TAKE THIS, LIBERALS

Editor,

Patriotism versus liberals —

A few years ago I was wearing one of my patriotic ball caps. It had a symbol of an American bald eagle with a United States flag on the bill which read “land of the free.” I was shopping at Safeway when a woman walked up to me and called me a war monger. Well, I was stunned. I smiled at her and asked her why she thought I was a war monger? She indicated by the cap I was wearing and I told her there is nothing on my cap with any military insignia. I asked if she was a liberal. She said yes. I asked her why she hated our country? She said that she did not hate our country and I politely told her that she did hate America just by calling me a war monger or wearing a cap that showed the love of my country.

I have a simple question to liberals: if you love your country by wearing patriotic hats, T-shirts that have American flags or eagles, does this make you a war monger? This got me to thinking of what is happening now regarding the liberal attitudes towards patriotism. Most liberals really hate their country and they go to great lengths to hide it. Many liberals including President Obama believe that our country is bad and needs pun­ishment for its sins for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also believe that former President George W. Bush was the problem for restarting the war. After 911, he had enough. Bush and our liberal Congress including Sena­tors Hillary Clinton and John Kerry supported the presi­dent in his decision to take out Saddam Hussein. When the war became unpopular, they blamed Bush, which really shows liberals’ true colors as hypocrites.

Liberals believe that our Constitution is outdated and it needs to be rewritten. President Obama believes that our US Constitution is flawed, therefore, he lied when he took the oath of office of the President. When Obama took that oath on January 20, 2009, the elected president said, “I will defend the Constitution of the United States.” If Obama truly believes the Constitution is flawed then he committed perjury. I also took a similar oath to defend our Constitution when I joined the United States Navy for I would have sacrificed my life or my country and its freedom for I am proud to have served.

Another point. Liberals love and admire people like the Cuban president Fidel and Raul Castro, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who are Communist dictators and terrorist murderers. Liberals put down our founding fathers is being racist slaveowners. A great man like our first President George Washington or the second President John Adams and third President Thomas Jefferson who risked their lives for the concept of liberty and freedom. These great Christian men and many other founding fathers teach me that without liberty and freedom we are nothing as a people.

It makes me angry when I do show patriotism and lib­erals view me as a war monger, a racist, a homophobe, and many other idiotic labels. Liberals are good at spreading around patriotic subjects by using terms like “I am a pacifist,” so they do not have to make commitments on their liberal values. They believe that our country is evil and in need a punishment for it. I am not a pacifist. I am a patriot who cares about freedom in this country and sometimes it costs blood to hold that freedom and by God liberals dishonor the men and women who have served and are now serving our country for freedom. Liberals, you say: I support the troops and not their mis­sion (Iraq and Afghanistan). Our military needs the sup­port of both and when you do not it is an insult to the military personnel who are sacrificing and defending our freedom. God bless them all.

Sincerely,

Richard Thompson

Ukiah

________________________________________________

THE BYPASS IS DEAD, BUT…

Dear Editor;

Last Monday there was a major development in the Willits Bypass project when CalTrans was not awarded the conditional 404 permit they were seeking from the Army Corps of Engineers. The details and the conse­quences are still being fleshed out. Phil Dow, head of MCOG (Mendocino Council of Governments), said on KYZX radio Monday night that “the bypass is dead.”

In my opinion this development presents an opportu­nity. Our community, along with other local cities and the County of Mendocino, has set aside regional trans­portation funds in the amount of $32 million for the Wil­lits Bypass. $17.3 million of this funding is unencum­bered, although $14 million has been used to purchase the right-of-way for the bypass.

We still have a traffic problem in Willits, no matter what happens in the next ten years. The City of Willits can build an alternative north-south connecting road along Railroad Avenue, plus other traffic solutions, for much less than $17 million. Also, a smaller, cheaper project would likely be able to employ more local con­tractors. The bulk of the jobs for the CalTrans bypass as planned were going to large out-of-town contractors. There is even a chance some of this funding could be allocated for a badly needed Brooktrails second access road.

The residents of the Little Lake Valley deserve a deci­sion. Public planning in the Willits area has been based on the future bypass for the past 50 years. We need to stop waiting for big government to solve our prob­lems. We can petition MCOG to release the regional transportation dollars to fix our traffic. The Willits City Council will discuss a request to release the local bypass funding on the agenda at its Sept. 22nd meeting. I hope citizens will attend this very important meeting and offer their opinions as to how we should move ahead.

Let’s come together as a community and realize this goal, instead of pushing problems into the future that we could deal with right now.

Holly Madrigal, Willits City Council

Willits

________________________________________________

QUEEN OF THE FOOD BANK

Editor,

Elegant at the food bank. I’ve been called a “Prin­cess,” “Princess Lubominska” friend of Goerthe, Benja­min Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. The title of my second book shall be Lubominska, a redwood tree, tall and heavy with excellent tusks. I have the ravens here. Edgar Allan Poe. I like to laugh with them. And joke in their company. A white blouse embroidered with black silk — coal black silk. My mind brighter than a fresh coined new Mexican quarter. Soft as turquoise lambswool wrapped around my neck. Some sun.

Diana Vance

Mendocino

________________________________________________

GRAND CHAMP HOG

Editor,

Much thanks for printing our after action report on the Fifth Annual Rockabilly in the Redwoods Festival. There is absolutely no pre-publicity for the event so the annual report lets people know what they missed even though they didn’t know about it in the first place.

Planning for Rockabilly, like the Pasadena Rose Parade, is an all year effort. We are hoping to introduce some rockabilly roots music next year starting with Western swing. Our tiny budget can’t cover the likes of Asleep at the Wheel, but we’ll round up some obscure Texas swingers who will knock your socks off.

On the home front, I’m proud to announce that my prime 500-pound Oklahoma Razorback, “Sharpie,” was named Grand Champion hog at the Redwood Empire fair this year.

What a thrill! Now I can triple his stud fees. Razor­back breeding is big biz in the Emerald Pentangle since watch hogs are replacing watchdogs in the local pot grows.

The thrifty cartellian plantation growers though, pre­fer assault rifles and shotguns to watchdogs or watch hogs because ammo is cheaper than pet food.

Law enforcement should take note and upgrade their canine for corps to “porcine corps.” A boar razorback will not be immobilized by having a stick shoved down his throat. He’d shred it into toothpicks.

Cartellian plantation guards — except for the ones blown away — seem to evade law enforcement during multi-agency pot raids. That won’t happen with razor­backs on the job. Due to their long legs and sleek bodies, razorbacks can glide through brush like sharks swim through water. And the pot perps will be quickly proc­essed leaving nothing but their belt buckles — like the 50s horror flick, “Attack of the Killer Shrews.” That will make law enforcement’s job a lot easier.

Unfortunately, Sharpie was banned from the Red­wood Empire Fair Grand Champions Parade because he wasn’t available to be auctioned to the highest bidder. But next year I will enter him in the tractor pull contest to rub their noses in it.

I tried to enter Sharpie in the upcoming Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show in Boonville but the not-so fair honchos demanded an outrageous security deposit.

Sharpie will have his day in the sun, though, since I entered him in the County fair parade where he’d pull a D-9 Cat on a flatbed trailer with me astride the catbird seat wearing an emerald green hardhat and toking a Mist Tulsa bazooka.

Go Hogs!

Knockers up!

Joe Don Mooney

Hopland

PS. The enclosed bioclips on Wanda Sue Jackson are for your in-house Country and Western musician Bruce McEwen.

PPS. People are shocked when I tell them — face-to-face — that I’m electronically unconnected: no phone, no e-mail, no voicemail, no tweets, no facebook, no iPod, no website, no radio, no TV, no laptop, no desktop. I delib­erately avoid the techno-tar baby treadmill. I’m biologi­cally connected and that’s good enough for me.

________________________________________________

MICKEY MOUSE IS GOD

Editor,

Back in the 1990s when I ran for US Congress three times in the Libertarian Party, at a meeting the candi­dates were asked what they thought about how much money candidates should be allowed to get from cam­paign donations. When it came to me, I thought a while and said $50 maximum to any candidate or proposal by any individual, company, union or any organization for each election. Since that time and since campaign contri­butions have gone completely out of control, it’s become a big soap opera.

We have to remember that politicians are just plain ordinary people like the rest of us, only worse. Anyone reading this should give some real thought about how far you would go to protect your job or your source of income. In the private work world there is a minimum to think about. If a business is losing money, people lose their jobs or the business goes out of business. Too bad. But the jobs and income are shot.

But government has the power to protect jobs and politicians do just that. To anyone reading this, how far would you lie and cheat to protect your job and income? The US Constitution was created mostly on history with its many protections, mainly on government and politi­cians who would go a long way to protect their jobs and income. Unfortunately, I don’t think campaign contribu­tions were a problem then, as the boob tube and radio were not around yet.

Recently, Congress passed a law limiting campaign contributions but left it possible to contribute up to about $30,000 to the parties (Democrat, Republican, etc.) which was a sham to fool the public into thinking there was campaign finance reform.

Back to the only $50 contribution to any person or organization. I hear people say how can they put on a campaign with only $50 as a limit? There are some 30 or 40 million Republicans or Democrats. If just one or two million gives $50 each, that’s at least $50 to $100 mil­lion. and that’s more than enough to put on a sensible campaign. The smaller the election (State, local, etc.) the less money received but the less needed to campaign with.

What would this do? First of all and most important the candidates would not be obligated to pay off the thousands of things the contributor gave the money for so the winners could legislate for the best interest of the country. Second, first of all is enough. Besides, I would not have to listen to all those political soundbites which it seems if someone says long enough that Mickey Mouse is God, people will believe it. Of course, maybe He is in disguise.

Emil Rossi

Boonville

________________________________________________

WHY SO MUCH?

Hello Mr. Anderson,

I have been meaning to write to you about an issue that came up a year ago that I thought you might be interested in. You see, I was jailed in the main Solano County Jail a year ago. I was there when the county made changes to the inmate diet, meaning they reduced the amount of food they were giving us without explana­tion. To reduce expenses I assume.

The first day of the switchover consisted of two pieces of bread the size of ladyfinger cookies, a 2×2-inch brownie made from yesterday’s left over oatmeal and a packet of koolaid. Lunch remained a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and portion sizes of dinner were of poor quality and drastically reduced in portion size.

All of us were outraged at the changes but we were told by the correction officers that this was something that was not grievable. It wasn’t until later that I found out that a company that is contracted to provide a meal service to the prison is also the same company that has a contract to provide the food store (canteen) in the jail. I don’t know the terms of the contract but it seems to me that this would be a conflict of interest to provide both contracts to the same company. If the quality or quantity of the meals provided is not up to par the only option is for the inmate to purchase food through the can­teen/store. Someone would have to verify that this is still going on but this is what occurred when I was last there.

Now to the main reason for my letter to you. I’m a first-time offender and so I ask a lot of questions about how things work and why things are the way they are. One of the troubling pieces of information that I came across is that the state spends $48,000 per year per inmate. Isn’t that about twice what a teacher makes or in that approximate range? How can it cost so much to babysit an inmate? The California Department of Cor­rections has cut out all of its drug rehabilitation programs and most of its vocational training programs and the adult basic education classes are barely hanging on. So where’s the money going?

I can tell you from personal experience that the major­ity of inmates who I have come across have an education level between the third and seventh grade. Most have a drug habit and or a mental disability, and many had just rolled over from juvenile hall to prison. The issues that these people face are not that hard to deal with. Why are they in prison? Since when did we become a society of cowards? Prison should be full of people who commit violent crime — violent crimes — not because they annoy you, not because they act funny or weird and not because they committed just any crime. We know that we pay people — judges, district attor­neys, public defenders and conflict defenders — to use their judgment in sorting these things out. But have you actually seen how the process works in reality? Theoreti­cally, it stands as a beautifully balanced machine. The reality is much dirtier than that.

