FORT BRAGG'S revived Taco Bell has customers lining up. Literally. And that's what strikes outsiders as odd, very odd. Why would non-starving people stand in line to get imitation Mexican junk food. But FB's Taco Bell has been open for two weeks now and the lines are still out the door.
ADDED UP, about a million dollars a year is funneled through County government to advertise the splendors of Mendocino County, the idea being that outsiders have no idea where we are and how cool we are. We think the money should stay in the County's general fund, that advertising Mendocino County is a pure waste of money that could be put to rational purpose right here.
CASE IN POINT: Sunday's Chronicle contained a full page ad on the back page of the Travel section called "Escape the everyday grind in Mendocino County." It's the usual compilation of drive-thru redwoods, wineries, seascapes, breweries and our "independent" population. Change the photos and it could be any place on the NorCal coast. I daresay that every adult in the Greater Bay Area, throw in the Sacramento Valley, is already well aware that Mendocino County is not Daly City. An advertisement is unlikely to result in any more people driving to Mendocino County for a weekend than would drive here anyway, and when they drive here they are driving to the Mendocino Coast with maybe a stop in Boonville to take in the delights of Mendocino County's most happening little town. Most tourists veer off 101 at Cloverdale. No tourist-type person continues on up 101 to Ukiah and Willits to check out inland Mendocino County, although true outdoors people know all about the Yolla Bollys. The ad is a waste of money.
AND THE AD IS BLANDLY untrue, historically considered. I wonder who dreamed up this passage: "Opportunist Californians once used the Fort Bragg shore as a dumping ground until the late 1960s. Decades of wave erosion weathered down the glass refuse that remained. The smooth particles cover what is now Glass Beach..."
"OPPORTUNIST CALIFORNIANS"? Fort Bragg and Fort Bragg alone takes full responsibility. Glass Beach was once the ocean end of an ingenious trash dump, a lengthy chute into which the town's garbage was disgorged into the blue Pacific. The endless pounding of the waves washed up broken glass gently rounded by the constant shaping of the sea to form Glass Beach.
A PROSPECTIVE TOURIST, seems to me, would be more intrigued by the true origins of Glass Beach than the vague tourist-ese of the brochure writer.
A FEDERAL AUDIT by the Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has blasted Mendocino County's half-privatized mental health services as so deficient that it killed a man who died waiting for privatized attention from the Ortner Management Group. Last week, doctors from the County's three hospitals repeated essentially the same defects found by the feds, as the Supervisors seemed unmoved.
THE "NEW" PRESS DEMOCRAT'S lede stories this week included, "Santa Claus delights, terrifies kids," complete with a color photo of Santa and a kid; "Where to find last minute gifts in Sonoma County," a tribute to the paper's advertisers; and "Sebastopol, Cloverdale among top 100 liberal cities in US," which may be true of Sebastopol but certainly isn't true of Cloverdale unless our neighbor to the south has undergone a recent population transplant. The Rose City daily's vaunted revamp turns out to be more of the same, not that anyone is surprised.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING, both available on NetFlicks: A BBC production called Broadchurch, a murder mystery brought off with the creative aplomb unique to the writers and actors of the sceptered isle, and an American documentary called Making A Murder that so astounded this viewer he gasped wtf's throughout. And you will, too. Making A Murder ought to be required viewing for lawyers. What the cops and a series of elected lawyers and judges did to this guy at all levels of Wisconsin state government is disgusting, and even shocked me, and I thought I was shock proof.
THE FORT BRAGG City Council approved a final remediation plan to clean up nearly 280 acres of the town’s former Georgia Pacific mill site. However 8 acres out of that area will still have to be limited to non-residential uses, with ongoing monitoring of contaminants.
THE STATE WATER RESOURCES CONTROL BOARD says California averaged 25% water reductions to mostly meet the conservation standard demanded by Governor Brown. State Water said they might lower the conservation target to 22% if NorCal continues at this rate.
