MCT: Tuesday, March 10, 2020

• Clear Skies
• Jerry Maberry
• Harp Boont
• Senior Fundraiser
• Uncounted Ballots
• Coronavirus Updates
• Cave View
• Variety Show
• DE Thanks
• Seismograph
• Velociraptors
• Human Remains
• Middlefinger Shot
• Neronian Tweet
• Prowess
• Schools Poised
• Rubble Watch
• Census Pledge
• VA Suicide
• Chandler Assault
• Yesterday's Catch
• Virus Directives
• Panic Buying
• Dumbing Down
• Long Emergency
• Eel Steelhead
• Detestable Moses
• Invisible Woman
• Huge Parade
• Planning Agenda
• Ducklings
• Pension Problem
• Bieber Fundraising
• Comments
• Wildlife Films
• Rummage Sale
• Criminal Parties
• Exit Fraud

HIGH PRESSURE will allow for mainly clear skies and dry conditions through most of the work week. Temperatures will warm back into 70s in the interior. A cold storm system will bring an abrupt change with rain and mountain snow this weekend. (NWS)

JERRY MABERRY has died too soon at age 55. A native of the Anderson Valley, Jerry, who lived in Philo and Manchester, was well known locally for his wide knowledge of the natural world, and was an avid fisherman.

BOONTLING AT THE SENIOR CENTER! Do you 'harp boont’ or would like to learn? Come to the AV Senior Center on Monday, March 15th at 7 pm. Locals that speak this nearly extinct and unique dialect to our Valley will be on hand to share their wisdom. This will be an informal meeting to form a group that is interested in learning the lingo. No experience needed! We will be discussing how to move forward with the the group and how to keep learning in a fun and casual setting. Future times, dates, etc, will be determined at this meeting so don’t miss out. Coffee and tea provided or BYOB. For more info, contact Renée Lee at 895-3609 for more info.

BALLOTS LEFT TO BE COUNTED

MARCH 3, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY ELECTION

Mendocino County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Katrina Bartolomie announced that as with every other election, there are ballots left to be processed as part of the official canvass. Mendocino County has 14,993 Vote By Mail ballots to process and 1,575 Conditional Provisional/Provisional ballots to review and process.

Of the outstanding ballots left to count: the 1st Supervisor District has 2,737; the 2nd Supervisor District has 3,023; the 4th Supervisor District has 3,750; Measure A - the Ukiah Unified School District has 6,615; Measure B - the Fort Bragg Unified School District has 3,314; Measure C - the Mendocino Coast Health Care District has 5,151; Measures D & E - Mendocino County Unincorporated Areas have 11,797; Measure G - the Willits Unified School District has 2,081; Measure H - the Mendocino Unified School District has 1,888; ballots left to count.

Per State law, we have 28 days to complete the canvass. The Statement of Vote, which breaks down results by precinct, will be available at that time.

If you have any additional questions, please call our office at (707) 234-6819

2019 NOVEL CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) UPDATE FOR MENDOCINO COUNTY: LARGE EVENTS AND COMMUNITY GATHERINGS

03/09/2020 4:00 PM

At this time, there are ZERO confirmed cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in Mendocino County. However, we are preparing for a possible pandemic of COVID-19 as recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), in light of increasing community spread worldwide.

As Mendocino County has NO evidence of community spread at this time, Mendocino County Health Officer, Dr. Noemi Doohan, is not ordering the cancellation of events.

However, we encourage event organizers to take the following steps based on recommendations from CDPH:

-Create a plan for how to modify, cancel, or postpone large events in the case of a COVID-19 outbreak (which means community spread to people who do not have relevant travel history or exposure to a known patient).

-Modify, cancel, or postpone if participants are traveling from communities with COVID-19 outbreaks.

-Promote messages that discourage people who are sick from attending events.

-Encourage social distancing and participation capability such as live stream.

-Provide COVID-19 prevention supplies at your events, including sinks with soap, hand sanitizers, and tissues.

You can find more information on mass gatherings from CDPH here: http://bit.ly/2PZRvpC

Mendocino County continues to work with state and federal health authorities, as well as with our local health care providers to track our county’s health status and to give direction regarding COVID-19.

Mendocino County’s Coronavirus Webpage: http://bit.ly/mendoph

Coronavirus Hotline: (707) 234-6052 or callcenter@mendocinocounty.org

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CORONAVIRUS: SF CONFIRMS 5 NEW CASES, BRINGS TOTAL TO 13

The five patients are in home quarantine and are in good condition, officials said.

patch.com/california/halfmoonbay/s/h1kj1/coronavirus-sf-confirms-5-new-cases-brings-total-to-13

THE VIEW FROM OUT HERE. Coastal caves, rocky tide pools and pastel sunset skies.

