisan battles in a number of states like Texas and Florida over topics touching on race, sexuality and religion. Such debates “establish a kind of ideological weather pattern for the schools,” Traub writes, but he saw few examples of overt partisanship from instructors in the classroom, apart from a Minnesota science teacher with a Black Lives Matter poster and a Gay Pride banner on her classroom walls. As in most organizations, the people on the ground were just trying to get the job done while dodging directives raining down from above.

But that’s where the good news ends. The real crisis of civics education, Traub discovered, is not that students are learning about 1619 rather than 1776, or the reverse. It is that so many are learning nothing at all. And here he lays responsibility at the feet of the American educational establishment, which has, in the words of one scholar, been turning the “meat of academic subjects into meatloaf.”

One of the peculiarities of the American educational system, compared with those in other democracies, is that most public school districts prefer hiring graduates with degrees in education rather than in specific academic subjects like history and physics. This leads to a greater focus on the methods of teaching, expressed in jargon phrases like “inquiry-based learning,” than on acquiring particular knowledge. Traub found a real allergy among public school educators to memorization of vocabulary, chronology and narrative — the elemental material out of which reality-based opinions and arguments can be formed.

In some places, fear of running afoul of politicized parents seems to have made some teachers gun shy about raising certain subjects. In Ron DeSantis’s Florida, Traub reports, parents at one Miami school received a notice that their first graders would need a signed permission slip to “participate and listen to a book written by an African American.”

In other states, too many teachers just seem to have abdicated their responsibilities out of despair, convinced that their students are no longer capable of reading whole books or remembering what they read. “History has been pushed to the side within social studies because there’s too much reading and writing,” as one frustrated teacher in Illinois puts it, on the verge of tears. “That creates too much stress, and it makes the kids feel bad about themselves.”

If students do want to engage, their dependence on social media simplifies their views. As Traub discovers, their credulousness toward online sources renders them dependent on present-day culture war influencers whose historical claims they are unprepared to challenge. Against this tide, teachers struggle to get their students to see how the world of the past could be both alien and instructive in a way that might stoke their skepticism.

Not all state-funded schools are alike. About a quarter million American children currently attend so-called “classical” schools, many of them charter schools that receive public money but are privately run. In these schools, memorization and recitation are prized, as are classic texts from the Western canon, like Plato’s “Republic” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

Many liberals see red when classical charter schools are mentioned, because of their perceived religious bias and a feeling that such schools drain resources from less advantaged ones. One senses that Traub shared their concerns. But as his book progresses, these schools begin to appear as inspiring examples of more rigorous and civic-minded education for many young Americans.

Outside Dallas, he visits the Founders Classical Academy of Mesquite, a classical charter school with a student body that is nearly all Hispanic. Teachers there make great demands on the students and their parents, which seems only to spur them on. In a ninth grade Western Civilization class, children who had started studying Latin in third grade were reading and intelligently discussing an essay by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. In a medieval history class at another classical charter school in Phoenix, one girl argued that St. Anselm must have been more popular in his time than Thomas Aquinas since Anselm believed, as Traub writes, “that faith preceded reason." She was in seventh grade.

“It was in classical schools,” Traub observes, “rather than mainstream ones, that I had most often heard the kind of reflective discussion that civic education seeks to foster.” Yes, a large part of the curriculum is devoted to old books. But “if you can speak thoughtfully about ‘The Nicomachean Ethics,’” he remarks, “you can do so about the fairness of our tax system.”

Traub does not offer the classical model as a panacea for American civic education. But he is certainly right that whatever model is used should impart “a solid foundation of linguistic skills, historical knowledge and habits of reflection” and offer “an alternative to the consumerist, vocational, instrumental culture of today’s public education.”

(nytimes.com)

9/29/1982 President Reagan sharing a laugh with William Wilson, Walter Annenberg, William French Smith, and Charles Wick during a private dinner in the Yellow Oval Room.

MY LITTLE TOWN

The lake is blue
The swimming is great
Why say, "I won't,"
When I like saying, "I ain't?"