The problem is that we have an industry that needs to be fed. All of these people are ambitious, they want raises, promotions, and they’re more interested in their conviction statistics than they are about what they’re doing to the community. That’s you, your children and your family — and the taxpayers. There is a compromise that we have to reach before we can move forward. There will always be crime. I repeat, there will always be a crime. What are your priorities? Go ahead, write them down, put them in order and let’s write down a percent­age of what we’re willing to spend. Here, I will give you a little bit of help. How about: education, health, reha­bilitation, employment, police, fire, environment, coun­seling, rehab, senior services, transportation, veteran services, youth and teen services. Obviously this is not a comprehensive list. But the point is that what we’re doing is not working so let’s just stop, refocus on what we want things to look like and let’s reprioritize.

I just heard that school funding was going to be cut again. Apparently, because Sacramento has not put a budget in place so that schools can receiving their fund­ing. I have a 12-year old out there. Just like all of you, I want the best for my son and that includes an education or if we want employment, health, safety and education. Please make your voices heard. You’re not alone and your feelings are right on. Others depend on you using your voice to say enough is enough!

With love,

Marco Castillo

Soledad

________________________________________________

WETLAND DECIMATION

Editor,

The slaughter of animals continues in the name of wetland improvement — from Rohnert Park in Mill Valley and Muir Beach.

The decimation continues. Bulldozers, scrapers — the deer stagger, cut off from their daily grazing and salt licks. The lone egret stands vertically on a pile of dirt where a field of pickleweed richly fed him and five oth­ers each day. And non-native trees gave cover and shade.

“We’re going to clean all this up,” said the worker as he gestured over the already half decimated marsh.

Now, it is desolate. No killdeer, no egrets, no mar­tins, no raccoons. No hawks, no crustaceans, no bees, no cool breeze. Just a murder of crows atop dirt piles framed by bulldozers and 4 inch plastic fencing.

“Wetland improvement” reads the meticulous sign on a post near hard gravel.

Name withheld

Healdsburg

________________________________________________

IT’S WORSE

Editor,

In his recent letter Alan Crow attempts to describe the inhuman conditions to which inmates of the medieval dungeon known as San Quentin State Prison are sub­jected — and does a pretty fair job of it. But no account, however vividly expressed, can come close to portraying the horrifying reality of that place.

He also states that “I can touch both walls in the cell with each of my hands at the same time.” No mean feat, that! But I know what Mr. Crow is trying to say and I must point out that it is a gross exaggeration: an average size man can span the breadth of the typical San Quentin cell using one hand — and one elbow. I’ve done it.

Also, Charlie Manson has not been on death row for decades.

Good luck, Alan.

Yours,

D.M. Bullock, loyal subscriber

Ione

________________________________________________

DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE

Editor,

On Norman de Vall’s August 20 public access radio program on KZYX, a man identifying himself as Super­visor David Colfax called in.

He stated that the Mendocino County Grand Jury is dominated by “a bunch of right wing ideologues” who are part of a conspiracy to “get” Supervisor Kendall Smith. This comes as the embarrassing debacle regarding Smith’s falsification of her County expense reports drones on.

It’s interesting that Supervisor Colfax elected to defend his pal Smith by attacking the Grand Jury, a group of citizen volunteers who work without salary while Colfax has long been a proponent of increasing compensation for the Board of Supervisors on which he serves.

He is using a broad brush to smear a diverse group of people rather than address the law, policies and princi­pals that guide the behavior of our elected officials.

Similarly, District Attorney Lintott has been ducking the Smith issue throughout her term. In the end, this has become clear to the public and she is finally being forced, in the heat of a reelection campaign, to take steps to correct the wrong that has been done to the people of this county.

This is a sad chapter in Mendocino County history. Hopefully it will end with the departure of those involved.

Stephen Ward

Ukiah

________________________________________________

KEEPING SCORE

Editor,

“Whatever the number, it will be more than any of us can bear.”

—Mayor Guiliani, 9/11/01

If you ask me, WE WON!

But where is the time keeper? And the guy with the yellow card holding up foul?

So far, on August 3, 2010 it’s World Trade Center — clerks: messengers, lawyers, bus boys, firefighters, typ­ists, programmers: less than 3,000.

While the Afghans — poppy farmers, wedding guests, teachers, hairdressers, students, well-diggers: are about 20,000.

17,000 ahead!

Add in Pakistan, Iraq and you pile up more thou­sands!

Look at those brawny young guys running ragged while the coaches frown.

Those referees — who’re those guys, anyway?

All the fans in the stadium, going wild, screaming “knock em dead!

We’re so far ahead it’s hard to remember the score.

How many more minutes are left in this game any­way?

Virginia Sharkey

Mendocino

________________________________________________

WHEN MCCOWEN RULES POT…

Editor,

Find a copy of “Chasing The White Dog” by Max Watman. Read this solid history of illegal booze in America. Then think on the marijuana legalization movement that’s going on.

Notice around page 66, when he talks about the his­tory of booze taxation around the civil war. In 1862, the tax on booze was 20¢ a gallon. By the close of the war, the tax was $2 a gallon and rising. As a side note, it becomes quite clear that the majority of taxes we’ve seen laid on us in the history of America are due to war. If we could all get along, we would have minimal taxation. It’s all about war. But I digress.

Legalization via taxation will not give us any relief from the government. They’ll quickly tax the weed to the sky; another cash cow for the bureaucrats to cash in on! And you’ll have Revenuers (tax men) over the fences, in your house, in your face — growing or not. They want the money!

I don’t believe the jails will stay empty long. Instead of growers and major sellers, you’ll find the jails full of tax evaders. Think about that: in the history of this country, nobody but nobody escapes the long arm of the tax man for long. Try Al Capone for starters. We’ll have a bigger and badder bureaucracy via taxation; more jack-booted federal thugs for everyone!

And beyond all of the above, how can we possibly think that the fed won’t come rolling in and start busting everyone and anyone when we legalize it here in Cali­fornia? The fed isn’t going to stand by and watch. There will be repercussions. I can’t think like a tax man, so for­give me for not stating examples. Just read the history of taxation and alcohol, and you’ll surely see that taxation is not the answer for weed.

I say keep it simple. You have a 12′ x 12′ marked area in your yard. You can grow all you want in that space. Grown by everyone who wants it on a personal level, there’ll be so much around the stuff will have little monetary value.

Nobody who’s into growing is going to stop because of legalization. Prices will escalate fast — due to increasing taxes whenever an excuse can be found. And enforcement of those taxes, via the actual taxation and draconian methods resulting in arrest and jail will prolif­erate. Nobody escapes the tax man!

I simply do not want the government involved in any­thing else! What has the government ever been involved in that worked out like it was supposed to? Oh I guess the draft worked out. They got their bodies for the war. But otherwise, what?

Pardon me if this is a bit brief and disjointed. I sim­ply want to throw out some facts that point toward what we should expect, given our history.

I’m voting NO on legalization as it will be presented in November. Taxation is just a ruse to get into our pockets and our lives. You get the tax man involved, you will look back in a few years and wonder why we let him into the picture. I am in favor of putting our troops out in the various national forests during the grow season. It is time to put the cartels and industrial outlaw growers on notice. I have friends around Hayfork. They assure me that the woods around them are no place to go hiking if you value your life.

Name Withheld

Santa Rosa

________________________________________________

GENERAL BULLMOOSE

Editor,

There’s a crack of the whip

Left in me yet,

I still have a grip

On my wits to set

Another course and be a force

To get more out of this old horse.

* * *

The first two lines, a common saw, are from James Joyce’s novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The saying was spoken by Simon Daedalus, the father of the Artist, Stephen.

Daedalus was a Greek legend, the architect for King Minos of Crete. Daedalus created the labyrinth, a maze, where roamed the Minotaur, a monster — half bull, half man, looking for escape. The Minotaur was the offspring of King Minos’ unfaithful wife and a beautiful bull that Poseidon had given Minos to sacrifice in his honor. Minos thought the bull too beautiful to sacrifice and in anger Poseidon caused Minos’ wife fell to in love with it. The result was the Minotaur, which Minos imprisoned in the labyrinth from which there was no escape. Every nine years, Minos put 14 youths from Athens, 50/50 male/female, into the Labyrinth. There was no escape. And the Minotaur, eternally looking for an escape would eventually run into them in and kill them. The reason for the macabre rituals was because, years before, Minos had sent his son to Athens from Crete for a year abroad. His son went on a hunting trip organized by the King of Athens, and was killed by a dangerous bull. In revenge, King Minos invaded and conquered Athens and told the Athenian ruler he would raze the city to the ground if they did not send him a tribute of 14 youths every 9 years. Minos would put them in the Labyrinth. The King’s son, Theseus, who had been gone from Athens for years and welcomed back a hero, arrived a few days before the next tribute was being sent to Crete. Theseus volunteered to be one of the 14, telling his father he would kill the Minotaur. When the 14 arrived in Crete they were paraded before the inhabitants, and among the spectators was Adriadne, the daughter of Minos. When she saw Theseus, it was love at first sight. She sent for Daedalus, the architect, and asked him to show her how to escape from the Labyrinth. Then she sent for Theseus and told him she’d show him how to escape if he would take her back to Athens and marry her. Theseus had no problem with that. Adriadne gave him a ball of thread to tie to the entrance of the Labyrinth to unwind it as he went through the maze. Not only did Theseus escape with the other 13, he first found the Minotaur and beat it to death with his fists. And they all, plus Adriadne, set sail for Greece.

Daedalus wasn’t so lucky. Minos realized Daedalus, who created the Labyrinth was involved in the escape and imprisoned him and his son, Icarus in the Labyrinth itself, but no ball of thread this time. But Daedalus was a genius. He fashioned wings held together with glue and he and his son escaped the Labyrinth gliding from Crete to Sicily. Except Icarus didn’t make it. He was so high on flying he tried to fly as high as he could go. Despite his father’s warnings, he flew too close to the sun and the heat melted the glue and his wings fell apart and he fell into the sea. (They weren’t very versed in science those days — we all know it gets colder the higher you go.) But Daedalus flew on to Sicily.

150 years ago, Marx wrote that Capitalism wouldn’t be finished until it ran out of tricks. He was obviously right in that regard.

General Bullmoose was a character out of the comic strip, Li’l Abner by Al Capp, who represented the epit­ome of a ruthless capitalist.

The novel by James Joyce from which I got the old saw, “There’s a crack of the whip left in me yet,” is an essay on aesthetics, but is also about “the game” — suc­cess, love, religion. And you’ll never read a more vivid description of Hell than you will in The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.

John Wester

San Diego

________________________________________________

A FRIEND IN DEED

Editor,

I would have to guess that Anne Fashauer is a friend of the AVA staff given the two column infomercial she was afforded in the August 25th edition in which she argues that realtor’s marketing powers are beyond those of the average mortal and the services rendered are beyond compare.

It occurs to me that every sub-prime junk loan that was awarded to unfortunates who could not afford them was facilitated by at least one real estate agent. As the market got more unrealistic and properties more over­priced, it was real estate agents who put lipstick on pigs and encouraged bidding wars. Never mind that real estate values were inflated beyond reality. This was not their concern. Their asses are covered. The blackjack dealer is not at fault either.

Real estate agents offer some services and have a place in the real estate market. The paperwork, escrows, and rules of the game can be daunting. But there is no assurance of things working out in either the buyer’s or seller’s favor. Agents are compromised by the deal. They typically do not get compensation for their work without a sale. From my own experience and the experience of millions in foreclosure, many folks were not well served by their agents. I would suggest that an agent’s concerns for the welfare of their client are as limited as a used car salesmen’s.

Sorry about the broad brush. There are surely reputa­ble people in the trade and I assume that Anne Fashauer is one.

