MCT: Thursday, April 2, 2020

• Pleasant Weather
• Social Distancing
• Grace Brodjeski
• Farrer Building
• Covid Updates
• Black Capitalism
• Spring Is
• Powerhouse Dayla
• Cat Mother
• Kayo Memories
• Foolhardy Policy
• Ed Notes
• Pushed Back
• Covid Fund
• Mendo Stats
• Doohan MIA
• Russian Gulch
• Last Week
• UDJ Note
• Pear Festival
• Philo Rumor
• Sentence Reduction
• Anytime Saloon
• Chuah Tamatie
• Yesterday's Catch
• Cuomo Prediction
• Paris Commune
• Capitalist Society
• Virus Tracker
• Stimulus Checks
• Anarchy
• Caspar Turkeys
• My Dreams
• Tremendous Quotes
• Smell That
• PD Memo
• Transformative Month
• Defense Production
• Opportune Time
• Congressional Reform
• Authoritarian
• No Excuse
• Countermeasures
• Only Lonely
• Baby Puff
• Huff Biden
• Found Object

PLEASANT WEATHER is expected across the region through Friday. Thereafter, a fast moving storm system will impact northwest California Friday night into Saturday resulting in a period of showery weather. A cold storm system is then forecast to move across the region Sunday and Monday. Locally heavy mountain snow will be possible along with isolated hail showers near the coast.

FREEZE WARNING remains in effect until 9 am PDT this morning . . . sub-freezing temperatures as low as 29.

(National Weather Service)

GRACE AGNES BRODJESKI

Grace passed away peacefully from natural causes on 3-21-2020 at Redwood Cove Healthcare Center. She was born Feb. 11, 1929 in Athens, Wisconsin. She lived in Mendocino County for 52 years, spending 20 of those years owning a bowling alley in Point Arena. She served as president of the Catholic Ladies Alter Society in Point Arena. She also loved to draw and do all kinds of crafts. She had love and devotion for her God and family.

Grace is survived by her daughters Judi Green of Sacramento, Cindy Catledge of Glenn Allen, Alaska, Brenda Lunder & Connie Day of Lake Havasu, sons Marvin Brodjeski of Carson City, Larry Brodjeski of Annapolis, Rick Brodjeski of Ukiah, 14 grandchildren, 14 great grandchildren, 6 great great grandchildren. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there will be no Service.

Final resting place will be Eversole Mortuary, 141 Low Gap Rd., Ukiah, CA

The family suggests memorials to The Catholic Church or you favorite charity.

MENDOCINO COAST COVID-19 UPDATE Week of March 30, 2020.

by William Miller, MD, MCDH Chief of Staff and Tabatha Miller, Ft. Bragg City Manager

---

From William Miller, MD, our hospital’s Chief of Staff:

As other places in the US start to see exponential rise in the number of patients in their hospitals, we continue to work diligently here on the Coast to be prepared. Since we still have no patients with COVID-19 in our neck of the woods yet, this is giving us some important extra time to get ready and we are not wasting that time. However, to be sure, the virus is here now or will be soon enough.

Again, we appreciate you all sheltering in place to help reduce the spread of the virus. At a time like this, there is something else that we also need to avoid spreading and that is rumors. There have been a lot of rumors flying around the community about the hospital that are simply not true. This is not helpful and only adds to the state of general confusion and anxiety. Here are some of the more interesting ones that I have recently heard and can dispel.

Rumor 1, we have a physician who is infected with the virus. No, not true. To date, we have not had any staff that are known to be infected or suspected of being infected or who have a known exposure. We do have some traveling staff that may come from parts of the country were the prevalence is higher. In such cases, we follow CDC guidelines and if indicated, ask the traveler to self-isolate and/or to be tested, depending on the situation. If the epidemic hits our health care system as hard as it has hit other places, then we may see a surge of patients in our hospital to such a degree that we will be thankful indeed to all of the help we can get, especially from those outside travelers who help us staff our hospital.

Rumor 2, we have run out of masks. No, not true. As you all know by now, there is a national shortage of all personal protective equipment (PPE). New York City announced this morning that their supply will only last one more week. Thus, supplies are being diverted to those parts of the country that are in greatest need. As a result, we must be very careful to conserve what we have now. Over the last two weeks, we have been asking our staff to re-use the same mask. This is following the CDC guidelines and is also what other hospitals are doing. Fortunately, we just received a small shipment of masks and will be loosening up those rationing requirements. When you consider that we currently still do not have any patients admitted here with COVID-19, it would be a serious mistake to use up our supply of protective equipment at a time when the risk is still very low and then not have enough when we do have patients with the illness, which we know will in fact eventually happen.

Rumor 3, we are missing out in participating in County, State and Federal assistance. Again, not true. All hospitals in the State are now coordinating on a daily basis with the California Dept. of Public Health and reporting on all aspects of our situation including numbers of cases, supplies including PPE, available beds and available ventilators. We are definitely in the line up to receive help if we have the need. The shipment of masks mentioned above came from this coordinated effort.

At this time, we have completed or will complete in the next few days the following. We have increased our ICU bed capacity from 4 to 12. We have ordered 8 more ventilators, to add to our current numbers and we also expect to receive at least 4 of the 20 or so that the County is seeking to obtain. We have expanded our regular med-surg capability by an additional 12 more beds. These bring our total hospital capacity up from 25 to 45. The State has asked us to increase our bed capacity by 30-40%, and as you can see we have far exceeded that at almost a 100% increase including tripling our ICU beds. We are working to obtain all of the extra supplies and medications that such a tripling of critical care beds will require.

The biggest challenge will be staffing. At this time, it looks like we may be able to double our hospitalist coverage at least during the peak of the surge. We are looking at how to potentially use some of our clinic providers to help out in hospital and ER settings. We are also exploring ways to get enough nurses and other staff, including respiratory therapists. Fortunately, we do have the luxury of having just a little bit of time before the storm to make such preparations. As I said before, we are not wasting that time for which we are truly thankful.

