Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Marine Layer | 9 New Cases | Fire Hazards | Blighted Bridge | Hell Hot | JDSF Updates | Who Dey? | Forest Destruction | Fires Today | Virus Origin | Cornteen | Mendo Manson | Hill Disarmed | Housing Market | Grilled Sheriff | Ukiah Steakhouse | Road Rager | Water Theft | Defusing | Illegal Weed | Yesterday's Catch | Lucky Pelosi | Chat Seat | Kleptocrats | Tax Church | Ali Documentary | Shark Visit | Nothing I | Green Vehicles | NPR Whining | Samuel Whittmore | Murder Fanciers | Mystery Meats | Dance Party | Smash Capitalism | Lies | Anti-Semite Custard

AN UPPER LEVEL TROUGH passing mainly to our north this week will limit the degree of inland heat through Thursday, while areas of marine layer clouds and northwest onshore breezes keep coastal areas seasonably cool. Inland heat will build this weekend with a shallower marine layer. (NWS)

9 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

WE CERTAINLY AGREE with the caller who said he thinks the abandoned nursery at the Philo end of Anderson Valley Way is an ongoing fire hazard, the second most visible fire hazard in the Valley after Ricard's kindling pile at the south end of Boonville. 

We're trying to track down ownership of the nursery property. We've heard it belongs to one of the Cakebread family members in Napa County, but winery people being strictly Whitey-Tighty personality types I doubt a Cakebreader would simply sit on the place without maintaining it. Ricard, of course, gets the all-time Mendo Fire Trap Award. He's been allowed to maintain his hazard for 50 years.

GRAND JURY ON THE ORR STREET BRIDGE: 12 YEARS OF DELAY

“In 2008, Waugh Lane and Orr Street Bridges were on the Ukiah City Council docket for refurbishment. Waugh Lane was renovated in 2010, however, the Orr Street Bridge has been closed since 2009 and remains unrepaired and in a hazardous condition.

If the City realized there was disagreement between the Public Works Department (PW) and the Wagenseller Neighborhood Association (WNA) and had researched guidance from CA Public Resource Code they could have solved this problem years earlier at a much lower cost.

The result of City inaction has resulted in a blighted bridge, inoperable for any use. Conflict in determining the use of this bridge between the WNA and the PW has resulted in no action despite the funding allocation for repair. Work may be delayed further because its condition was included in a grant application for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds. This grant will cover the cost of a community needs survey”. 

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FINDINGS

F1. The extension of Orchard Avenue to Brush Street relieved the traffic and made it possible to close the Orr St bridge for repairs which provided an opportunity for the WNA to seek a change in the use of the bridge.

F2. City Council decisions on October 6, 2010 and again on February 21, 2018 supported the WNA goals for bridge use but did not include formal assignments of Lead and Responsible Agencies which has resulted in long-term delays and increases in project scope and costs.

F3. Since the closure of the bridge in 2009, development of housing and a new roadway on County land to the north ending abruptly at the bridge. This has accelerated the need for repairing the bridge for traffic and introduced new potential stakeholders to the project.

F4. Project delays caused by the change in project scope have resulted in increased costs for either repairs or alterations to the Orr Street Bridge. Bridge repair estimates in 2009 were $125,000, and in 2017 were between $300,000-$400,000. It is unknown what the costs for 2022 will be.

F5. The Regional Redwood trail crossing, one block West of Orr Street, with a pedestrian bridge over Orr Creek limits the justification for a pedestrian/bike only bridge on Orr Street.

F6. The bridge repairs have been included in the 2019 grant application for the entire Wagenseller Neighborhood which may cause delays in construction for two to four more years.

F7. Refurbishment of the Orr Street Bridge for vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle traffic would have met all the needs of the neighborhood residents and qualified for project exemptions under CEQA in 2009.

F8. The root cause for inaction on the bridge is that the focused outcome pursued by the WNA requires more planning and a CEQA review which can take years to complete under normal circumstances.

