In 1900 my grandpa Patterson was born in a coal camp high up on the Arkansas River in the Colorado Rockies. A self-taught free-thinker, syndicated columnist and cartoonist (and no blood kin to me), my grandpa was a natural-born teacher who took a powerful interest in schooling me in, among many other things, the wicked ways of this crazy dog-eat-dog world. For what he took to be a whole battery of sound experiential and historical reasons, my grandpa was a deeply cynical man whose opinion of humankind was painfully low. With no attempt to hide his disappointment and bitterness, my grandpa claimed that what ailed the human animal was ignorance, willful ignorance, 14-carat greed and a fear of death, monsters and ghosts.

During the final weekend of April three abalone divers drowned in accidents off the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. One of these accidents killed 66-year-old Cedric Collett. Cedric Collett was a retired firefighter from Pacifica, a department he served for 30 years. He was an avid swimmer who trained in the waters of San Francisco’s Aquatic Park. As a fireman he’d received recognition for his rescue efforts to save a drowning child. Cedric Collett survived a three year stint in the Peace Corps in war-torn El Salvador and quite a few runs of the exhausting Double Dipsea in Marin County. The Pacific Ocean doesn’t care about all that.

Mike Gray died recently at 77 years of age, with prominent obituaries in some publications due to his status as a successful movie screenwriter – his most famous screenplay being “The China Syndrome” in 1979. The film had considerable star power with Michael Douglas, Jack Lemmon, and Jane Fonda, and portrayed a near-disaster at a nuclear power plant, with a resulting cover-up attempt. Just after the film premiered, Three Mile Island’s nuclear meltdown occured, and Gray looked like some sort of soothsayer.

As the New York Times put it in his obituary, Gray “tackled thorny contemporary issues in his work.” Another such issue was drug policy, which he examined in his 1999 book “DRUG CRAZY: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out,” which remains – sadly – an insightful and dismaying look at what even the AMA has called our nation’s worst public health malady.

Gray’s book effectively utilizes “street stories” featuring cops, addicts, drug treatment workers and more to illustrate the real- life impact of drug policies – which are his primary focus. And according to Gray, the “drug war” has been a failure on many fronts. More than one-third of Americans over 11 have consumed illegal drugs and use of such drugs has fluctuated regardless of government efforts. Our prisons are overflowing from drug-related convictions, while drug-related crime has risen; AIDS has spread among drug users; drug treatment is often not available to those who want it; doctors are afraid to prescribe even needed medications; and countless lives are being ruined by the drug war’s policies.

Gray held that the best measure of failure comes from the law of supply and demand: “After blowing hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives, the drugs on the street today are stronger, cheaper, more pure and more widely available than at any time in history.” Further, the drug war has poisoned much else in American society, “blanketing the nation in a smog of delusion so pervasive nobody can see it, even as it warps foreign policy, corrodes the Bill of Rights and successfully reverses years of progress in race relations.”

And much of the “warfare” is targeted at the wrong people, Gary wrote. “The medical literature is filled with thoroughly documented records of addicts who functioned normally throughout their lives”; in other words, the majority of people who experiment socially with illegal drugs suffer little harm and do not progress to addiction. Gray noted that the actual dangers posed by illegal drugs are dwarfed by the hazards of legal ones: “When compared to the annual number of premature deaths from tobacco (400,000) and from alcohol (100,000), drug deaths lag far behind.” It’s also true that the vast majority of casual users of drugs such as marijuana do not go on to try “harder” drugs. Even for those who do, “fewer than 1 percent of those who try cocaine become daily users.”

Such facts have been known for a long time, but, as Gray pointed out, ideological opposition to any kind of drug use or to any hint of its approval have “overwhelmed the handful of scientists who tried to put the brakes on this juggernaut.” For example, one medical expert, San Francisco’s Dr. David Smith, founder of the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinics and a pioneer in addiction medicine, was labeled as “pro-drug” in the ’80s by anti-drug parent activists; “Having (Smith) on programs to fight drug use is like having Adolf Hitler teaching the American Generals how to fight the German Army,” wrote one such parent who was “disgusted” by Smith’s factual, nonjudgmental approach to drug education.

And with the rise of the “Just Say No” movement, “the most remembered phrase of the Reagan presidency… and the most ridiculed,” all discussion of such innovative strategies as methadone maintenance or needle exchange “were just out… You had to just say no to all of it.” By the end of the ’80s, “Just Say No” was a largely discredited and commercialized slogan, but the effect of its “zero tolerance” imperative has been more lasting and pernicious. To implement that policy, the government turned to the military and the police.

The failures of alcohol prohibition earlier in the century are well- known, but the situation now is even worse. Addicts have no constituency, Gray notes, and since Prohibition, “whenever senators or congressmen found themselves outflanked on the right, they could come down on addicts like avenging angels to prove how tough they were on crime.” In the process, the courts have been swamped with futile “revolving door” arrests on the one extreme and handing out inhumane mandatory sentences on the other.

It is undeniable that addiction has been a nightmare for millions of Americans, and drug-related crime has destroyed many communities. But while they differ somewhat in the details, but Gray argued that we need a radically different approach to these problems. What then should be done? The consensus still grows that a public health-oriented approach is needed, focusing on prevention and treatment rather than crime and punishment. Prevention relies on reality-based education, argued Gray, for “apparently the one sure-fire way to cut down on drug use is to give people the facts and let them use their own judgment.” For those who “fail” drug education, guaranteed treatment for addicts, both free and imprisoned, is also necessary, without the long waiting lists that has those who want to quit drugs being “sucked back into the street.” Contrary to popular perception, drug treatment, while admittedly far from foolproof, is preferable to the law enforcement approach, even for preventing crime and saving money.

In order to implement these and other policy improvements, such as the decriminalization of marijuana (which was favored in California and four other states in recent elections), drug laws would need to be changed, entailing a lot of activism and education. Beyond ideology and fear, the lure of money on all sides – drug profits for dealers, and enforcement and incarceration funds for those who fight them – may be the biggest obstacle to change. Many Americans profit from the status quo, even as they might publicly deplore it. But there is an ever-growing list of observers of all political and professional stripes who are questioning the path the United States is on. Gray’s “Drug Crazy” remains a crucial and eloquent call for reform. I met him just one, at a drug policy forum I co-hosted and where he was a speaker, and I asked him if he thought his pleas would be heeded anytime soon. “Probably not in my lifetime,” he ruefully answered. And alas, with few exceptions, it seems he was right again.

Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comfortably then I shall begin. With so much happening over the next week or two around these parts, particularly for Memorial Day weekend, it would be very heart-warming if there were to be a good turnout for the one event that actually commemorates Memorial Day, and the reason we get the long weekend to enjoy all of these events in the first place. I’m talking about the service put on by the AV Veterans that will be held at the Memorial Wall in the Evergreen Cemetery on AV Way at 11am on Monday, May 27th to commemorate US soldiers who have died while serving in the military. This day was first enacted to honor Union and Confederate soldiers following the American Civil War and it was extended after World War I to honor Americans who have died in all wars. With US servicemen and women continuing to perish in various theaters of war, a good turnout at this short ceremony would surely be a sign that their efforts have not been in vain and are deeply appreciated by those of us who live on. The general public is encouraged to attend this brief service before going on to their other holiday weekend festivities and I sincerely hope to see many of you there.

The annual AV Pinot Festival took place this past weekend, greeted among Valley folks it seems by some mixed feelings, although overall it is seen as a positive thing even if many locals do not take part in any way. On Friday evening, with connected events elsewhere, the downtown Boonville eating and drinking establishments were fairly quiet. Like the Sierra Nevada Music Festival and The Beer Fest, these large Valley events are not the huge boon to local business that organizers would have you believe. I am sure there are exceptions at various times, and some extra business is inevitable over a whole weekend, yet according to some local business owners it is just not nearly as much as one would think. However, the Valley ‘scene’ gets to be enjoyed by many outsiders and this will surely have a positive knock-on effect for local businesses in the future. As for the event itself, it is one for the wineries and their employees to share and sell their splendid wines, for tourists to embrace the Valley’s natural beauty and produce, and it’s undoubtedly an excellent opportunity for local wine and food lovers, like myself, to get out and about to enjoy the veritable feast of edibles, libations, and entertainment provided on our doorstep.

I did not attend the $105 main tasting event held at Golden Eye Winery on the Saturday afternoon, nor did I attend any of the extravagant, yet no doubt enjoyable, winemaker dinners held that evening. However, following a Friday night spent at first Aquarelle and then Lauren’s Restaurant, I was ready to participate in the festival on Sunday afternoon and zoomed around the Valley accompanied by The Barn Owl. We visited many of the winery Open Houses and enjoyed some wonderful food pairings. After much deliberation we awarded our Top Three Pairings as follows. (Please keep in mind we did not get to every Open House; that would have been greedy and dangerous.)

In third place was Brutocao where we sampled the best dessert of the day: brownies made with Tawny Port, served with strawberries steeped in Merlot Mistelle and topped by their Cabernet Sauvignon Chocolate Truffle Fudge. Served with their Reserve 2009 Pinot Noir this provided a superb end to the day. Runner-up was Phillips-Hill’s 2010 Boontling Pinot Noir paired with some delicious Beef Cheek Bourguignon cooked beautifully by the talented Natasha Durandet. And in first place, and doing what all Pinot Noir pourers are advised to do (i.e., pairing their product with lamb), was Balo. Their 2010 AV Pinot was paired with the lamb chops served up by Kurt Morse and Bill Teague — some of the best lamb that the Barn Owl and I have had in many a long day. This dish was a runaway winner, and that was before we tasted the sumptuous smoked salmon and local Penny Royal goat cheese pizza produced by local chefs Corey Morse and Diana Charles that was also served at Balo. Honorable Mention should go to the wines of Knez, Signal Ridge, and Drew, whose winemaker/owner Jason Drew was our Host of the Day. Can we do it all again next weekend?

Public Service Announcements, calendars and pens at the ready. #341/ The Vets from the Mendocino Animal Hospital will return to the Valley on two more Thursdays this month: tomorrow, May 23, and May 30 — 2-3.30pm on each occasion. You do not have to arrive early and then wait a long time; everyone showing up at anytime before 3.30pm will be seen. #342. Coming up this weekend it’s the AV Art Guild’s annual Open Studio Tour: May 25-27 from 11am to 5pm each day. Visit the artists and view their paintings, glass, jewelry, sculpture, ceramics, and more. Call Peggy at 895-2493 for further details. #343. This Sunday the Lion’s Club prepares their delicious chicken and TriTip BBQ in the Redwood Grove at the Fairgrounds from 4:30 to 7:30! All proceeds will benefit the AV ElderHome. There will be the usual unique silent auction and for this year a small live auction. DJ Pete will be spinning the tunes so bring your family, your friends and your requests! Advance Ticket Purchase at All That Good Stuff and Lemon’s: $15 and $12 for Seniors (62+) and children (6-12). Children under 6 free! #344. And as always, the Memorial Day Flea Market, benefiting the Senior Center, will run all weekend from Friday 24 to Monday 27 with a breakfast and snack bar open at the Veterans Hall. Gina at 895-3609 has all the details.

Here’s the menu for the next week at the Senior Center at the Veterans Hall in Boonville. The Center asks for a $5 donation from Seniors and charges $7 for Non-Seniors for lunches; for dinners it’s $6 and $8, respectively. Tomorrow, Thursday, May 23, the 12:15pm lunch will be Chicken Enchiladas, Rice, Black Beans, Corn, Salsa, Kasha Salad, and a Cherry Crisp dessert. Then next Tuesday, May 28, at 6pm, the dinner served by Marti Titus and her crew will be Country Captain Chicken, Brown Rice, Peas, Rolls, Raspberry Gelatin, Tabbouleh Salad, Triple Lemon Dessert. This is also Game Night so bring your favorite game to play or hang out and visit with friends. Hope to see you there.

Topics and Valley events under discussion this week at The Three-Dot Lounge – yes it’s “Moans, Groans, Good Thoughts, and Rampant Rumors” from my favorite gathering place in the Valley.

…A continuing topic of discussion among the regulars at The 3-Dot is the rapidly increasing number of tasting rooms and restaurants in the Valley. I personally like to have such choice but until we have more places for visitors to stay overnight, where will all the money come from to support so many businesses? Perhaps it really is time for that ‘tastefully designed and appropriately located motel.’ Over to the Valley’s wheelers-and-dealers with a few dollars to spare.

…Talking of new businesses, I see that the location formally occupied by ‘All that Good Stuff’ in the Farrer Building is soon to become an antique store run by members of the Pronsolino family. We wish them well and hope they can make a go of it. This means that the ‘reliably rumored’ charcuterie idea for that space has been put on hold for now, which is fine with many local folks, I’m sure.

…And that segues nicely into another ‘reliable rumor’ – the one that the new high school Principal is a current member of the faculty and potentially being selected without the full participation of the School Board, his erstwhile employers. Believe it or not, I regularly speak with high school students and many of them are not happy with the recent developments at their school and see a definite need for significant changes. Perhaps the potential new Principal from the faculty will be fine, and I am sure that ultimately the Board will have a final say. But one has to wonder, ‘Is there nobody from beyond the Valley, without any baggage/connections to the previous regime, who will take this job and introduce some new ideas, someone who will arrive like a breath of fresh air, with enough vitality and vigor to blow away the cobwebs and quickly earn the respect of both staff and students alike? Maybe not, or are such candidates just not even considered?

Time to take my leave. Until we talk again, Keep the Faith; be careful out there; stay out of the ditches; think good thoughts; please remember to keep your windows cracked if you have pets in your vehicle; and may your god go with you. One final request, “Let us prey.” Humbly yours, Turkey Vulture. PS. Contact me with words of support/abuse through the Letters Page or at turkeyvulture1@earthlink.net. PPS. Keep on wagging that tail, Fred.

A YOUTHFUL MALE VOICE on our Tuesday afternoon hotline told us that Darryl Cherney would be on KZYX at 3pm. My reaction to certain names, Cherney’s among them, is a brief moment of groaning despair and, maybe, if it’s the end of the workday, a revivifying shot of Maker’s Mark. I tuned in on the off chance it was a call-in but, of course, this subject and most others at free speech radio venues being strictly one-way conversations, it was not to be. And, it seems, this was a music show not a talk program, and here came the minstrel man with a breathless tale suggesting that an FBI bomb expert named Frank Doyle had given a 1990 bomb class to a bunch of cops at the College of the Redwoods then trundled on down to Oakland to blow up Judi Bari. Cherney told the credulous woman hosting the show — the Bari Cult never appears anyplace where they’re likely to be questioned — that he had Doyle on tape telling another cop that the Bari bombing was “the final exam” for the class he’d just given up north. That was Cherney’s conclusion anyway. But, Cherney said, Doyle had his back turned in the film of the scene so audio forensics would be necessary to definitely attribute the “final exam” remark to him. And since Doyle now worked for the tv show Mythbusters maybe the show would bust Doyle’s myth. They might also bust Cherney’s myths while they’re at it, but I’ve never seen the show so I don’t know what kind of myths they bust.

AS IT HAPPENS, Judi Bari herself played that tape of Doyle for me, if it is Doyle. I remember driving all the way from Boonville to her cabin on String Creek east of Willits because she said she had a big new development in the case. I already knew that things weren’t what she was putting out there because, for one thing, a person who’d survived an attempt on her life sure as hell wouldn’t be living off in the woods where she could so easily been finished off. Anyway, we walked over to Joanne Moore’s house where there was a tape player we could listen to Judi’s new development on. The recording was faint but I distinctly heard a male voice say, “This is the final exam.” I thought it was cop humor, and I still think that, just as I think it highly unlikely that Doyle would have practiced blowing up cars in Eureka then, a short time later, blown someone up with a car bomb. I mean really. But Cherney, a cash and carry guy all the way, knows that the slo-mo sectors of the “left” will write checks to you if you say the FBI did it.

IN AN ARTICLE Judi wrote about Doyle and his bomb class for my paper, she identified an Oakland cop who’d attended Doyle’s class. Apparently Doyle had addressed his little joke to that guy while they were at the scene of the bombing.

ONE MORE TIME: If you think an FBI agent would give a bomb class for a random bunch of cops and young people wanting to become cops then, a week or so later, blow up a well known person in the middle of a major American city and also implicate himself at the scene where any old body could overhear him, get out your checkbook and tell Cherney to fill in the amount.

CHERNEY never mentions that the whole Bari Scam-a-rama could have demanded early on that the feds and/or the Mendo authorities subpoena the dna of likely suspects to compare against the known dna drawn from the confession letter signed by the bomber as The Lord’s Avenger. And Cherney never explains why Bari applied for limited immunity from prosecution to the FBI. (They said No.) Or why the Bari family has never demanded resolution of the case. Or why Cherney suggests on the one hand that the FBI committed the crime, but on the other can be trusted to turn over pristine evidence.

THIS THING is a huge fraud, front to back, but Cherney has lived off it all these years and continues to live off it because there’s always a fresh new crop of dummies coming along who believe everything he puts out, and speaking of dummies, another young person, this one female, calls up Tuesday and says, “I thought you’d want to know that Darryl Cherney is talking right now to Dennis Bernstein on KPFA.” Gog and Magog!

ONE MORE THING: Contrary to Supervisor Hamburg’s cretinous remarks on the Bari case, I don’t “hate” Mike Sweeney, and I certainly did not “hate” Judi Bari. I have to admire Sweeney for what he’s pulled off here; how many ex-husbands can blow up their ex-wives and get away with it? (I don’t think, though, that Sweeney acted alone.) And Judi Bari was a good friend of mine. She wrote for my paper and organized Redwood Summer using my paper as her megaphone when no other media would even talk to her unless it was to malign her. (KPFA jumped in right around the time of the bombing, and KZYX had non-personed Bari early on.) When I finally said to Judi (and I’m ashamed to admit I pretty much bought the PC version of events until I met Steve Talbot) I thought she should tell the truth about what happened she never spoke to me again. I think now I   was probably the only real friend she had.

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RANDOM OPINION: Ukiah City Councilman Phil Baldwin has been widely denounced for devoting two hours of recent Council time to a resolution opposing US involvement in Syria. The denunciations of Baldwin boiled down to the opinion that big picture political issues are not what city councils are elected to address. Two hours does seem more like a filibuster of the most excruciatingly tedious type, but I agree with Baldwin that discussion of this or that imperial disaster like the one looming in Syria should not be left to the people creating them, the experts. Look where leaving it to them has gotten US. If city councils and boards of supervisors routinely addressed national issues I think we’d be a healthier country for it because it might give pause to career officeholders like our Congressman, Spike Huffman, before he signs off on the next catastrophe. Imperial military adventures do affect us at the micro-level of American life by diverting public money from programs Americans need, even Ukiahan-Americans.

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I DIDN’T KNOW THAT. Robert Ripley, of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, was born and raised in Santa Rosa. A new biography of Ripley says he began life in the Rose City in 1890 when Santa Rosa was “a colorful California whistle-stop.…where folks shot each other over card games, stole horses and robbed banks.” Known for “drinking like an acquitted convict,” Ripley compensated for “fanged teeth and jug ears by building a gymnast’s physique” and “dressing like a paint factory hit by lightening.”

SANTA ROSA hasn’t changed much. Folks now shoot each other over dope deals, steal cars and there have never been more bank robberies. What has changed is the town’s journalism and the people who practice it. They’re about as colorful as a sack of marshmallows, and write like it, too.

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QUESTION OF THE DAY: How does the Fed lending trillions of dollars created out of thin air at zero percent interest to banks that then buy federal debt that pays 4 to five percent, money that we taxpayers have removed from our income and property by the IRS, how does that create jobs again?

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BE THERE! Fred Sternkopf and Doug Desmond have revived the What’s Afoot Fine Art Gallery in downtown Caspar. In its heyday, the gallery was home to some of the most interesting artists in the country, most of them no longer with us. The opening exhibit under S&D assembled by Sternkopf and Desmond features not only their high-order work, but that of many of our talented friends and neighbors. The new What’s Afoot kicks off this Friday, 5-9pm, with a reception open to everyone.

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THE NORTH COAST COMMUNITY needs a fully funded, fully functional 2 year accredited junior college to serve the needs of local citizens to have access to public education at relatively low cost.  Graduating high school seniors from Fort Bragg and Mendocino Unified School Districts deserve the option of a proper junior college path to a 4 year education and beyond.  Our community is somewhat isolated and needs this fully functional and fully funded junior college.  That’s why I created a petition to Fort Bragg City Council and Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, which says:  “”We, the undersigned citizens, petition the Fort Bragg City Council and the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors demanding that there be a functional and fully funded Community Junior College at the present campus in the city of Fort Bragg which will serve the North Coast community.”"  Will you sign this petition? Click here:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/the-north-coast-deserves?source=c.em.mt&r_by=7244206

Thanks! — Jessie Lee VanSant

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MENDOCINO GRAND JURY REPORT, May 1, 2013

Cut Backs In Mental Health Services Impacting Law Enforcement

Summary

The Grand Jury (GJ) conducted mandated jail visits (California Penal Code Section 919(b)) as well as visited local law enforcement agencies. The GJ found all facilities to be safe and well functioning within budgetary restrictions. All visited agencies expressed the need for additional staff. There was one issue that came up repeatedly, the impact of 5150 arrests on departmental resources and public safety. A 5150 is an individual displaying high risk behavior posing an imminent safety risk to themselves or others. Every 5150 arrest takes an officer away from patrol duty for hours at a time as they wait for a crisis worker to arrive or until preliminary procedures are complete. The severe cuts to the County’s Mental Health (MH) budget have resulted in less staff and resources. As a result, there is one crisis worker on duty for the entire county after hours and on weekends. Crisis workers have the authority to release patients over the objections of police, hospital staff, and psychiatrists. The lack of Mental Health workers is costly to law enforcement and local hospitals as well as to the safety of all citizens. Additionally, there are conflicting opinions on how this County’s Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) treats dual diagnoses (Co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse disorders).

The GJ is recommending Mental Health administration continue and expand the search for a county psychiatrist for the jail, provide additional crisis workers after hours, and re-examine the 5150 hospitalization and release procedures. Mental Health needs to make funds available to implement a discharge plan to aid the mentally ill released from jail. The medical provider at the jail is currently using a doc-in-a-box (telepsychiatry) in the absence of a psychiatrist. There is a psychiatric nurse on site. The GJ observed and determined the position of the camera was inadequate. Jail administration needs to move the camera closer to achieve personal contact. Telepsychiatry provides prescription service only, no counseling.

Background

The GJ visited law enforcement facilities including mandated jail visits in the County. During site visits to Willits, Fort Bragg, Ukiah Police Departments and Mendocino County Sheriff substation in Fort Bragg, the GJ heard frequent complaints that officers were taken off the street to deal with 5150s, making it difficult to respond to other emergency calls.

Every 5150 arrest takes an officer off patrol as the subject is accompanied to the hospital for processing. The officer must wait at the hospital for a County Mental Health crisis worker to arrive and make an assessment.

Severe cuts to the mental health budget have caused a reduction in services and personnel. This has resulted in an additional burden on law enforcement and the hospitals.

The GJ decided to investigate this problem to see how it is affecting law enforcement and public safety. In addition, the GJ reviewed mental health services and the impact of 5150s on the Mendocino County jail.

Approach

The GJ visited the Fort Bragg, Willits, and Ukiah Police Departments, Fort Bragg sub-station, Mendocino County Jail and interviewed department heads and staff. Supervisory staffs from Mental Health and Ukiah Valley Medical Center (UVMC) were also interviewed.