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From Tabatha Miller, Fort Bragg City Manager:

When the Mendocino Public Health Official issued the Revised Shelter-in-Place Order on March 24th, it had a termination date of April 7, 2020 but is now extended until further notice. This is consistent with Governor Newsom’s Stay-in-Place Order. President Trump just extended his social distance guidelines through the end of April. Likewise, the Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools, Michelle Hutchins, extended the modified or “remote” learning for all schools in the County through May 1, 2020. The message is clear that we will continue to live much as we have over the last two weeks for another month – maybe longer. The good news is that as a community we are healthy and we have not yet experienced the COVID-19 surges that New York and other parts of the world have already and that we hope to avoid through our Shelter-in-Place actions.

Understanding the short-term future, I encourage everyone to take stock of where they are at financially and emotionally, not just physically. If you need financial assistance, the sooner you act, the better. Here are a few programs and suggestions that may help you through the next several months:

If you have been laid off or your hours reduced, apply for unemployment now. The stimulus bill approved by Congress and signed by the President last week adds an additional $600 per week above the regular state benefits for up to 4 months.

Governor Newsom has negotiated a 90-day Mortgage Payment Relief program with many of the state and national mortgage providers. This applies to all Californians regardless of income level. Contact your mortgage provider immediately if you are unable to pay your mortgage in full now or in the near future. Even if your mortgage provider is not on the Governor’s list, they are likely to work with you.

Contact your student loan provider and the Federal Department of Education to arrange for a temporary suspension of your monthly student loan payments.

If you rent, reach out to your Landlord as soon as possible, if you are unable to make your full rent payment when due. You have protection from eviction under the Governor’s March 27th Executive Order, the City of Fort Bragg’s March 30th Eviction Moratorium and/or Mendocino County’s March 24th Eviction Moratorium.

In the City of Fort Bragg, your water and wastewater utilities will not be shut off for nonpayment in March or April. PG&E has made a similar promise to its customers.

If you need assistance with groceries, contact the Fort Bragg Food Bank (707) 964-9404. You can also apply for CalFresh benefits at getcalfresh.org.

General advice - the best thing you can do for your financial health is to be proactive and reach out to your creditors and discuss your options. This will often protect your credit for the future.

During this stressful time, taking care of your emotional health is also critical, especially if others rely on you. Reach out by phone, Zoom, FaceTime, email or Facebook to friends and relatives to keep connected. If you need more assistance remember your local resources:

Redwood Community Services Crisis Line 1-855-838-0404 or the Crisis Text Line text TALK to 741741

Project Sanctuary for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention and Support (707) 964-4357

As we focus on the physical health of our community and ourselves, remember to manage your financial and mental health as well. If you have questions, City Staff is available at (707) 961-2823 (Spanish speakers are also available). If you need nonemergency assistance from the Police Department, please call (707) 964-0200. In a true emergency, as always dial 911. Stay safe and healthy.

SPRING IS LIKE A PERHAPS HAND (E. E. Cummings - 1894-1962)

Spring is like a perhaps hand

(which comes carefully

out of Nowhere)arranging

a window,into which people look(while

people stare

arranging and changing placing

carefully there a strange

thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps

Hand in a window

(carefully to

and fro moving New and

Old things,while

people stare carefully

moving a perhaps

fraction of flower here placing

an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

DAYLA HEPTING WRITES:

Sounds like AV is about the same as Malta Montana as per CO-VID 19. I had felt relatively safe here in my nursing home with our restrictions which are lockdown, no visitors, no trips out except to doctors, temps taken 2x daily, masks and sanitizers provided, that is I felt safe until yesterday because supposedly we had no cases in Phillips County, but yesterday I learned only 9 people in the county had been tested! So really we have no idea! I also read a study made in Iceland where they have done extensive testing dating back to February when the virus hit China. Their data shows 50% of infected people were asymptomatic! Contagious yes, but no symptoms. It is also true that there is an incubation period of 5 to 14 days during which time you are contagious without even knowing you have it. So today I started wearing the masks and doing the hand sanitizing. If you would have talked to me a year ago which is right before I came into the rest home I would have told you “just draw me up a big fat syringe of pure powerful corona virus and shoot it up into that vein in the crook of my arm because I don’t give a fuck if I live another day!” But now, after a year in the rest home, I am a powerhouse again, happy and ready for 10 more years so I will be damn well pissed off if I get that CO-VID 19 and die on a ventilator 20 days later. No sir! Not me! I plan to live!

TOM QUINN COMMENTS in response to Fred Gardner’s first article on Terence ‘Kayo’ Hallinan:

I didn’t know that Hallinan had passed. Great guy. Had the privilege of working with him as co-counsel in a marijuana case in Lake County several years ago. Back in 77 after I first moved to the West Coast, Hallinan was running for SF Supervisor in District 5 when I went into his campaign headquarters on Haight St which featured that iconic photo of him in a coat and tie with a bloodied head after he got beaten by cops at an anti-war demo circa 1968, but Hallinan was edged out in a crowded field by Harvey Milk whose values he shared.

NOT GIVING UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS INSURANCE for COVID-19 is foolhardy. Do we want these workers who harvest our food, serve our elderly, and other critical tasks to go without testing and treatment and be contagious? This is where compassion and self interest can join together.

— Ralph Nader

ED NOTES

IT'S MORE LIKE PLAGUE NOTES but here goes:

At the CostCo gas pumps about 10am Tuesday, a young woman was wiping down the hose handles after each use. I spilled some fuel hanging up. "Sorry," I said, "I spilled some." You sure did, she said. I couldn't get a precise read on her meaning but it had to be irritation. CostCo announced Wednesday that it was trying to cut back on over-crowding by limiting entrance to two persons per card which, unless my cataracts deceive me, is the average number entering the Ukiah CostCo. But in the cities, I guess, mobs are a bump away from fistfights over the last tp roll.

AT SUNNY'S DONUTS, Maria was wearing a surgical mask. "Where's your mask, Bruce?" I'm wearing it, Maria, and it seems mostly to inspire anger, but I'm stuck with it.

