Mendocino County Today: Saturday 2/21/2026

THE FIRST of a series of frontal systems will bring strong to damaging south winds, a period of moderate to heavy rain and mountain snow this weekend. Another frontal system is expected to bring a prolonged period of moderate to heavy rain, and mountain snow early into mid next week. (NWS)

WIND ADVISORY
* What...Southeast winds 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 50 mph expected.
* Where...Western Mendocino.
* When...From 10 AM Saturday to 10 AM PST Sunday.
* Impacts...Wind gusts will be particularly strong along windward ridges and exposed coastal headlands.
* Additional Details...A prolonged period of strong winds is expected from Saturday morning through Sunday morning. Winds are expected to increase to up to 40 mph on Saturday, peaking up to 50 mph Saturday night into Sunday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A much warmer 47F under cloudy skies this Saturday morning on the coast. 2 weather matters of note today are a very windy weekend on tap to start with south winds gusting to 40mph today & 30mph tomorrow. The other matter is our overnight lows will be much warmer into next week. The NWS forecast for next week is much wetter than the 10 day graph from the WU ? We'll see ?

“FOR BUSINESSES AND COMMUNITIES, 2025 serves as a stark reminder that ‘average’ weather is a thing of the past. Whether it is a supply chain disrupted by an ice storm in the Gulf Coast, livelihoods upended by fires in California, or assets threatened by a flash flood, vulnerability is everywhere.” (From Fire to Flood, how 2025 Rewrote the Records, Baron Weather, Jan. 18, 2026)

ONIONS!

I will have onions this year in the second week of Feburary (12th).

New email: [email protected] - 707 895 2609

New red variety Red Zeppelin is supposed to store longer and Red River, Patterson (yellow), Super star (white).

$7 per bundle.

Bill Harper (Philo)

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

AFTER FOUR DAYS, RIVER GIVES UP VEHICLE OF MISSING COVELO COUPLE

by Lisa Music

Highway 162 was closed for a time around 5 p.m. today as rescuers pulled from the Eel River the vehicle of an elderly Covelo couple who crashed off the roadway last Tuesday. After four days of searching in cold, fast-moving water, the recovery brings at least partial closure to a family and community that have waited anxiously along the river’s edge.

Search and rescue personnel returned to the site after zeroing in on the vehicle’s location with a magnet. Divers entered the river to confirm it before crews attached rigging and pulled the vehicle from the water.

“Search and rescue and professional dive crew were able to go to the location where…we hit…with a magnet yesterday,” Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall said in a phone interview with Redheaded Blackbelt. “Divers went into the water and confirmed…the vehicle. We were able to get the vehicle pulled from the water.”

Kendall confirmed that only one occupant was found inside. The other member of the couple remains missing and is believed to still be in the river.

The sheriff acknowledged what many in Covelo had feared since the vehicle left the roadway.

“Well, it’s closure though. Everybody knew what we were going to find; we just didn’t know when,” he said.

For days, deputies, search and rescue volunteers, dive crews, and boat teams have worked through swift currents, muddy water, and bitter cold in an effort to locate the couple. Kendall described the situation as deeply personal for the rural community.

“It’s just a very, very sad situation,” he said. “These folks have been a [part] of our community my entire life… It’s just a really tough time right now.”

Search efforts are expected to continue tomorrow for the second occupant. However, the window of opportunity is narrowing. Rising river levels anticipated early Sunday, driven by another incoming storm system and continued snowmelt, are expected to significantly increase flows and complicate recovery operations further.

For now, crews will continue searching as conditions allow.

Controlled traffic remains in place along Highway 162 near the recovery site due to narrow shoulders and ongoing operations. Authorities are asking motorists to use caution and avoid stopping or slowing in ways that could interfere with crews when searchers return tomorrow.

The recovery brings a measure of closure, but with one loved one still missing, the grief remains incomplete. In a close-knit community like Covelo, Kendall said the loss weighs not only on the family but also on the recovery teams and neighbors who have stood along the river for days, hoping for answers. “Their family, their extended family, we all know each other. We all grew up together. Our thoughts and prayers go out for all of them,” Sheriff Kendall stated as the fourth day of searching comes to a close.

The identity of the couple has not been released at this time.

(KymKemp.com)

GARY AND YVONNE NIESEN

To the people of Covelo / Round Valley friends and family,

It is with a broken heart that I share this update regarding the events that have been unfolding off Highway 162.

On Tuesday morning, my grandparents, Gary and Yvonne Niesen, left Covelo around 0718 to meet Damon (great grandson) in Willits. When they did not arrive as planned, Damon drove Highway 162 to look for them. With a sick feeling in his stomach, he noticed a small disturbance in the grass. At the bottom of the hillside he found a bumper, a license plate, and other personal belongings. As he moved closer to the river, he discovered more of their items in the water and gathered what he could.

Today marks the end of day four of searching the river and its banks. We have searched every day from sun up to sun down. Diver Juan was contacted and located the vehicle today. Inside was Gary.

Yvonne is still missing. We will return in the morning to continue searching the river and river banks for her.

If you are traveling along 162, please watch for us on the roadside. We humbly ask that you help us keep an eye on the riverbanks as well. Any awareness, any extra set of eyes, matters.

While our hearts are shattered, we are profoundly grateful. The messages, calls, texts, meals, prayers, and the steady outpouring of love from this community are carrying us when we feel too weak to stand. You are lifting us in ways we cannot fully express.

Gary and Yvonne Niesen are lifelong Covelo residents. They built their life here, raised their family here, and were deeply rooted in the community. They are the proud parents of two sons, Walter and Fred Niesen.

Our family would like to extend our deepest thanks to the many agencies and individuals who have shown up without hesitation: Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, OES, CAL FIRE, Marin County Search and Rescue, Mendocino County Search and Rescue, Southern Humboldt Rescue Team, Rescue Solutions, Diver Juan and Mercedes, the swift water teams, CHP, Caltrans, Hopland Fire, Ukiah Valley Fire Authority, Laytonville Fire, South Coast Fire, Little Lake Fire, Albion Fire, Potter Valley Fire, Adventist Health, Bravo, Anker Lucier, and All In One Towing. Your professionalism, compassion, and tireless effort mean more than we can say.

If we have unintentionally missed acknowledging anyone who has supported this effort, please know it is not by design. We are deeply thankful to every person who has shown up, stepped in, prayed, searched, or carried us in any way.

I will continue to provide updates as I have them.

With gratitude and a very heavy heart,

The Niesen Family

Buckingham Family

UKIAH MAN KEPT WOMAN HOSTAGE AT OAKLAND HOTEL TO FORCE HER INTO SERVITUDE

by Nate Gartrell and Jakob Rodgers

A 22-year-old Ukiah man allegedly held a woman against her will to force her to have sex with strangers for money, after meeting her on Instagram, according to court records.

Alexander Barger was charged with false imprisonment, human trafficking, pandering, robbery and domestic violence. Police say that on Feb. 17, the woman was reported missing by her mother, who told authorities her daughter was being held hostage at the Nights Inn Motel on the 800 block of West MacArthur Boulevard.

Police located Barger and the woman, but not without a little bump in the road. When officers arrived, Barger jumped from the motel’s second story in a failed attempt to get away, investigators said in court records. He was booked into Santa Rita Jail in Dublin and remains there, with no bail amount listed, records show.

Barger has pleaded not guilty. His next court date has been set for March 3. The criminal complaint says he has two prior convictions, for failing to appear in court and threatening someone, both in Mendocino County.

The woman told police that after meeting Barger online, they had an in-person rendezvous. The day after Valentine’s Day, he informed her she was going to be making him money as a sex worker, she reportedly told authorities.

She said he brought her to International Boulevard in Oakland, an area known for open-air prostitution and violence, and ended up taking $80 from her after one day out there. Then they went to the hotel, and he allegedly refused to let her leave, according to authorities.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

ED NOTE: Alexander Barger has been arrested and booked at least a dozen times in Mendocino County going back to 2022 with a domestic battery bust. Since then he’s been arrested for drugs, stolen property, DUI, suspended license, vandalism, and criminal threats plus several failures to appear.

In March of 2025 Barger was arrested in Ukiah after Police officers spotted him driving a stolen Nissan after they got a traffic camera alert. The vehicle had been reported stolen from a distributor in Santa Rosa. Barger was booked into the Mendocino County Jail on charges of possession of a stolen vehicle, committing a felony while on bail, and driving on a suspended license due to a prior DUI conviction.

Why these ongoing menaces are repeatedly run through the sytsem yet continue to be released and at large despite all the money being spent on “public safety” (and a huge, wasteful courthouse) remains unexplained.

NEGIE FALLIS CHARGED WITH FOUR FELONIES IN COVELO SHOOTING

by Sydney Fishman

A Covelo man who is a person of interest in the high-profile disappearance of Round Valley Indian Tribes member Khadijah Britton eight years ago has been charged with four felonies in a separate case, a shooting that injured a man in November.

Negie Fallis, 45, was arrested by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office in late January and booked into the Mendocino County Jail for his alleged involvement in a shooting in Covelo on Nov. 18.

According to Mendocino County sheriff’s spokesperson Capt. Quincy Cromer, a 28-year-old man had arrived at Adventist Health Howard Memorial, a hospital in Willits, with a gunshot wound to his foot.

Earlier in the day on Nov. 18, the victim was visiting a residence on Airport Road in Covelo to collect money he was owed. About 10 minutes later, a vehicle arrived. The victim got into the vehicle and spoke with the driver, who was later identified as Fallis.

After a short period of time, an argument ensued, and Fallis exited the vehicle with a firearm. After a struggle between Fallis and the victim, the gun discharged, striking the victim in the foot.

“We don’t believe it was accidental. If there is an intent to shoot someone and you are struggling over a gun, it’s still attempted murder. It comes down to him brandishing and displaying the gun against the victim,” Cromer said in a recent interview.

Fallis has been charged with four felonies — attempted murder, assault with a firearm, possession of a firearm by a felon, and transportation of a controlled substance, as well as potential sentencing enhancements.

Fallis has been investigated for the disappearance of Britton, a woman who was last seen at her home in Covelo in February 2018. According to Cromer, Fallis is still a person of interest in that case.

The shooting case against Fallis is set to return to court on Feb. 27 to potentially set a date for a preliminary hearing.

ED NOTE: Fallis is the presumed murderer of Ms. Khadijah Britton of Covelo. In February of 2018 Khadijah Britton, 23, disappeared from her father’s Covelo home a week after having a violent altercation with her boyfriend, career criminal Negie Fallis, during which he wielded a hammer and swore he would kill her. Witnesses said Fallis pulled Ms. Britton from the home at gunpoint the night of February 7. Initial evidence indicated that it was very likely that Fallis did kill Ms. Britton, but after thousands of hours of investigation by the Sheriff and the DA charges were dropped a year later with the DA citing a lack of sufficient evidence. Ms. Britton’s body has never been found. Fallis has been in and out of jail over the years for various felonies including firearm possession. The Sheriff remains hugely disappointed that he hasn’t been able to make a sufficient murder case against Fallis. “We’ve got more than 4,000 hours into the search for Khadijah and we’re still looking,” he said at the time. “We meet all the time to talk about unsolved cases.” Any roster of Mendo's free range scumbags places this guy at the head of the list.

