THE CITY OF FORT BRAGG has presented the late Vern Piver’s family with a proclamation honoring the universally popular Piver, known and admired throughout Mendocino County, for his many years of community service. The new flagpole at the high school varsity baseball field features a plaque at its base in memory of Piver, among the finest all-round athletes produced by Mendocino County and, it should be said, a veteran of the Korean War. Additionally, Fort Bragg’s new Little League field will be called the Vern ‘Sonny’ Piver Baseball Field.
AT LAST. Work has begun on the 75,000-square-foot Adventist Hospital in Willits, a $64 million project approved by State hospital regulators just last week. The enterprise will be spread over 33 acres donated by the Handley family beneath their old ranch southeast of town.
MANCHESTER Elementary School's website says it serves 56 students grades K-8. Based on its state test results, it has received a “GreatSchools Rating of 3 out of 10,” but “the school community has reviewed this school and given it an average rating of 5 out of 5 stars.” Translation: Not a very good school but its staff and parents think it's boffo. Manchester Elementary also has its own school board. The school is looking for a 3 in one combined superintendent, principal and teacher. There's also a vacancy on its school board. Superintendent of County Schools, Paul Tichinin, is trying to get one of his preferred citizens, fogbelt old girl Cindy Biaggi, into the superintendent's job. She may be supremely qualified, but a recommendation from Tichinin should come with a bilingual neon Peligro! And Buyer Beware warnings. A vacant school board slot just might be filled by the persistent critic of the Point Arena schools, Susan Rush, but Tichinin and Co. will of course move both rezes to make sure she isn't seated. Of course independent, smart people like Mrs. Rush is just what's needed everywhere in Mendocino County, and especially in Point Arena's historically troubled schools.
A HUGE GOVERNMENT raid on the Robinson Rancheria began early Tuesday morning aimed at removing certain Indians from both the reservation rolls and rez housing. The caller alerting us to the purge declared, “It's a helluva note when you get Indians throwing other Indians out on to the street. There are a lot of little kids who are being evicted, too. You know what I think? I think the insiders on the Tribal Council just want to get more casino money for themselves.” The math certainly adds up. The more people who can be un-Indian-ed, the more money for the Indians remaining. It's happening all over the Northcoast.
THE CENTER for Biological Diversity, Willits Environmental Center, Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club and Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit in federal court last week challenging the approvals and environmental review for the Willits Bypass.
“BULLDOZING a freeway the size of Interstate 5 through precious wetlands would be wasteful and destructive — a four-lane road is just not needed for the traffic volumes through Willits on Highway 101,” said Jeff Miller with the Center for Biological Diversity.
“THIS IS A WAKE-UP CALL for Caltrans, which should be building efficient public transit and maintaining existing roads, rather than wasting our money and resources clinging to outdated visions of new freeways,” declared Ellen Drell, a founding member of the Willits Environmental Center. “Global climate change, threatened ecosystems and the end of cheap oil are warning signs that we need to change course. The change needs to happen in every community, including here in Willits.”
THE LAWSUIT is against Caltrans, the Federal Highway Administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and Clean Water Act. It seeks a court order requiring the agencies to prepare a supplemental “environmental impact statement” that considers two-lane alternatives and addresses substantial design changes and new information about traffic volumes and environmental impacts.
“A 1998 CALTRANS STUDY found that 70-80% of traffic causing congestion in downtown Willits was local, and Caltrans internally conceded that the volume of traffic projected to use the bypass was not enough to warrant a four-lane freeway. Agency data showed the volume of traffic that would use the bypass did not increase from 1992 to 2005. New information shows actual traffic volumes are below what the agencies projected when they determined only a four-lane freeway will provide the desired level of service, and that a two-lane bypass will provide a better level of service than projected.
