A current controversial federal law allows product manufacturers to withhold the identity of untested chemicals from the public if the manufacturer has reason to believe that such public knowledge could harm business — and even if the manufacturer and the feds know that a chemical poses a considerable risk to public health. It’s crazy, and [...]
The late comedian George Carlin did a bit about Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (back then it wasn’t called a Disorder). During WW1, Carlin reminded us, we called it “shell shock.” Now those two words pack some punch, don’t they?
Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders spoke for months about his “historic” efforts to get a vote on a single-payer health care bill in the Senate. While we all knew the outcome was going to be a rather miserable failure, it was a tiny crumb being flicked to those of us who still believe in both real [...]
Coast psychiatrist Dr. Mark Klein was back before the Board last week to present a follow-up to his pre vious informal request: a draft of a resolution “sup porting treatment not incarceration for people with serious mental illness.”
The doctor’s resolution was sprinkled with “whereases” stating what anyone with even a remote awareness of the situation already knows: [...]
by David Severn
Some years ago I was working out Clow Ridge and as usual had taken a couple of my kids along. On leaving the job my eight-year-old daughter Dandelion wanted to ride her bike down the hill. Descending that steep grade just above the stop sign on Nash Mill Road she lost control and did a [...]
by Daniel Mintz
Congressman Mike Thompson answered questions, dispelled myths and endured occasional outbursts in a town hall meeting on what is now the nation’s most debated issue — health care reform.
In a September 2 event that saw standing-room-only conditions a half-hour before it began, Thompson told an audience of hundreds at a building in Eureka’s Redwood Acres [...]
Mendocino County is broke and getting broker by the week. Just last week the State announced that it was “borrowing” another $3 million from Mendocino County and proportionate amounts from all the other counties in our troubled state. This forced loan is supposed to be paid back in three or four years when the State [...]
by Tim Stelloh
When cops were dispatched to a rural Redwood Valley address recently, they had little information about what to expect: All they knew was a man with a gun was standing in his front yard shouting insults at passersby. Neighbors thought he might be dangerous, but police didn’t know who the man was, whether he was [...]
Allan Graham, a long time resident of Albion, a legendary local character who calls himself Captain Fathom, is drinking heavily and making a major nuisance of himself. If he can be confined to nuisance status, if his careening conduct doesn’t again become violent we’ll be spared another round of “What Can We Do With This [...]
Remember the Marvin Noble case? Noble was shot dead by Ukiah Police back in 1998 when he tried to walk back to his Ukiah apartment after the Mendocino Mental Health department dispatched the cops because he wouldn’t take his Haldol. Noble, a 300-plus pound black man, was enrolled in California’s “CONREP” (Conditional Release) program, an [...]
