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Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, September 10

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UKIAH IS PAYING the usual outside consultant $28,524 to “evaluate traffic impacts to affected streets” for the new County Courthouse that no one except the County's nine (count 'em) judges wants. The new Courthouse, as we've often reported, is proceeding outside the usual public hearings, planning commission and city council approvals that large-scale projects ordinarily require. This thing is especially egregious because it consists mostly of courtrooms and the usual monarchical chambers judges assume these days.

NewCourthouse

THE 35,850-square-foot courthouse, guaranteed to be a major eyesore much like the now abandoned Willits County Courthouse, will sit on a 4-acre site bounded by East Perkins Street, Leslie Street, the railroad tracks and a residential neighborhood.

THREE MORE privately owned buildings are in the works for the site. They will partly house ancillary court services leased by the County at the usual exorbitant rents the County pays for privately-owned space. Of course traffic will be a mess at an already busy junction not far from Highway 101, although consultants have a way of coming up with rosy reports for the people who've hired them.

WE'VE WRITTEN to Ukiah mayor Phil 'Red Phil' Baldwin to ask him why the Courthouse project is going ahead outside all the usual processes.

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I'LL HOLD YOUR COAT, you go get 'em. But don't use my name, and don't write it so it comes back on me. We get that kind of thing all the time. I'm sure all papers do. Lots of crank calls, too. There's an old bat on the South Coast who often begins her communications with, "Bruce, you motherfucker!" And she wonders why local media won't have any thing to do with her. Oblivious of the effect she has on people, she claims she's banned, persecuted for political reasons.

LATELY, a guy e-mailing us under a pseudonym, wants us to publish a blast at another difficult woman. "She is a public nuisance and was banished from this area years ago… She has been a thorn in the side of many locals and has wronged too many honest people." And so on. This guy was annoyed that we'd printed a letter from the dreaded granny. I told him we don't select letters on the basis of the presumed mental health or social desirability of the writer. If we did, we'd probably be down to a couple of letters a week. "Why don't you?" he demanded, at which point communications on the subject had to be severed.

WE GO WAYYYY out of our way not to deny anybody access to our fervid pages, mostly because we know that free speech hangs by a very thin thread, and lots of people out there have zero respect for it and less commitment to it, and some of them go so far as to advertise themselves as free speech radio.

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WHICH NATURALLY compels mention of Mendocino County Public Radio, which isn't at all public except in its funding through federal grants and tax-exempt status. Whenever I hear one of the management drones trill, "Your community radio station...." I think to myself, "This is what fascism will sound like — constant repetition of untruth, but in this case, set to music. (It will look like Bill and Hillary.) But Mendo Public Radio has almost nothing to do with community — it doesn't even offer local news — and is really a kind of music club with intervals of discussion of long-distance issues overseen by a perpetually aggrieved, unhappy woman and a marginally competent character from who knows where.

JOHN SAKOWICZ had to know KZYX's "management team" was laying for him. Insecure, marginally competent people like John Coate and Mary Aigner (and that fat guy whatever his name his, the one who spit at the Mendocino lady), aren't about to tolerate in-house dissidents, although Sako was the only one left. So when Sako accidentally blurted a frustrated "what the fuck" over an open mic because his caller's line kept being cut off, Aigner, Coate and The Fat Man pounced. And Sako is now “suspended” pending execution.

COATE, an obvious lunatic, has prepared a lengthy document for Sako to sign. In truly crazed detail that probably took days to prepare, Coate demands that Sako terminate himself.

THE FOLLOWING charge from Coate vs. Sakowicz is our fave. (Coate wrote this himself for Sako to sign): “2. John Coate’s Title and Powers. In the same Petition to Deny renewal of KZYX’s license that I filed with the FCC, I alleged that John Coate unilaterally added the title of Executive Director to his former title of General Manager and expanded his powers. In fact, the position for which Mr. Coate was hired was initially advertised as an Executive Director/General Manager position. And Mr. Coate’s employment contract, signed in August 2008, also contains the title, ‘General Manager and Executive Director.’ My allegations about Mr. Coate’s expansion of his title and his powers were in error. I now retract them.”

