Letters (May 15, 2019)

• Sweet Deals
• Misreading Bosco’s Scam
• Latest County Farce
• One Ball Syndrome
• Not Even Close
• Look! Up In The Sky!
• True Believers

SWEET DEALS

Editor,

It's good work you do in this era of unchecked greed. I have noticed in my area (Ingelnook, just north of Fort Bragg) that the logging is proceeding at an unprecedented rate and that PG&E is getting in on the act by aiding and abetting this ratepayer subsidized cash grab by the timber interests such as Lyme Timber. 

Here is how it's playing out, private or corporate entities are working with PG&E contractors to clear all timber of value within hundreds of feet of the power lines, What a sweet deal, the ratepayers pick up the tab for the felling and the timber interests pick up the profits for hauling the trees off to the sawmill.

This might be the mother of all loopholes or the result of unintended consequences, hard to say, but none the less unchecked Capitalism is having its way with the forests in my neck of the woods.

I often wonder where is the outrage? It is easy to get upset about what is happening in the Amazon Rainforest, but when it's happening in our own backyards and the State and PG&E are complicit who will do anything about it?

It seems the time has come that we require yet another state agency which supersedes all other agencies, and that agency would be called "The Department of Climate and ecosystem protection." The trees are the lungs of the planet, Who will speak for the trees?

Sincerely, 

Tim McClure

Fort Bragg

MISREADING BOSCO’S SCAM

AVA: 

You're misreading Bosco's successful milking of the NCRA as his somehow engineering the GRTA, which Bosco fought because it is taking his precious rail line away. Yes, we (the people of California) are having to pay off the NCRA's debt to NWPCo (& thus Bosco) to free up the line for the trail. But that's a consequence of the (almost certainly illegal, but never challenged by the complicit NCRA board) lease that Bosco & Stogner engineered between NCRA & NWPCo. 

Wildly off base, Mark. Trails are extraordinarily popular in Humboldt. And while there's a substantial number of people riding the Pacific Coast every year, we anticipate a lot more coming from all over the world to use a trail along the wild & scenic Eel River. 

The first part is correct, but that last bit misstates the facts. Stogner (Bosco's Chief of Staff when he was in Congress and the state leg) remains the Executive Director of the NCRA (a state agency), not Bosco's NWPCo (a private company). 

Scott Greacen

Conservation Director

Friends of the Eel River

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Mark Scaramella replies: Mr. Graecen is a long-time close follower of the Little Train That Never Would and Never Will. We are happy to accept his assessment of the situation. Although we still see Bosco and NWP as benefiting from the project when California taxpayers pay their back debt to Bosco’s NWP which never really ran.

LATEST COUNTY FARCE

Editor,

I understand that our Board of Supervisors is going to appoint a “Climate Action Advisory Committee” of 15 people to help to “prepare for natural disasters and the changes coming due to climate change.” Yeah, right! If it were not for the fact that there are so many people involved in this thing, this almost sounds like a plot for a Three Stooges movie, you know, a bunch of airheads milling around trying to solve an imaginary problem.

I am personally of the opinion that the BOS sees this committee as a way to increase their revenue in the form of permits and fines due to so called climate change and I’m sure they can think up some real doozies to hit the public with.

I think the BOS want to put themselves on the same salary level as the City of Ukiah city manager and his assistant. They already make, thanks to a self approved salary raise, $85,500 a year. This is outrageous considering that a supervisor in L.A. makes a salary of $49,699 a year. 

When are we, the citizens of Mendocino County going to put a stop to grossly overpaying the incompetents we have for our so called leaders.

David Anderson

Ukiah

ONE BALL SYNDROME

Editor,

Why do men with two balls dice with death for fear of losing one? They neglect the warning symptoms for a long time, risking that the cancer will spread, all for the shame attached to "one ball" syndrome — "Hitler, he only had one ball," etc. At age 15 in 1960, I lost a testicle, and the embarrassment for fear of ridicule has been so great that I have never once told a male friend. It is time for men with one ball to come out and for other men not to endanger themselves or die for the sake of losing a ball.

John Taylor

Bridgport, Dorset, England (via LRB)

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ED NOTE: Mr. Taylor’s reference is to a common ditty sung by many Brits during World War II, sung to the tune of the Colonel Bogey March (aka Bridge of the River Kwai Theme):

Hitler, he only has one ball.

Goering has two but they are small.

Himmler is very sim’lar

And Goebbels has no balls at all.

NOT EVEN CLOSE

Editor,

Mark Scaramella's excellent piece 'The Golden Goose Egg' (AVA May 1, 2019) begs for editing of Casey O'Neill's comments, starting with his final sentence about the Ag Department's marijuana regulatory program — "The reality is, it's pretty broken." 

This is a bold admission from one of the most competent resilient farmers in the cannabis community. It should be his first sentence, not his last, with elaboration of the enlightened regulatory approach Casey would take if he were in charge. 

Perhaps the Maj will follow up with part 2 of Casey's insights. The Supes come to the table clueless at best. They are resistant to including the perspectives of the very people who are being regulated, stewards of the plant with decades of cultivation and breeding know-how, that could enhance BOS revenue purposes. 

The question is how to appeal to a previously prohibited community they are trying to bring out of the shadows and margins to engage in reasonable regulation of their cannabis crop. Current county regs are overly complicated, restrictive, duplicative, expensive and unreasonable and the procedure is backward. Supes should be starting with farmers and cannacraft growers at the table, hammering out compromises together, until we, as a county, can feel satisfied we got it right. 

