Anderson Valley Advertiser » Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

The AVA — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:34:48 +0000

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Liberals believe that our Constitution is outdated and it needs to be rewritten.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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Letters to the Editor

The AVA — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:04:12 +0000

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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Letters to the Editor

The AVA — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:01:59 +0000

WHY WAS GREENFIELD RAIDED?

Editor,

The federal DEA raid 7/7/10 of Joy Greenfield’s collective, “Light the Way,” magnifies the critical juncture where medical marijuana legalization in the states challenges federal prohibition.

Greenfield, 69, aka “grandma grower,” moved to Covelo California from Colorado to grow her own cannabis in order to save her deteriorating eyesight and help others unable to grow for themselves in the process.

She was the first patient-grower applicant to be approved by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s zip-tie program for a 99-plant exemption from 9.31, the local nuisance ordinance with a limit of 25 plants per parcel.

Shortly before the DEA raid, a sheriff’s helicopter hovered over Joy’s Covelo property. Frightened and alarmed, she arranged to meet with Lt Rusty Noe of COMMET. “I thought you guys were supposed to protect me,” she told him.

Noe explained: that was not Sheriff’s deputies in the plane; the Sheriff merely leased the helicopter to the Feds. He told her “not to worry”; her application was approved. This raises the question of county-federal complicity.

The following week, DEA agents raided the Covelo property when Joy wasn’t present and seized her entire garden, without regard to it being legal under the county program, scoffing: “We don’t care about Allman’s ordinance.”

Supervisor John McCowen, author of Mendocino County’s marijuana code (Section 9.31), said he was “appalled by the mistreatment.”

Sheriff Allman went on local KZYX radio, stating he would pay her back for the zip-ties she purchased at $25 each.

Meanwhile the dispensing end of Greenfield’s collective association, Light the Way, in San Diego, managed by family members, was not raided, despite that City’s hostility to all dispensaries.

Light the Way pays sales tax under an approved business license which lists Willits as the official address, thus connecting the Covelo farm with the San Diego dispensing collective. That suggests the Collective is above-board, attempting to comply with local and state law, and further suggests the Covelo raid was not based on anything that happened in San Diego. The record was sealed, hiding the source of the complaint.

A DEA agent asked Joy about other grow sites. “I told him there weren’t any,” she replied.

In early July, the DEA again contacted Joy, this time offering to return her $7,500 cash and computer, no longer evidence of any “crime.” They added they were looking for someone else, Jake Anderson, whom they raided on July 23, 2010.

No charges have been filed against her since she did nothing wrong under Obama’s Holder Memo to leave medical patients alone if they are in “clear and unambiguous compliance” with state law.

It was all apparently a big mistake. Or the DEA’s plan was to wreck Mendocino County’s 99-plant limit, fearing an entrenched medical marijuana program taking hold in a producer county, setting the standard for the state.

The DEA raid added a new level of mistrust to existing widespread skepticism about Sheriff Allman’s zip-tie program. It regulates medical cannabis cultivation by reducing patients’ constitutional rights under administrative law by not requiring a search warrant for law enforcement to enter growers’ property or corroborating evidence of violations and by removing the right to a jury trial and by negating presumption of innocence.

The ordinance adds civil regulation of medical cannabis to the Sheriff’s criminal arrest powers, allowing carte blanche deputy discretion through warrantless entry and blurring of lines between civil and criminal.

Two Mendocino lawsuits have been filed challenging 9.31′s constitutionality.

Pebbles Trippet

Elk

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TEST PARENTS, TOO

Editor,

My husband has been a California math teacher for 32+ years both in the Los Angeles area and small Northern California schools. Using test scores to “grade” teachers would only be effective if you gave “life” scores to parents (ones you can find and hold in a classroom) to evaluate the quality of their support of their children.

My husband must compete with rampant underage sex and drug use and try to cut the technology cord loose during classroom hours. Those children whose parents would care what a teacher’s score is already have students who are excelling no matter who the teacher is because they have support and guidance at home.

The problem for teachers today is there are so few of those students in their classroom. It is a war zone in there, folks. He and his fellow teachers use the phrase “back to the trenches.” They mean it.

So lower class sizes. Hire aides. Pay them the highest salaries you can muster. Pay for all their classroom supplies.

Mary O’Meara

Upper Lake

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SEMPER FI, KENDALL

Dear Editor,

Congratulations on exposing (well, sort of) Supervisor Smith, although the projected full-length nude I requested didn’t come out (or something), so you went conventional. But that’s okay since I have my memories. The tattoo “Semper Fi” just below the navel would have been worth it, but if you can live with the cover-up, so can I. I’m sure Supervisor Smith would agree — if it didn’t cost anything. Get her to tell you the one about Jim Jones and the enema bag sometime. It’s a pip!

Love your shoes

Bonzai!

Ignacio Hephalumpe

Bellingham, Washington (formerly San Narcisco)

PS. God’s notion of progress is old people.

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WHERE’D THEY GET ’EM?

Dear Editor:

I need some help. You have a stable of knowledgeable subscribers. And you have some really bright and knowledgeable contributors.

Nuclear weapons were invented in the mid-1940s by the United States and since proliferated to Russia, England, France and China. More recently India, Pakistan and probably North Korea have joined the club.

South Africa once had nuclear weapons, but decided to abandon its program.

Interestingly, Israel is believed to have nuclear weapons as well. They refuse to confirm or deny the existence of such an arsenal. But several sources report a stockpile of as many as 200.

Acquisition of nuclear weapons technology and labor intensive. Raw materials are expensive and difficult to acquire. Processing these materials is time-consuming and messy. Testing is necessary and requires a substantial, uninhabited site.

At 8000 square miles, Israel is not a very large nation. It has no good uninhabited test sites. (Kern County, California, is bigger.)

Israel has a Jewish population of less than 5.4 million people. (That’s only 30% of the population of Metropolitan Los Angeles!) And 10% of those are ultra-Orthodox Jews and thus pretty much useless for anything except making motors for tricycles.

So, how did a little jerkwater country like Israel get to be a nuclear power? I’ve read of no messy plutonium reactors, no mine waste sites, no cascade or centrifuge enrichment plants and no radioactive casks full of dangerous waste and no controversy about where to store same.

And no bomb testing has been necessary.

They seem to have become a nuclear power rather effortlessly. Maybe they had a little help. But who would just give Israel nuclear weapons — nuclear weapons that required no testing? Who?

Perhaps Al could shed some light?

Sincerely,

Bart Boyer

San Diego

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NINE MORE MONTHS

Dear Editor,

Hello. How are you? I’m okay — having a hard time falling into any kind of routine. Seems like a difficult thing to do in San Quentin. The prison was built in 1826, the oldest one in America. It’s like a giant castle, a concrete fortress with the most evil dark energy I’ve ever felt. The noise is unbearable. The block I’m in holds 500 inmates. It is five tiers high with 50 cells on each tier. The cells are the smallest I’ve ever seen. They cram two men in each cell. I can touch both walls in the cell with each of my hands at the same time. That’s how small they are. The cockroaches and mice, and 200 years of snot the inmates have spit on the walls have collected into a thick layer of mucus that looks like a layer of paint. They do not give you much of anything, even a t-shirt is hard to come by. You are issued a pair of pants and shirt upon coming in. No boxers, no socks. You have to wheel and deal for that from other inmates. You get one sheet and one wool blanket. There is no laundry service. What you want cleaned you wash in your tiny sink and hang to dry. There is no other prison on earth like San Quentin that’s for sure.

Every day is a true stress test. So I try to pace myself. Books are hard to come by. I spend most of my time laying on my bunk, toilet paper balls stuffed in my ears, trying to block some of the noise out. My only sense of relief comes from knowing time will pass and I am nine months short. My cellie is a weird-ass dude, so I do not talk much to him. Besides, there isn’t much to say. So I block him out the same way I do the noise. I think a lot. I think of what I need to do to beat the system and stay free this time. I also have some good memories that I escape to sometimes to pass time. Things we did when us kids were little, time spent with my kids, Jerry and Dorothy. And adventures I have been on around the country during my travels.

Time passes. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast. But it passes. Nine more months. So for now I face myself and try not to let San Quentin [bleep] with my head. About 200 feet from my cell is the state of California’s Death Row which houses 628 men waiting to die. Some of them are the most famous inmates in the world. Charles Manson, the Night Stalker, etc. For me, Death Row is a reminder that things could be much worse than they are.

Disease runs rampant here. Staph infection being the worst (and MRSA). A large percent of dudes have MRSA. No way San Quentin can prevent it. Showers are every three days — pipes sticking out of a brick wall shoot out cold water. 15-20 dudes crammed under each water pipe pushing and shoving in an attempt to get wet. I went one time and never went back. I birdbath once a day in my little sink. The food is the worst I’ve ever had. Always some form of noodle type of goo. A thick steak occupies some of my daydreams at least once a day. I remind myself that time passes, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but it passes. Nine more months to go. So I stay focused and keep my game face on, never allowing any of San Quentin yuck to splash on me. Thank you for every paper I’m lucky enough to receive. To be able to escape once a week is a treasure I do not take for granted.

My best regards from the gutter,

Alan Crow

San Quentin

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NOT DANGEROUS — YET

Dear Editor,

People complain that they should not pay for education because they don’t have any children. Pay now or pay later!

There is escalating crime by the young. They join gangs. Why shouldn’t they when no one seems to care?

Teachers make less than prison guards because the students are not as dangerous — yet. They’re learning that violence gets people’s attention. It even sells newspapers.

Children are the future and they need our help.

Best wishes,

Hillary Beckington

Little River

PS. I don’t know if you saw the headline in the Depressed Democrat about the Mendocino pot killings. The word here, by informed sources, is that they want to declare a state of emergency because of the cartels.

If you want to end this, we need to legalize pot. For that matter they should end the drug war and get rid of all of them.

But at least legalize cannabis and industrial hemp. Get rid of the crime and save the economy!

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STICK WITH THE COURTS

Dear AVA editor —

Why did the homosexuals abandon the court?

Before Prop 8, homosexuals allegedly acquired the right to marry. Then, Prop 8 came along. Instead of remaining with the courts, homosexuals chose to participate in Prop 8. Prop 8 was the means in which all participants would settle the question of marriage. Yes vote, or no vote. If the homosexuals had the most no votes regarding Prop 8 they would have won fair and square. Like Governor Schwarzenegger stated after the voting was over, “the people of California have voted.” That meant following all who chose to participate. If the homosexuals felt that Prop 8 was unjust they should have remained in the courts. To run back to the courts crying foul about something you chose to participate in, looking to win, yet lost, is wrong. The federal judge who claimed that Prop 8, the vote of “all the people,” was unconstitutional is wrong. In America, voting is a civil right a United States citizen upon his or her own free will can participate in fair and square.

Bernard Hill

Soledad

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NO MORE AID

Editor,

I just got your August 4th issue, as I’m in prison. (Lest anyone thinks that means I’m ignorant, I also have a degree in history, and a father who once worked at the White House, an energy expert under Carter).

I strongly object to the letter from the guy in New York City listing ten bad things done by the Israeli Army. Anyone who takes time for the research could easily list 1,000 worse things done by cops or soldiers in any Arab or Muslim country (Turkey, Pakistan, etc.), or by police in the Untied States.

As America’s government giving Israel money means having to listen to insults, I’m for no US aid to Israel. It’s not a poor country. They got by 25 years without US aid (through three major wars) and Nixon started US aid in October of 1973 only to thwart Russia when Egypt and Syria got huge Russian aid, then invaded. The US does nothing just to be nice. So I say no US aid to Israel, and America can shut up and stop telling other people how to live in their own countries.

Sincerely,

Michael Bear Carson

Mule Creek

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WALKER SHOULD BE GRATEFUL

Editor:

As a close family friend of the Hamburgs, I had first-hand experience with Calvin Walker and his relationship with the Hamburgs and frankly, my primary thoughts are that Dan and Carrie should be sainted for the amount of time, energy, effort, and love that they put into helping Calvin. He was welcomed at the breakfast table, he was present at birthday parties, he was taken under a family wing that any down-and-out human could only pray to have gracefully spread above them.

I am deeply saddened by Calvin’s lawsuit that has literally bitten the hand that fed him. I find myself struggling to hold on to my belief that one should always help those in need because I am appalled that Calvin would attack his benefactors this way even though I recognize that Calvin is acting out of desperation.

What I am less able to stomach is the fact that Calvin is being used as a political pawn. Calvin is looking for money, but his “anonymous benefactor” is looking for blood. Is there any question who the “anonymous benefactor” is or at least who he or she is associated with? Is this the kind sleazy, secretive maneuvering we want to see in our local government?

Erica Cooperrider

Ukiah

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FROZEN IN TIME

Editor,

“The door’s shutting seems so muffled

For a clanging piece of tin

But the handle’s on the outside,

You only can get in.

My hands are red from banging

And I think I’m about to cry

Because refrigerator heaven

Is such an awful place to die”

— The Freeze, “Refrigerator Heaven”

* * *

They cleared thick jackpine off twisting lower ridges, abandoned pastures from farm days. Mayapples and Jacks-in-the-Pulpit vanished under asphalt as great basement holes erupted in clearings on the slope edges. We’d jump into pits where drain manifolds were unbuilt and crawl down lengths of pipe to the next pit, a dim circle way off in tight darkness. Scary fun for a five-year old! Horror fantasies of entombment pumped our little adrenals.

The last farm got a last crop of corn, then went to pasture while they built a firehouse. Our first grade class had the great luck of a field trip to the firehouse immediately after they had snuffed a conflagration in their own living space. There were warped lockers and stinky air and they let us slide down the pole to get rid of us, too chagrined to play hero for the kids that day.

Below the firehouse the brush was thicker with old dumps towards a little valley.

A half-buried refrigerator leaned out of the ground, its door yawning invitingly. All the scare in the news about kids dying in abandoned refrigerators, we had heard loud and clear. To walk up and play with the thing took some forethought. Finally someone took the door off, and new horrors registered, like tire-mashed animals.

J. Biro

Santa Rosa

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SPILT EARNINGS

Editor,

Remarks I made at this month’s Retirement Board meeting. The Retirement Board oversees the Mendocino County Employee Retirement Association (MCERA).

Retirement Board Meeting, Public Expression, 18 August, 2010

At the July meeting of the Retirement Board, this board decided to completely write off the unauthorized, and possibly illegal, $9.6 million diversions from county contributions that should have gone into the Pension Fund…diversions that were later covered up through a fraudulent accounting practice generally known as “capitalization of expenses,” and specifically known as “improper earnings recoginition.”

You decided to completely write off the $9.6 million. All of it. One hundred per cent. One hundred per cent gone. Disappeared. Like a rabbit in a magician’s top hat. Woosh. Like it never happened.

I’ve got to tell you a lot of people in Mendocino County think something about your decision really stinks.

Here’s what Section 31587 of the California Government Code — part of the 1937 County Employees Retirement Act under which MCERA is organized — says:

“The (retirement) board shall apply the contributions of the county or district to its obligations under the system in the order and amounts as follows:

First, in an amount equal during each fiscal year to the liability accruing to the county or district because of service rendered during such year and on account of service and disability pensions, in an amount determined by the actuarial valuation as interpreted by the actuary.”

In 2004 through 2006, the Retirement Board didn’t do that. Many of you weren’t in this room then — but some were. This is what the law says — and it isn’t what was done.

Each year’s contribution has to be made in full, because the whole theory of the Pension Fund is that the yearly contributions will be made on time in full, and then earn the target rate of return so there will be enough money to pay the pensions in the future. If the yearly contribution is diverted and used for some other purpose — like paying Retiree Healthcare — then it can’t be invested, and therefore can’t earn its target returns.

And that directly leads to unfunded pensions that the citizens of Mendocino have to pay — even though we already paid our taxes in the year the funds were diverted. That means we — the people — are having to pay for those pensions twice. I repeat: Twice.

That’s what it looks like to many of us — $6 million of County contributions in 2004 through 2006 were diverted to healthcare, were not invested, and as a result the Pension fund went further into deficit, and now, we ordinary citizens who will never get the kind of retirement benefits most of you will get, have to pay those pensions twice. In fact more than twice because the truth is pension deficits keep on growing until they are eliminated.

Back in 2004 and 2006, Mendocino County Treasurer and MCERA Administrator, Tim Knudsen, with a wink and a nod from then-Mendocino County Auditor, Dennis Huey, said that your Actuary, Buck Consultants, “advised” him that doing business this way was fine — until they said it wasn’t fine.

Well, we the people have our doubts. This whole thing makes no sense. All the money has to go into the Pension Fund each year on time, or the entire funding scheme collapses.

So here’s the deal. You need to show us the specific authority for why the Retirement Board did this in 2004 and 2006. Where is it written in the law that this is OK? We don’t see it, and we need you to show us where the law says this is OK.

And then, there’s another thing.

After the diversions, MCERA set up this receivable account called “Actuarial Value of Unrecorded Earnings.” MCERA not only said they “paid back” the County with this account — but they took another $3.6 million out of the Pension Fund, and added that to this “receivable.”

We, the people, think this receivable is ” gift-wrapped air.”.. what is not an asset, but what is, in fact, a receivable “gift wrapped” to look like an asset.

The $9.6 million diversion was never an asset. It was always a receiveable. It was a claim against whay you called Excess Earnings sometime in the future, if and when those earnings may have occurred.

Excess Earnings?

You’ve got to be kidding me. The $9.6 million in diversions were never an “asset” or “earnings.” If you claimed your future, unrealized earnings as an asset on a personal loan application, you’d be in big trouble. That’s what this looks like — a “faked” asset.

And now you’re writing off a “faked” asset. Isn’t that right?

So — again — show us the authority MCERA used to create this account. Where is it written in law or Generally Accepted Accounting Principles that such an “asset” is real?

You need to show us here in this room today — and all the people of Mendocino County — what legal authority allowed MCERA to do the things they did. Not just tell us that authority exists — SHOW US.

If you can’t, then you know what? Then, it probably doesn’t exist.

Now — think long and hard about the implications of that.

Those of you were weren’t here then — or who were here but didn’t really understand what was going on — you need to take this very, very seriously as we procede in writing off this fictious asset, and probably proceed down the road toward a taxpayer lawsuit, or worse, a criminal complaint.

Tomorrow, the New York Times will report that the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), a federal agency, has settled fraud charges against the State of New Jersey for claiming it had properly funded public workers’ pensions when it had not.

Many more of these cases may soon be filed. Quoting from the New York Times article, “The SEC announced in January it had a special unit looking into public pension disclosures.”

Continuing with the article, “The SEC said its action was meant to dissuade other governments and their advisors from hiding bad fiscal news in a fog of numbers.”

“Hopefully, our action will send a message to other states and local governments, ” said Elaine C. Greenberg, chief of the SEC’s municipal securities and public pension unit, when interviewed for the New York Time story.

And so, today, I advise you, members of the Retirement Board, it would be a serious error in judgement to think that because we live at the edge of the world, here in Mendocino County, that we are immune from charges of criminal fraud.

We are closer to Washington, DC, and the SEC, than you may think.

And we are closer to Sacramento, and the California Attorney General Office, than you may think.

And we may soon have a new District Attorney, right here in Mendocino County, that may take an interest in the deceptions of this Board’s past administrator and his advisors.

Thank you.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

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TRASH TALK

Editor,

I was quite disappointed to miss the conclusion of last Tuesday’s garbage discussion, but I only had an hour before needing to return to my day job. I did have some comments that I wanted to read into the record but did not get a chance, so I thought I would pass them on for your consideration.

* * *

August 17, 2010

To the Board of Supervisors:

I have a number of issues with the agreement before you today. I remain skeptical of privatization in general because history has shown that it tends to create higher prices and decreased services.

I do not have a problem with Jerry Ward (owner of Solid Waste of Willits, SWOW), he has proven himself to be a conscientious business owner and community partner. In 2007 as chair of the Willits Planning Commision, we unanimously approved SWOW’s MRF (Material Recovery Facility) and permitted them to receive municipal waste from outside the franchise service area. This was done despite some complaints from nearby Willits Redwood Company and others about odor and truck traffic. I applaud SWOW for providing jobs in this economy.

However in terms of negotiations I have to agree with Mike A’dair of the Willits News who said “the County has been caught with its pants down and its shoes untied.” We have laid off staff prior to an agreement being signed! The Board of Supervisors majority is showing tunnel vision, with focus on what is good for “the county government” and not necessarily what is good for “county residents.”

In terms of liability — Supervisor Pinches mentioned today “a million dollar injury” as a good reason to give up the county transfer stations, but the Board should know that it can not absolve itself of liability relating to pollution or contamination. So even if SWOW takes over the county transfer stations, we will not be scott-free.

The way this process has gone down has been disappointing.

Holly Madrigal

Willits

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CONGESTION OR CUSTOMERS?

Editor:

Referring to the front page article in the Ukiah Daily Journal on August 19, “Businessmen suggest Brush Street for courthouse,” I smell a rat.

Quote: “Two Ukiah businessmen are suggesting a location for the new Mendocino County Courthouse they say would significantly reduce downtown congestion…”

Well, one man’s “congestion” is another man’s vital traffic where his business was positioned years ago to take advantage of “location, location, location” as the Real Estate brokers continuously crow.

Our core downtown is a vital part of this community, and much of its survival as a downtown depends on the courthouse. Moving it a couple of blocks away would help maintain our downtown businesses. Moving it to property on Brush Street will help kill the downtown.

Congestion? Take a trip to the Bay Area. That’s congestion!

In Ukiah, other than some mild backups in the morning and late afternoon when businesses are opening and closing, there is no congestion to speak of. The noon lunch rush is what we small downtown businesses live on. That’s called livelihood, not congestion.

No, it’s obvious this is about a property owner’s self-interest against the community’s interest in having a vital downtown, and downtown business owners’ self-interests, not about congestion.

And, oh yeah, these two guys, Mayfield and Selzer, pushed the Masonite Mall by talking about how much new business would be brought to downtown Ukiah. Now they’re concerned about congestion? Phony balony!

Keep the courthouse near downtown, and brush-off any suggestions that Brush Street might be a better choice.

Dave Smith

Ukiah

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HIS HIGHNESS IS HOME

Editor,

Just wanted to take this opportunity to thank the AVA for the Nutmeg editorial. Excellent tongue in cheek coverage.

Justice was served. Angela Hooper deserved to keep the animal. Shih Tzu are a gentle, beautiful, royal Chinese breed and should be with owners who love them. There is no doubt Hooper adores “his royal highness.”

There are four human actions in this world detestable to me: animal cruelty, liars, thieves, rats — two and four legged varieties. Pick any one of the four, and there’s Wallis Williams standing tall. I did not respond to her supercilious rantings about me in court. My comment on her vitriolic remarks to the AVA is limited to advice: Don’t throw spitballs at a battleship.

Aeryn Richmonde

Mendocino

PS. Two more points: 1. Gino may have signed that letter but did not write it. He is almost monosyllabic.

2. He was never in my house after August 1, 2006, when I finally got her another place. Williams supposedly paid me some mythical time in September or October 2006. The month moves around depending in which court she’s whining and what document she altered.

Williams has two fatal flaws. She can’t tell the same story twice in the same way, and she cannot stand to be ignored.

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NUTMEG THEFT

Letter to Editor

I have known Wallie for some time and was shocked at the cruel expose in the AVA concerning her and her dog Nutmeg.

I have been friends of Angela Hooper’s son Matt for many years and many prison sentences. Matt’s mother Angela always watches his dog until his return, sometimes for years. Angela of all people should know how important it is to return from prison to a loving pet. Wallie was looking forward to her Nutmeg being returned to her, and she wrote to me how much it meant to her to know Nutmeg and Gino were meeting her at the gate together. Small hopes and plans sustain us through the darkest times.

I saw Wallie the day after my release this May after two years and ten months at VSPW. Before Wallie’s house that day, I stopped off and picked up my dog Buddy. Buddy’s caretaker was sad to see him go, but Buddy is my dog, as Nutmeg is Wallie’s, and I had no problem claiming him. Later that day I fully expected to meet Nutmeg at Wallie’s house and all I can say is shame on Angela for stealing him. Her son Matt cannot be proud of her.