Documents and reports reviewed included:

• California CSA “White Paper” on Jails and the Mentally Ill

• Mendocino County Jail Incident reports

• Correction Division Policy and Procedures: Rules for Safety Cells

• Police Department Staffing schedules

• Corrections Standards Authority reports

• Mendocino County Jail – Medical Receiving – Screening forms

• California Forensic Medical Group – Nursing Assessment of Psychiatric and Suicidal Inmate form/Triage Assessment form/Sobering-Safety Cell-Restraints Log

• Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Annual Report 2010-2011

• Mendocino County Health and Human Services Budget

Discussion

People exhibiting behavior that is a danger to themselves or others are brought to the hospital under California Code Section 5150. When these individuals are brought in by law enforcement, it takes officers away from other assigned duties. When an individual is under arrest or violent, the officer is required to wait for the County crisis worker. After 6pm and on weekends, there is only one crisis worker on duty for the entire County. Officers can be detained for extended periods of time. In small communities, where only one officer may be on duty, this can leave the streets unprotected for several hours.

Ukiah Valley Medical Center reports one to two 5150 cases in the emergency room daily. Lab work and evaluation is required at the hospital with no guarantee of payment. This can represent an average loss of $4,000 per 5150. Law enforcement officers are required to complete burdensome paperwork. Of the 5150s, less than one third are placed in a mental facility. A crisis worker can release the patient over the recommendation of a psychiatrist, medical physician, or law enforcement officer. However, in order to recommend hospitalization the crisis worker must obtain supervisory approval. Often hospitalization has been recommended by a crisis worker only to be overridden by Mental Health administration. This County does not have a facility to house the mentally ill. Mental Health does not recognize dual diagnoses of substance abuse and mental illness as a mental health emergency. HIPAA (Health Privacy) regulations preclude direct communication between hospital staff and the arresting officer. Hospital staff may only communicate information directly to the medical staff at the jail.

During a visit to the County jail, it was reported close to 20% of all inmates have Mental Health issues. Due to the lack of Mental Health services and facilities in this County, people arrested for behavioral issues end up in jail. There are people in jail who are not accepted by Mental Health facilities, not deemed competent to stand trial, or are waiting for conservatorship status. Reduced resources within the Mental Health department have resulted in reduction of staff and less funds for hospitalization of the mentally ill. At the time of the GJ visit, it was reported there were 254 inmates, of which 46 had mental health issues. One third of these are women. Twelve inmates are acutely mentally ill (half men, half women) and should be hospitalized. This includes one inmate with a misdemeanor waiting months for a Mental Health bed.

The GJ heard testimony at the jail that their biggest issue is mental illness. Since there is no psychiatrist available for the jail, management at the jail insisted that a Mental Health nurse be available to administer drugs and provide some counseling. The medical provider offers telepsychiatry two hours a week. Services consist of diagnoses and prescriptions for medication, no counseling. Telepsychiatry (doc-in-the-box) is an impersonal replacement for a psychiatrist. During a visit to the jail, the GJ participated in an interview with the telepsychiatrist. The placement of the camera focused on the doctor all the way across the room. Repositioning the camera to focus on the doctor’s face would make the experience more personal. This limited service would not work without a psychiatric nurse on staff to provide patient evaluations. Telepsychiatry costs the same as an on-site psychiatrist but does not provide the same level of service. There is no other facility in the County for mentally ill who are acting out. The only place to confine them is jail. Patient inmates are often placed in solitary confinement for their own safety, as well as the safety of others. Jail staff quoted, “solitary confinement in jail is the worst thing we can do to someone…safety cells are a horrible, horrible necessity. There is no other way.”

A senior jail official stated, “We provide more mental health services than the Mental Health Department. We are the end recipient for the people the Mental Health Department no longer serves.” County jail personnel and Mental Health staff are working on the development of a follow-up program for released patients deemed mentally ill.

Law enforcement officers stated they no longer have confidence in statements made by Mental Health. The Willits Police Department refused to sign a MOU with Mental Health due to lack of trust. In an effort to control costs, County administration has decided to contract out Mental Health services in 2013. It is unclear, at this time, what the final contract will include. Since the county has put the Mental Health service contract out for bid, the department is having difficulty replacing staff.

Findings

F1. The Mental Health Department scheduling one crisis worker after hours and weekends is insufficient for Mendocino County.

F2. Crisis workers have conflicting responsibility and authority.

F3. Health and Human Services Agency and Ukiah Valley Medical Center have conflicting views on the procedures for treatment of patients with dual diagnoses.

F4. Mendocino County Jail enlisted the help of Mental Health staff to begin a follow-up program for released patients deemed mentally ill.

F5. The current method of providing psychiatric services needs improvement. Telepsychiatry (doc-in-the-box) is an expensive/poor substitute for the “real thing,” a psychiatrist.

F6. Mental health patients in crisis are costly to area hospitals and law enforcement.

F7. HIPAA regulations prevent mental health communication between law enforcement and medical staff. Hospital staff may only transmit patient information to the medical staff at the jail.

Recommendations

R1. Mental Health provides an additional crisis worker after 6pm and on weekends.

R2. The Health and Human Services Agency re-examine their policies regarding crisis workers making the determination for releasing 5150s when a supervisor’s authorization is required to hospitalize a patient.

R3. Health and Human Services Agency clarify the procedures for treatment of patients with dual diagnoses.

R4. Mental Health funds be used to implement a discharge /follow-up program for mentally ill inmates released from the jail.

R5. The doc-in-the-box camera be repositioned for improved personal interaction.

R6. Mental Health continues the search for a County psychiatrist for the jail.

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LAUREL KRAUSE WRITES:

Still Standing for Kent State Truth & Justice

5/6/13 Laurel Krause, Kent State Truth Tribunal on Kent State in 2013 as Abby Martin Breaks the Set on RTNews http://bit.ly/10HneaG

5/6/13 Pat LaMarche: UN to Review Whether the FBI Killed the Kids at Kent State http://huff.to/ZLbvwp)

In April 2013, the UN Human Rights Committee accepted & posted Kent State Truth Tribunal’s questions on Kent State. The United States must take their turn before the High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Committee in their formal review in October 2013. http://bit.ly/12r6F68

February 2013 ~ To the United Nations: A Plea for Justice at Kent State http://bit.ly/WQpjUP

The F.B.I. CHRISTMAS SURPRISE of 2012 arrived in the contents of the F.B.I.’s Occupy FOIA Papers with explicit FBI commentary on ‘suppressed sniper rifles’ against Occupy leadership. Interview with Jason Leopold http://bit.ly/RWuIto

RECALL the F.B.I. using the sniper scenario against protesters, crossing the line with murders in 1970. Uncensoring the “unhistory” of the Kent State massacre, while also aiming toward justice & healing. http://bit.ly/RQNUWC

WATCH 9/20/12 Mickey Huff as Abby Martin on ‘Breaks the Set’ on the Kent State massacre cover-up & more. Starts at 16:00 http://bit.ly/SahdDG

Allison’s sister Laurel on the Murders at Kent State Revisited http://bit.ly/JVNtIZ

5/1/12 Kent State Letter to President Obama from Allison’s Family http://bit.ly/IEJIWV

WATCH: 4/29/12 Kent State CNN news video. HEAR the Kent State Order to Shoot Firsthand http://bit.ly/IGvDUn

Daily Kos ~ Obama Justice Dept: No Justice for Kent State http://bit.ly/In3Jh3

No More Kent States! http://bit.ly/Jh1Q7T

Peace & Justice,

Laurel Krause, 707-357-2855

www.TruthTribunal.org

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.” — Edward R. Murrow

Change is inevitable, even in Anderson Valley. Some aspects of the valley have changed markedly from when I first arrived in the late 1950s and some hardly at all. Back in November, in my article “That’s Entertainment,” I detailed how – with the rise of television dishes, computers and homegrown options, and the disappearance of the television translator and radio dramas – the valley’s entertainment landscape changed. To a lesser extent, basic services like phone, power and water also have changed, though most of the changes won’t be obvious to casual observers.

I never got around to writing my intended tribute to the great American bassist Ron Carter last year at this time on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Carter entered the jazz canon 50 years ago when he joined the Miles Davis Quintet in 1963, remaining in the group for a five-year span that yielded the celebrated LPs E.S.P and Seven Steps to Heaven. His wide-ranging and indefatigable efforts since then are too numerous to list here; last year he was inducted into DownBeat’s Jazz Hall of Fame. Carter’s direct contributions to the vibrancy of the art of jazz are well-known to many aspiring musicians, myself included. I got to make music with Carter on jazz educator Jamey Aebersold’s Play-Along series; in the All-Bird installment of that project, a rhythm section with Carter on bass provided the accompaniment for bunch of famed Charlie Parker tunes, from the relaxed blues Billie’s Bounce to daunting up-tempo of Donna Lee. I could turn down the right speaker and eliminate the piano and have at it. Ron Carter is a towering musical figure who seems like a friend even to those who have never met him.

This past week Carter celebrated his 76th, birthday, and to mark that very American number I’ve gone to the archive of the Anderson Valley Advertiser for a piece I wrote in February of 1996. Things have changed since then. The MoMA in New York has been remodeled and remade. Jazz clubs are now smoke free. The wonderful jazz photographer Roy DeCarava died in 2009. The Sweet Basil jazz club is gone. But Carter is still going strong.

My first bit of luck last Friday was to stumble into the Museum of Modern Art in New York to find that a retrospective of the photographs of Roy DeCarava was on exhibit. A substantial part of DeCarava’s work has been taking photographs of jazz musicians, and his MoMA show, which continues for the rest of the month, displays many of his famous pictures: Billie Holiday singing at a 1957 house party; drummer Elvin Jones’ sweat-streaked face gripped by concentration; a smiling Louis Armstrong striding down a Harlem Street; and John Coltrane frozen to his horn in an ecstatic moment of creation. Much of the power of these images derives, I think, from DeCarava unwillingness to glamorize musicians in his photographs taken during performance — more often — during the countless hours they spend waiting to play. “I don’t think of musicians as musicians,” he writes, “but as workers.”

The second bit of luck was to discover that the MoMA is sponsoring a series of Friday jazz concerts led by the great bassist Ron Carter and running concurrently with DeCarava’s show. Carter’s quintet welcomed an overflow audience to the museum café with a rendition of the standard, There Will Never Be Another You, announcing a program to come that was so straight-ahead Euclid himself would have smiled. From the very first bar the rhythm section of Carter on bass, Stephen Scott on piano, and Louis Nash on drums proved to be a Triumvirate of swing — exacting but not mechanical, propulsive though never frantic.

After the opener the quintet settled into Milt Jackson’s famous blues, Bags Groove, and the audience knew it was in for a pleasure cruise. Tenor saxphonist Javon Jackson surveyed the view from the foredeck with a detached humor reminiscent of jazz giant Sonny Rollins. That Jackson doesn’t quite match Rollins’ exuberant irony should not detract from his youthful brilliance. Jackson has something to say that’s worth listening to, and I like the way he lays back and draws the audience in. Because people think art demands the transcendent genius of a discredited Romanticism, every artist now must be a genius, all the more so if he’s got a couple platinum records hanging from his living room wall. Art is craft, and Jackson knows his trade. Alongside Jackson on the front line was trumpeter Edwin Russell, who plays with a gruff wit and ruffled tone that serves as the perfect foil for the tenor player already boasting an impressive CV that includes time with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Jackson’s future looks even brighter than his store of past accomplishments.

But the greatest discovery was of pianist Stephen Scott, who is, from what I can gather, a very busy man on the New York scene these days. Like all the players assembled by Carter for the MoMA gig, Scott is young, but he has already arrived; his prodigious technical abilities are fed by immense powers of invention, and the structure of his improvisations are as compelling as the beautiful detail of the way he tells these musical stories. It’s not surprising then, that last year he played alongside bop-Olympian Kenny Barron in a two-piano quartet at Sweet Basil’s in Greenwich Village. But like the rest of the players in Carter’s pick-up squad, Scott has a good sense of humor. On Bags Groove, Carter and Nash urged him on through several double-time choruses, then suddenly quit playing. Scott responded with a quick history lesson in jazz piano, demonstrating his mastery of stride and boogie-woogie before offering homages to the Yin and Yang of bop pianists — Bud Powell and Thelonius Monk. Scott gradually thinned out the texture until he was playing only a single line in his right hand, which became more and more sparse until he was dabbing quick bits of syncopated color across the blues form. Just as Scott let things disintegrate into an abstraction verging on nothingness, the bass and drums kicked in as Scott played a few more choruses of gentler blues, leaving all the musicians — and many in the audience — smiling and shaking their heads in amazement. Such fantastical forays were made possible by the foundation laid by Carter, who is one of the greatest accompanists in jazz, who has the stature and the wit to able to follow Scott’s impromptu lecture with his own solo ruminations as captivating as those of his young pianist. There is always energy and imagination in Carter’s magisterial brand of music-making.

I will never be one to complain about a performance made up of tunes from the bebop lexicon; the whole evening was essentially a magnificent jam session, filled with the uncertainty and excitement that attends such gatherings. Before concluding the first set with a very brisk version of Monk’s typically idiosyncratic Well You Needn’t, the quintet turned to his well-known ballad Round Midnight, which featured a refined and quirky solo by Jackson, with a beautiful cadenza accompanied by Scott. The saxpohonist’s introspective style and the subtle commentary provided by the rhythm section came across all the more powerfully because the musicians were playing without microphones; only Carter had a small amplifier for his bass. The players achieved a direct communication much more human and subtle than is possible when the music is filtered through the usual tangle of wires and black boxes. I suppose amplification is necessary if the musicians are to be heard over the hubbub of most jazz clubs, but at the MoMA café people simply had to concentrate more on the music than on ordering their next drink or impressing their date. Ironically, I happened to have two German dowagers seated not far from me discussing the horrors of New York’s subways, so I stood against a wall next to the bandstand for the second set. Equally as uncommon as unamplified bebop was the excellent air-quality afforded by the MoMA’s smoke-free environment, for it is indeed rare that a club allows one the dual pleasures of listening to live jazz and breathing. Why is it that things are so rarely the way they should be, especially when it is so simple?

Of the four tunes in the second set, three were by Sonny Rollins; half of the pieces on the program (Bags Groove, Oleo, Doxy, St. Thomas) were recorded by Miles Davis and a quintet featuring Rollins on a date for Prestige way back in 1954. But as we cruised these well-charted seas with a full house of MoMA vacationers sunning themselves on deck, I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about enjoying the trip. Here’s what I started thinking in the break between sets, guarding my place near the bandstand and watching the snow-covered sculptures in the MoMA garden disappear in the twilight outside: boundless innovation gets us dreary rectangles of Mark Rothko on the walls of the MoMA, and crop-dusting helicopters dangling from its rafters. Try and convince me that Edwin Russell’s spirited improvisation on Sonny Rollins’ calypso romp, St. Thomas, isn’t better than the majority of the stuff up on the top floors of the MoMA, from the Formula One race car to the completely white canvasses. (Lest I’m thrown overboard, let me just say that I love almost everything on the first two floors of the museum.) Unhindered by microphones, the St. Croix native Russell was able to achieve marvelous acoustic effects, as when he would point the bell of his trumpet down at the floor then sweep it in an arc across the front of the band stand, unleashing sunny blasts and sustained, high-register lines out into the café.

To close out the program Carter steered his crew back towards port with a blistering Oleo, Rollins’ gloss of George Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm. These chord changes are the Scylla and Charybdis of jazz, but for those able to navigate the treacherous straits between them, there is plenty of open water beyond. Jackson proved that his humor was as quick as the demanding tempo, peppering his solo with Charlie Parker quotes, and Russell capped a banner evening with a spirited display of bop pyro-technics; his playing is dexterous but with a charming bluffness that lifts my spirits. But the most impressive performance was once more given by Scott, who was again left to solo for several choruses, Carter and Nash joining in only on the bridge, the middle portion of the tune. Hearing the bass and drums lay out during stretches makes you appreciate their decisive energy all the more, particularly in those moments when they enter again to infuse the soloist with renewed intensity. Drummer Nash is a brilliant player who listens carefully and who always deploys his vast technical abilities for the greater good of the ensemble. While trading four measure segments with Jackson and Russell, Nash made a quick tour of bebop drummers proving that he too is capable of a swift ironic interplay.

After the abrupt ending of Oleo the audience immediately rose to give the players a standing ovation. The musicians bowed once then stayed on the stand talking, and the applause quickly died down; no need for three curtain calls and flowers all around. DeCarava might have observed that they had created two-hours of art simply because they had shown up and done their jobs.

David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Bach’s Feet. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.

839 MILES OF WICK

May 19, 2013

To: Jane M. Hicks, Chief, Regulatory Division, San Francisco District, US Army Corps of Engineers, 1455 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1398

Re: Request for Reevaluation of the 404 Permit No. 1991-194740N regarding the Caltrans Willits

Bypass project

Dear Ms. Hicks,

Request: Keep the Code, a California non-profit public benefit corporation, requests a reevaluation of the 404 Permit No. 1991-194740N regarding the Caltrans Willits Bypass project because it appears that information provided by Caltrans to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) was incomplete and/or inaccurate; and significant new information has surfaced which the USACE did not consider in reaching the public interest decision. Furthermore, Keep the Code requests a determination by the USACE to suspend the Permit pursuant to 33 C.F.R. Section 325.7.

Problem: Caltrans is planning to begin the installation this week of approximately 55,000 holes to be punctured into the wetlands under the proposed northern end of the Phase 1 Caltrans Willits Bypass to insert plastic wick drains about 80 feet deep in spacing on a grid three to five feet apart. These wick drains will drain water from the soil, but without drainage settlement ponds, the turbid water can be expected to drain into the adjacent Outlet Creek. Also, the wick drains would be expected to dewater two adjacent Mitigation Actions areas, that are contiguous to the southwestern corner of the Northern Interchange: a Group 1 Wetland Establishment area and a Type 4 Wetland Rehabilitation area. Apparently, there was no environmental evaluation conducted on the adverse impact of this dewatering and the sediment draining into the adjacent wetlands and anadromous fish stream, and since the wick drains are permanently placed, this adverse impact can be expected to occur over many decades, which is not a temporary impact, and that has no mitigation provided for these significant adverse impacts to waters of the United States and to the three Federally listed fish species: Chinook, Coho and Steelhead. For example, the minimalist mention of wick drains is the following from the Draft Environmental Impact Report, May 2002, 5.5.6 Impact Analysis:

“The only activity that would penetrate into the groundwater table anticipated as part of any build alternative would be the placement of support piles and footings for bridges and structures; the relocation of groundwater wells; the placement of wick drains and any associated de-watering activities. These minor and isolated intrusions are not expected to impact the quality of groundwater.”

Clearly, this seems to be a casual dismissal of wick drains potential impact to the environment and is wholly inadequate. The 404 Permit requires a thorough evaluation of wick drain impacts on the adjacent watercourses and mitigation lands. Furthermore, on page 5 of the 404 Permit, condition 18 does not authorize Caltrans to take any threatened or endangered species, in particular the threatened Steelhead, Coho salmon or Chinook salmon, or adversely modify their designated critical habitat. The authorization under the 404 Permit is conditional upon compliance with all of the mandatory terms and conditions associated with incidental take of the Biological Opinions. And on page 81 of the National Marine Fisheries Service Biological Opinion, January 19, 2012, condition 17:

“Working waters from the project area shall not be discharged to the live stream, unless Caltrans can demonstrate that no impact to stream water temperature or other water quality parameters will occur as a result of the discharge.”

Caltrans Willits Bypass Documents

The Caltrans Willits Bypass Bid Package item 192 requires 1,350,000 meters of DRAINAGE WICK. (A table in the construction plans from the engineering drainage plans for location and length, totals 1,344,142.8 meters (about 4,430,000 feet or 839 miles of drainage wick).

* * *

The District Geotechnical Design Report for the Willits Bypass (Phase 1) prepared by Caltrans Division of Engineering Services Geotechnical Services Geotechnical Design – North, dated December 30, 2009 was addressed to Dave Kelley, Caltrans, states in part:

“…. Wick drains should be installed within the limits of the proposed embankment footprint, in a triangular pattern at the desired spacing to a depth of 24.4 meters (80 feet). It is anticipated that the near surface soils are of adequate strength to support the wick driving equipment. Once the wicks are installed, a drainage layer should be installed. Options for the drainage layer are:

1. Gravel blanket — consists of a filter fabric placed on existing ground, followed by a 305 mm (12 inch) layer of Class 1 permeable material, followed by a geosynthetic reinforcing fabric. The filter fabric will keep fines from penetrating the gravel layer. The reinforcing fabric will lessen the chance of circular slip failures and hold the fill together as the foundation consolidates, reducing cracking at the surface. The gravel blanket should cover the entire wick drain area.

2. Geocomposite blanket – consists of a polymeric sheet (drainage core) encapsulated by a highly permeable geotextile wrap. The geotextile retains soil, allowing water to pass into the drainage core. The sheets will be placed on existing ground and below the fill embankment. The geocomposite blanket should cover the entire wick drain area.

3. Horizontal strip drains – consists of polymeric strips (drainage core) encapsulated by a highly permeable geotextile wrap. The geotextile retains soil, allowing water to pass into the drainage core. The strips should be placed on existing ground and below the fill embankment. The horizontal strip drains may be spaced such that each strip drain ties into one or two rows of wicks.”

Questions:

1. Has the USACE evaluated the significant adverse impacts of the permanently placed wick drains and the above options for drainage layers, to wetlands and waters of the United States?

2. Will turbid water drain into the adjacent Outlet Creek, Upp Creek, or other wetlands and waters of the United States?

3. Will water contaminated with naturally occurring high levels of boron and arsenic drain into the adjacent Outlet Creek, Upp Creek, or other wetlands and waters of the United States?

4. Will the wick drains dewater either of the two adjacent Mitigation Actions areas that are contiguous to the southwestern corner of the Northern Interchange: a Group 1 Wetland Establishment area and a Type 4 Wetland Rehabilitation area?

5. Was adequate environmental evaluation conducted on the adverse impact of this dewatering or mitigation wetlands, and sediment draining into the adjacent wetlands and anadromous fish streams?

6. Were these potential significant adverse impacts mitigated to provide for protection to wetlands and waters of the United States?

7. Were these potential significant adverse impacts mitigated to provided for protection to the three Federally listed fish species: Chinook, Coho and Steelhead?

8. Are settlement ponds required to trap the sediment?

9. Does there need to be monitoring of the wick drain water effluent, such as water quantity, water quality, and effect on streams, wetlands, wetland establishment areas and wetland rehabilitation areas?

Again, Keep the Code requests a reevaluation of the 404 Permit regarding the Caltrans Willits Bypass project because it appears that information provided by Caltrans to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) was incomplete and/or inaccurate; and significant new information has surfaced which the USACE did not consider in reaching the public interest decision. Furthermore, Keep the Code requests a determination by the USACE to suspend the Permit pursuant to 33 C.F.R. Section 325.7. Thank you for your consideration.

Bob Whitney, Keep The Code

Willits

_________________________________________

25 TO LIFE MEANS 25

Editor:

What a waste of tax money.

