How many times do the people of Healdsburg have to pound home the same message of what the overwhelming majority of us support before SMART sees that?

Steve Villano

32 minutes ago

(I’ve been around government, worked for government agencies, and advocated for progressive causes and issues—especially mass transit, environmental protection, and affordable energy and housing, for more than five decades. As a former State Official in New York, responsible for the integrity of a Governor’s office as well as for the that of numerous State agencies, I am acutely aware of the critical need for government, public agencies and public officials—who believe in the importance of public service and good government—to protect and nurture the public’s trust in our work.

Perhaps the biggest failure of “liberal” government—my favorite kind—is to get out of its’ own way, and to listen to the people whose best interests it claims to have at the core of every action. “Independent” Federal, State or local agencies—like the Metropolitan Transportation Agency in NY, the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART) in SF and the East Bay, and the SMART Train Agency in the North Bay area, are perhaps the biggest violators of this fundamental rule of democracies. They are quasi-government agencies whose leadership is not elected but appointed—even if through legislation, passed by elected officials—which CREATES the appointed “public” board.

While appointed officials—even if they are, or were elected officials in other capacities, like the Members of the SMART Board of Directors—can be freed to make more “independent” decisions by being appointed to their new roles, the track record of virtually EVERY such agency is for it’s members—and staff—to lose any sense of public accountability, by acting as if they know better than the voters who made them public officials in the first place, and who provided the funding needed for the agency’s operations. SMART has fallen into that trap, a common mistake made by such “independent” agencies, that undermines the rationale for its very creation in the first place.

Almost a month ago to the day of this month’s October 22, public hearing on the location of the SMART Train station in Healdsburg, CA, I sent the following open letter to the SMART Train Board’s 12 Members. Those members , and their phone numbers are listed below. I urge you to call them, and let them know what you think about the location of the SMART Train Station in Healdsburg:

1. Chris Coursey, Chair (incumbent Sonoma County Supervisor), 707-565-2241;
2. Mary Sackett, Vice Chair (incumbent Marin County Supervisor), 415-473-7331;
3. Janice Cader Thompson, (Petaluma City Council), 707-774-5912;
4. Kate Colin, (Mayor, San Rafael), 415-458-3005;
5. Victoria Fleming, (Santa Rosa City Council), 707-453-3015;
6. Patty Garbarino, (GG Bridge, Highway and Transportation Dist.), 415-485-5648;
7. Ariel Kelley, (Healdsburg City Council), 707-385-1282;
8. Eric Lucan, (Marin County Supervisor), 415-473-7331;
9. Kevin Jacbos, (Novato City Council), 415-209-8937;
10. Barbara Pahre, (GG Bridge, Highway & Transportation Dist.), 707-224-7129;
11. Gabe Paulson, (Larkspur City Council), 415-927-5002;
12. David Rabbitt, (Sonoma County Supervisor), 707-565-2241;

Dear SMART Train Board Members:

I don’t know how many times we Healdsburg residents have to say this until you hear us, or until you open you eyes to what we are demanding: We want the SMART Train Station in our town at the Hudson Street Station Hub, NOT on Vine Street.

Two years ago, in 2024, our Healdsburg City Council voted 4-1 to support the citing of the SMART Train Station at the old Rail Station Hub. At that time, SMART didn’t have all the funding it needed to continue the commuter rail line from Windsor to Healdsburg and up to Cloverdale.

To make certain that would happen, our small but mighty City of 11,137 citizens has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly for environmental and mass transit issues, for the fractional sales tax to fund SMART’s work, and to increase the funding necessary to do the job, resulting in the $270 million now available to bring the Healdsburg station home. Your welcome.