I got a dog for a friend
I got BB gun dreams
Got an uncle in the war
And a fort in the trees

And I walk where I wanna
I'm a boy on foot
Think I'm big as an oak
I'm just-a sproutin' my roots
Uh-huh-huh

I know the folks
They all know me
Can't all be like-minded
But we can agree

Leave the boy be
Leave him with his bare feet
Catching lizards for fun
Ramping bikes on the street

But I'm headed home
Where nothing needs fixing
But the breakfast cooking
In my momma's kitchen, uh-huh

I got a young boy's mind and it's crystal clear
I can see the whole world just standing here
It's a one street town, I gotta get out
But it won't be long 'till imma singing about
Missing, missing, missing
Missing, missing, missing
My little town

What's wrong, momma?
Everything's right
We're out of Iraq
You can sleep at night

Oklahoma's a ways away
As far as tomorrow from today
And the rain comes down
And the grass grows green
Life is a science that you just can't teach
Uh-huh-huh

Oh, I got a young boy's mind and it's crystal clear
I can see the whole world just standing here
It's a one street town, I gotta get out
But it won't be long 'till I'll be singing about
Missing, missing, missing
Missing, missing, missing
My little town
My little town
My little town

— Jesse Welles (2024)

"MEN ARE CONSERVATIVES when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

Federal Prosecutors Open Investigation Into Fed Chair Powell

Anti-ICE Protests Spread Nationwide

‘Hundreds More’ Federal Agents to Be Deployed to Minneapolis, Noem Says

As Death Toll Surges in Iran, Leaders Take Tough Line Against Protesters

Malaysia and Indonesia Block Access to Grok Because of Sexually Explicit Content

Schools in Occupied Ukraine Aim to Turn Children Into Russian Nationalists

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

There are 330,000,000 Americans.

Even if there was any desire on the part of China, Russia, or any of the Islamic groups to conquer the US, that anybody would ever have the slightest hope of being successful is beyond ridiculous.

But, I’ve noticed that Right Wing groups have no problem inventing all kinds of cockamamie conspiracies to rile up their base.

Terrorists (and now apparently the PLA) is sneaking across the border!

Transgender for everyone!

They’re Eating The Dogs!

Norman Lear and Rob Reiner at an event for *All in the Family* (1971)

SING A SONG OF $1.5 TRILLION

by David Yearsley

There’s little to laugh at in 2026. Yet humor is more vital than ever, even if comic barbs and palliatives aren’t enough to stop the U.S. invasion of Greenland. Ironically, insane American adventures stock the arsenal of late-night talk show hosts. It is a very unequal arms race and, therefore all the more crucial to return fire.

In this combat zone, music can have a particularly potent charge. “Send the Marines” by Tom Lehrer, who died at the age of ninety-seven this past July, has remained true and necessary and funny ever since he penned and performed it in the 1960s, as the war in Vietnam was expanding.

This week’s tragic events in Minneapolis and the ongoing ICE invasion of American cities cast a shattering light on Lehrer’s line dispatching marines “To the shores of Tripoli / But not to Mississippoli.” The original reference pointed up the absence of federal troops in the American South to protect and further the cause of civil rights while American soldiers were dispatched overseas. Precisely because of the seemingly bizarre presence of boots now thumping the ground in the homeland and abroad, the message of Lehrer’s song rings out, bitter below its blithe sheen.

Shakespeare’s fools sang truth to power—to the characters in the drama and to the lords listening out in the theatre and acting in their plays of statecraft skullduggery.

The first self-styled philosopher of humor—as unlikely as it may seem, he was a German—writing in the middle of the eighteenth century, put it this way: “A harsh, disagreeable Truth, a Reproof, can in no better Manner be couched … than as a jest.” Even more unlikely, his treatise Gedancken von Schertzen was translated into English as The Merry Philosopher in 1764. That in itself counts as a joke: that the English sense of humor might be illuminated by one Georg Friedrich Meier, who prided himself on being coldly unfunny and therefore ideally equipped to analyze the chaotic essence of joking.

As Lehrer showed, music has a special status in comedy. It can clad the message, especially if an unwelcome one, in pleasing sonorities. But this cladding also provides a kind of parallel, sometimes subliminal text. Raw pitches without words—instrumental music—have difficulty projecting specific meaning, though we all have internalized a slew of meanings, for example, the notion (not always correct) that a minor key is supposed to be “sad.” Lehrer’s musical humor operates on multiple levels: in “Send the Marines,” the Gilbert-and-Sullivanesque feel of it—the jaunty melody and plain delivery of the words, along with his own music-hall piano backing—summons thoughts of other empires (e.g., the British) and/or good clean fun at home or in the community hall, or perhaps before the roaring tavern fire. The music seems automatic, easy, unthreatening, as if Lehrer’s unerring hands and unwavering, smiling voice are incapable of, and uninterested in, criticism or rocking any boat, whether landing craft or cruise ship. There is both lilt and wallop in this song that seems to assure, even as it unsettles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhZF66C1Dc

The counterpoint between the blithe parade-ground march and the upbeat patter and the reality of military intervention stokes the hilarity. The interplay between elements could rightly be called polyphonic, even if the compositional procedures are not. (Lehrer never seems to have set his text for “Fugue to Scientists” to music.)