2020 VARIETY VISION

Editor:

The show went on and it was fabulous! Yup, 29 years in a row the Variety Show has happened. And boy, this year we had not only the internal drama of putting all the acts together, technical snafus, scheduling conflicts etc., etc, but the external drama of the Corona Virus. We stayed in touch with our local docs and followed their advice. As a group we considered the alternatives and came to some tough decisions. As a result we lost some great acts and attendance was down. Didn't seem to dampen the spirits of the crowd or the performers though.

The staff of the Variety Show thanks everyone who came and was part of the show and those who didn’t. It's cool; we get it.

In the midst of all the uncertainty, the unflagging efforts of the crew was great to see. Thank you concessionaires, lighting crew, security, sound crew, parking experts, ticket crew, hall set-up team, clean up gang, photographer, backstage crew, pit band, AV Juniors in the parking lot serving food, amazing video crew, raffleers, mavens of decor and the green room, and the special effects team (shhhhh). Who have we missed? Truth be known, the show belongs to everybody in the valley and beyond. No show without the crowd, on the stage, behind the stage and most of all in front of the stage, you is us, we is you, and sometimes we're all together. Long live the Variety Show!

Oh, almost forgot:

FOR SALE, CHEAP, about 400 pairs of 2020 vision glasses slightly used. Call used prop division Vshow productions, 895-3807.

Captain Rainbow

Boonville

THANK YOU TO THE VOTERS

Editor,

On behalf of the Mendocino County Fire Chiefs Association and the Fire Companies of Mendocino County, I would like to thank the voters of Mendocino County for the positive outcome support of Measures D & E.

Although these new revenues are not the entire answer for the funding needed for emergency medical, rescue and fire services, the additional funding generated from these Measures will go a long way to help with equipment and training to support our emergency response.

Sincerely,

Dave Latoof, Chief Mendocino Fire

Vice President Mendocino County Fire Chiefs Association

NIGHT LIGHT OF THE NORTH COAST: Raptors at Chapman’s Gem and Mineral

by David Wilson

Since childhood dinosaurs have held a fascination for me. If dinosaurs roamed the earth today, my photo stories would probably be about them, or perhaps more likely, about dinosaurs at night. Alas, they are an exceedingly rare breed, and the opportunities to photograph them, or even to see them at all, are far between. As a matter of fact, until recently I had never had any luck catching a dinosaur on film or digital, though I have tried; I’ve had more luck photographing meteors.

It turned out I needed to rethink my approach. I am no wildlife-stalker, and for all my efforts to track down a dinosaur I had come up empty every time. I hadn’t failed, I’d simply discovered a number of ways how not to do it, and it was time to regroup. I would try a passive approach next, and toward that end I purchased a couple of high quality trail cams. If I could determine where dinosaurs roamed, I reasoned, I might be able to catch some candid photographs up close of creatures in their native habitats.

For months I set my dinosaur trail cams out in those most likely of habitats for these prehistoric beasts: primordial old growth redwood groves. But I got nothing. Of course, I captured the usual bears, mountain lions, bobcats, and the like, but nothing out of the ordinary. The real quarry eluded me. I tried setting my cameras up by streams, near rivers, in prairies, meadows, beaches, and sloughs. Nothing. No dinosaurs. Not even in Fern Canyon. I began wondering whether anyone ever sees these creatures.

But finally I caught a break, and naturally at a time when I was least expecting it and not at all trying for it. On my way home one afternoon from collecting my trail cams from an unsuccessful trail watch down near the Avenue of the Giants, I stopped in at Chapman’s Gem and Mineral Shop. I had with me a large spherical rock I’d discovered in our creek down by the Humboldt-Mendocino county line in my youth, and I wanted to inquire as to the nature of it. Maybe it was a big geode, I hoped; nope, they told me. “It’s sedimentary, my dear chap,” the man said.

Disappointed at finding out my round rock was merely so much detritus stuck together, and frustrated at my failure to capture any dinosaur images, I failed to notice my trail cams tumble out of the truck as I climbed in. I drove off without them.

It was several days before I noticed their absence. After a prolonged search at home and in the truck, I called Chapman’s to see if they’d found them. They hadn’t. But after the call, the good people there took a look for them out by the far parking area for me, and called back to report that they had found them.