“PHASE I OF THE PROJECT will discharge fill into more than 86 acres of wetlands and federal jurisdiction waters. Caltrans purchased approximately 2,000 acres of ranchland in Little Lake Valley to “mitigate” for loss of wetlands, but the properties already had established existing wetlands, with no ability for Caltrans to “create” new wetlands. To obtain the required wetlands fill permit under the Clean Water Act, the state and federal agencies submitted a significantly deficient “mitigation and monitoring plan” to the Army Corps to “enhance” wetlands. This plan itself alters existing wetlands and causes significant new impacts to wetlands, endangered species and grazing lands, and makes design changes that were not analyzed or disclosed in the 2006 environmental review. The Corps improperly issued the permit in February 2012.”
CHRIST JESUS SAVE US ALL! According to the most terrifying press release we’ve ever received, Stacey Lawson, terrifying in her own right, has announced the formation of her “Mendocino County Leadership Cabinet.”
A ZILLIONAIRE candidate for Congress in the reconfigured Northcoast Congressional district, Lawson, who has seldom voted and is a follower of an East Indian mumbo jumbo man, has predictably galvanized a kind of Who’s Who of MendoFeeb in her attempt to buy herself a seat in Congress — not the first person to make that attempt, of course, but this crystal-gazing babe has the dough to bring it off, because in Mendocino County, you take a big pile of money, mix in a few chamber of commerce cliches, add “spirituality,” and they all come running!
STACEY'S BRAIN TRUST: Mary Ann Landis, Mayor of Ukiah; Mari Rodin, Former Mayor of Ukiah; Bruce Burton, Mayor of Willits; Ron Orenstein, Willits City Council Member; Jim Little, Laytonville Fire Department Chief; Calvin Harwood, Laytonville School Board President; Mike Anderson, Mendocino Farm Bureau President, Fort Bragg; Michael Braught, Mendocino Farm Bureau Vice President and Long Valley Market owner, Laytonville; Jody Cole, Wild Rainbow African Safaris, and Katharine Cole, Victory Campaign Board member, Ukiah; Art Harwood, Triple Bottom Line Solutions, Branscomb; Jim and Barbara Hurst, Business Owners, Fort Bragg; Judith Bailey, Bailey’s Incorporated, Laytonville; Chris Neary, Attorney at Law, Willits; Steve Zuieback, Founder & CEO of Synectics, Ukiah. (Ed note: Any Mendocino County brain trust that doesn't include Bruce Richard and Paul Tichinin is going to be pretty darn short of grey matter!)
NATCH WE get an unmoored statement in support of Lawson from Ukiah’s unmoored mayor, Mary Anne Landis: “Stacey Lawson is the candidate who can help us make more in Mendocino County. Along with her strong business background and great people skills, she’s energetic and focused on promoting sustainable solutions to issues we face around economic development. She’s just the woman we need to represent us in Washington.”
WHAT’S SAD about Landis’s statement, never mind a candidate for high office dumb enough to share the sentiment, is that “strong business” backgrounds have brought us where we are: broke, and millions of Americans squeezed if not doomed. Ms. Lawson is much less qualified to hold public office than, say, Chesbro and Thompson, who at least understand how utterly corrupt things are and simply play ball so they continue riding to free dinners with lobbyists in big black limos.
WHAT WE’RE SEEING here in the Lawson campaign and this fatuous advisory group is an object lesson in how to buy public office. Will Mendocino County voters go for it? Evidence from elections past aside, I don’t think so.
RETURNING SOBER to an initial liquid assessment of 2nd District Congressional candidate Stacey Lawson's startling press release announcing a kind of Mendocino County Kitchen Kabinet… Come, take my hand, and together let us revisit hasty first impressions, not that they weren't appropriate as the mayor of Ukiah might say if she wouldn't instinctively pronounce them inappropriate. Anyway, you will recall that Lawson, “a very spiritual” multi-millionaire, has selected the Mendo luminaries listed above to advise and advance her run for Congress:
ABOUT HALF THESE PEOPLE are Republicans, as are lots of local Democrats, emotionally and for voting purposes, a fact of Northcoast political life confirmed by the corporate war Democrats who've represented this area for many years. But what's odd about the enthusiasm for Lawson from the names listed as her advisors and supporters is that acceptably conservative Democrats like Jared Huffman, a sitting Assemblyman, was in the race long before Lawson jumped in. Why wouldn't Huffman be the guy for the lib-labs? After all, he was endorsed early by More Of The Same Democrats like Wes Chesbro and Mike Thompson and local Demo Party bigwig, Rachel Binah. We'd assumed the rest of the Northcoast's middle-of-the-road extremists would also fall in behind party stalwart Huffman.