INLAND RATEPAYERS RUE CONSOLIDATION OF WATER DISTRICTS

Members of the Ukiah Valley Water Authority will see water rates rise more than 60 percent over the next five years

by Elise Cox

On a February evening in Ukiah, inland residents turned out to protest proposed water rate increases reaching as high as 30 percent this year, with additional double-digit hikes scheduled annually through 2029. For the Millview, Willow, and Redwood Valley water districts, the cumulative increases over the next five years will top 64 percent.

The increases were approved by the board of directors of the Ukiah Valley Water Authority on February 9, after more than 200 protest letters failed to meet the legal threshold required to block them. Officials said the additional revenue is needed for long-deferred infrastructure repairs and to stabilize shrinking reserves across Millview, Redwood Valley, Willow, and the City of Ukiah.

But for ratepayers, the increases felt abrupt and destabilizing.

“I understand that rates do go up,” Millview resident Jenny Richards told the board. “But the amount of the rate going up at one time is excessive, and I think it’s going to cause hardship for a lot of people.”

Playing Catch-Up

Mark Hildebrand, a Bay Area rate consultant hired by the authority, told protesters that most of the increases stem from deferred capital improvements.

“Every year that you don’t raise rates, you dig yourself into a hole,” he said, noting that Millview had not raised rates in 14 years.

Under the proposal:

Millview customers will see a 15 percent increase beginning March 1, followed by 14 percent annual increases in subsequent years.
Redwood Valley customers will face a 30 percent increase this spring and another 12 percent three months later, with smaller increases thereafter.
Willow customers will see a 19 percent increase, followed by annual 12 percent adjustments.
Ukiah’s increases will be more modest — roughly 6 percent initially — reflecting what officials described as more consistent past investment, as well as a 22 percent rate hike last September, and 14 percent increase in 2024.

Officials say the money will fund stepped-up capital reinvestment — replacing pipes before they rupture, upgrading reservoirs and treatment facilities, and stabilizing reserves that in some districts are projected to fall close to zero.

General Manager Jared Walker described the system in Redwood Valley as uniquely expensive to maintain: a dual plumbing network that provides both treated domestic water and untreated irrigation water, effectively doubling infrastructure across a sprawling rural footprint.

“We’ve got twice as much infrastructure,” he said. “Per capita, it’s very spread out.”

Anxiety Over Affordability

But for many residents, the numbers were disproportionate to the need — and to retired ratepayers’ ability to pay.

Kenneth Boudreau, a retired city employee in Millview, said the cumulative increases would outpace anything residents could realistically absorb.

“I receive a pension increase of 2 percent a year,” he said. “Not 57 percent.”

In a formal protest letter, Stephanie Yeh, a customer of the Redwood Valley County Water District, noted that the authority had not provided parcel- or district-specific cost-of-service data sufficient for ratepayers to evaluate whether the proposed rates exceed the actual cost of providing service.

Yeh said the mailed notice did not include “underlying cost allocations, assumptions, project lists, time frames, or district-level revenue and expense details necessary to validate the size and structure of the increases for Redwood Valley ratepayers.”

Remorse Over Consolidation

Others questioned whether consolidation under the new joint powers authority structure — which shifted operations to the City of Ukiah — had triggered rising administrative costs.

“Willow functioned for a long time without raising rates significantly,” said Steve Miller, a longtime Willow customer. “I’m very concerned that all of this extra money is going to projects other than serving water to us.”

Jim Donnelly, another Willow customer, noted that the 2021 Water Rate Study being used to justify the increase is not available on the Ukiah Valley Water Authority website.

“I am pretty sure the 2021 water rate study didn’t take into consideration the inclusion of three additional water districts,” he wrote.

The Ukiah Valley Water Authority, a joint powers agency, was formed in early 2024. The initial agreement was between the City of Ukiah, the Redwood Valley County Water District, and the Millview County Water District. The agreement was amended on October 1, 2024, to include the Willow County Water District and the Calpella Water District.

In a press release, city officials said the establishment of the joint powers authority would lead to “more efficient and reliable water services for the Ukiah Valley region.”

Learning from Hopland

The Hopland Public Utility District is not part of the joint powers agency, but it has service agreements in place with the Willow County Water District.

In October 2025, the Hopland Public Utility District voted to raise water rates by 40 percent and wastewater rates by 25 percent — part of a decade-long schedule that would ultimately triple water costs for roughly 330 customers.

Many residents crowded into a tense public hearing to challenge the hikes, questioning inconsistent financial figures, missing documentation, and what they saw as unclear justification for the new charges. Vernon Budinger, a Hopland ratepayer, criticized the process as a “smokescreen” masking rising administrative costs following consolidation under the regional water authority.

After a third of Hopland ratepayers submitted protest letters, a protest hearing was held on October 9. At that hearing, the board of directors of the Hopland Public Utility District restricted public comment to a total of ten minutes, appearing to violate the Brown Act.

No such limit was imposed at the February 9 hearing.

Board Issues “Determinations”

In contrast to the Hopland Public Utility District board of directors, which discouraged extended ratepayer comment, the executive committee of the Ukiah Valley Water Authority published its rebuttal to ratepayer protests in the meeting agenda.

The executive committee stated that the proposed rates were supported by financial plans and asserted that a reasonable relationship exists between the rates and the cost of service. In addition, the committee said there is no cross-subsidization of one district by another.

The executive committee claimed the state’s noticing requirements were followed. “Sufficient materials were made publicly available, and the record contains sufficient information to proceed,” the determinations stated.

Regarding the financial hardship the increases will create for seniors on fixed incomes, the executive committee “acknowledged affordability concerns, but finds that applicable law requires rates to be based on cost of service rather than individual ability to pay.”

“It Shouldn’t Be a Surprise”

When a member of the public requested a 10-day extension for further review, Tom Schoeneman, chair of the executive committee, declined, stating it was the board’s “responsibility to move this along.”

Schoeneman pushed back against public claims that the rate increases were a “surprise” or handled “underhandedly.” He said the board had been discussing the issue for months on Zoom and in person, asserting that the information “was available to you” as citizens and that “this shouldn’t be a surprise.”

In California, there is no regulatory body that directly oversees rates for most public water utilities. The primary requirement, established by Proposition 218, is that fees not exceed the cost of providing service. Proposition 218, which passed in 1996, also mandates public notice of rate increases and allows a majority of ratepayers to block a proposed increase.

(Mendolocal.news)

UKIAH CITY STAFF UNVEIL PLANS FOR ‘URBAN FOREST’

by Justine Frederiksen

One of the most beloved trees in Ukiah’s Urban Forest is this valley oak in Observatory Park. (Justine Frederiksen — Ukiah Daily Journal.)

At the last meeting of the Ukiah Planning Commission, recently hired city staff shared their plans for increasing the size and health of Ukiah’s “urban forest” with the careful planting of more than 700 new trees.

Blake Adams, who was hired in 2024 as the city’s Chief Resilience Officer, told the commission he was the division lead for the Community Development Department’s Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Division, which he described as “essentially an in-house consultant for the city on all things climate-change related.”

“Obviously, part of our work to build resiliency to climate change is by preserving our natural spaces and open spaces, and also re-vegetating, or re-foresting, our urban environments,” said Adams, noting that the city in 2024 was awarded a $1.4 million grant from Cal Fire to “plant over 700 trees here in the city of Ukiah. And so you fast forward about a year and a half later, going through that long process, a federal funding freeze, and recruitment, and now we’re really blessed as a city to have my colleague Aaron Yang join us, so I’ll let him speak about our exciting program and the different things that will be coming to our community.”

“I am the new hire for the city of Ukiah,” said Yang, describing himself as embracing the notion that “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, (but) the second best time is today, and today the city of Ukiah is very lucky to have the $1.4 million from Cal Fire, and I’m looking forward to building the urban forest in the city of Ukiah.”

To support Yang’s work, Adams told the commission that the city would also soon “be recruiting two forest technicians, so the Urban Forestry Team … will be three, full-time staff to help us implement this grant, as well as identify other opportunities to improve our city.” As for Yang’s position, city staff noted that it is “100% funded by a new Urban Forest Program grant received by the city from Cal Fire, (which will also fund) two additional urban forest technician positions.”

Alongside their work planting trees, Adams said his division had also created two “non-competitive grant programs,” one intended to improve lawns on private property by making them more fire-resilient, and the second to remove asphalt and concrete.

“So you can think of this as one part trees, one part concrete or impervious surface, (with the overall goal) of course to increase trees and reduce impervious surfaces,” Adams continued, explaining that both aspects combined would help “mitigate extreme heat in the city of Ukiah.”

In terms of existing trees, Commissioner Rick Johnson asked about the trees on his street “whose roots are pushing up the sidewalk, and I want to make sure those trees are healthy, because they’re definitely an asset to our community, and to my street in particular, (because) they are very beautiful and a lot of people like walking down the street (because of them.)”

To that end, Johnson asked Yang if it would also be his role to “manage existing trees owned by the city that are on the streets… and maintaining the health of the trees that we already have?”

To answer Johnson’s question directly, Community Development Director Craig Schlatter said that the city’s Public Works Department “will continue maintaining the street trees; any city trees that are under Public Works purview right (will remain so). You want to think about this as another layer added on to the existing trees, or green infrastructure, already existing in the city,” which would include at least 700 trees “they will be planting and maintaining.”

“As long as we have a maintenance plan in place for these new 750 trees, I’m happy,” said Commissioner Jacob Brown. “Because otherwise it’s just a tree-planting exercise with no maintenance plan in place.”

“And on that point, I believe one of the deliverables on the (Cal Fire) grant is that we find a way to sustain the efforts (of the tree planting) for that very reason,” Schlatter added. “We wouldn’t want to plant 750 trees, and then the grant goes away, and all those trees die because we don’t have the team to maintain them.

Also at the Feb. 11 meeting of the Planning Commission, Schlatter said previously that the board was expected to hear a “year-in review for all of the ordinances that staff sponsored that may or may not have been reviewed by the Planning Commission,” but now expects that presentation to be made at a March meeting.

COUNTY COUNSEL CLAIMS WORK OVERLOAD; WANTS TO FILL A VACANCY; SAYS BUDGET IS ALMOST $1.7 MILLION (or more?)

(from a memo from County Counsel Kit Elliott to the Board of Supervisors for the Tuesday Board meeting…)

“At the Board of Supervisors meeting on February 3, I agreed to delete one (1) FTE Deputy County Counsel. I am requesting to fill the remaining vacant position in the County Counsel’s department. Eventually, we would recruit for an attorney who would perform half-time general County Counsel work and half-time work for Children and Family Services (“FCS”). In the interim, I am requesting to temporarily underfill the position with a retired annuitant who previously worked in our office for FCS and has agreed to return part-time and either another retired annuitant or a temporary intern in order to save money and not lose the position.

“The total adopted budget for the County Counsel’s Office is $1,660,322, which this request should not affect. Salaries and Benefits are $2,674,938 of the total budget (which included the two (2) Deputy County Counsel positions). County Counsel’s budget is unusual due to the fact that we receive both Revenue (estimated to at $512,000) and Intrafund transfers (estimated at $923,403). County Counsel’s budget depends heavily on reimbursement from the from certain [sic] departments through direct billing. Therefore, a large portion of our Salaries and Benefits are reimbursed through Intrafund and Revenue and show as greater than the adopted budget, which represents our office’s cost to the general fund.