SAFEWAY cashiers were unprotected, no masks, no surgical gloves. The toilet paper shelves were empty, as were most allegedly protective items of the hand gel type. About half the shoppers wore masks, one of whom, an older man, skittered dramatically away from me when we came face-to-face at the yogurt. People were conscientiously keeping their distances, and lots were buying booze in the serious gallon sizes.

AVA STAND SALES are down about a third in the Anderson Valley and Ukiah, which is bad for us but a positive indication that people really are socially distancing by staying home, the only way to beat this thing. Bookstores are closed, meaning another blow to our weekly sales. Bay Area book emporiums have always been good for us, as have the book stores in Mendocino County north to Arcata. We soldier on, the ancient editor muttered.

I DREAMT the other night that I'd been wheeled into the Adventist emergency room. A green-smocked medical man, a maniacal grin on his face, leaned over me. "And who do we have strapped helpless to the gurney? Well, well, it's the Boonville fellow who called us a vegetarian cult and has had harsh words for our esteemed Doctor T?" A team of cabbages armed with pliers, started on my toes.

A LOCAL WRITES: "Besides pot, wine and beer are considered essential. I have seen busloads of farm workers trucked into AV from Ukiah. Any winegrapes grown will not be wine until two years down the road so certainly not essential for this crisis??"

ONE OF OUR street informants, Ukiah branch, said the consensus street opinion is that the new shelter on South State is quite helpful, with showers and practical assistance of various types. Our informant said his overall impression is that there are fewer homeless around. "I only saw one angry homebum who was raging about a government plot to stop him from getting coffee at McDonalds."

NEWS REPORTS from around the country say that food banks are running out of both donations and volunteers, many food bank volunteers being retirees, an age group at risk from the beast. The surprise consequences from the plague are many and not good except that air pollution is down. Help is leaving a lot of people out. Serious social disorder before the end of the summer.

BOTH the Boonville and Philo post offices now leave their outer and inner doors open, the better to spare patrons the hazards of unprotected hands to door handles. And both have plastic shields at their counters. Knock on wood — your head will do — but the farther you get from the population centers, the farther you are from the virus. Only four cases in Mendo, none in Lake, and the spread in Sonoma County seems statistically, encouragingly slow.

ONE of the Anderson Valley's many beauties is the wild yellow irises at the Scharffenberger Winery, Philo, just now coming into bloom.

THE DAILY "LOVE TABLE" in front of Boont Berry Farm was lushly set with fresh loaves of bread and hand packets of homemade (?) butter, plus a variety of other baked goods. All free! And whomever the baker is he/she knows his/her way around an oven. Wonderful stuff, and a great gift to our sector of besieged America.

JUST IN. I'm reliably informed the Love Table is the work of the The Land, formerly Shenoa, the orgasm collective at the far end of Rays Road, Philo. Orgasm collective? Well, the way I understand it, it's a group of purplish-oriented wealthy people who, uh, pay a lot of money to fine tune their watchamacallits, and prefer doing it in a rural setting, hence Philo. Whatever, as the young people say, they make a righteous loaf of bread perhaps, as I further understand it, because the guy making that righteous loaf is none other than the Tassajara bread guy whose bread book used to be in every hippie home back when there were hippies.

THERE JUST WAS A PRESS RELEASE saying the libraries reopening date which was April 6th, has been pushed back until further notice. I think most of us were pretty sure that was going to happen. So please be patient, be safe and stay healthy and let's get thru this.

As soon as I hear that we are opening again I will get the word out as fast as I can.

(MendocinoSportsPlus)

MENDOCINO COUNTY COVID-19 RELIEF FUND ESTABLISHED

Megan Barber Allende

When things begin to feel hopeless, one of the greatest ways to bring a little light in is to help others. We at The Community Foundation of Mendocino County have been closely monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic, and its many implications for our local communities. With the help of generous donors, we are pleased to announce the new COVID-19 Relief Fund, designed to support the basic needs of individuals and families in Mendocino County impacted by this crisis.

The Community Foundation has made a seed gift from the Disaster Fund of $100,000. To date the following donors have joined with lead gifts: The MLH Fund, Jim and Arlene Moorehead, Sonoma Clean Power, Savings Bank of Mendocino County, and the Poseley and Allende Families. We have also received a significant gift from the J-Olivanti Fund. Together we have raised $206,000. Our initial goal was $250,000, but we are dreaming bigger and hope to reach $300,000. We are immensely grateful for these substantial contributions, and we are reaching out to the public to help us meet our goal. Any and all gifts are accepted and will allow us to collectively support the communities that need us most.

Based on the current economic data about our county, it is possible that as much as 55 percent of Mendocino County is unlikely to have the resources to weather the financial impacts of long-term business and school closures. This includes both those below poverty already (about 19 percent) and those who are Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed (ALICE) households with income above the Federal Poverty Level but below the basic cost of living (about 35 percent). This fund is designed to provide immediate relief efforts to assist Mendocino County residents with basic needs during the COVID-19 crisis, including shelter, food, utilities and medical needs.

The current crisis in some ways has leveled the playing field, as so many of us shelter-in-place to flatten the curve. However, while some of us have the means to order groceries to be delivered, to shift our work remotely, and continue to pay our mortgages, this is not the case for so many of our friends and neighbors who live paycheck to paycheck and are facing layoffs and school closures. If you can give to your local food bank, please do so. If you can give directly to a nonprofit in your community who is serving those in need, please do so. If you have the means to make a contribution to the COVID-19 Relief Fund, please consider taking this opportunity to shed a little light on those in need throughout our county.

If you would like to discuss the fund or a contribution, please feel free to reach out to me directly at megan@communityfound.org or 707-468-9882 ext. 102.

To give to the COVID-19 Relief Fund, please visit our website at www.communityfound.org.

MENDO PLAGUE STATS

MISSING IN ACTION - MENDO COUNTY HEALTH OFFICER

So much for reassuring the public. Tuesday's Mendocino County Supervisors meeting was cut short when a staffer had "a medical emergency" but we did note the Mendocino Health Officer was part of the "virtual" meeting - yet she never gave an update.