BUT NO. A bunch of them, led by former Congressman Bosco and this odd group of Mendo wanks, er, bipartisan community leaders, are supporting Lawson even though, if the overriding standard is gender, which it certainly isn't for the Republicans in the group, there are two perfectly acceptable liberal female candidates — Susan Adams, a Marin County supervisor, and Tiffany Renee of the Petaluma City Council. Adams and Renee are also much better on the issues than most of the other candidates, certainly better on the issues than Huffman and Lawson. For straight up Fox News types, there are also two Republicans. The enthusiasm for Ms. Lawson is inexplicable given the many options in the race. Heck, we even have a psychiatrist, William Courtney, on the ballot. He's running because he thinks our seething, lunatic country could be soothed by a collective toke on the old bazooka. And there's a seaweed harvester in John Lewallen and a purely green guy in Andy Caffrey.
RYANE SNOW has passed away. The popular Coast mycologist was best known for generously sharing his vast knowledge of mushrooms with three generations of locals. Snow, who held a PhD in chemistry, was the go-to mushroom guy on the Mendocino Coast. He'd lived in Mendocino County since 1982.
NOT THAT LONG AGO, Mendocino County had a real economy based on timber, fishing, ranching, and non-booze related tourism. Outside timber corporations destroyed the timber economy, fishing was lost to a variety of causes, ranching became unsustainable, and tourism, with or without roadside booze boutiques, is always precarious in a down economy. Today's Mendo economy is based on two intoxicants, one illegal, one legal — dope and wine. There are also a large number of Landis-Rodin types employed in public jobs and the local non-profits where they are dominant except among the cops. The industrial wine industry, of course, is wholly dependent on non-union Mexican labor. The quality of our schools and much of our local political leadership is unlikely to attract the environmentally sensitive, high-paying, techno-groove-o businesses the financially secure residents of Westside Ukiah are always going on about. A person with “a strong business background and great people skills” provides exactly what in this context?
OBAMA on Pot Policy from last week’s Rolling Stone Magazine Interview:
RS: “Let me ask you about the War on Drugs. You vowed in 2008, when you were running for election, that you would not ‘use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana.’ Yet we just ran a story that shows your administration is launching more raids on medical pot than the Bush administration did. What's up with that?”
OBAMA: “Here's what's up: What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana — and the reason is, because it's against federal law. I can't nullify congressional law. I can't ask the Justice Department to say, ‘Ignore completely a federal law that's on the books.’ What I can say is, ‘Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage.’ As a consequence, there haven't been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes. The only tension that's come up — and this gets hyped up a lot — is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we're telling them, ‘This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way.’ That's not something we're going to do. I do think it's important and useful to have a broader debate about our drug laws. One of the things we've done over the past three years was to make a sensible change when it came to the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. We've had a discussion about how to focus on treatment, taking a public-health approach to drugs and lessening the overwhelming emphasis on criminal laws as a tool to deal with this issue. I think that's an appropriate debate that we should have.”
MENDOCINO REDWOOD COMPANY is selling 1,138 acres of timberland in three parcels for $3.7 million. One parcel is 589 up the Noyo River Valley east of Fort Bragg. The other two are near Montgomery Woods. Mendocino Redwood, owned by the Fisher family of San Francisco and GAP clothing, maintains 229,000 acres in Sonoma and Mendocino counties and another 208,000 acres in Humboldt County, much of it battered land purchased from Louisiana-Pacific after L-P’s short-term profit-taking of the 1990s. The irony here is that the patrician private families who dominated the Northcoast timber industry from early in the 20th century through the 1950s, logged sustainably and were rooted in their communities in company towns like Fort Bragg and Eureka They were bought out by corporate conglomerates who cut and run in the interests of short-term profit-taking. L-P, G-P and Charles Hurwitz at Pacific Lumber, having wiped out the timber economy of the Northcoast, are gone, and again the owners of vast tracts of Northcoast land are wealthy families who can afford to sit on our cashed-in forests until the trees grow back and a new timber industry arises. Will the new padrones be as benign as the old ones?