Then, just this Spring, because we were enthusiastic that “The SMART Train was coming to town,” as Mike McGuire cheered—with every single public and SMART official present—1,000 of us packed our new Foley Family Pavilion to show our support, that this part of the North Bay was finally receiving commuter rail-service. WE voted by our very presence—with nearly 10% of the entire town showing up—for the SMART Train. We gladly accepted all the “swag” SMART handed out, to boost this project, because Healdburg residents were delighted that “a new train was coming to town,” and that the location of the Station was settled.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the message the SMART Board appears to be getting from the one Healdsburg resident on the Board, our former Mayor Ariele Kelley—who is still insisting now, as she did even before her unsuccessful Assembly run against Chris Rogers—that she preferred the Vine Street station for the SMART train.

Many of us in Healdsburg have supported Kelley for every public office she has sought, and are proud of her leadership for affordable housing, diversity, and on the California Coastal Commission. However, on this specific issue of locating the SMART Train Station, Kelley is utterly out of touch with the people of Healdsburg, who by electing her Mayor, made it possible for her to serve on the SMART Board in the first place. Sadly, our former Mayor seems to have forgotten the voice of the very community she still represents, unless she perceives her audience to be elsewhere.

By contrast, our current Healdsburg Mayor Chris Herrod perfectly expressed the astonishment of most Healdsburg residents when he told the San Francisco Chronicle recently:

“To have SMART come up now and re-think this at this fairly late time—is flabbergasting!”

And, to further compound the dumb decision of the SMART Train staff to do a fast bait & switch with the Station location, former Healdsburg Mayor Evelyn Mitchell—who served as Mayor when the original SMART Station commitment was made to the City—told a standing-room-only City Council meeting crowd:

“I felt like I was blindsided.”

In one, single, ill-advised and highly biased presentation delivered by SMART’s General Manager Eddy Cumins and his assistant Zoe Unruh at the September 21, 2016, Healdsburg City Council meeting, SMART jettisoned years of good faith, trust and public support it carefully developed, since the passage of it’s original enabling State legislation in 2002.

I pointedly asked SMART’s General Manager Cumins, “What the hell were you guys thinking?”

My question came from a deep well-spring of support for SMART’s work, and a lifetime of support for environmental protection, mass transit, and public service.

Such an extraordinary sensitivity to treating public trust as a precious natural resource is essential to rebuild the public’s confidence that government can work effectively, honestly, well, and responsibly on behalf of the people it serves—especially in the face of anti-government forces, with the malevolent mission of destroying government, and denying urgent public services to those most in need.

The collection of stale, 3-year old data, blatantly biased conclusions, and the use of such disconnected, bureaucratic jargon like “Euclidian Walksheds,” which SMART’s executive team delivered to the citizens of Healdsburg, and the entire City Council at the packed-public meeting, was an insult and a violation of trust to a well-educated population that has formed the backbone of the North Bay’s public support for “bringing the train to town.”

That egregiously bad effort could only be described as a colossal public relations and administrative agency failure, which smacked many of us involved local citizens as an arrogant, not-so-SMART move. Healdsburg residents, and the majority of our public officials who are among SMART’s most loyal and ardent mass transit and green environmental supporters, felt stabbed in the back by SMART staff trying to pull a last-minute, bad-faith switcheroo on the long-settled location of the Healdsburg Station.

Yet, as someone who has devoted my entire career to making governments and humane non-profit organizations succeed on behalf of the people we serve, I still have faith in many of the public officials who lead the SMART Board, particularly it’s Chair, Chris Coursey, who worked for years as a first-rate journalist, before being elected as Santa Rosa’s Mayor, and as a Sonoma County Supervisor. I believe Coursey has the courage, strength & intelligence to put the SMART staff back on track, reminding them that it is our tax dollars and citizen support that is critical to the short and long-term success of the SMART Train to improve all our lives in the North Bay.

Perhaps the two most telling messages delivered by the people of Healdsburg to SMART’s staff came from City Manager Jeff Kay, and from Healdsburg resident Oded Shakked, a local businessman.

The Healdsburg Patch reported that “the city manager (Kay) said Healdsburg received between $1.1 million and $1.2 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission after the 2024 vote to prepare a plan centered on the (Hudson Street) depot. The planning area includes land south of the river”.

