MCT: Sunday, May 12, 2019

• Pets
• Motorcycle Mama
• Murders Revisited
• Hopmann Film
• Plastic Waste
• County CAACophony
• Yesterday's Catch
• On Inoculation
• Lunch Debt
• Financialization Endgame
• Mountain Girl
• Partisan Press
• Acceptable Thought
• Uber All
• Warren's Wealth
• Mousetrapped
• Audition
• Fast Foodlums
• Marco Radio
• Whiter Shade
• Found Object

UKIAH SHELTER PETS OF THE WEEK

Freesia is a 1 year old, spayed female, short hair, black and white cat. This sleek and shiny girl is mellow and affectionate. Freesia is perfectly content napping the day away or rolling on her side for belly rubs. This easy-going feline is sure to be a wonderful friend and companion.

Calling all big dog lovers! Juice is a big guy who is not clingy, but likes to get close for pets and affection. For a big dog, he walks well on leash. During his meet and greet/evaluation, Juice met a very, very playful, neutered male dog, and he seemed interested to engage in the fun! Juice is a 1 year old, neutered male, mixed breed dog who currently weighs 95 pounds. More about Juice here: http://www.mendoanimalshelter.com/dogblog/juice

The Ukiah Animal Shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah; adoption hours are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday from 10 am to 4:30 pm and Wednesday from 10 am to 6:30 pm. To see photos and bios of the shelter's adoptable animals, and the shelter's programs, services and events, please visit us online at http://www.mendoanimalshelter.com

For more information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

CONVICTED KILLERS FROM HUMBOLDT COUNTY SEEK RE-SENTENCING UNDER CALIFORNIA’S NEW FELONY MURDER RULE

by Rhonda Parker, LostCoastOutpost.com, May 10, 2019

Eight convicted killers from Humboldt County have filed petitions asking to be re-sentenced under California’s new felony murder rule.

Today Judge John Feeney called the cases for the eight, who are all in state prison. Seven were convicted of murder and one of voluntary manslaughter. Local attorneys have been appointed for each.

In the oldest case, Jeffrey Leonard Bowman and David Vincent Hanley have asked to be re-sentenced for their roles in the December 1999 murder of Julius Aubrey, stabbed to death during an attempted home-invasion robbery at his home on the Trinidad Rancheria. Bowman, Hanley, Lucan Keisner and Nikki Metcalf were convicted of first-degree murder and have been in prison since December 2001.

Deputy Public Defender David Celli, on behalf of Bowman, told Feeney he has been trying to track down trial transcripts, which is a challenge because the trial was held so long ago. Feeney agreed to sign an order to have Bowman, now 42, transferred to Humboldt County. He is serving a life sentence and is currently at High Desert State Prison in Susanville.

Hanley, 43, is lodged at the state’s Correctional Training Facility in Soledad. Defense attorney Mark Hapgood said he will prepare an order asking that Hanley also be returned to Humboldt.

Bowman, Hanley, Keisner and Metcalf entered Aubrey’s home with their faces covered, demanding money and drugs. They left empty-handed, but the last one out the door plunged a knife into Aubrey’s chest. Although Bowman was charged with being the stabber, the jury acquitted him of that allegation. So it has never been determined who actually used the knife.

Under the old felony murder rule, if a person participated in a felony that ended with murder, he or she could be charged for the killing and be sentenced to life. Senate Bill 1437, passed earlier this year, requires that to be charged with murder an accomplice must have the intent to kill or be a major participant in the underlying felony and act with “reckless disregard for human life.”

So far the 39-year-old Keisner, at Pelican Bay State Prison, and Metcalf, 38, at Calapatria State Prison, have not requested re-sentencing.

“We anticipate more being filed,” Feeney told attorneys.

District Attorney Maggie Fleming attended the hearing, saying she would file a response to each petition. Outside court, Fleming said her response to each will be the same: The new law is unconstitutional because it was not approved by voters. Fleming said that is the position of the California District Attorneys Association.

The law has been successfully challenged in Orange County, where a judge declared it unconstitutional.

This afternoon several people were in court to support convicted murderer Jonas Randall Semore, found guilty of second-degree murder in May 2016. Semore, 46, and Nicholas Johnson were convicted of killing David Ganfield, who was struck repeatedly in the head with a wooden bat. Johnson is serving a life term.

Semore is housed at the California Correctional Facility in Tehachapi.