“Currently we have an Interim County Counsel filling in for the County Counsel position and there is (1) vacant Deputy County Counsel position. The cost of that position would be approximately $60,526 if hired in PP 09-26 (4/12/26) [part of a year]. Due to the deleted and vacant positions, our budget includes a 12.08% Attrition Savings of $323,250. We believe that a substantial portion of the time billed would be reimbursed via Intrafund (which would not include such costs as holiday, vacation, sick and personal time).

“County Counsel bills Social Services, Family & Children’s Services Division (“FCS”). With an FCS attorney position unfilled, County Counsel will not be able to collect the anticipated Intrafund reimbursement ($359,954) as originally anticipated (calculated by taking the direct billable hours and multiplying it by the weighted rate). We anticipate that Fiscal Year 26/27 would be similar.

“Recognizing that the County Counsel’s Office is 1) Projected to be under budget for Fiscal Year 2025-26, and 2) additional salary savings are anticipated due to further vacancies, the County Counsel’s Office is requesting to hire one (1) Deputy County Counsel, per the County’s Strategic Hiring Process, while temporarily filling the position through retired annuitants or interns.

“The County Counsel's Office provides day-to-day advice and assistance to all County departments and offices. Much of the work performed by the deputies consists of advice and review every day on issues that the Board may not see. This includes tasks such as contract review, resolution and agenda packet assistance, responding to Public Records Act requests, managing litigation (both that handled internally and by outside counsel), and assisting on small to medium-difficulty requests for daily advice. Larger or more difficult projects (including but not limited to ordinance amendments, policy updates or novel contracts) require longer blocks of time, which requires balancing between resolving those matters versus handling the many everyday requests for assistance. The office handles many matters with firm deadlines, such as litigation and conservatorship matters, and must respond to time sensitive research projects, e.g., research connected to compliance with statutory deadlines, elections, grant application or contract deadlines, or personnel matters. With fewer attorneys, departments may be subject to a longer turnaround time, particularly on requests with flexible deadlines.

ACCORDING TO A CHART IN THE MID-YEAR BUDGET REPORT, The Supervsiors themselves are $150k over budget (16%). No explanation is offered. Also projected to be significantly over budget (more than $100k) so far this year are: Clerk of the Board, the Auditor-Controller ($116k over), the District Attorney (more than $1.2 million over), the Sheriff ($600k), and the Jail ($818k), Interestingly, the Treasurer-Tax Collector half of the Auditor-Controller/Treasuere Tax Collector office is slightly under budget, despite 1) their recent staffing increase, and 2) their recent plan to contract out to a collection agency at a cost of $1 million for collection of delinquent taxes. Perhaps they expect to pay that $1 million out of whatever may be collected.

Budget Notes (there is only one budget note, no other department budget variances are explained):

“The Jail will not meet the 6% staffing attrition reduction due to mandatory staffing levels in the Jail and staffing requirements necessary for the new Jail behavioral health wing, totaling $855,128. The Jail is actively seeking alternate funding for additional staffing, including a higher Community Corrections Partnership (CCP) contribution and funding from Jail Based Competency Treatment Program (JBCT) and the EAVES program for services offered in the Jail’s new Behavioral Health wing. … Jail costs are expected to increase in the next Fiscal Year due to staffing needed for the new Behavioral Health wing of the Jail. Staffing estimates project an additional $1.8 million in additional personnel expenses to adequately staff the new wing.”

(No notes are provided for the other departments that are projected to be significantly over budget.)

FEDERAL RAILROAD BOARD BLOCKS GREAT REDWOOD TRAIL

Cites freight potential between Fort Bragg and Willits

by Elise Cox

The Surface Transportation Board on Thursday denied a petition to abandon a 40-mile railroad line in Mendocino County, ruling that the corridor retains potential for freight service and must remain part of the nation’s interstate rail network.

The decision is a victory for the Mendocino Railway, which owns the line, and marks a departure from earlier rulings that allowed the former North Coast Railroad Authority — now the Great Redwood Trail Agency — to convert portions of its rail line into a trail.

The North Coast Railroad Authority first signaled its intent to abandon its 145-mile line from Willits to Eureka nearly five years ago. Rail service north of Schellville and Napa Junction had already been under a federal emergency embargo for two decades.

“There has thus been no freight rail traffic on any portion of the Line at issue in this proceeding since at least 1998,” the agency wrote in a 2021 filing, arguing that retaining the corridor for nonexistent freight service imposed unsustainable costs. Rehabilitating the line, it estimated, would cost between $100 million and $600 million, while landslides and washouts continued to damage the route.

In 2022, the board allowed abandonment to proceed after determining that Mendocino Railway lacked the roughly $12.7 million it said it would need to acquire and rehabilitate a 13-mile segment.

The dispute resurfaced in April 2024, when the Great Redwood Trail Agency sought approval to abandon 40 miles of track between Fort Bragg and Willits owned by Mendocino Railway. GRTA argued that no interstate freight shipments have originated or terminated on the line since Mendocino Railway acquired it in 2004 and that market studies show insufficient demand to justify full restoration.

Abandonment, GRTA said, was necessary to advance the 316-mile Great Redwood Trail along the Northwestern Pacific Railroad corridor, as required by state law.

The Surface Transportation board disagreed.

“GRTA has not satisfied the heavy burden to justify removing the MRY Line from the interstate rail network against the carrier’s wishes,” the decision states.

“This corridor remains a vital public asset for Mendocino County,” said Robert Jason Pinoli, President and CEO of Mendocino Railway. “We appreciate the Board’s thoughtful review. Our focus now is simple: protect the corridor, continue investing in it, and work constructively with regional partners on long-term solutions.”

Board’s Rationale

The board rejected GRTA’s argument that the adjacent federal embargo effectively strips the line of interstate status. An embargo temporarily relieves a railroad of service obligations, the board wrote, but does not sever a line from the national rail network absent formal abandonment.

It also found that Mendocino Railway had taken concrete steps toward restoring service, including securing a $31.4 million federal loan to rehabilitate a collapsed tunnel east of Fort Bragg, investing more than $30 million over two decades, and reaching a preliminary agreement with Grist Creek Aggregates to ship at least 400 annual carloads of aggregate once repairs are complete.

That future potential, the board concluded, outweighs GRTA’s trail objectives.

The decision also emphasized that a recreational trail does not necessarily require eliminating rail service. A “rails-with-trails” arrangement could allow both uses within the same right-of-way, so long as train operations are not impeded.

What Comes Next

Rail industry groups backed Mendocino Railway, while the Pacific Legal Foundation argued the board lacks authority to grant abandonment applications filed by non-carriers. The board declined to resolve that question, denying the petition on substantive grounds instead.

In separate statements, two board members suggested possible regulatory changes that could provide an alternative path for trail preservation. A pending rulemaking petition filed by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Interior in December 2024 would allow railbanking through the board’s discontinuance authority rather than requiring full abandonment.

For now, however, the Mendocino Railway line remains part of the interstate rail system — and the Great Redwood Trail faces a significant federal obstacle.

(Mendolocal.news)

Mark Scaramella Notes: Ms. Cox quotes the old NCRA management in 2021 saying: “‘There has thus been no freight rail traffic on any portion of the Line at issue in this proceeding since at least 1998,’ arguing that retaining the corridor for nonexistent freight service imposed unsustainable costs. Rehabilitating the line, it estimated, would cost between $100 million and $600 million, while landslides and washouts continued to damage the route.”

The timing of that statement of the obvious from the (defunct) NCRA is hilarious. The Northcoasts Democrats, ensconsed in the bowels of the NCRA for decades milked the non-existent “railroad” boondoggle going all the way back to when they used state money to buy it in the 1980s, insisting that the “train” was viable when everyone but them knew otherwise. But when State Senator Mike McGuire and this generation of Democrats dreamed up the Great Redwood Boondoggle to replace the old NCRA Democrats, the new generation of Demo-boondogglers suddenly and conveniently discovered that the railroad was dead. In fact, the only reason the NCRA-Dems kept saying the train was viable was to keep the State track maintenance money flowing to the NCRA, much of which went to former Democrat Congressman Doug Bosco’s private company, the Northwest Pacific Railroad Company who did what little track maintenance was done — after the NCRA Democrats (present and former associates of Bosco) raked off their vig for themselves.

ERNIE BERGMAN (Tamalpais High School):

On Tuesday, February 17 2026 classmates Donald Smith and Ernie Bergman had a chance to visit one of our FAVORITE high school teachers AND our senior year Varsity football coach Willie Hector. We found Willie in a VERY elegant, VERY beautiful assisted living facility in Terra Linda. He wasn't expecting us and we didn't call ahead. We found Willie lounging in bed in a beautiful private suite watching the Olympics on TV. He didn't recognize us right away (mainly because we were a big surprise). But it didn't take him long to figure out who it was that had entered his personal kingdom.

Willie looked good, still has his huge smile, his great laugh, and his booming voice and welcomed us as if we were dear old friends… which we ARE!!!

Donald and I spent about three hours with Willie talking about old times, catching up on the news, remembering some great stories (whether they were true or not), and just basically shooting the shit.

I wanted to let anyone know whoever is reading this that Willie is doing well, can still get around (although a LOT slower), still has lots of advice to share, and loves to see his friends.

ED NOTE: I played football at Tam with Willie Hector who went on to star at University of the Pacific and then became a linebacker with the LA Rams. Vallejo, with Dick Bass, crushed us (and everyone else) two seasons in a row. When I was a senior, Vallejo beat us 77-21 at the now gone Kentfield stadium. Bass scored five touchdowns on five touches but our star running back, Squeaky Davis, ran for three, making us the only team, I think, to even score against them that year. I think the Vallejo teams of the fifties would beat today's high school teams. They were big and fast. Bass ran a 9.8 in full gear!

CLOVERDALE CITRUS FAIR 2026

by Terry Sites

The 134th annual Cloverdale Citrus Fair spanned Feb. 13th to the 16th and two holidays. One hundred and thirty-four years is a lot of history, especially in a country that is only celebrating its 250th birthday. Founded in 1892, Cloverdale was the first fair chartered by the State of California. Coming in the winter makes it the first California Fair of the year, every year. KZST radio describes it as “A delightful celebration of past and present with an eye on the future,” which is an accurate assessment. This year’s theme, “Celebrating America 250 years — Then and Now,” reminds us that the Bicentennial is now a full 50 years behind us. Time Flies.

It is believed that a man named George E. Baer, one time editor of the long running Cloverdale Reveille, spearheaded the effort to create the fair. It was intended to promote Cloverdale and Sonoma County as great citrus growing country. It was even claimed that grapefruit grown in Cloverdale could ripen two months ahead of that grown by competitors in Southern California. By the 1920s such hopes had been dimmed by a few years of heavy frost, but the Fair marched on. An interesting side note is the similarity between the Mendocino Fair and Apple Show in Boonville and the Cloverdale Citrus Fair as both have outlived their original purpose but happily thrive. In all those years Cloverdale has missed only three years: once because the Pan Pacific Exposition of 1915 got all the State Fair funds, then again for shortages in WW1 in 1918 and WW2 in 1944. Even during the Pandemic they didn’t miss a beat by creating a drive-thru “Food Frenzy,” outdoor exhibits and parade floats.

The admission fee is modest and on some days for some people Free. Friday is Senior Day and Monday is Kid’s Day — when 62 and older and 12 and under FREE. On other days there’s a $12 general admission for adults and $7 for kids, a bargain.