Currently the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is lining up hundreds of people here in Solano State prison to be shipped out of state to other prisons. That’s like taking a dump in the living room and covering it with a newspaper. It’s still there, it still stinks, yet you don’t see it. I’m sure the feds will force all these inmates back to California. I’m speculating they will ship thousands out, costing millions of dollars to try doctoring the books for this population for the feds. It’s high time the lawmakers let people deal with their own issues and if they wish to save their jobs they can start getting rid of the common sense laws and start letting these lifers out of prison.

25 to life should mean after 25 years, if you’re not trying to stab people or fighting you should go home. We all make mistakes. Just some are a little more serious than others. Besides, people change a lot after 20 or 30 years.

A lot of lifers never killed anyone, yet I get to go home in a few years.

For some reason California has more prisons than anywhere in the world yet it still houses thousands of prisoners out-of-state. That’s proof enough that something is wrong. Soon my goofy buddy Shayne Muthaf-in Wrede will be joining them. Take the ‘R’ off of the CDCR because shipping people away from loved ones is not a part of rehab or recovery.

Mothaf-in Squirrely Goat

AKA Aaron Vargas AD 5532

CSP Solano 13-19-2 UP

PO Box 4000, Vacaville, CA 95696

Shayne Wrede AD 3900

CSP Solano 13-3-1 UP

PO Box 4000, Vacaville, CA 95696

PS. We all wish to salute your manbeaters of the week for putting your sissyfied men in check. If you ever wish for a real man drop us a line.

_________________________________________

SEVEN CARROTS OF LIGHT

(Corrected version)

Editor,

I have a recurring dream where I’m running for president again, and no, I have not gone off my meds.

Longtime readers of this paper may recall previous campaigns dating back to 1982. What they don’t know is that my 1982 effort wasn’t the first time I ran for president of the United States. No, that would be my 1972 run as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and student body president of Cañada Community College in Redwood City, California.

In that 1972 effort I simply borrowed Gary Snyder’s “Chofu-Four Changes” as my platform. I ran again in 1976, and in 1980 I joined the Citizens Party and campaigned for Barry Commoner and LaDonna Harris. In 1990 I was back at it changing my 1982 seven-point program to the “seven points of light” ala George H.W. Bush.

I want to keep this short but I would be remiss if I didn’t include the seven points for the edification of readers to whom this is all new, so here they are in their original form:

1. End all nuclear development and dismantle all existing weapons and plants. 2. Withdraw all support from military dictatorships. 3. Honor all treaties to which we are a party. 4. Provide jobs for all willing to work to solarize and re-green our land. 5. Cooperate in the decentralization of power and hold corporations responsible for their acts. 6. Turn the South Lawn of the White House into a community garden. 7. Ask God/ess for daily guidance.

When I say original form, I’m referring to what came out of my mouth in an interview with a reporter from the Willits News published in their July 28, 1982 edition under the heading “Willits’ first presidential candidate.”

So here we are in 2013 where I’ll turn 73 in November and I will be 76 by the time I take office in January 2017.

Dreaming? Of course. I told you that back in the first sentence.

I’m married now and I live on an acre north of Fort Bragg where with the help the couple of previously homeless friends I maintain two small vegetable gardens and a greenhouse which has been producing sugar snap peas and salad greens since March.

You want to do something revolutionary? Plant carrots and watch them grow.

I have absolutely no plans to leave his acre except to shop or keep appointments.

Peace,

Peter Sears

Fort Bragg

_________________________________________

ARMCHAIR QB BALDWIN

Editor,

I was dismayed to learn that “Red Phil” Baldwin has somehow convinced the Ukiah city council to weigh in on the US policy debate regarding Syria. Does Mr. Baldwin believe that he was elected to play “armchair quarterback” for the State Department? I suggest that both he and the city council refrain from the these purely symbolic gestures and instead focus on actions that will actually benefit their constituency. Drafting aggressive signage ordinance, perhaps.

More ominously, why is “Baathist” Baldwin seeking the preservation of the Assad regime, which has killed tens of thousands of its own citizens? I’m certain that the Syrian government will take comfort in counting the Ukiah city council among its friends, along side with Iran and Hezbollah. What’s next, Phil, a sister-city relationship with Damascus?

David Lilker

Willits

_________________________________________

INTERVENTION IS OUR BUSINESS

Editor:

We know David Lilker as an avid student and teacher of history who has endorsed the Pax Americana and its New World Order. Here we see his sarcastic apology defending an American foreign policy devoid of a voice for the American people. Condescendingly, he tells us any challenge to the warmongers is a worthless “symbolic gesture.” David encourages us to keep our mouths shut because the brilliant oligarchs in charge have American interests in mind when they initiate every new war.

David calls on us to shut up about America’s two to three trillion dollars spent during last decade in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya generating almost exclusively devastation, chaos, and sectarian violence. According to his logic, Mr. Lilker would have also encouraged us to keep our mouths shut about the following American invasions or bombardments (all illegal under international law): Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada, 1983), Operation Just Cause (Panama, 1989), Operation Desert Storm (Iraq, 1990), Operation Noble Anvil, (Serbia, 1999), Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan, 2001), Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq, 2003), Operation Odyssey Dawn (Libya, 2011). Never mind, he implies, the tens of thousands of innocents who have died as a result of these American “Operations.” And in Vietnam … we’ll avoid going there now.

David accuses me of supporting a head of state who “has killed tens of thousands of” his “own citizens.” Here, Lilker mouths what has been drilled at us for two years by the mainstream media. Mr. Lilker surely knows that the statistics on war deaths in Syria cannot be confirmed at this time and that we cannot determine what percentage of deaths there are those of foreign mercenaries, armed jihadists, (funded by our proxies Qatar and Saudi Arabia) and Syrian army casualties. David fails to admit (or grasp?) that any sitting government — good, bad, or mediocre — will use whatever force it takes to put down armed insurrection.

He simply forgets Anglo-America’s crushing responses to these armed uprisings (not including native American): Daniel Shays 1786, Nat Turner 1831, John Brown 1859, the Confederate rebellion in which Union forces killed 94,000 of their “own citizens.” Lilker avoids more recent incineration of the Symbionese Liberation Army in L.A. (1974), deadly stand-off at Ruby Ridge (1992), Clinton’s violent take down of the Branch Davidians in which 87 died in Waco (1993), and last year’s violent clearing out of Occupy Wall Street.

David does indeed know the plutocratic strategy spelled out for Republican and Democratic executives by the Project for a New American Century which champions “full spectrum” world dominance via regime change. He knows the plan followed in Libya, now underway in Syria follows this formula a) use the media to demonize the targeted head of state; (e.g. president is always replaced by despot, tyrant, dictator and government always becomes regime) b) encourage, advise, and fund peaceful protests via such dubious groups as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy c) encourage, advise, fund, arm and transport agent provocateurs to the scene — even if they be terrorists such as Al-Qaida d) encourage violent attacks on national forces so as to provoke a reactionary crackdown in which innocents are harmed e) initiate Orwellian propaganda that the target is going to commit or has committed unspeakable crimes against his own people f) mention the existence of WMD and its likely use g) institute an air war (aka “no fly zone”) and bomb the crap out of the targeted nation all in the name of the “humanitarian right to protect.”

David knows this strategy but seems not to care about its morality or legality. We are not sure he knows of the 156 page plan titled “The Path to Persia” initiated and completed by the Brookings Institute’s Saban Center for Middle Eastern Studies based in Doha, Qatar. It spells out this regime change strategy in utmost detail. Among Brookings leading funders we find Carnegie, Fannie Mae, Embassy of Qatar, Rockefeller, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AT&T, Richard Blum and Diane Feinstein, State Farm, Exxon Mobil, Visa, Allstate, Chevron, Johnson & Johnson, J.P. Morgan Chase, Shell Oil, Wal-Mart, American Express, Alcoa, Bank of America, Boeing, BP., Coca Cola, Citigroup, GE, Ford, Eli Lilly, Haim Saban, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Pfizer, Raytheon, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Caterpillar, CIGNA, Conoco Phillips, Dow Chemical, Goldman-Sachs, Honda, Marathon Oil, Merrill Lynch, Mitsubishi.

If you agree with Camus that “a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down” to the corporate oligopoly noted above or if you just want to armchair quarterback about America’s endless wars please attend the Ukiah City Council June 5th at 6:15 where opposition to U.S. war on Syria is the first item of unfinished business. David, KC Meadows, and others who agree that war is none of Ukiah’s business should attend as well and let us have it.

Phil Baldwin

Ukiah

_________________________________________

FIRE DEPARTMENT BUDGET

Dear Emil Rossi,

It was nice to see you the other day when you stopped by to ask about our recently revised fee schedule. I was glad to see that you are apparently still in good health and have not lost your interest in matters impacting our community. In your letter to the AVA last week you requested that a response to your comments on the Fee Schedule be published in the Letters to the Editor section of the paper so I am obliging.

I share your often published concerns about ever increasing taxes and the way these increases are sometimes disguised. The recently enacted Cal Fire Prevention Fee is an excellent example of this.

I thought it might be helpful to provide a little background on our Fee Schedule and why we utilize it.

Most governmental agencies utilize a fee schedule to establish the charges for providing certain services. The County Building and Planning Department is a good example with fees for building permits, use permits, major and minor subdivisions etc., etc. Most Fire Departments likewise establish fee schedules to set the charges for many of the services they provide beyond the normal response to emergencies. Our first Fee Schedule was adopted by the CSD Board in March of 1994 and was revised in 1998 and 2007 (the fees had not been increased in any of these revisions). Among other things this allows us to charge people who receive services but neither reside in, nor own property within the District. The logic for this is that these people receive services but do not contribute through property taxes or special assessments to the financing of our agency.

Several years ago we discovered that if we provide these services without at least attempting to recover the cost we would be in technical violation of the law in that we would be providing “an illegal gift of public funds” at the expense of our taxpayers and residents.

In our case we are also obligated to provide services to over 150 square miles of adjacent land that is not included in any fire district. Our Fee Schedule allows us to bill for these services that are again paid for by the residents and property owners within our District.

In your letter you also mentioned the Brown Act and requirements for public notice. It was unclear to me if you felt we had failed to provide this required notice but in any case, the Revised Fee Schedule appeared in the published agendas for; the CSD meeting on April 17th, the Budget Committee meeting on April 10th and the Fire Protection Committee meeting on April 3rd. In addition to this we ran a notice in the AVA (I assume this is where you saw it) for two weeks prior to enactment of the Fee Schedule.

I doubt this response will reduce your understandable objections to the general question of fees and taxes charged by governmental agencies but hopefully it will at least provide a little background and a brief explanation of why we have elected to utilize this method to recover the cost of providing some services.

When we spoke I did give you one piece of misinformation. I told you that you would not be charged for services provided to any of your properties within the District but that you would be charged for services provided to your property on Signal Ridge Road. In reviewing the document I found that it actually says that anyone who receives services out of the District but who also own property or resides within the District will not be charged.

I also needed to clarify that some fees would apply to District residents such as fees for plan checks, copies of reports or photographs. The Fee Schedule permits us to charge for these services but we usually don’t.

Additionally, the new Fee Schedule provides for charges to provide “Standby” personnel and or apparatus. We have occasionally received requests of this nature for people who wish to have an engine and personnel available for events like large weddings or other gatherings particularly when summer campfires were involved. We recently provided an engine and personnel to the movie company filming in the Valley that would fall into this category.

You also expressed concern regarding our level of debt. We currently owe a total of just over $40,000 on a loan we took out about nine years ago and which will be paid off next year. The loan was utilized to build our Boonville station and partly finance a new fire engine. Your comment caused us to realize that our taxpayers should be able to easily determine what we have in outstanding debt and so we will be including that informing in our proposed 2013/14 Fire Department Budget that is available for public review between now and the June CSD Board meeting.

Anyone wishing to provide input on this or any other matter that falls under the jurisdiction of the Community Services District should feel welcome to attend the CSD Board Meetings held regularly on the third Wednesday of each month starting at 5:30pm. The Board normally hears members of the public on any subject they wish to address as one of the first orders of business. Correspondence may be sent to the CSD Board of Directors at PO Box 398 Boonville, 95415. Emails may be sent to our General Manager, Joy Andrews at districtmgr.avcsd@gmail.com or me at firechief.avcsd@gmail.com . You can also call us at the Fire Department at 895-2020 or Joy at 895-2075.

Thanks for your interest in our agency and the opportunity to publicly respond.

Sincerely,

Colin H. Wilson, Fire Chief

Anderson Valley Fire Department, Boonville

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THE OPTUM PROPOSAL

Letter to the Editor

Privatizing Mental Health Services

The Mental Health Director has recreated the current dismal state of Mendocino County Mental Health services with all the same players plus his colleague Ortner, hung a new name on it, and called it an “enhanced delivery system.” Yes there are some welcome words in the contract about crisis care but an absence of people with experience in delivering it. I don’t see anything about recovery support services in all our communities.

This is why it had to be kept secret until now because others might notice and say so publicly. The plan seems to be to ram it through the supervisors on Tuesday. I wish the supervisors would look at the Optum Proposal. They have vast experience in 24 states and many counties. I believe they would bring in change for the better.

Sonya Nesch, author of

Advocating for Someone with a Mental Illness

Comptche

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UKIAH’S RIP-OFF AGENT

Dear Editor.

Gordon Elton, the City of Ukiah’s finance director is retiring in August. Elton is so arrogant and so secretive it’s hard to say whether he’s incompetent or just a jerk.

“This will be my last budget session,” Elton said. “I’ve enjoyed working here very much, even though there’s been more challenges than I needed.”

Challenges? You bet! Allow me to name a few.

Ukiah’s RDA cash cow disappeared. The excessive number of executive positions, and their fat salaries, at the top of the city’s management chart will have to be padded from some other source. If taxes can’t be raised, maybe the city manager and her new finance director can raid the Sanitation District.

Ukiah’s ridiculous garbage no-bid contract with C&S Waste Solutions will mean increases in collection rates and tipping fees from now until the end of time.

Ukiah residents can also expect annual double-digit increases in water rates and sewer rates for the foreseeable future due to mismanagement and flawed financial planning.

Ukiah’s old landfill on Vichy Springs Road — the one that should have been capped long, long ago — will have to be closed or face fines and penalties imposed by the State of California. Remember, the old landfill sits on top of a web of earthquake faults and in a watershed area.

All these add up to big bills for the city. Elton is getting out at a good time.

And, oh yeah, I almost forgot to add that the City of Ukiah already faces a budget deficit of $1 million next year.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

PS. I just called the City of Ukiah’s finance department to ask when the bond for the hydroelectric would be paid off. Gordon Elton said he thinks it is 2019. You are probably unaware that the City’s electric rates are twice that of PG&E, because of the bond passed many years ago. Wow! And we thought ahead of the green movement! Before the City became a hydroelectric power utility, the City’s electric rates were lower than the state average for PG&E, and the City used the surplus profits to buy one or two police cars, etc.

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TOKE TIME II

Editor:

I’m enjoying the discussion of the origin of 4:20. My first encounter with the term was shorthand for the time when some office workers would slip out to the back parking lot for a few tokes to make the rest of the bureaucratic day more palatable.

Anyone recognize this?

Rixanne Wehren

Albion

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PET PILL PEEVE

AVA,

Hi everyone! Kudos to the staff at the AVA….as always you produce thought provoking articles.

May I express a pet peeve in your illustrious journal?

One of the environmental issues we face as a species is from chemical pollution, though as most of industrial production has moved to China, it’s more at the consumer end that we have problems these days. A major pollutant in the US is the flushing down the toilet of old pharmaceuticals — believe it or not your outdated Prozac and antibiotics can have a major effect on fish and other riparian species.

OK, so we take them back to the pharmacy, right? Nope — here in Humboldt, the only way to dump your old pills is a once a month pickup at the garbage transfer station, or to try to hunt down a clinic that may or may not take them.

I believe it should be a state law that EVERY pharmacy that dispenses these useful though toxic substances should be required to take them back. Same for old TV’s, etc. Is it right that anyone can sell you some toxic junk, but YOU have to figure out how to get rid of it?

In San Francisco, for example, even the police department will take your old pills, 24/7, 7 days a week, as well as a long list of pharmacies. How cool is that? Here in bumf**k, the temptation is too great to simply throw your old junk off a cliff somewhere, and flush the old heart pills down the toilet. Do the fish a favor: if it’s too much trouble to haul the pills to somewhere, at least put them in the garbage, not down the toilet.

Thank goodness the Bayshore Mall in Eureka is actually buying back old cell phones now — there’s many places you can simply drop them off — just don’t forget to wipe your call/message list and your contacts (might want to copy them to your old phone first — I always forget that….oooops).

Thank you for your time.

I remain as always…

A faithful pill swilling AVA reader

Humboldt County

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ENDLESS AUDITS

Editor,

As Dan Hamburg’s campaign treasurer during the 2010 election, I feel I should comment on the recently noted fine that was handed him by the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Blunders were made by him, such as giving the campaign $1,500 of his own money (reported by me) but failing to run it through the campaign’s bank account.

What stood out most glaringly, however, were entries made by myself on FPPC reporting forms which were clumsy at best. During the election it was revealed that others running against him were spending considerable amounts of money for Bay Area professional political services. Dan wanted this to be truly a local effort, thus relied on inexperienced people such as myself.

It should be noted that every nickel and dime, plus those $100 donations, plus his $1,500 were on the table. The audit went on forever.

Geoffrey Baugher

Point Arena

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WHY VILLA RAIDED US

Editor:

Pebbles Trippet’s note on Pancho Villa is mostly accurate except that Villa was assassinated on orders by Alvaro Obregon or Plutarco Calles, not Pascual Orozco who was killed in Texas by a posse well before Villa was murdered.

The raid by Villa in 1916 on Columbus, New Mexico (the first attack on US soil since the war of 1812) needs some historical perspective. Villa felt betrayed by Wilson who embargoed weapons and munitions to Villa, and who later allowed Carranza’s army to travel through US territory to attack Villa from the rear and inflict a crushing defeat on Villa at Agua Prieta.

Also to be remembered is that this happened within the context of WWI when Wilson was itching to take on Germany, but trying to avoid an all-out war with Mexico called for by many in the US congress. Germany at the same time was plotting for a US-Mexican war (see the Zimmerman Telegram) to keep the US out of the European conflict. (Villa was looking for an invasion by the US in order to topple the Carranza regime.)

While the attack on Columbus was disastrous for Villa in terms of stores, money and arms — in strategic terms Villa’s raid would largely exceed his expectations and give his movement a new lease on life. This came about through the reaction against the US punitive invasion of Mexico under General Pershing which enabled Villa to rebuild his army to between 6,000 to 10,000 men from the 100-200 men he had left after the Columbus raid.

I urge those interested in this subject to read the works of Professor Friedrich Katz:

1. The Secret War in Mexico — Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution. University of Chicago Press.

2. The Life and Times of Pancho Villa. University of California Press.

Marcello Francisco Curatolo

Walden Pond Books, Oakland

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COAST HOSPITAL: THRIVE!

Letter to the Editor,

Last week our Coast Hospital provided a beautiful luncheon for the entire staff. It was deliciously catered by D’Aurelio’s Restaurant on Franklin Street. The luncheon was the hospital’s way of showing appreciation to the staff and saying, “Thank you for the continued excellent care we give to our community.” I want to say thank you to the hospital and to D’Aurelio’s for such a festive and tasty event.

It’s true that our hospital has enormous financial hurdles to overcome but this challenge hasn’t diminished our ability to care for you safely and competently. We are a home-grown, home-owned hospital and I hope we can keep it that way.

You have all heard the phrase “use it or lose it.” It’s true when referring to local shopping, or to our body’s mobility and muscle tone. And it’s certainly true concerning our local community hospital. To paraphrase an oft-heard advertising slogan: Coast District Hospital: Thrive!

Louise Mariana, R.N., Station 2

Fort Bragg

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IRAQ, LIBYA… SYRIA?

Editor,

On May 20 the New York Times ran a big op-ed piece about marijuana  by Bill “I-was-wrong-about-Iraq-but-let’s-do-Syria-anyway” Keller. On the Times website the piece is accompanied by a photo of Keller, above which is the twitter address of the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal. Andrew’s father, Abe Rosenthal, was the managing editor of the Times when California voters passed Prop 215 in November 1996, legalizing marijuana for medical use. Abe promptly weighed in with an op-ed entitled “While We Slept,“ bemoaning our victory. Rosenthal and the Drug Warriors Back East were kicking themselves for leaving the No-on-215 campaign to California Attorney General Dan Lungren. They held a series of high-level meetings in Washington and developed both short- and long-term strategies to curtail the medical marijuana movement. They realized they couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle; their goal was and is to hold it down by the shoulders.

Fast forward >16 years and we have Abe Rosenthal’s son running the ed page and his political offspring, Bill Keller, pontificating on “How to Legalize Marijuana.” Has the establishment come around to our way of thinking, or did our movement do x, y, and z to gain their acceptance?

East Bay Fred

Alameda

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PIXIE: WHITE COURTESY PHONE

Editor,

Jackie (Pixie) Audet is a wonderful young woman. I once had the pleasure of her being her friend and would love to hear from her again. So if you read this Jackie, please send me a message on Facebook, I hope all is well in your journey and I send you my love and prayers.

Jacob Oxley

Ukiah

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NO SYMPATHY, E.B.

Editor,

Re: Love In Tinytown.

Dear E.B., You didn’t tell us if you paid for dinner, too?

Just curious.

What does E.B. stand for? Egland’s Best? Energy Bunny?

No Sympathy from me.

A.G.

Boonville

A LOW INTENSITY war is underway between Mendo law enforcement and Meredith Ford, the County’s Auditor/Controller over Prop.172, a sales tax measure from the 1990s designed to help fund “public safety.” The money is earmarked for law enforcement but some goes to fire agencies. And some goes, County administration maintains, to the general fund as “a required maintenance of effort,” which seems to mean the County’s take for administering the money to a state-set standard. If the County meets that standard it gets the revenues beyond what is devoted to public safety. Ms. Ford has been battling cancer and has been out of her elected office a lot, which makes resolution of the dispute more difficult than it need be.

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REPORTING on the hospital strikes, particularly the ones at the UC hospitals, hasn’t explained the nut of employee beefs, which boil down to continued layoffs, which means more work for fewer employees and a generally deteriorated quality of care for patients. The boss at UCSF, for example, was paid $1.3 million last year as he laid off 300 people last year.

PERSONAL NOTE and observation from my experience visiting Family and friends who’ve been patients at UCSF: The level of care at UCSF seems all right but ragged around the edges because doctors, nurses and ancillary staff are asked to do too much. The patient presses the buzzer for help and help maybe shows up, maybe shows up twenty minutes later, maybe doesn’t show up at all unless your friend or relative jogs out to the nurse’s station to state the prob directly. The staff at UCSF needs more help but aren’t getting it.

FROM MY OWN emergency stay at St. Mary’s a couple of years ago, also in San Francisco, I couldn’t help but see how much more efficient St. Mary’s was compared to UCSF, and how much less harried staff was at St. Mary’s. Of course as a wheeze covered by MediCare I had a choice of hospitals, and I’m here to tell you St. Mary’s offers a level of care that’s far and above UCSF. If you’ve got to go under the knife, St. Mary’s is the place to do it.

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WE KNOW WHERE WALDO is,

but where’s Glenda?

Glenda Anderson, the Press Democrat’s

one-person “North Bay Bureau”

hasn’t filed a story out of Ukiah in months.