Defense attorney Russ Clanton said today he has been in communication with Semore but has not yet seen the petition.

Celli also appeared today on behalf of 45-year-old Tracy Jolene Williams, one of four people convicted in the February 2009 slaying of Ezra Sanders, shot to death during an attempted robbery at his McKinleyville home.

Feeney questioned Celli about whether the new law covers Williams, who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter rather than murder. Celli said he believes it does apply to her case. Williams is serving her sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.

Another woman asking for a new sentence is Sonia Hunsucker, sentenced to 15 years to life for the May 2011 killing of Willow Creek resident Darrell Hanger Sr. Hunsucker, now 38 and lodged in the same prison as Williams, was with her brother and two other people who went to Hanger’s son’s home, expecting to find it empty and instead were confronted by the father and son.

Hanger Sr. was killed by gunfire and his son shot and wounded. Two of Hunsucker’s co-defendants, Jason Bruce Hunsucker and Jackson Earl Surber, are also in state prison.

Deputy Conflict Counsel Meagan O’Connell appeared today on behalf of Sonia Hunsucker and fellow petitioners Michael Thomas Gorman, Douglas Mark Lunsford and John Lewis Way.

Gorman is 46 and serving his time at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla. Back in April 2001 he was involved in the killing of Bruce James, who was staying at a motel in Eureka. Although it was Michael Jared Lane who stabbed James to death, Gorman participated afterward.

Lane and his girlfriend Florence Laurel Anderson reportedly believed James had $600, and the plan was for Anderson to pose as a prostitute, giving James oral sex in exchange for money. But Lane burst into the motel room and repeatedly stabbed James.

Lane is serving a life term. Anderson was sentenced to life under the felony murder rule, but in 2017 Gov. Jerry Brown commuted her sentence.

Lunsford, 63, was convicted of the August 2002 death of his former son-in-law Nathan Gray Dannemiller, who was shot in the face and chest outside his Eureka apartment. Lunsford and his wife Marcella were arrested a year later in Tennessee. Marcella was sentenced to 26 years to life, but former Gov. Brown also commuted her sentence.

The Lunsfords were in a custody dispute with Dannemiller, 26, who had been married to their daughter.

As for Way, he did not file his petition until last month, Feeney noted, and O’Connell said her office was appointed to the case just yesterday. He is serving time at San Quentin for the February 2009 killing of Andrew Pease, stabbed to death outside the former Ray’s supermarket near Bayshore Mall.

Way and James Robert Stanko had gone on a 30-minute robbery spree that ended when Stanko knifed Pease in the store’s parking lot. Way told police he didn’t know Stanko had a knife.

All the cases will be on calendar again next month, with about half scheduled for June 14 and the rest for June 28.

If upheld, the new law will have an impact on the case against four people charged with murdering Tyson Eduardo Claros near Manila in December 2016. Although Brandon James Mitchell is charged with shooting Claros to death, three others involved in the related carjacking are also charged with murder. They are Tamara Nicole Thomson, Cesar Octavio Valenzuela and Hector Godoy-Standley. A fifth defendant, Godoy-Standley’s former girlfriend Catherine Fode, has pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and agreed to testify against the others.

(Courtesy, LostCoastOutpost.com)

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ED NOTE: AB 1437 amends the California murder rule that says if you're present with a killer when he murders someone you are just as guilty as he is. In many cases, as in the local Tai Abreu matter, there is no evidence that Abreu was involved in the murder part of what began as a robbery. Abreu had just turned 19. He received legal representation maybe a stutter step this side of lynch law — one day trial, no witnesses called on his behalf, no evidence he committed the murder. Abreu's been in prison for nearly 20 years where he's amassed a perfect behavior record.

THE STATE LEGISLATURE, recognizing the obvious unrecognized by the justice system, passed 1437 into law, meaning a sliver of people convicted of murder under the old one size fits all felony murder rule, can get their convictions re-considered.

MENDO DA EYSTER, taking his cue from the state's DA's Association, and unable to argue the facts of the Abreu case because there's no evidence Abreu committed murder, is arguing the constitutionality of AB 1437, claiming AB 1437 cancels the murder law voted into law. Most judges, so far, disagree, correctly reasoning that since the legislature is elected to legislate the legislature has the right, nay, duty, to legislate, not to mention a fiscal responsibility to reduce prison costs.