I picked them up, and for more days they sat on my desk. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with them. Frankly, I was tired of having zero success and had little energy for them. I didn’t know where in the wilderness I should place them next, or if I even wanted to anymore. But I knew that sometimes it’s best to step away from a project and let it steep, and with that thought I moved to put them away… and noticed that the cams had captured a few images. Random parking lot activity from Chapmans, I figured, and I was on the point of deleting them when an old movie came to mind. Partly it came to mind, I should say, for I don’t recall its title, but in the movie a photographer discovered after developing his negative that he had captured a murder in progress. Hmm, I thought, that could be me with these photos! So I looked.

And there they were. My dinosaurs. The cams had captured a marauding pack of three velociraptors moving through Chapman’s Gem and Mineral Shop’s front yard. Finally, I had my quarry. To think: if I hadn’t lost my trail cams, I never would have caught them.

Turns out, some treasures you only find when you stop looking.

PS: I reached out about the origin of the velociraptor sculptures, but at the time of this writing I have not heard back. I do know they aren’t the work of the local metal sculptor the initials of whom are D.M., as I asked him.

A marauding pack of velociraptors outside of Chapman’s Gem and Mineral Shop south of Fortuna, Humboldt County, California. Photo from March 6, 2020.

The Raptors contemplate the wisdom of crossing US 101. Car light streaks along the freeway are evidence that the Raptors might have been seen by passing motorists, but I have heard no reports. Humboldt County, California on March 6, 2020.

"Two ranging velociraptors pause at the edge of US 101 in Chapman’s yard. Febrary 6, 2020, Humboldt County, CA.“

(To keep abreast of David Wilson’s most current photography or purchase a print, visit or contact him at his website mindscapefx.com or follow him on Instagram at @david_wilson_mfx.)

HUMAN REMAINS FOUND ON HIGHWAY ONE

Mendocino County Sheriff Office’s Public Information Officer Captain Greg Van Patten provided further information on the human remains found off Highway 1 north of Westport. On Saturday, a Fort Bragg man discovered the remains after reading an article in Cold Case Mendocino about where a schoolmate of his had gone missing in November of 2018. Several agencies amassed to secure the scene, then collect the remains yesterday. The remains will be analyzed for identification purposes.

According to Van Patten, the office was informed of the human remains on Saturday, March 7 at 4 p.m. Mendocino County Search and Rescue personnel was on-site Sunday to conduct a thorough search of the location. The remains were “scattered”, according to Van Patten. He said, this “is common to remains found in remote, rural locations.”

Van Patten explained the remains will be sent to California State University, Chico’s Human Identification Lab to be positively identified and analyzed to determine the cause of death. Assemblyman Jim Wood will also be sought for his expertise in the field of forensic odontology using teeth found at the scene to identify the individual.

Van Patten did acknowledge that the human remains were located very close to the area that missing man Lewis Compton ditched his vehicle after running from the California Highway Patrol in November 2018. He did emphasize that MCSO could not speak to the identity of the human remains until analysis had been completed.

When asked whether the discovery of the remains so close to the last-known location of the missing man Lewis Compton was indicative of questionable search and rescue practices, Van Patten explained, “Lewis was reported to be armed when he went missing. Based on that detail, it was decided to not put our citizen-based Search and Rescue staff into harm’s way.” He compared the decision to an emergency responder coming to the site of a car wreck involving a live power-line. “You have to assess the scene and consider if emergency personnel could be at risk”.

Van Patten also explained law enforcement’s evolving perspective on intervening with individuals in the grips of a mental health crisis (which Lewis Compton was purportedly suffering from): “The approach towards those in a mental health crisis is changing. Unless they are in immediate danger to themselves or others, we are getting more hands-off. If we pursue someone who does not want to be apprehended, they could put themselves in more danger running from us.”

IRA’S BIG NIGHT

On Friday, February 28, 2020 at about 10:22 PM Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies were dispatched to a local hospital as a 20 year old adult female had been admitted to the emergency room because of a gunshot wound. Deputies contacted the woman and learned that on Thursday, February 27, 2020 at about 5:00 PM she was lying down listening to music in a bedroom at a residence in the 76000 block of Henderson Road in Covelo. The adult female was listening to music when she heard gunfire coming from outside the residence. The adult female then realized she had been struck by a bullet on her right middle finger. After she had been shot, Ira Reyes, 34, of Covelo, ran into residence and was apologetic for having shot her.

Reportedly, Reyes believed he was shooting at someone else inside his residence thinking they were trying to reclaim a firearm he had previously stolen from them. On Saturday, February 29, 2020 Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies obtained a search warrant for Reyes’ residence and served the search warrant in the early morning hours. Deputies discovered a bullet hole in the residence that perforated a bedroom wall and located expended shell casings to a firearm. Reyes was not at the location at the time of the search warrant service.