Lots of special events were scheduled during the four days of the Fair. Wine Tasting was ongoing, of course. Both the Commercial building and the Exhibition Display Hall were open continuously. Really special was the “Lily and Oran Orange” contest featuring 3-5 year olds in what was described as a “cuteness overload.” Not to be outdone, Monday hosted a “Baby Derby” with adorable very small crawlers in diapers racing to a finish line. Bingo was sponsored by the Cloverdale Senior Multipurpose Center. There were two days of orange juice squeezing contests along with both orange and lemon delight dessert contests. The animal barns and livestock events were not as numerous as at some fairs, but there were Junior Poultry, Pygmy Goat, Rabbit and Dog shows. A Ballet Folklorico troupe, “Ballet Legado de mi Alegria,” performed both outdoors and in the auditorium.

The Commercial exhibits building had a crazy mishmash of fancy knives, rain gutter guards, glittery jewelry, quick portrait drawing artists and tasty treats. The Exhibition Building, always my favorite, was crammed with high quality creative output. The quilts alone were worth the price of admission. I loved one whimsical quilt that sported three roller-skating dinosaurs. There were also lots of elegant art quilts on display plus two quilt guild tables with quilters who could answer any question.

The variety is always surprising. One Anderson Valley resident who used the name “Bunny Bill” on all his entry tags (presumably to elude those pesky citrus exhibitor paparazzi) won numerous blue ribbons for his produce grown in the Navarro highlands.

Other entries of note: a watercolor portrait of a very buxom cowgirl with admirable cleavage and a pencil portrait titled, “Tough Guy” by a Cloverdale High School student that could have come right out of a Martin Scorsese movie. There was a finely stitched tote bag that read, “Be the reason someone smiles today.” Lots of cakes and other baked goodies were appetizingly displayed.

The photography entered in fairs is always especially fine. Three pictures I really loved; a mother cow licking her new born calf, an Amish farmer “seeding” as he drove a four abreast horse team and a snapshot of a Chinese couple holding hands and looking at each other with “the eyes of love.” And there was so much more.

Live music was presented every day by eight local bands. The retro “Poyntless Sisters” is an all “girl” band featuring infectious dance music from the 50s forward. For an extra $15 you could hear Max Vogel and his band’s country, folk and rock “Heart Felt Music” in the auditorium. Also on the bill were Gas Money, Court N’ Disaster, Funky Dozen, Blues Burners, Clave MC and a teen band featuring regional Mexican music, Los Magos de California.

I didn’t see the parade but heard it was a really good one. Many local businesses including the Grocery Outlet, Reusuer, Ace Hardware, Empower Dance and Fitness and Papa’s Pizza help sponsor the Fair. The Fair Board awarded checks to many local clubs and organizations for their participation. In 2025 approximately 10,000 people attended which for a town of approximately 8,800 is pretty darn good. If you haven’t attended, think about going next year. You don’t have to be a Cloverdale resident or even a Sonoma County resident to enter an exhibit. There is a lot of joy to be found. The kids tumbling off the rides, smiling, hooting and hollering heartily attest to that.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Friday, February 20, 2026

DELBERT ALFORD, 38, Covelo. Domestic battery.

RICHARD ANDERSON, 65, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

TATEN KITCHEN, (Age not known), Fort Bragg. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, cruelty to child-infliction of injury, participation in criminal street gang, resisting.

OSCAR MARTINEZ, 26, Covelo. Domestic abuse, grand theft-firearm, stolen loaded weapon, ammo possession by prohibited person, felon-addict with firearm, probation revocation.

WYATT ROGERS, 21, Willits. Battery with serious bodily injury, robbery, vandalism, disorderly conduct-alcohol, damaging wireless communications device.

THOMAS THORSON, 40, Nice/Ukiah. Contempt of court, probation revocation, resisting.

COURTNEY WAGNER, 45, Ukiah. Burglary, obtaining money by false pretenses, obtaining personal ID without authorization.

REVERSE-COMMUTE CARPOOL HOURS MAKING TRAFFIC WORSE

Editor,

When Caltrans initially changed the high-occupancy vehicle hours on Highway 101 during the final stages of the Marin-Sonoma Narrows widening between Novato and Petaluma, it included restrictions during off-commute hours. I was one of the people who resisted, saying it did not make sense to prevent single drivers from using the lane when there was rarely congestion during those “reverse commute” hours.

Back then, it seemed Caltrans got the message. It said it would reevaluate after it had several months of experience with the new hours. Recently, Caltrans announced it would reduce the HOV hours by 30 minutes in one direction and two hours in the other. I think Caltrans is missing the point.

We have had over six months of experience. Every person I have spoken to about it believes traffic congestion has gotten worse, not better. If Caltrans has data to illustrate that the HOV restrictions have resulted in less congestion because of a significant number of single driver cars — maybe because they have given up their individual drives and are now carpooling (or public transportation) — then it should show us the data. If it makes sense, then let’s keep the new HOV hours. If not, reverse course and go back to the old rules.

Building a highway lane is a very expensive endeavor. Tying it up so only a few people can use it is a huge waste of money. Let’s do what works.

Peter Sorensen

Mill Valley

BILLIONAIRES COULDN’T SPEND THE MONEY IN A DOZEN LIFETIMES

Editor,

I am writing in regard to the article about a proposed one-time 5% tax on our state’s billionaires. It was written by the New York Times and republished in the IJ on Feb. 15 with the headline “California billionaires: Should I stay or should I go?”

It has me wondering why anyone needs a net worth of over $1 billion. Look at it this way: If at birth you earned a dollar every second, in less than two weeks you’d be a millionaire. But billionaire status wouldn’t come until age 31. You can’t spend that kind of money in a dozen lifetimes.

Jim Wood

Tiburon

TEAM CRAIG!

The present situation requires “setting up shop” for automatic writing. Automatic writing means letting the Spiritual Absolute flow through the body-mind complex without interference. I would appreciate the postmodern American society being supportive of this. At this time, I need to move out of the Washington, D.C. homeless shelter, which I have no further need of, since the legally permitted Peace Vigil in front of the White House (24/7 365 since June 3, 1981) was removed by the current presidential administration, because it was out of step with the new aesthetic design for the District of Columbia. At this moment, I’ve got $4,900 in the bank checking account, $147.16 in the wallet, $167.34 in the EBT account, and enough health insurance for a family of four. Thank you very much. Please do what you can. Peaceout

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

"LIKE MOST OTHERS, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going."

— Hunter S. Thompson

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all Friday night on KNYO and KAKX.

Soft deadline to email your writing for tonight's (Friday night's) MOTA show is six or eight. If that's too soon, send it any time after that and I'll read it next Friday.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio is every Friday, 9pm to approximately 5am PST on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KNYO.org. The first three hours of the show, meaning till midnight, are simulcast on KAKX 89.3fm Mendocino.

Plus you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's MOTA show. By Saturday night I'll put up the recording of tonight's show. You'll find plenty of other educational amusements there to educate and amuse yourself with until showtime, or any time, such as:

How we get recapped truck tires. Through the 1980s I used to get recapped passenger car tires from Coast Tire, back when they were in one of the warehouses behind Rossi's Building Materials, for $60 for a set of all four tires. That was the price out the door counting balancing, mounting, disposal of the old tires, everything. Black and shiny and fresh, they looked and smelled great, and they lasted a couple of years, then you'd take another $60 in and get four more. I never had a rim leak or a blowout or a wobble. I drove on a nail or a screw or two, but you'd get a puncture kit that had a screwdriver handle on like a giant sewing machine needle, a few inches of heavy rubber yarn, and a tube of liquid rubber. You pulled the nail out with pliers, threaded the yarn through the needle, saturated it with liquid rubber, pushed it all the way in through the hole and pulled it part-way out, let it dry for half an hour, cut off the excess yarn, pump it up with a bicycle pump and drive away, done. Those were the days. Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wrmXB_Bd_BY

Further back than that, it cost pocket change to pay a bridge toll, so you'd get the quarter, or whatever, ready in your hand and risk your arm flinging money into the basket as you drove through. This genius idea let you go through faster and safer by /shooting the money from a spring gun/. I kind of half-remember that my grandfather had one of these, but that can't be right, because there were no toll roads in Southern California. Maybe he got it in Ohio. Maybe I'm mistaken and it was a grease gun. https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/mystery_gadget_120

And the line where the snow starts. This is peaceful and sweet. Good dad. https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2026/02/snow-line.html

Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

DEMOCRACY OR PLUTOCRACY

by Anthony Leighton

Is America a democracy? At the State level direct democracy is employed. The electorate directly votes for their governors, state legislators, mayors, city council members and school boards. Various states, roughly half, allow voters to directly vote on specific legislative proposals.

The electorate votes at the federal level for two senators from each state and one representative from their congressional district. Whilst the election of congressional representatives for the house is representative of the population of the state, the election of just two senators from states with varying populations is not. Moreover gerrymandering undermines the integrity of this representation. They also vote for the president, but that vote is frustrated by the Electoral College system. Some of this does not comport with democracy.

On Jan 21 2010 the decision in Citizens United v FEC (Federal Election Committee) held that corporations and special interest groups have a First Amendment right to contribute to political campaigns without limitation. The wealthy elites throughout history have always had an outsized influence on government, now in the US they contribute to superPACs in the billions, who in turn finance the campaigns of politicians who are elected to represent the voters.

A plutocracy is a state in which power belongs to the rich wealthy class. This is what we saw in the 2024 presidential election when a single individual spent over $290 million and six others spent over $100 million to support the Republican presidential election. Down the list of plutocrats we find donors to the Democrats and even individuals who fund both parties. Many of these wealthy donors don’t pay taxes. Elon Musk's Tesla company reported $2.3 billion of US income in 2024 and paid no income tax.

The two party system has been in place now for about 172 years. Prior to an election voters are sent pamphlets by the Democratic and Republican parties expressing their vetted choices of candidates for congressional seats. The ‘winner-take-all’ (WTA) system makes it almost impossible for third parties or independent candidates to overcome the barriers and legal restrictions to becoming representatives, depriving voters of options that better align with their values. This system in the US is politically and socially divisive; the two thirds of the country that vote are divided; the supreme court is divided; the country is gerrymandered. With the WTA system the elected politicians spend their time ‘dialing for dollars’ and focusing on beating the other team, not on governing, debating and legislating, on winning. Winning the Presidency, House of Representatives and Senate, the ‘trifecta’, so they can fulfill their agenda unhindered without bipartisan participation. Meanwhile the third that does not vote have nowhere to find alternative representation.

The war in Gaza is an ongoing genocide according to the United Nations. This is an Israeli war predominately financed by the US. Much of the electorate have opposed and demonstrated against this war, calling for a suspension of the supply of American weapons. Congress has largely been supine on the issue, offering little more than platitudes like ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’. Defend yes, but this is not defence it is the extermination of many more than the reported 70 thousand defenseless Palestinians whose land was stolen in 1948 and who have since been cooped up in the largest openair prison in the world. Is this because politicians’ allegiance is less about the wishes of the American people and more about the financial support that most politicians receive from American Israel Public Affairs Committee, (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel PAC? In the 2024 elections many younger voters, but also older voters, did not vote for the Democratic candidates because of the policy regarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Kamala Harris’ assertion that she would continue the Biden administration’s policy towards Israel certainly contributed to the loss of the election.