In fact, the good doctor hasn't said ANYTHING via the video link she has at her home since last FRIDAY.

We have been told time after time after time how HARD everyone is working during this crisis but where's the proof? A two-minute daily video update wouldn't be asking for much - instead, we get nothing.

Info From Other Means

MSP was sent the following from a viewer that was sent to her neighborhood in Little River:

"Mendo Coast weekly COVID-19 update

Dear neighbor, I am writing a weekly column for the local newspapers updating you on the preparations that we are taking at Mendocino Coast District Hospital (MCDH) to respond to this health care challenge. I will try to post it here as well. This post is for LAST WEEK. I will put this week's post up on Thursday. You can get more information on COVID-19 specifically by going to the CDC's website at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html. - William Miller

Photo by Larry Wagner

Mendo Coast Weekly COVID-19 Update for March 23, 2020

by William Miller, MD, MD, Chief of Staff, MCDH

At this time, we have no COVID-19 patients in any of our three hospitals in Mendocino County. We do expect that to change over the next week or so. The most important strategy remains 'flattening the curve.'

By asking people to shelter-in-place, practice social distancing and frequent hand washing, we want to spread out the number of sick patients in hospitals at any one time. If we do this successfully, then we predict that our hospital will be able to manage the expected numbers of patients. So, thank you all for staying home and only going out when essential.

As you probably already know, this pandemic has caused a national shortage of medical supplies, medications, ventilators and protective garb for health care workers. The companies that normally supply us with such items are on back order for most of these items. So that we are better able to keep our staff healthy and safe, we are calling on all members of the community to donate any face masks, N95 masks, exam gloves and disposable gowns/aprons that you might have stored away, such as when you bought those N95s for the smoke from the fires last year. You can bring donations of such supplies to the hospital south entrance.

Since our hospital used to be a 40+ bed facility, we are working on bringing in more beds to increase our current number from 25 up to about 45. We are also examining ways to dedicate areas of the hospital specifically for COVID-19 patients. We are ordering more ventilators, however, these are perhaps the one thing that is in least supply nationally. We do have the ability to increase our current ventilator capacity in a pinch if it comes to that.

In keeping with national recommendations from the CDC, we are limiting COVID-19 testing to patients that are being admitted to the hospital and to health care workers. This is to conserve the transport medium needed to run the test, which is in short supply. We are using Quest to run the test, which is a send out. The turnaround has been from 5-9 days so far. Two tests have now been approved by the FDA for hospitals to use in their own labs for COVID testing. One is the Bio-fire assay and we already have the analyzer machine to run that test. The other is the Cepheid test. We do not have the Cepheid machine, but they do over in Willits. Neither test is available yet and is not expected for several weeks, perhaps as much as 8 weeks out. When we have that test, we may be able to broaden the scope of who we can offer the test to.

Also, following CDC guidelines, we are restricting traffic into the hospital and we are checking the temperature of everyone who enters including doctors and nurses. We have also canceled all non-essential elective procedures so as to conserve limited resources. We appreciate your patience as we need to implement such measures.

All of us at Mendocino Coast District Hospital are working very hard and long hours to prepare for when we have our first patients here. We want you to be reassured that we are doing everything possible to get ready and to also continue to care for all of the other patients that we have.

DEAR UKIAH DAILY JOURNAL READER,

Our commitment to delivering you and your loved ones 24/7 reliable coverage is at the heart of our journalism, in good times and especially during times of disruption and uncertainty.

During this unprecedented period, we’ve chosen to make a significant amount of our online content available to all readers. We understand that our coverage is more critical than ever to keeping the entire community safe.

As we continue to track the development of the COVID-19 outbreak our dedicated journalists are working around the clock to keep you informed. Please know that these efforts depend on paying subscribers to support our business.

For those of you who have yet to subscribe, we ask that you please consider subscribing to support our work now and in the months to come. To make this accessible for as many of you as possible, we’re offering the first 6 months for only $2. You may cancel anytime.

Thank you.

K.C. Meadows, Editor

Ukiah Daily Journal

617 S. State St

Ukiah, CA 95482

PEARS IN KELSEYVILLE - MOO

by Bob Dempel

Kelseyville is called the Pear Capitol of the world. I have done a vast amount of business in the pear industry in Kelseyville. Starting in 1965 I sold agricultural pesticides and fertilizer to pear growers that produced the prized Bartlett Pear. Kelseyville is part of the area called Big Valley, and ultimately part of Lake County. When I started selling agricultural products in Kelseyville in 1965 there were four pear packing sheds shipping thousands of boxes of pears annually. In Big Valley there were another four packing sheds. Most growers sold their pear through pear sheds.

The Kelseyville Pear Festival was started twenty-seven years ago. At that time, I had retired from selling agricultural products in Kelseyville. My interest in the festival was mainly due to the fact that the chairperson of the event was Marilyn Holdenried. Marilyn and her husband Myron had been friends for many years. Myron and I had been friends for seventy plus years through 4-H Club work. In addition, my brother-in-law was their best man when Myron and Marilyn were married some fifty plus years ago. They owned a new pear packing shed, as well as a winery. Marilyn had a great gift store called Holdenried Farms. Both have been very involved in many community organizations. They were the Camelot’s of Kelseyville.

Twenty-six years slipped by. I continued to have a desire to attend the famed Kelseyville Pear Festival. This past year I made a promise to myself that we would attend. I checked Shirley’s calendar and everything was a go. The press was reporting that the Festival, held on the last day of September, would attract 10,000 people. Now the population of Kelseyville is only 3353. It has one main street that runs for a couple of blocks. My main concern was where in the world would I park. I called another old friend, Keith Pettersen, who is a local icon in Kelseyville, as well as a pear grower. His advice was to arrive before noon. He also graciously offered to save a parking space by parking his car early in the morning.

When we got to Kelseyville, I would meet up with him, he would move his car, and his wife would take it home and I would have a parking place. Keith also instructed me on how to navigate through the town to find the parking spot. We got to the outskirts of Kelseyville around one in the afternoon. The press was correct. They were expecting 10,000 people. There were cars and people everywhere. We met Keith and parked our car. The parking spot was just one block from Main Street. Keith walked us to main street. We did not go far before we met someone that Keith and I had known years ago.