AFTER LIBELING ANGELA PINCHES as under the influence of methamphetamine when Ms. Pinches’ 2-year-old was found wandering half-clad near her Redwood Valley home three weeks ago, the DA said, “Oops. No meth.” But the damage was done. All the papers, including this one, assumed the police report was accurate and published stories repeating what has now turned out to be a false charge. When the DA got the lab test results on Ms. Pinches those results pronounced her clean. But her reputation was irreparably sullied. Meanwhile, John Pinches, 3rd District supervisor, and Angela’s father, is furious.
SUPERVISOR PINCHES makes the point: “They never even would have taken my daughter's kids if they had known she was not on drugs. Little kids wander away from their house all the time and they don't take them.”
PINCHES also spoke to the second libel associated with the wandering child affair. The police report quoted Ms. Pinches as saying she’d turned the oven on to warm her house in when she left to run an errand, instructing her 9-year-old to keep an eye on the 2-year-old. Not true, the Supervisor says. “I'll tell you what happened there,” he said, “and the cops know this. When she got back home and the cops were there, the house was a little bit cold so she turned on the oven. They were all there, her and the cops and everyone. She did not leave the kids alone with an oven on. Anyway, an oven is a lot safer than having a wood stove going. But she never let the kids alone with the oven on. She turned the oven on when she came back when the cops were there. It's pretty devastating when they accuse you of methamphetamine use and then go to court a week or so later and say, Oh, by the way, that was a mistake. The tests were clean…I don't know how they'll pass it off. But when you make a mistake like that it devastates people’s lives. It's like accusing somebody of being a rapist. Once it's out there everybody thinks the worst.”
ONCE CHILDREN are taken by Children’s Protective Services, it’s not easy to get them back. Supervisor Pinches said his daughter “has to go through the whole bureaucratic drill, all of it. She's been going there every day to get tested. She told them she was not on methamphetamine but she now has to go through this daily testing process to prove it because of this accusation.”
FOR YEARS NOW law enforcement has gossiped about Pinches being a big time pot grower on his ranch in the remote Eel River Canyon, but also for all these years the ranch has not been raided. The Supervisor’s suspicions that his family is getting a lot more attention from law enforcement than other citizens seem well founded. Of course the police would not have been at his daughter’s home three weeks ago if they hadn’t received the call about the lost child. Nevertheless, as Pinches says, “The other day I was in a restaurant and the waitress told me, ‘You know what the cop's were talking about? What a big pot grower you are.’ And I have to deal with that on a daily basis. I guess it's if you accuse someone for something long enough then okay, it must be true. I know a lot of people who have ranches and property out in the hills and they are not pot growers. After a while it gets to a point where now all of a sudden they are accusing my family of being involved in methamphetamine. I am not going to take it. I know my daughter. She is not perfect by any means. But I knew she was not on methamphetamine. Then you read that in the paper and you say, Well, you know, I guess she was. There was something I overlooked. I just didn't see it. And then they did the test. Completely negative. But because her last name is Pinches….”
ON MAY 1ST, Robert Jason Smith 32, of Mckinleyville, was stopped in Utah for a traffic violation. The Ute cop said he could smell marijuana in Smith’s vehicle, but found none. He said the distinctive odor of devil weed turned out to be wafting up from $215,000 dollars in cash he found in Smith’s SUV. The Utah police called Humboldt County’s narcos and soon a warrant was issued for Smith’s home in Mckinleyville where “officers located a commercial indoor marijuana growing operation” where they “seized 233 growing marijuana plants that ranged in size from 2 feet to 3 feet along with dried processed marijuana from inside of the residence.” They also seized Smith’s love interest, Ms. Tara Diva Fulgenzi, 31. This episode would seem to confirm that if local growers can get their product to buyers in the less marijuana rich areas of the country they can return to the Northcoast with a quarter million cash. But, as experienced dope mules have pointed out, it’s wise to transport the stuff in a rented vehicle, especially on the return trip.