ANOTHER BOONVILLE MOVIE MAKER: David Hopmann writes: "I'm pleased to let friends know that my Vacaville movie from last summer, ‘The Feeling,’ is now up on Amazon for streaming. Here is a link to the trailer (free). It can be streamed on Amazon for a few dollars.

https://www.xnihilofilms.com/

The movie is sort of a kids' picture, a heightened reality fable. Somewhat corny/cheesy. No sex or violence. It's my first time in a lead role. Before that I had acted only in small student films. If you decide to watch it, please enjoy the show!"

OVER 180 COUNTRIES -- not including the US -- agree to restrict global plastic waste trade

The governments of 187 countries have agreed to control the movement of plastic waste between national borders, in an effort to curb the world's plastic crisis -- but the United States was not among them.

cnn.com/2019/05/11/world/basel-convention-plastic-waste-trade-intl/index.html

IT'S INSULTING ENOUGH that Mendo Supervisor John McCowen is using climate change to get his close personal friend, and tenant, a cush $94,000/year position, he doesn't bother to excuse himself from the board discussion. He just goes sonorously on as if he doesn't have a flagrant conflict of interest.

TIED SECURELY TO Carmel Angelo's apron strings, as are Supervisors Dan Gjerde and Carre Brown, McCowen blithely placed the climate change committee job on the consent calendar. Doubt the obvious ethical prob presented by McCowen's gross palsy-walsy-ism would have bothered anybody in the CEO's office, but two of McCowen's colleagues got the scam pulled from automatic approval and, in the open discussion, strained to steer themselves around creation of both a bogus advisory committee on climate change and a highly paid job for an uneven Mendocino Enviromental Center woman called Alicia Littletree Bales.

McCOWEN presented himself as if he were disinterested in the job for his pal, Supervisor Brown seemed to think it was a good idea, Gjerde was incoherent, and it was left to Williams and Haschack to say, essentially, Whoa. Let's bring this back another day for discussion. Nobody was about to challenge McCowen, I guess, out of some misguided notion of collegiality. (Gjerde has been disappointing as a supervisor. We expected him to be a version of Williams, but at the moment he's doing a Hamburg sans comfort dog. He shows up, says virtually nothing, introduces nothing, picks up his fat check, heads back to the Coast. The Fort Bragg solon seems to have peaked as a Fort Bragg city councilman, where he almost singlehandedly put an end to the most flagrant civic corruption in County history. But with much less perilous corruption right in front of his supervisorial puss, Gjerde is silent.)

CLIMATE CHANGE, as a formal matter of discussion by our supervisors, hadn't arisen before the ambidextrous "activists" from the otherwise somnolent Mendocino Environment Center, housed at 106 West Standley in a building owned by Supervisor McCowen, group-appeared before the supervisors to present themselves as the very cutting edge of the issue.

THING IS, most people in Mendocino County, and the country, are not only aware that the weather has become dramatically more violent and unpredictable, most people conscientiously comply with laws aimed at beating back environmental damage or at least reducing it. You could grab the next twenty people off State Street who would be as knowledgeable as anybody affiliated with the Mendocino Environment Center, historically a kind of drop-in center for dimwits and random unemployables.

BUT WHERE THERE'S public cash available for sitting around donut talking about doing good without actually doing anything, here come the cash and carry libs, the grant gobblers and, in this case, Supervisor McCowen's pal.

HERE'S HOW THE CLIMATE COMMITTEE WOULD WORK:

“Listen up, Mendo. Here's the plan. It's perfectly clear, isn't it? And bear in mind, you fools, we're trying to save you from yourselves!”

PS. Notice how their chart assumes that “BOS hires” the “CAAC staff person” (i.e., Ms. Bales).

CATCH OF THE DAY, May 10, 2019

JOSEPH ANGENETE, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

SONO CARRIGG, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent Flyer)

LARRY COMMANDER, Philo. Under influence, paraphernalia, parole violation.

TROY DAILEY, Potter Valley. DUI, possession of unlawfully taken creature, concealed weapon in vehicle, loaded firearm in public.

JOSEPH DEDMAN, Ukiah. Resisting.

JESSICA DIAZ, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

JUSTIN GARNER, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MIGUEL GONZALEZ JR., Redwood Valley. Resisting.

RYAN GRIMM, Potter Valley. Probation revocation.