F9. Project delays have led to the current blighted condition of the Orr Street Bridge.

F10. The City Council could have formally assigned this project to the Planning Department and not Public Works after accepting recommendations from a community group.

F11. The Planning Department was not informed of the line-item fund available for bridge repair/refurbishment in the City budget while managing the application for CDBG funds.

The recommendations and the entire report are attached, and will be posted to the Grand Jury’s website: https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/grand-jury/2020-2021-reports

Kathy Wylie, Secretary

2020-21 Mendocino County Grand Jury

“I hear this is the hottest July in the history of hell.”

JACKSON STATE FOREST ACTION UPDATES AND INFORMATION

First and most importantly we need to focus our letter writing campaign on these two individuals.* Both Jessica Morse, Deputy Secretary for Forest Resources Management <jessica.morse@resources.ca.gov>, and Geneva Thompson, Assistant Secretary for Tribal Affairs <geneva.thompson@resources.ca.gov> are being courted by Kevin Conway, State Forest Program Manager. They have been given tours of Jackson Demonstration State Forest and told what a good job CDF/Cal Fire is doing in managing Our Forest. Of course we know better. It's time for us to present the truth to these two decision makers who are above Conway and in direct line to the Governor and Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of Natural Resources. 

The logging of JDSF is completely unacceptable and in direct contradiction to California's goals of the 30x30 Plan to conserve 30% of California's land and water by 2030 and of using Nature-Based Solutions to mitigate the climate crisis. 

Use your own words, but with these suggested main points:

• Logging second-growth redwood forests is in no way a ‘nature-based solution.’ A minimum of 80% of forest carbon is lost in the harvest which requires at least one hundred years to be re-sequestered.
• Water must be spared for essential needs, not to build logging roads and keep the dust down.
• Logging operations increase the risk of fire.
• With the stroke of a pen, the 78 square miles of Jackson can be saved to become part of the 30x30 solution.
• Barring that, an immediate moratorium on logging in JDSF must be declared until a new EIR can be drafted and approved.

The Coalition to Save Jackson State Forest presents: The Caspar Forest Fest! Saturday, July 31 at the Caspar Community Center

"Get ready to dance and celebrate community empowerment at the Caspar Forest Fest, the last Saturday of this month, July 31, from 1:00 until done at the Caspar Community Center. There will be live music with... [take your pick from below], powerful and informative speakers [again, pick your own faves], delectable food and desserts from Dalen and her Crew, kids' activities. Brought to you by the Coalition to Save Jackson--the People's Forest." 

The Full Line Up of Speakers, Emceed by Michelle McMillan:

• Priscilla Hunter,
• Ignacio Chapela,
• Belvie Rooks, 
• Chad Hanson, 
• Jory Wellspring, 
• Vince Taylor, 
• Sara Rose, 
• Ted Williams, 
• Bill Heil, 
• Chris Skyhawk

…and just a couple more pending

And Music.

There will also be Marrgie Chandler and the PAIEA Tree Walk, starting the event.

Jackson Demonstration State Forest is currently using millions of gallons of water per summer, emitting hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, increasing fire risk in the heart of our county, spraying chemical herbicides on forage lands, and handling native archeological sites very poorly. We can use everyone’s help to put an end to this blatant misuse of our public lands.

Go to savejackson.org 

ID THESE WOMEN AND WIN A REDWOOD TREE

WATER, A MESSAGE

Our water and trees…

I saw this article and thought I should share it as it affects us all.

While the city of Fort Bragg Is staring down the barrel of a water crisis and their patrons are being asked to conserve more water, California Department of Forestry is selling millions of gallons of the communities water at a steep discount. There are three timber harvest plans currently active that are in the Noyo River watershed and tributaries of the Noyo, totaling just under 2,000 acres.

These THPs will be sucking out an estimated 2.4 million gallons of water from the Noyo primarily during drought months for the watering of roads during timber operations.