THE SONOMA-MARIN Area Rail Transit District has sold $199 million in bonds to finance construction of the perhaps mythical rail line from Santa Rosa to San Rafael. Optimistic signs along 101 already announce that the train, which is planned to run from the Marin Civic Center to Railroad Square in Santa Rosa, will soon be chugging up and down the tracks no later than early 2016.
A READER writes to correct my comment that the SF Examiner is owned by rightwing nuts based in Colorado: “The Examiner was bought a few months back by some locals, maybe even ‘liberals,’ same folks buying the Guardian, as you noted. So, no more right-wing billionaire guys.” So far, though, the Examiner seems the same as when the crazy guy owned it, and the Guardian seems, ah, anemic.
THE SACRAMENTO BEE ran a long story by reporter Peter Hecht this weekend entitled “California’s Emerald Triangle Pot Market Is Hitting Bottom” which begins, “The pot market is crashing in California's legendary Emerald Triangle.”
“The closure of hundreds of marijuana dispensaries across California and a federal crackdown on licensing programs for medical pot cultivation are leaving growers in the North Coast redwoods with harvested stashes many can't sell.
“Some pot cultivators who sought legitimacy through the medical market are fleeing to the black market. So much cheap weed is getting dumped in the college town of Arcata, some local dispensaries say business is down 75%. Even the region's itinerant and colorful bud trimmers are going broke.
“By the scores, people have long trekked into the marijuana fields and indoor greenhouses of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties. Workers used to earn as much as $200 a pound meticulously cutting leaves from marijuana buds, prepping them for display at dispensaries or for sale in a purely illicit market.
“The region's pot pilgrimage had accelerated in recent years as people were drawn by local cannabis traditions and dreams of cashing in on the medical marijuana market. They planted marijuana in the backwoods and in rewired houses with high-intensity grow lights.
“But the saturation of pot growers set off a price tumble by 2010, as a pound of prime Emerald weed slipped from $5,000 to the $3,000 range for marijuana grown indoors and to the $2,000 range for product grown outdoors. Lately, prices are in free-fall.
“‘Last I heard, a pound of marijuana is $800 for outdoor grown,’ said Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman in Ukiah. ‘That's plummeting. You might do better with tomatoes.’
“The marijuana meltdown could have major regional effects. In Humboldt County [and Mendocino County] — a recent study by a [Humboldt County] banker estimated marijuana accounts for more than a fourth of that county's $1.6 billion economy.
In recent years, many locals already thought the influx of pot growers exceeded demand in the state's sanctioned medical pot market. When US authorities in October announced a crackdown on medical marijuana businesses that they contended were profiteering in violation of federal and state laws, it darkened growers' fears. …
“Pressures on growers intensified after federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided a marijuana farm that had been licensed by Mendocino County and was considered a model for establishing local compliance rules for medical cultivation. The raid prompted Mendocino County supervisors in January to rescind a program that allowed the sheriff to enforce a 99-plant limit on pot farms by attaching $50 zip ties to each plant and inspecting the gardens of nearly 100 growers who provided documentation to show they were serving medical pot users.
“The program, which also offered cheaper tags for smaller quantity growers, brought in $630,000 in county fees in two years.
“Sheriff Allman said it allowed his department — which spends 30% of its $23 million budget on pot enforcement — to target major cultivators who he says are illegally growing thousands of plants, diverting water and fouling the environment. After the federal government launched its crackdown, supervisors tabled work on the plan.
“Among the most worried cultivators are the outdoor growers who increasingly struggle to compete with the exotic strains produced in climate-controlled indoor grow rooms. …
“Many worry that the Emerald Triangle will go back to being the hub of California's illegal marijuana trade. … With a federal crackdown and a shrinking market, Allman said, many out-of-towners may leave and ‘everything is going to go underground’.”