The pear gods prevailed; it was a perfect fall day. Pear harvest had ended early that year, so no real fresh pears were to be seen, but that didn’t matter. Everyone was if a festive mood. You could buy everything from a pear margarita to a pear burrito. Music was coming from almost every side street. On each end of main street was a gigantic pear on a pedestal. I’m not sure what it was made of, but it was about 6 feet high. Not one sheriff was in site nor was there a need for one.

We met up with our friends Myron and Marilyn. We visited a bit as we walked slowly up one side of Main street. Marilyn needed to work at the Lake County Historical booth and Myron needed to meet a friend. We lost Keith somewhere talking to an old friend. Shirley and I continued to walked down the other side of main street. All of the local organizations were there, including my favorite, the Kelseyville FFA.

Shirley and I reached the cross street leading to where our car was parked and we both agreed we had seen the Kelseyville Pear Festival to its fullest.

POSITIVE COVID CASE IN PHILO?

A reader asks: Does anyone know with certainty if this is true? Heard it was a Bay area resident who has a second home here in the Valley that just tested positive over the weekend. I don’t know anything more, or if this is true.

BELIEVE

Editor,

As has been my custom, I hope all is as well with you and yours as can be expected under the conditions at hand. I continue to be housed here at San Quentin under quarantine due to the virus. All incoming volunteers, college programs and self-help groups are canceled. I reside in West Block, a building five stories high built for 450 men now holding nearly 900! Each cell is 4' x 9', it's like living in a small bathroom/kitchen combined with another person. No Bueno! However, through prayer and positive thoughts I maintain.

Of late Governor Newsom has been releasing some select inmates through commutation of their sentences. With my infraction-free conduct serving more than half my sentence and my age of 62, I qualify for consideration. I have been collecting character references from numerous officers, family, friends, employers and volunteers to accompany my application for resentencing (over 30). I also have several sponsors for exceptional conduct to approach the courts for resentencing under PC 1170(d)U). I would appreciate a letter from you also endorsing my sentence being reduced. I feel that a media person, especially one of your experience and knowledge of my case, would be of great value. You have written about me since my years as Fire Chief (assistant), Chairman of the Westport Water District, and my holding office as chair of the Mendocino Republican Party. You know my case better than most anyone. Please spend a few moments to write a character reference and get it to me as soon as possible, hopefully prior to April 15.

Also please keep your paper coming until I get out. Our country is faced with a lot lately and if released I hope to offer my skills and training as an EMT to assist in the fight against the virus. Thank you for all you do for so many.

Sincerely, God's love and mine to all,

Kenny Rogers, AC 8841

San Quentin State Prison 4W2

San Quentin, CA 94974

PS. We are all in this together.

Background: https://www.theava.com/archives/425

ANYTIME SALOON, BOONVILLE, 1920s

RUSS EMAL LOOKS BACK

It is indeed a small world. Interesting how I found it to be true in my life. Let me explain.

The Me Too movement started a number of years ago and the women and some men of Anderson Valley took notice. A number of local people gathered in downtown Boonville for a rally and marched in support. A dozen or so women, some children and a few men. I was one of them. After enough people gathered we all marched through town ending up at the high school. Pictures were taken and we made it into the local paper.

But this story is not about the Me To Movement nor really the march. It is about meeting another marcher I met walking to the high school. But to tell the story I first need to take you back in time some seventy years.

I was an army brat. My father was a captain in the army and was a signal officer. His assignment was to decode intelligence messages between Washington military command and General Douglas MacArthur. My dad was in the Signal Corp and he was called the general’s Eyes-Only-Man. When WW2 ended and MacArthur was transferred to Japan, my father went along with him. Soon after our family joined him. I was only a few months old. My brother Al was nine. Much of my early years were spent in the company of Japanese ‘servants.’ We had a cook, a house maid and I had a personal house-boy! My house-boy was an old man we all called Papa-San. Papa-San only spoke to me in Japanese and as I began to speak, I spoke back to him in his language. Unfortunately, I now have little remembrance of the Japanese language. On a side note my brother Al went to junior high school with General MacArthur’s son. Arthur MacArthur.

At that time the United States was trying to rebuild Japan from the disruption and destruction of WW2. It was MacArthur’s job to organize this reconstruction. As part of that attempt a song was created. It was widely heard in Japan at the time. Seventy-two years later I still remember that song. That is because that song was sung by me to my family and my parents friends until I was well into my teenage years. People would come to the house and invariably my mother would say, “Russell, sing your song.” So I would. You sing it to the tune of London Bridges Falling Down.

Chuah tamatie ku da sai

Ku da sai

Ku da sai

Chuah tamatie ku da sai

Ah so desu ka

So back to the march….

Here I was marching in the Me-Too Parade in Boonville when I noticed walking next to me was this woman. She was Asian and I felt she might have Japanese parents. So I asked her and indeed her family was from Japan but moved to the USA just after WW2. So I had to ask her. “When you were in Japan, do you remember a song every one sang? It went like this.” So I started to sing…”Chuah tamatie” and before I could sing one more word she joined me with “ku da sai..Ku da sai…Ku da sai…Chuah tamatie ku da sai…Ah so desu ka.” We both laughed and I asked her if she knew what it meant. She told me she did.

It had to do with being patient because everything will better if you give it a little time. Great advice in today’s troubled times. Please stay at home so we become part of the solution to this virus, Not part of the problem.

CATCH OF THE DAY, April 1, 2020

ROBERT CAMPBELL II, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger, parole violation. (Frequent Flyer)

JUSTIN HIETALA, Blue Lake/Ukiah. Battery, burglary, probation revocation.

TRAVIS ‘THE HUMP’ HUMPHREY, Redwood Valley. Resisting, probation revocation.

JOSE VERDUZCO JR., Willits. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, probation revocation.