And yet, even as he sings so forthrightly, turned outward on the bench to his audience, smilingly and full-throatedly delivering his devastating wit, the military interventions come as if every eight bars out in the song of the real world. The marines still get sent, and the song will go on.

One also hopes for grander musical entertainments that pillory the psychopathic president. Masks are not only necessary in dealing with tear gas attacks, but in comedy—mistaken identities, put-on voices, whether sung or spoken, emanating from behind the wrong face. These deceptions are increasingly digital.

The surreal, self-satirizing comedy now playing at the Kennedy Center has spurred a rogue wave of fakery. After the self-appointed chair of the institution, Donald Trump, illegally added “TRUMP” to the façade of the building itself, placed before that of John F. Kennedy, scheduled performers—from banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck to opera diva Renée Fleming—have cancelled by the dozen. The best and biggest that the Trump–Kennedy Center can serve up now is the world premiere of Melania, coming the night before the film’s “global” release on January 30 under the auspices of MGM and Amazon. The trailer has some horrifyingly hilarious snippets accompanied by campy, pseudo-Slavic dance tunes à la bad Brahms. This mélange de Melania explores new realms of exoticist idiocy.

A clandestine insurgent comedy is underway in the jungle of the internet. South Park producer Toby Morton recently told The New York Times that for the past five years, he has been “grabbing domains tied to politicians and authoritarian figures and turning them into blunt, often uncomfortable reflections of what they actually represent.” Morton now owns the domain name trumpkennedycenter.org, which greets visitors to the site with the slogan “A National Institution Devoted to Power and Loyalty.” Ringing in the New Year are “The Epstein Dancers.” The very idea of song and dance, as yet unheard but readily imagined, energizes the satire.

Across the Atlantic in Britain, where the Special Relationship recently bared its lurid underbelly during Trump’s state visit, another group of humor activists has occupied an adjacent virtual space, separated from the American one by a mere dash: trump-kennedycenter.org.

This website launches its satirical disinformation campaign with promises of staging a show worthy of White House criminal excess: “Saucy Jeff – a Rock ’n’ Roll Musical: a new adaptation of the St. Hubbins/Smalls-penned rock opera Saucy Jack, which brings this musical about friendship and sex crimes right up to date in the new location of Little Saint James, featuring Jeffrey Epstein as the protagonist. Adapted by beloved genius Marti di Bergi and produced by E. Jean Carroll.” The latter hasn’t seen a penny of the $88 million she’s owed by Trump for raping and defaming her. But Carroll would be ready to put that cash toward this spectacle, should she ever get it.

Devotees of that timeless comedy Spinal Tap, some of whose best bits come in its musical numbers, will remember the lead singer and bassist (played by Michael McKean and Harry Shearer) musing on the time they will no longer have to pursue their grandiose plans for an opera based on the life of Jack the Ripper called Saucy Jack after the band has self-destructed during a disastrous American tour. Spinal Tap was directed by Rob Reiner, who appears in the film as rockumentarian Marti de Bergi, a Tap fan whose greatest cinematic success up to that point was a Chuck Wagon dog food TV ad.

Spinal Tap was Reiner’s first film as director. Tragically, his last was the sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, which came out last year, not long before his murder less than a month ago. Trump, plunging to new depths of savagery even for him, blamed Reiner for his murder at the hands of his own son.

I loved the first Tap movie from the moment I saw it in the theatre more than four decades ago and have watched it dozens of times since, ever thankful for Rob Reiner’s contributions to, and crafting of, this collaborative masterpiece.

The trump-kennedycenter.org parody counts as a poignant elegy to Reiner’s spirit and art. I hope someone brings the idea to the stage. Now is the time for no-holds-barred asymmetric sonic humor: sung and played, shouted and whispered, acoustic or ear-splitting, cacophonous or contrapuntal.