On Thursday, March 5, 2020 at about 8:30 PM Round Valley Tribal Police Officers were involved in a vehicle pursuit in the Covelo area. The Round Valley Tribal Police Officers chased the vehicle to the west end of FootHill Boulevard and when the vehicle came to a stop, they observed suspect Reyes exit the passenger side of the vehicle fleeing into the wooded hills near a location called Little Valley. The Round Valley Tribal Police Officers observed Reyes throwing a backpack on the ground that contained a semi-automatic pistol inside. Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to the area and searched for Reyes, however he was not located. The Tribal Police Officers informed the Deputies of their observations and Deputies collected the found firearm as evidence.

On Saturday, March 7, 2020 at about 9:00 PM Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies received information that Reyes was driving a sports utility vehicle and the vehicle was seen parked at Barnes Lane just north of Mendocino Pass Road in Covelo.

Deputies covertly approached the vehicle and contacted Reyes who was inside the vehicle. Deputies arrested Reyes for Shooting at an Inhabited Dwelling/Vehicle, Assault with a Firearm, and Felon in Possession of a Firearm, without incident. On the vehicle seat where Reyes was sitting was a loaded semi-automatic pistol that was the same caliber as the shell casings found at Reyes’ residence. Reyes was a convicted felon and was prohibited from possessing any firearms. Reyes was booked into the Mendocino County Jail on the charges where he was to be held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

CATASTROPHE MONDAY. Markets all over the world continue to plummet over the growing threat of coronavirus spreading, but Trump has not addressed the economic impact as the death toll hits 22.

The president also continues to downplay the threat, claiming that the situation is being blown out of proportion by “fake news” and the Democratic Party. “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant,” Trump tweeted Monday morning.

THAT NERONIAN BLAST means not only are black swans on the wing, but the Queeg-like guy in charge has no idea about what to do, if anything can be done. At a minimum, however, he might at least try to act leader-like instead of like a paranoid nut case. (Neronian is a ref to the famous Roman emperor who played his fiddle while his city burned. Historians say nobody really knows what Nero did in that time of crisis, but people assumed, given his decadence and incompetence, whatever he was doing Nero was indifferent to Roman's welfare. There are parallels, certainly.)

COUNTY SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT, Michelle Hutchins, reports:

“We are working closely with Public Health to be sure our school leaders have the most up to date information. We plan to create a county-wide workshop for education to prepare for a potential epidemic that could include school closures. Of course we want to do everything possible to keep schools open as it is disruptive to close schools but public safety is of most importance. We negotiated a good price for our schools to employ a distance learning solution quickly with a non-profit company called Acellus to lessen the impact a school closure would have on a community. This specific solution can be used with or without technology access so connectivity will not be an issue. In addition to Acellus, we are creating a menu of options schools can use to deploy independent learning opportunities if kids are asked to stay home. We are also getting licenses for schools to be able to video conference meetings so that the administrative functions would continue. At this point, we are not being told to keep kids home unless they exhibit flu like symptoms which is the same thing we do now."

BOONVILLE’S SUPERINTENDENT, Michael Warych, confirms: “We're in the process on both counts” [re possible school closure]. “We've been working on it for a while now. Superintendents and MCOE are scheduled to meet this week to coordinate plans. A brief discussion is on tomorrow night's local Board agenda.”

TRANSLATION: If Mendo’s public health doctor says close the schools, the schools will close. As will high school baseball season although AV High has found a coach for this season in Matt Bullington, the school’s history teacher.

RUBBLE WATCH: Removal of the debris from December's disastrous fire in central Boonville was supposed to commence in March and word filtering through our endless summer and on into the AVA bunker says the rubble clean-up begins Monday. Might have begun sooner but for the usual confusion in the permitting County bureaucracies, beginning with the complexities of getting a demolition permit. As of Monday noon, the rubble remains unaddressed, not even so much as a guy in a hardhat gazing contemplatively at it.

A MAN NAMED DOUGLAS COULTER was protesting outside the Veterans Administration offices in Ukiah last week and a reader passed along his complaint:

"VA parking lot suicide that never happened because of censorship by Ukiah California authorities? 7:30 AM Friday, February 7, 2020, a veteran killed himself with a firearm in Ukiah a King's Court VA clinic. Police cover-up firearm death, list it as "coroner incident." VA keeps data from national gun death statistics. Newspaper refuses to cover story even after complaints. Censorship! Do we live in a police state? How many more veteran suicides have been covered up?"