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ALEXANDRA STILLMAN has been appointed as Arcata’s rep to the North Coast Railroad Authority. As reported by Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost, Ms. Stillman said of her appointment, which was resisted by the area’s mossbacks, “I just figure it’s important because Arcata has so many rail lines going through it, and we have the rail-with-trail project… Arcata is very affected by rail.” Or eternal lack of. Ms. Stillman told Sims she want’s to focus on feasible projects like rails with trails for the publicly-owned but rail-free rail line.

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LAST MONDAY at about 2pm Scott Walecka and his daughter Hilary Walecka of Santa Cruz were returning from a day on the bay practicing in their 38-foot sailboa Animal for today’s (Friday’s) Spinnaker Cup race from San Francisco to Monterey when Hilary saw someone jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Hilary Walecka

Within seconds they heard over their radio that the Coast Guard had been alerted that someone had jumped and that a cutter and a CHP chopper were being dispatched. Hilary saw the chopper hovering over the area where the jumper landed and directed her father to the spot. Upon arrival Scott Walecka threw the man a life jacket on a rope. “He was alive and wanted to be rescued,” Scott Walecka said. His legs were broken, but he grabbed the life jacket and pulled himself to the boat. Mr. Walecka described the man as apparently homeless and 31 years of age. Besides his broken legs, he seemed otherwise in good physical condition. The man said he was from Alabama, but was in too much shock to say anything else, Walecka said. The Waleckas took the jumper to the Sausalito Coast Guard station where he was turned over to fire-rescue personnel and taken to Marin General Hospital but his condition in the hospital has not been reported.

LIKE MANY SUICIDAL BRIDGE JUMPERS since 1937, the 31-year old homeless jumper probably regretted his nearly fatal decision as soon as he left the bridge. It’s not clear what prompted the man to jump on Monday, but those involved said he was lucky that the Waleckas were in the area and on the alert because most jumpers die a grisly death, with massive internal injuries and broken bones, on top of shock and lung failure leading to drowning in the Bay’s frigid waters. The bridge authority’s board of directors has approved a nearly invisble metal net system to prevent suicides.

The final design for that project is expected to be completed by the end of the year. However, the system would not be funded with bridge toll revenue, but by private donations and it is currently $45 million short of its $50 million budget.

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BYPASS SCAM

Editor,

Do you know what a roadway “Level of Service – C” means? It’s the reason that Caltrans is wasting more than $300 million of our money on a huge new freeway to handle a miniscule amount of traffic. It’s the reason that more than $30 million of local transportation money has been stolen from us and committed to a bloated project that even industry-written highway design manuals caution against. It’s the reason that Caltrans will level scores of century-old oak trees, cover hundreds of acres of prime farmland in asphalt, and destroy more wetlands than any other project in northern California over the last half century. It’s the reason that smaller, safer, cheaper, and less-impacting solutions for our traffic problems were never taken seriously by Caltrans.

It’s all because of a simple phrase that Caltrans wrote into the purpose and need statement for the bypass: “[the bypass must] achieve a minimum Level of Service (LOS) ‘C’.” These seven words are responsible for all this.

If you don’t know what LOS “C” means, you’re not alone. None of the regulatory agencies that approved the bypass understood what LOS “C” meant either, even though they signed a statement agreeing to the purpose and need statement years ago. None of them had the slightest clue that they had just been conned by Caltrans into committing their agencies to approving the massive destruction that will besiege our valley for eternity.

Level of Service (LOS) is a rating system that highway design engineers use to figure out how many lanes are needed on a new roadway to handle the traffic volumes projected to use it. The rating system attempts to estimate a driver’s perception of the quality of their driving experience during near worst case, peak-hour traffic conditions, and is derived from a complex series of calculations. The calculated LOS ranges from “A” (very low traffic) to “F” (bumper to bumper traffic). Highway design manuals recommend that engineers aim for something in the middle of the range – LOS “C” or “D”- when designing new roadways in order to balance functionality with cost and environmental impacts.

The same design manuals strongly advise against building roadways that will operate at LOS “A” over their design life because the roadway would be overbuilt, wasting public funds and causing undo and unnecessary environmental damage. In the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the bypass, Caltrans declares that “A four lane bypass would provide LOS “A” upon construction, as well as throughout the 20-year design period.”

In contrast, Caltrans states that a generic two-lane bypass “would provide a LOS ‘D’ at peak hour upon construction, as well as throughout the 20-year design period.” If you want to experience LOS “D” yourself, drive the stretch of Highway 101 from the north city limit to Reynolds highway at 5pm. Or, simpler yet, log on to Caltrans’ website (http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist1/d1tmc/1_cam.php?cam=27) to see real-time photos taken near the truck scales north of town. With a recent peak-hour traffic count of 860 vehicles per hour, this stretch of highway is well into LOS “D” according to the calculations.

But, as one recent editorial writer asked, aren’t we getting a two-lane bypass? The answer, unfortunately, is a resounding “NO.” The ultimate project is and always has been a four-lane freeway. What we are getting now is 2/3 of a freeway, a Frankenstein version with nearly the same massive footprint and impacts as a four-lane freeway. The same high-speed design as a freeway without the safety benefits of lane-separation. Six miles of inaccessible pavement, suspended 20 feet in the air, with interchanges too far from town to provide any local benefit.

If you dispense with the rigid constraints of a freeway, better alternatives suddenly become feasible. For example, numerous people have suggested the unused railroad corridor as a potential route. Even though it would clearly reduce delay and improve safety, the other goals listed in the purpose and need statement, Caltrans says it won’t meet LOS “C.” As a result Caltrans cast it, and all other non-freeway alternatives, aside as not meeting their own arbitrary LOS requirement. A railroad route could have completely avoided wetland impacts thereby forcing the Army Corps of Engineers to reject all the freeway alternatives from further consideration under the Clean Water Act.

Caltrans has always wanted a freeway. Be it 1950s thinking, hubris, money — but it’s certainly not traffic volumes, that’s been well established. They knew the purpose and need statement couldn’t just plainly state “we want to build a freeway,” agencies and the public would have questioned that. So, they did the next best thing. They added seven words; a benign sounding requirement that they knew no one would understand or question. The result is the same.

Richard Estabrook, Brooktrails

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Dykes

ON MAY 21 at about 1:50pm deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to a reported fight between two adult males at the Long Valley Lumber Yard in Laytonville, California. A 49 year-old adult male victim with significant injury to his face and head was transported by ambulance to Howard Memorial Hospital. He was treated for a left orbital fracture, multiple facial contusions and a laceration above his left eye. The other involved party, Jimmy Leroy Dykes, 42, of Willits had fled on foot from the scene prior to the deputies’ arrival. The victim told deputies that he was at the Long Valley Lumber Yard when he saw Dykes approaching him on foot. Dykes was making derogatory statements directed at the victim based upon a work related dispute the pair had approximately a year ago. Dykes challenged the victim to a physical fight and shortly thereafter punched the victim without provocation. Dykes thereafter placed the victim in a rear choke-hold position until the victim began to lose consciousness. As the victim lay on the ground, Dykes then struck the victim several times in the face with his elbow and forcefully hit the victim’s head against the ground. The victim believed Dykes had training as a mixed martial arts fighter. Deputies later located Dykes in the Laytonville area and he was subsequently arrested for battery resulting in great bodily injury. Dykes was transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $30,000.00 bail. (Sheriff’s Department Press Release)

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COUNTY REACHES AGREEMENT WITH MENDOCINO COUNTY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION — On May 14, 2013 the County of Mendocino and the Mendocino County Management Association received approval from the Board of Supervisors for a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that extends through September of 2014. Negotiations formally began on January 24th of this year and included a series of six meetings. The Management Association and the County essentially reached a tentative agreement in March, and have been working diligently since then on non-material contract language cleanup issues. The last MOU between the County and the Management Association was signed on January 24, 2012. Management was among the first four bargaining units to take a 10% reduction in October of 2010 in response to the economic crisis facing the County. The current MOU adopted by the Board of Supervisors last week largely extends the prior agreements, and the 10% reduction, through September of 2014 with no enhancements to benefit or salary levels in the contract. County and employee share of health insurance costs (75%-25% respectively) are anticipated to increase over the term of the contract, pending results of cost containment activities. County costs associated with market losses or bad assumptions (100% County) are also expected to rise over the term of the contract. — Kyle C. Knopp, Assistant Chief Executive Officer

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AT THE END OF THE LINE

To the Editor:

Today I did something I’ve never done before. I stood in line at Social Services. My disability payments were discontinued. I’m not eligible for unemployment. I lost my job in August 2011, collected until June 2012. Then I was put on disability for anxiety. Since I haven’t worked in 19 months, unemployment payments were denied; one month too late. In the month of April I have received $207 period.

I’m not eligible for emergency rent funds because I have no children in the home.

I applied for CMSP to get a second opinion on my disability three months ago. I’m waiting in line because they are understaffed (Social Services). As I stood in line for food stamps, the only thing I’m eligible for, I listened. Young adults are eligible for help with rent, schooling, food stamps, monthly stipend, etc.

You are young and have children therefore here are all your benefits.

You are a baby boomer in your late 50s, mid-60s and you are not eligible for anything but food stamps.

I have worked since I was 12 and paid for all of the programs through my taxes, but all I can get is $200 a month in food stamps.

I guess my point is this: I worked for 46 years. No alimony, no child support and no public assistance. These 30 year-olds “or less” have children, little job experience and the state will cover everything. On the other hand there are people like me who worked all their lives, paid their dues, and no one cares if I can’t pay my rent or end up homeless.

I worked hard and put money in the state-federal coffers. I’m a baby boomer. We are all getting older and disabled. There are a lot more of us coming around, needing help. I don’t want young families to starve, but I do want them to pay their dues.

We are the transients in Ukiah because we’ve lost our homes and can’t get hired because of our age or limitations. We baby boomers are looking for work. We are trying — raised with ambition. We are not all alcoholics or drug dependent. We are surprised that we have landed where we are. Standing in line at Social Services. We stand at the food bank, buy our clothes from Goodwill, look for jobs, give what we can now and we get tired.

I’m your mother, your daughter, your sister, your aunt. Are you proud to stand in line at Social Services and take from me like no one cares?

You are young. People will hire you if you ask. Go ask. Try. Work. Contribute. Because your mom and grandma are close to homeless everyday. Step up.

I wrote this letter a week ago. I didn’t send it because I’m ashamed and embarrassed. I didn’t want to advertise my situation. I still don’t. It needs to be said. I’ll take the embarrassment.

Bottom line is $207 to live on in April. Six weeks later, I’ve got food stamps but might have to live in my car. No gas. I hope I can park it somewhere I won’t get towed. I wasn’t too proud to ask for help. I’ve asked, I’ve done, I’m humiliated and my government isn’t helping and doesn’t care.

Nobody will steal my identity because I don’t think anyone would want to be me.

Cynthia Jeremiah, Ukiah

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THE DEFENSE OF LITTLE LAKE VALLEY:

Dispatch From 70 Feet Up A Valley Oak — by Will Parrish

On May 14th, I ascended roughly 70 feet into a 100-foot tall valley oak that stands in the path of the California Department of Transportation’s proposed six-mile freeway (“The Willits Bypass”) through Little Lake Valley. This tree, which has a nearly six-foot trunk and is covered from top to bottom with an intricate tapestry of lichens and moss, stands amid hundreds of ash trees in a lustrous grove in the north Little Lake Valley wetlands. The tree is certainly older than the State of California. It may be older than the United States of America.

This mighty oak stands like a sentinel at the southern edge of the ash grove. In its life, it has experienced a great deal. It has experienced the gridding, platting, and draining of its wetlands home for cattle ranching and the construction of Highway 101. It has experienced Euroamericans’ destruction of the Central Pomo people, who referred to the valley by the evocatively intimate name Mto’m-kai – a name that closely translates to “Valley of Water Splashing the Toes.” It has experienced the wetlands as they existed when the Pomo and early Euroamericans lived here, as an incredibly vibrant and life-sustaining ecosystem (for a rare picture circa 1905, see the AVA’s website.)

The mighty tree’s days are likely numbered, though, as are those of the entire ash grove and nearly 90 acres of these wetlands, which CalTrans intends to drain, fill, and pave over to build its highway. It would be the most extensive destruction of any wetlands in Northern California in more than a half-century.

Two days before I scaled the tree, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts-per-million – a profound milestone in industrial civilization’s relentless heating of the planet. The scientific consensus is that any level above 350 parts-per-million will spell catastrophe for life on earth, as it entails the continued melting of the Greenland ice sheet and exponentially increasing methane releases from melting permafrost in Siberia and Alaska.

Even with all the world at stake, the dominant society’s institutions remain fixed in business-as-usual mode, continuing to expand their consumption of a finite planet at a rapid rate. In CalTrans’ case, that means forging ahead with the monument to waste and folly that is the Willits Bypass, which would belch an estimated 380,000 cubic tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere just during its construction process – a process that has only barely begun.

The final cost of the Bypass is likely to be a half-billion dollars. The project’s greatest accomplishment would be to bind this region’s transportation infrastructure further to car culture, in large part to allow increased and unrestricted access for the largest and heaviest commercial trucks on the road, STAA trucks.

Even before its handiwork is done in Willits, CalTrans would move on to widening Highway 101 at Richardson Grove, widening Highway 199 and Route 197 in far northern California along the Smith River, and constructing a bypass around that utterly traffic-paralyzed megalopolis known as Hopland. For institutions like Big Orange, as CalTrans is oft-referred in these parts, there is no such thing as enough.

Climate change is one aspect of the planetary ecological unraveling. There is also the matter of topsoil loss. About one percent of this nutrient-rich matter – the foundation of terrestrial life, which sustain all of our food – around the globe is destroyed annually.

There is the matter of watershed and aquatic habitat destruction. Watersheds across the planet are in crisis. In California, for example, nearly 90 percent of wetlands that existed 200 years ago have been destroyed. There is the matter of biodiversity loss. Anywhere from 100 to 200 species on this planet go extinct every day, as part of the largest mass extinction since the Jurassic Era.

I have detailed the specific ways in which the Willits Bypass is part and parcel of these planetary crises in precisely a dozen previous articles in the Anderson Valley Advertiser.

We should make no mistake about what we are up against. CalTrans is an extremely powerful agency of the state. Its officials have the ability to buy off, intimidate, manipulate, and cajole, and to experience little accountability for doing so.

We have seen this dynamic at work with regard to the Willits City Council, some members of which are afraid to oppose the Bypass partly out of fear that CalTrans will retaliate by henceforth neglecting city roads. In recent weeks, we have seen CalTrans dangle a vaguely proposed $6 million Sherwood Road improvement in front of the Brooktrails Board of Directors as a quid quo pro for their endorsement of the Bypass.

We have seen CalTrans flagrantly violate the conditions of its environmental permits. We have seen it concoct any utter sham of a plan to “mitigate” the damage it is causing to the wetlands, as I detailed three weeks ago in the AVA piece “The Bypass Mitigation Charade.” The Army Corps of Engineers and politicians like Wes Chesbro are doing their level best to prop up the charade. We have seen CalTrans receive permits to do damage that never should have been granted in the first place. We have seen the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies allegedly involved in regulating this project roll over time and again.

We have seen CalTrans install itself as a veritable occupying power in this Valley. In the last several years, it has used the threat of eminent domain — both explicit or implied — to gobble up 2,000 acres from valley ranchers to use for its sham “environmental mitigation” projects. Today, Big Orange is Little Lake Valley’s largest landowner.

The system has failed Little Lake Valley and the people of Willits. Senior citizens are locking themselves to heavy machinery with metal pipes, as Willits resident Bob Chevalier did last week, for that very reason.

Younger people like me are living in trees for the same reason. Currently, I am dangling 70 feet in the air on a 4′x8′ platform. Many of the trees around me are tied together with traverses so that fellers cannot aim them accurately. If any of these trees were cut under these conditions, it would endanger my life.

I am taking this course of action because I love this tree, as I love oak trees in general. I love how it is starting to grow cavernous and gnarled with age. I love the invisible work it carries out in the world, tending secret gardens of mushrooms and lichens. I love the feeling of strength I get when I rest my back against its mighty trunk. I love the Western Meadowlark and the Northern Flicker that visit its branches every day, often at exactly the same time. I admire the lushness of this grove, and I care greatly for the wetlands of which this grove is part.

More than that, perhaps, I am sitting in this tree because I agree wholeheartedly with the celebrated Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, who wrote,

“If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate change change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains, and their rivers, because they know their forests, their mountains, and their rivers protect them.”

I would only add that this hope can also high up in the canopies of trees, with people who are willing to put their bodies on the line with these trees that they love.

For nearly two months, starting with The Warbler’s tree sit, people in Willits proudly embodied Roy’s sentiment by delaying the start of the Big Orange juggernaut’s destruction of Little Lake Valley through direct action. The first five times CalTrans’ contractors attempted to start work, people sat or stood in their way. All five times, the contractors packed up and went home without getting their work done.

During this period, the political climate surrounding the Bypass shifted. As one measure of that shift, politicians such as Noreen Evans, Dan Gjerde, and Dan Hamburg came forward and demonstrated the courage to oppose it.

This is where the intimidation comes back in. In an effort to break the back of the opposition, CalTrans called upon roughly 60 California Highway Patrol officers from throughout the state.

Though the Little Lake wetlands have been badly damaged across the past century and-a-half, they remain a vibrant and crucial ecosystem. They function in a manner akin to kidneys: absorbing the valley’s waters and slowly releasing them back into the system. As water flows through them minerals, sediments, and contaminants are absorbed and transformed by the plants, animals, and bacteria that occupy the many ecological niches therein.

They may not continue to function that way for long. In the week that I have been in this perch, CalTrans’ private construction contractor, FlatIron Corporation (a subsidiary of Germany-based HOCHTIEF, the world’s largest construction corporation) has steadily converted the lush wetlands meadow that formerly expanded out below me into a graded, gridded, and brown moonscape.

As I sit here pecking away on my SmartPhone (a tree sitter with a SmartPhone – the real deal), on May 20^th, FlatIron is preparing to install the first wick drains in an area below me. These drains are poles an average length of 80 feet that are engineered to wick moisture out of the ground. The purpose is to harden up the soft, moist wetlands characterized by extremely fine sediment, and thereby make this area suitable for 18-wheelers bouncing and careening through the valley at highway speeds.

CalTtrans intends to install roughly 55,000 of these drains. According to the bid package Caltrans advertised to engineering companies in 2012, roughly 1.35 million meters of plastic drainage wick material would be required for thus torturing and draining this area of land. Translated: 839 miles of drains driven into Little Lake.

Earlier today, though, I was vividly reminded of the spirit captured so eloquently by Arundhati Roy’s words. At 6:45 a.m., Travis “Condor” Jochimsen (who occupied this tree for 12 days immediately before me) and Jamie Chevalier locked down in a black bear device on the wick drain boom, paralyzing the machine and much other work FlatIron planned to do that day. They remained there for several hours. The California Highway Patrol were flabbergasted. They were not prepared to deal with the situation. Roughly two-dozen FlatIron workers stood on the outskirts of the area, watching and pacing.

The workers eventually went home without completing any of their planned wick drain installation. This terribly destructive activity was delayed by a full day by the courageous action of two people, who were cited and released by the Mendocino County Sheriffs after negotiating to unlock themselves voluntarily.

In the more than three years that I have been a journalist in Mendocino County, I have made it a point to chronicle and oppose the most destructive industrial projects to come along in our region: forest-to-vineyard conversions, destruction of rivers, widespread herbicide spraying, forest clear-cuts, land and water grabs, etc. The Willits Bypass is the most destructive project I have written about so far.

Largely for that reason, I have elected to take direct action of my own against the project (participatory journalism at its finest). My friend Amanda “The Warbler” Senseman, whose 65-day tree sit south of Willits in the route of the Bypass galvanized opposition to the project as never before, put it this way: “The Bypass is our local version of the Tar Sands. It’s our local version of the Keystone Excel Pipeline.” The Bypass is representative of those projects and many more.

Conversely, however, the resistance to the Bypass can be representative of an altogether different outcome for the planet. Here in Little Lake Valley, we do not live in a vacuum. If we stop stand up and stop this project here, the impact will ripple out. The greatest gift that people in this region could possibly give at this time, not only to Little Lake Valley, but to people fighting for their forests, mountains, and rivers all over the world would be to do exactly what it takes to stop this project.

By definition, that means we must at times depart from the same legal system that condones and enables the destruction of the Little Lake wetlands, just as it has condoned and enabled all of the destructive projects that have collectively created the ecological crisis at large. There has never been a better time to withdraw our hope from the conference rooms and tall buildings, and the people within them.

In doing so, we turn away from fear, and we take a true stand in solidarity both with the ancient ones – and those future ancient ones not yet born.

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MEDIA’S CLICKING CLOCK

More Exposés, Less Action — by Ralph Nader

There must be reasons why people are weary of the flood of excellent documentary films, books and articles showing us what the corporate state – that is, the fusion of big business and government to constantly serve the former against the peoples’ interest – is doing to our beloved country.

We are in a golden age of exposés, detailed revelations about out-of-control polluters, corporate tax escapees, corruption of government, cheating of consumers, abandonment of workers, freezing or reduction of wages, and a general hijacking of America for perpetual wars, militarism and profiteering. Even from mainstream television, newspapers and magazines, these exposés pour out in numbers that far exceed our weakened democracy’s ability to respond.

Why does so little change when the truths, the facts and the grim realities are available on request? In the past more prosecutors, legislators, and regulators would be informed and goaded by exposés. The wider media would echo such responses which further encouraged these enforcers to challenge wrongdoing. A cycle of public agitation and official responses kept things moving.

But there were fewer exposés and therefore less information overload. Today, exposés are running into each other and receiving smaller audiences. The shrinking mass media does not give the authors and producers the time that was afforded their predecessors.

Nothing has replaced the Phil Donahue Show that reveled in showcasing injustices. The Today Show and Good Morning America have fewer authors on their stages. Charlie Rose is heavily into entertainers, favored columnist Tom Friedman, and business celebrities. Once welcoming radio talk show hosts are off the air, replaced by curled lip ideologues or soft, fluffy commentators. Local daily city television talk shows that made author tours successful and often would jump-start investigative reports are nearly extinct, replaced by syndicated programs featuring touchy-feely or sadomasochistic fare.

This new media landscape is more hostile to the civic community and discourages the younger generation from believing that change is truly within our grasp. As the years pass, our examples of national re-directions, as if people matter, come from the 1960s and ’70s. There are dwindling illustrations from more variously-troubled, recent decades, even as the information revolution should have accelerated the pace of change.

There may be proportionately as much civic activism today, though the smaller marches and rallies and much less mass media coverage do not demonstrate that there is as much public protest. What is certain is that there are now far more problems, declines in livelihoods, and other deprivations and lockouts from participating in our legislative and executive governments and courts. It doesn’t help that there are far fewer differences between the two major parties and far more gridlocks, garnished by far more campaign cash, resulting in chronic avoidance or postponements of remedies.

Let’s go back to the exposés. What can documentary film makers, for example, do beyond putting out a fine product for theater audiences and DVD purchasers?

An ongoing development pushing the envelope toward change comes from Eugene Jarecki’s documentary “The House I Live In.” Saturating the country with his public and private showings, action meetings with prison wardens and lawmakers – urban and rural – and continuing media coverage, he seeks to make his film “a widely-recognized and galvanizing tool for a national rethinking of America’s drug control policies.” His two-year plan of coalition building and direct legislative pressure is breathtaking in its scope, depth, agility and strategic thinking (for more information visit the website here).