In fact, the City Council, acting on those commitments, created a seven-page, “SMART Station Area Specific Plan,” predicated upon the SMART Station being sited at the Hudson Street Hub, and including Veterans Memorial Beach in the important tourist area that SMART Train passengers would be able to walk to upon their arrival in Healdsburg by train. It will be the only Russian River beach reachable within walking distance by SMART train from Larkspur to Cloverdale, the full length of the route when completed, IF the Healdsburg Station is at the Hudson Street Hub.

But it was a Healdsburg resident and taxpayer, Oded Shakked, who, in a straight-forward common-sense way, was among the final speakers at the City Council hearing and, in less than 30 seconds, demolished the detached-from-reality “Euclidian Walksheds” being relied upon by the SMART staff to justify it’s conclusion to unilaterally move the Station from the already-committed Hudson Street Hub to Vine Street, where at least 40 mature trees, and the same number of scarce parking spaces would be destroyed:

“I walked both distances from each of the proposed SMART Station sites to the Healdsburg Town Square. From the Hudson Street Hub, it is 376 steps; from the Vine Street spot, it is 232 steps.”

Shakked then succinctly summed up the sentiments of many of his follow Healdsburg citizens and taxpayers:

“The SMART Board owes this Council, and the whole town, an apology.”

To that quietly eloquent request, I would add that we want the SMART Board to rebuild our trust; respect the democratically arrived at decision by a Healdsburg public that wants a vibrant SMART Train station in our town; and, to continue to involve this community in this great public achievement that will improve all of our lives.

You can do that by affirming that the SMART Train Station will be— as our community resoundingly supports— located at the Hudson Street site.

Yours for a community built on trust & a world worthy of our grandchildren,

Steve Villano,

Healdsburg resident, taxpayer, grandfather.

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Discussion about this post

Other than rubbing rubles all over Pee Wee Zuckerberg’s insecure little inch, what else could Putin and Russia have on META’s filthy-rich, arrogant mega-monster?

Steve Villano

12 minutes ago

(Illustration “Peeing on the Flag,” by Stephane Perry.)

With Donald Trump doing his dizzying array of Putana Pirouettes for Putin over the past few weeks (“Putana” is Italian for prostitute), people the world over are convinced that the famous “PeePee Tapes” must be as incriminating to the Puppet President as the Epstein Files are, where Trump’s name has appeared—and been mysteriously disappeared— thousands of times.

What else could explain Trump’s lifting of economic sanctions against Russia, in violation of US law? His war crime of purchasing diesel fuel from Putin to make up for the shortage and economic pain Trump’s War in Iran has inflicted upon American farmers—profits from which Putin continues to provide arms to Iranian soldiers, which are used against US troops fighting Iran? Pushing to include Putin in the upcoming G-20 economic meeting at one of Trump’s garrish Golf sinkholes in Florida? AND, abandoning Ukraine in the 4 year War of Aggression Russia has been waging against our ally—and all of Europe—resulting in tens of thousands of deaths & the kidnapping of Ukrainian children?

Sure, Donald Trump has no soul nor conscience, nor sense of loyalty to the United States. His motivation, like with most of his official actions, is dictated by how much money he can stuff into his pockets, just like Putin has done in Russia over the past rwo decades, amassing a fortune of some $200 billion American dollars.

Putin may simply be Trump’s role model (his new Roy Cohn?) for astonishing levels of mobster-like-grift over which he drools, but it’s just as likely that the infamous “Pee Pee Tape” which first surfaced in the Steele Dossier almost a decade ago, and then in the Mueller Report, may be so utterly incriminating that Trump will do anything to prevent having them made public. Could it show Russian prostitutes playing such water sports like pissing in Trump’s mouth? On his bedsheets? On each other for Trump’s erotic pleasure? Without giving it a second thought, Trump will sacrifice all of the our national interestsas well as American lives to guarantee that his self-interests are protected.