WE'RE ALL THE WAY into Queeg territory with stuff like this. But I think Coate, Aigner and their board of untrustworthy trustees ought to take it all the way. How about loyalty oaths? Uniforms? Waterboarding of people suspected of disloyalty to extract confessions, with medical monitoring provided by Drs. Trotter and Miller? “I think we need more water, Dr. Trotter. Don’t you agree?” “Oh yes, of course, Dr. Miller. Sako can handle it. I’ll be right back with the hose.”

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JUDGE MAYFIELD has denied the attempt by North County enviros to stop Caltrans from moving contaminated dirt from one end of the 6-mile Bypass project to the other. Caltrans predictably claimed the judge's earlier month-long temporary restraining order would cost the agency "multi-millions" in project delays. Caltrans says the $210 million job is 40 percent complete.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, September 10, 2014

ERIC BOMAR, Ukiah. Drunk in public. (Frequent flyer.)

DONALD BOWMAN, Fort Bragg. Possession of meth/paraphnernalia, probation revocation.

PAUL DECAMARA, Los Angeles. DUI-Drugs.

KAREN EVANS, Ukiah. Resisting arrest.

MARK GEORGE, Townsend, Delaware. Pot cultivation, processing, sale.

SHALA HOEFLICH, Piercy. Burglary.

Litzin, Long, Overholt, Redmann, Scroggins, Tomahawk, Williams
Litzin, Long, Overholt, Redmann, Scroggins, Tomahawk, Williams

KEVIN LITZIN, Ukiah. Drunk in public. Probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

JEANETTE LONG, Redwood Valley. Burglary, forgery, petty theft, receiving stolen property, driving on suspended license.

JUSTIN OVERHOLT, Ukiah. Battery, probation revocation.

TAMMY REDMANN, Fort Bragg. Trespass, failure to appear.

TARRYN SCROGGINS, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

CHARLINA TOMAHAWK, Fort Bragg. Possession of meth.

ARLEEN WILLIAMS, Ukiah. Drunk in public, probation revocation.

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AMERICA

ANITA: Puerto Rico / My heart's devotion / Let it sink back in the ocean / Always the hurricanes blowing / Always the population growing / And the money owing / And the sunlight streaming / And the natives steaming / I like the island Manhattan / Smoke on your pipe / And put that in!

GIRLS: I like to be in America / Okay by me in America / Everything free in America

BERNARDO: For a small fee in America

ANITA: Buying on credit is so nice

BERNARDO: One look at us and they charge twice

ROSALIA: I have my own washing machine

INDIO: What will you have not to keep clean?

ANITA: Skyscrapers bloom in America

ROSALIA: Cadillacs zoom in America

TERESITA: Industry boom in America

BOYS: Twelve in a room in America

ANITA: Lots of new housing with more space

BERNARDO: Lots of doors slamming in our face

ANITA: I'll get a terrace apartment

BERNARDO: Better get rid of your accent

ANITA: Life can be bright in America

BOYS: If you can fight in America

GIRLS: Life is all right in America

BOYS: If you're all white in America

GIRLS: Here you are free and you have pride

BOYS: Long as you stay on your own side

GIRLS: Free to be anything you choose

BOYS: Free to wait tables and shine shoes

BERNARDO: Everywhere grime in America / Organized crime in America / Terrible time in America

ANITA: You forget I'm in America

BERNARDO: I think I'll go back to San Juan

ANITA I know a boat you can get on, / Bye Bye!

BERNARDO: Ah-hah / Everyone there will give big cheer!

ANITA: Everyone there will have moved here

(From West Side Story, Lyrics by Steven Sondheim, 1957)

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DrDoo85

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FOODSHED AT THE FAIR

Please join Anderson Valley Foodshed at the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show September 12-14 in Boonville. We will have ongoing Rural Living Skills Presentations in our booth adjacent to Apple Tasting in the Ag Building.