Nicholas Pinette

Oakland

________________________________________________

BABS & CARLY, INC.

Letters to the Editor:

We’ll just elect the status quo.

Subject: Taxation without representation.

If your candidate was a Green Party, Libertarian or Peace and Freedom candidate, which all have ballot access in California, they were prohibited from debating the two millionaire candidates of the one-party, war/corporate, Democrat-Republican Party (“Climate, jobs split Boxer, Fiorina,” SF Chronicle, Sept. 2).

What California will end up with is a million­aire/billionaire senator who will do everything in his or her power to continue the status quo of tax breaks for the wealthy and wage cuts for the workers. The last thing the one-party system wants is a real debate on real issues.

Can’t wait for the governor’s debate — and California will be stuck with the best governor money can buy.

Cynthia Marcopulos

South San Francisco

________________________________________________

TAKE A WALK

Editor,

Regarding Calvin Walker’s letter complaining about Dan Hamburg and the marijuana garden.

Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.

This guy planted TWO crops after having, he alleges, been burned out of his share the first time? Fool me once. Smooth move. Calvin, does your elevator go to the top floor?

He admits he’s doing all this to scotch Dan’s chance to be Fifth District Supervisor. So it’s not about ripped off pot at all. It’s about politics — last year’s growing season was a year ago. Only now does this come out.

Hey, Calvin, you got a med marijuana card? What’s your ailment that pot alleviates? Schizophrenia? What did you do when your share was “denied” you? Did you go to a dispensary? Take Dan to small claims to get reimbursement for the money you would have otherwise not had to spend? Why not?

I’ve got no beef about the way Dan handled the job last time he was Supe. Wendy’s silence on this militates against my supporting her. Calvin, you helped me make up my mind. I’ll go for Dan one more time. Wendy, all your hard work to become Supe is trashed badly by non­sense like this. With friends like this, you don’t need enemies.

Calvin, come down off your cross and join the rest of us. You grow tiresome. Better to let people think you’re a fool rather than open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Doug Roycroft

Fort Bragg

________________________________________________

TOO MANY SIGNS

Editor,

This is a road report after returning from my recent trip to Canada. The difference in the number of road signs in Northern Calif. versus Oregon, Washington, and Canada is very significant. CalTrans signage department is polluting our scenic roads with far too many signs. An example of the over abundance of signs is the 14 signs, manual and electronic, on the curve south of Willits just before the downgrade towards Ukiah. I get dizzy and distracted with the numerous signs telling me there is a curve on Hwy 101.

Another form of sign pollution is the redundant signs indicating the overhead feet in an upcoming overpass. There is usually three counting the one on the overpass. Interstate 5 in California as well as other states have no overpass height signs. Another example of way too many signs is the numerous black on yellow arrows on a curve and now there are places with a second layer of these same signs. Electronic signs are popping up all over our roads also and need constant maintenance.

A lot of states have one speed limit for all vehicles from a VW Bug to 18 wheelers and vehicles towing something. In California we have different speed limits with redundant signs constantly telling us about the dif­ferent speeds.

The cost of these redundant and unneeded signs throughout California plus their maintenance deprives schools and other services of much needed funds. It would appear that the CalTrans signage department spends every cent in their budget so it will not get reduced. Write to your representative and CalTrans and tell them how you feel about this waste of tax money and pollution of our scenic highways.

Bob Wilkinson

Laytonville

________________________________________________

TOO MANY PEOPLE

Letters to the Editor,

James Jay Lee had strong opinions and wanted to tell the world about them. In principle, he was correct. In the way he went about delivering his message he couldn’t have been more wrong. It was horrible the way he took workers of the Discovery Channel hostage.

There are not enough of us homo-saps who believe that there are too many of us. We are totally destroying this planet for ourselves and every other form of life — even mineral life. Is the 75 mile long traffic jam in China enough of a sample? How about all the poisoned food recalls?

Mr. Lee had the spirit, too bad he was not more elo­quent. We humans are way over-populating this remote ball of dirt we call home. And, we should curtail science and get back to basic roots, like plants. Hello, Mr. Pope of the Vatican, are you paying attention?

My deepest sympathies go to those at Discovery Chan­nel because of the incident, and the loss of Mr. Lee is a step in the right direction: one less human.

Carl Flach

Alameda

________________________________________________

LIBERTARIAN FOR MORE RULES

Letter to the Editor,

Of pot and life after legalization.

As a lifelong Libertarian I support Proposition 19 (Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, currently leading in all major polls). It will put an end to the crime associated with commercial cannabis cultivation, it will provide funds to our local governments, reduce demand on law enforcement and, most important, Prop 19 will reduce government intrusion into folks personal lives. But the passage of Prop 19 will come at a cost.

Cannabis has been a part of our culture for 30 years, over the last 15 years cannabis has become an integral part of our economy to the exclusion of nearly every­thing else.

Clearly the days of cannabis fetching a cash premium for the risks associated with it are numbered thus, so are the days of cannabis being a staple for our local econ­omy. Indeed, even before the passage of Prop 19 the days of easy money growing pot are waning. For proof of this, one needs to look no further than the local head­lines that even Dan Hamburg is currently seeking employment.

We as a community need to decide what we are going to do because we will not do what we’ve been doing for the last 15 or so years. It simply won’t work in a world where commercial farmers are harvesting pot in the Sacramento Valley with combines and it’s not sold by the pound but by the bushel or by the carton. There may be some premium for the “family farmed” hand trimmed, boutique pot but just as there are few buyers for $150 dollar bottles of wine so will there be few buyers for $1,000/pound pot in a $1,000/ton world.

Full disclosure: I was a supporter of, and the spokes­person for, Measure B but the opinions expressed here are my own.

Ross H. Liberty

Ukiah

________________________________________________

LEFT? WHAT LEFT?

Dear Editor,

Why the Left is Nowhere

Like many of you I lay on my couch and ponder why it is that the Left is nowhere. No message, no platform, no charisma, no leadership, no nothing. Forget for a minute the distinction and difference between the Liber­als and the Progressives. Let’s take a look at the political Left as contrasted to the political Right.

The Left always wants to give the opposition a smat­tering of the benefit of doubt. The Left tries to see things from their point of view. The Left is somewhat open-minded, willing to question its own premises. Any Left­ist worth his or her salt is that way most of the time.

The Right however, is not that way at all, not any of the time. They see their point of view as the only correct view. Any other view is not only un-American, it’s heretical. They never question their own premises; they don’t have to, because their premises remain unstated. They are truisms, sacred truisms, that do not need justifi­cation, having come down from on High.

You, Editor, and your readers, already know that. Nothing new there. But if we look a bit deeper the Left and the Right are light years apart in a fundamental way. The operative word here is the word “nice.” By looking at that word we can see why it is that the Right gets away with lying. They have no illusions about lying. For the Right, lying is a tactic; it is not a moral matter at all. It is a pragmatic, practical, successful tactic, employed wher­ever and whenever the situation demands it. They know they are lying and it bothers them not at all.

The Left, on the other hand, knows that lying is not “nice.” It is wrong, personally and socially and politi­cally not a “nice” thing to do. One of the main tactics of the Nazi Party in Germany was to tell the “Big Lie” over and over again. And it worked. The Left screamed that it was not a nice thing to do, to lie on purpose.

The Left does not resort to the use of that tactic. The Left does not believe that the ends justify the means. The Left believes that the truth will win out if we just have enough patience. Obama does not call out the Right for its outrageous lies. He is, at least nominally, on the Left, and it’s not nice to call others liars in public. The Right has no interest in being politically correct, as does the Left. And being ‘nice’ is a part of political correctness. Heaven help the Liberal who stands up says to Sarah, or Glen, or Rush, or any of the politicos at the top of the Republican dung heap, and says, “You, Sir, are a f — -ing liar.” That’ll be the day.

Lee Simon

Far ‘n Away Farm, Virginia

________________________________________________

A FINE RESPONSE

Editor,

On July 11, 2010, a fire started on our ranch when our tractor lit itself on fire. Calfire, Boonville, and the Anderson Valley Volunteer Fire Department responded. Their well-organized efforts kept the fire to about three acres of grass, trees and fences. Thanks to them no structures burned. Words cannot express our gratitude for their competent response and assistance.

Although we are thankful for all the Calfire personnel and the Anderson Valley volunteers, we would like to especially thank those who were there that day. They include: Fire Captain Ray Taglio in the spotter plane, Air Tach pilot Bob Devinny, Tanker 90 pilot Colin Rogers, Tanker 91 pilot John Butts, Helicopter 101 pilot and firefighters, the Calfire crews of engine numbers 1161, 1163, and 1115, Calfire person-in-charge Zachary Grieve, and Anderson Valley volunteers Jan Wasson-Smith, Fred Wooley, Jim Minton, Roy Laird, Jack Ridley, Brock Archer, Charlie Paget-Seekins, Don Gowan, Rusty Pronsolino, Judy Long, Garth Long, Kyle Clark, Nick Schwartz, Carlos Espinosa, Sarah McCarter, John Keevan-Lynch and Chief Colin Wilson. We apolo­gize if we have left anyone out.

We would also like to thank David Williams, Gilles d’Aymery and Jan Baughman for their help and concern. Finally we would like to thank Cheryl Schrader of Anderson Valley Rescue for her help in finding out what to do with the baby quail.

We are grateful for our good fortune to live in this community.

Wallen and Elizabeth Summers

Boonville

]]> http://theava.com/archives/8124/feed 0 http://theava.com/archives/8122 http://theava.com/archives/8122#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:29:40 +0000 Eric Bergeson http://theava.com/?p=8122

At about noon one day last week, I decided on a whim to head down to see the Twins play the Tigers at Target Field.

It was pretty much a Toothbrush Trip, where you grab a toothbrush and go.

I didn’t have a ticket, but you can scalp those on the street.

It was too late to call anybody to join me at the park, but that’s okay. Some of my best baseball memories come when I go to a game alone and quietly soak it all in.

I determined ahead of time not to buy the first ticket available on the street. I am a sucker for con artists, and my first reaction to a scalper is to feel sorry for him.

This time, I had a map of the seats and I was going to stand up for my interests.

I failed.

The first guy with tickets was so nice and called me buddy and convinced me that this ticket was right behind home plate.

He was selling the ticket for face value, which seemed cheap enough, so I bit.

When I got into the ball park and started to look for Section 330, it was nowhere near home plate.

After asking an usher for help, I ended up four rows from the back of the upper deck in left field.

Ripped off again.

Was I angry? Nah. There isn’t a bad seat in the place. The view from the upper deck was absolutely spectacu­lar. The only thing you couldn’t see was the left field fence, which was just below.

Although the rest of the stadium was sweltering, there was just enough of a breeze in the upper deck to keep one cool. The seat was, in the end, ideal.

I wasn’t alone for long. As the game began, a couple I knew from up north took their seats two rows down. What are the chances?

I swapped seats to sit by them. One member of the couple is from Norway and the other from Russia, so whether they were interested or not, I spent the first few innings explaining every play to them.

The game started with four crucial flubs on the field by the Twins. Only one mistake was recorded as an error, but for a team which is supposed to do everything right all the time, it didn’t look good.

Eventually, the Twins’ bats woke up. Mauer and Valencia hit identical ground-rule doubles which bounced over the wall below. The Twins began to chisel away at the Tigers’ three-run lead.

The Twins’ gloves got better, too. Jason Repko made a leaping catch against the left field fence. We couldn’t see the play, but it gave me chills to have the entire sta­dium look our way and roar when the catch was made.

All through the game, a little old lady with her hair in a bun just in front of us added her baseball commentary to mine. She knew her stuff, so I had to be careful with my facts.

Then things got interesting, both on and off the field.

As the Twins started the rally that would give them the win, a little rodent crawled onto the neck of the little old lady. I thought sure it was a bat, except it had a tail.