Anita Murphy

Willits

Memo Of The Week

To: Mendocino County Auditor:

Re: Administration of the Benefit Assessment —

In our annual Benefit Assessment parcel review for the current year we discovered that some of the changes we submitted to your office for inclusion in last year’s tax bills had been omitted resulting in a revenue loss to us of $828. We then checked the preceding year and found that the changes submitted for that year had also been dropped without inclusion in the tax bills resulting in a revenue loss of $804 in 08/09 and a similar amount carried forward in 09/10. The cumulative revenue loss to us is $2,436. This amount reflects only the actual lost revenue and does not include the cost to discover and document the errors.

We believe that similar errors have occurred in the past and are greatly concerned that your office’s failure to correctly implement and maintain our records has resulted in a significant loss to us in spite of the fact that we have followed the required procedures. We are further concerned that without corrective action on your part we will continue to lose revenue in future years.

We were charged $2691.59 in fiscal year 08/09 and $2745.62 in fiscal year 09/10 for administration of our benefit assessment. Given this fact, we feel it is reasonable to request that you reimburse us for our documented losses of $2436 since you failed to provide the service we that pay for. It would be acceptable to us for you to compensate us by either sending us a check for the amount requested or deducting it from the administrative fees charged to us in coming years. We further request that you review your procedures to determine why this error occurred and take prompt action to ensure that it is not repeated.

The question also arises that if these errors are intrinsic in your procedures or software other districts may also have been receiving a similar loss in revenue.

Please advise us of your intended corrective action.

Sincerely,

Diane Paget, board chair; Andrea LaCampagne, director; Kathleen McKenna, director; Kirk Wilder, director; Valerie Hanelt, director

Boonville

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PROFUNDITY

Editor,

How profound is the Edgar Degas quote last week, “Painting is not very difficult when you don’t know how…”

Most artwork is just random scribble — all of it including the crap that made Picasso famous. The majority of “artists” think that they can make a lifetime career of what they learned in kindergarten. And some do make a few bucks by learning to describe what their garbage is supposed to mean to the prospective buyers who don’t have a clue of what they are viewing.

The exceptions are rare.

Carl Flach

Alameda

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NUTMEG! THE FRAME-UP

Dear Editor,

Why won’t the court judges order the return of Wallis Williams’ dog Nutmeg to her?

In a series of letter accounts published in the AVA, Wallis reviews and analyzes how she was set up and wrongfully sentenced to four years in Chowchilla Womens’s Prison. If you have not already read these letters, you can find them on the AVA blog site. Upon her release from prison, Wallis requested that the self-appointed dog sitter and supposed “friend” Angela Hooper return her now four year old Shih Tzu dog, Nutmeg. Angela Hooper, owner of the Ukiah 711 bar, refused to return Wallis’s pet.

To avoid the threats and jeers from Angela’s bar friends, Wallis took the issue to Small Claims Court. Whereupon Judge Behnke held a trial on June 6th, determining that although Wallis is the dog’s rightful owner, he thinks that Angela, the dog sitter, is the best dog mother. Judge Behnke then allowed Angela to keep Nutmeg in her possession until July 8th.

Both the Small Claims telefone legal advisors the self help center in the court house, and the Civil lawyer she inquired to, advised Wallis that even judges are not above the law and must follow the dictates of the law. On August 11th in open court, Judge Behnke censured Angela Hooper for not returning Nutmeg to Wallis on the 8th, then contradicted his own order by rewarding Angela with two more days possession of Wallis’s dog until the scheduled appeal by Angela.

Today, Friday the 13th, Judge Cindy Mayfield, a last minute substitute for the hearing originally scheduled with Judge LaCasse, presided. Ms. Mayfield decided to disregard Judge Behnke’s order. Instead of hearing the defendant’s Appeal, Judge Mayfield permitted a third party to claim ownership of Nutmeg. Enter the indoor pot grower, drug user, “for personal use only,” surprise plaintiff, Aeryn Richmond, now in a wheelchair. Aeron Richmond is the Shih Tzu dog breeder for whom Wallis originally worked as a “companion” for $800 per month. Aeryn was the only person permitted to present a case for ownership of Wallis’s dog in a so-called Appeal for Angela Hooper, dogsitter, to steal, er, retain possession of Nutmeg.

Wallis was caught unprepared for this unexpected turn. A third party’s claim for ownership of Wallis’s dog WAS NOT THE SUBJECT OF THE HEARING. ANGELA HOOPER’S ‘APPEAL’ AS DOG SITTER TO ACQUIRE OWNERSHIP OF THE LITTLE SHIH TZU WAS THE CAUSE OF ACTION.

Before Judge Cindy Mayfield, Aeryn Richmond claimed that Wallis had stolen the dog from her, that all Wallis’s paperwork was altered or forged including her receipt for the $1,000 payment for Nutmeg, Nutmeg’s American Kennel Club registration, Wallis’s bank statement listing the series of checks paid to her by Aeryn which had bounced, the copy of Aeryn’s bank deposit of the one thousand dollar payment which Wallis had requested in a friendlier time. All of this would have been a difficult and enormously time consuming task to forge for a one thousand dollar puppy dog.

Why did Cindy Mayfield permit a third party plaintiff, not the defendant appellant to appear in court, without proper notice so that Wallis was totally unprepared to prove her a liar? WHY WAS A PLAINTIFF, NOT MENTIONED ON THE COURT DOCKET, ALLOWED TO CLAIM AND RECEIVE OWNERSHIP OF WALLIS’S DOG NUTMEG?

Why did Cindy Mayfield refuse Wallis to file Gino Jacomella’s notarized statement of events and court testimony, especially since Gino was depicted by Aeryn in court as the man who kept Nutmeg abandoned and locked in a cold dark trailer for two months hiding him from neighbor Aeryn until Hooper arrived to save the day? Why did Cindy Mayfield refuse Wallis to file statements from two other friends who had offered to dogsit after Angela had taken the dog. Why did Cindy Mayfield refuse to let Wallis file other evidence of fraud and attempted illegal conversion of ownership?

The money judgment of 2008 was exactly that, a money judgment, revalidated three times in six months as exactly that, and revalidated again by Judge Behnke recently, as exactly what it is, a money only judgment, the dog is owned by Plaintiff who may or may not have paid for him twice. If it is within the law, Aeryn can ‘attach’ the dog later in lieu of payment of judgment I suppose, however it is odd she has waited four years to bring up the ‘stolen’ dog at all, judgment or no judgment.

Why have two court judges refused Wallis a fair hearing for the return of Nutmeg?

Something else is going on.

Cindy Mayfield announced in open court that she didn’t care anything about this case, the supposed appeal, that she was concerned about the Small Claims judgement of 2008. In this case, Aeryn Richmonde sued Wallis for alleged property theft for which she presented no receipts, nor any evidence. Since Wallis was by this time safely tucked away in Chowchilla Womens’ Prison unable to attend the Small Claims hearing, Aeryn “won” the case. Appealing twice by letter on grounds she could not appear in person to defend herself, Judge Basner finally refused altogether to even permit Gino Jacomella to speak on Wallis’s behalf at all or introduce any paperwork beyond what is mentioned in the paragrph above. Receipts of dog purchase as well as a Statement of Harrassment filed against Aeryn Richmonde, a protective restraining order for her Nutmeg, and the list of items Wallis swears Aeryn invented to pad the small claims to maximum.

Why is Wallis being scapegoated?

Is it because she blew the whistle on her public defender Bert Schlosser’s failure to defend her in an evidence free, witness free show trial of which Wallis could only hear parts because of a hearing deficiency from her childhood? Why was Wallis Williams sentenced and convicted for Aeryn Richmonde’s activities? Why is she being punished again by the courts for Aeryn Richmondes activities?

Sincerely,

Dorotheya M Dorman

Redwood Valley

Ed note: A friend of ours owns a pair of frou-frou pooches similar to the contested Nutmeg in general appearance and happy demeanor. He suggests that Nutmeg’s competing owners should seat themselves in an otherwise empty room where the unsuspecting Nutmeg would enter several minutes later. Assuming the women vying for his affections haven’t fallen to the floor in mutual combat, Nutmeg, yipping with pure delight, will leap into the arms of the person he loves best! That’s how dog disputes are best settled, not in the kennels of courtrooms. Case in point: My late dog Roscoe and I were hiking deep in the hills east of Boonville one afternoon when we suddenly encountered Roscoe’s previous owner, my nephew, with whom Roscoe, then known as Rothko, spent his formative years. Roscoe looked at me; Roscoe looked at my nephew. I walked on, thinking to spare myself the emotional trauma of being abandoned by an animal upon whom I’d lavished every indulgence and with whom I’d spent many happy hours trespassing the Anderson Valley’s endless ridges and dead end dope draws. We could see, nephew and I, that Roscoe was torn between us, but I’d only propelled myself a few steps forward when Roscoe bounded up to my side where, fixing me with his intimidating part-pit stare, he growled, “So long as you don’t call me Rothko, I’m with you, bub.”

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GIRL LOVES DOG

Dearest Bruce McEwen

Let me start by complimenting you on your artistic and humorous use of your pen. Sometimes, however, you just do not get the facts.

I met Ms. Williams in the last days of 2007. It was a difficult and trying time in both our lives. We had both made decisions which had led us to a place I never want to go again. But we paid for our mistakes.

Once upon a time when one completed a prison sentence, one was allowed to rerturn home to what was most important to them, preserved by family and friends. In Wallie’s case, she was looking forward to coming home to her man and her dog Nutmeg. I saw personally the relief in Wallie in early 2008 after she and Gino found a caring foster mother in Angela Hooper for Nutmeg just in case Wallie lost her case. Later, in our seperate state facilities, Wallie and I wrote. Never once did Wallie suggest anything other than Nutmeg and Gino, the two things she had in life left she loved, would be anywhere but the front gate of Chowchilla when she left. She told me she wrote Angela often thanking her.

Angela Hooper’s excuse for this mess is that she is uncaring, greedy and can say anything she wants because she is a bar owning local girl. Bruce McEwen, you have no excuse for writing second-hand gossip for one thing, nor have you the right to publicly pass judgment on Wallie’s feelings about her dog solely from speaking to her 15 minutes after her shock in hearing her pet being awarded not to Angela even, but to the very person who may have put her in prison the first time! You write that because Wallie comes from class, Wallie does not care ‘enough’ about her dog to be awarded him! Seems to me Wallie has tried to go the legal route by asking the courts to give her her precious dog back. A lesser person would have just snatched and grabbed him, and in fact maybe she should have done just that judging from the way she’s beeen crucified by both the courts and you.

What in the world has happened to decent human moral ethics? Girl buys dog, girl loves dog for two years. Beyond her control girl loses dog , but arranges for temporary long term care. Caretaker attempts to change dog’s ownership one month, one keeping it secret. Caretaker declares to owner on her arrival back that she is keeping dog forever because she is attached to it. So is the owner, Bruce MCEwen, so is the owner.

Victoria Biddle

Fort Bragg

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HEART OF GOLD

Letter to Bruce McEwen

My name is Gino Jacomella and you wrote some truely blasphemous things about myself and my girlfriend Wallis recently, your entire article was slanted and filled with lies and half truths you took as gospel from Angela.

I never gave Nutmeg to Angela Hooper to keep, not ever. Wallie and I made a verbal contract with Angela and I delivered the dog, bathed and groomed about one week after making arrangements with her. I never deserted Nutmeg, I visited him for his daily walks and phone call from Wallie, for one month after Wallie left her house. After handing him to Angela for caretaking, I saw him 5-6 times a week at Bar 711 walking him often, until her release. Ownership was never a question, Nutmeg was Wallie’s dog.

I am not a stalker, neither is Wallie, nor are any of the other people Angela has accused of stalking her bar from my Chase bank across the street, except for maybe the little black men in hats she may also see. I had legal guardianship of Nutmeg giving me the perfect right to remove Nutmeg from Angela’s care at any time I wished without the dramatics of stalking her. My fault was I trusted Angela as a friend and as a person to do the right thing. I now have proof she planned to steal him from the beginning, using our friendship to talk me out of him in the first place.

I understand Aeryn Richmonde has sold Nutmeg to Angela Hooper. I was there when Wallie paid Aeryn for Nutmeg in 2006, now she has sold him again it seems. At court last Monday Wallie was not allowed to speak or present evidence, not even my notorized statement let alone testimony. A woman known to be a liar was given the court floor almost exclusively to expound in anyway she chose, her intentions to confuse what was supposed to be a trial between Angela and Wallie.

Nutmeg is the sweet dog he is today because he spent his first two years with Wallie, and he will always be bonded to her no matter what you think Bruce. Beneath that beguiling smile you criticize Wallie for using as a tool, is a generous heart of pure gold that is broken at the moment, in disillusionment not only of the court system and Angela, but you yourself the AVA. For the two years of her incarceration Wallie felt comfort in knowing three things. The AVA was listening to her letters and publishing her scary accounts of an alien world. Nutmeg was safe until her return, and I remained a loyal friend.

Wallie respects your understanding of the courts of Ukiah and came looking for you at Forest Club to explain or enlighten for her exactly what happened in Dept E and if the proceedings that morning were even legal. We all saw saw the court trial go haywire and wanted some input. It cannot be wrong to want to fight for your family which is what Nutmeg is to Wallie. Wallie is wrong only in that she is not from Ukiah, I guess — and so naive and lacking in guile in fact that she wrote a will while inside (the judge has it), giving Nutmeg to Angela in case of her death. In view of all of this slander and greed Wallie has obviously since superceded that last will and testament at least, if not begun to understand human behavior better.

Jammin Gino Jacomella

Ukiah

_________________________________________________

REPUTATION RESTORED

Editor,

A little retraction please—

My name is Wallis Williams. The article this week in the AVA was not a bit flattering. I will not go into detail now, I want to hit two important points.

The letter I wrote to the UDJ on Aug. 8th was merely meant to be helpful to other dog owners like myself who could find themselves dogless and no one to turn to.

I have never spoken to Sheriff Allman on the subject of dogs nor have I put in print anything saying I have. I meant well in my letter as I have suffered over the return of my dog and I wrote this letter in the anticipation of a successful trial on the 13th. I guess Miss Pacific Palisades was trying to be helpful to other dog owners. Sorry.

I spoke with UDJ on Wednesday afternoon after your article came out and they had not even read the letter yet, let alone ‘deep six it.’ Please retract that I ever spoke to Mr. Allman about my dog or that UDJ was appalled about it. Thanks.

Though I spoke of Aeryn Richmonde in a less than flattering way at Forest Club the 20 minutes after she won my dog in a sham court maneuver, I mentioned nothing about the Schlossers. You have either mixed up my statements with your short interview with Dorotheya Dorman or you are referring to the Wallis letters, “The Williams Case.” Whatever I may feel deep inside, I would never stand in a bar blasting a lawyer nor his wife with unsubstanciated theories. Please offer your own and my apologies to the Schlossers for those comments you credit to me which appeared in this dog article of the 18th. Thank you

Bruce McEwen, you used second hand gossip from a very vindictive and mean person, Angela Hooper, to pad your story with juicy tidbits. There has never been a question of previous record in any country whatsoever. My being defensive over “check interpol” is because I was sent to Chowchilla instead of a low security place because Aeryn Richmonde used her vivid immagination to keep her clear of her own case in this matter by inventing previous incarcerations. Interpol check were the the first words out of my counselor’s mouth. She told a mutual friend for example, I would spend 85 years in France for manslaughter if I either got bail or was released eventually from prison here.

Do I need this? I have a cleaner record than anyone in 7-11, and my word is provable on record. Interpol cleared me 1/9/09 but I still could not go to FireCamp because of mean little people talking in the background here in Ukiah. I did not get probation on a first offense because of mean little people. Do you have to parrot the same untruths just for shock value?

While we are at it, Ms. Richmonde did not pay me $200 a week to drive pot to Pacific Palisades. I was hired to drive her to Doctor’s appointments and be a companion. Are you attempting to get me a new case? Who told you I did that? Angela Hooper I suppose, or was it Aeryn herself? For that kind of money my phone should be ringing off the hook with people wanting me to transport Mendo’s finest, shouldn’t it?

There is so much more and I will try another time to straighten out the mess you made of what was left of my reputation. Right now I worry about the poor Schlossers and Sheriff Allman. Thank you.

Wallis Williams

Ukiah

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LETTER FROM WELLSPRING

Dear Wellspring Community,

Having recently celebrated our 30th Anniversary, it is with great sadness that we make this announcement.

As a board, we have made the decision to close Wellspring by November 15, 2010.

How can we say goodbye to this place and community that has meant so much to each of us? Wellspring holds treasured memories for all of us.

Over the last two years, as the board has undertaken a restructuring of Wellspring, our attention has been focused on creating a sustainable enterprise. A lot of hard work has gone into this process, and we have been so privileged to undertake this work with such a vibrant and capable staff.

There were a number of concerns and issues that we faced. One of Wellspring’s biggest challenges has always been making our budget work. In order to strengthen our financial situation, we raised our prices, reached out to revitalize and grow our community, and fundraised. We were honored to see our community rise to the occasion and support us in our Save Wellspring campaign on so many levels. All of these efforts helped, and you were the reason we were able to make as much progress as we did.

However, despite our best efforts, we are left in an untenable situation. Wellspring simply doesn’t have the resources to sustain itself in a long term and meaningful way. There was no single variable we could have altered, nor any one change we could have implemented that would have made it possible for us to stay open. Our decision is based on a complex series of factors, many of them financial, some of them stemming from issues that have been problematic for years. We made this decision as a board, with the input and support of our Founder, Executive Director and outside professionals.

We sincerely thank you for joining us in the experience of Wellspring. We offer our gratitude for the many ways in which all of you, new and old friends, have contributed to the blessings that well up from this precious place. There simply aren’t enough words to express just how much your presence and contributions have meant to us.

Fortunately we are able to continue into the fall. We look forward to our Annual Harvest Weekend, scheduled for September 17-19, and there is still time to sign up. We invite you to join us in this opportunity to reflect upon the bountiful gifts that Wellspring has offered over the years. We also have open space this fall for those of you who want to soak in the beauty of Wellspring one last time.

Sincerely,

Wellspring Board of Directors

Philo

PS. We appreciate your patience as we work to get this message out. We will be updating our community as this process unfolds. If you have questions about this decision, please contact our board member Daphne Macneil, (707) 463-2878 or daphnemacneil@hotmail.com. For questions about reservations, contact our Executive Director, Terry McMillan at Wellspring, (707) 895-3893 or wellsprg@pacific.net.

Letters to the Editor

The AVA — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:04:54 +0000

DEAR DAN

Dear Editor,

I’m addressing this letter to a man of stature in our community, former United States Congressman, Mr. Dan Hamburg. He is currently a candidate for the Fifth District Supervisor seat of Mendocino County, California.

Dan Hamburg, before your mother Jean Hamburg passed away nearly a decade ago, I promised her I would try my best to help you and your family in the years to come as a loyal friend. That promise is part of the reason why I agreed to help you and your wife when you asked me if I would help the two of you grow a medical marijuana garden for the spring and summer growing season 2008.

To be grown on your property, just off Boonville Road in Ukiah, California. I also agreed to help the two of you because I knew your wife was recovering from cancer treatment and she was unable to do the physical labor of growing a medical marijuana garden as she had for the two of you in the past to its fullest potential.

I also agreed to help me because I needed a place to grow my medical marijuana for the 2008 growing season. It seemed to be a perfect partnership.

Dan, when I planted the garden in May 2008 then took care of 100% of the gardens needs for six months (May to October 2008), I did this in good faith. I trusted our friendship and our partnership. I knew when harvest time came around that there would be no question of my being entitled to an equal share of the medical marijuana garden, the garden I grew for us in a partnership in good faith!

Dan, when I agreed to help you and your wife grow the 2008 medical marijuana garden for us, my intentions were to grow the garden, then move on to find a piece of property here in Mendocino County to lease for myself. Then set up a medical marijuana garden for the 2009 growing season for myself.

That never happened, Dan, because you cheated me out of any share of the 2008 medical marijuana garden then nickeled and dimed me with just enough money for food through the winter and into the spring of 2009. I had to stay in a cabin at the top of the medical marijuana garden all through the winter. A cabin I had built during the spring and summer of 2008 so I would have a place to stay while I grew the medical marijuana garden.

Dan, after you sold the first 16 pounds of medical marijuana for $43,800 you hired a landscape crew and equipment to landscape around your home for a cash price of $10,000 plus. And offered me nothing from that money for a partial payment of my share of the 2008 garden.

During the spring of 2009 you did give me enough money to pay an attorney who helped me with a legal case. Thank you very much, Dan. After that I told you we can call it even for the 2008 garden even though it was far from fair to me. The way you failed to offer me any share of the 2008 garden.

Which brings us to the 2009 medical marijuana garden. The second of the two gardens I grew for us on your Boonville Road Property. The 2008 and 2009 medical marijuana gardens.

The reason I stayed to grow the 2009 garden was because I told myself that no one is going to cheat me out of my fair share of two gardens that I grew in good faith for us, Dan.

In the spring of 2009 I set up the medical marijuana garden based on a theory of mine on how to grow the maximum plant with a maximum yield and the best quality of medical marijuana.

During the summer of 2009 I had an opportunity to show the medical marijuana garden to one of Ukiah’s best attorneys at law. He offered me a ride back to your property, and, after he found out that I was intending to walk back after a meeting with him in Ukiah. First I asked your wife’s permission to do so.

At that time he suggested that we post our legal medical marijuana prescriptions (four in total) in the 2009 medical marijuana garden for legal reasons and to ensure that I would be entitled to six of the plants from the 2009 garden. The legal limit for medical marijuana patients as far as plants per patients was six plants. Four patients could combine their prescriptions on one parcel of land to achieve a 25 plant garden (the 25th plant is a give me) by local law enforcement. The legal limit allowed by law per parcel of land during the 2009 growing season in Mendocino County.

The 2009 medical marijuana garden at harvest had a yield of 100 pounds of Grade A+ medical marijuana.

Up until the time the 2009 garden was ready to harvest, you would show your friends the garden and introduced me to them as a master medical marijuana gardener.

Dan, at harvest time you refused me my six plants allowed to me by law and I became an insignificant SOB.

You and your wife did ask me what I would want momentarily for my six plants. I gave you a figure that was fair to me. It included my time and labor it took for me to grow.

I was led to believe that I would be paid in full the figure I had given you.

The next two weeks I watched as you and your family systematically harvested a large part of the garden. Then you informed me that you were only going to pay me 40% of my asking price which does NOT work for me, not even close.

At that time I decided to harvest one of the six plants allowed to me by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department codes. I informed the two workers you sent to continue harvesting the 2009 medical marijuana garden that I was harvesting one plant for my personal use and that they should tell you what I was doing when they returned to your house.

Within 20 minutes you were at my cabin door where I was starting to process the harvesting of one of my plants for my own personal use. At that time you told me point blank that you were not going to allow me to take any of the medical marijuana away from your property and you insisted that I leave your property that very day because you could no longer trust me. When in fact it is you Dan Hamburg who has betrayed the trust I put in you.

I agreed to leave your property that afternoon. Even though I had lived in the cabin at the top of the medical marijuana garden for one and a half years. I would have made you evict me out of the cabin but I was starting to worry about my own safety due to the level of intimidation coming from you. I wasn’t sure to what extent you would go to ensure that you were able to keep 100% of the 2009 medical marijuana garden for yourself. Also, who am I to argue with a former US congressman on his own property? So for my own safety I left your property that afternoon never to return. But not before the two of us agreed that I should be entitled to 20% of the 2009 medical marijuana harvest.

Before I left your property you handed me a pint Mason jar full of medical marijuana for my personal use. The medical marijuana in the Mason jar was at least two years old, maybe even three. Brown in color, barely fit for smoking. Not even one ounce of fresh medical marijuana from the 2009 garden was I allowed to have for my personal use. The medical marijuana in the Mason jar I tossed without smoking any. In fact it was an insult to me.