WE ASKED Sheriff Matt Kendall about this incident and he said, Yes there was indeed a suicide at the Veteran’s parking lot on February 7, but that there had been a full report and there was no cover-up. The elderly man who committed suicide in his truck at the parking lot left a note at the scene explaining that he didn't want to do it in front of his family, that he had a terminal illness, and that he wanted to do it at the Veterans parking lot because he was confident that the Veterans Administration would notify next of kin and take care of other arrangements as required. Sheriff Kendall said if anyone wants more details they can contact the Coroner’s office supervisor, Lt. Shannon Barney, 463-4080, (Barneys@Mendocinocounty.org) or his assistant Cynthia Bartley (bartleyc@MendocinoCounty.org).

WILLITS HE-MAN

On Thursday, March 6, 2020 at about 5:00 PM a 20-year old adult female contacted Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies at the Sheriff’s Office substation in Willits. During the contact it was reported that her cohabitant boyfriend, Chandler Bowers, 19, of Wililts, had physically assaulted her at their residence a few days earlier.

Reportedly, the adult female and Bowers were at a residence located in the 4000 block of Lower Road on Monday, March 2, 2020 around 8:00 AM when they became involved in an argument. During the argument Bowers became very angry and head-butted the adult female and threw a cylindrical wireless speaker striking the right side of her torso. The adult female's 2 year-old child was in close proximity to her when she was assaulted with the wireless speaker. Bowers continued his assaults on the adult female by grabbing her hair, pulling her to the ground and striking her several times in the torso area with his hands. Deputies observed the adult female had a visible injury to her face. On Friday, March 7, 2020 at about 10:08 AM Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies located Bowers in the 100 block of East Barbara Lane in Willits and he was subsequently arrested for Felony Domestic Battery, Child Endangerment, and False Imprisonment. Bowers was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $25,000 bail.

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 9, 2020

PAULA ESPINOZA-MENDOZA, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, suspended license (for DUI), probation revocation.

CONOR MILLER, San Francisco/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

JOHN PALACIOS, Ukiah. Under influence, probation revocation.

YVETTE ROCKEY, Willits. Domestic abuse.

WHO PAYS FOR VIRUS TESTING?

At the governor’s direction, all full-service health insurance carriers must lower to zero the cost for screening for the virus, including co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance. This includes hospital and emergency room visits, urgent care treatment, and visits to provider offices. The directive also states insurers must waive preauthorization when the care involves COVID-19, permit out-of-network care when required, and specifically mentions telehealth — or virtual visits with a health-care provider via video. Additionally, the governor announced support to citizens and businesses affected by the disease. Anyone who falls sick with COVID-19 and must stay home can file for disability insurance, which generally ranges from 60-70 percent of wages. Paid Family Leave is a form of disability insurance and is available for up to six weeks to people caring for a sick family member. For employers, the state has opened the UI Work Sharing Program, which enables employers to curtail worker hours if necessary and allows employees to receive unemployment insurance benefits to make up the shortfall in wages.

independent.com/2020/03/05/california-requires-free-covid-19-testing/

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The Ides of March: Nearly 900 people waiting to enter Costco, where last week the opening crowd would be >100. Panic buying.

What about when it’s panic but nothing to buy?

-largest weekly stock market drop since 1929

-first time treasury yields are under 1%

-biggest single day oil price drop since gulf war

-fastest spreading virus since SARs, China hardest hit

-gold hitting $1700 after previous high of $1900

-cryptocurrencies in freefall

THINGS TAKE A TURN

by James Kunstler

Around the same time that most Americans set their clocks ahead this weekend, something more momentous shoved the world into an epic phase-change, and the modern era, with all its mighty baggage, was finally swept away, along with that single lost hour of darkness.

We’re in a new world, and one night later, out on the freeway of history, the engine of the global economy threw a rod. The chauffeur is still standing alongside the stricken vehicle in the breakdown lane, scratching his head while sour-smelling smoke wafts up from the hood.

You’d think that truly earthshaking events like that might change the so-called narrative, but The New York Times was at it again Monday morning with this front-page op-ed purporting to explain all the sorrows of our times:

That’s how out-of-it the narrators are, even while a thuggish reality whapped them repeatedly upside the head with a two-by-four for weeks leading up to this. No, Dean Baquet (NYT ed-in-chief), transphobia does not explain the quandaries of our time, any more than sorcery or the wickedness of black cats explained the plagues of the 1300s that put a chapter of the human story to rest and started a new one. That elaborate machine of globalism just never figured on a situation when so many people in all corners of the world would have to hunker down in place to wait out one of Gaia’s super-weapons — though it is still not known if corona virus was actually created by Gaia’s wards, Homo sapiens, themselves, who are suddenly feeling the blowback.