CLEAR LAKE is among only a few sites in California where evidence of organized human life goes back more than ten thousand years. Three tribes have signed an agreement with Lake County officials to better protect artifacts. Last year, Lake County tribes achieved guarantees that they'd be consulted on developments in sensitive areas. It’s taken two centuries to achieve this landmark “guarantee,” which may not be a guarantee at all in practice.
A PRO-DEATH PENALTY group has received state approval to gather signatures for an initiative that would speed up what has become a stalled process. The average stay on Death Row is now 25 years. The death people would require the state to rule on capital cases within five years, would limit appeals, tighten up appeals deadlines, and expand the pool of death penalty lawyers.
EXPANSION of the lawyer pool would mean any attorney who now takes on court appointed cases of the indigent class would also have to take on capital cases regardless of his experience. The initiative would not provide added funding to defend capital cases.
ANOTHER INITIATIVE, this one to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole, is also being circulated. This same initiative lost by 4% of the vote in 2012. Both initiatives require 365,880 signatures collected in 180 days to qualify for the ballot.
THE PRO-DEATH group already has more than a million dollars behind it.
THERE ARE PRESENTLY 750 men (all men, I believe) on death row. The last execution was in 2006 after which a federal judge ruled that the death potions were faulty and the people administering them were often poorly trained.
THE DEATH PENALTY, for or against, quickly segues into arguments by the pro people who cite the monstrousness of the crimes committed by the ignoble 750 and that a dead killer can't kill anybody else. They say that lawyers and bleeding hearts have gummed up the process.
THE ANTI'S argue commonsense — that life without is cheaper than funding death penalty appeals, that the death penalty does not prevent future murders, and so what if the bastard suffers, look what he did. And, of course, a wealthy killer has seldom, if ever, been executed in this country. The poor get murdered by the state, the wealthy don't. The poor also comprise the large majority of people in prison, many of them doing life without for murders they committed when they were very young. But the death penalty is not rational. Proponents seek pure revenge.
THE BOONVILLE NEWSPAPER has always been opposed to the death penalty because it clearly isn't a deterrent and a midnight needle in a sterile prison chamber resembling the emergency room at Adventist Hospital in Ukiah means all of us in whose name the mad dog is being put down take no responsibility for his execution. A killer should be killed the old fashioned way, in public, and by hanging or a firing squad with at least one member of the victim's family directly involved in the actual execution.
I'VE THOUGHT a lot about it. I knew a guy, David Mason, executed at San Quentin. Mason was a very dangerous person, very dangerous. He was dangerous in prison, which is where he should have lived out his days. Could I have killed him? If he'd killed someone close to me? Absolutely. But if I weren't willing to do it myself, and he couldn't be publicly executed, I'd simply want him locked away forever.
AN APPEALS JUDGE put it best, in effect saying that if we can't face up to the cruelty of state executions we shouldn't be doing them.
THERE ARE PEOPLE who still think Obama is a liberal. Raids and deportations that would target hundreds of families who fled to the United States from Central America in 2015 are being planned by the Department of Homeland Security. The operation will be handled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents next month and will reportedly be the largest nationwide effort to deport families who have fled violence south of the border. The Washington Post said that more than 100,000 families have made the journey in the past year. Adults and children whose removal has already been ordered by an immigration judge will allegedly be detained wherever they are found and immediately deported. The Obama administration has deported more people, far more people, than his Republican predecessor.
WHAT'S COMING in 2016? Off present functioning, Mendocino County won't change much barring external disaster. The big picture far away and over the hills, it is clearly more of the same — unaddressed rolling catastrophes.
DESPITE the deluge of complaints about the County's privatized mental health services, including complaints from the County's emergency room doctors, Sheriff Allman and his deputies will continue to function in 2016 as the County's de-facto front line mental health services.
HERE'S THE SHERIFF himself on Facebook, Sunday (December 27): To my Facebook friends, I don't like those "teasers" that radio stations and TV stations use, however, I'm going to use one now. I am pledging to do something in 2016 that will allow Mendocino County to once again, provide a service which we have not had for many years. I can't spill the beans right now, but you, my Facebook friends, will be the first to know of my new project. Let's make 2016 the best year yet for Mendocino County. I'll quote country singer Aaron Tippin right here...."You've got to stand for something, or you'll fall for anything."