The woman seemed not to realize she had a critter on her neck. I yelled for her to sit still. I intended to grab the thing by the tail and whip it over the back of the upper deck before it bit her on the neck.

Just as I was about to make the grab, the woman reached behind her neck, grabbed the rodent and stuffed it into her bra.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It is just a four-week old flying squirrel. I had to bring it along because it still needs feeding.”

I eventually convinced the woman to pull the squirrel out from her bra for a picture. I knew nobody would believe me unless I had evidence.

The lady obliged. After the photo session, she put the squirrel in her front pocket where it peeked out oh-so-cute.

Later the lady passed the squirrel around to the sur­rounding fans, who by this time were not watching the game at all.

The Twins won, but I didn’t figure out how until I found a box score. ¥¥

(For photographic evidence of this disturbing inci­dent, visit Eric’s weblog at http://www.countryscribe.com.)

]]> http://theava.com/archives/8122/feed 0 http://theava.com/archives/8118 http://theava.com/archives/8118#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:25:22 +0000 Dick Meister http://theava.com/?p=8118

Let’s pause for a moment this Labor Day to recognize some of our most important, yet most maligned workers.

They’re teachers and librarians, police officers and firefighters. They’re bus drivers, doctors and nurses. Judges and lawyers, landscape gardeners and arborists. They’re laborers and other maintenance and construction workers.

They are, of course, public employees. There are mil­lions of them, who every day perform many thousands of the essential tasks that keep our country going.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” — Anne Frank

On my way out to water the garden, the living room radio tuned to our local public radio station, I hope I didn’t hear what I think I just heard, especially since I recently renewed our membership to that radio station. But when I come in from the garden, Marcia confirms that some nincompoop guest on said station did, indeed, say, “You shouldn’t give money to the homeless people in Fort Bragg because they’ll just use it to buy drugs.”

You wake up one morning and your eyesight has changed — you can’t read the paper as usual and colors fade in and out. Over several weeks this happens on and off but it’s always worse with each new occurrence. A couple of times you have short visions that are like an LSD trip. None of the ophthalmologists can find a cause or treatment. By now you have begun tossing the ball for your serve in tennis and it is going all over the place — you have no control. Over time your game deteriorates. After over 30 years playing your favorite game, tennis can no longer be a part of your life. You find yourself on a wonderful trip in a foreign country. While climbing up a steep hill you keep collapsing — total loss of control. Coming back down the same thing happens. Once on flat ground, walking through a potato patch, you are tired but walking without help, under control and with good bal­ance. What changed?

Barack Obama’s speechwriters are, no doubt, polishing just such a commentary by their boss. In terms of political energy, the event is as inert as Labor Day, itself just around the corner at the start of September. But this year brings welcome relief from such pietism. The premier anniversary celebration of the March has been hijacked by the right-wing commentator, Glenn Beck. The prime speaker will be Sarah Palin, the Tea Party’s pinup girl and as unlikely as any woman in Alaska ever to have had a pinup of MLK on her dorm wall. To have the March on Washington honored by Beck and Palin is as shocking to liberal America as installing Jefferson Davis, president of the Southern slave states in the Civil War, next to Lincoln in the Memorial — an insertion which will no doubt be approved by Congress, and endorsed by Obama in the interests of bipartisanship, just as soon as the 14th Amendment is repealed.

Beck admits that when he scheduled a rally in Washington on August 28 to boost his new book, The Plan, and strut his stuff to the Tea Party masses, he had no idea it was the anniversary of the March. But he swiftly turned ignorance into opportunity. He’s now saying that’s he is working “to finish the job” that was at the heart of the 1963 March on Washington and King’s vision. Beck claims the ideas of Dr. King have been corrupted and that he will resurrect the true King. As part of this mission, Beck is trying to separate Dr. King from social justice and limit King to advocacy of individual Christian salvation.

According to Dedrick Muhammad of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, writing on our CounterPunch.org website last week, “Beck has even reached out to distant relatives of Dr. King, like Dr. King’s niece. After questioning her several times he gets her to say that King was not about social justice or government redistribution of the wealth.”

From the left comes the angry response that King was, indeed, committed to the need to redistribute wealth in order to advance a juster nation and was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968, in the course of a visit to black city workers on strike.

If Beck’s hijacking provokes some honesty among the left in general about King and about black leadership today, then Beck will have performed a useful service. Too late now to organize the obvious, a huge counter demonstration to call Beck to accounts and run him and Palin off. The left is too weak for that, having now given up gluten which has given us leavened bread for 5,000 years.

The March of 1963 was actually called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It wasn’t King’s idea, but that of A. Philip Randolph who had planned a similar march in 1941. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference was only one of five main sponsoring groups. Some of these saw the march’s purpose not as high-flown talk about dreams but as harsh reproof of President John Kennedy. They accused him of dragging his feet on giving legislative heft to the civil rights movement that had moved into high gear three years earlier. Julian Bond’s speech denouncing Kennedy’s weakness was famously censored by the March’s organizers.

King’s political career was heading into crisis. Three years later, in 1967, he was booed by blacks at a rally in Chicago. He recalled later what he thought that night: “I had preached to them about my dream. I had lectured to them about the not-too-distant day when they would have freedom ‘all, here and now.’ I had urged them to have faith in America and in white society. Their hopes had soared. They were now booing because they had felt we were unable to deliver on our promises. … They were now hostile because they were watching the dream they had so readily accepted turn into a nightmare.”

It was one thing to force a chain restaurant in Greensboro, North Carolina, to allow blacks to sit at a previously Whites Only counter; it was quite another to attack the racism embedded in the American system so savagely excoriated by the greatest American black revolutionary of the 1960s, Malcolm X, who was assassinated in 1965.

Beck, to a certain extent, has it right. In 1963 King was on the same tack as another man professing confidence in the American system to engender justice out of an innate, individually virtuous moral tropism to do the right thing — Barack Obama in 2008. King was wrong then, just like Obama is two generations later. It’s a matter of class war, not individual character traits.

King moved to the left in the mid-60s. He had to. In Riverside Church in New York, a year before his death he gave a far more powerful speech than 1963’s “I have a dream” address. He called the US government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. … A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. …[T]rue compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar… it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

This was a far cry from what White Power wanted from King, which was the soft rhetorical pillow on which all Dreamers could lay their heads: MLK’s 1963 dream that “we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

On August 28, 2010, 47 years after the March for Jobs and Freedom, America has plunged into the vortex of long-term mass unemployment. No jobs, particularly for young blacks. So much for jobs.

What about freedom? Thirty years ago, fewer than 350,000 people were held in prisons and jails in the United States. Today, the number of prisoners in the United States exceeds 2,000,000. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the chance of a black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32%, or 1 in three. Black boys are five times as likely as white boys to go to jail. Former prisoners are permanently relocated on society’s margins, these days some five million of them, denied the right to vote in most states.

Professor Michelle Alexander, in her book The New Jim Crow argues convincingly that we have a purposeful system of mass incarceration, with blacks as the prime victims. Today, in this fearful crisis there is no effective black leadership, starting with President Obama who has marvelously fulfilled his function as political sedater of black aspirations, starting with the promotion of his own success story. “Yes, we can.”

Oh, no they can’t. It’s not in the Master Plan. Black politicians are well aware that most of their black constituents will stay with Obama till the end, whatever he does. So most of them remain quiet — and yield the stage to an opportunist like Beck, flanked by Ms. Palin. Malcom X, who called the 1963 March on Washington “a picnic” and “a circus,” would have had a good laugh about that.

The Left & Iraq: Snatching Defeat

from the Jaws of Victory

“The US isn’t withdrawing from Iraq at all — it’s rebranding the occupation… What is abundantly clear is that the US, whose embassy in Baghdad is now the size of Vatican City, has no intention of letting go of Iraq any time soon.”

So declared Seumas Milne of The (UK) Guardian on August 4. Milne is not alone among writers on the left arguing that even though most Americans think it’s all over, they say that Uncle Sam still effectively occupies Iraq, still rules the roost there. They gesture at 50,000 US troops in 94 military bases, “advising” and training the Iraqi army, “providing security” and carrying out “counter-terrorism” missions.

Outside US government forces there is what Jeremy Scahill calls the “coming surge” of contractors in Iraq, swelling up from the present 100,000. Hillary Clinton wants to increase the number of military contractors working for the state department alone from 2,700 to 7,000. Of these contractors 11,000 are armed mercenaries, mostly “third country nationals,” typically from the developing world.

“The advantage of an outsourced occupation,” Milne writes, “is clearly that someone other than US soldiers can do the dying to maintain control of Iraq.“

“Can Iraq now be regarded as a tolerably secure outpost of the American system in the Middle East ?,” Tariq Ali asked in the New Left Review earlier this year. He answered himself judiciously, “They have reason to exult, and reason to doubt.” But the thrust of his analysis depicts Iraq as still the pawn of the American Empire, with a “predominantly Shia army — some 250,000 strong— …trained and armed to the teeth to deal with any resurgence of the resistance,” all this with “the blessing of the saintly Sistani’s smile.”

The bottom line, as drawn by Milne and Ali is oil. Milne gestures to the “dozen 20-year contracts to run Iraq’s biggest oil fields that were handed out last year to foreign companies.”

Is it really true that though the US troop presence has dropped by 120,000 in less than a year, Iraq is as much under Uncle Sam’s imperial jackboot as it was in, say, 2004, even though now no US troops patrol the streets? If Iraq’s political affairs are under US control, how come the US Embassy — deployed in its Vatican City-size compound, (mostly as vacant as a foreclosed subdivision in Riverside, California and planned in the same phase of megalomania) cannot knock Iraqi heads together and bid them form a government? Those 50,000 troops broiling in their costly bases are scarcely a decisive factor in Iraq’s internal affairs; nor are the private contractors.

Is a Shia-dominated government really to America’s taste and nothing more than its pawn? It was Sistani who forced the elections of 2005, calling Bush on his pledge of free elections, thus downsizing the excessive representation of the Sunni — who boycotted the election anyway. And if all this was a devious ploy to break “the Iraqi resistance” how come the United States constantly invokes the menace of Iran and decries its influence in Iraq?

The “Iraqi resistance” invoked in worshipful tones by Tariq Ali, as opposed to his ironic “saintly” reserved for Sistani, means, in his perspective, the Sunni. But if the Sunni ever had a strategy beyond a strictly sectarian agenda, it was scarcely advanced by blowing up Shi’a pilgrims and their shrines and setting off bombs in marketplaces. If Moqtada al Sadr has been side-lined by the US and its supposed creature, Sistani, why has he been described as the “kingmaker” since his success in the parliamentary election this past March?

As for the contractors, those sinister Third World mercenaries should not be oversold, unless the Shiites are supposed to quail before ill-paid Peruvians, Ugandan cops and the like, who will now be supposedly handing down orders to the Iraqi government. This takes a very imperial, and contemptuous attitude towards the capabilities of the Iraqi people.

If this really was a “war for oil,” it scarcely went well for the United States.

Run your eye down the list of contracts the Iraqi government awarded in June and December 2009. Prominent is Russia’s Lukoil, which, in partnership with Norway’s Statoil, won the rights to West Qurna Phase Two, a 12.9 billion-barrel supergiant oilfield. Other successful bidders for fixed-term contracts included Russia’s Gazprom and Malaysia’s Petronas. Only two US-based oil companies came away with contracts: ExxonMobil partnered with Royal Dutch Shell on a contract for West Qurna Phase One (8.7 billion barrels in reserves); and Occidental shares a contract in the Zubair field (4 billion barrels), in company with Italy’s ENI and South Korea’s Kogas. The huge Rumaila field (17 billion barrels) yielded a contract for BP and the China National Petroleum Company, and Royal Dutch Shell split the 12.6 billion-barrel Majnoon field with Petronas, 60-40.