Mr. Dan Hamburg, the combined wholesale value of 2008 and 2009 medical marijuana is very close if not more than half a million dollars. With a retail medical marijuana sale price of over a million dollars.

On May 10, 2009, I had a phone conversation with you in regards to two things. One being my voter information pamphlet sent to your address for me. I asked you if you would forward it to me via general delivery at the Ukiah Post Office. Because I don’t want you filling out my absentee voter’s card and sending it in like you have previously done at least once in the past without my permission. I hope you forward it to the Ukiah Post Office because if it doesn’t show up I will be checking to see if it was sent to the office of elections filled out. (Constituting voter fraud on your part.) The second part of our conversation of May 18, 2010 concerned my being paid the balance of what you owe me for growing the 2009 medical marijuana garden and for the six plants you refused me.

Dan, at that time you told me that the 2009 medical marijuana garden I grew was diseased and that I would receive no more monetary compensation. When in fact the 2009 medical marijuana garden produced some of the best medical marijuana in Mendocino County and ranks with the best in the world.

Mr. Dan Hamburg, when you and your wife asked me for my help during the spring of 2008 it was because you were broke at the time and living on credit. Dan, the bottom line is I needed a hand as much as you did at the time. Instead of all of us coming up from what the 2009 garden produced, you chose to take it all for yourself. Dan, your greed will be your downfall.

Dan, I’ve tried to sue you over the way you have done me, but not one attorney in Mendocino County would take the case because of who you are and the fact that it is against the law to sell marijuana. I feel it is my civic duty to try and warn the Mendocino County voters, especially those in District 5. To vote NO on Dan Hamburg for District 5 supervisor for the primary election on June 8, 2010 and because you are asking for the voters’ help just as you asked for my help during the spring of 2008.

The voters should realize that Mr. Dan Hamburg should not be entrusted with the guardianship of our west coast or the taxpayers dollar. Because the Dan Hamburg I put my trust in is no more than a common thief, a fraud, just another person getting rich at the expense of other people. Pompous for sure.

Calvin Walker, June 4, 2010.

Ukiah

707/468-8255

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OVERBLOWN

Editor,

Countless times over the past ten years Calvin Walker sat at our kitchen table and shared meals. Members of his family often came to our home and we often visited with his family. We know his sister and mother, his children and grandchildren.

We believed him to be a basically good person down on his luck. To this day, we believe that Calvin is a decent man, but a man easily confused and now being manipulated by people who are determined to keep me from being the next Fifth District supervisor.

I’m aware that my political opponents are funding this effort. The same people unsuccessfully attempted to recall me from office almost three decades ago using similar tactics.

I’ve never been in a serious campaign for public office without such an attack so this one doesn’t come as a surprise!

Dan Hamburg

Ukiah

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THEY CAN’T HEAR YOU

Dear Editor,

On July 20, 2010, I was in a struggle with a sheriff’s deputy during my arrest. I was transported to the Ukiah Valley Medical Center for medical clearance due to having a seizure while being arrested.

Upon arriving at the Mendocino County Jail I realized I no longer had my hearing aid. I am deaf/hearing impaired.

My name is James D. Hoffman Sr. I am currently in the custody of the Mendocino County Jail on multiple charges that the district attorney has filed against me.

I am innocent until proven guilty.

My wife Jennifer and I were at South Boat Ramp of Lake Mendocino swimming and enjoying the coolness from the hot temperature.

Due to the fact there was alcohol drinking by a group of family members and from being intoxicated leading to being blacked out, the crime occurred at the time, supposedly. My wife and I were arrested. Jennifer was arrested for public intoxication and I was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and domestic abuse.

I had a hearing aid that was left behind at the south boat ramp or was lost in the struggle with an off-duty sheriff’s deputy.

Due to the nature of depending on hearing assistance, I need my hearing aid which is necessary living in a jail environment.

My wife finally got released from jail three days later after being held in the women’s holding cell for public intoxication meaning she was released when sober.

While I had court I had a seizure in the courtroom and immediately was rushed Ukiah Valley Medical Center by Ukiah Fire Department ambulance on July 23 at approximately 2:30pm.

My wife finally got released from custody and I was back from the medical center to the holding cells once again. The whole time from July 20-23 I have been in the men’s holding cell.

My wife went back to the south boat ramp to locate the hearing aid because the corrections deputy informed her that I didn’t have my hearing aid in my possession. No such luck. She could not find it.

I have requested multiple times for assistance in my hearing-impaired disability to the medical department at the jail without positive result to this day.

Due to the Americans with Disabilities Act an inmate has a right to assistance needed and medical care and necessary devices such as hearing aids while incarcerated at the county jail.

According to Armstrong v. Davis and Armstrong v. Schwarzenegger remedial plan and Penal Code the county should provide the standard of a prisoner’s medical needs!

I need a hearing aid.

After being booked into custody, medical staff supplied me with seizure medication for eight days then immediately cut me off from the meds for unknown reasons.

I was prescribed Zoloft for my anxiety and Tranadoze anti-depression. A doctor from mental health department in the jail discontinued my Zoloft due to budget limitations and increased my anti-depression dose.

Since the Mendocino County jail does not provide American sign language interpretation, I often have miscommunications with both medical and the correctional staff.

I feel there is huge discrimination against me based on my disability and criminal record.

Something needs to be done immediately with the medical department at the jail such as providing my proper medications and necessary medical devices such as hearing aids.

Respectfully,

James D. Hoffman Sr. A#50939

Mendocino County Jail

Ukiah

PS. If anyone has found a hearing aid around the south boat ramp area of Lake Mendocino in the July 20-23 time frame, please kindly drop it off with the Sheriff’s correction lieutenant or corrections commander. Thank you.

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A GROWN MAN CRIES

Dear Editor,

What is a snitch? I’m asking you because I’ve read your paper and noticed the term used loosely.

To me the word snitch is a disrespectful term. I believe it’s an honest person’s right to call 911 in an attempt to gain assistance from medical staff, fire department staff and yes even the police. I don’t consider the average Joe a snitch because he calls the police. If someone follows the law and respects the law he should be entitled to all of the benefits that come with respecting the rules.

On the other hand you have people who break the law continuously and cause trouble that they can’t handle and have no business being involved in. These same people call the police and lie about their involvement. I feel like the taxpayers money is wasted on things that make no sense. Please note that just because someone is called a snitch that does not make the things that they say true.

I’ve been following the story about the shootout on Chicken Ridge. A perfect example for a snitch is a guy you wrote about named Jackie Slade. He is the best example I’ve seen in your paper. He plays the part of a mean one, but 911 is on his speed dial it seems. In your paper it quoted Deputy DA Matt Hubley as saying “something caused this man to cry.” From where I stand I believe Jackie Slade is a fraud who cannot be trusted. I will keep watching because I believe he is going to dig himself a hole. In this town of green mountains and purple kush, I’ve seen quite a few witnesses turned into inmates right from the stand. It’s like spitting in the wind and getting it in your eye. No, worse. I hear Mendocino County lock-up is pretty foul.

From what I can see this town’s DAs are not as dumb as the police.

Let me make a note to the snitches out there. When you dial 911, be careful because you can’t lie your way out of the police station. Well, maybe in Mendocino County.

Stockton, Red Rum

Ukiah

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BIG PIECE PETROLEUM

Editor,

In 1951, near Abadan, British Petroleum operated the world’s largest refinery, an area described by a British engineer as a place of “sunshine, mud and flies.” British Petroleum’s interests now run from Alaska to Indonesia, but its recent North American record is marked with mishaps. No hard cheese. No bad people. While British Petroleum’s current tagline touts their company as “beyond petroleum” in an oil dependent world, they contribute to a Big Part, or shall we say to a Big Piece of the muck.

Yours,

Diana Vance, Muckless in

Mendocino

PS. Six miles up the ridge my neighbors are jackrabbits and cottontails. A time for penance and a time for partridge. Let them eat quail! Appetite comes with eating, while thirst goes away with drinking. One should lift swan, side haddock, break deer, tame crab, sauce capon, chine salmon, disfigure peacock. “That all softening overpowering knell. The tocsin of the soul — and the dinner bell.” Pure water. Water has preeminence. “I am drinking the stars.” “Sit down and feed and welcome to our table.” “You tell me where a man gets his cornpone, and I’ll tell you what his ’pinions is.” A good cook is the best physician. Sing for your supper, but no tears for spilt milk. Your goose is cooked. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Too many cooks spoil the broth which is the greatest thing since sliced bread. In vino veritas, the purse is a better cook than the maid. The positive smell of coffee avec croissants. No taste at the table without the kitchen. The cook in Albion is a priest offering a sacrifice. And the stove is the altar.

PPS. In the 2003 Index on censorship annual report they reported that China continues to jail more journalists than any other country. The world’s worst places to be a journalist are in Iraq, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Haiti, Russia, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. With the 21st century comes an increase of physical attacks on media personnel. In 2002 19 journalists were killed. 36 lost their lives in the course of their work, two disappeared, 13 were killed. Iraq is the most dangerous place for a journalist. The above deaths were Australian, German, Spanish, Ukrainian, Palestinian, Iranian, Jordanian and US — four of whom were killed by US troops. Cameraman Mazen Dana was shot dead by machinegun fire from a US tank while filming near Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Boom! No, Bang!

“High number of journalists killed during conflict.” What has happened to journalist as noncombatant and neutral observer? Consequences of journalists and/or their bodyguards involved in armed exchanges is war, isn’t it?

On May 3, 2003, World Press Freedom Day, UNESCO Director General Ko’ichiro Matsuura reminded media audiences that in crisis situations and violent conflict the public relies on journalists who put their lives on the line to bring the public the information.

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MORE ANALYSIS WON’T HELP

Editor,

On Aug. 17, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors will vote to turn five county transfer stations over to a private company. If this contract is approved many county residents will pay more for curbside collection and all residents will see self-haul rates rise at five previously operated county sites. This proposal is harmful, unnecessary and will permanently dismantle a network of transfer stations available to county residents for decades. We feel compelled to alert the public to how their pockets are about to be picked.

We have no philosophical objection to privatization of government work if it can be proven that it saves money and preserves service. But this deal is so bad that it can only be described as a give-away. It imposes indefensible costs on thousands of Mendocino County citizens without any justification.

The proposed deal negotiated by Supervisors McCowen and Pinches would award four no-bid contracts, 14 years long, without competitive bidding, to Solid Wastes of Willits. The corporation would take over operation of five county transfer stations — Laytonville, Potter Valley, Boonville, Albion and South Coast — and impose an immediate gate fee increase from $25 per cubic yard to $29. And every year into the future, the company can increase the gate fee based on a variety of factors including cost of living and cost of fuel.

As if that benefit isn’t enough, this deal would give Solid Wastes of Willits a no-bid extension of its three curbside franchise collection contracts, covering 2,400 customers in South Coast, Anderson Valley, and North County, so that the exclusive franchise contracts all run for another 14 years. In normal government practice, a no-bid franchise contract extension is only granted if the hauler gives major concessions in rates or other financial benefits. But this deal is just the opposite. Solid Wastes of Willits would get an immediate 2% increase in all its curbside rates, plus another upward rate adjustment in only four months. Accordingly, curbside trash customers who never even use the transfer stations would therefore be forced to pay even higher rates than they now do in order to give Solid Wastes of Willits an unjustified pay-off.

It is being argued this deal will ensure that the county will no longer need to subsidize the transfer stations with General Fund monies. There is a long-standing policy to subsidize these remote sites in order to keep the gate fees low, and we can no longer afford such subsidies. But financial analysis provided by staff shows that the county can continue to operate these transfer stations without any subsidy provided that the gate fee is increased but to a level lower than the $29 per cubic yard demanded by Solid Wastes of Willits. So there is no justification for this deal except to carry out Supervisor Pinches and McCowen’s preconceived notion that privatization must happen.

In June the City of Fort Bragg rejected the privatization contract because of its impact on the Caspar Transfer Station, co-owned with the county. We deplore the subsequent action of the Board of Supervisors majority to retaliate against Fort Bragg by issuing a notice of termination for the Caspar Joint Powers Agreement, which has been in place for 33 years. Going forward, we will do everything we can to repair the damage of this precipitous action so that a rational public policy can be preserved to provide disposal service at the best possible price in the northern coastal area.

In summary, we urge the public to insist on a cost benefit analysis of this contract, including the need for a 14-year extension to three hauling contracts. Privatization at any cost is not in the public interest, does not provide consumer protection and will cost residents needlessly for years to come.

David Colfax

5th District supervisor

Kendall Smith

4th District supervisor

Ed note: See this week’s lead story by Mark Scaramella for the true facts of the garbage controversy. These two scammers, Colfax and Smith, are hardly in a position to decry “gifts of public funds” seeing as how successive grand juries have said they cheated on their travel reimbursements, Smith to such an extent the grand jury said she should be indicted.

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VEILED FLATTERY

Dear Editor:

I was amused by your story in your Off the Record column about your army subscriber being taken to task by the base commander, a colonel, for reading the AVA. The colonel seems be to under the correct impression that you “encourage the breakdown of good order and discipline.”

You certainly are right in being flattered by his accusation. Also, if my memory serves me well I believe you are an anarcho-syndicalist and the colonel is rather insulting when he throws around words like communist.

You should send the colonel a subscribtion form and tell him for $50 he can get his own personal copy of the AVA and thus will not have to snoop through the mail of his soldiers. DOD Secretary Gates is trying to cut the fat in the military and he should start with this fathead.

In Peace,

James G. Updegraff

Sacramento

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ALBION REVISITED

Editor,

After its long vacation the summer sun, like me, has returned to Albion, bursting at the seams, calling forth more flowerings.

Paradise regained at the Richard Anderson Estate where Lady Mellon is Gardener in Residence among other things.

A longed for series of delightful moments are passing. Catch them gently as you can, as you would a butterfly. Then let them fly away on the wings of thanks.

John Patrick Donahoe,

Middle Ridge, Albion

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DON’T CHECK YOURSELF OUT

Dear Editor —

If you haven’t been in a Safeway store recently, you’ve missed the new self-serve line to check yourself out.

Evidently, they want to lay off checkers in the future. I tried to use one, just to see. It took so long I almost gave up, but someone came to help me. I had one item. I said never again. I like people. Say no to mechanization.

Best wishes,

Trixie Stubbs

Little River

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SCAMMERS ON A ROLL

Editor,

You have to hand it to the people at SMART. They are years away from having an actual train, but there are lots ofstaffers earning six-figure incomes with over-the-top benefits. (“Staff costs for agency $2 million a year, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, August 8, 2010.) This may be SMART for them, but for taxpayers, not so much.

That’s why I think we need a new acronym. I’m proposing SCAMMERS — Sonoma County and Marin Medical and Early Retirement Swindle.

Doesn’t it just roll off the tongue?

Don Jones

Santa Rosa

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A FINE FRAUD

Editor,

After a huge waste of taxpayer time and money, Barry Bonds is being put on trial for lying about taking steroids. This is not about taking steroids; its about lying. This is an issue between professional baseball and the public. If the public doesn’t care if a player takes this drug, that’s what counts. If they do care, there will be little attendance at ballparks and stadiums. That’s the answer. How about other things players do to enhance their abilities like Jerry Rice who had an obsession with exercise to keep in tip-top shape? And it paid off. Is that fair to the player who in his time off sits in a bar drinking highballs?

Then about this lying business. A short time ago the judicial council put out a paper according to them to make fines more equal in California. It is a complete mess of words that no one really understands. The real purpose of this paper was to raise… Cross that out, I mean steal money from the public. They changed the meaning of the world “fine” which is what one must pay for breaking the law to “bail” which is the word what one pays to get released from jail with no explanation of their changing the meaning of words in the English language.

All courts in California were obliged to look these papers over. But I never could find out who obliged them. But the way it was apparently was not mandatory. As far as I know I presume that all counties jumped on board. I have not read of any objections to this fraud which should have been big news. Mind you in this great state of California not one person of authority tried or is trying to expose this fraud by the judicial council who seem to be some secret group. Who gave them authority to write up these papers? As most people have read about the fraud in the town of Bell, all executed in private in where the mayor and his cronies gave themselves unbelievable compensation.

I have stated many times that all public agencies are probably required to, but don’t, publish clear understandable figures of the financial status at least every year. If someone out there in legal land can explain this for us idiots who pay for it all, I am sure this paper would gladly print it.

Emil Rossi

Boonville

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TEACH ’EM EARLY

Editor,

My intent is to tell you that learning a second language is no big deal, and I really mean it. What I’m trying to say is: “It’s no big deal. If I can do it, so can you!”

It upsets me to no end the way bilingual education is being handled in this country. I recently called the Department of Bilingual Education in Washington DC (now called the Office of English Language Learners), and was hugely disappointed. None of the people I spoke with speak a second language. How can you work at this level and have absolutely no personal knowledge about what learning a second language entails? I don’t like it.

I was given the telephone number of the Director in charge of hiring the Director for this new office in Washington DC. She said she had only answered her telephone because Caller ID showed “unknown caller” which is code for the White House. I told her I wanted to apply for the position of Director of this new department, but she told me the process was well underway, with little chance of being considered. Yuck! I felt powerless, again.

The objective is to start early. The sooner the child starts (pre-school) the better, because it’s easiest to learn then, the affective filter is low. This means that not much thought goes into learning, it’s much more automatic. When you are a teenager, and more self-conscious, this learning is not so automatic, and can be cause for much laughter (or embarrassment), and is not so productive, seems to me. At that age, I was already fluent in two languages and learning a third. And that was how long ago?

I meet people, every day, who say such silly things as: “Oh, I can’t speak a word of _______,” as if they should be proud of this.

In pre-school, kids love to play with words. They don’t judge the experience, they just do it! Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese, French, or German can be taught early on. Early is the key. Don’t wait to do this in the After-School program. By then it’s too late. Foreign languages belong in school, like milk belongs in cereal.

You have free public education in this country. For crying out loud, use it! Where are those monks?

Susie de Castro

Fort Bragg

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A BAD DEAL

Editor,

Mendocino county solid waste contract found wanting

Why are three members of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors so anxious to give a near monopoly sweetheart deal to Solid Wastes of Willits (SWOW) to the detriment of the residents of Mendocino County? There are about twelve points that could be shown to be poorly negotiated from the County’s standpoint . For the moment I’m only going to lay out three:

Point 1 — Why is the County ready to reward a contract violator? Through an independent review SWOW was found to have overcharged County ratepayers by $60,000, in Anderson Valley, the South Coast and North County areas. Customers are being paid back over time. Are they paying the customers back with interest? And furthermore, why would the County proceed to negotiate a new long term contract with a vendor that was quick to over bill us and slow to pay us back? Additionally, under the new proposed contract, instead of rolling back Anderson Valley’s rate to the old and correct level, the proposed contract ‘grandfathers’ in the violation!

Point 2 — What is the County going to get for giving SWOW a 14 year contract? In Healdsburg, Redwood Empire Disposal provided a number of inducements for a 10 year rather than a 5 year contract, including offering some discounted rates and paying the City a one time $150,000 contract fee. The refuse company also agreed to haul sludge from the city’s new wastewater plant, a savings of about $160,000 annually, according to Healdsburg public works officials. Healdsburg must have had a very good negotiating team. No such approach in Mendocino County negotiations. In the proposed Mendocino County contract does the County get lump sum payments for a couple of years? Or reduced rates for consumers for a couple of years? What do the residents of Mendocino get other than immediate higher rates and the ability for these to climb higher and higher? This exclusive franchise right prevents any other company from setting up a competing operation during the course of the 14 year contract. How much is SWOW paying the County of Mendocino for this franchise right? Are they paying anything at all? Why are we being so generous with a company that hasn’t treated County consumers fairly in the past? Who gives 14 year contracts these days? Maybe to vendors who have proven their reliability and integrity over a long period of time. That is not the case here!

Point 3 — Why does the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors find it necessary to sell off (actually give away) the five solid waste transfer stations? The main purpose as I understand it is to eliminate the County’s subsidy of the five transfer stations. There are six but the Fort Bragg City Council had the wisdom to say no to the deal so the Caspar station, co-operated by the City and County, is not part of this new contract. I believe that any business, in order to survive, must provide service to its customers so they are reasonably satisfied and that the business be run as efficiently as possible so as not to lose money and eventually die. I don’t think that the County has run the six transfer stations as efficiently as possible. Maybe they need new management. Maybe they need to modify rates. If the Supervisors are thought not to be doing a good job, they can be voted out of office. If SWOW is thought to not be doing a good job, we have to wait until 2024 in order to not renew their contract.

Howard Dashiell, the County’s Director of Transportation, in his July 23, 2010 letter to the Fort Bragg City Council stated that a rate increase to $28 per cubic yard, may mitigate all or a portion of the County’s subsidy. With additional proposed efficiencies discussed with the Board last month, a balanced transfer station budget is attainable NOW. So if we are able to operate all transfer stations at the $28 rate, including Caspar, why give the operations away?

And why, why why hasn’t SWOW been banned from doing further business with the County after overcharging us $60,000?

To not provide the public with any explanation for the contract length and fee increases is inexcusable. A cost-benefit analysis would have done that. But the County administration and board majority seem to want this deal at any cost to the residents and tax payers. Despite best practices and the right for citizens to see an objective analysis the deal appears to be going forward.

This solid waste contract as negotiated by the Supervisors Ad Hoc committee is a bad deal for the residents of Mendocino County and should not be completed. When I left New Jersey 16 years ago I thought that I had left these kinds of shenanigans behind. I guess chicanery is universal.

Robert S. “Bob” Bushansky

Fort Bragg

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THE TIES THAT BIND

Editor

“Ukiah man proposes pot forest patrol by citizens.” (Headline in the Sunday, Ukiah Daily Journal.) It is courageous men like Ken Good who give America the backbone that makes this country so great, a commendable solution to the ever increasing problem that we see as our national forest being taken over by the drug cartels.

But as Bob Nishiyama of the major crimes task force has said there are some problems with this idea! Not only due to the safety of the citizens who wish to take on such a daunting task, there is also the chance that offshoot rogue vigilantly renegades confronting the cartels will turn the forest into an all out war zone.

Then we can see another problem by crop raiders taxing the growers, by pretending to be the good citizens that wish to make our forest safe. What I mean is a group of people pretending to eradicate a grow when in fact they are stealing it for financial gain!

There is a solution for this. It is called the PC 832(b). This is listed in the penal codes, so you do the research. Basically what this means is that such a volunteer would have to complete a course. Of course with the economy they would have to pay for this course themselves. Once completed they shall work with law enforcement to observe and report, and then allow law enforcement to do the rest with help from the volunteers if deemed needed.

By completing the course it not only prepares the volunteer for the job at hand, it also registers them with law enforcement and builds a bind between the two entities, hence establishing the communication and organization needed to have this done correctly!

Trent Foster

Ukiah

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RAMADASABBATH

Mighty Editor,

Here is my proposition. Religion must be defanged and demystified in this time. I will mention two seemingly monolithic and intractable foes of fundamentalist fervor, the Jews and the Muslims. Certainly there are some beneficial lessons in their respective teachings and there are some dangerously divisive separatist tendencies which don’t seem to be finding healthy outlet and expression in a modern globalized world.

My opinion is that once we begin to universalize the nationalistic religions of our past not only do we one up them morally but we steal away their exclusivist claims which are the backbone of fundamentalism and we socialize all devotees into the globalized world of inter-dependence and mutuality.

So for example, as an exercise, imagine combining the Sabbath of the Jews with the Ramadan of the Muslims.

I have always admired how observant Jews don’t drive on the Sabbath, genius, an interruption in the industrial march of humankind for at least one day of the week. Combine that with for example Ramadan, a sunrise to sunset fast of the Muslims that lasts a month.

So you combine these two ideas and stop driving your car for a month.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery and humanity has been learning from itself through imitation since the infancy of this world. The oppressed imitate the oppressor, the oppressors imitate the oppressed. The young imitate the old, the old imitate the young. I once asked an orthodox Zionist where he got his fervor from. He said he saw how committed the Muslim brothers were and resolved that he would have the same zeal and commitment to his cause. I couldn’t really fault him, he was born who he was. Not sure what this revelation means for mankind. Perhaps we are all more similar than we believe despite the abyss of separation that looms between us all that is growing by the day.