BILLY NORBURY, 33, of Redwood Valley was in court again Friday, and again the accused killer of Jamal Andrews, 30, was granted a continuance. Friday’s hearing was supposed be Norbury’s arraignment on a murder charge with a special allegation that he used a gun in the shooting death of Andrews the night of January 24th. Norbury’s attorney, Al Kubanis, said he needed more time to research Norbury’s background, specifically Norbury’s divorce file, where psychological evaluations of Norbury apparently indicate that he may be mentally ill. Judge John Behnke gave Kubanis three more weeks to prepare. Norbury is now scheduled to be arraigned on Friday, May 25th.
A POPULAR REGGAE singer raised in Laytonville, Andrews’ many friends believe that Andrews was shot to death by Norbury because Andrews was black, Norbury a white racist. DA David Eyster says the known facts of the case do not support hate crime allegations. Eyster says “other reasons” for the shooting were in play. Large numbers of Andrews’ friends and supporters have turned out for each of Norbury’s court appearances, although fewer people turned out for Andrews last Friday.
CRIMES OF THE WEEK: A 45-year-old woman identified as Marcia Stockhoff of Ukiah and Kelseyville, was arrested last week (Thursday, April 26th), when she crawled through the drive-up window of the North State Street Taco Bell and began stuffing herself with negative food value items. Ms. Stockhoff had been unsuccessfully panhandling from the seated position beneath the window when, at about 1:45am, she suddenly stood, forced the window open, dove through and began helping herself. Marcia got herself in more trouble when she attempted to fight with the officers who’d arrived to cart her off to the psych unit at the Mendocino County Jail.
THE PREVIOUS NIGHT, 68-year-old John Driggs, a career weenie wagger, was arrested Wednesday night about 10:30 when he was found standing naked outside the Ukiah Valley Medical Center. A nurse, presuming that Driggs was a roaming patient, attempted to cover the nude senior with a hospital blanket. But Driggs, a parolee and registered sex offender with “numerous” arrests for indecent exposure, lewdly thrust his pelvis at the helping professional and announced he was about to commence random sexual assaults with her or any other handy female. Driggs had illegally removed his ankle monitor before he went out into the Ukiah night looking for love, and will soon be on his way back to state prison.
JUST IN FROM GIZMOLANDIA: A recent report from the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the University of Manchester looked at the Apple Business Model and its employment effects. They cite a study which found that Chinese workers add $6.50 in value to each iPhone 3, just 3.6% of the phone’s shipping price. In a counterfactual exercise based on the average wage for electronics workers in the US ($21 per hour) and assuming 8 hours labor per phone, the CRESC team shows that Apple could assemble the phone in the US and still make a gross margin of $293 per phone, which is down from its current gross margin of $452, but still an impressive 46.5% margin. Assembling the phone in the US would have added benefits for the US economy in terms of direct job creation and multiplier effects — in contrast to the current business model, which decreases US employment and increases the US trade deficit. But healthy profits are not enough, so Apple continues to make superprofits to the detriment of the US economy. What is good for Apple is not good for the US.
GOLDIE WATCH: Goldilocks and all variations thereof have been retired as per the request of their designee, Ms. Jacqueline Audet of Fort Bragg. From 3 reported sightings of Ms. Audet last week in the Harvest Market shopping area south of town, she is doing well, although one reporter did encounter her in the hard booze section of Harvest and was compelled to comment, “She wasn’t loaded yet.” Another eyewitness said he thought Ms. Audet “was beginning to show the signs of hard wear and tear from her very unfortunate lifestyle choices.” We remain hopeful that Ms. Audet, now one of the Mendocino Coast's most remarked upon citizens, will soon consent to an interview.
FRIENDS OF THE WILLITS LIBRARY presents its annual Memorial Holiday Book Sale on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, May 25, 26 and 27 from 10am-4pm at the Willits Public Library meeting room, 390 East Commercial Street in Willits.