Mr. Jarecki is plowing new ground through relentless follow-through – an extension more authors, capable of doing so, should undertake. After all they have proven themselves as knowledgeable, interesting communicators.

Another contemporary documentary receiving serious follow-up by its production team is “The Invisible War” – the story of rape and other sexual assaults within the U.S. military. This film, directed and written by Kirby Dick, is being taken seriously by the Pentagon which is showing it to commanders and high-ranking military leaders. Attendance is often required thanks to a few enlisted commanders and constant prodding from the filmmakers.

Realistically, many reporters and producers are unable to pursue their findings into the realms of action. Often they are onto their next investigative project and are economically hard-pressed. Here is where some farseeing foundations or enlightened wealthy persons can make a difference by funding small civic groups taking the findings and recommendations into the public policy arenas backed by civic mobilization. After all, civic advocates have proven their worth over the long run.

Or existing groups, such as the anti-nuclear steadfast organizations – Beyond Nuclear and Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) – can be the beneficiaries of funders viewing documentaries such “Knocking on the Devil’s Door: Our Deadly Nuclear Legacy.”

Maybe we need a 24/7 documentary cable channel with a citizen action focus so that fortuitous rendezvous can occur among all these parties at any given time around the ticking clock.

(Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition.)

IT TOOK US a while to figure out the specific nature of the scam at the North Coast Railroad Authority. There’s no way a railroad that runs almost no trains can be financially viable even if they rent their silent right of way to their own “operator,” Northwestern Pacific Inc. Which also doesn’t run trains except for a token run once in a while with a little feed grain or the occasional miscellaneous freight between Windsor and San Rafael.

HERE’S THE SCAM: THE NCRA gets federal money for maintaining and even upgrading track for trains that will never run on those tracks. The NCRA is a pseudo-agency used by the NWP to launder the federal and state track maintenance money to NWP. NCRA tells people they’re going to run a freight service some day. SMART (Sonoma-Marin Area Rapid Transit) tells people they’re going to run a commuter rail line some day. They’re not, of course, because there’s nowhere near enough sustaining freight or ridership to do either. But that doesn’t matter because as long as NCRA maintains the fiction that trains will run some day, they can keep getting money from the feds and the state to repay the track maintenance loans they got from NWP — with substantial interest; the same money NWP loaned NCRA to give right back to NWP to do the “maintenance” which is paid back with interest when the state and federal reimbursement money comes in later. NCRA itself skims enough out of the federal and state track maintenance money via “rental” from the NWP which is nothing more than a share in the interest money that NCRA was charged by NWP.

IT’S JUST CONVOLUTED ENOUGH to keep most bureaucrats and the public in the dark about what’s really going on. And it all depends on the complete and utter fantasy that there will be an economically viable train service running some day. And that’s why the NCRA (and most of its captive “board of directors”) is so dead set against abandoning those fantasies — even though, as a practical matter, they know there will never be a viable train service on the abandoned line.

IT’S BRILLIANT, when you think about it. As long as the feds, the state and most of the public falls for this choo-choo sucker play, NCRA can keep chugging along indefinitely fixing and upgrading tracks for a mythical railroad. (— Mark Scaramella)

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SF MOMA STRIKES AGAIN. Crissy Field is the large expanse of field and grass on San Francisco Bay, a bracing vista of green, a cluster at its west end of stately old structures left over from the days the Presidio was a functioning Army base, the whole of it looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge. The black-clad pseuds at MOMA look at all this natural beauty and see major eyesore potential which, of course, they call art, and plunk down eight separately huge collections of randomly placed steel, one of the monstrosities phallically aimed at the Bridge. It’s insulting, really, and shouldn’t be permitted. But there they are, the worst public art in the city since the Vaillancourt Fountain at Justin Herman Plaza. The Vaillancourt is still there. These things at Crissy Field will foul the natural beauty of the area for two years.

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THUGS AND REEFER. Gil Kerlikowske has been Obama’s “director of national drug control policy” since 2009. Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief, said Thursday that there’s a strong correlation between drug use and crime. He said that his studies revealed that 54% of the people arrested for one thing or another tested positive for marijuana, with cocaine and crank running a strong second. Mr. K said that his office has concluded that federal drug policy should be assumed to be more of a public health problem and approached from that assumption rather than being addressed primarily as a criminal justice problem. He said “it means abandoning simplistic bumper sticker approaches, such as boiling the issue down to a ‘war on drugs’ or outright legalization.”

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LATE LAST MONTH The Mendo Board of Supervisors discussed possible capital expenditures in the near future which had been put off for several years due to budget restrictions. Among the items in the pipeline is an upgrade of the county’s antiquated assessor’s parcel tracking system on which all the property taxes and associated assessments are maintained. Mendocino County has about 56,000 parcels (not all of them developed, of course) with a total assessed value of about $9 billion (for an average assessed value of about $170k). According to Assessor-Recorder Susan Ranochak, the computer and software maintaining the parcel database were originally obtained from Sutter County in the 1960s. It was updated to some extent in the 1970s and again in the 1980s. It went “live” in 1996 (apparently meaning that staffers and the public could access the data with computer terminals at the Assessor’s office which Mendo got for free from another county who abandoned them when the other county upgraded more than 15 years ago). “It’s an obsolete system,” said Ranochak, stating the obvious albeit belatedly. “If it fails, I don’t know what would happen. We no longer have staff to maintain the software. Younger [computer] staff members know nothing about it and have to spend time learning an obsolete system. Until now our Information Technology people did a great job keeping it up, but the only person familiar with the system retired last year. In addition, too much information is in people’s heads, not in the computer system. It would take a year or two before any new property tax system could be implemented. We need to start the RFP (Request for Proposals) process to see what’s out there.” Supervisor Pinches suggested that some of the recently improved Teeter Plan proceeds be spent on the computer upgrade, but his fellow Board members were reluctant to slow down the Teeter Debt payback plan which has been relatively successful so far. Auditor Meredith Ford added, “We have one person in our office with lots of parcel spreadsheets. It’s hard to keep up on parcels and all the associated activity. A supplemental run we had to produce recently blew up in middle and we had to finish the run with manual attention.” Supervisor John McCowen, who has been pushing the County to “deTeeter” some of the unsalable tax defaulted parcels in Brooktrails to save the County some money, added, “We only heard about this when we dug into Teeter. Now we hear about it. It sounds like there was a significant disconnect. Where was it? I don’t know. It’s a big disappointment to be at this point [with very little choice and not much time]. We can’t afford to continue to use the obsolete system, and all the extra staff time. It puts a stress on several offices, and we have to do it with reduced staff at the same time. We can’t afford to put it off any longer. The timing of the replacement depends on financing. Plus it will take more staff time to develop and implement a new system.” McCowen noted that a new system should be similar to systems in use in other counties in the state, but Ranochak pointed out that there would still be “lots of RFP work to do; then staff would have to decide how to tailor it for Mendocino County. That could take months. Then we’d have to go through demos and testing.” Supervisor Carre Brown reminded staff that the County should make sure they don’t get into the kinds of trouble Marin County had with their huge accounting system upgrade fiasco.

SUPERVISOR BROWN IS RIGHT to be concerned. According to a January 2013 Marin Independent Journal story: “High-tech experts who had been following the County of Marin’s legal battle over a $30 million computer problem were left wondering what happened after county officials — who spent $5 million in legal fees — announced a $3.9 million settlement last week with no public explanation. Dropped in the deal crafted behind closed doors were all claims against Deloitte Consulting LLP, software giant SAP and former county Auditor Ernest Culver, who managed the computer project for the county before quitting to join SAP in 2007. The county board, claiming fraud, racketeering, bribery and other wrongdoing, filed two high-profile lawsuits in 2010, saying the county was ripped off when a sophisticated fiscal accounting system failed to work right. Officials later decided to scrap the inefficient system that a grand jury calculated had cost taxpayers $28.6 million by 2009. It remains ‘stable’ and in use while officials determine what system to buy next. Although officials contended for more than a year that their case was strong despite setbacks in court, the county bailed out last week and officials declined comment, with elected leaders citing a settlement gag order.”

MS. RANOCHAK suggested that the County begin to prepare an RFP which can be done without specifically committing capital equipment funds. That funding decision can wait until August when next year’s budget is finalized.

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PLEASE TUNE IN TO KMUD on Thursday, May 30^th at 7 p.m. for the Sanctuary Forest quarterly radio hour. Lands Program Director Noah Levy and board member Galen Doherty will be discussing Sanctuary Forest’s Conservation Easement program, with a focus on working forest conservation easements as a tool for keeping local forestlands in long-term sustainable production. We’ll discuss what conservation easements are, and will hear from owners of easement-protected properties about how they used this tool to secure their own stewardship vision for their property. Finally, we’ll discuss the Lost Coast Redwood and Salmon Initiative, our current project to place nearly 5000 acres of forestland—including the lands formerly known as Buddhaville—under a new working forest conservation easement. Please join us for an exciting and important conversation about land management, conservation and restoration, and protecting properties in perpetuity. (Sanctuary Forest is a land trust whose mission is to conserve the Mattole River watershed and surrounding areas for wildlife habitat and aesthetic, spiritual and intrinsic values, in cooperation with our diverse community.)

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THREE FRACKING MORATORIUM BILLS pass Resources Committee, then referred to Appropriations suspense file

by Dan Bacher

Despite intense political pressure by the oil industry, the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on April 29 approved three bills proposing to halt fracking (hydraulic fracturing), a controversial method of oil and natural gas extraction, in California.

Fracking opponents fear that increased water diversions destined for the peripheral tunnels proposed under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) will be used for expanding fracking in Monterey Shale deposits in the San Joaquin Valley and coastal areas. The construction of the tunnels is expected to hasten the extinction of Central Valley Chinook salmon, Delta smelt and other fish species.

The three bills were referred to the Appropriations Committee suspense file on May 15. (http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml)

“We are extremely optimistic that these bills will keep moving forward,” said Kassie Seigel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “They can do so as one year or as two year bills. We’re doing everything we can to push them forward and we’ll know more on the status of the legislation at the end of this month.”

Richard Bloom’s A.B. 1301, Holly Mitchell’s A.B. 1323 and Adrin Nazarian’s A.B. 649 would place a moratorium on fracking while threats posed by the controversial practice to California’s environment and public health are studied, according to a news release from Food and Water Watch.

The Appropriations Committee is deciding on these three bills and four other fracking-related bills by Friday, May 24. You can contact your legislator by going to: http://org.salsalabs.com/o/2155/p/dia/action3/common/public/index.sjs?action_KEY=13490

A.B. 1301, A.B. 1323 and A.B. 649 are strongly opposed by the Western States Petroleum Association, headed by their President Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the former Chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called “marine protected areas” on the South Coast.

In an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle on May 12, Reheis-Boyd disputed claims by environmental and consumer groups that fracking in California is “destructive and unregulated.”

“In truth, hydraulic fracturing has been used in California for 60-plus years, is not destructive and has never been linked to any environmental harm here. The process is and has been closely regulated. California’s well construction and testing regulations that protect our groundwater are the strictest in the nation,” she wrote. (http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Fracking-has-viable-future-in-California-4506267.php)

Groups cite lack of regulations and monitoring

A.B. 1301 author Assemblyman Richard Bloom and fracking opponents strongly dispute Reheis-Boyd’s claims that fracking is environmentally sustainable and is already adequately regulated.

“Fracking operations have skyrocketed throughout the country and in California as new technologies have enabled the extraction of oil and natural gas deposits from previously unreachable geological formations,” said Bloom. “However, fracking uses and produces highly toxic chemicals that can pose serious threats to public health and the environment.” (http://asmdc.org/members/a50/news-room/e-newsletters/legislative-update)

“The threat is significant enough that 14 states have now enacted legislation restricting or banning the practice until safeguards are in place. Currently, California does not regulate or monitor fracking despite holding the largest oil reserve in the continental United States, the Monterey Shale,” he explained.

Food & Water Watch, the Center for Biological Diversity and Clean Water Action are sponsors of A.B. 1301. The California Nurses Association, Breast Cancer Action, Family Farm Defenders and more than 100 other health, labor, environmental and social justice organizations support the bill.

Oil and gas wells have been fracked in at least nine California counties without fracking-specific regulation or even monitoring by state oil and gas officials, according to Food and Water Watch. Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, employs huge volumes of water mixed with sand and toxic chemicals — including known carcinogens — to blast open rock formations and release previously inaccessible fossil fuels.

“From the food that California farmers grow today to the long-term future of our state’s water resources and air, California’s economy and vital resources hang in the balance if we allow fracking to continue in California,” said Kristin Lynch, Pacific region director for Food & Water Watch

“These bills will protect the air we breathe and the water we drink from cancer-causing chemicals and other fracking pollutants,” said Kassie Siegel. “That’s why a fracking moratorium is supported by nurses, farmers and so many others concerned about our state’s health and environment.”

Fracking linked to pollution

Siegel said fracking is linked to air and water pollution and releases large amounts of methane, a dangerously potent greenhouse gas. About 25 percent of fracking chemicals could cause cancer, according to scientists with the Endocrine Disruption Exchange.

Andrew Grinberg of Clean Water Action also applauded the Assembly Natural Resources Committee vote.

“This vote is an important step in the effort to protect California from the dangers of fracking,” said Grinberg. “This committee gets it that the state needs to slow down and assess the many threats to our air, water, climate and communities of extreme oil extraction.”

Grinberg said fracking pollutes the air by releasing dangerous petroleum hydrocarbons, including benzene, toluene and xylene. It can also increase levels of ground-level ozone, a key risk factor for asthma and other respiratory illness.

According to a Colorado School of Public Health study, air pollution caused by fracking contributes to the risk of asthma, cancer, and other health problems in people living near fracked wells, A.B. 649, A.B. 1301 and A.B. 1323 will next go to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Fracking uses large volumes of water

The huge volume of water used and contaminated by fracking is a critical issue for California, especially when Governor Jerry Brown is rushing the construction of the peripheral tunnels to export water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to corporate agribusiness and oil companies.

Lynch cited a new report from the Western Organization of Resource Councils that estimates that fracking consumes about 7 billion gallons of water in four western states where fracking has become widespread.

The report, titled “Gone for Good,” warns that water consumption by the oil and gas industry “simply cannot be sustained.”

The current amount of water used for fracking in California is not currently known. In a post on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) website on March 210, Richard Stapler, Deputy Secretary for Communications of the California Natural Resources Agency, claimed that only 8 acre feet of water is used every year for hydraulic fracturing in California, in an apparent attempt to minimize the amount of water employed for fracking. (http://baydeltaconservationplan.com/blog/blog/13-03-20/Oil_Water.aspx_)

Yet in a footnote at the bottom, Stapler states, “For reference, you could multiply the average of 87,375 gallons with every injection well in the state (about 25,000) and still come up with a relatively small amount of water — 6,721 acre feet, or water for about 27,000 average families for a year.”

Stapler never responded to my email inquiry over the enormous discrepancy in the water he claims is used for fracking per year– 8 acre feet of water in one section of his article and 6,721 acre feet in another.

One thing is for certain – oil companies use big quantities in their current oil drilling operations in Kern County, although the amount specifically used in fracking operations is hard to pinpoint. Much of this water this comes through the State Water Project’s California Aqueduct and the Central Valley Water Project’s Delta-Mendota Canal, spurring increasing conflicts between local farmers and oil companies over available water. (http://yubanet.com/california/Dan-Bacher-Water-for-fracking-8-acre-feet-6-721-acre-feet-or-much-much-more.php)

“In the time since steamflooding was pioneered here in the fields of Kern County in the 1960s, oil companies statewide have pumped roughly 2.8 trillion gallons of fresh water—or, in the parlance of agriculture, nearly 9 million acre-feet—underground in pursuit of the region’s tarry oil,” according to Jeremy Miller’s 2011 investigative piece, “The Colonization of Kern County,” in Orion Magazine. “Essentially, enough water has been injected into the oil fields here over the last forty years to create a lake one foot deep covering more than thirteen thousand square miles—nearly twice the surface area of Lake Ontario.” (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6047)

Background: the increasing power of big oil in California

The drive by the oil and natural gas industry to frack California is highlighted by recent disturbing developments that reveal the enormous power of Big Oil in the state.

In yet one more example of the revolving door between government and huge corporations that defines politics in California now, State Senator Michael Rubio (D-Bakersfield) on February 22 suddenly announced his resignation from office in order to take a “government affairs” position at Chevron.

Rubio went to work for Chevron just two months after alleged “marine protected areas,” overseen by the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, a coastal real estate developer, a marina corporation executive and other corporate interests, went into effect on California’s North Coast.

These “marine protected areas,” created under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil drilling, pollution, wind and wave energy projects, military testing and all human impacts other than fishing and gathering.

In a big scandal largely ignored by the mainstream media, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, not only chaired the Marine Life Protection Act Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called “marine protected areas” on the South Coast, but also served on the task forces to create “marine reserves” on the North Coast, North Central Coast and South Coast.

“It’s clear that government and petroleum officials want to ‘frack’ in the very same areas Reheis-Boyd was appointed to oversee as a ‘guardian’ of marine habitat protection for the MLPA ‘Initiative,’” said David Gurney, independent journalist and co-chair of the Ocean Protection Coalition, in his report on the opening of new lease-sales for fracking. (http://noyonews.net/?p=8215)

“What’s becoming obvious is that Reheis-Boyd’s expedient presence on the ‘Blue Ribbon Task Force’ for the MLPAI was a ploy for the oil industry to make sure no restrictions applied against drilling or fracking in or around so-called marine protected areas,” Gurney emphasized.

The current push by the oil industry to expand fracking in California, build the Keystone XL Pipeline and eviscerate environmental laws was facilitated by state officials and MLPA Initiative advocates, who greenwashed the key role Reheis-Boyd and the oil industry played in creating marine protected areas that don’t protect the ocean.

Reheis-Boyd apparently used her role as a state marine “protection” official to increase her network of influence in California politics to the point where the Western States Petroleum Association has become the most powerful corporate lobby in California. (http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/lawsuit-filed-against-fracking-oil-lobbyist-says-its-safe)

Oil and gas companies spend more than $100 million a year to buy access to lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento, according to Stop Fooling California (http://www.stopfoolingca.org), an online and social media public education and awareness campaign that highlights oil companies’ efforts to mislead and confuse Californians. The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) alone has spent more than $16 million lobbying in Sacramento since 2009.

As the oil industry expands its role in California politics and environmental processes, you can bet that they are going to use every avenue they can to get more water for fracking, including taking Delta water through the twin tunnels proposed under the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.

RICHARD POOLE JR. and Scott Anderson came by the Boonville office the other day. They’d driven down from Willits where Poole owns property at 195 E. Oak, a couple of blocks from Main Street. Poole is in his late 50s and is a disabled veteran. He’s a big man who travels with a pair of small, well-behaved dogs. It wasn’t easy for Poole to get up the office stairs, and when he sat heavily down I could hear his lungs. Anderson did all the talking as Poole stared at me and occasionally nodded assent. Whenever I looked back at Poole he smiled ruefully and shrugged his shoulders in a total gesture of, “Isn’t this a mess?” I don’t think he quite knows what’s happening to him. I liked him. I’m told sometimes media attention helps, sometimes it doesn’t. The two of them, Anderson and Poole, made me think of Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men.

I’VE KNOWN Scott Anderson all the way back to his days at Boonville High School. I knew his parents. We all knew his mother Terry who was instrumental in forming the Anderson Valley Health Center, which has grown into a small hospital. I knew that Scott was doing pretty well in Willits as a property developer when he started turning up in the Sheriff’s Log. And kept turning up in the Sheriff’s Log. He, too, is a likeable man with the gift of gab but, law enforcement says, he’s been enslaved by white powder and has lost everything he’d had, including his wife who died in an automobile accident. He’s looking ahead, he said, to better times.

THE STORY the animated Anderson told was a confused one, but the gist of it was that Poole is about to lose the home he bought with a VA loan back in 1999. Then there were refi’s and fixer-upper loans from the City of Willits, and Poole got in deeper and deeper.

THE IRREPRESSIBLE Anderson said the City of Willits owes him money. He says he wants to give that money to Poole so Poole can get himself out from under the avalanche of loan defaults and liens on his maxed out property. There is no evidence that the City of Willits owes Anderson any money.

HERE’S THE TRUE SITUATION: Mr. Poole is, at this point in his difficult life, is disoriented from his multiplicity of disabilities. How he got that way can be debated, but here he is. I’d say he needs a judge to appoint a conservator, but it’s probably too late for that because in a few weeks Mr. Poole will be out of his house.

EVERYONE AGREES that Poole’s case is a sad one, and everyone I talked to about it has tried to help the guy because he’s the kind of guy people try to help. He’s probably gotten more help over the years than any other single citizen of Willits. That help has been repeatedly extended by the City of Willits and the various entities Poole owes money to, including family members.

POOLE LIKES TO HELP PEOPLE, TOO. He has no criminal history, but people who do have criminal histories have moved in with him. As one Willits resident put it, “If we lose a Willits tweeker we know we can probably find him at Richard’s house.”

IF YOU LOOK up Poole’s property you’ll see that 11 persons are alleged to be living on his tiny plot. As presented by Google Earth, Poole’s place is covered with an assortment of structures, many of them apparently inhabited.

Satellite View at the corner of E. Oak and Railroad Avenue

View from E. Oak Street

View from Railroad Avenue

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, Poole got a nice loan from the City of Willits to rebuild his crumbling house. Not long after it was made fully habitable, the house began to crumble again from lack of basic maintenance. Keeping property up requires energy and focus. Poole doesn’t have it. He’s not well.

AS 195 E. OAK became a consensus eyesore and habitat for people who long ago parted ways with the conventional world, Willits paid people to clean up the property. And Poole said he’d keep it nice, and keep the deadbeats out, too. But try as he might, Poole, running as fast as he could, fell further behind on his loans as his property seemed to fall down around him. Willits several times re-negotiated the terms of the loans but the result was always the same: Poole would make a few payments and then the payments would stop.

THE CITY OF WILLITS cannot by law make endless gifts of public money. At some point the City has to at least try to get its money back. Poole’s so far in to the City that even when the City abates him right out onto the street, which will happen in a couple of weeks, and Willits sells the place, Willits still won’t recover all the money they’ve got invested in Richard Poole. Maybe one more deal can be worked out, maybe Willits will let Poole stay on under some sort of conservator arrangement. But Willits has already exhausted itself making deals with Poole, and in a matter of weeks the big guy with the bad lungs and the two well-behaved little dogs will be out on the street.

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IS WILLITS READY for at least two solid years of deafening pile driving? CalTrans’ contractor, Utah-based FlatIron, has been carrying out test piledriving this week. Piledriving, which is so loud that it splits eardrums of nearby wildlife, is one of the major environmental and quality-of-life impacts of the project. Unless the Bypass is stopped by the people of Willits, Willits will be dealing with and associated heavy construction for at least a few more years. A new video at

www.Savelittlelakevalley.org

courtesy of Chris Hardaker, shows (or more accurately blasts) just a small snippet of Caltrans driving test pilings on the Bypass route near Hearst-Willits Road.

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WILLITS WILL GET NO HELP from newly elected Congressman Jared ‘Spike’ Huffman either. According to another recent post on

www.Savelittlelakevalley.org

Congressman Huffman told the Ukiah Democratic Club that it was too late for him to get involved and that he would “get engaged” … “if any agency is not living up to its mitigation requirements.”