JEFF BLANKFORT WRITES:

This possible turn of events is not unexpected. It is likely that the campaign for the Democrat party candidacy is over, that the national convention in July will be cancelled as well as the scheduled preceding primaries. Given the weakness of Biden and his unpopularity with Sanders voters and the advent and expected continuation of the coronavirus crisis in which Cuomo has become a "star" compared with Trump's Humpty-Dumpty, Cuomo will be proposed by the DNC as a substitute candidate who is already demonstrating that he can best Trump and the fact that he has long been in Israel's pocket will not be allowed [sic] to become an issue.

ON APRIL 1ST, 1871, the Paris Commune abolished rent. It could happen here — if we make it.

— Jeffrey St. Clair

THE INDIVIDUAL HAS BECOME MORE CONSCIOUS than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.

—Albert Einstein

CA VIRUS TRACKER

https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2020/coronavirus-map/

THE LIST OF THOSE WHO WON’T GET A $1,200 STIMULUS CHECK is growing — and includes some surprising groups

Americans on Social Security now have to file a tax return to receive a stimulus check. Most high school seniors and college students won’t get any money at all.

washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/01/bailout-checks-social-security/

I THINK PEOPLE GET BY

and that is good

through tough times and rough

anarchy

to help find

anarchy

to help find

anarchy

to help find

anarchy again

to help find

their

last

chance

to help find

anarchy

before they smile

and die cynically

you say what?

let corporate industry win.

let it be hope and chaos.

let it be your angry.

let it be your cry.

let it be your die.

you say what?

I just can't

make

any

other

sense

of

it

— Quincy Steele

CASPAR TURKEYS

Photo by Larry Wagner

DIM OHIO. BREAKTHROUGH. THE COLUMN.

My dreams from March 31.

First dream. I'm in a big dim nighttime empty lot between old unpainted two-or-three-story residential buildings in like Ohio or maybe New York. Smudgy little children are running around everywhere, playing. Odin from the Albion Whale School in the 1980s but middle-aged here is partly in charge of all the kids. I suggest to him that I get my boxes of electrical things out of storage --everything-- and set up the Tesla coils and the vacuum pumps and all, and do a whole electrical demo and teach about electricity, and he's very against the idea; he uses a funny sounding insulting made-up word-or-phrase for firing up a Tesla coil where people all have vulnerable electronics now. All the kids have expensive phones. There are phones and computers and teevees in all these sagging buildings. I say the phrase back to him because I like it, and this angers him so much he stomps away into the darkness. [I didn't get to keep the phrase. Too bad.]

Now I'm lying on a big bed in one of the buildings, with a strange woman with a wide Russian face and her friend. I can see us from above, and I can see outside, and also see the filthy roof, while we're all on our backs with our arms at our sides. The nearest woman rolls over on top of me and kisses me. I kiss back, but I don't put my hands on her, in case Juanita comes in, because that's when the person always comes in in the story, right when you can't any longer say you didn't do it, and it becomes a problem. Also the woman is too big. Just her face is too big. I'm like, You can get off now. She's like, Oh, you're so funny. (kiss kiss). No, really, please get off. I can't move to push her off. Help. [But it comes out like 'elph, 'elph.]

Next dream. My employer Tim and his old astophysicist friends, all tall and thin, are doing an experiment in a big hay barn, where at the bottom against one wall, just below the level of the ground, they have an '70s Toyota on a rail in the straw, ready to rocket forward and have something happen to its windshield that will produce exotic particles from the beginning of the universe.

Tim comes from his living space even farther down under the barn, adjusts the car. It's almost time. Everybody in the small community shuffles up through the dry grass hills to get far enough away to be safe from this holiday event, like people walking to (or from) a fireworks event or on the long path into (or out of) the Novato Ren Faire. I go aside to a paved road up the hill with some others and go up the road, but I want to know what's going on, not just be in the audience, and I go back down diagonally through the grass.

I can see in through the barn door on the side from about a hundred feet away. I've misjudged; the event is about to happen. I spin away, get on the ground, cover my ears, squinch my eyes shut, open my mouth wide. There's a silent flash that's bright white through my eyelids that all came out the half-shut doors of the barn and lit up all the hills-- imagine how bright it must have been inside! Tim and the others are probably dead.

Later, people are working, carrying things, taking notes, moving around in the different levels of the barn. There's an exhibit somebody made with fluorescent paint and string and bits of aluminum foil and shards of plastic to be a diorama sketch to show how the particles sprayed out of of the strike point just below the top of the windshield on the driver's side.

Tim's okay, he's just tired and sore from the exotic radiation. I massage his six-foot-long arms by pulling up on them hard, one at a time, and rolling a paint roller up and down them. And even later, after all the publicity has died down and the nature of the experiment has been glossed over and fibbed away and nobody remembers, I'm up on the grassy hill walking after Tim, who's got the single clue to the results: it's a shiny heavy-looking sharp-edged solid metal cylinder the size of stick of chalk. He's going to hide it or bury it somewhere here, somewhere within a few hundred feet of the well, so it can be found twenty years later, after he's dead. I persuade him to mark where it'll be. He tapes some notebook paper to a rock well, with blue pen arrows on them, as if that's enough, because it's not; okay, I'll do it. I take pictures all around, of the boarded-up store building suddenly near --or, no, that was already in the phone-- and past the well to half a mile downhill, of a sparse version of Fort Bragg (CA), which is just the part of Main Street with the oldest stores, from the back, the unpainted, sagging side. Everything else for miles is just dirt and dry grass. Is this before? Or after? Things are weird because of the experiment. It broke something about the world, but also saved the world at the same time, so that's okay, then.

Tim's gone. The well is gone. The metal thing is lost forever.

Next dream. Cotton Auditorium is arranged to be used turned the other way, so the audience is on steep seat risers going up toward the back of the stage. I'm on tip-toes on the top step of a ladder (the not-a-step step), reaching upward to the top of a two-foot-diameter decorative column at the east side of the proscenium, to put a microphone (?) up there, or a motion sensor (?) or something. The orchestra, all in the middle of the stage, is setting up, tuning up. They take a break and wander out into the regular seats to eat their sack lunches. They're a union orchestra; the union says take your lunch, you take your lunch. The ladder shifts; I hug the column. The audience murmurs about how unsafe I am. I want to get down, but there's no way to attach the thing (it's the little metal cylinder from the previous dream but on a heavy cable).