READING between the lines here, we think the Sheriff is planning to set up something like the old Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF) which the County closed at the behest of the Mental Health Department back in the late 90s.
COAST HOSPITAL'S financial difficulties and the failure to pass a bond initiative will lead to a proposal that the Hospital close and turn itself into a feeder clinic for the Adventist’s recently expanded inland hospitals.
THE “no social services” in downtown Fort Bragg Initiative will pass as the town becomes more and more aware that the well-paid, self-interested Ortner-Hospitality House complex continues to expand its dubious services into Fort Bragg's downtown.
THE SUPES will vote to allocate a few hundred thousand Proposition 172 sales tax dollars to local fire departments simply because it's the right thing to do and the local cops are flush, thanks to dope interdictions. Thus end-running the proposed initiative that would have forced them to allocate much more.
EL NINO, as of late December, is tardy to get rolling, but will produce higher than average winter rains but not enough to roll back long-term drought conditions.
SEMI-LEGALIZATION of marijuana will stall, with nothing to show for it beyond expensive fees and permits trumped by the federal government's continuing zero tolerance policy.
THE EXCLUSIVE Operating Agreement for inland ambulance services will lead to an attempt to professionalize and corporatize outback volunteer ambulance services.
DESPITE THE DEPARTURES of John Coate and Mary Aigner, KZYX will plod on as always with its enemies' list intact and no increase in local public affairs programming, and chaste news reporting.
KEITH FAULDER will defeat Patrick Pekin to replace David Nelson as one of our 9 Superior Court judges. Judge Richard Henderson will “retire” but we’ll still see him back in court on a regular basis as a substitute judge because these guys never really retire. Henderson's vacancy will be filled by appointment.
THE FLAGRANTLY NOISOME frost fans will not be turned on in Anderson Valley during the spring frost season because there will be adequate water in local ponds to protect the grape harvest.
SUSAN KEEGAN'S killer will remain unprosecuted even though her death certificate reads “homicide,” and there’s only one suspect, her husband, Dr. Peter Keegan. The Keegan case is a perfect example of our class system in action. The same set of circumstances would have buried Joe the working guy or Joe the pauper in prison for the rest of his life. A medical doctor gets away with murder.
BUREAUCRATIC MENDO QUOTE OF THE YEAR: Stacey Cryer, Mendo’s Director of Health and Human Services, describing why the County should spend $250k on the “Stepping Up Initiative” (which is supposed to divert a few criminally nuts perps from the jail:
“It's an initiative, a movement, it's a new way of thinking, it's stepping out of the box that we are in, it's coming together, it's collaborating, it's something that we have already started. We are bleeding to death in adult mental health. Adult mental health in this county has been an issue for years. It's poorly funded, not well understood, problematic in more ways than one. Across the country, adults are being put in jail who should not be put in jail because they are mentally ill and they are violating some part of the law and they end up incarcerated and they end up with felonies. It's got to stop. Everyone is saying nationally it's got to stop, we have to change. So instead of just asking for general fund to go into the adult mental health system we decided to do something a little more proactive and we decided to do something that we are already working on. As public defender Thompson says we are meeting about 5150 [people arrested on mental health grounds: danger to self or others], about services in the jail; we are meeting about the way that people are picked up and the way they are delivered and how they are in the emergency room and how they end up in jail. So we are doing these things already. So instead of asking for general fund for adult mental health, we decided to be a little more proactive and try to do something a little different and support this initiative. This was talked about on the Capitol steps on May 7 in Sacramento. It was a very good conversation, and a lot of great speakers were there of course, and it felt like something we could wrap our arms around and move this county forward in a new way. So it's not really a program, so I can't give you a deadline, but it's something we are already talking about and we will continue to focus on. It's really putting our money where our mouth is, so to speak, on where we want to look and focus in mental health.”
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE YEAR: “We’ve made billions of dollars off of people from all over the world who smoked our herb and drank our wine, and now we’re complaining that a couple hundred pot heads and drunks chose to migrate directly to the source.” — James Marmon
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