Huffman, who represents the 1st Congressional District spanning the entire California North Coast from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, was sworn in to his new job this past January. Previously, the Willits area’s representative in Congress was an instrumental supporter of the Caltrans bypass of Willits, Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), who intervened at multiple stages to make sure the project moved forward. On April 20th, Congressman Huffman appeared at the Ukiah Democratic Club event focused on global climate change. Roughly 20 members of Save Our Little Lake Valley (SOLLV) turned out to challenge and clarify Huffman’s position on the Bypass. As you will see in the savelittlelakevalley.org short clip, Huffman promises to “get engaged” in the needless project if Caltrans violates its mitigation requirements, to make sure that the Bypass is carried out “in the most environmentally responsible way possible.” Note that Huffman stops short of saying he would try to stop the project. SOLLV has submitted abundant documentation to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and to the Army Corps of Engineers regarding CalTrans permit violations. On the first and only inspection the State Water Resources Control Board conducted regarding CalTrans’ construction activities, they cited Big Orange for six violations. SOLLV is calling on Congressman Huffman to live up to his word and hold Caltrans accountable for its repeated violations of its permit obligations. A number of Willits residents have sent Huffman letters urging him to get engaged over mitigation shortcomings. To contact him as well, contact http://huffman.house.gov or call (202) 225-5161.

The SOLLV video begins with Ellen Drell, founder of the Willits Environmental Center, requesting Congressman Huffman’s support in stopping the Caltrans Bypass. In the video, you will also hear from Willits resident David Parch, Amanda “The Warbler” Senseman, and lifelong Willits resident John Wagenet. Below the video, you will find this excerpt of the relevant quote by Huffman. (Video by Cynthia Jeavons.)

“If I were stepping into this way earlier in this process, I think [City Councilwoman] Madge [Strong] and many of you make a compelling case, there could be alternatives that make more sense. There are some apparent shortcomings in this that would cause me to have all the same concerns you are laying out. But, I have to also respect that all of the approvals at every step in a very deliberate and extensive and lengthy process are in place, and we now have a court case that is pending. It’s just something that, as a member of Congress, I have to have respect for the process at some point.

I told Madge, and I’ll tell you again: There are two things that could cause me to engage differently on this project. One is that if the court decision goes your way. If we get a court ruling that says now you need to go look at other alternatives, including the one on the rail right-of-way, which seems like something that would merit a second look if that’s the case. Then you’re gonna’ see me shoulder-to-shoulder with all of you urging Caltrans to do that, and I think that would be respectful of the process as well.

The second way I would get engaged is if any agency is not living up to its mitigation requirements. I want to make sure that if this does move forward as it’s been permitted and approved, that all of the mitigation takes place and that it’s done in the most environmentally responsible way possible. That’s not going to satisfy a lot of the folks in this room, I know. But, I gotta be honest with you, that’s where I am, and I can’t unwind a process that’s this far along. But I certainly respect what you’re doing as well.” (Courtesy, SaveLittleLakeValley.org.)

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ACCORDING TO A RECENT 2013 GRAND JURY REPORT, in 1985, LAFCo (Mendo’s Local Area Formation Commission) “commissioned a study by Culp/Wessner/Culp Engineering to determine the feasibility of combining the City of Ukiah, Millview, Willow and Calpella water systems into one agency. In December 1986 this study resulted in two recommendations: that the City of Ukiah be the sole supplier or that a new district be formed that included all four agencies. The recommendations failed because the city did not want to join a separate district and Millview did not want to secede to the city.” The 2013 Grand Jury report notes that “there is a proliferation of special districts in the Coastal and valley areas of Mendocino County,” but can only muster a pointless suggestion that LAFCo “provide the leadership to facilitate the consolidation of some of the resources and services of the valley…” Back in the 90s a bolder Grand Jury specifically suggested that everyone’s best interest would be served if the multiple water agencies in the Ukiah valley were consolidated. But, of course, nothing changes because none of the balkanized little boards each with their own irrational collection of water rights, obviously including Millview, want to cede their prize water rights to anyone else. (And don’t forget that some of the water rights are used for the proliferation of vineyards in the Ukiah Valley.) Among the results of this pathetic situation are a damaging competition for underlying groundwater which is already overallocated and overappropriated and a patchwork of widely varying conservation measures between districts whenever there’s a drought — which may well happen again this year. (In the last drought, homes across the street from one another were told, on the one hand to cut back their water usage by 50% and, on the other, to engage in voluntary conservation, creating unnecessary animosity among neighbors, some of whom continued to wash their cars while others avoided flushing their toilets.)

TECHNICALLY, the Board of Supervisors, acting as the County Water Agency, could issue some regulations that would apply evenly to all water districts in the County (such as gauging and rate setting) but that would require the “leadership” that the Grand Jury incorrectly calls on from LAFCo. Historically, the Board of Supervisors has never shown any interest in “leadership” outside what little they do internally with the County’s management structure. There’s no indication that they have any will to do so now. And the Grand Jury recommendation to LAFCo, instead of the Board of Supervisors, just gives the Board yet another free pass on the subject until the next drought comes along.

OH, WE FORGOT TO MENTION SEWER SERVICES which are also in dire need of “leadership.”

THE SUBJECTS OF WATER AND SEWER are so untouchable that no board members have ever even put the Ukiah Valley water and sewer problems on their agenda for open discussion. Development and vineyard interests always take precedence over “leadership” in Mendocino County.

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FRIDAY NIGHT, MAY 31st, The Mendocino Coast Jazz Society, will honor this year’s music scholarship winners, Mariana Cooper and Spencer Crowell, as part of the regular Fri. night Jazz show at the North Coast Brewery in Fort Bragg. Mariana and Spencer will play a short opening set at 6:00, and then will be presented with their scholarships. Jazz pianist Richard Cooper and saxophonist Francis Vanek will then play till 9:00.  The Brewery is located at 501 N. Main, Fort Bragg

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ATTENTION UKIAH HIGH CLASS OF 2003 GRADUATES

10-Year High School Reunion — The graduating class of 2003 is hosting a 10-year high school reunion on Saturday, July 13th at Barra of Mendocino in Redwood Valley from 6-10:30pm. Join us for dinner, dancing and reminiscing with old friends. A family-friendly potluck picnic will be held the following day, Sunday, July 14th at Harrison Grove Picnic Area Low Gap Park from 11-4pm. Early bird ticket prices are $50 for individuals and $75 for couples. After June 1st ticket prices will be $70 for individual and $95 for couples. Log on to www.uhsclassof2003.com to purchase tickets, sign up for committees, view additional event information and more. You can also mail in your ticket payment to PO Box 1064 in Ukiah. Checks should be made payable to UHS Class of 2003. E-mail info@uhsclassof2003.com with any questions.

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WHY SHOULD CALIFORNIANS PAY FOR $50 BILLION TUNNEL BOONDOGGLE?

by Dan Bacher

As opposition to Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to build two massive tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta increases every day, Brown administration officials continue to mount a full court press for the project’s completion.

Dr. Jerry Meral, Brown’s point man for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels, recently said, “the Delta cannot be saved,” in spite of administration claims that one of the co-equal goals of the plan is “ecosystem restoration.”

Then in an op-ed piece for the Stockton Record, Meral now claims, “No additional water withdrawal from the Delta is being sought under the application for this permit.” (http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130519/A_OPINION06/305190304/-1/NEWSMAP)

Restore the Delta (RTD) responded to Meral’s latest statement by asking, “So why then should rate payers from Southern California and tax payers throughout the state be asked to pick up the tab for a $50 billion project that will not make more water for Southern California or save the Delta?”

That is a very good question. How can the Brown administration possibly ask the taxpayers and rate payers to pay for a $50 billion pork barrel boondoggle, putting Californians in debt for generations to come, when the project makes absolutely no sense?

Restore the Delta emphasized, “There is a better solution to California’s water challenges than to build Peripheral Tunnels that won’t create one drop of new water and will not save the Delta.” Restore the Delta’s plan is here: http://www.restorethedelta.org/about-the-delta/healthy-delta-communities-plan/theres-a-better-solution/

Of course, we know that the real purpose of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, under the guise of the co-equal goals of “ecosystem restoration” and water supply “reliability,” is to create the infrastructure to export more Northern California water for corporate agribusiness to continue irrigating toxic land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and for the oil industry to expand the environmentally destructive practice of fracking.

As I asked Meral, deputy secretary at the California Natural Resources Agency, at a BDCP meeting on March 20, “Can you give one example from U.S. or world history in which the construction of a diversion canal or tunnel has led to taking less rather than more water out of an ecosystem?”

Neither Meral or any Brown administration official has been able to answer this question.

Meral made his controversial comments, “BDCP is not about, and has never been about saving the Delta. The Delta cannot be saved,” while speaking with Tom Stokely of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) in a private conversation after a meeting with Northern California Indian Tribes on Monday, April 15.

“I was flabbergasted because that’s not what we’ve been told by politicians and state officials,” said Stokely after the conversation. “I was surprised at his candor because I’ve always known that BDCP is not about restoring the Delta.”

“We did not put the statement out for publicity gain or just to try to embarrass somebody,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, RTD Executive Director, who witnessed Meral make the comment. “The reason we let this statement out was to show the true intent of the tunnels project,” which she said is to increase pumping Delta water south.

Both Stokely and Barrigan-Parrilla said Meral had been speaking about his concern that a “mega-flood” could inundate the Central Valley someday, as it did in 1861-62, when Meral made his statement.

A spokesman for the Natural Resources Agency told the LA Times the remarks were “taken out of context” and that there are no plans calling for Meral’s resignation. Congressman George Miller and four other leading Democratic Representatives called for Meral’s resignation after he made his controversial remarks. (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/political/la-me-pc-jerry-brown-water-jerry-meral-delta-water-plan-resignation-20130425,0,7348556.story)

It is important to understand that Delta advocates and supporters of Central Valley salmon and Delta fish restoration aren’t backers of “doing nothing,” as Natural Resources Secretary John Laird suggests is the “alternative” to the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels in his recent letter in the Sacramento Bee (http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/17/5417541/managing-to-scientific-uncertainty.html)

The Brown administration needs to immediately halt the BDCP process and instead adopt the following proactive measures:

First, install state-of-the-art fish screens at the state and federal pumping facilities in the South Delta to avoid the deaths of millions of fish including protected salmon and steelhead at the pumps every year.

Second, reduce water exports from the Delta to no more than 3 million acre feet in all years, in keeping with the flow criteria of the State Water Resources Board.

Third, adopt the series of creative recommendations outlined in the Environmental Water Caucus reduced water exports alternative, including an aggressive statewide water conservation program and the retirement of toxic farmlands. (http://www.ewccalifornia.org/reports/REDUCEDEXPORTSPLAN.pdf)

The Brown administration needs to abandon its tired 19th Century solution — the Bay Delta Conservation Plan — to solving 21st Century ecosystem and water supply problems.

Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, summed up the danger that the peripheral tunnels pose to California’s fish, people and rivers: “The common people will pay for the peripheral tunnels and a few people will make millions,” emphasized Sisk. “It will turn a once pristine water way into a sewer pipe. It will be all bad for the fish, the ocean and the people of California.”

A SENIOR TICKET to see the Terracotta Warriors at the Asian Art Museum costs $16 bucks; once you’re inside you’re informed they are five life-size facsimiles, but what the hey, what’s one more little swindle in the Land of Swindles. Or, as George Carlin famously put it, “This country runs on bullshit. Take away the bullshit and everything collapses.”

And on a Thursday morning I was surprised to have to wait in a long line, surrounded by wheelchairs and walkers and barely ambulatory decrepitude, aware that I was only a stutter step away from the wreckage myself. I might have been the youngest person on the premises and I’m in my seventh decade. I’d seen the upstairs exhibits, and was mentally kicking myself about paying $16 to see five concrete statues when a kid in an usher’s blazer walked up and said, “I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to check your backpack.” I went immediately to senile mode: “You can’t have my checkbook, and if you ask me for it again I’ll call the police.” He walked off, presumably to consult with his supervisor, but no one reappeared to make an issue out of it. Back out on the street I was pleased to see a street preacher on the steps of the appellate court shouting through a bullhorn about sin. At least he was yelling at the right people. I’ve seen the same guy on Market Street with his aurally weaponized bullhorn. He’s a tough-looking old bird even in his suit, and so loud-angry that you have to listen carefully to understand that he’s not looking for a fight but urging passersby to give up their wicked ways and follow Him, which isn’t a message that finds much receptivity in San Francisco even when it’s delivered by a man who doesn’t look like he’d rather slug you than pray with you.

SATURDAY, there was only one crazy guy on the 1 California, one of the most sedate Muni line at all hours. Youngish, maybe 35, conventionally dressed in shirt and slacks except for a hole punch he wore like a bolo tie. “Are we there yet?” he asked no one in particular several times. Suddenly, opposite the hospital at Laurel he screamed, “Off! Let me off!” The driver let him off in the middle of the block.

I STOPPED at the Ferry Building to pick up a sandwich for the ballgame, Giants vs. Colorado, which started down the street at 1:05. For $5.70 you can get a la di da “rustic baguette with Mt. Tamalpais triple creme cheese, fruit jam, arugula, and black pepper.” Even if I have a few extra bucks I don’t buy ballpark food, not out of hostility for negative food value viands but out of hostility for Giants ownership and the South Carolina concessionaire that pays the concession workers about one dollar out of the ten dollars they charge for a beer. And you’d think at least a couple of the ballplayers would step up to the plate for the people who make the game go, people making an average of $11,000 a season. From a couple of blocks away the concession workers were picketing the ballpark. I’d bought a $20 ticket from this scalper-dude I kinda know and was chagrined that now I’d have to turn around and go home, never having crossed a picket line and reluctant to start at an advanced age. But a picketing lady said it was fine to “go on in and enjoy the ball game —  just don’t buy anything.” No prob for me. I always bring the cheese sandwich from the Ferry Building. Inside, most of the concessions were closed. 70 years ago the whole city would have been on the picket line, but 70 years ago anymore might as well be 700 years ago. No one remembers, no one cares, it’s every pre-schooler for himself.

SEATED BEHIND six women of my vintage, one of them sporting a gray mohawk, the tanned woman’s back directly in front of me featuring a butterfly tattoo with a bumble bee forever hovering over a flower, the girls of  many summers were talking about the concession strike. “I don’t care,” the tattooed babe said, “I bought a beer and I’m going to buy another goddam beer, strike or no strike.” The old lady next to her commented, “Gawd. What are they trying to do, starve us?” Later in the game, which ended in mass ecstasy with Angel Pagan’s inside-the-park homerun, Zito hit the Rockies centerfielder on the hand with a Zito fastball. “The tattooed lady exclaimed, “Eighty miles an hour fastball? Big goddam deal. He’s not hurt. Play ball!” They were a ruthless bunch, commenting knowledgeably on both the game — “Belt got under the tag. He was safe” — and the sartorial deficiencies of female passersby, “Why not let it all hang out, honey?”  And, “I wonder how she got her tits up that high?” one wondered. “Maybe with a forklift,” answered another. That kind of thing, always to the chuckling agreement of the other ladies.

IT WAS A WONDERFUL day high up in View with these  long gone Golden Girls, the wind whipping the stadium flags, the sun and the sailboats all afternoon on the water, the delirious game-ending heroics of Pagan.

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TWO IMPORTANT BYPASS ISSUES arose at the May 22 Willits City Council meeting. According to the Council’s agenda for May 22 under a cryptic item under “City Council and Committee Reports” and “Ad Hoc Committees — Caltrans” we later discover, we think, an account by Linda Williams of the Willits News that tells us what it was apparently all about: “The Willits City Council listened to more than three hours of testimony by a series of local citizens objecting to the way the city was dealing with ongoing violations of the city’s highway relinquishment agreement with CalTrans. The issue was placed on the agenda by Councilwoman Madge Strong and in the end her motion to change the timeframe for negotiations died due to lack of a second.”

SO WE CAREFULLY RE-READ the agenda. No such “issue” was on it. But it must have been in there somewhere because “a series of local citizens” certainly did object to the way the City of Willits is handling the “relinquishment agreement with CalTrans.”

MADGE STRONG is the only outspoken Bypass opponent on the City Council. We’re pretty sure she wanted to do more than simply change the timeframe for negotiations with Caltrans. (Hopefully she will provide more on that later.)

PARTICULARLY INTERESTING for example, was this item: “Strong and several of the speakers expressed concern about whether CalTrans was actually going to complete the scheduled reconfiguration of the Sherwood Road interchange as stated in the city’s agreement with CalTrans.”

“CALTRANS is fully committed to improving the Sherwood Road intersection. The funds have been programmed ($200,000 for right of way, $3.5 million for construction, and $2.5 million for development and support), geotechnical studies have been completed, and the design is being finalized,” said CalTrans spokesman Phil Frisbie.

REALLY? An earlier piece by Ms. Williams reported, “When the bypass was approved by the California Transportation Commission in March 2012, a series of ‘child’ projects were also approved as part of the main project. These projects were the Sherwood Road interchange for $6.25 million, the Ryan Creek fish passage, the City of Willits relinquishment, and the environmental mitigation. The money was ‘programmed’ to be spent in future years. This means the projects have money reserved for them and will move forward unless there is a significant change in the project or estimate.” (Our emphasis.)

THAT WOULD APPEAR TO MEAN that when the Bypass project over-runs, as it inevitably will, there will be no Sherwood Road interchange, no Ryan Creek fish passage, no relinquishment and no mitigation. The money will be “reprogrammed” to cover the overrun and Willits will have to settle for leftovers, if any.

AND THE CALTRANS BAIT & SWITCH will be complete.

THE OTHER MAJOR ISSUE that locals complained about was “why the contractor is not installing a haul road along the bypass corridor and is instead using city streets.”

Phil

CALTRANS SPOKESMAN Phil Frisbie responded, “The haul road clearance is part of our permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board. At this point the issue is not that we are experiencing difficulties with obtaining clearance for the haul road [which they obviously are, but Frisbie chooses to ignore it because they’re using city streets], but that the contractor believes [our emphasis] using city streets to deliver materials will be much more efficient, and could [our emphasis] shorten the construction time by as much as [our emphasis] a full year. This would be beneficial for everyone [if it happened — it would be especially “beneficial” for Caltrans and their contractor if no one else]. The city provided Caltrans with a 90 day grace period for the contractor to use city streets.”

THIS “grace period,” by the way, was interpreted differently by the Willits people who were complaining, saying it applied to negotiations, not actual use of the road.

THIS TRANSLATES AGAIN to the Bypass Budget and the inevitable overrun. If it means that using Willits’s over-burdened city streets will save Caltrans and the Contractor some money — never mind how much costly damage is done to those streets by Caltrans and the contractor’s heavy equipment — Willits will just have to suck it up.

THE HIGH-HANDEDNESS of Frisbie and Caltrans in their dealings with Willits is breathtaking. The City Council (with the obvious exception of Ms. Strong) has no idea how one-sided this all will end up, with the City of Willits holding a very big, very expensive bag.

JEFF COSTELLO, DRIVING THROUGH UTAH, NOTES: “Road notes in progress. After driving across Utah, it makes perfect sense to me that the loudest, most violent and intrusive aspect of the Willits bypass project is being done by a Utah company).”

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STATEMENT OF THE DAY: “The Flowery May, who from her green lap throws the yellow Cowslip and the pale Primrose…” — John Milton

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COLLEGE OF THE REDWOODS: ANYBODY OUT THERE KNOW ABOUT THE EARLY YEARS?

A READER WRITES: “It would be nice to hear a full-blown history on the beginnings of the ‘college.’ I worked there as a student during the nursing program days, dabbled in classes prior, as many citizens ridiculed the ‘basketweaving’ classes, I took law, real estate and drawing. I think how it happened and who made it happen is important. I do know the vote to affiliate with C/R (in Eureka) was the animosity coastal residents felt towards the city of Ukiah where Mendocino College is located. When I worked on the coast campus during the Kavanaugh days, Joan Penrods’ nursing program graduates were testing consistently highest in California for their state exams. People were commuting from the city to take the two year RN course and internationally for the woodworking classes. An offer was made during that time to build dorms for students, by a private individual. He was excited about his offer, as I remember. Davis made a bid to put a satellite campus on the coast (Point Arena) many years ago and its offer being rejected seemed to me a sign of something denser than the Washington rain forest in the fog. How did the college start, before the affiliation vote? Who were the players and what was their vision? Regardless, what little we have is a lot to lose. Even if it is to socialize and open windows in our own world. Thanks for listening.”

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A LETTER TO THE EDITOR in this morning’s SF Chronicle:

Sculptures at Crissy Field (“DiSuvero sculptures work on a grand scale,” May 23).

The emperor’s new clothes? How is it that SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra can foist this litter on San Francisco? The pleasant, wide-open space of Crissy Field is marred by this visual assault.

Apparently these sculptures speak to art reviewer Kenneth Baker but in some arcane language known only to himself. As to seeing them for what they are, I see that they are not unlike the barriers the German army placed on the beaches of Normandy to prevent the Allies from landing in France.

Diana Knight, Fairfax

Sign the petition to remove the Crissy Field sculpture.

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JUST THE FACTS

by Eric Bergeson

During the aftermath of the recent tornado in Oklahoma, at least two reporters made fools of themselves as they worked to turn tragedy into entertainment for the masses.

Wolf Blitzer of CNN interviewed a young woman holding a baby amidst the rubble of her home. Blitzer apparently thought the way for an educated eastern snob like himself to relate to a hick from the Bible Belt would be to condescendingly ask her if she “thanked the Lord” for her survival.

“Actually, I’m an athiest,” the young woman replied, as she struggled to hang on to her wiggly toddler.

An atheist in Oklahoma? Who’d’ve thunk?

Later, a truly ditzy CBS reporter interviewed a delightful old woman who stubbornly refused to get emotional as she described what happened.

The old woman was the better journalist of the two: She told how she hid, she told how the tornado came, she told how she dug herself out, and she said matter-of-fact that her dear dog was somewhere in the rubble, presumably dead.

Just the facts, ma’am.

Yet the reporter continued to attempt to get the woman to cry.

“I mean, have you even began to comprehend what happened here?” she said, in a question which should be banned for its sheer stupidity.

“No, I know exactly what happened here! Exactly!” the woman said, still being polite despite the obnoxiousness of the reporter.

Once again, the reporter probed, trying to get tears.

“I mean, I can’t imagine…this is your neighborhood!”

“That’s life in the big city!” the old woman shrugged.

Just then, the woman’s dog, until now presumed dead, stirred in the rubble. The poor woman moved to help the dog. As she did, a brutal gash on the back of her arm flashed past the camera.

Yes, the woman was physically hurt. But did the reporter ever ask about her physical condition? Did the ditzy, dastardly reporter put down her microphone and help the poor old woman dig in the rubble for the dog?

Of course not. For now the reporter and her cameraperson had possible irresistible footage of a woman digging out her dog. You don’t want to interfere with that. And maybe, just maybe the woman would finally display some emotion!

Wolf Blitzer should have been there. After the dog struggled loose the woman said the Lord had answered both her prayers: first, the prayer that she would be okay and second, the prayer that her beloved schnauzer would live.

“He answered both of ‘em!” the woman said in a touching way, still refusing to break down in a manner that would make for an irresistible lead to the evening news segment.