There are only a few people here. I must have been up in the air the whole show, so I did it, fine. I'm slipping sideways… I'm just gonna fall and trust that I'll land right or maybe fly. Let go, push off, float down. Catch the falling ladder, hope nobody saw.

Time jumps back to where I came in. I have a microphone (the metal thing). I'm looking around for how to get the wire to the column from backstage. There's a hatch to a crawlspace inside the east wall… Nah, I'll just run it along the floor, this side of the wall. I need a ladder to put it up there on the column. Tony, where are the ladders? Ah, right, this is where to put the duct tape roll on my wrist so I'll have it to tape the mic up there.

— Marco McClean

TRUMP IN HIS OWN WORDS

Fireside chats with the idiot in chief

In his own words…

The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We have it totally under control. I’m not concerned at all. It’s one person coming in from China. We pretty much shut it down. It will all work out well. We’re in great shape. Doesn’t spread widely at all in the United States because of the early actions that myself and my administration took. There’s a chance it won’t spread. It’s something that we have tremendous control over.

Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear. Just stay calm. It will go away. The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. This is their new hoax.

Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared. Totally ready. We’re rated number one for being prepared. We are so prepared like we never have been prepared. Taking early intense action, we have seen dramatically fewer cases of the virus in the United States. We’re very much ahead of everything.

This is a flu. I didn’t know people died from the flu. Here, we’re talking about a much smaller range. It is very mild. Some people will have this at a very light level. Some of them go to work.

The mortality rate is much, much better. In my opinion it’s way, way down. I think it’s substantially below 1 percent. A fraction of 1 percent. I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along. This is just my hunch.

We have very little problem in this country. We only have five people. We only have 11 cases. Out of billions of people, 15 people. They’re getting better, and soon they’re all going to be better, hopefully. We’re going very substantially down, not up.

The United States, because of what I did and what the administration did with China, we have 32 deaths at this point. To this point, and because we have had a very strong border policy, we have had 40 deaths. As of this moment, we have 50 deaths. I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be.

Frankly, the testing has been going very smooth. The tests are all perfect. Anybody that wants a test can get a test. The tests are beautiful. We have a tremendous testing setup.

I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. We are very close to a vaccine. A matter of months. You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact?

Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. Based on very strong evidence.

I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter. No way I’m going to cancel the convention. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!

We’re the ones that gave the great response. I’d rate it a 10. We’ve done a fantastic job. I think they should be appreciative. Gallup just gave us the highest rating. The highest on record.

I like this stuff. I really get it. Maybe I have a natural ability. We think it’s going to have a very good ending. We’re going to win faster than people think. I hope.

This blindsided the world! Who could have ever predicted a thing like this? This was something that nobody has ever thought could happen to this country.

I’ve always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously.

If you’re talking about the virus, no, that’s not under control for anyplace in the world. I was talking about what we’re doing is under control, but I’m not talking about the virus. I didn’t say Easter. It was just an aspiration. I am giving consideration to a QUARANTINE.

So you’re talking about 2.2 million deaths. If we could hold that down—between 100,000 and 200,000, and we all together have done a very good job. START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!!!!!! FORD, GET GOING ON VENTILATORS, FAST!!!!!! Invoke “P”. I want our life back again.

It was nobody’s fault. No, just things that happened. I don’t take responsibility at all.

MEMO OF THE DAY

(WASN'T it only last year that the Press Democrat announced it had paid off all its investors and was solidly in the black? Business couldn't have gone south this fast, could it?)

---

TO OUR READERS (Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

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To help keep our staff working and our operations running, we ask that you consider the value of trusted, local journalism to keep you informed and up-to-date. If you’re not a subscriber, consider a digital subscription.

If that’s out of reach, please consider a small donation to offset our costs.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Whoo! Last day of March, 2020, and one has to admit it’s been a transformative month. A short 30 days ago I don’t think I’d heard of the C-Virus yet; I was like a clueless character in a 50s scifi film, (when a radio report in the background briefly mentions strange meteorites crashing into farm fields in the next county) out in the driveway spooling monofilament onto one of my fishing reels, looking forward to spring, radio playing in the background, and on the news report a brief mention of a new sort of flu emanating out of Wuhan Province, China. Which I didn’t pay much attention too. Truly a Black Swan event, one for the ages.

WARTIME PRODUCTION LAW HAS BEEN USED ROUTINELY, BUT NOT WITH CORONAVIRUS

A Korean War-era law called the Defense Production Act has been used to place hundreds of thousands of orders by President Trump and his administration to ensure the procurement of vital equipment, according to reports submitted to Congress and interviews with former government officials.

Yet as governors and members of Congress plead with the president to use the law to force the production of ventilators and other medical equipment to combat the coronavirus pandemic, he has for weeks treated it like a “break the glass” last resort, to be invoked only when all else fails.

nytimes.com/2020/03/31/us/politics/coronavirus-defense-production-act.html

SO. IS THIS WEIRD ENOUGH FOR YA? Life was climate change, the 2020 election, terrorism, spreading fascism—myriad obsessions and fascinations. Then, as if from remote outer space, this tiny thing, too small to see without very costly lenses, strangely disgusting and scary in appearance when enlarged — this intruder from some unimagined hell pops up — and nothing will ever be the same.

Everything is changed in an instant, and the change takes place with blurring speed while at the same time happening at a pace that seems like slo-o-o-w motion. Things of unprecedented acceleration are happening in slo-mo. Weird!

Eleanor and I watched events in Manhattan on 9/11/01, over and over, the tallest thing falling onto its own footprint, twice, never to rise. I said then, “I don’t know what this is, but I know the world will never be the same.”