People will have to unite. The rumors of war on the near horizon are Completely and Unequivocally Unacceptable in Any Degree. We will have to unite socially and spiritually to avert these crises. We will have to identify with the other, no matter how uncomfortable any of us may find that to be.

‘wearing the sandals of fear and hope’

Nate Wellred Collins

Oakland

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SAVE THE GAUGE

Editor,

Save the Navarro River Gauge—

The current message on the Navarro River stream gage reads: “STREAMGAGE TO BE DISCONTINUED OCT.1, 2010.” There is a serious potential that the USGS will no longer receive operational funds for this streamgage. Federal regulations require that the USGS discontinue operation of unfunded streamgages. Any party with concrete information on funding sources to continue the gage operation should contact…

40% of the expense of the gauge has been covered bofUSGS, 60% from Mendocino County’s Water Agency. It is the scarcity of county funding that now puts the gauge in jeopardy. If this portion of the funding from the county is not re-established by October first, the gauge will be shut down ending a continuous 59-year history.

This gauge is essential to the state’s program to address the Navarro’s sediment and high temperature TMDL impairments. The state also has an obligation to develop an action plan for the Navarro that must include a program of monitoring water quality and instream flow. Additionally, the state’s AB 2121 program to restore instream flows cannot function without the data that the gauge now provides.

The recently released CEO budget for 2010-11 for the Water Agency shows a budgeted income of just about 10.3% less than last fiscal year. The budget does not disclose budgeted expenses. It is our understanding that the cost to the county is $13,450 of which the Mendocino Redwood Company has contributed about half the cost. We understand and appreciate that MRC desires to continue their support for the gauge.

We propose that the public provide an additional contribution to the Water Agency of $4000 for the gauge for this fiscal year to keep it in operation. We believe this will be acceptable to the county. If so, Friends of the Navarro Watershed will put up the first $1000 and work for the commitment of the balance from other supporters.

This arrangement would reduce the anticipated cost to the county for the gauge by more than 50% compared to the anticipated 10% budget cut. More importantly, it will maintain a vital data source that will be substantially funded by others.

The county has made commitments in the new General Plan for surface water resources:

Policy RM-12: The County supports the creation of a comprehensive plan for surface and groundwater resources in Mendocino County. The comprehensive plan should include the following components:

• Assessing existing surface water resources, including water quality and instream flows.

Allowing this gauge to cease operation would defeat this county policy and is unacceptable.

We ask for your help in raising the additional funding. Contact Daniel Myers dmyers@pacific.net 895-3887 or Steve Hall pipsteve@pacific.net 895-2735.

Steve Hall and Daniel Myers

Friends of the Navarro

Boonville/Philo

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POT PROBLEMS

Dear Editor,

The August 13, Santa Rosa Press Democrat story of Dan Hamburg employee Calvin Walker’s complaint against him was lamentably unbalanced. While Walker’s “troubled past” was outlined in detail, allegations of Hamburg’s earlier involvement in an unemployment fraud case and the 2008 police raid on Hamburg’s property in a marijuana case were not.

Although Walker has merely gone to court with a claim against his employer, which is not an unusual matter at all, The Press Democrat gave the story a banner headline and quotes Hamburg derisively calling his former employee is a “disturbed individual.”

Obviously, the reason this story has legs is that the political season is upon us. If the PD chooses to stir the political pot by running a non-story, they should at least be fair and present the facts about Hamburg’s record as an elected official allegedly involved in illegal marijuana farming.

With $10,000 in cash, fifty plants in the ground and ten pounds of processed marijuana found on Hamburg’s property, there was surely enough smoke to concern all of us who favor medical marijuana and want to stay within the bounds of the law so the right to its medicinal use is not outlawed.

The issue is not Calvin Walker or his character, but the character and political skill of a former public official once again running for office, who is known primarily for his allegations of wrong doing in marijuana and employment issues and his weak record of achievements as an elected official. Relevant as well would be pointing out that the voters in a liberal Democratic district thought so poorly of the job done by their congressman that they replaced him with an arch conservative Republican after only one term.

In the 5th District Supervisorial contest, I recommend Wendy Roberts — a candidate who offers integrity and a genuine commitment to public service

Bill McIver (former Hamburg supporter)

Mendocino, 5th District

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WHAT MARRIAGE SHOULD BE

Dear Bruce,

This morning (August 17) I sat at the local good-ol boy hangout known as the Redwood Drive-In sharing a Logger’s Omelet with my two youngest kids, thinking of how much I had changed since the days when I was 12 years old and used to go in with my Grandma Kuny at 4am to start the coffee and doughnuts for the loggers.

Missing those carefree days. I then happened to overhear an interesting discussion brewing between two local “good-ol boys,” a discussion that I would have found myself in the middle of if I did not have my two youngest kids with me.

Now, I know it’s too much to ask that all people be open-minded, generous to all, blah, blah, blah. So I’m glad that at least one of the men made a fairly decent decision and said, “I really don’t give a shit if gays want to get married!” Good choice — just stay out of it — fairly wise I think — keeps you from being on one side or another. The other man though, in my book, just my opinion, and like I said — if I did not have my two kids!… He says, “Fags can’t breed!” What a shame! We may have more open-minded, intelligent, good looking, professional, well dressed people on this big blue earth! What a shame that instead, close-minded, unintelligent people get to breed. I know many “Fags” that have chosen to adopt unwanted or abused children, spawned by drug using, negligent “straight” people — and these “Fags” are wonderful, caring, giving parents. He also made a comment that marriage was a “religious thing.”

Ha! Ha! I’m married, not because I’m religious but because I’m in love. Maybe it used to be a “religious thing” but not so much anymore. Marriage should be because two people love each and want to be together. Straight or gay, Black or White, Mexican or Jew… Etc.

It amazes me really that in this year we still have to have such close-minded self-righteous talk. It took everything I had not to comment. I just hope that my children grow up wiser, more open-minded, more generous than some of the people in this valley tend to be. I hope they know that whether they are straight, gay or bi-sexual — I don’t care — I’ll love them, I won’t judge. If other people judge them, it’s other people’s loss. I think it would be ironic if the man who made the comment one day finds out his kid or grandkid is gay. You don’t choose to be gay, just like you don’t choose to be white, black, Mexican — you’re born that way. It doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to be loved. The two men in my life who have given me and my children more love, respect and opened our eyes to better things in this life — happen to be gay. My Uncle Mick and his partner, Uncle Marc. They are intelligent, business savvy, generous, fun-loving, dependable — and they have the strongest relationship of any couple I know. Gay or straight. That’s what marriage should be.

Lisa Kuny-Mariani

Navarro

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APPOINT LIZ, BARACK

Friends,

This is President Obama’s choice:

Side with consumers, taxpayers and investors.

Or once again make an appointment to please Wall Street.

This administration desperately needs someone who will get tough on Wall Street.

Act now to urge President Obama to name Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The new consumer protection agency is the best thing to come out of the recent Wall Street reform legislation.

With a real reformer at the helm, the Bureau could crack down on predatory mortgage loans, hidden bank fees, credit card abuses, college loan traps and much more.

But whether the new Bureau will deliver on its promise depends in large part on who runs it.

There’s no doubt who would be the most effective leader of the new bureau: Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren.

Under a lesser leader, the new agency will quickly degenerate into just another part of the Washington bureaucracy.

Just what Wall Street hopes for.

Public Citizen, an organization I founded nearly 40 years ago, fought long and hard for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It is now leading the charge to have Elizabeth Warren selected to run the new agency.

Please sign Public Citizen’s petition calling for President Obama to name Elizabeth Warren to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Warren first proposed the creation of a new consumer financial protection agency in 2007. And as head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, she has led the commission that has been the toughest official group — by far — on Wall Street. Professor Warren combines rigorous scholarship, a superb sense of needed change, and unusually clear ways to communicate those needs to families and individuals around the country.

You may have seen her on TV chairing the Congressional Oversight Panel’s inquiry, or being interviewed by Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. She more than held her own in each of these venues.

Many of the political and corporate bosses have taken a dislike to Professor Warren.

She has offended them by asking hard questions they are not accustomed to.

Why have you bailed out the banks, and received nothing in exchange?

Why have you done so little to address the foreclosure crisis, doling out trillions of dollars to big banks while spending only hundreds of millions to aid homeowners?

Do you believe the economy should work for middle-class families, or for Wall Street?

And so these powers-that-be have started a whisper campaign to defeat her. Oh yes, she’s talented, they say. But she can’t win Senate confirmation, they claim.

There’s no reason to think this is true. She has broad support and popularity across the country. Even some Republicans have warmed to Professor Warren’s plain-spoken ways, and her readiness to challenge Wall Street.

And, in any case, the responsibility of the President is to name the best person for the position, then use his powers to win Senate confirmation.

Add your name to the petition urging President Obama to make Elizabeth Warren the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Nearly two years after the Wall Street meltdown that threw the economy into a tailspin, leaving millions out of work, costing trillions in lost savings, and leading millions to be evicted from their homes, Congress has finally passed Wall Street reform legislation.

The new legislation is testament to Wall Street’s ongoing political dominance and the deep corruption of our government. The bill leaves the too-big-to-fail banks intact, it fails to crack down on dangerous speculation, and it has other deficiencies.

But Wall Street didn’t win everything.

The creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of the bill’s hardest won and most meaningful reforms.

Whether its promise is realized depends in large part on who runs the new agency.

One of the emblematic failures of President Obama was his decision to populate his economic policymaking team with Wall Street veterans and allies.

Now the President has an opportunity to make an appointment on behalf of consumers and a fair economy, rather than for those who prey on consumers and undermine our economic well-being.

Right now, Warren is considered a leading candidate for the job.

Act now to urge President Obama to nominate the people’s choice — Professor Elizabeth Warren — to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Only YOU, we and others together can make the difference,

Ralph Nader

Washington, DC

Letters to the Editor

The AVA — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:23:18 +0000

THE BAD SUPERINTENDENT

Dear Editor,

Mark Iacuaniello, superintendent of the Point Arena Schools District in Point Area, retired August 1, 2010. He arrived at Point Arena in 2001 after he was “let go” as superintendent of the Mendocino Unified School District (having previously been “let go” as superintendent in Laytonville). Mr. Iacuaniello told the reporter for the Independent Coast Observer (ICO) that, “it wasn’t a good match” and his being “let go” was “hurtful,’ he “felt bad.” Mr. Iacuaniello has been the superintendent in Point Arena for nine years and I would like take a moment to reflect what his accomplishments were during his leadership (I use the term loosely) at our district:

1. Elementary school: Was in Program Improvement when he arrived and continues to be in Program Improvement. This means students failed to meet minimum benchmarks in Mathematics and English set forth by State/Federal guidelines.

2. High school: Met State guidelines six out of eight years (2010 not available). Met Federal guidelines five out of the eight years (2010 not available). Mr. Iacuaniello did manage to build an all purpose central facility and new offices at the high school.

Mr. Iacuaniello said, “I wouldn’t use the STAR test other than for general perspective. I wouldn’t use it to assess a teacher on any given year, for example. You must look at the long term.”

I believe nine years is a long enough term and certainly should be long enough for anyone to assess what he, as superintendent, did or did not do for the district.

3. Employees: Mr. Iacuaniello hired a non-certificated teacher to teach at the elementary school. After he and county superintendent Paul Tichinin discovered this teacher had forged her teaching certificate she was kept in the classroom despite the principal’s objection. She left on a separate charge that ended her up in front of a judge and did not return to the classroom. Not to be denied, Mr. Iacuaniello instead hired her at the district office for a period of time.

Also, Mr. Iacuaniello hired a non-certificated teacher to teach Spanish and English Learners at the high school. The teacher gave the students a Spanish book and told them to “read the book and you will learn Spanish.” When the board realized he was not credentialed, as they were led to believe by Mr. Iacuaniello, was this “teacher” terminated? No, he became a “para-educator” in the classroom with Mr. Iacuaniello being the “teacher of record.” However, Mr. Iacuaniello was never in the classroom with this “para-educator.” After another incident in the classroom he was placed in the elementary school where he continued as a “para-educator.”

The District’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) has retired three times. Unfortunately, she had to return because the replacement CFOs could not handle the position (mind you we have a district of approximately 413 students, K-12). Last year, Mr. Iacuaniello hired a CFO who has emphatically informed me that he is quite “capable” of handling his job. However, the retired CFO has been kept on in the district earning additional, scarce educational dollars. This in spite of an open agendized item put before the school board to cut three to four school days from the school schedule. Fortunately, Board President Mr. DeWilder stated that this would not happen nor would teachers lose any of their benefits even if they had to cut into the reserve funds. I believe before the item was even agendized Mr. Iacuaniello should have looked at cutting the salary of this three time retired employee!

4. 2003 Gualala K-5 School Bond: 70% of voters passed a $3.9 million facilities bond to build a K-5 elementary school in the neighboring city of Gualala. At that time, taxpayers were informed, “the school site approval is nearly complete and preliminary drawings for the new school are underway.” However, because Mr. Iacuaniello failed to proceed in a timely fashion which then resulted in falling enrollment, the District lost matching State funding. After the school was built in Gualala, the bond allowed for the Arena Campus classrooms to be converted to a middle school. Mr. Iacuaniello did not retire the bond as was suggested by community members. The public was not given an opportunity to consider this major change. Since the Gualala school — which a majority of the district voted for — would not be built, Mr. Iacuaniello requested the board use $1.79 million of the bond funds to build new buildings at the Arena elementary school without voters having a voice. Currently, there is $2,266,378.00 remaining for the Gualala School Bond. In July 2010, there was a presentation to the school board regarding retiring the bond, but only to the tune of $1.79 million, not the remaining $2,266,378 that is left on the bond. What will happen to the remaining $476,478? The decision is to be made at the August school board meeting. I was informed at the last meeting by the board president, “this is a board decision.”

Further, it is unlawful for any person who is employed by the District to serve on the Bond Oversight Committee regarding bond funds. Yet, Mr. Iacuaniello not only served as secretary on this committee but also as chairman. Mr. Tichinin knew about this but did nothing to stop it. I also informed Supervisor Colfax regarding this and what was happening with the bond monies, although he stated, “It seems like it is not right for this to be happening.” He also informed me that this was not within their purview to do anything about it!

5. Mr. Matthew Murray: In 2004, Mr. Murray left a promising career as a school administrator in Southern California to become principal of the failing Point Arena Elementary School. He was brought in by Mr. Iacuaniello as a “change agent.” Unbeknownst to Mr. Murray and/or his family there had been nine principals in the previous eleven years at the school. Within a year Mr. Murray brought test scores up to the point that the school was taken out of Program Improvement, just as he had been hired to do. However, this did not come without predictable complaints from a handful of lazy, disgruntled teachers.

Mr. Iacuaniello assured Mr. Murray during his hiring process that he “had his back” because Mr. Murray knew that if things were to change the first to complain would be the teachers. However, when it came down to it, Mr. Iacuaniello supported the handful of teachers who didn’t like being asked to actually educate their wards and not Mr. Murray even though there was, as Mr. Iacuaniello stated, “a large contingent of the community” who wanted Mr. Murray to continue as principal. I believe it was this large contingent of the community support that concerned Mr. Iacuaniello because it was not until the voices of the community began to speak out loud and clear in support of Mr. Murray that steps were taken to terminate Mr. Murray quickly.

• Mr. Iacuaniello informed the ICO reporter, “If I had to do it all over again I would have done it much sooner.” Yet, Mr. Murray (as the records show) had stellar evaluations from Mr. Iacuaniello. Also, even though Mr. Murray “waived his right to privacy” and have his termination discussed in public, at the meeting when Mr. Murray was terminated the board refused the public’s demand to know why they were doing this — a violation of the Brown Act.

Mr. Murray not only did a great job elevating the children’s education in Point Arena, but the problem the school was having with discipline and gang related incidents declined drastically. Where is the elementary school today? Right back in Program Improvement.

Mr. Murray could not get a job in his own State of California and is currently serving as a school superintendent in the State of Idaho. This community and our children lost a great educator and leader. Why? Only because he did the job he was hired to do, and did it extremely well. Possibly, too well because he outshined Mr. Iacuaniello and he had a “large contingent” of the public who wanted him to stay. I believe Mr. Iacuaniello’s own insecurities got the best of him.

Mr. Murray did take Mr. Iacuaniello to court over his unfair termination. The ICO reporter stated, “Murray was unsuccessful.” I do not see it that way. I believe it was 1. obvious to anyone who followed the case that Mr. Iacuaniello committed “fraudulent misrepresentations, 2. more narrowly speaking it was a tie because Mr. Iacuaniello lost on two counts and Mr. Murray lost on two counts. Technically, Mr. Murray had to win three out of the four counts. Mr. Iacuaniello also stated that he was “getting bogged down in a legal battle that cost me and the District.” I’m not sure what it cost him and/or the District because Mr. Murray had to pay the court cost for the District. Mr. Iacuaniello went on to state to the ICO, “I guess one of my weaknesses is to give people a lot of chances; sometimes I win and sometimes it doesn’t work out for me.” Again, the ones who it did not “work out” for were all the students in our elementary school, parents, community members, Mr. Murray and his family.

• Finally, Mr. Iacuaniello stated, “It was an emotional drain and it took its toll on productivity.” So, I guess we can now also blame Mr. Murray for the failing scores of our elementary and high school since he left and not Mr. Iacuaniello’s lack of leadership skills!

6. We are classified as a Basic Aid School District which means the majority of our funding comes from our property taxes and not the state. Basic aid schools are envied by state-funded schools because while those schools are experiencing revenue cuts, our schools only see a trickle down effect and can count on approximately 2% increase each year from property taxes. Last year (2009-10), our district received $7,437,402.56 in funds/grants to educate 413 students — or $18,008 per student! An undergraduate student attending California State University, San Francisco currently pays fees of $7,000 to $8,500 (tuition and books only) per academic year enrolling in more than six units. Yet, our students who are failing to pass State/Federal Guidelines are receiving more funds than it cost for students at the college level. I can’t make sense out of this!

7. Brown Act Violations: There is absolutely no transparency within our district. As a matter of fact, there was a time the board had an off site meeting in the home of a district employee. This was not an agendized meeting nor was the public made aware of the meeting. The meeting did not have handicapped facilities. All of these are violations of the Brown Act. Our district runs from Stewart’s Point to the south up to Elk to the north. That is a distance of 44 miles. This means that if a community member would like to see what is on the upcoming agenda he had to drive over 45 minutes to the district office where the agenda was posted outside. I guess this is better than what it used to be because in the past it wasn’t posted at all. Mr. Iacuaniello does not make it available at the local post offices in this district for those members of the community living outside the town of Point Arena. The Brown Act was instituted so board members would be responsive to the public they represent and protect their investment. Unfortunately, this Law has fallen short of protecting the community because you have board members who protect the leaders, not the people! Most board members haven’t a clue what the Brown Act requirements are. I believe before a person serves on a board that is governed by Brown Act Law they should be required to pass a test.

8. Mr. Iacuaniello received the 2010 Superintendent of the Year Award for Mendocino County after being nominated by County Superintendent Paul Tichinin. But the elementary school is in Program Improvement and the high school is failing. Certainly Mr. Iacuaniello could not possibly represent the top Superintendent. When I repeatedly inquired as to what he actually did to deserve this prestigious award, no one could give me an answer. Not even the editor of the ICO who ran the story about the award! The only reason the editor offered was that he was nominated by the County superintendent. (This is the same Superintendent who thinks that “niggardly” is a racist slur and got all his fellow superintendents, including Iacuaniello, to sign a letter to that effect.)

Finally, regarding Mr. Murray’s termination, the ICO reporter stated, “a few [people] continue to loudly criticize Mr. Iacuaniello (and anyone else who gets in harm’s way) even now.” This statement makes me believe what Mr. Iacuaniello has done as superintendent of our small district should be considered the “norm” within all districts of our state. However, I believe it should not be considered a norm when there was such an outcry to maintain an educated leader like Mr. Murray as principal in our small district! I believe schools should be educating our children and improving test scores (as Mr. Murray was able to do). Mr. Iacuaniello stated to the ICO reporter “We have tried everything, including bribing them.” Can someone please, please explain to me just how Mr. Murray was able to accomplish this task — without bribing the students? Although Mr. Iacuaniello has now “retired” from the district I will continue to be an advocate for our students and in spite of the ICO reporter’s attempt to paint me as an isolated critic.

Education shouldn’t just be about buildings, which is Mr. Iacuaniello’s single legacy in his nine years at our school district. Everyone knows buildings do not educate our children, teachers do. With the generous funding our district receives to educate our children they should know how to read, write and do the math. Mr. Iacuaniello states that because “the test scores are not available until the following year” he sees them as “ineffective.” He has been with our district for nine years and the schools continue to fail in meeting the standards set forth. So, does this mean if he were superintendent for ten, fifteen, twenty more years, he just might be able to do something about test scores and educating the children? I think not, because, as he stated, test scores shouldn’t be used other than for “general perspective.”

The last statement from Mr. Iacuaniello to the ICO reporter was probably the most chilling of all, “It seems every time there is a lull in my life, another door opens up.” I pray for the sake of our children it is far away from the educational field!

Respectfully,

Susan Rush

Manchester

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GOOD WHEN YOU AGREE

Dear Editor,

As marijuana legalization momentum explodes in the media, it is good to know that honorable reporters like Carole Brodsky are in the fray, conscientiously uncovering the stories of shattered lives.

Carole did a good job covering the July DEA raid on Joy Greenfield’s Covelo medical marijuana garden (AVA 7/14/10) by going to the source, getting Joy’s story first-hand at the July 14 MMMAB (Mendocino Medical Marijuana Advisory Board) update meeting in Ukiah.

But her follow-up story “Joy Greenfield and the Russians” (AVA, 7/21/10) left much to be desired. In the proverbial twist where the victim becomes the investigated and accused, the story was turned on its head.

Brodsky’s angle revolved around questioning the truthfulness of Greenfield’s story and the motives underlying her involvement, while accepting the Sheriff’s story and the involvement of his office.

First was the access question. Joy, 69, explained at the meeting that she had such a hard time finding cannabis in Colorado for her congenital eye condition that when she found some old marijuana that wouldn’t burn easily, she mixed it with bilberry and eyebright and drank it as a tea and found the cannabis combination helped her see better “by dilating the arteries that allow the blood to flow to the eyes.”

As part of a separate several-hour interview, Joy described to me the flare-up in her eye condition that sent her to the emergency room and caused her to create the cannabis tea. She was there to study “healing with energy” and didn’t know anyone who used cannabis. She told me there were no dispensaries at the time, only health food stores.

In response to Joy’s claim of scarcity in Colorado, Carole retorted in disbelief, “Really? It is difficult to fathom how Ms Greenfield was unable to locate cannabis in a state as ganja-friendly as Colorado.” As contrary evidence, Brodsky recalled the 1972 John Denver song Colorado Rocky Mountain High singing “everybody’s high,” then recalled the 2000 Colorado Ballot Initiative that allows “treatment of certain illnesses,” and last month’s dispensary regulation bill signed by Governor Ritter covering the estimated 1000 dispensaries statewide.

There is no reason to disbelieve Joy’s claim of lack of access. The 1972 pot-friendly atmosphere has nothing to do with medical use in 2010. The 2000 Colorado Initiative was one of the most restrictive farces in the country (I believe it was limited to 2 ounces and covered very few conditions, probably not Joy’s.) My own sister, who lived in Colorado when it passed, said she too was having a hard time finding quality cannabis or a doctor to approve her use. The proliferation of hundreds of dispensaries didn’t occur until after Greenfield had left the state.

Carole also questioned the legitimacy of Joy’s dispensing collective, “Light the Way,” based on a full menu with “20 varieties of cannabis plus concentrates and edibles∏ and routine questions by DEA agents probing for Joy’s “associations” and “other grow sites.”