Throughout the two auctions there were frequent bleats from the oil companies at the harsh terms imposed by the auctioneers representing Iraq, as this vignette from Reuters about the bidding on the northern Najmah field suggests: “Sonangol also won the nearby 900-million-barrel Najmah oilfield in Nineveh. … Again, the Angolan firm had to cut its price and accept a fee of $6 per barrel, less than the $8.50 it had sought. ‘We are expecting a little bit higher. Can you go a little bit higher?’ Sonangol’s exploration manager Paulino Jeronimo asked Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani to spontaneous applause from other oil executives. Shahristani said, ‘No’.”

So either the all powerful US government was unable to fix the auctions to its liking, or the all powerful US-based oil companies mostly decided the profit margins weren’t sufficiently tempting. Either way, “the war for oil” doesn’t look in very good shape.

Milne advances the odd idea that with the (entirely imaginary) US “control” of Iraqi oil “the global oil price could be slashed and the grip of recalcitrant Opec states broken.” In fact, the last thing the majors want is to cut world oil prices.” Ask BP.

Milne and Ali are being naive and credulous in taking at face value US officials declaring that they are not wholly withdrawing and they will still be in business in Iraq for the foreseeable future. The reason for saying this is that they don’t want to see their influence go wholly to zilch. They therefore have to maintain — and are dutifully echoed on the left — that their power in Iraq is only a little affected by reduction of troop numbers from 150,000 to less than a quarter of that number.

The US line on this is in one sense sensible: In Iran many Iranians saw the hidden hand of Britain behind developments long after the Brits’ real power had faded almost to nothing. In the case of the US in Iraq it is easy to sell this when the right and left agree that the US is too powerful to have suffered a defeat.

The American right tried to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by claiming that “the surge” — a pr ploy by General David Petraeus to mask US withdrawal — was a military success, rather than the Sunni abandoning “national resistance” and throwing in their lot with the Americans. The left — or the substantial slice of it hewing to the Milne/Ali line — snatches defeat from the jaws of a victory over America’s plans for Iraq by proclaiming that America has successfully established what Milne calls “a new form of outsourced semi-colonial regime to maintain its grip on the country and region.”

Iraq is in ruins — always the default consequence of American imperial endeavors. The left should report this, but also hammer home the message that in terms of its proclaimed objectives the US onslaught on Iraq was a strategic and military disaster. That’s the lesson to bring home.

(Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com.)

IS THE WILLITS BYPASS a goner? Maybe, not that it was ever likely to have gone to construction. But the Army Corps of Engineers has missed a crucial permit deadline and Phil Dow of Mendocino Council of Governments or MCOG, on our end of the huge funding for the huge project confirmed Monday that the Bypass was in all likelihood finito, leaving the rest of us to wonder what will happen to the large pot of money MCOG has accumulated over the years to get the thing built?

PAVING WITH GOOD INTENTIONS

Editor,

Ron Epstein’s Sunday View column in the August 22 Ukiah Daily Journal attempts to explain why he thinks the planned for asphalt hot mix plant at the Harris quarry site south of Willits is a really bad idea. The pro­posal is by Northern Aggregates, a small Willits-based firm in the basalt and crushed stone business for over 20 years with less than $3 million in yearly sales and employing 25.

Their application for a permit was turned down two years back and has now been scaled back to eliminate the companion readymix concrete batch plant and by restricting the life of the plant to 30 years rather than allowing operation of the site until the “end of life” of the quarry, which could be 70 years from now. The new EIR will be ready by October and the public will have 45 days to challenge it before submittal to the Board of Supervisors.

Ron Epstein, getting off the first salvo against this yet unpublished plan, argues that there are: 1. Serious cancer risks from asphalt fumes, 2. That it would seriously pol­lute the greater Ukiah area with these carcinogens, 3. That the original EIR concluded that health and odor were insignificant, it did not take into account the vola­tile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene deriva­tives, the major source of carcinogens. The fourth (4.) criticism is that the revised EIR is basically inadequate. The asphalt plant being considered under the new EIR is no different from that which was evaluated two years ago so I will respond to Epstein’s critique using the old EIR as a basis. Each of these charges is easily dismissed by anyone willing to take the time to read the 263 pages of the 2007 EIR, and to comprehend what he or she is reading. Admittedly, not many of us have even the time nor the technical background required. As a retired pro­fessional chemical engineer, I have the time and experi­ence working in oil refineries and asphalt plants. So here goes.

Pure asphalt is produced from the “bottom of the bar­rel” in an oil refinery. It contains all the heaviest ele­ments of crude oil, those that do not vaporize at moder­ate temperatures, as does gasoline, diesel oil and kero­sene. It would be trucked to the Harris quarry hot mix plant while being kept warm to keep it from solidifying. There it would be mixed in a rotary kiln with aggregate that has been mined at the quarry, and then stored in a silo prior to use. The new state of the art plant at the Harris quarry will be equipped with filters to efficiently remove particulates, and with various controls and air quality monitoring systems. It will be technically and environmentally far superior to the two existing hot mix plants along the Russian River in Ukiah and probably will result in their being shut down.

Responding to Mr. Epstein’s specific charges: 1. The toxic air contaminants emissions (TACs) from the new plant, are estimated to be far, far below the levels that could be of harm to any residents in the vicinity. The state and federal criteria define as a significant risk the possibility that one out of every one million people liv­ing in the project area would suffer from cancer caused by the asphalt plant if it were operated at capacity for the 70 years of an average person’s life. The calculation shows that at the nearest site, a trailer park, 0.27 persons would be at risk of cancer over their lifetime. (Never mind that there are probably fewer than 100 people liv­ing in this remote area 7 miles south of Willits and 20 miles from Ukiah and it would be physically impossible to cram 1 million into the immediate area.)

Mr. Epstein’s second charge, is that it will seriously pollute the greater Ukiah area with carcinogens and rep­resents a significant risk to the health of large numbers of county residents. I have no idea how he came to this sweeping conclusion if you read the EIR and its appen­dices carefully. There would be no significant pollution of the greater Ukiah area from this asphalt plant as dem­onstrated by the air dispersion modeling techniques employed in EIR. The third charge is that the EIR did not take into account the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene. The volatile organics, mainly petroleum derivatives, are a large portion of the TAC emissions category mentioned in item one above. They are fully considered although Mr. Epstein seemed to have missed it. The toxic consequences of the VOC’s are not significant.

In his final complaint, Mr. Epstein concludes that the EIR fails to consider the cumulative buildup of toxics from a multiplicity of sources over one’s lifetime and that it does not consider the magnified effects of toxics upon infants and old people. He wonders about the conse­quences of failure of air filtering systems and other equipment and the ability of the county to adequately monitor the plant operation. He also worries about an overturned asphalt truck on Highway 101.

Please note here that hot mix asphalt is routinely applied to Highway 101 and county roads, an application not much different from an accidental dump on the roadway and not considered an environmental disaster by our Transportation department.

After this discussion, Mr. Epstein complains that so-called safe pollution levels set by the federal government for toxic substances “are believed to be grossly inade­quate by mainstream communities of medical and scien­tific researchers.”

On the contrary, we have often heard complaints from industry that the toxic emission standards are impractical and far too severe. I would like to see some references to these “mainstream communities” who apparently think 10 cases of cancer in 10 million over a lifetime is not a strict enough criteria. If he wants to tighten up the regulations, then he should do battle with the EPA in Washington and the state office of Environ­mental Health Hazard Assessment in Sacramento, not with Northern Aggregates in Willits. What would he have us do? Refuse to approve all industrial projects in Mendocino County while he gets the EPA and the state to mend their ways?

I do not like to see people’s fears raised by means of unsubstantiated charges published in the County’s only daily newspaper. I’ve talked with Ron Epstein, a most reasonable man, and I hope that he will respond to my letter and try to be more careful in his future letters to the Editor. Maybe come October we can arrange a public debate?

James Houle

Redwood Valley

PS. I drove all over the area. There are not more than 100 people living within a two-mile radius of the quarry. So you take the 0.27 cancers per one million in the area and adjust for only 100 people, and you come up with (0.000027) cases of cancer amongst the hundred resi­dents in the area over 70 years. Fear and panic seem to be our daily bread. The Ground Zero mosque bullshit is our most recent example.

_________________________________________________________

SEX REGISTRATION BLUES

Bruce McEwen:

I have agonized since March about writing this letter. It is very difficult to explain my situation and/or reasons why I deserve exception or tolerance as a 290 PC regis­trant.

“We routinely disqualified testimony that would plead for extenuation. That is, we are so persuaded of the rightness of our judgment as to invalidate evidence that does not confirm us in it. Nothing that deserves to be called truth could ever be arrived at by such means.” M. Robinson, Death of Adam.

Every time I have been guilty (including my original offense on October 3, 1990) I have taken responsibility for my actions. I have been open and honest about my history. I have disclosed my situation as a sex offender registrant to all of my family and friends and anyone who I felt had a need to know. My honesty and openness about my past has caused me nothing but heartache. But for me my honesty was my personal accountability. I’ve chosen to break the chain of abuse even though the only reinforcement I have received for my changes in behav­ior has been negative reinforcement.

After 12 years of difficult compliance with PC 290, I had the misfortune of running afoul of the Willits Police Department while en route to Arcata, California on Sep­tember 20, 2008. I had registered previously in Arcata on August 20, 2008. Transients are required to register every 30 days, rather than every year with a stable address. While registered in any jurisdiction you are legal to go anywhere in California (as I made a side trip) as long as you don’t reside in any other jurisdiction more than five days. On September 18, 2008, I was in Ber­keley, California. I knew that I needed to go back to Arcata by Monday noon, the 21st to register. My intent was to at that time to register as out-of-state and return to New York State.

On Sunday, September 20, 2008, I was arrested at the Jack-in-the-Box in Willits for trespassing. I was booked into the county jail for failure to register even though there would have been no way for me to register on a Saturday or Sunday.

When I was finally released after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor, 30 days time served in 20. I was never notified by the Sheriff’s Department of Mendocino County that I now have a requirement to register in a county that I do not, have never, and plan never to reside in!

I spent a few days in Willits helping a friend move. On September 13, 2008, I hitchhiked from Highway 20 and 101 to Rochester, New York. I registered in Reno Nevada and then Rochester New York as per state New York State law, my original state of commitment. I have lived there since December 2008 without serious issue. I have had one inconsequential police contact. I’ve been living my life with the intention of never being incarcer­ated again.

Fast forward to October 21, 2009. I returned to my home town to see my mother as she had just gotten mar­ried only to be arrested on a felony warrant from Mendo­cino County. I was refused entrance into the San Diego County jail because of high blood sugar. I registered as out of San Diego and came her to face the court on my own power on October 22, 2009. While in the court I was released on my own recognizance but the judge ordered me to register in Willits. I walked across the hall and registered even though there was no legal reason for me to do so except the court order. I was yelled at and threatened by one particular Willits Police Department officer and treated unprofessionally by everyone else I dealt with there. I left their concerned for my life and/or well-being only to be followed until I left town by Offi­cer Jeff Andrade. I rode the bus back to Ukiah.

I returned to court on November 12, 2009. I was released to go home, Rochester, New York, to find evi­dence if possible.

Never had I registered in Mendocino before. I had been threatened here and I just wanted to catch the bus. I didn’t even think about my registration. My only thought at the time was how to get back to New York. I was planning to return by February 24, 2010 for court there. Upon my return to Rochester I registered in accordance with New York State law.

If anything I’ve made a mistake. I followed the law and the judge’s order to the best of my ability. The Dis­trict Attorney’s office here in Mendocino County wants a felony conviction/prison and/or parole time because I followed a court order. There was no legal reason for me to register here. My California registration was current as of October 27, 2009 as out of the San Diego area. I was here less than five days and I live in New York.