CODY KILLION, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

MICHAEL LANGLEY, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

OSCAR LOPEZ-FELIX, Ukiah. Unsatisfactory evidence of identity, no license.

JUSTIN MALUGANI, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

SAMANTHA MENDEZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DENA MORRIS, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

DAVID PERRINE, Calpella. Failure to appear.

SHANE ROORK, Ukiah. Smuggling controlled substance or liquor into jail.

DONALD SHARP, Fort Bragg. Rape of victim incapable of giving consent, sexual penetration with force or fear, failure to appear, probation revocation.

MARIANNE TAN, Gualala. DUI, probation revocation.

RESISTANCE TO IMMUNITY

Not far from the hospital in Edinburgh where I work there’s a graveyard; it can be a calm, if morbid, place to reflect after a tough shift. Passing it acts as a memento mori on days when I need to be reminded of the value of medical practice—which for all its modern complexity remains the art of postponing death. Benches are set out in the shade of trees, between red-shingle walkways and rows of Victorian tombstones. Many of the stones commemorate dead children, but there’s a memorial near the entrance that always stops me short.

It’s dedicated to Mary West, a woman who died in 1865, at the age of 32—two years before Joseph Lister published his groundbreaking work on antisepsis. The reason for her death is unrecorded. Beneath her own name are listed the names of her six children in their order of death—at ages two, eleven, four, twelve, and fourteen. Only one lived to adulthood.

The death of any child is a tragedy, but to lose so many is now almost unthinkable. In the Victorian period, when infectious diseases were rife, it was routine. I trained in medicine through the 1990s and never saw a case of one of the most virulent, measles, though my tutors told me to learn about it from textbooks.

Yet working in the emergency room recently I saw a girl with a rash, fever, conjunctivitis, swollen lymph glands—all classic symptoms of the measles virus. “Do you know if she has had her MMR [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccine?” I asked her father. He nodded, but something made me doubt his sincerity.

“Are you sure?” I asked again.

He nodded, then broke my gaze. “Maybe she skipped that one,” he said at last.

One in 20 children with measles develops pneumonia. Only about one in a thousand develops the most serious complication, encephalitis (a viral infection of brain cells). About two in a thousand will die. Having to second-guess parents about whether a patient has been vaccinated is new: physicians are accustomed to trusting the parents of the children they see—after all, we both want what’s best for the child. But when fears about vaccine safety cause a drop in vaccination rates, cases of serious infectious disease start rising. Parents who decline to vaccinate their children sense a growing opprobrium toward their choices. They have a consequent incentive to lie or, perhaps worse, stay away from the emergency room for fear of having their parenting challenged by medical professionals.

In 2014 Eula Biss examined this crisis of confidence in her book “On Immunity: An Inoculation” and proposed that we think of infection control as an ecology to be kept in balance rather than a war between opposing sides. Writing with the perspective of a new mother who ultimately chose vaccination for her own child, Biss explored the metaphors we use to think about disease and the body. The word “inoculate” has its origin in the care of gardens and orchards, and was originally used to describe the grafting of a bud onto a tree. It’s unfortunate that vaccination has come to be seen as an unnatural and dangerous intervention, when in truth it’s through “grafting” that the natural power of the recipient’s own immune system is harnessed. The testimony of our graveyards is that before public health, clean water, antisepsis, and vaccination, it was perfectly natural that most children died.

(Gavin Francis, New York Review of Books)

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“I WOULD LIKE TO ISSUE a Mount Carmel-like challenge to any ten unvaccinated priests of Baal. I will take ten selected vaccinated persons, and help in the next severe epidemic, with ten selected unvaccinated persons (if available!). I should choose three members of Parliament, three anti-vaccination doctors, if they could be found, and four anti-vaccination propagandists. And I will make this promise—neither to jeer nor to jibe when they catch the disease, but to look after them as brothers; and for the four or five who are certain to die I will try to arrange the funerals with all the pomp and ceremony of an anti-vaccination demonstration.”