PETER PHILLIPS WRITES: “A recently organized coalition of Sonoma State faculty, students and local Occupy activists is calling for a public demonstration of outrage in response to the announcement that former Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill will receive an honorary degree at SSU’s graduation ceremony this year. People all over the country are invited to the Sonoma State campus for a ‘Day of Shame on Sonoma State University.’ The protest begins at noon on Saturday, May 12, and does not intend in any way to disrupt graduation proceedings. On the contrary, this is an urgent call to defend the integrity of the ceremony and denounce the unacceptable insult that Mr. Weill's dishonorable doctorate degree represents. Sanford (Sandy) Weill was the driving force in shattering the Glass-Steagall Act, which for decades had prohibited Wall Street investment firms from gambling with their depositors' money. Its reversal opened the gates for the housing crisis in 2008, the plague of foreclosures devastating our communities and the economic recession that has stolen our children's future. Mr. Weill thus enabled the merger that created Citigroup, a major player in the criminal banking practices thereby unleashed. Given his unquestioned responsibility in this, Time Magazine recently included Weill's name in its list of the ‘25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis.’ A major purveyor of toxic subprime mortgages, Citigroup required $45 billion in government investment and a $300 billion guarantee of its bad assets to avoid bankruptcy; yet Sandy Weill retired an incredibly wealthy man shortly before the ‘banking collapse he helped engineer’ required a taxpayer bail-out. Now Mr. Weill is being rewarded with a degree in Humane Letters for his donation of $12 million of his ill-gotten dollars to complete SSU's construction of the controversial Green Musical Center. In fact, many of the students in the SSU graduating class this year are leaving school saddled with Citigroup student loans, all part of the trillion dollar student loan debt from which graduates across the nation will be struggling for years to escape. Graduating SSU student Melanie Sanders' nicely sums up the student perspective: ‘I must now call my grandma and explain that I will be protesting at my graduation ceremony. I am personally offended that he will be at my graduation and receiving a degree.’ The ‘Day of Shame on Sonoma State University’ starts at noon on the SSU campus at 1801 East Cotati Ave, Rohnert Park, on May 12, 2012. Please respect our commitment to non-violent assembly and protect the integrity of this graduation ceremony, deploying your creativity to inform and articulate compassionate resistance, and honoring the dignity of this treasured moment for students and their families by dressing appropriately in black.”
ABSENTEE BALLOTS were mailed out to Mendo voters on Monday. More than half of us in the County now vote absentee, a process hastened by the closing of many outback voting precincts as a cost-saving measure.
A READER comments that at last weekend's Point Arena Daffodil Festival, “The tweakers were picking the daffs and trying to sell them to the tourists. Closing the Sea Shell Inn over here was like shaking an old wool blanket full of moths, then watching them all fly around without a place to land, looking all blurry-eyed in the daylight.”
CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE JARED HUFFMAN might want to re-think his sponge gambit. Huffman is mailing out little sponges emblazoned, “Huffman. Congress. Dip in water. See what happens.” We dipped the one we got and nothing happened. All it did was float. Anyhow, seeing as most Americans already think of their elected reps as sponges, if not leeches, a candidate doesn't seem well advised to confirm the stereotype.
WE OFTEN HEAR or read back-to-the-land sagas told by the now aged representatives of the flower child diaspora of the late 1960s as young people departed the cities for the more placid areas of the west and east coasts. What you don't hear much, if at all, is the primary reason for the urban exodus which, in the case of the San Francisco Bay Area to West Sonoma County and north to Trinity County, was the everyday level of street violence in the Bay Area cities, not to mention the world class maniacs like the Zodiac and Zebra Killers. The urbs had become a major bummer, man. It propelled thousands of counterculture types northward. Of course it was also possible to buy logged over land cheap in Mendocino and Humboldt counties, much of it financed by Bob McKee, arguably the pivotal expediter of the Northcoast back to the land movement. Now that the revisionist histories extolling the “Albion Nation” and the like are appearing, I'm looking forward to a new book by David Talbot (bother of Steve) on the “nightmare of violence and divisiveness that followed the dreamy days of peace and love.” Talbot's book is called “Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love.”
STAN ANDERSON informs us that the Mendocino County Republican Central Committee will meet at Gribaldo's Restaurant in Willits this Saturday, May 12th from 10 to noon. No hippies, no long guns. Side arms ok so long as they're holstered.