Almost all politicians receive funds from wealthy donors, corporations, political action committees (PACs) and plutocrats. Who in our representative government is being represented? It’s hard not to see quid pro quo everywhere. Where is the equitable tax system? Where are the social services? Where is our national health care that we have been requesting for forty years or more in the richest country in the world? Where is the kind of public education that we can be proud of in the richest country in the world? Where is the housing, where is the eldercare, in the richest country in the world? The money, our tax dollars, have been wasted on a series of lost wars, including most recently the genocide in Gaza. What’s left is in the pockets of the money hoarding, tax dodging, plutocrats.

The supposedly co-equal branches of government are highly politicized. The Supreme Court has a super majority of republican justices and have done all they can to support the republican agenda including ending federal abortion rights and granting the President total immunity from prosecution. Institutions like the Federalist Society have been suggesting vetted potential republican justices. Leonard Leo has played a prominent role in this and has received historically the largest political advocacy donation from a wealthy libertarian, Barre Seid, of what amounted to $1.6 billion to fund broad conservative advocacy efforts including Supreme Court picks. Of the U.S. government’s three co-equal branches, allowing each branch to limit the others’ power, the judicial branch should be apolitical. The court should be expanded, have term limits and be elected by the people not the political party currently in power.

Social Democracy is a form of representative democracy with a mostly capitalist economy. It advocates for a strong welfare state providing national systems for healthcare, childcare, eldercare, education and housing, and regulations such as progressive taxation, and strong labor and environmental laws to control capitalism. The Nordic countries that employ social democracy have demonstrated that relatively high taxes are accepted when accompanied by robust social services. That capitalism can be restrained and forced to work more equitably for the many and not just the few.

Democratic Socialism is also a form of democratic government which advocates for a strong welfare state, but believes that the people as a whole should have ownership and control of all means of production and distribution and seeks to replace capitalism.

The recent election of Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as mayor of New York shows there is tangible interest in other forms of polity. The two party system is entrenched in its work arounds, a ‘this is the way it’s done’ mentality and is fundamentally undemocratic. It should be reformed as a multi party system, or perhaps even a no party system where representatives do not have to declare fealty to a party and can focus on the issues the voters elected them for. What we currently have is an autocratic government, supported by plutocrats, with a capitalist economic system.

The US is described as a constitutional federal representative democracy (or constitutional republic). A republic is a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives. A constitutional republic is a republic constrained by the dictates of the constitution. Our constitution is very old and subject to broad interpretations. There is a tendency to sanctify The Constitution, but realistically it needs to be rewritten regularly to keep pace with the changing times and language and to avoid the parsing of words and misinterpretation.

What is needed are representatives who will not sell out to lobbyists; who will have a platform that includes; overturning Citizens United v’s FEC, coming up with an equitable taxation system, creating social services like universal health care, child care, elder care, providing the best education in the world for everybody, fixing the partisan nature of the Supreme Court, getting rid of the Electoral College, doing everything we can to mitigate climate catastrophe, which currently has no voice in our government. We need representatives who see their voters as being paramount, intelligent participants in the governing of our country.

(Anthony Leighton, a retired boat builder and furniture maker, is a long time resident in Anderson Valley.)

RESISTANCE 101 DOCUMENTARY TRAILER (Coming Feb. 21)

As the genocide in Gaza has continued for almost three years, Italian dockworkers have risen up to do what our governments and international institutions refuse to.

by Chris Hedges

With little hope of the genocide in Gaza subsiding, dock workers in major Italian port cities have organized strikes and large demonstrations to halt arms shipments to Israel. These actions are a direct response to the refusal of international institutions and governments around the world to confront the carnage. Though the genocide continues, the dockworkers’ industrial disruption offer us a model of resistance. Will the Italian way spread to the imperial core — and can it end the genocide?

https://youtu.be/-dHri83pclA

Correction: The trailer above advertises our scheduled livestream Q&A on the documentary as being on Feb. 21 at 7pm ET — we have changed the livestream to be on Feb. 21 (same day) at 3pm ET. Apologies for the inconvenience, and thank you for understanding.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE RAIN?

Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm
I know, it's been comin' for some time
When it's over, so they say
It'll rain a sunny day
I know, shinin' down like water

I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?
I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?
Comin' down on a sunny day

Yesterday, and days before
Sun is cold and rain is hard
I know, been that way for all my time
'Til forever, on it goes
Through the circle, fast and slow
I know, it can't stop, I wonder

I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?
I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?
Comin' down on a sunny day

— John Fogarty (1971)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I don't give a hoot or a holler what happens in Gaza. None of my affair. What I care about it what is happening here in my own Country. I've never been to Gaza. I will never go to Gaza. It doesn't concern me. What concerns me is the bankrupt state of the United States of America and what my children and grand children will inherit from us when we are dead.

THE 2028 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDERS, RANKED

by Nate Silver & John Guida

Voting has started in the 2026 midterms — in Texas, ahead of a big primary on March 3. But this year isn’t about only the midterms: Looming in the background is 2028, and the presidential “invisible primary,” when potential contenders stump for fellow partisans, form campaign teams, hop around early voting states like New Hampshire and release memoirs.

Who’s in the mix for Democrats? Nate Silver, the author of the newsletter Silver Bulletin, recently participated in a fantasy-style draft of potential 2028 Democratic contenders (with two of his former colleagues at FiveThirtyEight, Galen Druke and Clare Malone).

In a written conversation with John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion, he assessed the front-runners, the politicians and non-politicians — and what surprised him about the picks.

John Guida: You’re a big sports fan, so you know the great drama and symbolic importance of the first overall pick in a draft. Drum roll, please: The first pick was …

Nate Silver: The first pick, made by Galen Druke, was Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. But I would have taken Newsom, too. Either he or Kamala Harris is ahead in basically every poll. And he’s moved well ahead in prediction markets, which, whatever their strengths and weaknesses, are a convenient enough summary of the conventional wisdom.

But it’s important to articulate a distinction here: These are our picks based on who we think is most likely to be chosen by Democratic voters and delegates, not whom we would necessarily pick. Personally, I think Newsom is cut from the same cloth as some past losing Democratic nominees like Harris. That said, I don’t think you can sort Democrats into clean buckets of winners and losers. The 2024 election was close-ish, and I’m not sure anyone should fear the likes of JD Vance or whomever else the Republicans might nominate.

Guida: Understood. We will get to whom you would pick soon. In the meantime, how much does it matter that Newsom has drawn scathingly critical attention — and not necessarily from G.O.P. partisans. For example: “Newsom’s record as governor of California is a Republican strategist’s perfect foil” — that’s from Bret Stephens, Times columnist. At The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait and Marc Novicoff wrote that during Newsom’s tenure, the state has been “a laboratory for some of the Democratic Party’s most politically fraught policies and instincts, which has left it less affordable and more culturally radical than it used to be.”

Silver: Even if you don’t trust the polls, you can look at how people are moving with their feet. California is projected to lose four electoral votes after the next census, which will be a setback for Democrats beginning in 2032. The state’s population has flatlined, even though people are flocking to warm-weather states pretty much everywhere else. My dad grew up in Los Angeles, my grandparents moved across the country from Connecticut to live there — California once symbolized the American dream. Now it comes attached to a lot of political baggage.

Guida: The second pick also comes from a blue coastal state, New York: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She was followed by Pete Buttigieg, the former Biden transportation secretary. Maybe we can bring in some broader context here in terms of how you size up the Democratic Party at the moment. You laid out a taxonomy of three factions within the party: Why those three, and how do you see them shaping the invisible primary, if indeed you do?

Silver: Some of this comes from something I was having trouble making sense of at first. If you look at, for instance, The Times’s interview with the podcast host Jennifer Welch, she’s absolutely furious at the Democratic “establishment.” Her show is called “I’ve Had It.” And yet she seems to be a big fan of Newsom, and of Kamala Harris, which is about as establishment as it gets. So I don’t think it’s as simple as there being just a left-versus-right or establishment-versus-outsider axis. You need to work along a few dimensions here.

The one thing pretty much all Democrats agree upon after 2024 is that the party needs to change course. And there are three different solutions to that. The left-populists think, well, the party needs to be more populist, especially on economic issues and “affordability,” inspired by Ocasio-Cortez and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York. Then there’s what I call the “abundance libs.” The name is slightly fraught because it comes from the book written by Ezra Klein of The Times and Derek Thompson, and I think the label has come to be used in ways they wouldn’t necessarily endorse. But it’s become the brand associated with people who think the party ought to move to the center, with “smart” economic policies and perhaps following public opinion more on culture war issues.

That leaves the third faction, the “Resistance libs,” which might actually be the majority faction. They usually attribute Democrats’ problems in 2024 to poor messaging or the failure to take on Donald Trump aggressively enough. They want a fighter. And Newsom plays expertly into that. They actually think the party’s platform is totally fine, though — it’s hard to identify any real differences between Newsom and Harris. Or maybe they think the same message would win if it were articulated by a white man rather than a Black woman; there’s some of that subtext here, too.

Guida: How would you apply that taxonomy to Ocasio-Cortez and Buttigieg?

Silver: Oh, Ocasio-Cortez is definitely a populist. And she might have that lane to herself. There are two other highly successful politicians from this group, but they’re Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and not eligible to run for president, and Bernie Sanders, who at 84 is even older than Joe Biden. Ocasio-Cortez’s recent international trip suggests that she wants to broaden her profile, but as inequality worsens, especially at the very top of the scale, as affordability remains a perpetual concern, this is arguably a more valuable message than it has been in a long time.

I also wonder, by the way, how A.I. plays into all of this if the timelines are even half as fast as Silicon Valley expects. I’ve argued, as has The Times’s Ross Douthat, that concerns about mass job loss at the same time tech valuations are increasing exponentially could be a very good issue for the left, even if they’ve been unduly dismissive of A.I. up to this point.

Meanwhile, Buttigieg is iconically in the abundance libs faction. He presents himself as a smart technocrat with a little bit of a crossover biography (gay, but married, from Indiana, former naval officer, etc.). However, he also borrows a little bit from the Newsom playbook in being quick on his feet and willing to punch back, albeit in more highbrow ways than with the occasional ALL-CAPS POSTS.

Guida: Here are the full results of the draft, and then we can continue in categories:

(1) Newsom; (2) Ocasio-Cortez; (3) Buttigieg; (4) Gretchen Whitmer; (5) Ruben Gallego; (6) Josh Shapiro; (7) Wes Moore; (8) Harris; (9) Cory Booker; (10) Raphael Warnock; (11) Jon Ossoff; (12) Mark Kelly; (13) Jon Stewart; (14) J.B. Pritzker; (15) Andy Beshear; (16) Ro Khanna; (17) Amy Klobuchar; (18) Chris Murphy.

There were six Democratic governors selected. Two of them — Whitmer of Michigan and Shapiro of Pennsylvania — represent swing states. Only one (Beshear of Kentucky) leads a red state. Did anything surprise you about this group — perhaps that Whitmer was the second one taken, since it is not so clear that she is interested in running?

Silver: There’s been a huge debate in the party about whether moderation or progressivism is the way to electoral success. I’m on the side that says the evidence pretty clearly lines up with moderation — other things being equal, which often they aren’t. But what really ought to be the best demonstration of electability is, well, actually having won elections — ideally by comfortable margins in purple states that will be key in the Electoral College, or even red states, as in the case of Beshear. Whitmer and Shapiro have that. Some of the senators, like Gallego, have it too.

But for whatever reason, I don’t think this definition of electability is selling to the electorate. It’s really been a long time since Democrats nominated someone who was a clear electoral overperformer. You’d have to go back to Bill Clinton, although Barack Obama won by a very large margin in his only Senate race in Illinois.