Brodsky asks, “Was it Greenfield’s dispensary and not the fact that she was the test case for the county’s nuisance ordinance — that provided agents the evidence they needed for the raid?”

Joy answered: “Maybe Brodsky could enlighten me by telling me what evidence the DEA needed for the raid — to come on my property, hold 14-16 guns to a young man’s head who was unarmed, and threatened to taser him if he didn’t tell them where my other grow sites were. There were no other grow sites.”

Brodsky also asks, “Could Greenfield’s 25 plant Covelo grow or even her proposed 99 plant garden have produced enough varieties and quantities of cannabis to provide for 1000 patient members of her dispensary?”

Joy’s answer: “Apparently Carol must not be familiar but all medical marijuana dispensaries have a variety of medical cannabis that collective members grow.”

The San Diego dispensing collective is still in tact with no special law enforcement problems. Greenfield says, “The city of San Diego is now ordering all dispensaries closed with cease and desist letters across the board. The bottom line is there is no ordinance to regulate them. They want them all closed.”

The remainder of Brodsky’s comments on the raid were based on quotes from Sheriff Allman, but none raised the questions begging to be asked.

Joy described an incident that happened before the raid, where a Sheriff’s helicopter flew over her land as though about to drop down. She went to the Sheriff’s office in distress, and got an appointment with Lt Rusty Noe of COMMET. She complained, “I thought you guys were supposed to be protecting me.” According to Greenfield, Noe answered that that wasn’t them, that “the Feds lease the sheriff’s helicopters.” That raises the question of who pays for what? Who pays the overtime salary of the deputies who do more than ride along — whose job is plant eradication — since the Feds don’t do that kind of work.

Allman explains why his deputies accompany DEA personnel on raids. “I would not turn down a DEA request for support, especially in the interest of officer safety.”

But plant eradication goes beyond “officer safety” or “watching the back” of other officers. How can Sheriff Allman justify his deputies from COMMET accompanying the DEA to do the heavy lifting of eradicating medical marijuana plants supposedly protected under the Sheriff’s zip-tie program?

Despite being the first applicant with permission to grow under Sheriff Allman’s 99-plant exemption program, Joy’s “protected” cannabis garden was destroyed. The DEA muscled their way in to her land and stole her plants, contrary to the Holder Memo and Obama policy in medical marijuana states. She is the victim of bad marijuana laws and a failed federal policy. No amount of questioning of her character and motives can change that. Allman needs to come clean about his role in the process and no amount of refusal to question him can change that.

Pebbles Trippet

Elk

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THE UNWIRED VIEW

Editor,

I sit in a cell for 24 hours a daze, seven daze a week with no TV, no phone, no radio. No radio gives me a unique perspective on life. Although TV is allowed, I have not had one and I do not really miss it. Yes, I miss sports and some realitie shows and I am a sucker for extreme home makeover. Otherwise, not so much.

I listen to those around me talk about TV shows and the conversations are not even interesting so I figure the shows that they speak about can not be much better.

Insofar as the news goes, I don’t need it or miss it. I get some sparse tidbits — oil spill, Obama sucks, killer caught, Obama is great, car crash kills family of five, alcohol the cause. And I knows it’s bad. I get a headache just writing about it. Let alone, More at six.

Phones. Man alive, now they only make calls by default. You can make videos, shoot movies, take still photos, go online, check e-mail, send e-mail, tweet, text, even download stuff off the Internet. Heck, you can press a few buttons and take a photo of yourself from outer space and see where you are, or type where you want to go to your phone will show you how to get there by turns.

Me, all I still want to do is phone home. (Anyone under 28 might not get that.)

As for computers, I would not even know how to turn one on. I’ve heard a lot about them and they kind of scare me. Anything you can simply push a few buttons on and get to see anything, go anyplace — oh-oh. Pornos, chat rooms, millions of videos about every and any thing. Buy and sell damn near anything. Good news for me. I would not leave my house to get into trouble. If I was to leave my house with laptops being super thin with eight hour battery life. Or, better still, coffee shops with plug in spots and free Internet access. Bad news: I would never leave the front of the computer. Just thinking about it stresses me out.

Now we come to the radio. I miss that more than the rest of these dam-vises. Music is manna for the soul. I try and remember all the words to all the songs I know. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to hear the music but it just isn’t the same. I find that I try less and less. It’s as if it has lost its edge. All these dam vices have lost their shine. They don’t seem to matter. I just don’t feel any pressing need for them.

People say, I can live without them while still having them. Me, I’m without them and still living. It’s like I’m an anomaly. I read books and magazines. I communicate using words written on a piece of paper using a thing called a pen. Then I send it by putting it in an envelope using what is called snail mail. I know this: if I worked for the United States Post Office I would not be pulling for any prison reform. With over two million people in prison, using snail mail if you let too many prisoners out it would be a hit to the Post Office. Heck, the loss of stamp sales alone would put a couple of postal workers out of job.

The crazy part is this: if I got any of these Dam-Vises, I figure it would not be long before I thought I could not live without them. Until then all I know is: I have no headaches, no stress, no worries about not catching the latest updates at six. Still I write using a pen and paper and not pushing buttons and I could just be saving a few people their jobs.

That’s just my perspective.

Tommy Brennick

Tehachapi

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CALTRANS, AGAIN

Editor,

The already saved Richardson Grove State Park is still being threatened by Caltrans. They think their plan to widen Highway 101 through there is a done deal. Who can stop this madness? When does saved mean saved? Is it time for the Save The Redwoods Again League?

The Beckingtons, Confused in

Little River

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ESCORT!

Dear Editor,

I send you my respect and thanks for the newspaper that I receive every week. Here at San Quentin the AVA is the only newspaper in Mendocino that brings all the good news and bad news.

I’m sending this letter to confirm or say that Johan Espinoza never had a life sentence or anything like that. He took the deal for 15 years. Why? Because he was scared to go to trial and his dump truck attorney, Berry Robinson, scared him more than he already was. That is why he took the deal for 15 years. Now after he took the deal, Berry Robinson and convinced Johan Espinoza to snitch on everyone. That is why he says in a letter that Berry Robinson brought up a good idea or point to get off after he testified against me on trial. All those lies he said about the case and on the record. He said that he never heard or knew of a better deal from the DA’s office. He snitched on us because he wanted to do the right thing. I was found guilty not because a jury or the judge did not believe him. They know that he was lying from the beginning because he wanted to get off from doing any time at all. I got 25 years plus 8-to-life for being a man and taking it to trial. After five months I find out that Johan Espinoza got four years for his cooperation on the case. After he and District Attorney Newman said on the record that there was no deal. He was looking at 15 years — “no deal at all.” I guess St. Nick came in and gave him four years for being a good boy and snitching. The only problem about telling is when you get to prison you have to be escorted and be in protective custody for the rest of your life.

They already made a song about protective custody here in prison. It goes like this: Now you wish you could walk the mainline. But you shouldn’t have dropped the dime. Now they’re yelling out ESCORT every time you walk the line. You shouldn’t have done the crime if you couldn’t do the time. Now your mom is sad cause your all bad. Escort, escort, escort.

Very truly yours,

Juan ‘Rico’ Fernandez

San Quentin

PS. For all you guys out there, if you get caught for anything and if you don’t want to do the time, get Berry Robinson who will find you a good deal and put you in protective custody the rest of your life. That is his game. I am not mad at Johan Espinoza. He should and played his cards right and taken his time like the man that God made him to be. I believe in karma. God will take care of the rest. I send mine! Keep your head up out there. God bless you all.

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UNEASY ABOUT EASEMENTS

Mendocino County Board of Supervisors

Dear Chairperson Brown and Members,

June 21, 2010 — Off-Site Septic systems should be considered as both a Planning issue and Public Health and Safety issue.

The current and recent update of the Mendocino County General Plan Goals and Policies are set with an approximate knowledge of the number of parcels, their size and designation impacting the nine elements of the General Plan outside the Coastal Zone and fourteen elements contained within the Local Coastal Program Element.

As there is no known or approximately known number of developable parcels which may be created by this change in policy, the impact on the Mendocino County General Plan may be significant. In fact, significant to the point that it can jeopardize the Environmental Impact Report determination necessary to approve the updated General Plan.

In sum, we do not believe that it is reasonable to consider such a policy change without a study of the potential number of developable parcels which may be created by such a policy change.

We are concerned with five related points:

• Numerous known areas which cannot meet perk requirements are also water short or in drought;

• Current county policy does not require proof of water prior to the issuance of a Building Permit in General Plan areas;

• Such a policy change can cause a deflationary price drop of existing parcels held by many as prospective investments, as the supply of parcels could dramatically increase;

• If the Board approves the policy it should be required that all such systems have a dedicated maintenance agreement which runs in perpetuity with the land;

• The existing policy should not be changed in the Coastal Zone where Boundary Line Adjustments combined with off-site septic systems can create numerous legal non-conforming parcels impacting a number of LCP policies.

We would suggest that the Board of Supervisors review the ability of the County to oversee and manage an increase in the amount of septic tank pump-outs. As the Board knows neither “septage farm” on the Coast is either owned or under contract with the County.

These issues clearly indicate that a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review is necessary prior to consideration of adopting a policy which can jeopardize the General Plan and its Local Coastal Program element.

Respectfully,

Norman L. de Vall, President

Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance

PS. August 4, 2010 — We wish to reiterate the points made on this subject in our June 21, 2010 letter and continue our opposition to the suggested policy of allowing Off-Site Easements for Disposal of Septage.

Such a policy, without limitations, could or would create an unknown number of parcels thus impacting some, if not all, of the elements of the County’s General Plan. In addition, we wish to state that if such policy were to be imposed within the Coastal Zone that it would, in effect, constitute an amendment to the Local Coastal Program without the benefit of the public process or CEQA review.

In our opinion if such policy were to be consummated that the action of the Board would be in violation of Coastal Act of 1974 as amended. We therefore request that the proposal be tabled or voted down until such time the cumulative impacts of such a policy have been enumerated.

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WHAT’S THREE YEARS?

Editor,

I hope enough time has passed since it was published that mentioning the following item won’t be upsetting. I thought it was wonderful at the time and still do.

“7/25 9:42pm A 48-year old man, Pedro Saldana Rios, 51, was questioned by deputies in downtown Boonville about an unnamed relative who was arrested at his home on Anderson Way for outstanding warrants.” — AVA, 2009-07-29 p. 4, Sheriff’s Log

Cheers,

Michael Slaughter

Pacifica

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GOOD RIDDANCE, IKE

Dear Editor,

I see from the ICO that the Point Arena school superintendent is departing.

Goodbye and good riddance to Mark Iacuaniello, who in my personal view has to be the worst piece of bureaucratic trash it’s ever been my displeasure to personally encounter in an otherwise legitimate public position.

Doubtless I’ve been misled, but I see him as the sort of guy who will always give an earnest citizen — petitioning for help on a significant mission — an evasive, unhelpful answer if there’s any way to avoid a simple, straightforward, useful response.

(My mission, actually, was on behalf of AVA Editor Bruce Anderson, to locate high-school pictures of Martin Laiwa “in his football uniform.” How could a school super find any reason to obstruct this public-interest objective?)

My feeling is that a man like “Ike” should never, ever be given any sort of public charge, not even dog-catcher. The dogs would deserve better.

As to the disgraceful episode of Ike’s deceitful hiring of Matt Murray — and basically fraudulent termination of Murray shortly thereafter (again just in my personal opinion) — Murray is ten times the man Ike is. What a pity Murray wasn’t the superintendent, and Ike the job applicant! I’ll warrant that Murray would’ve seen through Ike in about 30 seconds (as I did, back in 2001), and would’ve sent Ike packing to peddle his damaged goods elsewhere, preferably in Alabama.

Let’s hope that nobody’s stupid enough to hire Ike to work for Mendocino County as… anything!

Peter Lippman

Reno

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TAX AVOIDANCE

Editor:

Sales Tax Blues — Buying Online to Avoid Sales Tax Costs Us Locally.

While economists nationwide argue over whether we have begun to recover from the Great Recession, one financial reality is beyond dispute. Our state, our county, and our town of Ukiah, continue to face the biggest budget challenge in decades. Even in a slowly rebounding economy, California is faced with continuing budget shortfalls, which means that local governments — even if they raise school and property taxes — are going to be cutting support for such essential services as policing, fire fighting, and schools.

The enormous irony in these troubling times is that California is allowing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax to go uncollected by allowing remote online retailers with a significant business presence in our state to ignore their obligation to collect sales tax.

Given the sums involved, you would think there would be many in the state calling for this situation to be remedied. There are not. Perhaps it’s because opponents of sales tax equity have, so far, managed to obfuscate the issue through a combination of misinformation and scapegoating.

Under current sales tax law, any out-of-state retailer is required to collect and remit sales tax for purchases made by residents in California if the retailer has a physical presence in our state. Current sales tax laws dictate that an out-of-state retailer has a physical presence in a state if they have a store, warehouse, office, or sales agent in the state.

Amazon.com and other online giants have thousands of affiliates in California, and they are actively promoting products sold by these out-of-state businesses. When this promotion results in a sale of said product, they earn a commission. That, by any definition, is a sales agent, and that means that these online mega-retailers have the legal presence in our state that requires them to collect sales tax.

The Amazons of the world and online affiliates are naturally opposed to any steps that states might take to enforce sales tax laws. Strategically, their stance makes a lot of sense because it gives them a significant competitive advantage over local businesses that must add the additional cost of sales tax.

Furthermore, there is no doubt that consumers enjoy this so-called advantage. They will shop at out-of-state e-tailers just to avoid paying sales tax. Hence, the recent closure of two local music stores just after Christmas who not only found themselves paying the same price wholesale that their customers were paying retail on-line, but also having to collect an additional 8.75% sales tax that their on-line competitors refuse to collect.

We need to ask ourselves, in the long run, who really is footing the bill for these duty-free purchases? Well, I can tell you who is not paying the bill: Neither online affiliates nor remote retailers.

We are not talking about just a few dollars here and there flowing out of our state, county, and city. The reality is that hundreds of millions of dollars are “leaked” out each year, and the figure is growing. This is money that should be going to first responders, to local communities, and to lessen our tax burden. Instead, this money is flying out of our city and county to remote retailers and the affiliates that pocket the cash while taxpayers subsidize their use of our in-state services, our roads, and their very business.

Taking advantage of our state’s unwillingness to enforce sales tax laws during the best of times is egregious enough. However, during a recession that has hit us all so hard, it’s an affront to every business and citizen in the state.

And what’s worse, on an economic level, it makes no sense.

Legislators who oppose sales tax equity tout their belief in fiscal responsibility. But, in truth, how fiscally responsible is it to maintain a public policy that subsidizes out-of-state retailers while punishing in-state, tax-paying businesses and residents? Does fiscal responsibility demand that out state government burden residents and businesses with higher taxes and fewer services to placate out-of-state retailers that only take from our state and provide nothing in return? Yet that’s the stance our state legislators and Governor are currently taking.

Opponents love to argue that folks like me are calling for a new tax. The idea that any struggling retailer in our town would demand a new tax on consumers just doesn’t pass the giggle test. In truth, if an out-of-state retailer does not have nexus in the state, shoppers are already required by law to submit the sales tax to the state. The real question is over who should collect this tax — you as a consumer or the out-of-state retailer. Now, granted, our state has not really done much to enforce the collection of use tax from residents, but as the budget situation worsens, it will. So either you’re going to pay it or someone is going to collect it from you.

Finally, as for those who worry that sales tax equity would somehow harm online business in the state, let me stress that most online retailers, including Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, and Sears, already collect and remit sales tax for online purchases. Technological advances have greatly simplified and automated this task. Huge corporate retailers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com are the few remaining holdouts. That said, the money they siphon from our local community and residents is significant and growing exponentially each year.

If our county needs to add to the local sales tax to fund local, critical services, so be it. As a local retailer, I support that, but with the provisos that the County Supervisors and top managers share the pain equally with those who do the work, as citizen Jim Houle continues to insist on, and that stupidity of privatizing public services stop now.

When you go to the Internet for some tax-free shopping, I urge you to remember that your purchase isn’t really free at all. In fact, that tax-free purchase costs all of us and our communities a lot more than you might think.

Dave Smith

Ukiah

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RURAL HEALTH

Editor,

National Health Center Week 2010 (August 8-14) is about celebrating the mission and accomplishments of Community Health Centers for the past 45 years, as well as looking ahead to what they will achieve under Health Care Reform. While the earliest changes from the health care overhaul won’t take effect until next month, Community Health Centers coast-to-coast are gearing up to be key figures in the government’s five-year plan to cut wasteful spending, expand access and strengthen primary care.

One of the bright spots in America’s health care system, Community Health Centers are the family doctor to over 20 million people at 8,000 sites nationwide. Health Centers are especially vital in rural and medically underserved areas. Health Centers in Anderson Valley, Laytonville, Gualala, and Point Arena are the sole providers of care in their community. In 2009, Community Health Centers in Mendocino County served 49% of the county’s residents. In Anderson Valley, 78% of the residents sought care at the Anderson Valley Health Center. This rise in demand during a year of recession reflects the health centers’ commitment to providing access to care regardless of the patients’ ability to pay.

Demand for access to care is projected to rise under health reform and expanding health center capacity from 20 million to 40 million nationwide over the next five years is central to the White House’s plan to deliver quality care to the currently uninsured while trimming health care costs.

Community Health Centers are effective providers because their approach to health care is local and targets the unique and diverse health needs of the populations they serve. They are directed by patient-majority governing boards that ensure the health center’s services are responsive to the patient population, culturally appropriate and deliver results that improve health outcomes. With unfettered access to a range of primary and preventive care services under one roof — including dental, medical, and even behavioral health services — more people will receive regular care that is coordinated and targeted to their specific health care needs. By focusing on preventative care and providing patients with a medical home, health centers are projected to save the US health care system as much as $300 billion over the next ten years.

National Health Center Week is sponsored by the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC). To find out more about Health Centers and their role in Health Care Reform, please visit www.nachc.com. For more information about Health Centers across Mendocino County, visit www.ruralcommunityhealth.org.

Boris Scherbakov

Ukiah

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ROUSTED ROOST

Editor:

Re: Raven Roost Rubble that was once a string of trees on the south side of Fort Bragg high school —

With a blanket pulled over her head, Detective Diana Wood Duck of Deadtree nests in a hollow log near a woodland lake beside some decapitated trees. Geez. Though I’m not Ripley, believe it or knot, the United States shall soon be paved. Clean-shaven? Wo-ho! So-ho then! Concrete cerebral cortex, bad weather. Faruna bangs her black metal dish. Bang! License tags in Washington State say “Evergreen.” At loggerheads with logging, The Raven Roost at the high school is rubble. Sticky beaks say, large machines and a dirty place soon become a teacher’s parking lot!

As Rubicon asphalt approaches — our terrorist: Rubicon asphalt. Tree me, tree me.

Diana Vance, Nancy Drew of the Forest

Mendocino

PS. No! I refuse to put metal utensils in my mouth.

Letters to the Editor

The AVA — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:32:35 +0000

WHERE THE FISHIN’S GOOD

Editor,

I was warned when we moved here to this wonderful state, that the weather was lousy, but the fishing was great! I said, “the good with the bad, the worst with the best,” and I packed up my bags and headed out west.

Now I fish in all kinds of precipitation, no worse is it here, than the rest of the nation, but, one thing is true, to this I’ll attest: the fishing advice was simply the best.

I’ve caught salmon and steelhead and sturgeon and more, (being boatless), I’ve done all this from the shore). But now in this winter, river levels are low, and metal and fishing is desperately slow.

I’m sitting here feeling a little forlorn praying for rain (that which I was warned). I believe, even south, they’re getting some snow. I hear two feet fell in Sacramento!

“But I’m lucky,” I say, “I shouldn’t complain,” I live here, in this state, and still pray for rain! I don’t see me leaving. This state’s too much fun. God had a good day, when he made Oregon.

* * *

I’ve always loved this poem. Two of my favorite letter writers and friends (I have so many of them) are now here in this grand and glorious state: Jim Schmidt who used to live in Weaverville, North Carolina, and Don MacQueen (even though Don got demerits next to his name for his repulsive shenanigans with the letter “n.”)

Thank you so very much for the wonderful article by Joe Bageant from Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico. My oldest and dearest friend lives there and I’ve been toying with the idea of moving to Ajijic. She has sent me a lot of real estate brochures. It was also interesting to read that Efron Mendoza was born in the state of Jalisco.

Hope all of you are cheerful and in good health. If you don’t have that, nothing else matters much.

I love you all,

Leslie Kraft

Coos Bay, Oregon

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SUPREME VOTERS

Editor:

It’s quite true that the Supreme Court has the job of rendering decisions on whether or not laws are in accordance with the Constitution. I wonder if anyone would enlighten me, then, on the role of the Supreme Court in Bush versus Gore, 2000. What did the state of Florida’s election processes have to do with the Constitution? It seems naive to think that the Supreme Court doesn’t overstep its role for political reasons. It is also naive to think that George W. Bush elected by popular vote or by the Electoral College. He was elected by nine Americans only, in a 5-4 vote. You and I had nothing to do with it.

In 2000, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court set America on a new and disastrous course. The echoes of that terrible decision reverberate to this day. The fact that that’s what happened, and could happen again, is why who a president nominates to the courts is so important.

Jim Schmidt

Eugene, Oregon

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TWISTIFIED!

Editor,

Twistifecation Personified — On April 20, 2008, in Florence High Desert Federal prison after a white versus black melee on the yard, several guard towers opened fire — shooting all their ammunition — shooting seven prisoners, two fatally. One native was shot in the foot while in the fenced-in sweat lodge about 400 yards away from the fight.

A tort claim was filed in federal court by a lawyer as Steel versus USA. The US attorneys filed a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction because the prisoncrats had “discretionary function exception” to do what they did. Or, realistically, they had a 007 license to shoot, kill and maim as many convicts/fish in a barrel as they want.

I’m trying to file a Bivens (not a tort claim) for my friend Ed Evey who had eleven teeth shot out while he was walking 100 yards away from the combatants, unaware of what was occurring at the far end of the yard. Did Thomas Jefferson have it correct when he wrote, “the twistification of the law”?

Ronald Del Raine

Florence, Colorado

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ISRAELI SOLDIERS SPEAK

Editor,

On a snowy day in February I went to a talk given by Dana Golan, a young woman who had been a lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Force. She now serves as the executive director of “Breaking the Silence,” an organization of veterans who have served in the Israeli Army since September 2000 and tell the Israeli public about what it’s like for soldiers and Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Although some are exempt, most Jewish Israelis are required to perform military service after graduation (Palestinian citizens of Israel are not drafted.) Dana told us the majority of Israeli adults have been in the Army, but only 10% of veterans that served in the occupied territories, thus that experience is little known and seldom discussed.

Breaking the Silence began its work in March 2004 and its first project was an exhibition of testimonies and photographs by soldiers who had served in Hebron. The organization’s goal is to stimulate public debate about the moral price that Israeli society has been paying for the reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population and control its life. Breaking the Silence makes sure that all testimonies from soldiers are carefully researched, cross-checked with other eyewitnesses and/or the archives of human rights organizations.

Dana had brought with her copies of this small book containing testimonies of soldiers who have served in Hebron from 2005-2007. Hebron is a large Palestinian city in the West Bank, in the midst of which 800 Israeli settlers live, and these volatile demographics have a profound effect on how the soldiers function. In the neighborhoods near the settler enclave, Palestinian movement, livelihood and living space are severely restricted and subject to military control.

Here are a few excerpts: “It’s a crazy town, Hebron. At first, when I just came in the Company, I mean I was this leftie kebbutznik, you learned that Arabs are human, etc. really, I would fight with my mates after an arrest — we put the detainee in a jeep oor patrol tricl with us — and I’d fight with them not to beat him up. It makes you sort of apathetic eventually: beat him, don’t beat him, what do I care?” From testimony #34.

“Your own grasp of reality gets distorted. After having such total control over so many lives, you can do anything you want to them (i.e., Palestinians); you can steal from them, sleep in their house, anything. Take their car. You really can do anything.” From testimony #28.