Back in the early 1980s, Dave Kingman of the New York Mets hit three home runs against the Los Angeles Dodgers. After the game, a reporter asked Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda if he had “any thoughts” on Kingman’s performance.

Lasorda lost it. “Any thoughts?” he said. “You’re asking me if I had any thoughts? We just got trounced and you’re asking me if I have any thoughts?”

Lasorda then let loose with a delightful and appropriate tirade that cannot be reproduced here.

The crusty but saintly old woman in the rubble in Oklahoma would have been justified if she had pulled a Tommy Lasorda. Instead, she kept her manners and refused to do what the reporter so badly desired: Lose her composure, and her dignity, for a national audience.

In the old days, reporters probed for facts, not emotions. Today, television news has become utterly unbearable in part because the reporters don’t report, they titillate.

The sports interview, which always was a worthless endeavor, has become an exploration of feelings by amateur counselors posing as reporters.

“What were your emotions as that 97-mile-per-hour pitch sailed towards your temple?”

With reporters determined to uncover emotions rather than matters of fact, is it any wonder that the appearance of the grief counselors merits just as much coverage as the tragedy itself?

Who are these grief counselors whose arrival brings such instant relief?

Lacking photos of an actual death, is it any wonder that the focus becomes the sobbing teenage girls on the scene?

“An angry London grieves,” blared a headline after last week’s beheading on a London street.

Somewhere, I hope some old cranky journalism professor holds that headline up in front of Journalism 101 class and gives a Lasorda-like rant.

“A city can’t get angry! A city cannot grieve! A city is buildings, rivers and churches! They do not get angry! People get angry!”

Just the facts, ma’am. They’re bad enough by themselves.

EULOGY FOR A VETERAN

(Author Unknown)

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the Gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the mornings hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circled flight,

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there, I did not die.

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JOHN DALTON, now 58, has been in federal prison for more than 17 years on marijuana-related charges. Dalton was put in prison by rogue DEA agents who seduced his wife, making her their informant. At one point, the DEA had Dalton’s wife place a tape recorder under the couple’s bed in their Redwood Valley home. And the DEA took Mrs. Dalton joy riding in government helicopters and engaged her in sexual relations in a so-called Ukiah safe house. When Dalton sued the DEA for “egregious government misconduct,” federal judge Susan Illston, in a contorted ruling, found that outrageous government conduct requires “more than negligence or poor judgment,” declaring that tax-paid seduction of a citizen’s wife by government agents was merely “inappropriate.” Dalton is presently incarcerated at the federal prison in Lompoc, Central California. We are re-printing Tim Stelloh’s follow-up piece on the Dalton case this week because we think what happened to Dalton is an ongoing outrage, one of the worst miscarriages of justice we know of arising out of Mendocino County.

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THE SECOND MENDO judicial railroad was that of Mark Sprinkle, a Ukiah man sentenced to 45-to-life for what amounted to 90 seconds of sexual touching. Three underage girls, one of whom was the daughter of Sprinkle’s embittered former girl friend, suddenly took off their clothes in Sprinkle’s car. Instead of running from the vehicle Sprinkle stayed while the voluptuous 14-year-old daughter of his former girl friend rubbed up against him and cooed birds and bees questions to him that she’d known the answers to from a couple of prior years hanging around the Ukiah truck stop late at night. In a related persecution of the unfortunate Sprinkle, DA Eyster recently dispatched his second in command, Paul Sequiera, to argue against parole for Sprinkle as if he were some kind of playground perv. Sequiera attended the parole hearing because Beth Norman, Sprinkle’s prosecutor, claimed she was still too afraid of Sprinkle to sit in the same room with him. Which, if true, should get her removed from her job as psychologically too precarious to do the work.

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THE GRAND JURY has found that the Leggett schools are dangerously short of students, so short that the schools may not survive. The two-school district consists of a school in Leggett and another school 90 minutes to the northwest at Whale Gulch. The school in Leggett has 70 students, Whale Gulch 45. Add in a history of administrative turmoil and Leggett may be compelled to revert to the days when Leggett-area students were bussed to Fort Bragg, Whale Gulch youngsters to Garberville and South Fork. The GJ reports that the new administration is an improvement over those of the recent past, but the funding picture remains grim.

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WAYNE MILLER has died at age 94. Some of us will remember him from the 1990s when Miller frequently represented the smaller, family-owned Mendo timber interests at public hearings. Miller was best known as a photographer. He organized the famous 1955 Family of Man exhibit at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and provided the photos for Dr. Spock’s best-selling, “The World Is Young.” Miller is survived by his wife of 70 years, Joan Miller, and several children, among them Dana Blencowe of Fort Bragg.

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MASSIVE ABALONE interdiction in Boonville Monday morning. A large number of Fish and Game wardens set up a roadblock at the Boonville Fairgrounds. Through traffic was diverted into the Fairgrounds parking lot for thorough vehicle searches. Other F&G personnel were stationed on 128 towards Philo to chase down motorists who, alerted by cell phone that the barricades were manned ahead, made sudden u-turns to avoid Boonville. A specially trained dog was also deployed to sniff out purloined ab. How much illegally taken abalone was confiscated is not yet available from Fish and Game, but it is known that the delectable mollusk is approaching endangered species status because of both poaching and the overwhelming harvesting it’s been subjected to over the past decade.

ABALONE is called Venus’s Ears in South Africa, el abulón in Spanish, bao yu in Chinese. It is assumed that much of the recent poaching of abalone along the Mendocino Coast is the work of immigrant Chinese, some of whom have been arrested for selling abalone to Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area where an abalone dinner runs from $80 up.

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AS FISH AND GAME frisked likely ab poachers at the Boonville Fairgrounds, Rick Adams of Boonville, showed  us the humongous abalone he took near Elk. At least 13 inches across, Rick’s ab is the biggest we’ve heard of this year.

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A PHILO MAN, David Severn, has found a pristine, six ounce Coca Cola bottle near the Navarro River stamped at its base, “Willits, Calif.”

A code on the side of the bottle indicates its vintage as 1935-45. Was Coca Cola bottled in Willits? Anyone?

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SUPERVISOR DAN HAMBURG doesn’t communicate much with the AVA, but this weekend he sent us two strange messages:

FIRST: “Calling The Major: Dear Mark (aka The Major): There is a good deal of speculation that you are using the name ‘Paul Baum’ to inhabit the MCN list serve. Is this true or not? It would be good to clear the air. Thanks, Dan”

THE MAJOR REPLIED: “Dear Dan (aka The Supervisor), It is instructive that you feel this question is worthy of your time, much less mine. I will say that I have never felt the need to use a pseudonym since I have no reason to hide my identity. As I would hope you know by now, I have never hesitated to put my name on whatever I publish. Also, most of what I’ve seen on ‘the listserve’ is of no interest to me from people I don’t much care for. But you have my permission to conduct a full inquiry if it’s that important to you. Best, Mark Scaramella.”

THE SUPERVISOR immediately posted the Major’s response on the listserve with the introduction: “Mark’s assertion (‘I…never hesitated to put my name on whatever I publish.’) means little. Just because he publishes articles his [sic] name on them and [sic] doesn’t mean he’s not a troll (in his sparetime). I’m sorry that Mark doesn’t care for us.”

NOTE HAMBURG’S clubby use of the word “us.” We all know who he thinks “they” are.

BUT THE SUPERVISOR did not bother sending the Major his second unbelieving observation. “If he wasn’t going to believe my answer, why did he ask?” the Major wondered.

SECOND MESSAGE FROM HAMBURG: “Mark, The ‘Mendo Broadband Denied’ piece (5/22) is a good example of misleading journalism beginning with the headline. Had you spoken with someone from the BAMC or better yet, the California Emerging Technology Fund which wrote the Padilla bill, you could have provided a more complete picture. SB 740 will likely pass out of the Senate this week. It has been raided by the telcos (an important fact you fail to mention) in ways that are unfavorable to us. But there is an active strategy being employed to resurrect the funding and definitions of ‘unserved/underserved’ on the Assembly side. It’s a much more complex situation than you relate to your readers. Dan”

TO THAT, the Major replied: “I was simply reporting your useful update on the subject at the Supes meeting, and adding what happened that same week in Assembly. I have no doubt that the subject is more complex than that snapshot portrayed. Perhaps you failed to read beyond the headline in your attempt to find a complaint when none is called for. We’d be happy to have you (or someone from the Broadband Alliance) provide an updated assessment of whatever ‘more complex’ developments have occurred since then. We were under the impression that Carole Brodsky was working on a story along those lines which we’d be happy to have (since she’s written about it for us before).”

LATER the Major added, “It looks like The Supervisor really did not read the report before he complained, just the headline he objects to. I quoted Hamburg saying that ‘the telecom lobbyists in Sacramento are trying to squelch our efforts. But we have some good political support on our side and we are fighting the battle.’ Then I simply added, ‘But later in the week, news out of Sacramento reported that funding for Padilla’s broadband infrastructure bill (via the California Public Utilities Commission) had been cut by $100 million, and the bill was amended to substantially restrict the definition of ‘underserved’ to include language that would limit funding to areas where no big telecom company had applied for a permit which isn’t very many areas in California.’ Hamburg says I failed to mention that when it’s right there.”

THE MAJOR CONCLUDED, “I thought I was helping by giving a bit of coverage to what The Supervisor himself reported, which the other local media have ignored. Instead, Hamburg complains that I didn’t say enough about the issue without telling us much about what he thought should have been included. Oh well, no good deed goes unpunished. I wonder if The Supervisor has noticed that the Fort Bragg Advocate hasn’t even mentioned the Broadband meeting Hamburg attended in Fort Bragg.”

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THE EDITOR SPEAKING HERE: Hamburg’s four colleagues are hardly head over heels for the Boonville newspaper, but they don’t hesitate to communicate with us on the public’s business. I confess that I’ve always considered Hamburg something of a rum character, the kind of “liberal” who rides down out of the hills after the battle to shoot the wounded. I agree with the local yobbos that Hamburg seems to think he’s above the rules. And I wonder how much tax-free money he’s made over the years in the dope business while sanctimoniously last week lecturing Indians on the too muchness of casinos. And anybody who signs up for Adi Da is a nut by definition, and our supervisor is an Adi Da guy.

I DON’T READ the Mendo listserve. The Major looks in once in awhile simply to see what’s fretting the crackpots — “Was it a chem trail that took down Building 7? Will tinfoil keep the CIA out of my molars?” — and to see if Hamburg, our supervisor, has said something of general interest about the public’s business. For Hamburg to suggest that we’d go to the trouble of adopting a pseudonym to contend with a handful of outpatients on an obscure listserve is really insulting, but his constituents, not all of whom worship at his clay feet, might legitimately wonder why their supervisor doesn’t communicate directly with us on the public’s business.

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Linton

SUNDAY’S UKIAH PAPER always runs a feature that asks random locals an innocuous question then runs the answer with the local person’s photo. It’s an ancient newspaper gambit to sell a few more papers. Rarely does the random person say something interesting. But last Sunday, this kid Christopher Linton, student, Ukiah, was asked what he was doing for Memorial Day. He replied, “Go to the 101 Bar and Grill for the White Trash and Iron Assault concert. Plus some camping.” The kid probably assumed he had to say something plausibly wholesome after honestly answering what his holiday plans were.

MEANWHILE, as the meat is thrown on the coals, the beer put on ice, and White Trash and Iron Assault tunes up, in every graveyard in Mendocino County rest the remains of young men cut down all the way back to the Civil War, many of them dead before they were even old enough to enjoy a legal beer.

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: What’s going on is as follows: America’s central bank is trying to compensate for a floundering economy that will never return to its prior state. The economy is floundering because its scale and mode of operation are no longer consistent with what reality offers in the way of available resources at the right price, especially oil. So, rather than change the scale and mode of operations in this economy — that is, do things differently — we try to keep doing things the same by flushing more “money” into the system, as though it were a captive beast receiving nutriment. One problem with that is that the “money” is no longer money. That is, it’s not really an effective store of value, or pricing reference. It remains for the moment a medium of exchange, but the persons exchanging it grow suspicious of what this “money” purports to represent. Does it stand for promises of future repayment? Hmmmm. Those promises are looking sketchy lately, especially since this is an economy that does not generate enough new real wealth to make the interest payments, let alone manage to pay back the principal. Is it a claim on future work? Some are afraid that the future work deliverable will be less than they expect. Whatever else it is, does it find respect in other societies where different money is used? — James Kunstler

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CRAIG GETS HIS FEEDBACK

Everyone: Thank you to everyone who responded to my networking emails recently, in which I stated that I have $600 saved and am able to relocate to the east coast for more radical political action. Particularly, I thank a friend in Pittsburgh who told me to stop bitching, stop asking others to give me anything, and start walking 3,000 miles across the north American continent if I wish to again be active on the east coast. Actually, that is the second suggestion that I do this, the first coming from Delaware a month ago. Obviously, if I had begun walking with my gear a month ago, I’d be somewhere in the middle of Iowa by now. Instead, I am at a long term Berkeley, CA shelter tonight. By the way, I am welcome to be here for another week, and then must either meet with a case worker to set up a payment plan, or go elsewhere. The payment plan is 1/3 of my income ($359 monthly social security retirement check) which they keep, 1/3 set aside in a non-interest bearing savings account for a future rental situation, and I keep the remaining 1/3 of $359 to spend on my needs for a month. I’d like to know if there is anybody reading this who would feel enthusiastic about having this arrangement; I mean, would you feel that this would be exciting for you? Please contact me if you are willing to offer me anything intelligent at all to change my situation to something worthwhile. For now, I will continue to spiritually center my mind and live from there, regardless of how it plays in postmodern America. But hey, you know that I really don’t want to ask anybody for anything. Fuck, that would indicate that we are actually living in a conscious society together. Sincerely, Craig Louis Stehr Craig Louis Stehr Email: craigstehr@hushmail.com Mailing address: c/o NOSCW, P.O. Box 11406, Berkeley, CA 94712- 2406 Blog: http://craiglstehr.blogspot.com

* * *

SUBJECT: Advice from Tom Noonan

GO WINGNUT CRAIG, YOU ARE DEFINITELY A NUTCASE… J-CAT, SOCIOPATH, WHATEVER!!… $854 A MONTH AND NO MORE WHINING ABOUT YOUR N0N- EXISTENT “SOCIAL ACTIVISM,” YOU NARCISSISTIC, PRETENDING, USURPING USELESS BAG OF DUBLIN HORSE SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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EXCERPT from a long four-part story running in the Lawrence, Kansas, Journal World about the Mendo-Kansas marijuana connection:

TRAFFICKING FROM CALIFORNIA — According to court documents, the man in charge of organizing and shipping the larger quantities of marijuana from California to alleged conspirators here, such as Chad Bauman, a Lawrence businessman convicted of drug trafficking, and local twins Los and Roosevelt Dahda, also indicted in the case, was Wayne S. Swift, formerly of the Kansas City area. At some point, Swift moved to Hayward, Calif., about three hours south of Mendocino, connected with people such as the Soderlings, Keller and McMillan, and turned an auto parts business into a hub for drug trafficking back to Kansas. Swift’s business, the aptly named California Connections, had a Kansas City-area branch. According to court records, he was already shipping large crates of wheels and other parts between Hayward and the Kansas City area, and that provided a convenient cover for storing and smuggling drugs. Sometimes, the drugs would be mailed, but other times teams of couriers would mule the drugs and money cross country, with contraband hidden in secret compartments in the vehicles. In April 2012, investigators, aided by intelligence from the wiretap, were able to watch an alleged shipment of drugs from start to finish. Agents watching the California Connections headquarters in Hayward saw Swift loading a crate into a truck. A few days later, agents in Kansas City watched his business partner at the Kansas City branch unload it. The alleged transaction included many of the major players in the larger conspiracy, and recordings of their phone chatter throughout the deal would play a prominent role in the government’s case.

HIGH PROFIT MARGIN — The idyllic Mendocino area, situated on cliffs overseeing the Pacific Ocean and home to the Mendocino Headlands State Park, is home to an unusual number of out-of-state license plates and rental cars, according to Mike Sena, director of the Northern California High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. “They’re not there to go hiking,” said Sena, who coordinates efforts to combat drug trafficking in the region. The area is a hot spot for growing large amounts of high-grade marijuana. The local and state laws are different, with medical marijuana laws on the books, and there is minimal legal risk associated with growing the drugs, he said. In the past, drugs were smuggled up from Mexico. But with the ease and abundance of marijuana grown and supplied in Northern California, it’s a natural pick-up point for out-of-state smugglers, who buy up large quantities and haul it back to their respective areas, Sena said. Court records allege that Keller and McMillan operated a small growing operation in the Mendocino area, but at some point upped the ante on their operation, acquiring larger amounts of drugs from various area sources to supply to Bauman’s drug-dealing operation in Lawrence. For local growers who supply medical marijuana shops, the allure of big money is sometimes just too much to resist. “There’s a huge profit margin,” Sena said. At times, court records allege that Bauman was facilitating the smuggling of hundreds of pounds of drugs via the California pipeline, which isn’t unusual, Sena said. “A few hundred pounds is no problem,” he said.

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WOMEN’S SOCCER CLASSIC – THE ABALONE CUP

Coming This August to Fort Bragg, Saturday and Sunday, August 10-11, 2013. Your team is invited!

Mark your calendars for the Abalone Cup Soccer Tournament this August 10-11 on the Dana Gray Elementary and Fort Bragg Middle School fields. Lorraine Murphy, president-elect of Soroptimist International of Fort Bragg, comments, “I’ve been involved with this tournament since it began in 1985 and I am excited to have our Soroptimist International club take over management of this popular women’s tournament.” a. This tournament is for women’s soccer teams and covers age-specific divisions from U-19 through Over-40 teams. b. There is also a division in which the excellent Open teams can compete. c.. Each team will play three games at a minimum (two on Saturday and one on Sunday morning) with section winners and runner-up teams going against other section winners and runners-up in their division for the age-group/division champion and runner-up spots. d.. Once again, the tournament will have its unique and sought-after Abalone Cup trophies for the winner of each of the age-group/divisions. With weekend temperatures for this tournament expected to be between 55 and 65 degrees, the tournament motto, “Soccer’s Cool on the Mendocino Coast” is more than just a boast. It’s a fact! Your team is invited to join the fun. For more information about the tournament, including an application for your team, please contact Lorraine Murphy at 707-964-9551 (Lorraine@jkmcpa.com) or visit www.mendocoastsoccer.org

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Road Notes; May 2013

San Francisco-Denver

by Jeff Costello

Picnic on Donner Pass — No meat.

Plaque I’d like to see at the Donner Summit: “They Bit off More Than They Could Chew”

In Sausalito we had lunch with a friend of M’s late husband. The guy is a Mormon with a rich history of womanizing, seven marriages, and big money made through less-than-honest business practices. This was in the Bay Area, where two of his many houses are. He drove up to the restaurant by the old Sausalito Boat & Tackle in a bright red Lotus, a $110,000 sports car. His attitude was distinctly patriarchal. Approval of me is perhaps pending, but I had his number in minutes, a rich phony hypocrite. The Lotus was the final straw for her.

Reno, a very sad place indeed. The glitzy casinos— cheesy, low-grade operations that do nothing to hide or disguise the overall bummer vibe of the place. The broken down losers on the street were never any kind of high rollers.

Across Nevada on I-80, it is difficult to find something decent to eat, but there is one good place in Winnemucca called The Griddle along the business loop. Recommended. Just down the street from the Winnemucca Inn, where I once had perhaps the worst breakfast ever. The grease-soaked fake hash browns were unfit for dogs. It may be worth noting that such places use the lowest grade of cooking grease the USDA will allow to be designated as food.

Wendover, on the Nevada-Utah border just before the salt flats, was nothing but creepy, even the sky. Weird noises and thumping on the wall in the motel. M, who likes to gamble a little, wouldn’t even go into a casino there.

Utah. Weird. Mormons, and coming off the salt flats, like Arkansas with the alternating bible and pornography billboards, Utah’s are alternating shady pie-in-the-sky business “opportunities” (Mormon) and strip/lap dance clubs. My friend Dave, a Colorado boy in Port Townsend WA, says, “Salt Lake is a slimehole, pure and simple.”

Terrible traffic in Salt Lake metroplex. Nevada and Utah, rivals for most boring states. And weird and dangerous. Highway 6 in Utah is the worst. Narrow two-lane road with very strong contrary winds across endless bleak desert, huge trucks coming the other way and assholes in big macho pickup trucks tailgating.

Highway 6 meets I-70 at Green River, where we stayed at a motel run by a one-armed man. The town’s “best restaurant” — not very good — was full of hard core Americans — republicans, pro-war by default. It is scary but necessary to know this. The American tourist: Poodle-haired old women and the husbands traveling in RVs looking for satisfaction in retirement and of course not finding any. Worked all his life for a chance to see such as Mt. Rushmore and doesn’t even notice all the garbage at the bottom of the sculpture, they never even bothered to clean up the rocks that got chipped off. And so it goes. Dave weighs in again on Green River: “That town is a real dump.” Crossing into Colorado, the land was alive, unlike in Nevada or Utah.

Into Colorado and over the 10,600 foot pass down into Denver, at its mere “mile-high” elevation. Through Vail, where Gerald Ford liked to ski. A lot of small towns with touristy knickknack shops along this route. One of them had a marina full of sailboats and a lake that appeared to be pretty much dried up.

Not a lot of friendly eye contact in Denver, I’ll have to call up recollections of living in Manhattan to deal properly with that. I’ve been in the land of fruits, nuts and flakes too long.

Mullins

MAN BEATER OF THE WEEK: Ms. Miranda Mullins of Willits. Miranda, 18, is a large, attractive young woman whose bail was set at the minimum $10,000 for an allegation of domestic violence. Big women, like big men, are generally perceived as somehow capable of greater violence than smaller people, but that’s never been true unless you plan to rassle the large person. Quick story here: In another life I was a volunteer captive at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego where every member of Platoon 199 got feloniously assaulted at least once a day. There was also what was called the Bad Ass Platoon, made up of kamikazi types who’d slugged a DI and were otherwise unamenable to military discipline. Or any discipline at all. The Marines didn’t kick these guys out, they put them in this Bad Ass Platoon where the guys in charge, all veterans of the Korean War’s heavy combat, some of it hand-to-hand, were the kind of guys who could kill you three different ways before you hit the ground. And they were not large, more like middleweight fighters. But at even the hint of insolence, down you’d go, down hard, too. All day long the Bad Ass Platoon did physical training; no classes, just running, push-ups and lots of late night bare knucks in the quonsets. We did the same thing but with time outs for instruction and lots of close order drill, aka marching. 15 weeks of it, at the end of which all of us could at least take a punch. That was 1957. The point is, I don’t think Ms. Mullins needs to be put in the Bad Ass Platoon, but a lot of people would benefit greatly.

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ON SECOND THOUGHT, maybe I do belong on the Mendo listserve. Last week there was an earthquake centered near Mt. Lassen where earthquakes had hitherto been unknown other than rumbles from Lassen, an active volcano. I read somewhere once a remark by a geologist that the entire earth is like a cracked hard boiled egg, with every fault line connected, however tenuously, to every other fault line, Sri Lanka to Petrolia. That observation has stuck with me although I have no idea if it has any basis in scientific fact. Anna? Dan? Dave?

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BE IT KNOWN that an editor’s email to the staff at the Press Democrat has said that Glenda Anderson, the paper’s MIA reporter out of Ukiah, will return to work, part-time at first, in June “after a long battle with back pain and consequences of spinal surgery.”