Guida: What stood out for you among the members of Congress?

Silver: I should also have mentioned Warnock and Ossoff, Georgia’s two senators, above. In 2024, Georgia moved even closer to what we call the electoral tipping point — the state most likely to be decisive in the Electoral College. Ossoff has generated significant buzz since we did the draft a few weeks ago and would probably rank even higher now. He’s the rare case of someone who might be acceptable to all three factions, combative but with some electability credentials, progressive but not “too” progressive.

I’m not sure what to make of the comparative lack of Latino candidates, or for that matter, Asian American candidates. But these are groups that were generally moving away from the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. It’s been in Georgia, where Democrats have relied on a coalition of Black voters and suburban whites, where their numbers have held up among the best.

Guida: Only one nonpolitician was in the mix: Jon Stewart. Did that surprise you, given the success of Donald Trump in the G.O.P.? Other non-politician names have been mentioned elsewhere: Stephen A. Smith, Mark Cuban, Stephen Colbert?

Silver: If we were doing this a year ago, I’d have been more bullish on the non-politicians. But I think we’ve found that Democrats like Newsom, Ossoff and Ocasio-Cortez are pretty good at grabbing attention on their own, in ways that play more organically into political news cycles. And so there isn’t necessarily that much demand for celebrity-type outsiders among the primary electorate.

There’s also the fact that the president to be elected with basically the least government experience in American history is Donald Trump, and I’m not sure how eager Democrats should or will be to emulate that. Plus, some of these guys may be a little out of their depth when it comes to the substance. Stewart recently drew a lot of criticism for his lack of understanding of Economics 101 concepts in his interview with the Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler.

Guida: So you think Democrats will be picking from a pool of largely conventional political candidates — and yet the party itself is strikingly unpopular. Do you see that as a problem, or do you think adjustments around some cultural issues and the strong counterreaction to a Trumpist G.O.P. will drive the Democratic primary?

Silver: I do want to be clear that, even if I think someone like Newsom is a suboptimal choice, I’d probably give him a 50-50 chance of winning in 2028. Two big things are behind that.

First, incumbents have been in a very bad way in the United States and around the world for several cycles now. It might almost be an advantage to be the party out of power.

And second, I expect Republicans to have a lot of trouble agreeing on a candidate who is not Donald Trump. They’ve done quite badly in the Trump era in nonpresidential elections, from the 2018 midterms (and probably this year’s, too) to off-cycle and special elections. I don’t expect “marginal” voters (people who don’t always vote) to walk over glass for, say, JD Vance, the way they did for Trump. And yet Vance has some of Trump’s liabilities and maybe not as much of his political talent.

Guida: Let’s get to how you, personally, see it. If you were picking for yourself, who would be in your top five?

Silver: I don’t want to be too prescriptive here. But I’d say, from the list of 18 candidates we drafted, here are the ones who have a track record of electoral overperformance: Whitmer, Gallego, Shapiro, Warnock, Ossoff, Kelly, Beshear, Klobuchar. If you want to limit it to five, I’d just take the first five. Kelly has less charisma than the others (subjective, I know), Beshear will probably read as too much of an outright Joe Manchin-y centrist, and Klobuchar seems unlikely to run in 2028 as she’d be just two years into her first gubernatorial term (should she win this November).

Guida: David Axelrod has a theory about how voters choose a president. As he put it, “Open-seat presidential elections are shaped by perceptions of the style and personality of the outgoing incumbent. Voters rarely seek the replica of what they have. They almost always seek the remedy, the candidate who has the personal qualities the public finds lacking in the departing executive.”

We have one recent model where Trump was the sitting president, which is Joe Biden: a return to normalcy, etc. Do you see anyone in this pool of potential candidates who could be the remedy in 2028?

Silver: I basically agree with that, but I think candidates tend more to follow zigzag patterns. They’re sort of moving at perpendicular, 90-degree angles, not doing a full 180. On the one hand, they want to turn away from the failures of the previous incumbent president. On the other hand, they want to present something new and different and to also escape from the ghosts (or at least the failed nominees) of their own party’s past. Biden was maybe an unusual case in being so “retro,” and also drawing on some nostalgia for Obama. And he wrapped up the nomination very quickly after struggling in the first few states, just as Covid exploded in the United States and Democrats were in a risk-averse mood (and party leaders like James Clyburn weighed in heavily on his behalf).

But I wouldn’t say Biden had a particularly successful presidency. Which means the “return to normal” messaging would be a harder sell this time.

AND SO WE FIND OURSELVES, once again, on the eve of a war which lacks any basis in the laws of our nation or the global community.

Iran is not a threat to the national security of the United States, or allies, or the world.

It is Iran that has complied with every lawful demand made on it regarding its peaceful nuclear program.

But, as had been the case with Iraq and the manufactured case for war centered on weapons of mass destruction that did not exist, Iran is being condemned based upon a manufactured case for war centered on a nuclear weapons program that does not exist.

— Scott Ritter

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HOWARD SKILLINGTON:

There is no plausible scenario in which the US benefits from a large-scale attack on Iran. Iran would almost certainly block the Strait of Hormuz, send oil prices sky high, wreck our economy, and send the shaky market over the brink.

Iran is also quite capable of sinking our antiquated aircraft carriers, along with thousands of our troops – bearing in mind that the American public is traumatized when our persistent military mischief making occasionally causes us to lose even a handful.

Any of the above would forfeit any chance of the Elephants winning the midterm elections, instantly making Trump an ineffectual lame duck for the remainder of his term.

Against all of this, what benefit would the US enjoy in the improbable event of an easy, low-cost victory over Iran? Nothing much. Why, then, is this idiotic exercise proceeding? Who on earth can have the power to make the United States of America risk all for their sole benefit? Israel, of course.

Is there anything that can break their lethal hold on our geopolitics and free us to pursue our best interests? This may be it. Either this exercise fizzles out and looses us from Israel’s thrall, or our nation suffers a lethal self-inflicted wound while a tiny, insignificant country in the Middle East laughs at our demise.

THE SUICIDAL FOLLY OF A WAR WITH IRAN

by Chris Hedges

The U.S. Navy's Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group (Photo by Tajh Payne/US Navy via Getty Images)

The Laurel and Hardy negotiating team of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, coupled with Trump’s appalling ignorance of world affairs and megalomania, seem set to push the U.S. into yet another debacle in the Middle East, one the Congress has not approved, and the public does not want.

The demands imposed on Iran by the Trump White House are no more acceptable to the regime in Tehran than those imposed on Hamas in Gaza under Trump’s sham peace plan.

Trump’s demand that Iran shut down its nuclear program and give up its missile capabilities in return for no new sanctions is as tone deaf as calling on Hamas to disarm in Gaza. But since we have long dispensed with diplomats, who are linguistically, politically and culturally literate, who can step into the shoes of their adversaries, we are being led to another war in the Middle East by our newest coterie of buffoons. The U.S. and Israel foolishly believe they can bomb their way to decapitating the Iranian government and installing a client regime. That this non-reality-based belief system failed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya eludes them.

The promise of no new sanctions will not incentivize Iran to broker an agreement. Iran is already crippled by onerous sanctions that have gutted its economy. This will do nothing to break the economic stranglehold. Iran will not give up its nuclear program, which has the potential to be weaponized, or its ballistic missile program, which Israel said it would target in an air attack. Israel’s reputed nuclear arsenal of some 300 warheads is a powerful incentive for Iran to retain the capacity to build a nuclear arsenal of its own. Iran, like Hamas, is never going to render itself defenseless against those seeking its annihilation.

An aerial attack on Iran will not be like the 12-day assault last June against Iran’s nuclear facilities and state and security facilities. Then Iran calibrated its response with symbolic strikes on Al Udeid air base in Qatar in the hopes that it would not lead to a wider, protracted conflict. If an aerial assault is launched, Iran will have nothing to lose. It will understand that appeasing its adversaries is impossible.

Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Afghanistan. Iran is not Lebanon. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Syria. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is the seventeenth largest country in the world, with a land mass equivalent to the size of Western Europe. It has a population of almost 90 million — 10 times greater than Israel — and its military resources, as well as alliances with China and Russia, make it a formidable opponent.

Despite Iran’s relative military weakness, when set against the combined forces of the U.S. and Israel, it can inflict a lot of damage. It will do this as swiftly as possible. Hundreds of American troops will likely be killed. Iran will certainly shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil chokepoint that facilitates the passage of 20 percent of the world’s oil supply. This will double or triple the price of oil and devastate the global economy. It will target oil installations along with U.S. ships and military bases in the region.

Mounting losses and a huge spike in oil prices will provide the fodder for Trump, and his vile counterpart in Israel, to ignite a sustained regional war.

This is the cost of being governed by imbeciles. God help us.

(chrishedges.substack.com)

DOES IT SMELL LIKE VICTORY?

"We're either gonna get a deal or it's gonna be unfortunate for them.” — POTUS Donald Trump

by James Kunstler

The message seems to be something like the USA isn’t messing around with all those strike forces in the waters around Iran. The Islamic Republic suddenly looks like Rock-and-Hard-Place-Land. Everybody and his uncle are trying to figure out the calculus in play, World War Three or a happy ending?

You’re seeing the most significant US military build-up over there in memory. Smells a little bit like first Gulf War, 1991 — minus all those allies we roped in then. Mr. Trump (via Marco Rubio) has read Euroland out on this one. We are in a cold war with those birds, in case you haven’t noticed. The UK, France, Germany & Co.? They are as crazy as the ladies of The View and their millions of Cluster-B followers.

Euroland is yet in thrall to the climate nutters, the farm-and-industry-destroyers, the one-worlders, the Jihad-migrationists the floundering banksters, and the Klaus Schwab wannabes. Euroland seeks to throttle free speech throughout Western Civ and meddle in everyone’s elections. Euroland keeps mouthing off about a war with Russia despite having no military mojo and going broke-ass broke faster than you can say Götterdämmerung. Bottom line: the US is going solo on this one.

What is the objective? Ostensibly “a deal” over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Like, just cut it out, will you, please? By the way, did you know that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa sin 2005 saying production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons was forbidden under Islam. But then deception is allowed in Islam under the doctrine of taqiyya, against the threat of attack from hostile forces,

I’m sure you remember Operation Midnight Hammer in June last year when we attacked and supposedly “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear research and development bunkers at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan? They got pretty banged-up, you may be sure, and nobody in Iran denied there was something nukey going on in those installations. Is there a will there to rebuild the whole darn infrastructure of uranium enrichment and so forth?

The mullahs are not saying, which means: of course, they intend to continue developing nuclear weapons — and even if that’s a stupid and futile gambit, given recent history, they still have factories churning out plain old long-range ballistic missiles and new drones by the thousands. Let’s face it: the mullahs are hardcore for Jihad and martyrdom. Since being elevated to Supreme Leader in 1989, Ayatollah Khamenei has sought relentlessly to transform the traditional Islamic concept of Jihad and establish it as the central pillar of the regime’s ideology.

Are we doing Israel’s bidding there? (Cue: roar of affirmation.) But then, Israel has a point. Iran has been cuckoo for going on forty years. If Israel wasn’t a target of the mullahs’ eternal Shia wrath, there are their other enemies, the Sunni, on the west side of the Persian Gulf (and next door in Iraq). And consider, too, Iran’s obdurate sponsorship of Jihad, wherever possible, both within and outside the Ummah — including especially Western Civ, where low-grade Jihad has been going on for over a decade. . . mass murders, rape gangs, beheadings, trucks through the Christmas markets. . . .