The original warrant that I returned to Mendocino to clear up has been dropped for lack of evidence. The pre­sent charges were dropped on August 9, 2010, then immediately refiled.

I will continue to put faith in the motto on the door of the courthouse: “truth, liberty, justice and tolerance.”

During the last 19 years I have lived within the bounds of societal and cultural morality. My honesty has been the cornerstone of my positive changes. I have been kicked and beaten both metaphysically and physically because of my honesty. But I have not re-offended! When I have been prosecuted there has been no evi­dence.

Rights and liberty are only as good as those that we protect for the least of us citizens of the United States.

It seems that the District Attorney’s Office would claim that I am a great danger or a scary person to the Mendocino community. I have doing quite well living 2900 miles from here. I have less interest in being here than they seem to have in dragging me back.

Thank you,

Brian K. Wallace

Mendocino County Jail

Ukiah

_________________________________________________________

HEMP & HAMBURG

Editor:

Is Calvin Walker a Judas? The “repugs” are always trying to “crucify” Dan on a bed of “grass.”

I/we like Hemp & Hamburg!

Captain Fathom

Tom Allman’s Poor Man’s Health Spa

Ukiah

_________________________________________________________

MAN UP, DAN

Anderson Valley Advertiser

This is in response to Dan Hamburg’s comments about me and my family in the August 18 AVA.

It is true that I have sat at Dan Hamburg’s table many times. It is also true that Dan knows my mother and sis­ter, my children and my grandchildren. But let me be clear about that. The only reason Dan Hamburg knows my family at all is that at one time I was proud to be his friend and I introduced him to my family because of that. Believe me, that is the only reason.

Dan Hamburg also describes me as a confused, lost soul with the character of that of the village idiot who is constantly in and out of jail.

I am a union trained sheet-metal man, one of the best sheet-metal layout men in the whole of the United States of America. That is a bold statement and I can back it up. I have an advanced knowledge of the theory of triangu­lation, geometric design and layout. An ex-sheet-metal heating ventilation air-conditioning contractor and passed both the state of California contractor’s license test, trade exam and contractor law the first time.

I am a journeyman in at least half a dozen trades and build houses from the ground up doing all of the aspects of the total building package.

Also, I am one of the best medical marijuana growers in Mendocino County. I have it down to a science. Which is the reason Dan Hamburg asked me for my help to grow a medical marijuana garden on his property during the spring of 2008. Then he cheated me out of a fair share of the garden.

Dan Hamburg also recently said that none of the mari­juana from the two gardens I grew on his property belonged to me, which is a flat out to lie. For two grow­ing seasons, 2008 and 2009, I planted and tended for the two marijuana gardens that I grew on his property in a partnership of trust only to be cheated.

At no time did Dan Hamburg or any member of his family offer to help me other than supplying material in those two years.

That gave Dan Hamburg and family two years of not a care in the world as far as the medical marijuana gar­den.

And then Dan Hamburg has the nerve to say I had no right to any of the medical marijuana from those two gardens.

As far as my politics go, my filing the small claims lawsuit against Dan Hamburg was a political move. But it was my move. I am attempting to keep Dan ever from being elected to the Fifth District supervisor job in November because Dan Hamburg can not be trusted in the guardianship of Mendocino’s County’s West Coast or the taxpayers’ money.

So Dan Hamburg, don’t tell me I am confused about the issues.

As far as my housing and arrest record goes, the only time I have ever been sentenced to jail time was 20 days for driving on a suspended license. I have never been convicted of a felony and at the present time I have no probation, no tickets of any kind, no court date. I am a law-abiding citizen.

So, Dan Hamburg, pull your head out of wherever it is stuck and man up.

Sincerely,

Calvin Lee Walker, 8/23/10

Ukiah

_________________________________________________________

STILL A LESSER-EVILIST

Dear Colonel Anderson:

Not that you give a rat’s ass but, for the record: I admit that you and A. Cockburn et al. were, in the main, were right about Mr. Obama. My enthusiasm upon his elec­tion arose chiefly from my amazement that a black man could be elected president of this racist country. If you check back, I believe caveats were included with my kudos, to the effect that I wasn’t keen about many of his positions. Still — enthusiasm prevailed. My error.

It has become obvious that Obama would not have been allowed to run, much less given a chance to be elected, had he not first gone to the powers that be and convinced them that, to paraphrase Churchhill, he did not intend to become first minister of the United States in order to preside over the liquidation of the country’s capitalist status quo. No revolutionary, he.

Despite the disappointment we feel we of the left feel about his presidency so far, the alternative would have been, I assert, much worse. And the American people may well be ready, in their truculence, to opt for that “worse” in the coming election. If it wasn’t unbecoming of an atheist, I would urge prayer.

Respectfully,

Don MacQueen

Eugene, Oregon

_________________________________________________________

FLYING BUMMERS

Dear Editor:

Just in case lawmakers are interested in what the citi­zenry thinks about the recent marijuana eradication operations on the Big Island in Hawaii to judge from the amount of pure, unadulterated hostility the DEA heli­copter generated in my neighborhood, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if the collective stinkeye had blown them out of the skies. If there is such a thing as “karma,” it may take a couple of lifetimes of community service for the perpetrators of these crimes to pay their debt to soci­ety for all the days they ruined, and all the people they totally bummed out.

The federal government in particular is behind the times when it comes to representing the will of the peo­ple with respect to marijuana laws. Flaming liberals and rabid right-wingers alike can agree that new legislation is needed. Those running for public office who don’t want to be on the wrong side of history might win by a land­slide by pledging to bring more sanity to the discussion. People are darn mad, and they don’t want to have to take such violations of their personhood anymore.

Aloha,

Bill Brundage

Kurtistown, Hawaii

_________________________________________________________

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Dear Editor,

I am writing in regards to how could a brother whose family showed him nothing but love and support for his safety and well-being in the most critical time in his life turn on him as if they were the ones who were seeking the death penalty for him!

The brother I am referring to is Eugene Allen Lincoln Jr. A lot of people know him as “Bear Lincoln.”

My name is Eric Lincoln. Bear is the oldest brother of the family.

On April 14 of 1995 Bear was accused of killing Men­docino County Deputy Sheriff Robert “Bob” Davis. This had been a very bad and uncertain time for us all.

Family stuck with him all the way. From the time Bear turned himself in to Tony Serra’s office in San Francisco until the day he was acquitted of all charges in Ukiah.

For reasons we will probably never know, when he came back to Covelo his whole attitude had gradually changed for the worse towards his family. The same family who stood by him during what was perhaps the most difficult time of his life. The friends and the sup­porters he had made along the way toook the place of his natural family.

The house in Little Valley which the whole family build he figured belonged solely to him. Him being in that state of mind moved anything that he felt didn’t belong in “his” house outside literally in the dirt!

And if that wasn’t enough, my eldest sister Tina told me that she went up to the family house to gather some of her stuff. Bear confronted her telling her to get what she wanted and let her know that she and her family were not welcome up there anymore!

He has no f-ing right in hell to say who can and can­not be up at the family house. Before our dad died one of his last wishes was that the house in Little Valley belonged to all of us — a wish that obviously Bear has no intention of honoring.

I honestly have no clue to what could have happened to cause a total reversal of character. His unpredictable actions are tearing his family apart.

And now our mother Lucille, is considering leaving her modular (where everyone stays after Bear put Little Vally off-limits to them) to him after her passing.

I’m going to try to persuade her to change her mind. I mean he already ran everybody away from the big house (its nickname). How much more damage can he do to his family?

I didn’t mean to use your paper as a way to air my dirty laundry. I just intended to let the other side of Bear Lincoln be known, the side he keeps hidden from his friends and supporters. But it is the side of him that his family is aware of every day.

When I get back home I will have to deal with reper­cussions of writing this letter. But I did it for my family who I care for and love very much — yes, even my brother Bear.

Bare the truth.

Eric Lincoln

Ukiah

PS. Family — United we stand, divided we fall. Sad but true.

_________________________________________________________

WORDS TO VOTE BY

Editor,

“I want to win the lottery, buy three ships, man them with American Indians, and send them over to discover Italy.” — Henry Oettinger

“I don’t know if I’m going to change the world, but I’m sure as hell going to try to see that it doesn’t change me.” — Ammon Hennessy

“There are a lot of stupid people in this country, and Sarah Palin is their leader.”

A reader

Willits

_________________________________________________________

DRIP DRY

Editor,

In the last 3421 years, 268 have been without war. We peaceniks are 12 percenters. A poll of men along Manhattan’s skidrow revealed they are in touch with the world. At any given moment, 1800 thunderstorms are in progress on the Earth’s surface, where lightning strikes 100 times every second. It was declared on KY radio this morning that 20% of Pakistan is under water. And the difference between man’s soot and nature’s grime is that while we are all wet, nature knows how to clean up on this planet. Things get deep or dusty.

Ciao,

Diana Vance

In what was

Mendocino’s Redwood rainforest

_________________________________________________________

THIS IS REHAB?

To the Editor:

My sister is in a drug and alcohol recovery center. She is now dating a man at that Center who is from from Ukiah. This man had two DUIs in one month. First one was a hit and run while under the influence of alcohol, heroin and meth. He was booked and released. Second one, he hit two vehicles while under the influence of all of the above drugs. His mother bailed him out. He did 90 days in County Jail and was granted 90 days in rehab. Well, $6,000 and a month at this rehab center and no restitution for his victims.

My sister spent two nights with this man in Eureka. I guess after 30 days, clients can get a two night pass (away from the facility). My parents are furious because my sister and this man are planning to leave Ukiah and move to Garberville together after he sells his home. The lack of supervision at this rehab is just that, a lack of supervision. They spend all day together from morning to 10pm driving around in her vehicle, alone. They are in love.

Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

Janice Jenkins

Ukiah

_________________________________________________________

MIRRORS

Editor,

Regarding Mariano Lopez Fernandez (AVA, 8/25/10. Page 4.)

A response to Jessica regarding the loss of her hus­band who was shot and killed by law enforcement offi­cers when confronted in an illegal marijuana grow.

Jessica, the loss of a loved one is always traumatic and heart-rending. However, your rant in the AVA blaming everyone but yourself and Mariano begs a response.

Your husband was involved in felony criminal activ­ity, a 2000-plant marijuana garden. He was hired to guard the garden and was armed with a military style assault weapon for that purpose. You said he would never have fired at deputies! But does any sane person expect a deputy to wait to see if he will be fired upon when a person is pointing a rifle at him? Oops, I was wrong, he did shoot and now I am dead!

You said he had a family to think about. If he was so concerned about the care of his family why was he engaged in criminal activity? You and he knew the risk, as you said, you always told him that if he got into trou­ble and was deported you would follow him to Mexico. Why didn’t you use every means in your power to steer him away from such dangerous and criminal activity? If you had he would not be dead.

You said the deputies have destroyed many lives. Have you ever considered the many lives that are destroyed by those who are involved in these large and small marijuana grows?

You know that drugs, including marijuana, beget huge profits, are sold and marketed in the major cities, and fuel the majority of the crime, death and suffering that is present in our society. Yet you did nothing to remove yourself and your husband from this sordid activity, choosing instead to openly support and encour­age him by promising to always be there for him. You obviously still support this illegal activity as you said you know who was there and will not give names ever to anyone.

Well, Jessica, you have made your choice in life and choices entail responsibility. You made bad choices which have resulted in the tragic loss of your husband and the father of your son. I suggest that if you wish to see who is responsible for his death you need only to look in a mirror! No one else but you and Mariano could have prevented his death.