That has not happened and we are not even close to reasonable regulations capable of replacing unjust and unenforceable marijuana prohibition. 

Pebbles Trippet 

Elk

LOOK! UP IN THE SKY!

Hey Mr. Gruesome Gavin Newsom,

How are you doing today? Why don't you take a trip down to San Francisco, the lovely town that you let turned into a cesspool? Why don't you take off your shoes and socks and walk down some of the streets and feel what happens to the bottom of your feet and what you step in that you caused. You are the man person that let San Francisco get the way it is while you were out committing adultery on your wife and taking care of other business in California. Why don't you take some of that billions of dollars that you have locked up or stolen or stored or spent on the train to nowhere like Mr. Brown did and put up some homes for the homeless? Fix some of those things in the state that need fixing like the roads, the bridges, the levees, the dams, just general infrastructure. Why don't you do something instead of walking around like a big ostrich with your Adam's apple going up and down? Shame on all you liberal Democrats letting the state get in the condition it's in. 

God bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

By the way as a PS I want to thank Jerry Moonbeam Brown for using most of our gas tax money to build a rest home for convicts when they get out of jail so they can swarm in and out of there like bees and then go out in the state and commit more crimes while they are protected because this is a sanctuary state. Come to think of it Jerry Brown is a civilian now. He's married to Mary Sobel. A bunch of people in Sonoma County should sue the Brown for millions of billions and trillions of dollars because he's the one who committed the crime by letting the fire happen because he vetoed the cleaning up underneath the PG&E lines. He has committed crimes while he is above the law while he was our so-called governor. Shame on all the politicians especially the Liberals.

This is another PS: I want to address climate change. Now our great governor Gruesome Newsom is authorizing restaurants to put a surtax on food. And that is supposed to be for climate change. Are you kidding me? Climate change. Global warming. Air Resources Board. There is only one thing that is stupider than all of them and that's the people that make the laws about them. There's only one person, only one thing that can change the climate and that's mother nature. Do you think the fumes that come up here in Mendocino County off the trucks is going to blow a over into Nevada or Illinois or Wisconsin and hurt somebody? What do you think happens to the fumes when the wind blows? Gone! Dissipated! How stupid can people be! The people who watch the news are so uneducated they can't understand the news. They would know what's going on if they paid attention. We are getting screwed, blued and tattooed by the Liberals with our own tax money! Send the money to mother nature! Let her change the climate! We had record cold in the East, record snowfall in the mountains, record flooding, and you say it's caused by climate change! Get a grip! And get a grip American people! Realize what these people are doing!

I just want to say, what about the airliners that fly up 20,000 feet? Are they fighting climate change? What about the spaceships up in space, are THEY fighting fumes? What about the satellites in space? Are THEY fighting fumes? Are you people so STUPID that you believe this thing about climate change? These people who make up these rules that attack the American people, that make them lose their jobs, lose their vehicles, and other countless things I could list that we have to deal with and their stupid laws. President Trump should put a law against laws that are unnecessary.

I also want to thank the Sheriff and his fine deputies and the CHP and other law enforcement people in our county for keeping the county so safe in spite of the fact that it's a sanctuary state. They are doing a great job. Even Humboldt County does a great job. We need to respect law enforcement despite what the lawmakers do about it.

PS. A PS to the add-ons that I previously added on. The next law they will come out with is a law against smoke. That means any smoke — leaf smoke or grass smoke or any kind of smoke, cigarette smoke, wood stove smoke, wood burning stoves. There will be a law against that. Then they'll have a giant ship like a blimp that they are going to design for millions and trillions of dollars of our tax money and it's going to float around up there above us and suck up all the smoke that is generated from the lightning fires and other sources. It will suck it all out and then when it is going to dissolve it is going to be called the save America ship. That's what the name is going to be written on it. Then you're going to hear this loud screaming sound that will hurt your ears and you know what that's going to be? It's mother nature laughing! Laughing at how STUPID the American people are for designing it and even more STUPID are the people who believe it! Mother Nature! That's her laughing! Go outside and look up in the sky. Maybe you can see her. Well, you probably can't. For all the smoke and all the CARB stuff. 

TRUE BELIEVERS

Letter to Editor,

In your response to my objection to your pro-religious full page thing about Jesus you insulted me. You called me a liberal. I am far to the left of liberals. 

You stated in your response, the full page was "a tribute to The Greatest Liberal Who Ever Lived!"  

IF Jesus ever lived; and IF he actually said the things reputed to him, and IF he actually promoted peace, is it not astonishing that peace is not what his followers have promoted? The Christian Crusades were not  peaceful.  The 30 Years War was fought by Christians. WWI was fought by Christians.  WWII was fought by Christians.  

You concluded your reply by stating, "Rest assured, sir, that this newspaper stands four-square behind the Prince of Peace." I ask you to remember that religion is the most divisive social institution in the world.  Divisiveness does not foster peace. Peace has never come, and will never come, from worship.  Faith is self-delusion on a mass scale. It is, as Marx said, "Religion is the opiod of the people."  Faith is counter-productive to human well being and to peace. If religion ceased to exist we might be able to sit down and reason together.   A fuller explanation is available on Amazon  in my book, ‘The Atheists Handbook.’  

Lee Simon

Virginia

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ED REPLY: I shall pray for you, my son.