Okay, if Euroland is out, what about the other big dogs, Russia and China. Will they just stand by and let the US have its wicked way with Iran? Russia sent a corvette-class naval vessel down to the Straits of Hormuz for a joint operation with Iran’s navy, but what does that mean? Probably not much more than occupational therapy. Besides, Mr. Trump is just now promising to bring Russia “out from the cold” of all those onerous economic sanctions. . . to begin the process of normalizing relations. You might doubt that Russia wants to blow that for Iran’s sake.

And, while it is somewhat out of the news due to the Epstein stink-bomb, and the deepness of mid-winter, there is still a war going on over in Ukraine. Which is to say, the Russians have their hands full in their own back-yard and might, perhaps, be hesitant about piling-on in Iran. And, let’s just suppose that the US objective is actually regime change in Iran. Would Russia be indisposed if the mullahs got kicked out of power? I doubt it. Russia has longstanding annoying issues with Islamic factions distributed throughout their adjoining former Soviet republics. Russia does not need Jihad. Russia might actually live more comfortably with Iran under a secular government, tilting a bit more western in temperament. Just sayin’. . . .

China has more urgent concerns with Iran. China gets around 13-percent of its oil imports from Iran, and it enjoys a three to four percent discount on it. Regime change or war that could damage Iran’s oil terminals would be bad news for China. But then, China is at a long geographic remove from Iran, and China is not used to conducting military adventures so far from home, so don’t expect much assistance there. China’s other option would be to start a kerfuffle over Taiwan to distract and divert the US. We’ll just have to see about that. Uncle Xi Jinping has been busy lately sacking the upper echelons of his own military leadership. Are they even ready for action? Plus, China’s economy is wobbly. Consider also: has the US given China assurances of continued oil imports from Iran if it steers clear of the situation there?

What are we operationally capable of over in Iran with all our warships, fighter jets, and other stuff? I don’t know. . . and neither do you. Looks impressive, but a couple of Sunburn-type missiles landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln could produce a profound instant attitude adjustment. Perhaps President Trump, WarSec Hegseth, and StateSec Rubio have more refined plans for disarming Iran and surgically removing the cuckoo-birds in charge. Our guys are certainly acting confident. But then in geopolitics confidence is best friends with hubris. And hubris generally precedes clusterfuck. The art of the deal is not for sissies.

(kunstler.com)

HOW DID WE WIND UP WITH THIS DUNCE?

by Andy Borowitz

Presidents’ Day was a painful reminder of the monumental dunce currently residing in the Oval Office.

Some of you might be asking: how did we get here?

This is the subject of my most recent book, ‘Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber.’

Imagine a hypothetical job applicant. He can’t spell the simplest words, such as “heal” and “tap.” Confused by geography, he thinks there’s an African country called “Nambia.” As for American history, he’s under the impression that Andrew Jackson, who died in 1845, was angry about the Civil War, and that Frederick Douglass, who died in 1895, is still alive.

Given the alarming state of his knowledge, you might wonder what job he could get. Unfortunately, he’s not hypothetical, and the job he got, in 2016, was president of the United States.

People sometimes call our nation “the American experiment.” Recently, though, we’ve been lab rats in another, perverse American experiment, seemingly designed to answer this question: Who’s the most ignorant person the United States is willing to elect?

Over the past fifty years, what some of our most prominent politicians didn’t know could fill a book. This is that book.

This book will also examine what brought our country to such a stupid place. We’ll retrace the steps of the vacuous pioneers who turned ignorance from a liability into a virtue. By relentlessly lowering the bar, they made it possible for today’s politicians to wear their dunce caps with pride. Gone are the days when leaders had to hide how much they didn’t know. Now cluelessness is an electoral asset and smart politicians must play dumb, or risk voters’ wrath. Welcome to the survival of the dimmest.

Maybe you’re thinking, “So what? We’ve always had dumb politicians.” That’s undeniably true; as the political satirist Will Rogers said, “It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.” When I was growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, I struggled to find a politician I could take seriously. In 1972, our mayor, Ralph J. Perk (his actual name), presided over a trade expo for the American Society for Metals. There was a metals-themed opening ceremony, requiring the mayor to cut a titanium ribbon with a welding torch. As Perk held the fire-spewing tool, sparks flew skyward and set his hair ablaze. The incident, which, thankfully, is available on YouTube, inspired mocking headlines around the world. It also reinforced Cleveland’s unfortunate reputation for flammability: three years earlier, our polluted Cuyahoga River had spontaneously combusted.

Perhaps the hair-on-fire incident was Ralph J. Perk’s version of the Icarus myth, a cautionary tale about what happens when a politician flies too close to a welding torch. Like Icarus, Perk came crashing to Earth. In 1974, Ohio’s voters rejected his bid to serve in the U.S. Senate and chose someone less likely to be flummoxed by technology: the astronaut John Glenn. Perk received hair transplants at the Cleveland Clinic in 1976 to repair the bald spot the torch had created, but by then his political career had been singed beyond repair. He did have one other notable achievement as mayor: Richard Eberling, a man he hired in 1973 to redecorate Cleveland’s city hall, was later convicted of homicide and linked to another murder— the one that inspired the TV series and movie The Fugitive. Perk’s historic role as a job creator for suspected serial killers hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. I hope I’ve fixed that.

Perk’s political career collapsed in 1977 with a humiliating third-place finish in Cleveland’s nonpartisan mayoral primary, a result I found reassuring. I believed his downfall proved democracy had a braking system. If a politician was too big a doofus, the brakes would keep us from hurtling off a cliff. But on Election Night 2016, it felt like the brakes were shot.

As the Trump nightmare unfolded, well-meaning people tried to soothe a rattled nation by arguing that he was no dumber than some of our previous dumb presidents. In this valiant attempt to pretend the hellscape enveloping us was nothing new, they cited a bygone commander in chief reputed to be one of our densest: Warren G. Harding. It’s true that our twenty-ninth president would never have been put in charge of designing the next generation of supercolliders. After Harding’s inaugural address in 1921, H. L. Mencken wrote, “No other such complete and dreadful nitwit is to be found in the pages of American history.” Mencken should’ve added, “. . . so far.”

People have pilloried Harding’s campaign slogan, “A Return to Normalcy,” for which he allegedly coined the word “normalcy” when a perfectly good actual word, “normality,” already existed. But, according to Merriam-Webster, “normalcy” first appeared a decade before Harding was born, in a mathematical dictionary published in 1855. Now, it’s true that Harding did our language no favors by popularizing “normalcy,” a word almost as annoying as “impactful,” but he was a slacker compared to Trump, whose mutilation of English could fill a non-word-a-day calendar. Out of fairness, I’ll exclude from discussion the much-mocked “covfefe,” which was probably just a late-night typo, and draw your attention to remarks he made at the Pentagon in 2019, when he seemed to invent a new military term, “infantroopen.” Based on my research, there are no prior appearances of “infantroopen” in any dictionary, mathematical or otherwise.

Of course, Harding’s bad reputation stems from more than one iffy word. His presidency birthed a profusion of controversies, most notoriously the Teapot Dome corruption scandal, long considered second only to Watergate in its infamy. (Proof that Watergate was worse: “dome” never became a suffix.) But how much blame Harding should shoulder for Teapot Dome has been debated. In 2004, Watergate celeb John Dean published a biography in which he argued that Harding “had done nothing wrong and had not been involved in any criminal activities.” Whether you agree with that verdict or not, it’s hard to get too worked up over Teapot Dome once you’ve seen a president urge a mob wearing fur pelts and face paint to storm the Capitol.

When you review some of Harding’s presidential initiatives, comparisons to Trump seem even less apt. Harding supported a federal anti-lynching law and proposed a commission to investigate not only lynching but the disenfranchisement of Black voters. On October 26, 1921, he advocated racial equality in a major civil rights speech in Birmingham, Alabama. “Whether you like it or not, our democracy is a lie unless you stand for that equality,” he declared. For a guy Mencken called a nitwit, he was far more enlightened than the person who, in the aftermath of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, said that there were “very fine people on both sides.”(It’s also possible that Mencken didn’t think one’s support for racial equality was desirable, since his posthumously published diary revealed him to be racist, anti-Semitic, and pro-Nazi. In other words, a very fine person.)

One quality Harding and Trump have in common: neither excelled at monogamy. But, even here, Harding wins. In 2014, the Library of Congress released letters he wrote to his lover, Carrie Fulton Phillips, containing florid passages such as this: “I love you more than all the world and have no hope of reward on earth or hereafter so precious as that in your dear arms, in your thrilling lips, in your matchless breasts, in your incomparable embrace.” It’s hard to imagine Trump writing something so heartfelt to Stormy Daniels, or a sentence that long.

I’ve saved the best about Harding for last: unlike our forty-fifth president, he knew his limitations. He once lamented, “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.” Though this comment would be a far more accurate assessment of Trump than “stable genius,” I can’t picture the Donald engaging in such introspection—or, as he might say, introspectroopen.

Although Harding has the dubious distinction of being smarter than Trump—pretty much the dictionary definition of faint praise—both belong to a tradition that we Americans shouldn’t be proud of: our habit of installing dim bulbs in the White House. There’s a long history of anti-intellectualism in American life, a point that the historian Richard Hofstadter seemed to be making in his 1963 book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. It wasn’t a good sign when the eloquent abolitionist John Quincy Adams lost the 1828 presidential election to the homicidal maniac Andrew Jackson. (“Old Hickory,” who was neither stable nor a genius, challenged more than a hundred men to duels. He killed only one, but still.)

Over the next thirty years, the nation endured a presidential clown parade. In 1856, ex-president Millard Fillmore ran for the White House under the banner of a new, nativist party, the exquisitely named Know-Nothings. Fillmore and his running mate, Andrew Jackson Donelson (the homicidal maniac’s nephew), believed that there was nothing wrong with America that persecuting all its German, Irish, and Catholic immigrants couldn’t fix. As dumb as Fillmore sounds, the winner on Election Day might have been even dumber: James “Old Buck” Buchanan. Though Buchanan failed to avert the Civil War, he sprang into action to defuse a military confrontation with the British over the shooting of a solitary pig in Canada. (This skirmish actually happened; google “Pig War.”) The following year, the American people seemed to say, “Enough of this bullshit,” and elected Abraham Lincoln.

Yes, our Statue of Stupidity has held her torch high over the years. But she’s held it even higher over the past fifty, during the so-called Information Age. By elevating candidates who can entertain over those who can think, mass media have made the election of dunces more likely. Fact-free and nuance-intolerant, these human sound-bite machines have reduced our most complex problems to binary oppositions: us versus communists; us versus terrorists; and that latest crowd-pleaser, us versus scientists. Interestingly, Hofstadter thought that the first televised presidential debates, in 1960, were a positive development, because they benefited John F. Kennedy, who, he believed, combined intelligence with on-screen command. But the historian didn’t live to see how TV, tag-teaming with its demented henchman the Internet, could boost candidates who were geniuses about those media and dopes about everything else. What happens when you combine ignorance with performing talent? A president who tells the country to inject bleach.