Soldiers describe middle of the night raids on random houses, completely trashing everything in the home: “We could choose any house we wanted, it’s not that we had some intelligence information about the terrorist hideouts..” From testimony #71.

Soldiers were also ordered to do “fake arrests,” to practice arresting someone at random and then release him after several hours.

“Petty looting was normal. Backgammon sets, cigarettes, everything… gifts for our girlfriends.” From testimony #38

“There’s this car accessory shop there. Every time soldiers would take tape-disk players, other stuff, they would raid his shop regularly.” From testimony #67.

“Settler violence was directed at us (the Army), at the police, at the Palestinians and at any Europeans who were there. Any time a Palestinian would pass along the road, not every time but often, they would throw stones at him. If we tried to get them to leave, they threw stones at us. They threw eggs, tomatoes. If there are disturbances, we should summon the police. We must not touch them (the settlers).” From testimony #69.

A soldier describes a “sterile road.” “You realize the injustice in this? Sterile means that all the shops in this street, that once were shops, except for one or two, are shut down, all the houses that once were inhabited, now stand empty, they’ve been blocked and no one can go on living in them. No Palestinian may enter the street.” From testimony #55.

“Now all the Palestinian shops (in this area) are welded shut, and sprayed over with inscriptions like ‘death to the Arabs,’ ‘Arabs to the gas chambers,’ and other such creative stuff.” From testimony #75.

Soldiers sometimes describe how hard it is to talk about their experience in Hebron when they go home: “I also experienced this kind of numbness. If you keep getting into what that does to him (a Palestinian detained at a checkpoint) and to me, you end up not being able to carry out your assignment so you naturally go numb.” From testimony #60.

“I’m afraid to think what would happen to us if we stayed there, because this sense of not being able to face myself, and tell the person closest to me in the world, being unable to tell her what I had done, for me this is the worst discredit.” From testimony #15

Here a soldier describes a Palestinian father defending his young son from the military: “Usually the parents start beating their kids up so you won’t beat him up. He was so different, he only defended him as if he were totally fearless, not afraid of anyone. He reminded me so much of my dad, really, I couldn’t even look at him. My dad once had a mustache and so did he. He really reminded me of my dad, his whole demeanor, his body language. You look at them; they have such a different culture, they behave differently at home. Everything. They’re another people. What can you do? Different. Then suddenly you see something that’s so similar to you, to yours, even to your home, it was a real shock.” From testimony #96.

The testimonies are filled with stories like that. Their sorrow and remorse for abusive behavior, longing for the public to understand the reality of military occupation and the discovery of human connection. Many of the scenes they describe reminded me of how the United States forces have treated civilians in many parts of the world. I am grateful for soldiers, anywhere and everywhere, who have the courage to break the silence and tell the truth about their responsibility for needless suffering.

Breaking the Silence has also published similar books about the experiences of women soldiers in the occupied territories and the soldiers who took part in the attack on Gaza December 2008 to January 2009. More information is available on their website: www.breakingthesilence.org.

Terry Rogers

New York, New York

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BRIBING JUDGES

Editor,

In a recent Off the Record item in the AVA, it spoke of the campaign contributions to Judge Moormon. As I have often said about campaign contributions to our elected officials, that this is typically the case that it is bribery to get opinions in the contributor’s favor and extortion that a lawyer better give or the rulings go against them. That’s what’s happening in all our political elections. The only difference is the bigger and more important, the more dough one has to cough up.

Which leads to one of the most egregious, anti-democratic set of rules that campaign contributions ever bought. For those who don’t know some of the rules of corporation stock, I will try to make it as clear as I can. There are mainly two types of corporations. Private whose stock is not sold to the general public. The other is public corporations which most big corporations are. The US government in 1934 created a department (the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC) to clean up the hanky-panky that existed and to stop any further manipulation of the market. Each year public corporations have to have an annual meeting and vote on certain items which the board of directors anbd top managers put on the ballot. Also, any shareholder with simple rules to qualify can put a proposal on the ballot. That sounds fair and democratic. But the SEC, the government department, puts rules that severely limit what a shareholder can put on the ballot and if the corporation bigwigs object to the proposal it’s sent to the SEC for confirmation to allow or not allow on the ballot. That’s the kicker. If they allow it on it has been so watered down that it doesn’t mean much. Then the most undemocratic SEC rule is that the proposal is only advisory even if it passed by 90% of the shareholder vote.

How did this rule happen in our so-called democracy? Guess what? Campaign contributions. When management is pushed about this farce, they answer that the public doesn’t know how to run a corporation. Well, the public doesn’t know how to run our country but the majority vote count is binding, besides at these annual meetings when a corporation is doing good, there are few votes against management. When the corporation is doing bad or when management gives themselves huge pay the vote goes against management and the shareholders scream and holler at the annual meetings. But campaign contributions win as they thumb their noses at the shareholders.

Emil Rossi

Boonville

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CAREER OFFENDER

Dear Mr. Anderson:

I am a 60-year-old renegade alchemist serving the last seven years of a 40-year sentence for manufacturing recreational pharmaceuticals without the permission of the American Kleptocracy. My name is Dash and my friends call me “Doc,” while the federal courts label me a “career offender,” perhaps the most truthful finding a court has ever inadvertently made. For yes, I have spent the last half-century doing my best to offend the sensibilities of the staid and politic. My motto is: a crime a day keeps the ennui away. I always walk on the grass.

So it is with immense pleasure that I read your periodical each week when I receive a copy from my friend Robert Brame, aka the gentleman bankrobber, for in your masthead is another great truth: Anderson Valley Advertiser: America’s last newspaper. Shades of Horace Greeley! I savor the words of those 12 pages as a man dying of thirst sucks the moisture from a cactus with little regard for the spikes to puncture the lips of my preconceptions and biases.

Having spent so much of my life in prison it was probably inevitable that I should have generated a pullulating plethora of penal prose in describing life in the big house to my family and friends. Of course, the reviews always rave. In spite of Robert’s urgings over the past 12 years (you previously printed some pieces from him) I had never seriously considered submitting my stories and rants to an unbiased reviewer until I recently read Todd Walton’s essay, The Presence of Absence (June 16) which answered a question I had never consciously asked myself: why do I write? To bring light and sound and feeling to the void or the chaos or the darkness or the presence of the absence.” Presence of absense — my life eloquently described in just three words.

And so I have included herewith a potpourri of stories, an essay or two, poems, a chapter from my purportedly posthumous autobiography, “Mandatory life.” Use anything you like and deploy the remainder in starting a fire in the pot-bellied stove I know must reside in a corner of your office.

While I would never presume that you would need my permission to exercise unfettered editorial discretion, if you do, then you have it. Should you choose to use something from me in the AVA, I shall undoubtedly find it difficult not to use that as a sort of validation of my existence and consequently inundate you with a veritable tsunami of tales from the belly of the beast. If not, then I shall continue to rationalize the waste of my life with the immortal words of that ol’ tree hugger, Thoreau: “under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also prison. The only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor.” (Henry David Thoreau, “On Civil Disobedience.:)

Still standing and sincerely yours

G.W. “Doc” Dash, Register No. 53671-065

Federal Correctional Complex, USB Coleman II

P.O. Box 1034

Coleman, FL 33521-1034

PS. sorry about the photocopies. The powers that be are incapable of maintenance so they run the machines until they no longer work and then leave them by the side of the road, sort of like our economy!

PPS. Two In One, by GW ‘Doc’ Dash

I remember as if in a dream / a life full of passion and pain / where I wore the face I was born with and / could look in your eyes and you would / simply be all that I wanted to see: myself.

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TICHININ MUST GO

Editor,

RECOVERY…OR DISASTER?

We the undersigned are demanding that County Superintendant Paul Tichinin be rescinded as Trustee of Round Valley Unified School District, in favor of a state appointed trustee.

We are a group of concerned citizens who have witnessed Paul Tichinin, time and time again coerce our elected school Board into using his MCOE [Mendocino County Office of Education] to forestall Round Valley USD from being acquisitioned by the State without prior disclosure, or apparrntly even any consideration of cost.

We the undersigned have invested over $1,200,000 into Paul Tichinin’s so-called “Recovery Team.” Paul Tichinin and his team havr willfully and consistently obstructed disclosure of expenditures to our school board and to our community. This $1,200,000 exaction has only resulted in LOWER test scores, a precipitous drop in enrollment, and a loss of programs which we feel are vital to our mission as a school district and to the morale of our community at large.

We believe that the only way to restore trust and transparency to our schools is for the State of California to appoint our district an independent trustee. Feel free to voice any relevant concerns — sunlight is the best disinfectant!

John Smoak, and

A group of Round Valley Parents and Residents

Covelo

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CHOCOLATE CAKE SECURITY

Dear Editor:

San Diego has a county fair. It’s held at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. My wife and I attend every few years. We went this year. It was a weekday, but still crowded.

But this year there was an additional irritant. We had to wait in a long line to pass through security and a metal detector. The county fair gods no longer allow WMDs of any kind: no penknives, no nail clippers, no scissors — not even metal tableware for a picnic.

They say, and I quote: “if you wonder whether something is allowed or not, probably it is not.”

Does this strike you as odd? It did me. But nobody squawked (well, almost nobody). Folks just plodded through passively — like it was a normal part of the fairgoing experience.

Maybe they were afraid somebody was going to attack the chocolate cake exhibit.

One wonders, what’s next? You gonna need to go through a security check to attend the cinema? A baseball game? If a security check is required for the county fair, then surely it’s needed at the mall, a rock concert, a play or a university lecture.

Last week the Washington Post ran a series of articles called “Top-Secret America.” Apparently, security agencies and companies have proliferated to the point where nobody knows what they are all doing. Nobody. Not even the security agencies who hired them.

Osama bin Laden has really done a job on this nation. The 911 tragedy revealed the American people to be a bunch of children, cowering under our (security) blankets.

Land of the free? Home of the brave? What rubbish!

Sincerely,

Bart Boyer

San Diego

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WHERE’S MY $55?

Editor,

Whereas I attended the first Earth First! meeting in Berkeley in 1980, and have been active ever since, I’d like to attend the Earth First! Journal roadshow’s presentation. However, because I demanded that East Bay Food Not Bombs reimburse me $55 (money that I fronted for EBFNB at Acton Street House to cover their utility bill obligation, seven years ago), the east bay punk stupidity banned me, without ever inviting me to a meeting to discuss the situation, from entering the Long Haul Infoshop. In the midst of this jackass insanity in the east bay, am I going to be able to walk into the Long Haul Infoshop without fighting my way in?

If this is all just too difficult for everybody in postmodern California to deal with, tell ya what: let me make it easy for you: drop off $55 at my current residence at 593 62nd Street, Oakland, CA 94609-1246, and I will go to the Starry Plough Irish Pub located across the street from the so-called “anarcho-revolutionary” Long Haul Infoshop, and I will enjoy a couple of beers and skip the roadshow, and we can still talk about current environmental campaign strategy when you come over to the pub after the roadshow presentation. Fair enough?

Still Earth First! after all of these years

Craig Louis Stehr

Berkeley

Nota bene: I posted this message as a comment to the roadshow’s notice on San Francisco Indymedia’s activist calendar, but the SF Indymedia techies removed it. Therefore, I am sending out this email, because there is no other way for me to communicate this.

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HOMELAND SECURITY

To the Editor:

Nobody in their right mind would defend the growing of marijuana on public lands. Those lands belong to us and we should not have to fear stumbling into a garden.

Having said that, there is a question that needs to be answered.

When a garden is discovered on federal land, the Forest Service has access to personnel from the following acronyms: USFS, BLM, DEA, NPS, DOJ, FBI, DOD and some I am probably not aware of. Why then should that include the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department?

If you ask Sheriff Allman, he would talk about grant money, task forces, mutual aid, blah, blah.

But let’s cut through the BS and get down to brass tacks. The citizens of Mendocino County are without the services of an experienced deputy because he and three other “county employees” were conducting a raid on federal land.

Wouldn’t you rather pay them to find the local meth labs than do the bidding for the federal government? We need a return to the basics of policing – which is to police the jurisdiction that pays your salary.

Ken Good

Ukiah

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THE GREEN GOLD RUSH

Editor:

The eyes of America if not the world are placed on the city of Ukiah, watching for the pivotal outcome placed on locus of axis for the legal outcome of the green gold (marijuana).With this we have many speaking of the tourism business that this may generate, the green gold is to Ukiah as whiskey is to Kentucky.

The commonwealth and commerce are looking for ways to improve the attractiveness of our downtown area, pointing out such blight as the Palace Hotel. Yet it is the very gauntlet of terror that the Palace Hotel sits on that is the killer of all potential tourism in our city. As I have mentioned before, all eyes are on Ukiah not unlike the Soviet missiles of the cold war aimed at America. State Street has the most potential for disasters and liability in our city. From north to south this street is metered in a sequence of traffic signals to maintain a speed limit of 35 miles per hour.

Between Talmage and Stanley street, slightly over a mile, there is consistent traffic lights to sustain the speed limit. After this there are great gaps of unmetered traffic, causing confusion for the drivers and pedestrians alike!

Let’s examine the North side of State Street from Stanley to Scott. Norton Street’s nearly a quarter of a mile and at several crosswalks we have no traffic lights. Then from here to Low Gap (which is an anomaly in itself without left hand turn signals) and another quarter mile we see this again. From Low Gap all the way to Ford Road there are no metered signals to further sustain the speed limit. This is for a half mile with the Garrett Drive crosswalk directly in the middle! I mention the Garret Drive crosswalk because this is the walkway that most drivers either do not or wish not too see when a pedestrian is crossing. I have seen some autos stop and at the same time others go right ahead with impunity, more often enough driving in front of the pedestrian missing them with a matter of a couple feet!

What we see here is the age old problem of city planning versus city growth! State Street is set up with the metered traffic to sustain a speed limit at 35 miles per hour and with the great gaps, it is one’s guess as to who has the right of way other than California law which says the pedestrian does. But if the driver maintains a speed limit of 35 miles per hour they may feel as if they are in the right!

Such a Catch-22 can only be solved by extending the traffic signals to the north and to the south to accommodate the sustained speed limit. But the city has no money and it can not afford to do so.

I will tell you this: What the city can well not afford is to have another pedestrian hit and injured/killed in the streets of Ukiah – especially if it is a tourist!

Now that I think of it, not single person in Ukiah or in America has even been scratched by a Soviet nuclear warhead!

Trent Foster

Ukiah

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ANOTHER RITUALISTIC CALL

Letter to the Editor:

Well another ritualistic call to Federal representatives regarding Immigration and Depleted Uranium. It is clear that Congress is very very very tardy at this important work. The issue around immigrants is that there is no real plan. Bush in a moment of coherent thought mention the Bracero program. Alas a plan! I would bet that many of the Latino immigrants here would love to go back every year and even stay home for a few if they did not have to pay 3-4 thousand to get back, and run the gauntlet of a hot and dry desert and friendly pistol packing racists at the border, so called minute man, huh! The spin on that revolutionary name makes Sambo buttermilk seem like nuthin’. Most of these undocumented folks don’t want to be citizens. They just want to work. Anyone who thinks we can get along without immigrant workers is in the closet. So lets deal with it! Contact your representatives and apply pressure, lots of pressure. It works. They need pressure now. It is in the lime light. Obama has to do something to quell the situation in Arizona. It is causing a lot of unnecessary racial tension. And the truth is that the real problem is Congress, where Congression health and retirement benefits abound, and secure jobs are a real deal.

Fallujah was in the radio the other day talking about the very high level of birth defects there because of the incredible battle using depleted Uranium. This seemingly safe toxic byproduct is everything but! Uranium takes many years to degrade and during that time it is radioactive and deadly. What is depleted is that it won’t works as well in the really bad nuclear weapons. Oh also depleted is the thinking that they should use this as a weapon. In total violation of the Geneva Convention. It is the toxic got-to-have even though other countries are getting the seem dense penetrating shells using nontoxic tungsten alloys. Meanwhile in Fallujah and parts of the US babies with huge tumors on their faces and bodies, some with two heads and others with none. We have more than polluted Fallujah, with have made it another Chernobyl and our defense leaders keep on using it. Think our soldiers are safe? Sorry wrong. They come home to create birth defects in their own young and some die with the radioactive load they are carrying. Wanna celebrate Memorial day, get rid of the depleted nuclear maiming weapons that maim and kill everyone around them. Weapons should be safe around soldiers and not linger in battle fields. That is why we have these conventions to protect the soldiers and innocent citizens after the wars.

And while you are calling Senators Diane Feinstein (202) 224-3841 and Barbara Boxer(202)224-3553, mention Feinstein’s bill to stop the use of BisPhenol A (AKA BPA) in food containers. The plastic made from the almost estrogen replacement for women. Too much estrogen messes with everything. Kudos to Diane Feinstein for raising this issue against a beastly food industry. Don’t forget Congressman Mike Thompson (202) 225-3311 in your calls.

Time for Congress to get go on the other crucial issues.

Greg Krouse

Philo

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TO MY DAUGHTERS

Editor,

On My Twin Daughters’ 30th Birthday

for Marithea and Vanessa

August 2, 2010 — O, the joy that we are human! The joy that we were born into human form!

About whether we should believe in life after death, what does it matter as we look out across Pacific Ocean in Mendocino or look up at Pikes Peak from Manitou Springs?

This is my shameful secret — that I do not believe in an abstract God. I believe in the spirit in the sparkling salt and sunlight in the wave’s spray. I believe in the lazy earth spirits under the roots of the Colorado spruce.

I do not believe in life after death. I believe in the everlasting joy of the present moment.

A simple plain face shows through every form. It is God’s face.

Once, I had believed there was a center in the universe, but there was none. Once, I had believed in the past and future, but, in the present, I found love that was real and strong.

Your Proud Father

Ukiah

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DEFENDING MLPA

Editor,

In Ventura, every Thursday morning, there is a popular boat trip to Anacapa Island. Anacapa I. is part of the Channel Islands National Park. Weather and traffic conditions permitting the boat will pull into Packer’s Cove and drop anchor. Some of the island coastline has been protected under the MLPA for the last five years, some is off limits only during the Brown Pelican nesting season and some is unprotected but Packer’s Cove is unique, it has been protected from commercial and sport fishing for over 30 years. The boat is the Peace dive boat and, unfortunately, its passengers are all scuba divers. Its unfortunate because probably only one tenth of one percent of the State’s residents will ever get the chance to see a long term marine protected area and compare it to adjacent areas which are unprotected. The difference is unbelievable, Packer’s Cove is lush with big fish, lobsters and scallops, this is what the State’s costal environment was like 200 years ago. When the boat moves its like going into a desert.

People who argue that marine protected areas are unnecessary don’t know what they are talking about. Presently there is only one completely protected area north of Monterey Bay, this is a tiny cove in Sonoma County at Salt Point, it is the only place in Northern California where Red Abalone are protected. Vague conspiracy theories about oil companies don’t trump the need for marine conservation. One of your writers states that environmentalists oppose the MLPA, what a joke! Would you care to name him or her? The MLPA calls for protecting only 6% of the California coast, it is long overdue.

Frank Onstine

Blue Lake

PS. Some of those reporting on the MLPA in the AVA refuse to identify themselves. I am a retired logger and recreational diver.

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PEACE, LOVE, SUN

Letter To The Editor,

Thanks a bunch!

A powerful Thank You to all the great folks who supported, worked hard and helped make our Summertime Parking Lot Faire a big success!

Thanks to Village Cobblery — Dennis Ranieri (whatta guy!), Ron and son, and Joyce; La La Smokes — Ali and Pam and Pam’s family; The Incredible Duo Dancers, Tessa Howard and Ling-Yen Jones (who were awesome!); our Fabulous Vendors: Annie and Joseph Sanchez, Janmaria Chiappa and friends, Kim Ghezzi, and Ramona and Mario Mariscal; The Delicious Food Vendors, Carla and Ken Jones and the Aguilar Family; Faviola Aguilar, Janet Kukulinsky and everyone from Action Network, and especially all the wonderful people who joined us for lots of Fun in the SUN! Thanks to local media: The AVA, ICO and Real Estate Magazine, KTDE (especially Joel, Liz and Fred), KMFB, KYZX/Z, and everyone who helped us get the word out.

And a big thank you to Mother Nature who blessed us with a bright, sunny, warm and lovely day. Thank you all for your loving support and hard work. See you at the 2nd Annual!

Peace,

DJ Sister Yasmin

Anchor Bay

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BAHL TIDRICK

To The Bahl Hornin Foundation

“Not to be summersetting, but the Bahl Boont Steinber Foundation deserves a huge yibe! Every year they hold a sockin huge bahl tidrick at the Applish nook and flow the resulting higs to the community. For all of their kindness and generosity they truly deserve a great yibe, yibe, yibe and thank you.

The Anderson Valley Historical Society

Boonville

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AFRICA YESTERDAY?

Editor,

Africa Today has been one the best programs that has appeared on KPFA. It’s host, Walter Turner managed to escape the great purge of radical programmers in 1995, five of whom (M-F) were replaced by Gerry Brown, giving him the springboard to return to politics as mayor of Oakland and he has been fooling the public ever since. Now KPFA is at it again,moving inexorably towards the center and this is the latest indication of it.

Jeff Blankfort

Ukiah

* * *

July 21, 2010

Amelia Gonzalez, Acting Assistant General Manager & Development Director, KPFA

Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you regarding the proposed program schedule changes at KPFA. It is my understanding that those changes have not been finalized.

The proposal to move Africa Today to 11 AM on a weekday changes the time of the program, the composition of the program, and my ability to produce the program. Africa Today has for more than three decades been a regular program of KPFA. The program was initially produced by Faraha Hayati and has for the last almost 20 years been produced by myself. Africa Today includes a mix of music, African related community announcements, and differing segment lengths highlighting issues relative to Africa, African Americans, and the broader African Diaspora. The program segments do not fit “regular” formats of 28 or 58 minutes but are adjusted to mix preproduced segments along with live segments, announcements, and short news updates. Africa Today is best described as a news magazine format. The preparation time for Africa Today on a weekly basis requires more than 4 or 5 hours. Interviews and segments that involve the reading of a book and other background material can take up to two to three weeks to prepare and include extensive additional reading. The topics are selected using a broad base of contacts that has been developed over more than 20 years from my work as an activist and in academia. I am usually able to tape some of the programs on Friday mornings while other programs are produced live on Monday evenings. This is the format that allows me to manage a very busy professional schedule and still produce a quality program.

Africa Today on KPFA has long been established as a nationally and internationally respected news magazine on Africa. The program is one of the most frequently listened-to programs on the web that is produced on KPFA. Africa Today has outstanding connections with media, activists, organizations, institutions, and academics throughout the United States, Africa, and other parts of the world. The connections with Bay Area Africa related organizations and individuals are excellent. The program has hosted practically all Bay Area based Africa/African related organizations and institutions over the past many years. Many of these non-profits need greater attention and support for their Africa and community related work and outreach.

Africa Today is a priority contact for scholars who speak at the major universities in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are part of the Priority Africa Network, which coordinates activities for African and African Americans throughout the world. Africa Today works extensively with Africa based organizations such as Pambazuka News and the Global Fund for Women. On a number of occasions Africa Today has been able to pair with Transitions on Traditions and produce feature programs on African and African American related issues. During the last two years were able to produce special programming on Dr. Ivan Van Sertima and Dr. Asa Hillard. Africa Today has built a community of supporters and institutions that represents a unique space in media on African issues. More importantly, Africa Today serves as a resource for programmers at KPFA who are interested in covering Africa related issues.

Your proposal to produce a pre-recorded program in unworkable. Such a proposal would require me to spend more time producing and recording the program, time that I do NOT have. Essentially your proposed offer that Africa Today move to an early morning slot means that the program would end, both because of my inability to produce it and because of the loss of a 30 year international audience. This is a major step backward and a retreat from a Pacifica-wide mission that has for many years included a focused program on Africa at the majority of the Pacifica Stations.

During my many years at KPFA I have acquired the production skills to be able to do basic editing, run the board, engineer live phone calls, complete meter readings, and do live interviews without a board operator or a program producer. I have developed these skills out of necessity given KPFA’s inability to provide this support.