We need to be liberated. Send in the Musical Marines!

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)

Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest in *This Is Spinal Tap* (1984)

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

— "Lord" George Gordon Byron (1814)

GEORGE GORDON BYRON was born on January 22, 1788, in London, England. He grew up in Aberdeen, Scotland, and inherited his family’s English title at the age of ten, becoming Baron Byron of Rochdale. Abandoned by his father at an early age and resentful of his mother, whom he blamed for his being born with a deformed foot, Byron isolated himself during his youth and was deeply unhappy. Though he was the heir to an idyllic estate, the property was run down and his family had no assets with which to care for it. As a teenager, Byron discovered that he was attracted to men as well as women, which made him all the more remote and secretive.

Byron studied at Aberdeen Grammar School and then Trinity College in Cambridge. During this time Byron collected and published his first volumes of poetry. The first, published anonymously and titled Fugitive Pieces, was printed in 1806 and contained a miscellany of poems, some of which were written when Byron was only fourteen. As a whole, the collection was considered obscene, in part because it ridiculed specific teachers by name, and in part because it contained frank, erotic verses. At the request of a friend, Byron recalled and burned all but four copies of the book, then immediately began compiling a revised version—though it was not published during his lifetime. The next year, however, Byron published his second collection, Hours of Idleness, which contained many of his early poems, as well as significant additions, including poems addressed to John Edelston, a younger boy whom Byron had befriended and deeply loved.

By Byron’s twentieth birthday, he faced overwhelming debt. Though his second collection received an initially favorable response, a disturbingly negative review was printed in January of 1808, followed by even more scathing criticism a few months later. His response was a satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which received mixed attention. Publicly humiliated and with nowhere else to turn, Byron set out on a tour of the Mediterranean, traveling with a friend to Portugal, Spain, Albania, Turkey, and finally Athens. Enjoying his new-found sexual freedom, Byron decided to stay in Greece after his friend returned to England, studying the language and working on a poem loosely based on his adventures. Inspired by the culture and climate around him, he later wrote to his sister, “If I am a poet … the air of Greece has made me one.”

Byron returned to England in the summer of 1811 having completed the opening cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a poem which tells the story of a world-weary young man looking for meaning in the world. When the first two cantos were published in March of 1812, the expensive first printing sold out in three days. Byron reportedly said, “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”

Byron’s fame, however, was among the aristocratic intellectual class, at a time when only cultivated people read and discussed literature. The significant rise in a middle-class reading public, and with it the dominance of the novel, was still a few years away. At twenty-four, Byron was invited to the homes of the most prestigious families and received hundreds of fan letters, many of them asking for the remaining cantos of his great poem—which eventually appeared in 1818.

An outspoken politician in the House of Lords, Byron used his popularity for public good, speaking in favor of workers’ rights and social reform. He also continued to publish romantic tales in verse. His personal life, however, remained rocky. He was married and divorced, his wife, Anne Isabella Milbanke, having accused him of everything from incest to sodomy. A number of love affairs also followed, including one with Claire Clairmont, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sister-in-law. By 1816, Byron was afraid for his life, warned that a crowd might lynch him if he were seen in public.

Forced to flee England, Byron settled in Italy and began writing his masterpiece, Don Juan, an epic-satire novel-in-verse loosely based on a legendary hero. He also spent much of his time engaged in the Greek fight for independence and planned to join a battle against a Turkish-held fortress when he fell ill, becoming increasingly sick with persistent colds and fevers.

When Byron died on April 19, 1824, at the age of thirty-six, Don Juan was yet to be finished, though seventeen cantos had been written. A memoir, which also hadn’t been published, was burned by Byron's friends who were either afraid of being implicated in scandal or protective of his reputation.

Today, Byron’s Don Juan is considered one of the greatest long poems in English written since John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The Byronic hero, characterized by passion, talent, and rebellion, pervades Byron’s work and greatly influenced the work of later Romantic poets.

(poets.org)

*The Music Lesson* (1944) by Thomas Hart Benton

14 Comments

Mazie Malone January 12, 2026

Hiya; 🤗🚓

I was disheartened to see Rest Padd as the operating agency for the PHF. I have personal experience via my loved one, with them and the reviews are less than thrilling. Not a good start a 1.3 million a year contract equates to bare minimum care, 16 patients, at about 225 a day. Did you know the Psychiatrist gets 275 dollars an hour? ……

Happy Monday

mm💕

- Bob Abeles January 12, 2026
  
  Hi Mazie, allow me to offer a correction. A psychiatrist gets $275 for one hour of therapy, that’s 40 minutes in the real world. Sorry, our time is up!
  