Lots of things are blowing back on us now, especially from the patches, tweaks, and work-arounds we applied to the shuddering system while the “check engine” light was flashing the past twelve years. After the awesome skid of 2008, you’d think the world’s money managers might have learned something about the hazards of stepping on the gas when those lights were flashing. Sadly, the tens of thousands of PhD economists in the back seat couldn’t think of anything else to do. And history will regard them as no better than the hooded priests of the 1300s who swung their smoking censers in the dark streets while the stricken town folk bundled their dead.

The new disposition of things is upon us, and the sooner we get with the program, the better. Welcome to The Long Emergency and its aftermath, a world made by hand. Expect that a lot of things crashing, grinding to a halt, and falling to pieces will not get patched back together and restarted. When the dust settles from all that, we’ll discover one of the primary conditions of the new era: we’re poorer — a lot of what we took to be money, or things that represented money, were figments. “Money” itself, as manifested in currencies, may become a slippery concept, with low credibility. If that’s the case, people ought to ask themselves: how can I be useful or helpful to the others around me in a way that will raise my own social capital and accumulate, at least, the good will of these other people, and perhaps some of their help or service in return for mine? That is the beginning of building a local community — people bound together by mutual obligations, responsibilities, duties, and rewards.

We’re lucky for one thing: this crisis of advanced civilization is striking at the very start of the planting season. If you’re prudent, you can begin at once to organize serious gardening efforts, if you live in a part of the country where that is possible. I’d go heavy on the potatoes, cabbages, winter squashes, and beans, because they’re all keepers over winter. Baby chicks sell at the local ag stores for a few bucks each now and you’ll be very grateful for the eggs. Get a rooster — even though they can be a pain-in-the-ass — and you won’t have to buy any more chicks.

If you live in a part of the country where the terrain is rugged and well-watered — as I do — start scoping out local hydro sites that might potentially generate electricity or drive machinery directly from water power. We will probably need more of that. Around here many of those sites are signified by the ruins of decommissioned factories and hydro-stations from not much more than a century ago. They were originally built with a lot less machine power than we would use today, and a lot more power of men working in groups. We’ve forgotten how effective men can be working together with pretty simple tools. We were too busy devaluing men in recent decades for the sake of a moral crusade to erase “gender” differences. Well, that will be bygone so fast your head will spin.

The big cities won’t do well if supply chains stay down for a month or longer. This ought to be self-evident. If you have friends or relatives in places where food can be grown, or in the small towns favorably located near productive land and running water, maybe this is a good time to start negotiating some new arrangements and making a move, if you can. Nobody knows yet just how deeply the effects of corona virus will cut through daily life in the weeks ahead. The potential for disorder isn’t tiny, looking at the current situation, at least in terms of broken business relationships and the flow of vital goods. We’ve apparently entered the hunkering-in-place stage of the crisis. Be prepared for plenty of action when the hunkering ends and the hungering begins.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

SUMMER STEELHEAD ON THE EEL RIVER

…and other news and features from Friends of the Eel

eelriver.org/2020/03/05/summer-steelhead-feature-piece/

ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE, when the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers 31:13): "And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women-children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.'"

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater one than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

— Tom Paine, “The Age of Reason” (1795)

INVISIBLE WOMAN

A SENIOR West Wing staffer told Trump that he had a dream, and in that dream Trump got his huge military parade after all, complete with hundreds of thousands of cheering, flag-waving people lining the streets. "Was I smiling?" Trump asked. "I don't know," the aide replied. "It was a closed casket."

A BUNCH A PLANNING STUFF

The March 19, 2020 Planning Commission agenda has been posted to the department website at the below link:

mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff if you have any questions.

Caitlin Schafer
Staff Assistant III
Mendocino County Planning & Building Services
860 North Bush Street, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-234-6650

WHAT TODAY'S MARKET COLLAPSE MEANS FOR COUNTY WORKERS

To the Editor:

There was one thing that former Supervisor Dan Hamburg and I strongly agreed on. And that thing was Mendocino County's pension system, also known as Mendocino County Employee Retirement Association (MCERA), was not safe. Our county retirees and county workers, and their pensions, were not safe.

I'll explain.

Being almost entirely invested in registered securities, Mendocino County was just another chump, along with almost every other public pension system, in Wall Street's con game.

We were not diversified out of being totally invested in only stocks and bonds, in other words, what Wall Street sells.

And we were not hedged against Wall Street's market manipulations and frauds.

Dan and I noted the bull market since the global financial crisis 2008 was due largely to all the free money that Wall Street lobbied the Federal Reserve Bank to pump into the financial system. The U.S. government shifted liabilities from the Wall Street's balance sheets to its own balance sheet. Then the U.S. government pumped liquidity into the market like crazy for the next ten years.

Wall Street could not have been happier.