Hofstadter thought things started going downhill for us in the 1720s, when the preachers of the Great Awakening upstaged the learned clergy of the Puritans with bizarre theatrics: “fits and seizures. . . shrieks and groans and grovelings.” Neil Postman, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, argued that this dumbing-down process exploded during the nineteenth century, when we started reading fewer books because we were going bonkers over two wild new inventions: photography and the telegraph. Clearly, ignorance in America has had kind of a running start. Since this trend has been centuries in the making, why am I even bothering to single out a few dimwits from our recent past? I’m writing this book as a concerned citizen, reporting a ghastly multicar pileup to other concerned citizens. Just as a Stephen King novel might inspire you to bolt your doors, perhaps these political horror stories will rouse you to action. Alternatively, if someday alien scientists are picking through the rubble of our fallen civilization and happen upon a tattered copy of this book, maybe it’ll help them piece together what went wrong.

Since I’ll be arguing that politicians’ ignorance has been surging over the past five decades, I should clarify what I mean by ignorance. The dictionary defines it as “the lack of knowledge, education or awareness.” That works for me, only I might add “the refusal to look things up in the dictionary.” When discussing a politician, I’ll refrain from using words such as idiot, imbecile, cretin, or any other equally tempting term that impugns mental capacity rather than knowledge. I might say “dunce,” because that connotes a failure to do one’s homework, a problem that has plagued a few recent presidents. I also like “ignoramus,” which the dictionary defines as “an utterly ignorant person.” Ignoramus is a word you don’t hear much these days, which is too bad because it applies so well to so many. If, in writing this book, I somehow bring the word ignoramus back into vogue, I’ll consider my work on this planet done. (A caveat: If other people have called a politician an idiot, imbecile, cretin, etc., I’ll be obliged to quote them. The historical record must be preserved.)

I’ll resist the urge to speculate about a politician’s IQ or cognitive health. I might be dazzled by a person’s ability to remember the nouns “person, woman, man, camera, TV” and repeat them on command, but, as a non-neurologist, I’m not qualified to say what this monumental achievement says about one’s acuity. Neither will I try to assess a politician’s mental stability, since I think it’s safe to assume that most people who run for president are, to some extent, out of their fucking minds. Instead, I’ll ask: During their time in public life, what did these politicians know? Did they have sufficient mastery of math, science, history, geography—and, since I’m being picky, the English language—necessary to govern? When briefed, could they learn? At the very least, did they know not to stare at a solar eclipse?

My preference that politicians be educated probably brands me as an elitist. I’m fine with that. I consider myself the Ted Nugent of elitism. But being an elitist doesn’t make me a snob—hear me out, there’s a difference. When I say “educated,” I want politicians to have the knowledge required to do their jobs well, or at least not to get us all killed. I don’t care where, or even whether, a politician went to college. Harry Truman wasn’t a college graduate, and he probably took some solace in knowing that a predecessor of his, George Washington, wasn’t, either. It’s possible to become a great president with no more than twelve months of grade school—an educational background that Abraham Lincoln, being honest and all, would have had to disclose on LinkedIn.

I don’t care much about the grades a politician got in school because they’re not a reliable predictor of governing ability. Franklin Delano Roosevelt somehow managed to lead the nation out of the Great Depression and to victory in World War II despite his C average, a GPA that today would keep him from getting an interview at McKinsey. What made Roosevelt a successful president, among other gifts, was his intellectual curiosity, which enabled him to absorb vast amounts of information necessary to resolve unprecedented crises. When severe drought created the Dust Bowl, he had a lot to learn; he couldn’t fall back on his high school experience at Model Dust Bowl. I want the president of the United States to be intellectually curious for a simple reason: I think the person running the country should be smarter than I am. We’ve just lived through the alternative, and it was only good for the liquor industry.

How can we tell if a politician is intellectually curious? Reading habits are a good place to start. Truman might not have gone to college, but as a kid he tried to devour every library book in Independence, Missouri. As I profile presidents, I’ll examine how much they enjoyed, or even tolerated, the act of reading. Why? Well, there’s something called the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), an intelligence summary that, true to its name, lands on the president’s desk every day. It’s true to its name in another way: It’s literally brief, often just a page or two. Yet to some recent recipients it seemed like War and Peace.

The only known instance of George W. Bush reading.

To believe that Trump’s presidency came out of nowhere, without warning, is the political version of creationism. I, on the other hand, believe in devolution. The election of a serially bankrupt, functionally illiterate reality TV host was the logical consequence of the five decades preceding it, which, with apologies to Edith Wharton, I’ll call the Age of Ignorance. How did the bar for our political figures fall so far? To better understand this heinous half century, I’ve divided it into the Three Stages of Ignorance: Ridicule, Acceptance, and Celebration.

During the Ridicule stage, ignorance was a magnet for mockery, a serious flaw that could kill a political career. Consequently, dumb politicians had to pretend to be smart. I’ll profile two politicians who navigated this perilous stage with radically different outcomes: Ronald Reagan, whose gift as a TV performer helped hide his cluelessness, and Dan Quayle, who shared Reagan’s cluelessness but not his knack for hiding it.

During the Acceptance stage, ignorance mutated into something more agreeable: a sign that a politician was authentic, down-to-earth, and a “normal person.” Consequently, dumb politicians felt free to appear dumb. In this stage, I’ll profile George W. Bush, who made ignorance his brand, and Sarah Palin, who made it her business model.

Finally, during the Celebration stage—the ordeal we’re enduring right now—ignorance has become preferable to knowledge, dunces are exalted over experts, and a candidate can win a seat in Congress after blaming wildfires on Jewish space lasers. Being ill-informed is now a litmus test; consequently, smart politicians must pretend to be dumb. I’ll profile the ultimate embodiment of this stage, Donald J. Trump, and Trump wannabes such as Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis—who, despite being graduates of our nation’s finest universities, strenuously try to outdumb him.

The solidly Republican cast of this tragicomedy might prompt you to ask (especially if you’re a Republican): Haven’t Democrats done a lot of dumb crap? Yes, bucketloads. Democrats have been caught on tape smoking crack (Marion Barry) and trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat (Rod Blagojevich). And we shan’t forget the Four Horndogs of the Apocalypse—John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, and Andrew Cuomo—who, though seemingly endowed with functioning brains, let a different body part do their thinking.

But while Democratic dopes have wreaked their share of havoc, the scale of their destruction doesn’t equal that of their Republican counterparts. Once Democrats gin up a two-trillion-dollar war to find nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, ignore and then politicize a virus that causes nearly a million needless deaths, and attempt a violent overthrow of the U.S. government, I’ll get cracking on a book about them. Until then, I’ll recognize them for what they are: supporting players in our national pageant of stupidity, but not towering icons like George W. Bush or Donald J. Trump.

After reading these profiles in ignorance, you might decide that the bar couldn’t possibly go lower. Well, sorry. The bar can always go lower. On the plus side, history doesn’t move in a straight line. After the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, the Dark Ages must’ve seemed pretty bleak—but, before you knew it, it was the Renaissance, and everyone was singing madrigals and painting frescoes. The lesson is clear: while the bar can always go lower, it can also go higher, as long as you’re willing to wait a few centuries.

But I’m not recommending that we sit around waiting for our present Dark Ages to pass. Given what’s at stake—things I’ve grown partial to, like a habitable planet—we need to find an off-ramp from this idiotic highway before it’s too late. In my last chapter, I’ll explore a possible route.

One final point. For the past twenty years or so, I’ve written a column in which I’ve made up news stories for the purpose of satire. In this book, I’ve made nothing up. All the events I’m about to describe actually happened. They’re a part of American history. Unfortunately.

*Whiskey Barrels* (1945) by Thomas Hart Benton

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Harvey Reading February 21, 2026

He was booked into Santa Rita Jail

Santa Rita. The name brings back memories of my time at UC Berkeley during the various demonstrations that were occurring around me in the late 60s-early 70s (Peoples’ Park, Vietnam War, Cambodia, etc). Lotsa demonstrators got to know the place intimately, since it was a favorite drop-off point for the “blue meanies” of the Alameda County Sheriff’s office…who had a reputation that was much worse among demonstrators than that of other agencies. In a way, they were comparable to the ICE picks of today, I guess.

Harvey Reading February 21, 2026

INLAND RATEPAYERS RUE CONSOLIDATION OF WATER DISTRICTS

Part of the price paid for overpopulation of human monkeys. Time to get it down to carrying capacity of the natural habitat for the rapacious species. Do it before things get even worse for ya! If you destroy habitat, you pay the price!

bharper February 21, 2026

I have sold all the onions already.

Bill

James Tippett February 21, 2026

“How did we wind up with this dunce?”
Very simple: Democrats arming and collaborating in the Gaza genocide, carried live on Americans’ cell phones. Harris’s arrogant “I’m talking here!” In response to young people protesting Israel’s lethal ethnic cleansing. Young liberal voters, faced with their leaders’ complicity and a deafening silence as the bodies of slaughtered children piled up, just stayed home. The DNC even spiked their own post mortem to avoid taking responsibility for their moral failure. My guess is the Democrats are hoping the Dunce and his toadies will leave the Nation in such shambles that Democrats can waltz in without taking any responsibility for what their own failures enabled, machinations on machinations, the American people left twisting in the wind…

- Joseph Turri February 21, 2026
  
  “How did we wind up with this dunce?”
  While I object to your premise (“dunce”) the answer is quite simple, an election.
  
  - gary smith February 22, 2026
    
    He’s a dunce alright. He just revealed that he doesn’t know where the Great Salt Lake is and that’s just the latest of a long list of things he is ignorant of.
    
Harvey Reading February 21, 2026

This is the cost of being governed by imbeciles. God help us.

If it even exists why would it help us, of all people? We are the biggest bunch of thugs on the planet, along with being the most sanctimonious.

Morgan Baynham February 21, 2026

Reading the AVA this morning reminded me just how small this county really is, and how short our time here can be. I was so sad to learn of Gary and Yvonne Niesen’s tragic accident on Covelo Road.

I only knew Gary for a short time, but it meant a lot to me.

In 1983, I was struggling to make payments on my first logging truck and our first house. Logging was slow, and I needed steady work to keep up. Out of desperation, Jack Campbell Logging out of Covelo took a job on Mountain View Road and needed trucks. Laura and I were living in Boonville then, with my truck parked right in our driveway.

One day Gary came knocking on our front door, asking if I needed work. I sure did.

Gary was the truck boss for Campbell at the time. The crew was camped out on the Piper Ranch for the season. That job carried us through a tough stretch, and over that season our friendship grew. Gary would often come by for dinner. He talked about Yvonne and the pies she made. Laura baked plenty of apple pies for Gary and the crew that year.

Later, when Laura worked as the school nurse in Covelo for many years, she got to know Yvonne too.

What a loss. Just good, good people.

- peter boudoures February 21, 2026
  
  That’s a great story. Thank you for sharing it
  
- George Hollister February 21, 2026
  
  Morgan, lots of history there with many names. That job on the Piper Ranch put food on tables at a time when the timber economy was in a tough place. Good to hear of your connection to the Niesen’s. May they rest in peace.
  
Jim Armstrong February 21, 2026

Hopefully there will come a time in the near future when you run out of Hunter Thompson quotes.

Where is any hope that Trump, cornered in so many ways, will not start a war with Iran that may be World War Three?

- Paul Modic February 22, 2026
  
  The Big Sur story by HST was good…
  Haven’t read the Big Sur weed story yet but looks like fun…
  Yeah, sometimes there’s just not enough time or motivation
  to read all of those looooooooooong ones by HST, though the Nixon one was entertaining…

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