  Is that Our Esteemed Editor staring down the dog in today’s featured photo?
  
  - Bruce Anderson January 12, 2026
    
    Yup! Good catch, Bob.
    
    - Chuck Dunbar January 12, 2026
      
      Dang, I’d guessed he was the bongo player in “The Twist” painting.
      
    - Mazie Malone January 12, 2026
      
      Oh my, Dear editor, looks like you are having a sweet moment with the pooch…… I mean I thought you weren’t to keen on canines…😂🐶. This photo says otherwise, Thank God, I mean thank Dog!! 😂🤗🐶
      
      mm💕
      
  - Mazie Malone January 12, 2026
    
    🙃lol, Mr. Abeles,
    
    Correction granted…. Haha 😁
    
    mm💕
    
George Hollister January 12, 2026

“(FERC) the independent agency that oversees hydroelectric facilities, can’t require a private company to keep a project running, no matter who wants it to.”

PG&E is a de facto government agency whose policies and purse strings are controlled by its sole client, the California Public Utilities Commission. The CPUC could easily require PG&E to keep the Potter Valley Project in place, if the governors office wanted them to. The CPUC could also require PG&E to look at all the options available with the best interest of the rate payers in mind. Of course the CPUC cares little about rate payers, and is only interested in furthering the interests of California’s political establishment. PG&E’s job as a government agency is also to take the heat for decisions the CPUC makes. They do a very good job of that.

George Hollister January 12, 2026

For the last 30 years two groups have controlled the immigration debate: Those who want no immigrants, and those who want only illegal immigrants. Now the voices of those two groups is all we hear from. Any needed changes in immigration policy are off the table in Congress, and have been since GWB was president, and Democrats controlled the House, and had a 60 vote majority in the Senate. The debate between these two groups is hard to take seriously intellectually, but has to be taken seriously politically. Don’t blame ICE, they are doing their job to enforce a law that there is no political resolve to change.

- Harvey Reading January 12, 2026
  
  You must live in some sort of dream world.
  
  - George Hollister January 12, 2026
    
    The AFLCIO nixed immigration reform in 2007, when there was a bi partisan effort to pass it. Enough Democrats went to the union’s side, including Obama and Sanders, to kill the bill in the Senate. It tells me trade labor unions would rather have illegal immigrants than legal ones. They also were responsible for killing the Bracero program in the early 1960s that legally allowed Mexican nationals to enter the US to work in agriculture, then return home. Non union worker Republicans believe the same thing. Of course with Biden the US border was open to anyone who wanted in, for any reason and Federal welfare money went to illegal immigrants adding another dimension to the existing and resultant illegal immigrant economy. Local governments, the healthcare industry, and non profits getting Federal dollars benefited. That is where we are, and where we have been for 30 years. The late Charles Krauthammer said, “For immigration reform to be possible, the border must be secured first.” The border is now secure, and no one is discussing immigration reform, but people are going after ICE, while the country deals with a shortage of trade labor. No dream. For a country made up almost entirely of recent immigrants this is insanity.
    
    - Harvey Reading January 13, 2026
      
      Just more nonsense. This is a country of immigrants. Immigration should not even be a point of contention…and, it isn’t, except for paranoid MAGAts, who live in a constant state of insecurity, that paranoia fueled by those with a desire for a more authoritarian form of government, one where the wealthy rule everything and commoners bow down to them, like they did back in the “good ole daze”.
      
- Marshall Newman January 13, 2026
  
  Except for native peoples, we are ALL either immigrants or descendants of immigrants.
  
Jim Armstrong January 12, 2026

Brooke Rollins’ injection of herself, with the Orange Ones’s guidance of course, into the Potter Valley mess has a Faustian vibe for me.

- George Hollister January 12, 2026
  
  Jim, isn’t what we have now the result of a Faustian bargain? How many voted for the current political establishment that we have, and why did they do it? The Devil is always trying to suck people in, all the while taking what he wants from those who innocently, or foolishly take the bait. That is the perfect description for the current California political establishment. Don’t blame PG&E.

14 Comments

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