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OUR TWISTED POLITICS OF GRIEF

By Norman Solomon

Darwin observed that conscience is what most distinguishes humans from other animals. If so, grief isn’t far behind. Realms of anguish are deeply personal — yet prone to expropriation for public use, especially in this era of media hyper-spin. Narratives often thresh personal sorrow into political hay. More than ever, with grief marketed as a civic commodity, the personal is the politicized.

The politicizing of grief exploded in the wake of 9/11. When so much pain, rage and fear set the U.S. cauldron to boil, national leaders promised their alchemy would bring unalloyed security. The fool’s gold standard included degrading civil liberties and pursuing a global war effort that promised to be ceaseless. From the political outset, some of the dead and bereaved were vastly important, others insignificant. Such routine assumptions have remained implicit and intact.

The “war on terror” was built on two tiers of grief. Momentous and meaningless. Ours and theirs. The domestic politics of grief settled in for a very long haul, while perpetual war required the leaders of both major parties to keep affirming and reinforcing the two tiers of grief.

For individuals, actual grief is intimate, often ineffable. Maybe no one can help much, but expressions of caring and condolences can matter. So, too, can indifference. Or worse. The first years of the 21st century normalized U.S. warfare in countries where civilians kept dying and American callousness seemed to harden. From the USA, a pattern froze and showed no signs of thawing; denials continued to be reflexive, while expressions of regret were perfunctory or nonexistent.

Drones became a key weapon — and symbol — of the U.S. war trajectory. With a belated nod to American public opinion early in the century’s second decade, Washington’s interest in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan did not reflect official eagerness to stop killing there or elsewhere. It did reflect eagerness to bring U.S. warfare more into line with the latest contours of domestic politics. The allure of remote-control devices like drones — integral to modern “counterterrorism” ideas at the Pentagon and CIA — has been enmeshed in the politics of grief. So much better theirs than ours.

Many people in the United States don’t agree with a foreign policy that glories in use of drones, cruise missiles and the like, but such disagreement is in a distinct minority. (A New York Times/CBS poll in late April 2013 found Americans favoring U.S. overseas drone strikes by 70 to 20 percent.) With the “war on terror” a longtime fact of political life, even skeptics or unbelievers are often tethered to some concept of pragmatism that largely privatizes misgivings. In the context of political engagement — when a person’s internal condition is much less important than outward behavior — notions of realism are apt to encourage a willing suspension of disbelief. As a practical matter, we easily absorb the dominant U.S. politics of grief, further making it our politics of grief.

The amazing technology of “unmanned aerial vehicles” glided forward as a satellite-guided deus ex machina to help lift Uncle Sam out of a tight geopolitical spot — exerting awesome airpower in Afghanistan and beyond while slowing the arrival of flag-draped coffins back home. More airborne killing and less boot prints on the ground meant fewer U.S. casualties. All the better to limit future grief, as much as possible, to those who are not us.

However facile or ephemeral the tributes may be at times, American casualties of war and their grieving families receive some public affirmation from government officials and news media. The suffering had real meaning. They mattered and matter. That’s our grief. But at the other end of American weaponry, their grief is a world of difference.

In U.S. politics, American sorrow is profoundly important and revs up many rhetorical engines; the contrast with sorrow caused by the American military could hardly be greater. What is not ignored or dismissed as mere propaganda is just another unfortunate instance of good intentions gone awry. No harm intended, no foul. Yet consider these words from a Pakistani photographer, Noor Behram, describing the aftermath of a U.S. drone attack: “There are just pieces of flesh lying around after a strike. You can’t find bodies. So the locals pick up the flesh and curse America. They say that America is killing us inside our own country, inside our own homes, and only because we are Muslims.”

A memorable moment in the film Lincoln comes when the president says, “Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other” — in 1865, a daring leap for a white American assessing race. Truly applying the same Euclidean theorem to grief would be just as daring now in U.S. politics. Let’s face it: in the American political culture of our day, all grief is not created equal. Not even close.

*****

We might say ’twas ever thus: countries and ethnic groups mourn their own while yawning or even rejoicing at the agonies of some “others.” And when grief weighs in on the U.S. political scale, the heaviness of our kind makes any other secondary at best. No wonder presidents have always been wary of red-white-and-blue coffins at Andrews Air Force Base. No wonder “Bring our troops home” is such an evergreen slogan of antiwar activism. If the only grief that matters much is American, then just getting Americans out of harm’s way is the ticket. The demand — like empathy for the war-torn grief of Americans — is vital. And grievously incomplete.

The world’s only superpower has been operating with vast impunity to strike targets and, in effect, summarily execute. (President Obama’s big speech on May 23 reasserted that prerogative; as the ACLU’s president Anthony Romero pointed out, Obama “still claims broad authority to carry out targeted killings far from any battlefield, and there is still insufficient transparency.”)  For American politics and mass media — perennially infatuated with the Pentagon’s latest tech advances in military capacities — such enormous power to smite presumptive evildoers has fed into a condition of jingo-narcissism. Some of its manifestations could be viewed as sociopathic: unwilling or unable to acknowledge, or evidently care much about, the pain of others.

Or the terror of others, if we are causing it. In the American political lexicon, terror – the keynote word for justifying the U.S. state of warfare so far in this century — is a supreme epithet, taken as ours to confer and to withhold. Meanwhile, by definition, it goes without saying, our leaders of the “war on terror” do not terrorize. Yet consider these words from New York Times reporter David Rohde, recalling his captivity by the Taliban in 2009 in tribal areas of Pakistan: “The drones were terrifying. From the ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death.”

As part of tacit job descriptions, the U.S. network anchor or the president is highly selective in displayed compassion for the grieving. It won’t do to be seen with watery eyes when the Pentagon has done the killing (“friendly fire” a notable exception). No rulebook need be published, no red lines openly promulgated; the gist remains powerfully inherent and understood. If well acculturated, we don’t need to ask for whom the bell tolls; we will be informed in due course. John Donne, meet Orwell and Pavlov.

The U.S. Constitution — if not international law or some tenacious kind of idealism — could prevent presidential “kill lists” from trumping due process. But, as Amy Davidson wrote in a New Yorker online column last year, the operative approach is: “it’s due process if the president thinks about it.” Stephen Colbert summed up: “The Founders weren’t picky. Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock-paper-scissors — who cares?” After all, “Due process just means there’s a process that you do.” Satire from Colbert has been far more candid than oratory from President Obama, whose May 23 speech claimed a commitment to “due process” and declared: “I’ve insisted on strong oversight of all lethal action.”

Bypassing due process and shrugging off the human consequences go hand in hand. At the same time, it can be reassuring when the commander in chief speaks so well. But Obama’s lengthy speech at the National Defense University laid out a global picture with a big missing piece: grief due to U.S. military attacks. The only mention was a fleeting understatement (“for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss”), instantly followed by a focus on burdens of top perpetrators: “For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live…” As usual, the grief of the USA’s victims was quickly reframed in terms of American dilemmas, essential goodness and standing in the world. So, while Obama’s speech called for “addressing the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism, from North Africa to South Asia,” some crucial grievances stoking the conflicts were off the table from the outset; grief and rage caused by U.S. warfare remained out of the picture.

Transcendent and truly illuminating grief is to be found elsewhere, close to home. “The greatest country in the world” presumes to shoulder the greatest grief, with more access to profundities of death. No wailing and weeping at the scene of a drone strike, scarcely reported by U.S. media anyway, can hold a candle. For American grief to be only as weighty as any other just won’t do. We’re number one! A national narrative of emotional supremacy.

Our politics of grief, bouncing off the walls of U.S. media echo chambers, are apt to seem natural and immutable while fueling much of the domestic political rhetoric that drives U.S. foreign policy. The story goes that we’re sinned against yet not sinning, engaged in self-protection, paying to defend ourselves. Consider the Google tallies for two phrases. “U.S. defense budget”: nearly 4,000,000. “U.S. military budget”: less than 100,000.

But for those in communities grieving the loss of people struck down by the USA’s “Defense Department,” the outlook is inverted. To be killed is bad enough. But to be killed with impunity? To be killed by a machine, from the sky, a missile fired by persons unseen who do not see who they’re killing from hundreds or thousands of miles away? To be left to mourn for loved ones killed in this way?

When, from our vantage point, the grief of “others” lacks major verisimilitude, their resentment and rage appear irrational. Heaven forbid that such emotions could give rise to deadly violence approaching the level of our own. People who are uneducated and unclear on the American concept sometimes fail to appreciate that our perception is to be enforced as hegemonic reality. By a kind of fiat we can elevate with fervent validation some – some – others’ grief. As for the rest, the gradations of importance of their grief, and the legitimacy of their resort to violence, are to be determined by our judicious assessment; for further information, contact the State Department.

*****

There may be no worse feeling of human powerlessness than inability to prevent the death of a loved one. The unmatched power of bereavement forces people to cope with a basic kind of human algebra: love + death = grief. Whether felt as a sudden ghastly deluge or as a long series of sleeper waves with awful undertows, real grief can turn upbeat memories into mournful ones; remembering becomes a source of anguish, so that, as Joan Didion wrote, “Memories are what you no longer want to remember.” Ultimately, intimately, the human conditions of loss often move people to places scarcely mapped by standard news coverage or political rhetoric.

Imagine living in a village in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Yemen. From the sky, death has been visited on neighbors, and drones keep hovering. (As now-former Times reporter Rohde pointed out: “Drones fire missiles that travel faster than the speed of sound. A drone’s victim never hears the missile that kills him.”) Overhead are drones named Reaper, shooting missiles named Hellfire. Have the heavens been grabbed by people who think their instruments of death are godly?

“When scientific power outruns moral power,” Martin Luther King Jr. said, “we end up with guided missiles and misguided men.” For America, drones and other highest-tech weapons are a superb technological means of off-loading moral culpability from public agendas; on the surface, little muss, less fuss.

Disembodied killing offers plenty of pluses in U.S. politics, especially when wars become protracted. From Vietnam to Afghanistan, the reduction of troop levels has cut the number of American deaths (easing the grief that “counts”) in tandem with more bombardment from the air (causing the “other” grief). Today’s domestic politics of grief are akin to what emerged after mid-1969, when President Nixon initiated a steady withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam. During the three years that followed, Nixon reduced the number of soldiers in Vietnam by nearly half a million, to 69,000. During the same three years, the U.S. government dropped 3.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam — more than all the bombing in the previous five years.

Then, as now, the official scenario had U.S. troops thinning on the ground, native troops taking up more of the combat burden, and the Pentagon helpfully bombing from the sky as only Americans could “know how.” Independent journalist I. F. Stone astutely identified the paradigm in 1970, when the White House struggled with fading public support for the war. The revamped policy, Stone wrote, was “imperialism by proxy,” aiming to buy “low-wage soldier-power,” an approach that “will be seen in Asia as a rich white man’s idea of fighting a war: we handle the elite airpower while coolies do the killing on the ground.” Stone would have swiftly recognized the pattern in President Obama’s upbeat statement on May 23 that “we will work with the Afghan government to train security forces and sustain a counterterrorism force.”

The number of U.S. ground troops in Afghanistan was down by one-third, to 66,000, at the start of this year, when Obama announced plans to gradually withdraw the remaining troops over a period of two years. High-tech warfare would pick up the slack. The outgoing Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, told a news conference that a key mission in Afghanistan, persisting after 2014, would be “counterterrorism,” a buzzword for heavy reliance on airpower like drones and cruise missiles. Such weapons would give others grief.

A top “national security” adviser to the president, John Brennan, said as much in an April 2012 speech. “As we have seen,” he noted, “deploying large armies abroad won’t always be our best offense. Countries typically don’t want foreign soldiers in their cities and towns.” The disadvantages of “large, intrusive military deployments” were many. “In comparison, there is the precision of targeted strikes.”

But such “precision” is imperfect enough to be an other’s calamity. Likewise, the extreme relativity of “agony.” At his Senate confirmation hearing to become CIA director in February 2013, Brennan spoke of “the agony we go through” in deciding which individuals to target with drones. Perhaps to square some circles of cognitive dissonance, those who inflict major violence often seem moved to underscore their own psychological pain, their own mental wounds. (As if to say, This hurts me as much as it hurts them; maybe even more, given my far more acute moral sensitivities.) When the focus is on the agony of the perpetrators, there may be less room left to consider the grief of their victims.

Shifting the burden of protracted war easily meshes with a zero-sum geopolitical game. Official enthusiasm for air strikes has correlated with assurances that Americans would be facing much less grief than allied others. So, near the end of 2012, the USA Today front page reported that “the number of U.S. deaths in Afghanistan is on track to decline sharply this year, reflecting the drawdown in U.S. forces” — while the death toll for Afghan government forces had climbed to ten times the U.S. level. These developments were recounted as progress all the way around.

As top officials in Washington move to lighten the political load of American grief, their cost-benefit analyses find major strategic value in actions that inflict more grief on others. Political respects must be paid. Elites in the war corps and the press corps do not have infinite tolerance for American deaths, and the Pentagon’s latest technology for remote killing is a perpetual favorite. In the long run, however, what goes around tends to come around.

Advice offered by scholar Eqbal Ahmad before 9/11 bears repeating and pondering: “A superpower cannot promote terror in one place and reasonably expect to discourage terrorism in another place. It won’t work in this shrunken world.”

After the “war on terror” gained momentum, Martin Luther King III spoke at a commemoration of his father’s birth and said: “When will the war end? We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others.” That was more than nine years ago.

(Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State.”)

Picnic on Donner Pass — No meat.

Plaque I’d like to see at the Donner Summit: “They Bit off More Than They Could Chew”

In Sausalito we had lunch with a friend of M’s late husband. The guy is a Mormon with a rich history of womanizing, seven marriages, and big money made through less-than-honest business practices. This was in the Bay Area, where two of his many houses are. He drove up to the restaurant by the old Sausalito Boat & Tackle in a bright red Lotus, a $110,000 sports car. His attitude was distinctly patriarchal. Approval of me is perhaps pending, but I had his number in minutes, a rich phony hypocrite. The Lotus was the final straw for her.

John Dalton, now 58, has been in federal prison for more than 17 years on marijuana-related charges. Dalton was put in prison by rogue DEA agents who seduced his wife, making her their informant. At one point, the DEA had Dalton’s wife place a tape recorder under the couple’s bed in their Redwood Valley home. And the DEA took Mrs. Dalton joy-riding in government helicopters and engaged her in sexual relations in a so-called Ukiah safe house. When Dalton sued the DEA for “egregious government misconduct,” federal judge Susan Illston, in a contorted ruling, found that outrageous government conduct requires “more than negligence or poor judgement,” declaring that tax-paid seduction of a citizen’s wife by government agents was merely “inappropriate.” Dalton is presently incarcerated at the federal prison in Lompoc, Central California. We are re-printing Tim Stelloh’s follow-up piece on the Dalton case this week because we think what happened to Dalton is an ongoing outrage, one of the worst miscarriages of justice we know of arising out of Mendocino County.

* * *

It was over a decade ago that John Dalton, formerly of Redwood Valley, was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison for growing massive amounts of marijuana in the rugged hills near Branscomb. He received the sentence after the DEA agent investigating him amassed a mountain of on-the-job improprieties — including a romantic tryst with Dalton’s alcoholic, unstable wife, Victoria Horstman, who the agent had cultivated as an informant and who was found dead in 2007 under mysterious circumstances in Montana.

Those improprieties are the spine of a civil lawsuit filed late last year by Dalton in San Francisco Federal District Court for $48 million against Janet Reno, the DEA, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, Mendo’s pot raiders (COMMET) and everyone in between.

The agent, Mark Nelson, met Horstman in the summer of 1994. She had long harbored law enforcement ambitions, so she began aiding the drug cops in their investigation against her husband. It started with Horstman handing Nelson bank deposit slips from her husband’s machine shop. The agent subsequently made her a snitch (and allegedly threatened that she could be prosecuted for money laundering if she refused). In an effort to collect more information on her husband — and with Nelson’s encouragement — Horstman placed a DEA recorder behind the headboard of their bed, a violation of marital privacy rights. It was around then that things turned romantic between the agent and his informant. When it came time to fingerprint Horstman — who was now officially a “source of information” — Nelson blindfolded her and drove her to the county drug cops’ secret “safehouse.” Then he gave her a beer.

“Soon after, he put his head in my lap as if nothing was abnormal,” Horstman later wrote in a letter to prosecutors. “I froze up out of disbelief of what was happening to me. Soon after he then turned over on his side on the couch and swung me down and over facing him and began kissing me while he took my left leg and pushed it into his crotch area.”

In Horstman’s telling, Nelson tried, over the course of their relationship, to have sex with her multiple times — though she refused — and he even drove her to a divorce lawyer and “forced” her to leave her husband (which she did). During Dalton’s trial, a close friend of Horstman’s testified that it was far more than fondling, kissing and “trying” to have sex, however — she said that Horstman and Nelson were having an affair.

In those letters to prosecutors, Horstman said that all that DEA pressure had damaged her irreparably — that she’d filled her garage with exhaust in a suicide attempt. In the years following Dalton’s eventual conviction, in 1999, Horstman moved first to Potter Valley, then to Montana, according to her son, Josh Corrigan, who testified in Dalton’s trial but soon after left Mendocino County for Oakdale, near Modesto, to live with his grandparents.

“She went up there because part of her heritage is Blackfoot Indian,” said Corrigan, now 31. “When we were kids, she talked about going back there, about knowing her roots. One of her favorite movies was ‘A River Runs Through It.’ But she couldn’t handle it. I felt so sorry for her.”

Corrigan kept in touch with his mom through letters, and occasionally they talked on the phone. Then, several years ago, she sent family photo albums — the only possessions she’d taken with her up north — to Corrigan’s sister. On the evening of July 5, 2007, her body was found floating in the Clark Fork River in downtown Missoula. Horstman was taken to the hospital and placed in intensive care — but she was already brain dead. She died 15 days later.

The medical examiner found that Horstman had drowned, and classified her death as undetermined. Detective Chris Shermer, who investigated the case for the Missoula Police Department, said her apartment — which was at an Elk’s Lodge — was nearly empty, save for a few jugs of wine, some bottles of anti-depressants and recently purchased bed sheets. Neighbors described a troubled woman to Shermer: On one occasion, he said, Horstman was seen crouched in the lotus position outside her apartment, a bottle of booze beside her. She’d been screaming. Other times, she told neighbors that she worked for the DEA and that the KGB was watching them through their televisions.

“They drove her insane,” Corrigan said. “When my sister visited my mom, she was really paranoid, especially with TV screens. She thought the DEA was watching her.”

When agent Nelson was questioned about Horstman’s allegations during Dalton’s trial, he denied some, admitted some, took the fifth on another, crucial point — and was accompanied by a non-government lawyer to the witness stand. Yes, he’d taken Horstman to the safehouse. Yes, he’d given her a beer. No, he didn’t know she was an alcoholic. Yes, he’d kissed her — but only once, at the safehouse. No, he’d never fondled her. Yes, he knew he’d broken DEA rules. Yes, he’d driven her to the divorce lawyer. No, he’d never forced her to leave her husband. Maybe he’d threatened her with prosecution. When Nelson was asked about the precise day he’d taken her to the safehouse, he took the fifth. Nelson, prosecutors told the court, had falsified the date on Horstman’s fingerprint cards so as to conceal when he’d taken her to the safehouse.

Tony Serra, Dalton’s attorney at the time, tried getting the government’s indictment dismissed based on Nelson’s “outrageous” conduct (he also argued that Nelson’s search warrants were based on bogus info). While the judge, Susan Illston, found that the agent exercised “poor judgment,” and that what he did was “highly inappropriate,” she didn’t find his behavior so “grossly shocking” that it violated the “universal sense of justice” and tainted the government’s entire case.

She barred the bedroom recordings, but allowed the prosecutors to proceed. Though they had no physical evidence linking Dalton to the pot gardens the DEA said were his, the government got a conviction based on the testimony of several informants, including Horstman.

Dalton — who filed the same civil lawsuit in the late ’90s but voluntarily withdrew it in 2000 due to lack of access to a law library — says despite potential statute of limitations problems with his case, he’s confident the judge will agree to hear it. “The lawsuit is a dead-bang winner,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I just basically need someone with some balls to go after the government and hold them accountable for what they have done.”

MASSIVE ABALONE interdiction in Boonville Monday morning. A large number of Fish and Game wardens set up a roadblock at the Boonville Fairgrounds. Through traffic was diverted into the Fairgrounds parking lot for thorough vehicle searches. Other F&G personnel were stationed on 128 towards Philo to chase down motorists who, alerted by cell phone that the barricades were manned ahead, made sudden u-turns to avoid Boonville. A specially trained dog was also deployed to sniff out purloined ab. How much illegally taken abalone was confiscated is not yet available from Fish and Game, but it is known that the delectable mollusk is approaching endangered species status because of both poaching and the overwhelming harvesting it’s been subjected to over the past decade.

RICHARD POOLE JR. and Scott Anderson came by the Boonville office the other day. They’d driven down from Willits where Poole owns property at 195 E. Oak, a couple of blocks from Main Street. Poole is in his late 50s and is a disabled veteran. He’s a big man who travels with a pair of small, well-behaved dogs. It wasn’t easy for Poole to get up the office stairs, and when he sat heavily down I could hear his lungs. Anderson did all the talking as Poole stared at me and occasionally nodded assent. Whenever I looked back at Poole he smiled ruefully and shrugged his shoulders in a total gesture of, “Isn’t this a mess?” I don’t think he quite knows what’s happening to him. The two of them, Anderson and Poole, made me think of Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men.

Arthur Randall

Arthur Randall, a Ukiah tow truck driver by profession, knows his way around town, and the quickest way to get from South State Street to his girlfriend’s work on the corner of Dora and Gobi, he knows best of all. So when he left a Christmas party, December 20th last year for the kids at Grace Hudson School, he got on the freeway at Talmage and planned to zoom up to Perkins, he said, which only has a few lights, then turn south on Dora, impeded by only a few stop signs, and get his gal to work on time, even though the little family of five were running late. He might have made it, too, but some guy cut him off, and then had the audacity to flip him off as well, and that changed everything. Getting his significant other to work on time was no longer his priority; Mr. Flip Off had to be dealt with first.

Cult leader Adi Da Samraj & Supervisor Dan Hamburg. On Samraj’s website Hamburg wrote, “I suppose the understanding that politics must be imbued spirituality began when I was very young.”

There’s little to be said about Dan Hamburg’s latest controversy surrounding the burial of his wife in his own back yard. What the hell, he lives in the country and owns 82, oaky acres; so there is room somewhere out there next to the medicine garden. However, as the current president of the county board of supervisors, Dan must have known that once the sheriff found out about his clandestine, backyard cemetery, the sheriff, by duty and the law, would have to spend needless time investigating in a county that’s going broke taking time and money away from more important pursuits. Sure, who isn’t sympathetic to a man who’s lost his wife? However, the grave out past the barbecue also conveniently diverts attention from the fact that Dan was recently fined $9,000 bucks by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for incorrectly reporting campaign finances during his Nov. 2010 election, which—with Dan’s usual aplomb—is water off his waterproof back.

Who is Dan Hamburg? What’s he all about? Over the years, I haven’t paid close attention. Although he’s always championed some cause (too many to even count) he seemed vapid and predictable, a nice guy who hung in Ukiah, far away from my chosen haunts.