QUOTE OF THE DAY from Michael Lewis: “If I were in charge of Occupy I would probably reorganize the movement around a single, achievable goal: a financial boycott of the six ‘too big to fail’ Wall Street firms: Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo. We would encourage people who had deposits in these firms to withdraw them, and put them in smaller, not ‘too big to fail’ banks. We would stigmatize anyone who invested, in any way, in any of these banks. I’d try to organize college students to protest on campuses. Their first goal would be to force the university endowments to divest themselves of shares in these banks.”
BUDGET PROBLEMS KEEP MOUNTING for the City of Ukiah. The General Fund is projected to be $1.8 million in the red for next fiscal year unless drastic cuts are made. Nearly a million of the shortfall comes from the loss of Redevelopment money which the City was using to pay administrative salaries, including a big chunk of the salary and benefits of the City Manager, Assistant City Manager, Finance Director and others. The City has milked the Ukiah Redevelopment Association (RDA) cow this way for years. Normally, when funding for a position goes away, so does the position. Instead, City Manager Jane Chambers is recommending laying off the Sun House Museum Director Sherrie Smith-Ferri and all of her staff, as well as public works line staff and a police officer and fire fighter position. Museum supporters and firefighters turned out in force to support their programs, but no one pointed out the obvious — that the City could get a lot more bang for its layoff buck by offing a couple of high priced administrators instead of essential people doing essential work. The City Council will appoint an ad hoc committee to study the issue and report back.
THE OTHER REDEVELOPMENT SHOE dropped when the California State Department of Finance told the City of Ukiah that some $6 million dollars set aside for the COSTCO project was not an “enforceable obligation,” because contracts to encumber the money had not been signed by last year's deadline. Without the extensive road improvements that were to be funded by the RDA, the future of the COSTCO project is uncertain. It's a heckuva note in the first place that a hugely successful private business like CostCo should get a large hunk of public money for site prep.
THE RACE for Second District Supervisor continues to be low key, although incumbent Supervisor John McCowen's handmade, spray painted signs have begun to appear around Ukiah. The signs have been criticized for not being “professional” enough, but they provide visible proof of McCowen's frugality, and frugal is always reassuring in profligate times. McCowen's challenger, County employee and former SEIU bargaining team member Andrea Longoria, is so far pretty much invisible apart from a candidate's night and a mostly unheard appearance on Norm de Vall’s local radio Access show. Early speculation was that SEIU would pour significant money into the race, but so far all but $50 of the $1,362 raised by Longoria has come from the Pinoleville Pomo Nation, of which Longoria is a member.
McCOWEN HAS THE ADVANTAGE of regular exposure at the Board of Supervisor's meetings while Longoria has seldom if ever attended Supes meetings, except to complain about the pay cuts the Board was seeking to impose on her and fellow SEIU people last year. Nor has she attended Ukiah City Council meetings where McCowen is also a regular and occasionally weighs in on the issues facing his home town.
FOR YOUR ONLY IN MENDO files: We've all heard of sleep walking, but sleep driving? Randall D. Jennings, 43, of Fort Bragg said he was “sleep driving” when he piled head-on into two southbound vehicles containing a total of six tourists, injuring all of them. The three-car pile-up on Highway One north of Cleone near the intersection of Little Valley Road occurred in May of last year. Jennings, represented by Timothy O'Laughlin and prosecuted by DA new hire Jared Kelly, insisted he was driving in his sleep. Jennings took his unique defense all the way to a just-concluded jury trial that quickly found him guilty of two counts of felony reckless driving and four counts of misdemeanor reckless driving. Dr. Richard Miller of Mendocino, psychologist, and host of an equivalently implausible bi-weekly psych hour on KZYX, appeared as a witness for the defense. Jennings will be sentenced on June 18th at Ten Mile Court, Fort Bragg.
THE SUPERVISORS, slipping into their hair shirts, will meet at Saint Anthony’s Parish Hall in Mendocino next Tuesday (15 May), not in their lush leather swivel chairs in Ukiah. Beginning in 2006, the Board has annually held several of its regularly scheduled meetings in outlying areas of the county, most of them in the Fourth and Fifth Districts where their free lunches tend to be radically superior to those on offer in the culinarily-challenged areas of the County. The meeting starts at 10:00 a.m., and ends sometime late afternoon.
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