I currently serve as the Chairperson of the Social Sciences Department at the College of Marin and President of the Board of Directors of Global Exchange. I have developed and teach the courses on African History and African Contemporary Affairs. My work as a Professor and Chairperson involves more than 50-60 hours per week. I am on the Board of many other organizations and involved with many other projects and institutions. I travel extensively to Africa and the Caribbean, often doing interviews and making contacts that will be part of the larger resources of Africa Today. Africa today benefits from these contacts and interactions, KPFA likewise benefits from these contacts.

My ability to continue to produce Africa Today is based on Africa Today remaining in its current time slot. I cannot, and should not have to increase the amount of hours that I currently donate to KPFA to continue a quality program that has an established reputation and need. Africa Today is among the VERY few non-commercial radio programs that is directed at Africa. In my long tenure at KPFA I have donated thousands of hours on projects and programs to ensure the sustainability of listener sponsored radio. My dedication and sacrifice to the KPFA community is well above question or measure. The notion that arbitron ratings should be the primary basis for making a decision on KPFA”s ability to continue their only program on Africa is short-sighted and disrespectful of my work and the community that has built Africa Today.

Africa is a continent four times the size of the United States including more than 800 million people and 53 countries. The community interested in Africa matters and should be a permanent part of Pacifica’s mission. Your proposed program changes will eliminate Africa Today from the airways.

Respectfully,

Walter Turner, Host/Producer

Africa Today, KPFA

Berkeley

Letters to the Editor

The AVA — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:04:53 +0000

OUT TO PASTURE

To whoever accused me of being “severely neglected”—

My name is Filly and I am the equine equivalent of a 95-97-year-old woman. I know you have this beautiful image in your head of what a horse should look like: smooth muscles rippling under a glossy coat perhaps. Just strike that from your mind! Unfortunately, I am never going to look like that again.

I am a skinny, bony old lady with wrinkles, a swayback, stringy muscles and some gray hairs. But if you had taken the time to look me in the eye you would have seen the light in them that has nothing to do with pain and neglect. Maybe you did look but just couldn’t see.

I am still enjoying myself. I have a roof in winter and 75 acres of freedom and grazing during the dry season. My humans keep an eye on me to make sure I have all four legs under me and am not in pain. I am wormed and have all I can eat. Despite my arthritis, I am still quite mobile. Being skinny helps with that. I can even still manage a short canter on occasion.

I wish the general public was more aware of what a normal appearance is for a truly old horse. There once was a time when people had “horse sense,” and it was synonymous with “common sense.” That seems to be in short supply now. Having this unrealistic expectation of equine beauty for all horses is unfair. I don’t look like the horses on the cover of Horse Illustrated with their young, muscular physiques, glowing coats and lush manes and tails.

If it offends your fine sensibilities to find me in your viewshed, look somewhere else. I don’t go into your human rest homes and complain about your 95-year-old great-grandmother, so don’t come into my pasture and complain about me. I am enjoying what little time I have left to me. My human would like me to live out my days and die a peaceful, natural death if possible. As long as I have a happy expression in my eye, she says she’s not going to bump me off. My fear is that if people make too much of a stink about having to look at me, she may have to put me down.

So, please, I know you probably meant well, but give an old lady a break. You could have asked anyone who works and lives at Ferrington Vineyards about me and they could have told you I’m just ancient. I don’t want to be rushed into my grave. I may be getting senile, but I am not stupid.

Severely Old at Ferrington Vineyard

Fille (via Colleen Kobler)

Philo

PS. Oh yes, the Animal Control officer said I look pretty good for my age.

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WHAT A SHAME

Editor:

This morning when I took the early MTA bus and we stopped at the Aquatic Center in Fort Bragg. Do you know what the bus driver said when there wasn’t one dog at the dog park?

Dog gone.

Diana Vance

Mendocino

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NO MORE NEGATIVE SURROUNDINGS

Editor,

I send you my respect. I hope this letter finds you in the best of health and spirits. I enjoy reading your one and only newspaper, the AVA. I’ve never come across a newspaper as entertaining as yours. I get so into it that I read it from the first word to the last word of the last page. Every Thursday I look forward to having it in my hands and once I do it makes my time go by much faster.

For this reason I would like to ask you if you may send me a subscription please.

As you know they hit me with four years which means I will be here for another little while. It’s no biggie though.

I did the crime. Now I have to do the time. I was immature, young and dumb with negative surroundings and now I’ve learned that the people I hang out with will determine my future lifestyle! My loved ones will surround me at all times once I’m released. But that’s if I make it out of this dangerous situation I put myself in.

It’s true I received a life sentence but my attorney, Berry Robinson, brought up a good point that sending me to prison was like sentencing me to death. You know and I know that’s the honest truth! But it is what it is and I will just take it one day at a time.

I look forward to receiving your paper. If you publish this letter please send me a copy of the paper where it was published. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Johan Espinoza

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin, CA 94974

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CODE RED

To the Great People of the Ukiah Valley and Mendocino County as a whole:

The Mendocino County jail’s medical staff was mentioned in the Ukiah Daily Journal recently as having no compassion or sensitivity towards the inmate population. True. What is also true and to some might seem a crime is Sheriff Allman’s recently revamped classification system in his Corrections division. With the help of Captain Pierce, Sergeant Studer and correctional officers Leon and Ziad, there are now high, medium and low security codes. The lower the code the more privileges you get. The highs get nothing, not even with good behavior. Privileges consist of more dayroom, TV and how much you can spend on commissary. The lower your code the more you get.

Now this new system places child molesters and rapists at a very low code and they are afforded the maximum privileges the jail as to offer. Not only does this system cater to sexual predators, but it coddles the dropout gang members who still are committing crimes who can’t be in the general population. Wouldn’t you think these criminal types would be of the highest code since their crimes are against the most important element of society — the women and children of Mendocino County?

Sincerely

A Concerned Citizen

951 Low Gap Road, Ukiah

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COLLECTIVE EGOS

Dear Bruce,

How did we get into the mess we are in socially, financially, environmentally and politically? There is no easy answer to that, but if we look deep enough and historically enough, we can get a glimpse of some causative factors.

Western civilization has been dominating nature for hundreds of years, with a Biblical sanction to do so, rather than living in harmony with nature. The Protestant Reformation ushered in the extreme individualism that is evidenced in all Protestant religious groups, in its derivative economic system we call capitalism, and in the greed mode that has sanctified profit to replace cleanliness as being next to God.

Primitive and tribal societies skewed the spectrum far over to the societal end of the tension between the group need and the individual need. What we have done is to flip it over to the other extreme end of the spectrum, deifying the individual as against the societal need. The result of that is Ayn Rand and her philosophy.

In one of his brilliant political essays David Michael Green points out that the individual must yield some of his/her powers to the social group called the family; the family must yield some to the city, the city to the state, and the state to the national government. There are many among us in America who no longer want to do that, as we evidence a demand for more state’s rights and less Federal power.

He goes on to point out that nations are not willing, at all, to surrender some of their sovereignty to an international organization that would have the power to prevent wars, to prevent environmental degradation, to prevent the neurotic and sometimes psychotic acting-out of religious fanaticism, and to enforce economic change that would prevent starvation in the developing world.

That goes a little bit of the way to explaining why the United States has refused to sign the accords and agreements that would do at least some of it. The religiously driven individualism creeps upward, and manifests itself in non-benign nationalism and extreme selfishness.

Egoism and egotism seem to rule the day these days. The opposite of that would be to expand the notion of ‘us’. Until and unless we are able to evolve to the point where everyone on the planet is seen as ‘us’ there will always be ‘us’ and ‘them’. In reality, that’s all there is, just us. But reality has way of being distorted by extreme individualism. This brings us back to despair, because the century we are now in does not show any desire to avoid the wars and environmental disasters of the past century. As I see it, mankind is on the brink of collective mass catastrophe, the warning bells are sounding, the tipping points are tipping, the oil spills are spilling, and change is mandated by reality and resisted and avoided by all of us humans.

Lee Simon

Far ‘n Away Farm, Virginia

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BE FRUITY & MULTIPLY

Editor,

Soozie Boobies bugged J. Biro about his spraying weed killer every spring for a fire clearance. Biro knew fire clearances from several forest fires in the Greenhorns and understood that there is bare dirt and there is everything else. A half-cup of 41% RoundUp in 10 gallons of water, times two hours application time, at the proper point in the season, which is February or so when the grass is up a few inches, would result in mostly bare dirt until the following season’s rains. That’s a few bucks and a coupla hours. But, Soozie bugged J. Biro so when he finally used the gallon of glyphosate that had lasted for years, he let things grow.

And it rained and rained, and after it rained it still rained enough often enough to keep everything growing like hell into summer. J. Biro bought gas and expensive mix oil. He cleaned up the weed whacker. He had to get out early to whack the massive thistle fields before they flowered. He whacked and whacked for hours, then had to clean up everything and himself for more hours. And it rained more, and more stuff came up, and the thistles sprouted new stalks, and J. Biro bought gas and expensive mix oil and whacked and whacked and all was as a pool table. But it rained and even rained more and more stuff came up and J. Biro bought gas and expensive mix oil and whacked and whacked.

Finally everything was permanently whacked until winter! Biro put away the machinery and began the personal decontamination process. Stepping into his bathroom, he noticed that the big four-foot sliding glass panel was lying as 50 pounds of crystal kitty litter on his floor. The weed whacker, as it is wont, whacked a pebble at high velocity into J. Biro’s glass door and destroyed it. Fortunately his junk collection contained some three-foot panels, plus plywood to cover the gap. And now he has to hope he can find a cheap piece of glass at the recycling yard. Retail, this stuff is expensive!

But the moral of the story is that next year J. Biro is returning to RoundUp.

J. Biro

Santa Rosa

PS. Morton Gomberg suffers a Hell similar to J. Biro. Gemma Payne decided the front lawn needed testosterone and scattered her seed everywhere thereupon. And up came the grass, thicker than ever. And down fell the rains, thicker than ever. And more up came the grass. When it was time to be mowed, much too early in the season, the aging Morton Gomberg was just barely equal to the challenge. But a mere week later, the grass was thicker than ever. For the first time in his life, Morton is considering either hiring a gardener or insisting that Gemma Payne mow the lawns.

As to RoundUp, Morton wisely sprayed it on unwanted weeds in the driveway and around the pool. Yes, it’s poison and Morton feels as Soozie does about poisons. But, Bliss! No jobs needing done that would have been engendered by NOT using RoundUp.

Gemma also bought plant Viagra, some sort of enhancement tablets that causes all plants to grow vigorously, i.e., all plants except the day lilies that she bought on the TV shopping channel. But our leafy vegetables have never been more leafy. I hope the plants prove to be equally fruity.

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OVER-IMPOUNDMENT

Editor,

Lest readers not understand anything else about the protest against police checkpoints in Sonoma County they should understand that I support law enforcement efforts to get drunken drivers off our roads.

My problem is with our police taking advantage of the poorest people of our community by implementing an impound policy that is contrary to current law.

I have reviewed several hundred pages of documents, including Department of Motor Vehicles statistics and reports received from Sonoma County police officials and obtained from other sources. I have had discussions with community members, including Santa Rosa Police Chief Tom Schwedhelm and Petaluma Police Sgt. Ken Savano, and conducted several hours of legal research. I’ve also observed Sonoma County law enforcement checkpoints for more than a year.

The claims put forward by the police, that 30-day impounds (1) comply with constitutional protections against unreasonable seizures, (2) are necessary to deter unsafe drivers and (3) are a fair penalty for those who break the law, are not persuasive. I am confident that our protest against the 30-day impounds of cars driven by non-drunken drivers is not only appropriate but necessary.

With others from the Committee for Immigrant Rights, I have discussed with Schwedhelm the fact that police have a choice. They can choose to follow the law and stop 30-day impounds of non-drunken drivers’ cars, and there will be no protest. However, they choose to impound cars from hard-working individuals and families.

I have on various occasions seen officers in Santa Rosa impound cars of families with small children and leave them on the side of the road with all their belongings in freezing temperatures, putting the children at risk of getting sick.

I saw an officer direct a person, who was driving home from work when his car was impounded, to walk down a dark winding road in Petaluma — in front of the outlet stores.

Through discussions with community members, I heard about a father who was forced to carry his disabled adult daughter down a busy road when his specially modified minivan was impounded.

All these people were placed in danger by police who are sworn to protect them. These stories represent why I am protesting our local police department impound policies.

There are several alternatives to impounding cars for 30 days for non-drunken drivers. A few of these alternatives (which other counties have chosen to implement) include:

• Citing the driver and giving him or her an opportunity to make a phone call to a licensed driver to pick up the car within 30 minutes.

• Allowing the car to remain parked where it is, if the location is safe place, and having the driver sign a waiver allowing the car to be towed at the expense of the driver.

• Allowing the vehicle to be stored until a licensed driver can pick up the vehicle.

The thing some critics cannot fathom is why anyone would advocate for those who are easy targets, the poor and undocumented. I would like to tell these people that before they rush to judgment, they should think for a moment or more about their true motives for criticizing my objection to our impound policies.

Alicia Roman, attorney

Member of the Committee for Immigrant Rights.

Santa Rosa

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THE SANDERSON EFFECT

Editor,

Thanks again for the AVA’s heads-up, in depth reporting of the upscale Sanderson Gang’s pot and welfare scam operating out of marvy Mendo Village.

High Times will, no doubt, do a cover story featuring Mom and Pop Sanderson posed as a stoner version of the Grant Wood painting, “American Gothic” — the bonafide poster kids for the mellow mom and pop pot racket.

The whole sordid case brings up many other unanswered questions: How were the Sandersons able to live an upscale, in-your-face lifestyle and so easily scam the Mendo County Welfare Department? What did the artists know and when did they know it? Who were the New York contacts? Why the media blackout? Other than the AVA’s extensive coverage and the Ukiah Daily Journal’s initial write-up of the bust in October 2008, the “local” corporate press totally avoided the story.

Will the multi-agency big ecstasy lab bust “west of Willits” disappear down the same rat-hole to avoid embarrassing some well-connected people?

Bet on it.

Cheers,

Don Morris

Skunktown/Willits

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DEFENDING MLPA

Dear Editor,

My good friend and former colleague Don Cruiser and I have different opinions on the California Marine Life Protection Act of 1999. I previously stated the reasons I support the MLPA in the Mendocino Beacon. In response to Don’s article in last week’s paper, the MLPA, as created by the legislature, was never intended to be exclusively a fisheries management tool. It is a whole eco-system approach to marine conservation that addresses all aspects of marine ecology through methods based upon the most readily available science.

Similar to land-based conservation such as wilderness areas, conservation easements, and open space preserves, ocean conservation places a few carefully selected, biologically important marine areas off-limits to certain activities. It is certainly not an effort to close all access to fishing and/or recreation on an entire coastline.

Today we are witnessing several on-going ocean tragedies. These horrific scenarios make me believe that more not less ocean protection is necessary. That is why I am serving as a regional stakeholder for the North Coast in the MLPA process.

As we work to address both community concerns and meet the science requirements of the MLPA, I have attempted to bring local knowledge into this process. It is my hope that together we can find the solution that has benefits for both humans and aquatic ecosystems.

William Lemos

Mendocino

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THE BIGGER THE CRIME…

Dear Editor,

Mark Hunter, Prisoner Number 80840, writes, The warden was too busy to read your letter, An Open Letter to the Warden of the Salinas Valley Prison, so the Assistant Warden called me instead. He said he would place my name on a waiting list for GED classes.

Mark wrote that he was wrong about the number of books allowed each inmate at Salinas Valley Prison. He is permitted to keep ten books in his cell at one time. In addition, he commented that the library at that prison is pretty good.

In today’s mail a four-page letter from Ralph Nader’s organization, Public Citizen, asks readers, “How many corporate executives have ever been sentenced to prison for environmental crimes: 11 BP workers dead, oiled and dying pelicans up and down the ruined coastline, oil moving towards the Atlantic Eastern shore beaches. The Answer. None. Public Citizen recommends prison for the CEO of BP.

Scanning the Press Democrat today, I read about a young lady who with her friends had spent some time wine tasting. When she, as the designated driver, ran her car across the center meridan to crash head-on into the oncoming vehicle, she caused the death of two older women. This young woman is facing 20 years in prison. Comparably speaking, how much prison time does the CEO of BP deserve for a world’s record disaster caused by his and his associates’ criminal disregard of basic safety, intentionally ignoring the many warnings from BP’s contractors about shoddy and unsafe practices.

Sincerely,

Dorotheya M Dorman

Redwood Valley

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REPORT FROM Q

Dear Editor,

Hey, what’s up? It’s Too Tall & Friends. Thanks for sending me the paper! The timing was perfect. I am no longer housed in the same unit as Rico and Mr. Rogers, but, now I’m in the same unit as Aaron Vargas. We are on separate sides so it’s hard to get the paper from him. We had a chance to socialize on the yard and he seemed to be doing well under his circumstances.

Thanks again. I hope to keep receiving your paper in the future. Larry in Soledad: don’t let the voices get to you. Just keep writing those awesome poems!

To all the real Mendonians I send mine! Keep up the good work!

Sincerely,

Robert Hendy

San Quentin

PS. Any Mendonians who would like to write or be a penpal would be greatly appreciated. They are few and far between. What’s up, Fort Bragg?

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THE BIG POT DANCE

Editor,

I like Scotch Whisky. Since it is nearly impossible to make myself, I buy it, taxes and all.When I smoked cigarettes, it was nearly impossible to grow and process the tobacco myself, so I bought them, taxes and all.I can make fair wine, but it is much easier and tastier to buy it, taxes and all. Top notch marijuana is so easy to grow and process, any further steps toward decriminalization will almost certainly finish off any industry, taxes and all. As other states follow California (as they have with medical marijuana), watching the ensuing dance of the feds will be highly entertaining.

Name Withheld

Mendocino County

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WHEN INTOXICANTS MERGE

Editor,

The Press Democrat rightly raised the proliferation of wine tasting rooms and the implications for public safety, specifically DUIs (“Outing with friends ends in tragedy,” Tuesday).

Coincidentally, alongside was another, seemingly unrelated story about how Oakland “could usher in the era of Big Pot” by way of approving marijuana factory farms (“Oakland could go for pot in a big way”).

There are other stories, many of which extol the benefits of legalizing marijuana and what a great business it would become, solving all our deficit problems, etc. I have questions:

If marijuana is approved for normal use in addition to medical use, what is to prevent a proliferation of marijuana tasting rooms?

Could we have people driving from one marijuana farm tasting room to others so as to sample and select the best, the most aromatic, the more exquisite weed? If so, what will be the DUI standard for pot in case people get high?

Do we need more police and police training? Do they need special tests and equipment separate from that for alcohol-related offenses? Do we need more judges and lawyers?

Also, will it be OK for wineries to also sell pot? How about casinos? Can you get cancer from smoking pot like cigarettes?

Am I asking a lot of dumb questions, or are they an examples of the law of unintended consequences?

Robert Aherne

Rohnert Park

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TASTING ROOM DRUNKS

Editor,

My family has been in the grape industry for many years. Back in the day, wineries had tasting rooms, but not to the extreme that you see now.

I have lived my life in the Geyserville area and have driven into Geyserville on a daily basis. Since the influx of tasting rooms, I try to avoid the area on Saturdays and Sundays. When I do go to town, I see people walking the streets sipping from one or two glasses at a time. Some of these people are well on the way to being intoxicated. Nothing is being done to control this.

If a bartender serves a person who is intoxicated, the bartender is liable if that person enters a vehicle and causes an accident. Yet tasting rooms are not monitoring. Last Sunday’s accident is a good example. Two people are dead, and three others are injured.

Tasting rooms need to be better monitored, and when people are openly drinking on the streets or showing signs of intoxication, they need to be arrested and held until sober.

The wine industry needs to be paying for more law enforcement in the areas of these tasting rooms to ensure the safety of the citizens.

Janet Perotti

Geyserville

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FAIR PLAY FOR FIRETRAPS

Editor,

Jim Young laughed over lunch at Boont Berry the other day saying, “Even if it’s not true, you’ve got to admit Bruce is funny. He got you good this week in Valley People.”

Not having read the paper yet I didn’t know what he was talking about but I quickly rectified that as there was an issue on the next table. I laughed myself when I read it but it is true that I do rather appreciate that old abandoned building a short block south of the firehouse in downtown Boonville.

It’s got character. Something sadly missing in much of the Napa-Sonoma-Mendocino wine/tourist complex. Character, in my opinion, is akin to beauty. It is pleasing to look at and pleasant to have around. Old people have character. Maybe they’re not much use any more, practically speaking, but their wrinkles, clacky false teeth and shaking hands hold a history that can help fill a room, even a community, with stories and memories that project a sense of propriety and well being, even belonging. An old person doesn’t have to actually speak a memory it just kind of oozes out from their being.

The old Ricard building does that for me. I can remember when it housed the first Anderson Valley Health Clinic started by Marc & Phranklin Apfel and Peggy McFadden along with other community members. I took my kids there to have them mended. Before that I can still picture buying dinner at the pizza parlor that had red and white checkered oilcloth on the tables and then dragging laundry down the gangway to the laundromat in the rear. Little Orphan Annie’s in the corner shop was a great place for used clothing. One evening while taking a whizz around back, Digger, who was living there then, came out and told me he would get his rifle and blow me away if I ever did that again. I laughed then at the thought of dying such a trivial death but he and I became friends with time. I smile when I think of Karen Ottoboni’s uncle Fred and his partner “aunt” Bill Spenard who owned the place for a while and how they were inspired to remodel with wood siding after watching a John Wayne movie.

Sitting idle is not a crime or an abomination, not for people, old or young, nor buildings. I daresay we would probably be a healthier people if we could only learn to relax.

Old, aging redwood is not ugly. Old buildings are pleasing to look at whether they’re of use or not. As for firetraps, at about a thousand to one, the buildings that burn are the ones with people living in them. Buildings just sitting unoccupied tend not to spontaneously combust.

Personally I think concrete, no matter what color you make it or how smooth and sexy it is shaped, is cold, hard and uninviting. I think vineyards of the sort that sits as a welcome mat to Boonville that enslave the magnificent, tenacious vine in stunted, redundant, monotonous rows are an abomination of nature. I think every wine tasting facility, no matter how well maintained or architecturally acceptable is painful to view given the degree to which they normalize to young and old alike the concept of drinking and driving.

I’m sorry, but the old Spenard building just ain’t ugly. It represents a time in the past when plastic and sterility wasn’t so fashionable. It’s a part of my life and a part of the history of Boonville and I’d rather see it preserved with a plaque put up than have it torn down. Long live Glen Ricard.

David Severn

Philo

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ME & ALEC BARR

Editor,

I finally found a writer who shares my feelings about the joyous yuletide season: “Alec Barr actively hated Christmas, its preparations and its aftermath. He loathed the falseness of forced gift giving, the down-to-grandma’s- farm spuriousness of the family visits, the snowdrifts of unwanted cards, and rounds of overmerry parties which turned December twentieth to January second into a steady debauch you shared with people you would rather not see at all. Santa Claus entranced him not, nor did the people you met under Saint Nick’s ho-ho-hearty aegis.” Robert Ruark, “The Honey Badger.”

What a writer Ruark was (he died of alcoholism at 49). His great novel “Uhuru” set when Kenya was shedding British colonialism, is really a great commentary on the whole human condition with Africa as a crucible. I once heard Ruark referred to as a poor man’s Hemingway. What bullshit. He wrote circles around Papa with far fewer titles and much less acclaim. I assume you’ve read him but you’ve gotta get beyond “Something of Value” to discover his true greatness as a scribe. Anyway, couldn’t resist sending the above as a potential filler.

Very Best,

Denis Rouse

Bieber

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OUR WIRELESS AGE

Editor,

The wireless age is upon us, yet as we have progressed into many new technological ages, new problems associated with the new technology crop up. Many years of independent research is spotlighting some real concerns in terms of DNA damage, blood brain disruption, calcium uptake problems, cornea damage, sleep disorders, heart arrhythmia, seizures, and electrohypersensitivity.