Friday:

  • 12-1 Simply Sauerkraut (and Pickles)
  • 1-3 Composting With Worms
  • 2-3 Easy Yogurt and Kefir
  • 3-4 Crop Preservation Techniques
  • 4-5 Vegetable Gardening Tips
  • 5-6 Using Undervalued Crops
  • 6-7 Grape Tasting

Saturday:

  • 10-11 Backyard Honeybees
  • 11-12 Groundwater Utilization
  • 12-1 Restoring Our Watershed
  • 1-2 Seed Saving
  • 2-3 Homemade Mustard
  • 3-4 Foraging and Food Forestry
  • 4-5 Living With Lyme
  • 5-6 Composting With Worms
  • 6-7 Grape Tasting

Sunday:

  • 10-11 Basket Making
  • 11-12 Basket Making (continued)
  • 12-1 Closed for Parade
  • 1-2 Seed Saving and Processing
  • 2-3 Meet your Meat
  • 3-4 Seasonal Farm-to-Table Menus

— Cindy Wilder

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FAIR SUNDAY COMMUNITY CHURCH SERVICE September 14th 2014, 8:30 AM Apple Hall Auditorium, next to the Fair Office Pastor Dave Kooyers from Valley Bible Fellowship will present: "If God Exists, There Should Be Evidence". Free admission/Everyone Welcome. Please come and worship with us, and then enjoy the fair for the rest of the day. For additional information please feel free to call Pastor Dave Kooyers (707) 895-2325, or the Fair Office at (707) 895-3011, or visit their website at: http://www.mendocountyfair.com/ 10:00 am Sheep Dog Trials, - Rodeo Arena, and Car Show 2:00 pm CCPRA Rodeo Finals - Rodeo Arena.

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MENDO RESIDENT POSITIVE FOR WEST NILE

Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency, is reporting the first human case of West Nile Virus since 2008. The Mendocino County resident was infected within the county. This patient is recovering. West Nile Virus is a disease transmitted to humans and animals through the bite of an infected mosquito. A person or animal that has been infected by West Nile Virus may have no symptoms of illness or they could become severely ill. What are WNV Symptoms? (Symptoms can vary from severe to mild.) Severe Symptoms occur in approximately less than 1% of persons infected by WNV. These symptoms can include high fever, headache, neck stiffness, disorientation, tremors, coma, convulsions, muscle loss, numbness, paralysis and vision loss. Symptoms can last several weeks, and neurological effects may be permanent. Mild Symptoms occur in up to 20 percent of persons infected with WNV. Symptoms include fever, headache, body aches, nausea, vomiting and sometimes swollen lymph glands or a rash on the chest, stomach and back. Person with these symptoms can feel ill for a few days, while other persons may feel ill for several weeks. No Symptoms approximately 80% who are infected with WNV do not have any symptoms at all and do not feel ill.

Who is at Risk? Persons over 50 years of age are at a higher risk to develop serious symptoms if they are infected with WNV. Persons who spend a lot of time outdoors at dawn and/or at dusk. Avoid spending time outdoors at dawn and dusk when mosquitoes are most active. Wear long pants and long sleeved shirts when outdoors and use insect repellent. Products containing DEET appear to be more effective. Eliminate all sources of standing water to reduce mosquito breeding. Repair or replace torn screens on windows and doors to prevent mosquitoes from entering your home. Add mosquito fish or larvicide to small ponds that do not have fish. For use of larvicide, follow the directions on the package. There is a vaccine for horses to prevent WNV but no vaccine has been developed for humans.

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LEGIONNAIRES’ UPDATE Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) Public Health was notified that 3 people were hospitalized with Legionnaires’ Disease in the Ukiah area; currently, all 3 people have been discharged and to date, there are no additional confirmed cases. The only common factor in the Public Health investigation thus far is that all three individuals stayed at the Discovery Inn in Ukiah between June and August. Legionella bacteria grows in drinking water systems, hot tubs, decorative fountains, and cooling towers. The Discovery Inn water systems were tested, and the results are inconclusive as to the presence of the legionella bacteria. HHSA Environmental Health staff continue to work with the property owner of the Discovery Inn. HHSA Public Health has been notified that on August 25, 2014, the precautionary work to disinfect the water lines at the Discovery Inn was completed by Weeks Drilling and Pump Company of Sebastopol, California which specializes in regulated public water systems. The water main line that serves the main office and kitchen, hotel rooms and the spa room have been flushed with chlorinated water. All water dispensing appliances, hose bibs, toilets, showers, sinks and ice machines were tested in these buildings and achieved the chlorination level necessary for disinfection. HHSA Environmental Health staff approved for three (3) of the spas to be placed back into service last week. The fountain was treated and the pool drained. HHSA would like to thank the Discovery Inn for its cooperation and all those who have worked to ensure the health of the public during this period of investigation. Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency - Dr. Craig McMillan, Public Health Medical Director and Dr. Charles Evans, Deputy Director of Communicable Disease Control Program

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NUCLEAR INSANITIES

Taxpayer-Guaranteed

by Ralph Nader

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) – the corporate lobbyist in Washington, D.C. for the disintegrating atomic power industry – doesn’t have to worry about repercussions from the negative impacts of nuclear power. For nuclear power is a government/taxpayer-guaranteed boondoggle whose staggering costs, incurred and deferred, are absorbed by American taxpayers via a supine government regulatory and subsidy apparatus.