The PeePee Tape prognostication makes reports of Trump’s penchant for pedophilia in the Epstein Files look mild by comparison. Those files, rumored to have been documented by Israel’s Mossad as part of a scheme with Jeffery Epstein to exert leverage for Israel upon world leaders who partied with Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell, may also account for Trump’s doing backflips for anything fellow war criminal Bibi Netanyahu demands. With Bibi under indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and Trump soon to be, it’s no wonder Trump and his squishy little Secretary of State Marco Rubio are out crusading for the ICC’s destruction.

But is Trump the only American slimeball being squeezed? Could Putin have damning stuff on other American Oligarchs like say, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk? How else to explain the Musk/Trump decision to cut off the Starlink Satellite hook-up to Ukraine, sabotaging our Ally’s ability to gain vital wartime intelligence? How else to explain mealy-mouthed Mark Zuckerberg’s shutting down his social media platforms this past weekend during key organizing times for the nationwide “No Kings Demonstrations—the largest early voting effort in American history, in some 3,000 locations?

Indivisible’s brilliant co-founder and co-Executive Director Ezra Levin—who conceptualized and meticulously organized and implemented all of the “No Kings Campaigns.” told Indivisible activists this week that there was “one egregious episode during No Kings, and it didn’t come from any of the millions of patriotic Americans who showed up”

Levin went on to write that:

“It came from one of the several Silicon Valley mega corporations that pose both an acute threat in the lead up to the midterms and a longer term existential threat to democracy itself. We should learn from this episode, demand immediate answers, and plan accordingly”.

“It was Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, a trillion-dollar corporation, that caused the trouble,” Levin wrote in Indivisible’s October 20 Newsletter, detailing the mega META sabotage of the pro-democracy efforts:

“I got the news while I was at my second No Kings protest. Without warning, Meta suddenly suspended the No Kings Instagram account and proceeded to block access for 4 hours. Then the company’s spokespeople offered a weak apology and blamed a glitch.

Forgive me if I say this smells like bullshit.

Because this cycle of harm, excuses, and empty apologies is nothing new for Meta. I can’t cover everything Meta has done, but two categories stand out: undermining elections and cozying up to Trump.’’

Levin, who previously worked as a key Congressional staffer before founding Indivisible, went on to document in great detail, the number of times Zuckerberg has bent over for BOTH Trump and Putin:

“1) Undermining elections.

2017: Facebook admitted Russian operatives may have reached 126 million Americans during the lead-up to our election, which Zuckerberg later apologized for.

2018: Zuckerberg said it was “my mistake” that a Trump campaign data firm harvested 87 million users’ data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

2021: Meta’s own internal task force found it failed to stop the Stop the Steal movement behind the January 6 insurrection. Indeed, the new Aaron Sorkin film tells the story of the whistleblower who exposed it.

2024: Three months before the election, Meta shut down the tool researchers used to track election misinformation, over the objection of more than 100 civil society groups.

Last week: Brazil’s top electoral court ordered Meta not to throttle reach, restrict searches, or remove posts in ways that would benefit the right-wing authoritarian in the upcoming national elections.

2) Cozying up to Trump.

Late 2024: Zuckerberg remade Meta for Trump’s return. He dined at Mar-a-Lago, named Republican Joel Kaplan to run global policy, put Trump ally Dana White on the board, and scrapped fact-checking.

2025: Meta paid tribute to Trump with a $1 million donation to the inauguration, $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit, and a donation to his ballroom.

Late 2025: Meta took down a Chicago ICE-tracking group after Pam Bondi’s Justice Department’s outreach.

“So” Levin wrote, “ what we have here is a trillion-dollar company with demonstrated power to misinform the public, a long history of undermining democratic processes, and a very recent history of buddying up with the Trump regime. We’d be fools to take its word that knocking No Kings offline on No Kings Day was a simple, accidental glitch”.