So here we are, a mere eighteen and a half years later, absorbing, will we nil we, an event of greater magnitude, affecting all the planet, all the human parts of it, as if God said, “It won’t be fire but pestilence next time,” something like a cobalt bomb that would leave most lifeless things undisturbed and most living things dead, a payoff for our crimes against home, our family, our common decency, existence itself. “Shit on Existence, will you? Fair enough!”

Weird things happen when you ignore the writing on the wall. Weird things happen when you teach dogs and cats to operate computers, with their dog- and cat-brains. Weird things happen when you endow a race like Homo sapiens with new capabilities that are out of balance with the existing ones, when you create a high-tech world and drop a low-tech species into it and push the accelerator to the floor. Watching the ubiquitous screens: telephone, TV, computer and, in fast-closing venues, cinema, you see the marvelous exertions of this energetic human animal to adapt, to calm its members while contemporaneously challenging them to adapt faster.

The words “shiny object” are inspired. Everybody gets it. The shiny object is that which hauls our attention away from less-catchy but often vastly more important things. Trump is a brilliantly designed shiny object. Our shared hysteria itself, on such a magnificent scale, is a glaring object, ramping up our anxiety when we need to ramp it down. We are told, advised, and ordered to separate while being urged to come together to an extent never achieved. The tiny, alert, nubby creature circulating among us defines opportunism, and, with opportunities plentiful, its moment is at hand. It will have its way.

If I were a praying man, I’d pray that we take these moments of enforced deceleration to get calm and quiet, to look within and without, to consider our follies and our advances, our predilections and the true costs and rewards of our choices, personal and collective. We will have a generous dollop of time for this. We will arrange how to not starve. We will have plenty of chance to consider where and what we are.

It is possible that this conflagration is also a cleansing, a winnowing, a separation of wheat from chaff, the seemingly important from the real. I have lifetime rule. It comes from my own history of disasters. It is “make something positive out of this.” This has kept me trudging along, but, to my considerable grief, my society has not done this. We stupidly, blindly allowed misguided, materialistic, blandly evil people to hijack the moment of 9/11/01 and take it from a spectacular shiny object to the long-term nightmare we’re still having.

Now there’s a kind of gathering together that hasn’t happened on this scale since the 1940s. We could benefit from it.

But I am not a praying man.

And it probably wouldn’t make a lick of difference anyway.

— Mitch Clogg

WARREN BUFFETT, "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC.

"You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971…before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land…all because of public pressure.

Congressional Reform Act of 2019.

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 7/1/19. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term's), then go home and back to work.

TRUMP’S MEDIA ASSAULT RAGES ON IN MIDST OF CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

When you’re confronted with a bully, you have to punch back. The press corps need to be more aggressive in holding the president’s feet to the fire or just stop showing up. The president’s coronavirus briefings have been a disgrace. He is a fountain of misinformation, partisanship and point scoring that is the last thing you need in a time of crisis, especially in a pandemic when there is a premium on truth.

theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/01/us-coronavirus-outbreak-donald-trump-media-latest

WE NO LONGER HAVE any real idea of how deadly the coronavirus pandemic is going to be in the US. We’ve long since passed the point where the key to understanding the likely spread of the pandemic was a better understanding of the virus itself. What matters are the countermeasures we put in place to stop its transmission routes.

Somebody should stop me if I’m wrong here, but we’re in terra incognita. We’ve never had a widespread pandemic where we’ve put in place strict and widespread countermeasures, and that means we’re just guessing at how effective they are.

The guess of an epidemiologist might be better than the guess of a blogger, but it’s still just a guess. We simply have no experience to draw on…

This is why you see estimates ranging wildly from 80,000 deaths to half a million. These estimates all depend on which countermeasures you think we’ll adopt; how well they’ll work; how long we’ll keep them in place; and how seriously people will take them.

Unfortunately, even the smartest epidemiologist in the world has a limited insight into things like that. So we just don’t know.

(Kevin Drum, Mother Jones)

ALL ALONE ISOLATING/MARINATING HERE ON THE SOUTH COAST

Only the lonely

(are. Orbison/melson)

Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah

Ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah

Oh-oh-oh-oh-wah

Only the lonely

Only the lonely (dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah)

Know the way I feel tonight (ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah)

Only the lonely (dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah)

Know this feelin aint right (dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah)

There goes my baby

There goes my heart

They're gone forever

So far apart

But only the lonely

Know why

I cry

Only the lonely

Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah

Ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah

Oh-oh-oh-oh-wah

Only the lonely

Only the lonely

Know the heartaches I've been through

Only the lonely

Know I cried and cried for you

Maybe tomorrow

A new romance

No more sorrow

But that's the chance - you gotta take

If your lonely heart breaks

Only the lonely

Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah

— Randy Burke, Gualala

NOW HERE'S A BIG SURPRISE

Congressman Huffman Announces Endorsement of Joe Biden for President

Huffman: “Joe’s unique combination of experience and humanity will see us through.”

From Congressman Jared Huffman:

In these trying times our country needs a President who will do three things: one, make thoughtful, science-based policy decisions; two, restore basic honesty and decency to the Presidency; and three, work to unify our divided nation.

On day one, Joe will get to work advancing an ambitious, progressive agenda. Unlike the current President, Joe will make decisions based on the interests of hard working American families — not powerful special interests, personal wealth, or a fragile ego. Joe will appoint diverse, dedicated, highly qualified people to lead every federal agency and restore America’s faith in the competence and integrity of our government. And in the face of any crisis, Joe’s unique combination of experience and humanity will see us through.

Having served in Congress during the Obama-Biden administration, I’ve seen up close Joe’s tenacity and effectiveness in tackling big issues. We need that kind of leadership to confront a number of challenges, none more important than climate change. Joe understands the urgency of our climate crisis and will quickly restore America’s credibility and stature as a global climate leader. His climate plan, consistent with the Green New Deal, provides a solid framework for taking the necessary steps to meet the moral, environmental and economic imperative of reversing global warming, while creating good jobs and seizing the economic upside of leading the world in clean energy and other climate solutions.

For all these reasons, I’m proud to endorse Joe Biden for President.

FOUND OBJECT