So if you go to work at the NEI and you read about the absence of any permanent radioactive waste storage site, no problem, the government/taxpayers are responsible for transporting and safeguarding that lethal garbage for centuries.

If your reactors experience ever larger cost over-runs and delays, as is now happening with two new reactors in South Carolina, no problem, the supine state regulatory commissions will just pass the bill on to consumers, despite the fact that consumers receive no electricity from these unfinished plants.

If these plants, and two others in Georgia under construction, experience financial squeezes from Wall Street, no problem, a supine Congress has already passed ample taxpayer loan guarantees that make Uncle Sam (you the taxpayer) bear the cost of the risk.

If there were to be an accident such as the one that happened in Fukushima, Japan, no problem, under the Price-Anderson Act, the government/taxpayers bear the cost of the vast amount of damage from any nuclear power plant meltdown. To put this cost into perspective, a report by the Atomic Energy Commission about fifty years ago estimated that a class nine meltdown could make an area “the size of Pennsylvania” uninhabitable.

Why do we stand for such a doomsday technology all over America that is uneconomic, uninsurable, unsafe, unnecessary (it can’t compete with energy conservation and renewable energies), unevacuable (try evacuating the greater New York City area from a disaster at the two Indian Point plants 30 miles from Manhattan) and unprotectable (either from sabotage or earthquake)?

David Freeman, the famous energy engineer and lawyer, who has run four giant utilities (the Tennessee Valley Authority, the SMUD complex – where he closed the Rancho Seco Nuclear Plant – the New York Power Authority and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) sums up the history of nuclear power this way: “Nuclear power, promoted as too cheap to meter, turned out to be too expensive to use, the road to nuclear proliferation, and the creator of radioactive trash that has no place to go.” Right wing conservative/libertarians call it extreme “crony capitalism.”

Nuclear power plants are shutting down. In 2013, four reactors shut down: Crystal River 3, Kewaunee, San Onofre 2 and San Onofre 3. Now, Michael Peck, a senior federal nuclear expert, is urging that the last nuke plant left in California, Diablo Canyon, be shut down until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s regulators can demonstrate that the two reactors at this site can withstand shaking from three nearby earthquake faults.

Meanwhile, the human, environmental and economic disasters at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plants keep metastasizing. Scientists are producing studies that show serious biological effects (genetic damage and mutation rates) of radiation on plant, insect and bird life in and around the large, cordoned off, uninhabitable area surrounding these closed down reactors. The giant politically-influential electric utility company underestimated the likelihood of a powerful earthquake and tsunami.

In the early nineteen-seventies, the industry and its governmental patrons were expecting 1,000 nuclear plants – 100 of them along the California coast – to be operating by the year 2000. Instead, a little more than a hundred were built nationwide. In reality, as of 2014, there are only 100 operable reactors, many of which are aging.

The pitfalls are real and numerous. In addition to growing public opposition, and lower-priced natural gas attracting electric utilities, there are the ever-present, sky-rocketing costs and delays of construction, repair and the question of where to store nuclear waste. These costs are what make Wall Street financiers turn their backs on nuclear power unless the industry can ram more tens of billions of dollars in government/taxpayer loan guarantees through Congress.

And what is all this nuclear technology, from the uranium mines to the nuclear plants to the still absent waste storage dumps for? To boil water!

These are the tragic follies when the corporate masters and their political minions, who are ready and willing to guarantee taxpayer funding, have no “skin in the game.” This kind of staggering power without responsibility is indeed radioactive.

See Union of Concerned ScientistsNuclear Information and Resource Service and Greenpeace for more information.

(Ralph Nader’s latest book is: Unstoppable: the Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.)

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