The leader of Indivisible’s pro-democracy movement than pointed us to a “ a post-Nerd Reich world:

“I wish we could avoid Meta products entirely. Indivisible has made such moves before. We were the biggest pro-democracy organization to leave X when Elon turned Twitter into his personal neo-Nazi playpen, and we’ve encouraged other organizations and pro-democracy politicians to do the same. That was possible because real alternatives existed — and we’ve tried to guide folks to them. I hope our movement eventually gets there with Meta too, but we can’t yet abandon these vast spaces (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads) where too much of the persuadable public is active online. Doing so cedes that space fully to the political forces we need to defeat. For now, we need to push for oversight, and build audiences on decentralized platforms, and those we control — like email and SMS.”

Levin astutely pointed out that, “It’s the government’s job to protect its people and institutions from a force like this. Within a day of Meta’s actions against No Kings, Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen, Bernie Sanders, House Judiciary Dems (led by Jamie Raskin), and Pramila Jayapal called for answers and investigations.”

And, as usual, Levin and Indivisible issued a very achievable call to action to all of us:

“If your Members of Congress haven’t raised the alarm, tell them to. Whatever your party, and whether or not you like. No Kings, nobody should take this company at its word when it comes to election interference that benefits Trump.”

Levin also noted that Zuck’s attempt to fuck our pro-democracy movement ala Putin and Trump, “backfired spectacularly:”

“More people heard about No Kings because Meta knocked it offline. Heading into an election at risk of sabotage by Trump, more Americans know the tech giants are not our friends. And heading into a new Congress, more elected officials are setting their sights on these Goliaths.

“When we say No Kings,” Levin concluded,” we mean NO KINGS.Not in the White House, not in any state house, and not in Silicon Valley. The people have the power, and all these fascists are bound to lose”.

Hungary’s Victor Orbon, who terrorized the Hungarian people and trampled democracy there for nearly two decades, was crushed by the people’s voting power in April of this year, just a mere seven months ago. Trump, Putin and America’s corporate Oligarchs, are about to follow in Orbon’s footsteps, into oblivion.

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Why Trump will cause chaos, corruption and terror in the upcoming elections and won’t care. He has everything to lose–fortune, family, power and freedom–if the elections are lawful and normal.

Steve Villano

12 minutes ago

(From Botticelli’s Map of Hell, of Dante’s Inferno; Vatican archives.)

At the beginning of Chapter 8 of his brilliant book East of Eden (1952, Viking Press, NY.) the California-born writer John Steinbeck, gave us a clear and sobering description of the “anti-human” human, the epitome of evil—terrorizing all he or she touches, by exposing in its full-frontal ugliness the absence of any soul or conscience:

“I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents, and no one’s fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishments for concealed sins.

And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience…To a man born without a conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish.

You must never forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”

Steinbeck wrote that six years after Donald Trump was born, written to describe one of the most monstrous characters he’s ever created in all of his books.

It was not intended to describe Trump, but over time, Trump has morphed into Steinbeck’s soul-less and conscience-less Monster, who cannot abide by normality, or the rules, or the law, since, to do so, forces him to face his own abject deformity and culpability.

It’s why Trump will do everything he can to cheat, corrupt, corrode, undermine, disrupt, and cause chaos in the upcoming Elections, just three weeks away. And he won’t care what people think or say about it, what columnists write, or what television and social media say. It doesn’t matter to him; he is immune from shame or conscience or normal notions like duty or the law, or devotion to a greater good. To Trump, there is no greater good than his own. That’s why he will do everything in his power to disrupt the November elections, and knowingly send his use of illegal force and seizure of ballots into Court for months. If he can illegally chop down 400 mature trees on federal land—in direct violation of a court order not to—he will surely try to steal this election, destroy ballots, or make them disappear like immigrants dragooned off by ICE.

To do otherwise, to allow the elections to take place normally, legally, and without interference, or terrorism, would open a huge Florida-sized sinkhole in the earth, entirely exposing the Monster and all of his monstrous lies and frauds and thefts and rapes and hatred. And like Botticelli’s depiction of the “Map of Hell” Trump and his entourage will be sucked down into the firey swamp they created, which will devour them forever. The amoral Monster, who has faked and cheated his way through 80 years of life, will do things “normal” people of conscience are not capable of contemplating, in order to avoid the fate of consequences for actions.