The Toxic Trespass radio show looks at these sorts of toxic intrusions with the intention of exposing for avoidance. Greg Krouse, hosts will include an interview with one of the authors of “Health SOS: the dark side of the wireless revolution,” Camilla Rees. The other author is Dr. Magda Havas, Ph.D. The book not only defines the problem, but provides a unique Q&A to questions that may not be too obvious. Mr. Krouse has said that Health SOS is a must have book to move through the wireless age. The show will air Tuesday, August 3 from 7-8 PM PST on 90.7 and 91.5 FM or on the Internet at www.kzyx.org. Ms. Rees is offering two free books to listeners during the show. There will be a call-in period and listeners can email queries to DJ@kzyx.org while the show airs.

Greg Krouse

Philo

Lemos v. Cruiser

Letters to the Editor — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:06:11 +0000

Dear Editor,

My good friend and former colleague Don Cruiser and I have different opinions on the California Marine Life Protection Act of 1999. I previously stated in the Community Forum the reasons I support the MLPA. In response to Don’s article in last week’s paper, the MLPA, as created by the legislature, was never intended to be exclusively a fisheries management tool. It is a whole eco-system approach to marine conservation that addresses all aspects of marine ecology through methods based upon the most readily available science.

William Lemos
Mendocino

Five Questions for Tom Allman

Letters to the Editor — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:21:43 +0000

1) WRITTEN MEDICAL MARIJUANA INSTRUCTIONS TO DEPUTIES TO BE POSTED ON THE MCSO WEBSITE

Will the Sheriff’s Office create and post comprehensive written medical marijuana guidelines to deputies to be used in the training of deputies about common encounters between law enforcement and qualified patients at the gardensite, i.e., a primary point of friction?

2) INDEPENDENT NEUTRAL THIRD PARTY GARDENSITE VERIFIER POINTS TOWARD A MORE TRUSTWORTHY PROCESS

Will the Sheriff agree to open the independent third party verifier process to include diverse patient input on criteria & choices, prior to decisions, not after decisions are made? This applies no matter which regulatory law is in place. (A sheriff’s meeting consisting of verifier interviews is taking place Thursday July 22.)

The purpose of the third party verifier is to increase patient-grower trust in the process by way of a neutral witness. There must be patient input into the choices of the verifiers and the criteria used in making those choices, or it is not neutral. Decision-making solely on the part of the sheriff’s office without patient participation is untrustworthy & likely to be skewed toward a law enforcement bias in violation of patients’ rights.

This points to the need for a laison committee, such as a Citizens’ Advisory Board or CAB, or an ombudsman, to communicate & run interference between local government agencies & the patient community on a range of relevant issues.

3) SHERIFF’S OFFICE CALL FOR INVESTIGATION INTO WHAT LED TO THE FEDERAL DEA RAID ON JOY GREENFIELD’S COVELO PROPERTY

Will the MCSO as well as the Board of Supervisors call for the proper authorities to initiate an investigation into what led to the federal DEA raid on Joy Greenfield’s 90-acre Covelo property, in violation of Obama’s federal policy, while she was simultaneously approved and protected by the Sheriff for a 99-plant exemption permit?

An investigation by the Ca Atty General’s office may be the most appropriate avenue, since the Greenfield situation involves both the AG Guidelines and the Holder Memo.

A change in policy is required in light of the protection promised going terribly wrong & the DEA raid being widely condemned. Joy Greenfield, 68, elderly, nearly blind with glaucoma, the first 99-plant zip-tie exemption applicant on the sheriff’s program, was raided on July 7 by the federal government with MCSO knowledge and complicity. All 99 plants were confiscat

4) SHERIFF’S OFFICE LENDING OF ASSISTANCE TO FEDERAL AGENCIES FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA RAIDS IS A CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

Does the Sheriff agree to not materially assist any branch of federal law enforcement involved in raiding zip tie patients approved by his office?
Examples of material assistance are:

a) the MCSO “leasing helicopters” to the feds for patient raids, including the Joy Greenfield raid.

b) COMMET deputies playing a plant eradication role on federal raids, instead of merely back-up for officer safety.

5) SHERIFF’S OFFICE USING ASSET FORFEITURE FUNDS FOR DEPUTY OVERTIME PAY IS A CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

Will the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office decline to use citizens’ forfeited assets to pay sheriff’s deputies overtime pay?

a) Officers seizing money from citizens to pay themselves is a breeding ground for corruption and theft.

b) The federal rule is that law enforcement can use forfeited assets for overtime pay, since it is not considered salary.

c) This allows deputies to increase their budget by seizing private assets from their own constituents to pay themselves overtime salaries for the seizures.

d) We cannot solve our economic problems with asset forfeiture monies.

e) It only puts more stress on the economy exacerbating job losses, bankrupcies and home foreclosures already in free fall, pouring gasoline on the fire.

f) It further erodes the value of the county’s taxable base.

g) It further erodes the integrity of the office.

Mendocino Medical Marijuana Advisory Board

Letters to the Editor

The AVA — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 04:33:34 +0000

WHAT THE HELL?

Editor,

For What I’m Worth!

In my head I hear voices, they give me direction, they give me choices.

Right or wrong I can’t decipher, I guess I’m blessed, I’m not a lifer.

Why should life be so confusing, and my freedom I’m constantly losing?

Does our system have a mental scar, when the Judge says, Au revoir?

When I sleep I turn and toss, because my wife and kids are lost.

It’s not what I did that’s sick and funny, the State is broke and I’m worth money.

Two dead worms inside one apple, that’s what we have inside the Capitol.

But they’re doing their job so what the hell; we’re slowing dying but they do mean well.

Larry D. Wilson

Soledad

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DELIVERING THE TRUTH

Dear AVA,

Enclosed is my subscription renewal check. The issue that arrived with the stamped notice of my current subscription’s expiration was a particularly interesting one, notably Gary Smith’s stunning article, “7 Days In The Life Of A Catastrophe.” I haven’t read Mr. Smith in years, but I remember him as part of the golden age of “New Journalism,” and that breed of writer and brand of periodicals that looked at the world in fresh and exciting ways. Smith’s beat was the world of sports and I recall him as a natural storyteller who treated his subjects with compassion and an eye for the telling detail. His article on the Gulf Coast disaster reads like a field trip to Hell, exposing the dead core of our so-called culture. But Smith makes an apocalypse relatable in the heartbreaking reflections of Mr. Eugene of Happy Jack. This article should be required reading for all Americans.

A small army of electronic mass media have gone to the Gulf — TV talking heads with cameras and cables and tons of equipment — and have not brought back a thimbleful of the truth of one writer charged with getting a story.

Thanks Gary, and thank you AVA for delivering the news.

Sincerely,

Mark Cotta Vaz

Castro Valley

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TRUTH TRIBUNAL IN FRISCO

Dear Friends & Supporters of KSTT,

The Kent State Truth Tribunal will soon travel to San Francisco to gather the collective memories and stories from original 1970 Kent State shooting participants and witnesses at a west coast location.

We launched our inquiry at the 40th anniversary in early May this year and broadcast each of the narratives live at MichaelMoore.com.

Since May 4, 2010 two notable events draw our attention and super-charge our continued efforts to uncover the truth at Kent State in 2010:

1) A copy of an original Kent State audio tape was analyzed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer and an order to ‘prepare to fire’ has been verified by two professional forensic scientists; and

2) An apology for Bloody Sunday was publicly voiced before Parliament by British Prime Minister David Cameron for the actions of British paratroopers killing 14 demonstrations in 1972. 38 years after the shootings, strikingly similar to Kent State, Britain has taken responsibility for it’s ill-guided, malicious and deadly actions.

We now gather our energy and set our focus on learning the truth about Kent State in San Francisco. We know that many individuals that were directly affected by the Kent State shootings now call the West Coast home and pre-registrations are up.

Kent State Truth Tribunal in San Francisco will also be broadcast live from 9am to 5pm Pacific on August 7 and 8 (the weekend) at MichaelMoore.com so you’ll be able to watch ‘live, streaming Kent State truth’ from your desktop.

Most importantly right now, we seek your donation to KSTT as we raise funds for crew travel to San Francisco. OUR GOAL IS $2,600. You may donate at http://TruthTribunal.org/donate via credit card and paypal. KSTT is a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible organization.

Every incremental contribution supports KSTT, first amendment rights and Allison Krause’s call for truth at Kent State in 2010. Funded solely by the Krause family and concerned citizens like you, we shall only succeed with your help.

Then on August 7&8, when you watch KSTT San Francisco at MichaelMoore.com, know that you made it happen!

Thank you for donating NOW at http://TruthTribunal.org/donate

With gratitude,

Laurel Krause (www.TruthTribunal.org)

Fort Bragg

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SIMPLE LIVING BOOKS

Greetings

We want to do a local author/book and historic book table at the Simple Living fair. These books can be sold there or people interested can be referenced to Laughing Dog bookstore for purchase or ordering. The event itself might be a bit historical and real bodies accompanied by their real books will provide an interesting perspective.

If you can attend and take a shift or two at the table please let me know at 895-3897.

Thanks,

Rob Goodell

Boonville

Memo of the Week

(Ed note: the following letter was sent to the County labor negotiators before the board voted to reduce deputy pay by 10%, not the 16% recommended by CEO Carmel Angelo or the labor negotiators.)

July 12, 2010

Ms. Teresia Haase Mr. Rick Haeg

Human Resources Director Labor Relations Consultant

579 Low Gap Road 2221 Home Drive

Ukiah, CA 95482 Eureka, CA 95503

Re: County of Mendocino Last, Best and Final Offer

Dear Teresia and Rick:

I am writing to you on behalf of the Mendocino County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association (MCDSA) and MCDSA President Dan Edwards. This letter is in response to your July 1, 2010, letter to President Edwards.

On July 8, 2010, the County’s Last, Best and Final Offer (LBFO) was presented to the General Membership of the MCDSA. Approximately eighty-five percent (85%) of the membership was represented at this meeting (three meetings were held simultaneously via video conferencing). The membership unanimously rejected the County’s LBFO.

The concerns most expressed by the members towards the County LBFO were the enormity of the compensation reduction (10% wage reduction and the loss of the 6% County contribution towards retirement funding) and the disparity between the LBFO to the MCDSA versus what the County came to agreement with for the Mendocino County Department Head Association on June 8, 2010 — a 10% wage reduction only.

Our members do not understand why and have never been offered an explanation for the reason the Board of Supervisors feels the most highly compensated employees in the County, the Department Heads of the County, are being treated more generously than line level employees. Compensation is compensation whether it is in the form of salary or some other monetary benefit such as an employer contribution towards employee costs, i.e., the 6% the County contributes towards our members’ retirement costs.

A straight 10% wage (compensation) reduction is certainly significant. The reasoning for increasing the reduction for line level employees by 50% (the loss of the County contribution towards retirement costs) over what the County required of Department Heads one month ago is simply unfathomable to our members.

In an effort to maintain a positive relationship between the membership of the MCDSA and the elected representatives of the citizens we serve and protect, we are asking you to not impose your LBFO. Instead, the bargaining team of the MCDSA respectfully asks the Board of Supervisors to direct your negotiator to return to the bargaining table. The MCDSA bargaining team, given the opportunity, will strongly recommend to our membership a successor collective bargaining agreement with (1) a term of one (1) year from date of ratification by the Board of Supervisors, (2) the elimination of the County six percent (6%) retirement contribution effective with the first full pay period following adoption of the agreement by the Board of Supervisors, (3) a reduction of five percent and one-half (5.5%) of base salary for all bargaining unit members effective with the first full pay period following adoption of the agreement by the Board of Supervisors and (4) the tentative agreements referred to in your letter of July 1, 2010. This proposal is a mirror image to the loss of compensation the Board of Supervisors agreed to with the Department Heads Association thirty (30) days ago.

We know the job of the Board of Supervisors is a difficult one. In these economic times, hard decisions have to be made. However, those decisions should be fair and equitable in so far as they affect the work force of the County.

In closing, we ask that you share this letter with the Board of Supervisors in the closed session scheduled for July 13, 2010. It is also our understanding a Special Session of the Board of Supervisors has been scheduled for 9:00 am on July 14, 2010. Should there be any change in the County’s position, please notify either Dan Edwards or myself as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

John R. Noble

Sr. Labor Relations Representative

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INCOMPETENT ROCKS

Editor,

In 1970-71, my house, along with 16 others, was destroyed in a massive, slow-moving landslide in the Oakland hills. We homeowners banded together and consulted geologists and engineers to see what might be done to stop the slide. Nothing could be done. We were told that the houses were built on serpentine, known to engineers as an incompetent rock where building should never have been allowed. It was the first time I had heard that adjective applied to an inanimate object.

When considering the state budget and other examples of governmental paralysis, it becomes apparent that serpentine is the perfect choice for California’s state rock. It typifies our governor, the Legislature and all the voters who elected them.

Marshall Windmiller

Oakland

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THE COAST SCHOOL BOND

Editor,

Realizing the Independent Coast Observer prides itself in bringing truth to the community I would like to give some facts regarding the presentation from Joanna Bowes, Vice President of KNN Public on “Public repayment of partial bond funding” which took place at the Point Arena School Board Meeting last Thursday.

I asked Ms. Bowes where she obtained the figure of “$1.7 million” because in the remaining bond fund there should be a total of $1.9 million. To be precise, $1,799,131 is in the Gualala School Fund and $187,980 in the Undesignated Reserve Fund for a total of $1,987,111. Ms. Bowes stated, “the county.” I asked her could money from the Undesignated Reserve Fund be used to help pay off the debt of retiring the bond which comes to approximately $25-30K? She stated, “Yes.”

Superintendent Iacuaniello quickly said to School Board President DeWilder, “She can’t be asking her that,” and then DeWilder informed me that this will be a board decision.

I stated, “I realize this is a board decision but I wanted to know if this was an option?”

Along with the realization the board makes the final decision, I also realized the County (Tichinin’s Office of Education) had to obtain their information from only one place, the district. That is over a quarter of a million dollars below what is actually available to be refunded to members of our community!

I hope the following takes place once Dr. Colleen Cross comes on board as Superintendent after the 1st of August:

1. There is more transparency on the board and decisions regarding open door agenda — items are not made in closed door sessions.

2. As of March 9, 2010, there was a total of $1,987,111. This is without any accrued interest going into the undesignated reserve fund. So, there could be more. Community members who voted on having the school built in Gualala and will never see this dream come to its fruition should have every penny possible returned to them.

3. More community members become involved in seeing what is taking place in your school district. As I have stated many times before these students are our future.

Respectfully,

Susan Rush

Manchester

PS. Recently, I spoke with a young gentleman who just graduated from the Point Arena School District. I asked him how his experience was at Point Arena and he stated he signed up to take Spanish because he wanted to learn the language. He went on to state, “The teacher assigned to the class was Mr. Bergu, Berga, Bagu…” He couldn’t figure out his name. I stated, “Mr. Lu Beguiristain”? “Yes”, he replied. He went on to tell me that Mr. Beguiristain handed out Spanish books and told the class, “They could learn to speak Spanish if they studied the book.” I asked him if he passed the class and he informed me, “We all passed the class because Beguiristain was never credentialed to teach Spanish.” Although passing, this young man couldn’t speak Spanish!

However, both the Superintendent, Mr. Iacuaniello, and the board approved Mr. Beguiristain to be in the high school as a teacher until it was later discovered he had no credentials to be teaching. Even after that he was kept at the high school as the teacher but under a different status. Mr. Iacuaniello was the “teacher of record” and Beguiristain was classified as a “para-educator.” However, Beguiristain was the one in the classroom every day by himself without another teacher. Beguiristain was later transferred into the elementary school to be a para-educator because of another incident that occurred at the high school. The bottom line is how could Iacuaniello and/or the board not know he was uncredentialed? After all, Beguiristain was only a para-educator at the Pacific Charter School in Point Arena which everyone was aware of. So, how could this possibly have been such a big surprise to them? They got caught!

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WHO SHOULD HAUL TRASH?

Editor,

RE: County contract with Solid Waste of Willits

Given the two 3-2 votes on this matter (Board of Supervisors and Fort Bragg City Council), this contract was obviously controversial.

The controversy, in my opinion, is not primarily about “ideology” so much as about the specific provisions of the deal and to some degree, the past performance of the proposed contractor, Solid Waste of Willits (SWOW).

One thing that seemed problematic to me from the start was the composition of the Board’s ad hoc committee charged with negotiating the contract; that is, the committee lacked coastal representation. This seems to me a major oversight in light of fact that Caspar handles by far the most volume of the six county transfer stations and the fact that three of the other stations (Albion, Fish Rock, Boonville) are the 5th district. Fish Rock has been particularly at issue because of serious overcharging that occurred at that facility over a number of years.

Wendy Roberts has claimed that it makes sense for the rates at Caspar to be raised (according to the proposed contract from $25 to $28 per cubic yard and from $4 to $5 per 30 gallon can) in order to subsidize the higher costs of operation at the County’s other five stations. However, according to Fort Bragg Councilmember Dan Gjerde, “the existing contract between the County and the City guarantees Caspar’s revenues can only stay in Caspar.”

Mr. Gjerde’s memo to the Council dated 6/28/10 lays out his reasoning for opposing the new Caspar Joint Powers Agreement, an essential element of the SWOW contract. Gjerde claims that this agreement: 1) authorizes SWOW to operate Caspar with significantly higher fees and 2) absolves the City of theoretical future deficits at the Caspar Transfer Station (an eventuality that Gjerde finds implausible given the higher fees that are proposed).

He complains that the new agreement: 1) does not direct any profits from the large Caspar site to benefit Caspar customers and 2) does not eliminate or reduce the County’s largest bill to the City for Caspar, that being the annual landfill post-closure costs.

I could go into a lot more detail here on the issues of Landfill Closure Costs and post-closure costs and how these affected the vote at the Fort Bragg Council, but would instead invite readers to examine two documents: 1) Gjerde’s memo; and 2) the agenda summary written by Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority (MSWA) director Mike Sweeney to the Fort Bragg Council on the issue of the 14.5 year contract with SWOW.

Supervisor Kendall Smith has pointed out that in long term agreements of the kind proposed between the County and SWOW, the party offering the contract (in this case, the County of Mendocino) commonly extracts a fairly large sum of money. These contracts, have real monetary value (that’s why SWOW wants to enter into it in the first place!). This proposed contract contained some beneficial provisions for the County (including keeping employees on board, capital improvements at Fishrock, etc.), but no money paid directly to the County for the privilege of a 14.5 year exclusive contract to both haul the County’s curbside waste and to operate the transfer stations.

There is an ideological question here as well, even if it’s not the primary consideration. What is the proper role of the government in overseeing the delivery of an essential service that is important to every single resident of the County; i.e., the disposal of solid waste? It seems to me that this is precisely the kind of function that should rest with government. However, as I’ve said before, if this proposed contract was sufficiently attractive for the County, I would overlook that philosophical objection in favor of an agreement that was truly cost-effective and beneficial over the long term.

Below are links to the memos I mentioned above. I’m sure this won’t be the last we’ll be hearing and writing about this long-standing controversy!

Staff report written to City of FB by MSWA director Mike Sweeney:

http://city.fortbragg.com/pdf/2010-06-28CC5B.pdf

Gjerde memo to FB Council:

http://city.fortbragg.com/pdf/2010-06-28CC5B_Dan_Gjerde_Memo.pdf

Dan Hamburg

Ukiah

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WENDY ROBERTS REPLIES

Editor,

Candidate Hamburg has raised some interesting questions about the waste management contract.

I concur that it is the County’s responsibility to ensure that every County resident has appropriate, cost-effective options for solid waste disposal. The County already ensures the availability of curbside pickup for many residents through franchise agreements that it oversees with independent contractors. The current discussion is about the proposed contract to extend existing franchise agreements with Solid Waste of Willits (SWOW), include management of the 6 transfer stations and provide for capital improvements to the Caspar and Fish Rock stations. This contract was prompted by huge County budget deficits that have grown as transfer station costs have increased and the flow of revenue-producing trash has declined in recent years.

Dan states that he “…can think of no valid reason that the (Ad Hoc negotiating) committee should have lacked a coastal supervisor.” I was present at the BOS meeting when the ad hoc committee was formed to work on the contract with Mike Sweeney and the County/City of Fort Bragg coordinating committee. John Pinches invited Colfax to serve on the committee and he declined, saying that he was opposed to the committee and wasn’t going to “miss a Celtics game” to serve. Supervisors Smith and Colfax remained in the loop as members of the Joint Powers Coordinating Committee.

Hamburg mentions “…serious overcharging at Fish Rock.” Despite the absence of a coast supervisor, the Ad Hoc committee did examine issues around the rates charged by SWOW to curbside pick-up customers on the South Coast. After analyzing cost factors, the committee determined that some rates were higher and some were lower than justified by actual costs. The proposed solution was to require SWOW to compensate any customers who had been overcharged and to then approve increased rates that take all cost factors into account.

The claim that Fort Bragg was uninvolved and uninformed as the contract negotiations proceeded is simply inaccurate. The Joint Powers Coordinating Committee met in April for the express purpose of hearing any and all concerns that needed to be addressed.

Smith and Colfax represented the County; Councilman Dan Gjerde and Mayor Hammerstrom represented the City. Mike Sweeney, the County’s Contract Administrator and other staff were also present.

Fort Bragg did not want to continue to pay a subsidy to County for monitoring the closed landfill and managing the Caspar Transfer Station. The negotiated contract would have eliminated this payment. Fort Bragg wanted to establish a fund that would be reserved exclusively for improvements to the Caspar Transfer Station or predevelopment of a new long haul transfer station. This, too, was included in the agreement by a clause that would have reserved for use at Caspar all funds paid by Fort Bragg residents plus a dollar for dollar match from fees paid by County residents. Other issues were also discussed.

When the Ad Hoc committee met in May, Mike Sweeney confirmed that all of the Fort Bragg issues had been addressed. If, in fact, Mr. Gjerde had unresolved issues, he did not raise them until after the BOS-approved contract reached the City Council. Gjerde, Sweeney and Smith all confirmed that this was true during last week’s BOS meeting.

At the City Council meeting, Supervisor Smith argued that the County was “leaving money on the table” by not insisting on a substantial up front payment for extending existing franchise agreements and agreeing to a 14 ½ year contract. She had made this point previously and was unwilling to acknowledge that any such payment was precluded by the declining volume of revenue-producing trash and by the fact that SWOW had already assumed more than $4 million of debt for capital improvements in Willits and was accepting responsibility for another $400,000 in improvements at Fish Rock. In addition, the contract requires SWOW to assume about $8,000/year in State permit fees that the County currently pays and to take on all liability for accidents or other litigation related to the waste management function.

Supervisor Smith also argued that the Ad Hoc committee had not looked at how other Counties are faring with solid waste management. At least one member considered the fact that Humboldt and Lake Counties are still dumping waste into landfills. I was also told that Sonoma County received a $1.8 million payment for extending curbside pickup franchises and raised its transfer station rates 16% in one year and still expects to lose $2.6 million in the coming year because of increased costs and the decline in trash volume.

The bottom line is that increased costs and decreased volume of revenue producing trash have made internal management of the transfer stations a disastrous drain on Mendocino County taxpayers. The County is attempting to resolve this matter by expanding its contract with Solid Waste of Willits to meet waste management needs through 2024. Without this action, there will be no capital improvement fund for Caspar, Fish Rock or any other site. The South Coast will continue to be held hostage to high tipping rates for ultimate trash disposal at the Annapolis site in Sonoma County. Jobs will be lost and access to local transfer stations will be drastically reduced.

I’ve followed this discussion closely over the past year because of its potential impact on Boonville, Albion and the South Coast. While I do not claim comprehensive knowledge of the subject, I learn more of the details every day. From all that I have seen, I believe that the people we’ve elected and the professionals they’ve hired are working hard to reach an agreement that is in the public interest.

Regards,

Wendy Roberts

Candidate for Fifth District Supervisor

Mendocino