Category archives for: Commerce

Evidence of Corruption Emerges: North Coast Enviros Blast MLPA

by Dan Bacher

Evidence of Corruption Emerges: North Coast Enviros Blast MLPA

John and Barbara Stephens-Lewallen, Mendocino County’s leading environmental activist couple, demanded that the Schwarzenegger administration stop the corrupt, fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative in a letter they presented to the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the North Coast Study Region on March 1. Their plea to halt the process was made the [...]

Eco Libs & Eco Grain

by Letters to the Editor

Eco Libs & Eco Grain

I was reading National Geographic this morning and noticed an ad the featured something called Eco Grain. “What in tarnation is Eco Grain?” the headline said.
Well, according to the ad, it is grown on special farms in Idaho “thanks to a more sustainable farming approach.”
Sounds good to me, I thought, I might get some of [...]

Farm To Farm

by Spec MacQuayde

Farm To Farm

I don’t follow the calendar very well, and since there aren’t any Lutheran churches in Anderson Val­ley I wasn’t aware that last Tuesday was actually Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras. All the same, as the tempera­ture climbed up to 70° in the afternoon, with barely a trace of breeze, I couldn’t help feeling that groping [...]

Fake Pinot

by Mark Scaramella

Fake Pinot

The worldwide wine industry is abuzz with the recent conviction of a French wine combine which defrauded Gallo Wines by delivering at least 18 million bottles (the equivalent of 460 oil tanker loads) of “cheap French red table wine” (blended with with cheaper merlot and syrah grapes) and calling it “pinot noir” for “at least [...]

Sacto Salmon Run Hits Record Low

by Dan Bacher

Sacto Salmon Run Hits Record Low

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council (PFMC), a quasi-governmental body that manages West Coast fisheries, on February 11 released alarm­ing numbers showing that California’s once most abundant salmon run collapsed to an all-time record low in 2009.

Dispatch From the Weed Wars: Oaky Joe & The Pot Police

by Tim Stelloh

Volume is the first thing you notice about Joe Munson: He doesn’t seem to have much control over it. The hearing aids stuffed in his ears are next. They’re the result of being an alcoholic. More specifically, they’re the result of going on a bender in Pontiac, Illinois, of talking shit to a very large man, of receiving an asskicking so severe his jaw broke in three places and his hearing vanished.

Prices Down, Murder Up

by Bruce McEwen

Desperation is rippling through the north hill country of Mendocino County as land and pot partners turn on each other and ruthless bands of home invaders cruise the mud dirt roads from Branscom to Spy Rock to Alderpoint and points between.

For Howard Zinn: LaGuardia & The Truth About Marijuana

by Fred Gardner

For Howard Zinn: LaGuardia & The Truth About Marijuana

Howard Zinn greatly admired Fiorello LaGuardia and in the end the two men had important things in common. They grew up in New York City, two gen­erations apart, sons of immigrants. They both flew bombing missions for the U.S. Army -LaGuardia over Italy during World War One, Zinn over occupied France in World War Two- and then reconsidered the worth of those missions. They both spent their lives speaking for people whose voices hardly got heard.

Oaky Joe & His Many Grows

by Tim Stelloh

Oaky Joe & His Many Grows

This week, I wrote about “Oaky” Joe Munson–a former outlaw grower who “came down off the mountain,” went legit and made medical pot his mission. In the last half-decade, he’s been through the medicinal marijuana-criminal justice ringer in Mendo and beyond.
So far, every case against him has been dropped.
Below is a series of photos of [...]

Things Looking Up For Tall Timber

by Mike Geniella

The North Coast’s biggest timber operator says the economy is looking up in tall timber country despite the state’s still sagging new housing and home improvement markets.

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