Seven hundred years ago, Dante wrote about such crimes against humanity and decency, and for hundreds of years later great artists like Botticelli depicted what some of the most horrible punishments, and personal consequences, would look like. They are maccabre scenes which exceed anything seen in modern horror films, that make non-Monsters blink, but Monsters, like Trump, don’t even blanche.

None of it matters to Trump; he just doesn’t care. He didn’t read Dante, nor look at the vast collection of Dante-inspired Vatican art, nor read the Bible, any bible, or Steinbeck, or anything but his bank account, which has increased some $2.2 billion since his second term began. It is the purpose for his existence. He (and his sons) accumulated such obscene wealth through theft of public funds, and fraud; rigging the markets, illegally boosting their own stock, and steering multi-million dollar government contracts to companies in which The Trump Sons were major investors. Some of those companies made millions by war profiteering, making prolonging the wars in Iran and the Ukraine, good for the Trump Family business.

All the national polls may show the Trump Monster’s microscopic approval rating sinking more each day, and the flashing “normal” political signs of danger for an incumbent President of a sweep of both Houses of Congress by the opposition party, with the power to investigate and subpoena and hold the Monster’s minions in contempt finally being exercised. To the Monster, immune from conscience or soul or decency, none of that mattes.

The Democrats may be poised to win US Senate Seats in Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, Alaska, Georgia, Florida and North & South Carolina, but none of that matters to the Monster without a conscience or soul, and the criminal without any shred of honesty. He will continue to eat everything in front of him, including human beings, or laws, or “precedents,” or “traditions” they way he ate evidence of his sex crimes, and multiple financial frauds, and business and policy failures.

Tsk-Tskers will shake their heads, and mutter, “Is there no Bottom?” or “Have you no decency?” or “Have you no regard for Democracy?”, and the answer to all of those pleadings is, and has always been the same. NO.

The Monster has none of that, nor will ever develop it, even if forced to, because as Steinbeck wrote, “to a Monster, the “norm” is monstrous.” Expect the worst disruptions and chaos and criminality on Election Day. It’s all the Monster knows how to do; it’s all he’s ever done.

The only question is, what will we do about it, and how quickly? Will we only mourn the 400 fully grown trees after they’ve been chopped down? Will there be consequences? Will our own consciences and souls render us ridiculous? Will our honesty force us to play the fools once again?

The Monster melts when doused with a bucket of normalcy, rules, restraints, the law, and consequences. Do we have the courage to confront him, remembering, as Steinbeck instructed us, that “the Monster is only a variation.”

Do we have the moral strength to hold the Monster accountable for his actions? We’re about to see if the Monster wins, or, if we do.

Dennis Hastert, former Wrestling Coach, longest-tenured GOP House Speaker and jailed “Serial Child Molester,” was perfect for the GOP. The Gang of Pedophiles is still playing dumb to sex crimes

Steve Villano

10 minutes ago

The longest-tenured GOP House Speaker in US History, Dennis Hastert, pictured 50 years ago, in 1976, after the Yorkville, Illinois Boys Wrestling Team, which he coached, won the State title. Hastert served as the GOP’s Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1999-2007.

Less than 10 years later—in June, 2016, when accused sex offender Donald Trump was on his way to becoming the GOP candidate for President— Hastert began serving time in prison for being a “serial child molester,” for having sex with some of the boys on his wrestling team. One team member molested by Hastert, the equipment manager Steve Reinboldt—whom Hastert credited with being his “right hand man” on the championship team—died of AIDS in 1995—four years before Hastert was sworn in as Speaker of the House.

Dennis Hastert lived 31 years after Steve Reinboldt’s death, to the age of 85. The one time GOP Hero of the House died this week, the same week that Donald Trump said he “felt bad” for the seven Cornell University male students accused of raping a female student, in a case that languished for years.

