PROPERTY TAX RELIEF
Editor,
Twice now over the past week, county officials, replying to the question of offering some property-tax relief to homeowners, have answered that only the state can extend the due date. This is true, but what they are not saying is the county can waive penalties and interest for late payments.
Currently, here in Mendocino County, if you do not pay, in full, your second property-tax installment by April 10, your partial payment will be returned and you are then assessed a 10% penalty (on the entire amount) plus a $20 "cost charge." The county can change this. For instance, they could waive all penalties and charges until some future date, which would essentially extend the due date. Or they could waive penalties/charges if you paid at least half (or a third, or a quarter) of your total amount by the tenth, and then offer a reasonable schedule for paying the remainder. (They could also ask those who are able, to go ahead and pay the full amount on the tenth.)
The point is, the county's hands are not completely tied on this issue. They could help, if they wanted.
Mike Kalantarian
Navarro
WHY WE NEED IT
Editor,
The coronavirus pandemic has shown us the deficiencies in our health care system, where for most people health insurance is provided through their employers.
I have a brother-in-law in the food services industry who has insurance provided through his employer. He has just been laid off, along with the other staff of a large number of restaurants. His health coverage will continue for a month, but after that it is up to him to pay for it.
Even if he and his family are provided with free COVID-19 tests, the rest of his health care will be left uninsured. He has no guarantees of having a job in a month. He and many like him will be left with no good options after that.
If we had “Medicare for All,” or even an established public option, it would be better than the hodgepodge medical coverage we have today. Medicare for All may not have helped prepare us for the coronavirus pandemic we are facing, but it would have spared millions of people from the secondary effects — having no effective health care for the upcoming months.
Allan Thorpe
Sebastopol
BACK TO BASICS
Editor,
I wonder why high-pressure tactics were used in an article to persuade people to drop cursive in schools (“Kids can’t write cursive — no big deal,” March 8). Big guns were brought out. The pro-cursive movement is a “right-wing conspiracy,” with an appropriate quote from the paranoid fringe. Teaching cursive was described as an indoctrination tool for unruly children to mold them into “a fine platoon of soldiers.” Compared to my instruction in cursive, it was ludicrous.
The coronavirus pandemic teaches us not to place our eggs in one Chinese manufacturing basket, which suddenly becomes inaccessible. We assume there will never be widespread system failures requiring nonkeyboard communications. Printing is slow and awkward. More importantly, we would lose handwritten works of statesmen, theologians and long-ago writers if people can’t read cursive, which is already happening. Sure, the “official” version would be on computer, but how could we verify it is real?
In the TV series “Man in the High Castle,” a filmmaker from the Reich is making a film claiming America was always under the Reich. Her boyfriend says no one will believe it. “This will be the only version available,” she replies. “In three generations no one will remember anything else.”
Cathy Veenis
Santa Rosa
HORSE FEATHERS
Editor,
Some clarification please.
A woman on the internet is accusing Mendocino Animal Control of doing hideous things to her horses, like breaking their legs! Seems preposterous.
She’s asking for a lot of “crowd” funding to help her provide for her horses and go to court.
Someone named Ann Katherine Caudra in Fort is this woman, or her friend.
Is there any truth to these accusations? Or is the complainant just an equine hoarder?
Concerned in
Albion
ED NOTE: Ms. DelaQuadra lost custody of her horses because she was unable to care for them. That custody was lost two years ago. Ever since she has alleged a wide-ranging conspiracy against her. She's obviously unhinged but more to be pitied than condemned.
NO BIDEN, NO BERN
Editor,
Can anybody imagine what this country would be like if Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders was elected to be president? They both have dandruff on their shoulders, whiskey on their breath, they both have probably been child molesters at some point during their life and maybe still are. It would be almost horrible if they got in anyway in charge of any politics in this world or in the United States. So sad that people like that even get a chance to run for office.
I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.
God Bless Donald Trump.
Jerry Philbrick
Comptche
PS. That witch Mary Nichols with the Air Resources Board and the Liberal Democrats who support her claim to have a situation to stop things going on in the United States and make a better climate or global warming. They are crazy. They already have Gavin Newsom who runs a dictatorship in California, the worst state in the union.
PPS. Thank you President Trump for doing such a great job with this minor virus thing. Keep going, buddy. Get rid of all the liberals. Kick some ass.
Jerry Philbrick,
Mere repetition convinces weak minds. Many have an acquired taste for bovine offal, but before we are all buried under mountains in the blizzard of it, you should be called on for your part in it, in our beautiful county, to counter ignorance & prevent violence it can motivate.
It is a great danger to society for people with no idea of responsibility for what they say, to advocate lynchings & crackdowns on dissent by a would be dictator in public forums.
In the AVA letters you might be allowed to say anything, especially when Donald Trump’s example has dived standards for responsibility so, but the value cannot be destroyed that all who speak to the public are responsible to tell the truth.
You cannot make up scurrilous lies. You cannot make outrageous accusations that are not true. Objective truth is what you can prove & you must prove what you say is true when accusing people.
Joe Biden has been videoed inappropriately touching children. For example:
“Joe Biden jokes about having child’s permission to touch him” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xnunfpurA
When has Bernie Sanders ever been proved to do that? Prove it or Apollogize.
As for the creature you habitually bless, he bragged on having sex with his own daughter on TV. “Donald Trump tells Wendy Williams That He has S.e.x. In Common With Ivanka” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0_axTST2aY
Can’t help but wonder if it’s the Oligarch & the Man of the People who “have whiskey on their breath & dandruff on their shoulders”, or you.
God help us, with a demented, pathological liar in charge of “this minor virus thing”.
Mark W. Laszlo