— Dr. William Osler, responding to the anti-vaxxers of his day, circa 1850

YOGURT MAKER CHOBANI PAYS LUNCH MONEY DEBT

Yogurt company Chobani says it will pay the school lunch debt of families attending a Rhode Island school district. Warwick Public Schools made national news when it announced that children in families who owe money for school lunches would get cold sunflower butter and jelly sandwiches instead of a hot lunch. The system later reversed the decision.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yogurt-maker-pays-lunch-money-debt-after-school-13835486.php

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

There certainly is a crisis, all right. Largely a financial crisis, I believe. All this political theater is just a smoke screen to cover the fact that we are rapidly approaching the bitter-end consequences of financialization. What I fear is that war will be the answer to this pickle of a problem. That’s usually the way it goes – certainly has been in the past. Only this time, with all the new mega-weapons, all bets are off whether anyone gets out alive. We are fast approaching the “kick over the chessboard” solution, I fear. We should all hope my fear is unfounded. I sure hope so.

GONE PARTISAN

Editor,

From my optic, the great tradition of the American free press, and the media as a whole, has degenerated into a standardless profession that has squandered the faith and trust of the American public, not through actions of government officials but through its own abandonment of reportorial integrity and objective journalism.

Most people who have observed the coverage and commentary of the Justice Department special counsel investigation over the past two years have noticed the media is now, more than ever, a partisan press overwhelmingly aligned with the Democratic Party’s ideology and hypocritically engaged in a massive untruth as to its real nature.

The media’s strategy is to use selected misinformation and disinformation to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning and, ultimately, the behavior of groups and individuals to induce or reinforce behavior favorable to their political objectives.

Unfortunately, those media organizations entrusted with news reporting today are destroying freedom of the press from within, through self-censorship, groupthink, bias by omission and passing off opinion, propaganda, pseudo-events and outright lies as news.

It’s the same thing the Russians are accused of doing to influence the 2016 presidential election. No difference.

Kirk Moeller

Santa Rosa

UBER’S PLANS INCLUDE ATTACKING PUBLIC TRANSIT

“Increasing ridesharing penetration in existing markets. Our large addressable market opportunity means that with approximately 26 billion miles traveled on our platform in 2018, we have only reached a less than 1% penetration of miles traveled in trips under 30 miles in the 63 countries in which we operate. We believe we can continue to grow the number of trips taken with our Ridesharing products and REPLACE PERSONAL VEHICLE OWNERSHIP AND USAGES AND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION (my emphasis—RW) one use case at a time, including through continued investment in our affordable Ridesharing options, such as Uber Bus and Express POOL.”

48hills.org/2019/05/ubers-plans-include-attacking-public-transit/

ROB ANDERSON TWEETS:

Elizabeth Warren and her husband have a combined net worth of over $31 million, as of 2015. Warren's personal net worth is around $12 million.

Wonder if this begins to explain why Warren refuses to cosponsor Bernie's legislation to scrap the Social Security cap and to up the estate tax.

I KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN

I'll try to go to bed

With fear of failure flappin'

Like a fruit bat in my head

I'll sleep for half an hour

The clock'll ring at six

I'll wake up in the shower

With a stomach full of bricks

So I won't have any breakfast

Maybe just a little tea,

Like when you have to go

And get a colonoscopy

Which incident'lly isn't half as

Disconcerting or upsetting

As going for a part you know

There's no way that you're getting.

— David Yazbek

MEMO OF THE AIR: Friday Night’s Show.

De nuovo il canto di trionfo del Porcellino Rosso. /"A pig who doesn’t fly is just an ordinary pig." -Sophocles/ The recording of last night's (2019-05-10) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg and KMEC-LP Ukiah is available by one or two clicks, depending on whether you want to listen to it now or download it and keep it for later and, speaking of which, it's right here:

https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0332

Besides all that, at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you can find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not necessarily radio-useful but nonetheless worthwhile educational items I set aside for you while gathering the show together. Such as:

"Just radioactive enough."

https://tinyurl.com/ColdCreamForFallout

Olga Mieleszczuk. Rivkele, der Yiddishe tango.

https://tinyurl.com/DerYiddisheTango

And the myth of the immortal white snake.

https://tinyurl.com/MythWhiteSnake

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org,

https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

A WHITER SHADE OF PALE

We skipped the light Fandango
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kind of seasick
But the crowd called out for more

The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
As the Miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said there is no reason
And the truth is plain to see
But I wandered through my playing cards
And I would not let her be

One of the sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open
They might just as well've been closed

And so it was that later
As the Miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale

—Gary Brooker & Keith Reid

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Procol Harum performing A Whiter Shade of Pale with the Danish National Concert Orchestra and choir at Ledreborg Castle, Denmark in August 2006: https://binged.it/2Hfw9k8

FOUND OBJECT