Allegations of sexual molestation of women & children against Donald Trump—the kind of charges which sent Dennis Hastert to jail— date back decades, and have never been fully investigated. Trump’s name appeared thousands of times in the Epstein Files, before it was systematically redacted by the FBI under the direction of FBI Director Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney.

Blanche, who interviewed Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice and convicted serial sex offender and child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, and subsequently oversaw her transfer to a cushy, lower-security prison camp—against the rules of the Federal Bureau of Prisons—unsuccessfully defended Trump against sexual harrassment and rape charges brought against him by New York journalist E. Jean Carroll in two separate trials. Trump was found guilty in both trials, and was ordered to pay Carroll over $90 million in damages. Those judgements were upheld by the US Supreme Court on two occasions earlier during 2026. Trump’s involvement in crimes against women and young, underage girls, contained in the Epstein Report, have still not been released almost two years after he was re-elected President on a promise to “release the Epstein Files.”

In addition to the death of Dennis Hastert this week, Simon Andriesz, a whistle-blower who exposed ties between Jeffrey Epstein and Trump confidant and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, was reported to have died by suicide—one in a string of “suicides” swirling around the Epstein files.

In July of this year, Daniel Siad, a former modeling scout linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his home in a suburb north of Paris. Four years earlier, in 2022, Jean Luc Brunel, who headed a French modeling agency that worked with Epstein & Maxwell, was found hanged inside a Paris prison cell while awaiting trial in a sex trafficking case connected to Epstein.

Jeffrey Epstein himself at the age of 66 years old, was found hanging inside his New York City jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in August, 2019, in what prison officials considered a suicide, despite Epstein’s brother, Mark, believing that Epstein was murdered.

Two months later, in November, 2019, Thomas Bowers, the head of the Deutsche Bank wealth management group, which helped finance the Epstein operation, was found hanged inside his California home.

The following year in 2020, Epstein’s last cell mate, Efrain Reyes, 51 years old, was reported to have died of COVID, just weeks after talking with federal investigators looking into Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Reyes was transferred out of Epstein’s cell one-day before Epstein’s death.

And , Virginia Giuffre Roberts, the author of “Nobody’s Girl,”(2025) and the primary accuser, who gave sworn testimony in court about the years of sex crimes of both Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, resulting in Maxwell’s conviction and imprisonment, was found dead of an apparent suicide in April, 2025—three months after Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time as President of the United States.

Rest in peace, Dennis Hastert, but only after you’ve paid for your sins for eternity.

A North Babylon High School friend of mine died this week, shortening our September and our breath, as our days, and our lives, grew darker.

Steve Villano

18 minutes ago

(Photo by Steve Villano, Doran Beach, Bodega Bay, CA., September, 2026, taken on the day after I learned of Bob Conboy’s death.)

Only the ocean heard me scream;

Only the gulls jumped away.

Empty steps up to a sun-kissed chair,

Where he sat, and laughed, in earlier days.

Not this beach, not that chair,

Over sands swept out by time;

I pictured my friend sitting there,

Enjoying his youth, as I mourned mine.

I, observing;

Him, embracing;

Looking at,

Or, living life.

Our easy smiles,

His ebullience,

Separate ways of handling strife.

I watched him play with his dog,

While he… played with the dog.

I kept to myself, on my own shelf,

Extrovert/introvert, often fearful

Of getting hurt.

He, fearless of friends,

And of the mess they brought, the dirt.

He believed in God, and goodness;

Mine had to endure my wrath, and all the time I spent alone.

He acted on his compassion to others,

Knowing that here, in this world, kind work had to be our own.

I observed who and where I was, pushing it away,

To find a different path, give myself a shove;

He embraced who and where he was,

Finding his journey, like Assisi’s, in everyday acts of love.

(From the Class of 1967, North Babylon High School Year Book, edited by Jan Hickman. Voted as the three students who did most for “NB”: from right to left, Bob Conboy, Jan Hickman, and me.)

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