Stacie Good

Boonville

_________________________________________________________

HAMBURG’S VISION

Editor,

In the aftermath of my debate with Wendy Roberts yesterday afternoon for Ukiah Valley TV (to be broad­cast on Mendocino Coast TV, MCTV), I want to describe what I see as the difference between your two candidates for supervisor. Wendy is a self-described “Stanford liberal.” As such, she doesn’t deeply question corporate prerogatives, often repeating the contention that “they’re all good people.” She describes the MLPAI (Marine Life Protection Act Initiative) in this vein, insisting that the Resources Legacy Foundation Fund (funded by the family charities of Intel, Getty, Packard, etc.) has no particular agenda when it comes to the dis­position of our coast. She believes that the placement of Catherine Reheis-Boyd, chief operating officer and chief of staff for the Western States Petroleum Association, on the Task Force making the decisions about our coast raises no particular concern. On other issues — from the privatization of county solid waste disposal to the increasing loss of agricultural land to outside real estate investment trusts — she voices support or raises no loud objection.

I’m a Stanford grad, too, but would describe myself as a progressive (registered Green due to my disaffection with the Democratic Party’s capitulation to corporate interests) who believes strongly that the current order, in which the US functions like an international rogue cop, enriching corporations while gutting the middle-class and guttering the poor, must pass.

I noticed that Wendy recently criticized me (Ukiah Daily Journal, 8/26), as have Grant Miller and other Wendy supporters, for being “too concerned about national and global issues.” I don’t know how one can be “too concerned” about those things. Being a good county supervisor means “thinking globally and acting locally.” For example, the need for us to build a local economy, particularly in the food and energy sectors, is precisely because Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland, PG&E, BP, Exxon, etc. are evil. That doesn’t mean that their execs are necessarily evil. These folks would act most amiably at a Stanford University reception. They wouldn’t be rude. They would use all their eating utensils correctly. They would smile at the children and pet the dogs. The issue isn’t whether they are evil, it’s whether the power relationships they condone and in many cases embody, are evil in the sense that they are taking the planet and its people in a cruel and unsustainable direction.

The current order will pass because its contradictions have become obvious. Nearly two billion people world­wide are starving, many without access to clean water and sanitation. Our very planetary life support system is on red alert. These are not simply problems “out there.” They are problems right here. When Mendocino County destroyed its resource base, with plenty of encourage­ment from Wendy’s supporters at the Employers Coun­cil, we contributed our share to global warming and lost thousands of good local timber and fishing jobs.

We can get Mendocino County back on track but it will take a different vision than the one Wendy and her supporters have pressed for far too long. The Fifth Dis­trict is a great place to start!

Dan Hamburg

Ukiah

_________________________________________________________

SMART METERS: A DUMB IDEA

Editor,

What are “smart meters” and how do they work? Smart meters are expensive devices that allow electric companies to track and control electricity usage in an individual household. Consumers are skeptical that they are worth the $5.4 billion California utilities are charging for them.

Are the meters supposed to save electricity?

No. Smart meters merely track electric usage, just like their older, dumber predecessors. Consumers who purchase additional devices can receive detailed infor­mation on the energy costs of individual appliances. Utilities will encourage customers to sign up for high “time of use” rates in order to reduce peak demand.

What additional expenditures will be required on the consumer end?

Existing air conditioning cycling programs, energy efficiency measures and consumer education programs are the most direct way to reduce demand for electricity, especially during peak times. Consumers who take advantage of existing programs can already lower their bills and carbon footprint substantially.

What additional expenditures will be required on the consumer end?

In order to get the purported benefits of smart meters, consumers will purchase their own communications devices, computers, high speed internet, special thermostats, appliance chips and other automated equip­ment. The cost of retrofitting or replacing existing appli­ances alone will be astronomical.

Without the expenditures, consumers will not see any difference from the new meters except higher electric bills.

Why are so many consumers complaining about smart meters?

Many consumers believe the meters are inaccurate, or that their usage data is not being transmitted correctly. Due to the hundreds of complaints The Utility Reform Network (TURN) and others have received about smart meters, the CPUC recently launched an investigation. TURN is demanding a moratorium on smart meter installations until the investigation is complete.

What other problems are associated with smart meters?

Elimination of meter reader jobs.

Allows utilities — or hackers — to shut customers off remotely. Risk of private data being lost, stolen or accessed. What consumer protections are needed? Pri­vacy protections to prevent loss, theft or misuse of cus­tomer data. Moratorium until CPUC investigation is completed. Allow customers to opt-out. Provide rebates and energy efficiency assistance to consumer whose bills have increased due to smart meters.

Mark Toney, Executive Director

The Utility Reform Network

San Francisco

_________________________________________________________

OBSOLESENCE

Editor,

Increasingly it appears that the nastier realities of the economy are going to drive the next decade of politics at every level, particularly the federal, where policy faux pas can effect tens of millions of Americans. The current debate is classic guns and butter choices, with our over­seas warfare costs sinking he ship of state in a sea of international red ink.

The rapidly aging “baby boomers”, whose impact on history and marketing has dominated the last half century of our society, are now asked to take the money and die while Congress raises the bar for the piddling payments of a Social Security System long looted by one or another war mongering administration since Eisenhower beat Stevenson. The current argument notes the statistics on life expectancy to justify raising the age for “retire­ment” by a decade over the next quarter century. While it true that medicine has increased the average lifespan, most of the increase comes from reducing infant deaths from epidemics and bad water. Walk your local cemetery and look at the numbers of kids brought low before the vaccine revolution of the 1930’s.

But living longer does not mean working longer. Physically and mentally mankind deteriorates beginning in the third decade of life, accelerating its ravages throughout the “productive” years until we are worn out and must be replaced in the assembly line of modern society. Increasingly those replacements are technologi­cal rather than human; leaving a surplus of highly tra ined technicians with obsolete skill sets. And the pace of such automation is increasing.

In my working time, I have outlived nearly every job skill I mastered. I learned to solder cleanly with solid irons and flux on a brush in junior high school metal shops at the same time I learned to use a manual type­writer and mimeograph machine. In high school I wrote for a school paper that demanded we learn  type setting and linotype compositing with hot lead. In by scouts I learned Semiphore and Morse codes along with tying knots of every sort, skills long lost today.

In the Navy Iwas taught entirely erroneous versions of electricity and electronics just before the invention of the transistor and solid state circuitry. I pulled survey “chain” on hydro projects along the Pit River south of Mt Shasta, in the days of the four man transit crew.  Now laser surveying needs only a warm body to hold the pole and the gunner whose readings are trigonometrically cal­culated and transmitted back to the base computer which sp its out topo maps in minutes.

In my radio career the art of sophisticated music pro­gramming derived from the taste and knowledge of the “disc jockey”, many of whom developed encyclopedic memories and private collection of rare music. Today the songs selected by a music director are downloaded to the station’s database and often auto programmed to a for­mat. Local radio has been replaced by satellite syndica­tion services, allowing license owners to hire s few teen techies to baby-sit the broadcast day at low cost.

Like most of my contemporaries, I am, once more, obsolete, reduced to the dying craft of editorializing in a time when the print medium itself is failing.

Save Social security, combine it with unemployment, and pay for it by bringing the troops home.

Travis T. Hip

Nevada City

_________________________________________________________

BALANCED BUDGETS

Editor,

There are numerous articles on Proposition 13 regard­ing its being repealed if Proposition 25 passes this November. The current law requires a congressional two-thirds majority to pass a budget and Proposition 25 would reduce that to a simple majority.

Reading a few articles on the left and right it is evi­dent that California being a liberal State has enough votes in the legislature to get a simple majority vote unless that changes by virtue of the upcoming election. Frankly what I’ve seen so far does not give me confi­dence that the California legislature will go toward the center let along go right of center.

Arguments from the left and right are to substantiate their positions but I think both sides miss the issue a lit­tle.

From the left: The reduction in property taxes by Prop 13 has hurt California and should be reinstated and the current real estate taxes on businesses should be increased to make businesses pay more in taxes.

On the right: The taxes should remain as is.

My view.

On the left: The left forgets that before Prop 13 folks close to or in retirement were being forced to move from their homes with major property tax increases. Person­ally I know of relatives in the 60s in 1970s who lived in Califonria all their life whose taxes went up (roughly from memory) from $4,000 to $7,000 and then $13,000 a year in the span of about five years. They moved to Texas to have money to live on.

The left forgets that, and we went through the Prop 13 initiation, sales taxes were greatly increased as were water bill and garbage disposal taxes, etc.. If you want the pre 1978 property taxes then cut all the other taxes since initiated back to their pre 1978 tax level.

On the right: The right says leave everything the same. Well maybe we should revise the business real estate taxes, but this will require a proposition that excludes home owners and the simple majority only pertains to businesses.

My thoughts: Increase business real estate taxes and they will move to another state or increase the price of their products affecting the consumer.

California Medicare fraud, illegal alien costs each year costing California $10 billion a year, sanctuary cit­ies violating the law should see those city politicians in jail — take from the law abiding taxpayer and give to an illegal.

California can not live within its budget plain and sim­ple. Pass a constitutional law to have a balanced budget.

Bryant Whittaker

Boonville

_________________________________________________________

IF BECK WERE HONEST…

Editor,

(This is the ‘I have a Dream Speech’ that Glenn Beck would give at the Lincoln Memorial if he were being completely honest.)

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from tax increases or increased regulation of your speculative financial instruments. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of government takeover and stag­gered by the winds of police laxness toward Mexicans and minority crime. You have been the veterans of crea­tive suffering, under our current strange mixture of fas­cism, communism and Islam (Islamo-commie-fascism as I call it).

Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffer­ing cannot be cured by a government take-over of healthcare. Go back to the Hamptons, go back to Grosse Point, go back to Alaska, go back to Utah, go back to Idaho, go back to the suburbs and exurbs of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation of having an African-American president can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that some men are only worth 3/5s of others.’ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down and recognize that our president doesn’t like white guys. I have a dream that one day even the borough of Manhat­tan, a borough sweltering with the heat of socialism, sweltering with the heat of Islamic fascism, will be transformed into a mosque-free oasis of freedom for people just like me.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their gold port­folios. I have a dream today…

Satire by Juan Cole, professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book “Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Mid­dle East] (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) has just been published.

Ann Arbor

_________________________________________________________

SEEKING CHARLES STATLER

Editor

I would like to get in touch with my good friend Char­les Statler, who resides some where in one of Cali­fornia’s prisons.

He will be easy to notice for he has the biggest mouth this side of the Mississippi and can sing like a caged bird!

Just listen for “The Midnight Special” or any Hank Williams song. I as a free man am not at ease to give out my address but Charlie if you would please send your post to Trent Foster, General Delivery, Ukiah CA 95482 I will send you the proper address after that. Thank you.

Trent Foster

Ukiah

_________________________________________________________

WHAT’S WRONG WITH KZYX?

To the Editor;

Whatever has happened to the local radio station? It seems to have morphed into some sort of NPR “lite,” with all the accompanying sleazy corporate underwriting and even promotional commercials to fill up the con­venient breaks provided in all their programs. There are NPR’s “very own” correspondents who lend their voices to local programmer commercials. Often, after these promotional commercials, the radio station tacks on “right here on…” as if the radio station might be pro­moting a program for some other broadcaster!

Then there’s the top of the hour litany. FCC rules require very little by way of station identification, once an hour, on the hour, the station is required to give its call letters and city of origin and three times a day the translator ID. All the rest is just self promotion.

Mendocino County Public Broadcasting? Not really. If the radio station really served the whole county they would be broadcasting Fox News and more significantly not broadcasting a lot of current programming. Actually, it’s a rather exclusive station that appeals to a relatively small group of people. It’s hard to say what “public broadcasting” means, but it has a lot to do with not hav­ing commercials.

Listener supported? Clearly not. It has been said, on the radio, that only 1 in 10 listeners are members. Either there are a lot of people who don’t think it’s worth pay­ing for or, more likely; less people than they think listen to “public radio.” Listener supported would be KPFA, where they have no sleazy corporate underwriting, no local underwriting and generate all the funding for their programming from membership support and from selling their excellent programming to other stations.