Over the years, I contended during public comment at Mendocino County Board of Supervisors meetings that the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing had caused the biggest bubble in the history of humankind, the mother of all bubbles, which, of course, is government debt.

It’s so important to understand the original cause of the problem, and that is the Federal Reserve ran up debt that it couldn't possibly repay, and the Federal Reserve let politicians spend money recklessly and without consequence. In this regard, there was no difference among politicians. No difference really between Obama or Trump.

From 2008 until today's crash, both monetary policy and fiscal policy are at the root of the problem.

In particular, the 2017 Trump tax cuts created a dire debt situation. The White House is estimating this year’s budget deficit will total $1.09 trillion. The Obama administration saw deficits just as large while trying to solve the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent recession. Meanwhile, the rich got richer. The poor got poorer. Unions started to die. And the middle class started to disappear.

The wealth gap between the 1% of the 1%, and the rest of us, has never been greater in U.S. history.

The only thing Dan Hamburg and I got wrong was timing. The timing of the market collapse. Our timing was off. We predicted the collapse too early.

Today, the house of cards came crashing down.

So, will there be another Great Depression?

There doesn't have to be.

As long as Fed policy and lawmakers don’t make the same financial mistakes as they did in 2008, the market sell off doesn't have to last long.

If the Fed and lawmakers allow the bargain basement liquidation of vastly over-valued securities, the sell off doesn’t have to last long.

What can our Mendocino County's own Retirement Board do?

One, we can DIVERSIFY out of being "all in" on registered securities. We should invest in our own economy. Like start a public bank. Or start a limited-charter cannabis bank.

We should invest in local infrastructure and local economic development.

We should buy foreclosed properties. And invest in land trusts. Maybe even invest in housing development.

See Obama's Toolkit for Housing Development: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Housing_Development_Toolkit%20f.2.pdf)

Two, we can HEDGE our portfolio. We should sell options on covered securities. In other words, we should develop hedging strategies on the portfolio we already own.

We should also invest in alternatives, like managed futures funds, long-short funds, bridge loans, merchant banking deals, and syndicated bank loans.

Pension liabilities are typically exposed to a wide range of different risks, including: changes in nominal interest and inflation rates, equity volatility, changes in average member longevity, and changes in credit spreads. Liability hedging offsets these exposures by utilizing a wide range of tools, some of them very sophisticated, like interest rate and inflation swaps, currency swaps, longevity swaps, buy outs/buy-ins, and property derivatives.

If MCERA is not up to the task of sophisticated hedging strategies, and if MCERA wants to control those hedging costs, MCERA should pool its money with another county, a bigger county, that has its own chief investment officer and investment team.

We can pool our assets in a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) with another county, like Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, or Santa Barbara.

I made exactly this suggestion when I served on the Retirement Board. I even brought in a former president of the State Association of County Retirement Systems (SACRS) to present the idea. My suggestion fell on deaf ears.

The question is: What do we do now?

John Sakowicz, public trustee of MCERA and member of the Retirement Board, 2012-2017

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Money was always at the root of it, with plutocrats cooking up schemes to profit from development of alleged “greening” technology, or through such financial chicanery as trading in instruments like carbon credits. But to be fair there’s many personal motivations for all this climate perturbation. Some people are truly convinced that doom is around the corner, some in the scientific community are just looking to make a modest living through research dollars, some people are just trying to get laid.

The more cynical of them won’t be surprised by what’s going to hit, but I’m afraid that some of the young, the naive, the pink, the moist, still in school and therefore unschooled and unhardened in the ways of the world, are in for a real let-down. That is, they’ll find out they’ve been played, that it was a con, all of it for the rich to get richer, for the comfortable managerial clerisy to carve out jobs in universities and in well-compensated bureaucratic positions i.e., climate regulatory bodies.

When the financial and economic unwind comes (as it must), when current arrangements vis-a-vis trade with China come to a grinding stop, through either money conduits clogging up with the detritus of financial collapse, or something like this Wuhan flu, or a choking off of oil pipelines from the Middle East, a great re-arrangement will have to happen.

And given the exigencies of getting necessary materials and objects no longer made on the North American continent, never mind the continental USA, climate concerns will dissipate like morning fog.

Let-down? What let-down? Global warming? What global warming? Oh THAT global warming. Well, that’s all to the good isn’t it, what with all that CO2 bringing about a re-warming and re-greening of the planet. THAT’S what we were all concerned about all along. Wasn’t it? More CO2, not less. Warmer is better, isn’t it?

And so with Democrats and – cough – progressives guilty of the very accusations that they’re presently hurling at their political opposites, people are showing their cognitive flexibility. Two plus two equals five? Sure, why not, if my livelihood and well-being depend on it, I am convinced of the unalterable truth of it.