Member supported? Well sort of. Throughout its life, the radio station has struggled to find and keep 2500 paying members, attrition seems to be a problem. Underwriting helps, also fund-raising events and some grants. Constantly reminding members that the pro­gramming comes with their support is unnecessary; members already have that smug self-satisfied feeling that comes with paying the pledge. Would it not be more effective to just mention the underwriters?

Here are a few suggestions: For the locals; for less than the cost of a membership you can buy, from Radio Shack, an antenna to put on your roof and there is a good chance that you can pick up KPFA. It comes in well when it’s foggy. North of Philo you can pick up KMUD, which is everything KZYX is without NPR and then a lot more. Think about the kind of radio station you wish to support.

To the staff and board of KZYX: Measure your suc­cess by how well you serve your membership not by your ability to “grow” the station. Avoid over-promo­tion. If someone is listening they know what the fre­quency is, it’s written on the radio dial! Promote pro­grams to the listeners of the program you are promoting as in ‘On next week’s program my guest will be…’ Ran­dom and repeated promotions sound like commercials, are counterproductive and nobody likes them. Keep the underwriting brief. As locals, we know the businesses that do the underwriting and we don’t need the virtual tour of the store. Being over professional is not neces­sarily good. Your listeners know your names, no need to introduce yourself multiple times in each hour, the big over-produced stations do that, but you don’t need to. Avoid repetitious introductions to programming. Don’t feel obligated to use the convenient spots NPR provides for commercials unless you plan to become a commer­cial station in which case move on down the dial and let us revive local radio. Finally drop the guilt-tripping, the strange emphasis placed on the words “listener” and “member” — it doesn’t work. If your product is good it will sell.

Anthony Leighton

Navarro

_________________________________________________________

SIDDOWN & DANCE

Editor,

Warm spiritual greetings, Please know that I am pres­ently in Berkeley, doing nothing of any great conse­quence, and would prefer to be on the east coast involved in the ongoing effort to “intervene in history” while we joyfully await the imminent full scale implosion of materialism’s failed promise to deliver lasting satisfac­tion to the human race. I am particularly interested in the success of the International Monetary Fund days of dis­sent October 7-11. Please consider giving me a place to go to on the east coast, and I look forward to being fully spiritually involved, as I usually am, in opposition to the ridiculous, absurd path of materialism and its extreme sense gratification craziness, supported by wars for oil.

Does this email message make you want to get up and dance?

Craig Louis Stehr,

593 62nd Street, Oakland, CA 94609-1246.

Email: craigstehr@hushmail.com

_________________________________________________________

ALBION, MY ALBION

Editor,

Thanks Albion.

Last Sunday we had our party to celebrate the suc­cessful search for Naomi Kerwin and her dog Rosie. A great time was had by all down at the Albion River Campground (thanks Bruce Campbell for lending the space). The weather Gods and Goddesses even smiled upon us by bringing us our first fully sunny day in weeks. The attendees had a great time eating food pre­pared by Susie and her amazing grill crew. Stacy Weil-Dye and others from the Albion-Little River Fire Department were present discussing the search and answering questions, and we even made some money for the department to upgrade search and rescue equipment.

There are a lot of people to thank: for the event, all who put time into the search, and really, all in our com­munity who showed up in a big way in time of crisis. Albion has a lot to be proud of.

Chris Skyhawk

Albion

_________________________________________________________

SIMON SAYS: NO HOPE

Editor,

If you think there’s hope, think again. A careful read­ing of David Michael Green’s latest political essay in his series he calls The Regressive Antidote explains it this way.

We are not, he says, in a recession. We are not in a downturn that is part of the cyclical pattern of upturns and downturns. We are not in recovery. We are, he says, in a compressive deflationary contraction.

I think two things have happened in the past few dec­ades. We have ceased being a nation that produces real wealth. The Wall Street fiasco is predicated on the con­cept of getting something for nothing. They created financial instruments that they knew were extremely high risk and then hedged their bet by selling insurance instruments to back them up. There was no real wealth there, but investors, including large pension funds, bought the myth that there was real wealth there. Then it all came crashing down.

There is no free lunch. An economy cannot be based on mythical wealth. You can’t cash in derivatives at the bank; they are the bank. Real wealth comes from manu­facturing of goods. We have outsourced that aspect of our economy. Until and unless we bring back that manufacturing base there is no hope of saving our econ­omy. Manufacturing creates jobs, whereas financial instruments make billions for the Wall Street guys but the profits do not flow down into the economy, they do not create jobs.

The destruction of the middle class is not an accident. It is an intentional strategy of the ruling class (large cor­porations, large banks, large Senators) to create within our shores a third world country with a miniscule middle class and a large lower class and a small upper class. Reagan began the process with the systematic destruc­tion of the labor unions. This was followed by the dot-com revolution that bubbled up and then burst. Then came ‘downsizing and restructuring’, which wiped out retirement pensions and sent jobs overseas. Next came social media, emails, texting, Facebook and so on, which has taken an entire generation further into unreality.

First came movies, then came television, now come the social media, yet another step in the direction of unreality. The young people think they are communicat­ing about their reality, when, in fact, they are simply sharing gossip about their personal private worlds. It’s no less a fantasy than are movies and television. It is escapism, pure and simple. Ask them any question, any question, about what is going on in the real world and they haven’t got a clue. How could it be otherwise when the marketing mentality is so pervasive that the eco­nomic masters can sell anything to anyone, even if they know they don’t need it.

The present 11 year war is not real to the mass pub­lic. The mass media do not allow reality to enter the air­waves. Just as fantasy football is not real, fantasy war is what we have from the mass media, and it’s not real either. Take a walk down the hall of Walter Reed Medi­cal Center in D.C. as I did the other day visiting my fos­ter-son who was blown up in Afghanistan and it gets very real very quickly.

The money flows up, it does not trickle down. The angst flows down, and the rulers are so insulated, so arrogant, so greedy, that the malaise of the middle class is unnoticed by them. The despair of the lower class is written off as individual personal failure and unattended to. The masses are silent, blaming themselves for the failure of the system. The economy is in ruins and the Tea Party people are busy blaming the symptom, rather than the cause. They fail to separate the actions of the giant corporate rulers from the actions of the govern­ment. The impasse in government is the symptom, not the cause. Nothing meaningful happens because the eco­nomic rulers frame the debate, they create the language of the debate, and then peddle it to the masses via all of the television networks, not just Fox news.

When you have, as we do, a growing number of disen­franchised, alienated, angry, out-of-work, confused citizens, for whom government is impotent to address reality at its causes rather than the symptoms, you have the breeding ground for fascism. Economic conditions create reality, but, when those conditions are mis-explained, rationalized, and even denied by both the Left and the Right, the demagogue steps in and promises to end the confusion. What he or she ends it with is a nightmare.

We can’t wake them up. The fantasy is too pervasive; they are too dumbed-down, manipulated, confused, to see the reality of endless war, the end of discretionary income, the ownership of politics by the ruling class, the worship of war (as long as it doesn’t effect our daily lives), and so on. And then, after all of that, comes the final nail in the coffin of liberal democracy, which is the item in Proverbs, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Therein lies the basis of the anti-intellectualism in our culture. God help us all.

There is no hope until people stop believing and start thinking. Don’t hold your breath.

Lee Simon

Far ‘n Away Farm, Virginia

_________________________________________________________

DE NADA

Editor,

Gracias a todos y cada uno que nos apoyo el sábado pasado en los juegos que se dio acabó enla cancha de Anderson Valley JR/SR High School. Les a agradecere­mos por haber asistido al los eventos y por haber par­ticipado en el baile y la comida. Gracias a ustedes nuestro equipo de futbol recaudo nuevos uniformes.

Thank you for all of the support last Saturday (August 21st) during the soccer games at the Anderson Valley Jr/High School. We thank everyone who assisted at the event and who participated in the fundraiser at The Grange that evening. Thanks to the community the soc­cer team will be able to purchase new uniforms.”

Sincerely,

Sergio Gutierrez & Carlos Mendoza

Co-Captains of Anderson Valley High School

Boys Soccer Team

Boonville

]]> http://theava.com/archives/8004/feed 0 http://theava.com/archives/7993 http://theava.com/archives/7993#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:38:38 +0000 Eric Bergeson http://theava.com/?p=7993

The heat of last week seemed like a good reason to stay inside and sort through junk.

Amongst the piles of stuff, most of which ended up in the dumpster, I found a treasure, a true historical odd­ity, something you don’t find any more: A stack of let­ters, some hand-written, others typed.

The stack was fully an inch thick. It consisted of doz­ens of letters sent to me while I attended a summer ses­sion of college in England as a 21-year-old in 1986.

Full disclosure: I became so home-sick when I got to England that I spent the first week writing postcards to anybody and everybody back home about my bravery and exploits. The return address was prominent.

It was clear I desperately wanted mail. My friends, relatives, neighbors and even customers rose up to the call.

Mom typed weekly updates on the summer activities of the visiting cousins at the farm.

Dad wrote about the state of the machinery which was, because I was in England and not at home burying tractors in the swamp, much better than usual.

Kid brother, then 12, scratched out a letter on a blue Airmail mailer which began: “I want you to know that I write you entirely out of guilt and obligation.”

Kid sister, then 19, reported on the social scene of local-kids-home-for-the-summer from college, a rowdy group to which we both belonged at the time.

Apparently, some of the guys were out drinking beer and decided that it was high time they drag a refrigerator around the back roads with a log chain.

Twenty miles they dragged that poor fridge, never thinking that if you’re going to cruise the back roads drinking beer, a fridge bouncing around on the end of a log chain is not the best way to avoid detection.

Roughly the same group, gathered at the bar a while later, wrote me a dozen messages, the sort you’d find in the back of a high school annual, on a paper place mat which one of them mailed to England.

Grandpa typed weekly letters in his no-frills tele­graphic style, freely mixing baseball news, horticultural updates and scripture quotes:

“Twins lose in ninth.

Hrbek strikes out, bat on shoulder.

Lo how the mighty have fallen.

All the millions can’t buy a hit.

Or happiness either.

Movie stars addicted to booze.

Much better to raise apples.

Good crop this year.

Pies a bonus.

Grandpa.”

Neighbor Bernice wrote an account of the successful Daily Vacation Bible School, with a somber addendum about a local who died in a late-night crash.

It was sad news, but I was relieved there was nothing in there about a fridge.

The summer of 1986 was only twenty-four years ago, but how times have changed.

Will anyone eventually find a stack of handwritten or type-written letters left from a memorable summer spent abroad in 2010?

No way.

Letter writing is dead.

Oh, we communicate, if you can call it that, on email. Instantly. Badly. Thoughtlessly. But frequently.

A while back, I called a friend on his cell phone and we were well into the conversation before he casually mentioned that he was in Sweden and it was midnight there.

Travel, too, has become commonplace.

But the experience of mail call at breakfast on your first heart-wrenching trip from home since Bible camp, of hoping there’s a letter for you, of glowing brightly for hours when three arrive in one day–that experience is gone.

Also gone is the touching thrill when you realize friends and family took the time to put pen to paper on a letter which required postage, which wouldn’t arrive for a week, and which might last forever.

I was more touched when I found those letters last week than I was the first time I got them.

Not so with today’s communication.

Where will our emails be in twenty-five years? Hid­den on a hard drive somewhere.

Decades into the future, nobody will sit on the living room floor, mess strewn about, paging through old emails, laughing, remembering, sneezing from the musty paper.

There will be no quiet spells in the cleaning frenzy when a particular letter launches you into five minutes of reverie about a time you had almost forgotten.

We’ve never had more than we have today. But we’ve lost an awful lot, too.

And there’s no getting it back.