With this as the precedent, with the intellectual and behavioral template being set as we speak, they’ll insist they were always for the very things they previously said they were against. Down the memory hole it goes, reality shape-shifting on the pages of the august New York Times, the paper of record.

There’s no way they can pull it off you say? I say they can and they will.

---

[2] I’m in a low income neighborhood. It went seriously to shit in the last downturn. It got back to (what passes as) normal (slowly) but I know what’s coming again.

Pplz get aggro we be servin’ up some lead.

Multiple attempts by meth-head creeps trying to bust in your door while you’re home and they hear you and they DO NOT CARE, surely work to force you to re-think your “Liberal” ideology and your views on the 2nd Amendment.

Drunk, high, cold, hungry, sick-of-it people are not a joke. People who let their own kids and pets go hungry and filthy while they tweak care even less about you. Normal people are not raised to view the world with a realistic idea of what many others are capable of. I had to re-learn over a period of years (due to China-outsourced downward mobility and social decline, thank you Bill Clinton) and it wasn’t enjoyable. Okay, it really blew. But I’d sure hate even more to be taking a crash course now. My life expectations have been beat to shit. For this I now rejoice.

CHILLIN' PIGS, NORTHERN BUGS, AND EXQUISITE FROGS: "Nature's Weird and Wonderful" theme at Wildlife Film Fest

by Roberta Werdinger

The International Wildlife Film Festival tour from Missoula, Montana, will continue on Friday, March 13, with three fun films for all ages. Doors will open at 6:15 p.m. with live music by Bob Laughton. Films will start at 7 p.m. The Fest takes place at the at the Ukiah Civic Center, 300 Seminary Avenue.

The feature film “Amazing Pigs” (50 min.) provides a close look at pigs. Filthy? Greedy? Lazy? Pigs are intelligent, have acute senses, and thrive everywhere from frozen Siberia to the turquoise waters of the Bahamas.

"Amazing Pigs" takes the audience on a fun, fascinating journey around the world to reveal the secrets of their success. You’ll never look at pigs the same way again. This film was the 2019 IWFF Audience Award Winner.

Two short films will also screen. “1000s of Bugs, 100 Islands, 1 Happy Entomologist” (6 min.) follows Chris Ernst on a mission to find and catalogue all of the tiny creatures that creep, crawl, and fly around the Central Coast of British Columbia.

“Sounds of Survival” (8 min.) takes viewers deep into the emerald forests of Cusuco National Park of Honduras. In this preserve, scientists are on a quest to record the as-yet-unheard call of the endangered, exquisite spike-thumb frog. What ensues is both a delightful portrait of the process of scientific discovery and an inspiring example of the power of sound as a tool for conservation.

Tickets are available at the Mendocino Book Company or at the door for a suggested donation of $10 for adults and $5 for children. All proceeds benefit the Redwood Valley Outdoor Education Project (RVOEP), a special program of the Ukiah Unified School District that provides outdoor environmental education programs to over 2,000 students each year on a 45-acre woodland in Redwood Valley.

For more information contact Maureen Taylor, RVOEP Education Coordinator, at 707-489-0227. A full schedule of films and music is available at the RVOEP website: http://rvoep.org/events/.

ELK’S 33RD ANNUAL RUMMAGE SALE

The Greenwood Civic Club invites you to take part in the 33rd Annual Elk Rummage Sale to be held Saturday and Sunday, April 4th and 5th from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Greenwood Community Center in downtown Elk.

Discover antiques, collectibles, clothes, books, toys, housewares, furniture, tools, and more at bargain prices. Join the “Great Race” Sunday afternoon - all you can stuff in a bag for $3.00. While shopping, feast on baked goods, drinks and home-made tempting lunch items. Credit cards now accepted!

Donations in good condition are welcome before the sale and may be dropped off at the Greenwood Community Center on Wednesday, April 1st and Thursday, April 2nd between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. For information or pickup assistance, call Angela or John at 877-1130 or visit www.elkweb.org

The Greenwood Civic Club is a non-profit organization and all donations are tax deductible. Proceeds from the annual event benefit community projects, the summer children’s program and student scholarships.

THE CRIMINALITY OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

The Democratic Party is one of the two partner parties of American capitalism. As with the Republicans, it is primarily financed by the corporate rich and represents their class interests. The policies it implements are cohered within a vast policy formulation network of foundations, think tanks and policy discussion groups that have been set up for the purpose of legitimizing the policy choices of the corporate community and its military industrial security complex.

informationclearinghouse.info/53086.htm