Further, Redwoods are known for helping to regulate and store water in an ecosystem and to regulate water flows during drought months: “Forest soils act like giant sponges, soaking up rainwater as it falls, and slowly releasing it throughout the dry season.”

Logging a forest has been proven to be one of the most destructive activities you can do to the forest floor. Additionally, thinning and removal of the canopy allows in more light and increased winds, two factors that affect overall forest dryness.

“Spencer Robert Sawaske, a Stanford researcher, measured fog-drip from individual trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains during the 2013 dry season.

He found that older redwoods and Douglas firs on the Pacific Coast side near the ridgetops produced the most fog-drip: up to 38 inches recorded over 2.5 months! He also found that this fogdrip soaked into the ground and replenished stream flow.”

With significantly fewer trees and canopy cover in these logging areas, there is and will continue to be less fog drip contributing to the Noyo watershed during the driest part of the year - when we need it most.

If you are working diligently to conserve water, if you are a farmer who is letting fields go fallow or a home gardener starring at bare dirt this year. If you are a city official or water worker scrambling to figure out a way through this summer, it’s time to hold the California Department of Forestry accountable for their rampant water misuse. Please call your elected officials and ask them to put into effect an immediate moratorium, and to tell CDF no logging during drought!

Call scripts can be found at http://mendocinotrailstewards.org 

Rixanne Wehren <rixanne@mcn.org>

FIRES TODAY

The Dixie Fire, 25 miles north of Oroville, California [probably caused by PG&E equipment failure] grew by tens of thousands of acres Monday, reaching 59,984 acres by the end of the day. It now stretches for about 15 miles along the Feather River Canyon and Highway 70.
wildfiretoday.com/2021/07/20/dixie-fire-grows-to-nearly-60000-acres-in-northern-california/

The Tamarack Fire spreads east, crosses state line from California into Nevada. Burns 10 structures and over 41,000 acres.
wildfiretoday.com/2021/07/21/tamarack-fire-spreads-east-crosses-state-line-into-nevada/

DID COVID ESCAPE FROM A LAB?

by William Miller, MD; Chief of Staff at Adventist Health – Mendocino Coast Hospital

Last week we examined some of the data that supports COVID developing naturally and being bioengineering by humans. However, that doesn’t mean it might not have been something being studied in a virology lab that was then released, accidentally or otherwise. 

At the beginning of this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) sent a team of international scientists to Wuhan, China, to investigate the origin of the pandemic. As most people know, Wuhan is generally accepted to have been the epicenter of the outbreak that started in December 2019. Wuhan is the capital of the Hubei Provence and has 11 million people, making it the ninth most populated city in China.

WHO’s visit there was the first of a two-part investigation with the goal of understanding the origin so that we might be better prepared to respond to the next pandemic. WHO released a report of its findings in March in which they concluded that the virus naturally developed, most likely in horseshoe bats, and most likely jumped to humans via an intermediate animal. The report further states that the possibility of the pandemic starting because of a lab accident is “extremely unlikely”, however, cannot yet be fully ruled out. 

Many people continue to speculate that there may have been some sort of experimental lab involved at some point. China’s alleged unwillingness to fully cooperate with the investigation have not helped squelch concerns that they may be hiding something. This week, President Biden officially directed the US intelligence community to do its own investigation and report back to him in 90 days.

Some people have pointed out the close proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to the Huanan Seafood Market that sold various exotic live animals as food. That has led to much speculation that there might be some sort of link between the two. Subsequent research has suggested that this market was an initial super spreader at the start of the pandemic, but not the origin of it. 

The WIV is the world’s leading center for the study of coronaviruses and in particular the relationship between bats and these viruses. Bats appear to be the natural reservoir from which many new strains of coronaviruses develop. WIV is a Level 4 Biosafety Laboratory (BSL-4) which is the highest level of security for a lab studying dangerous communicable diseases. WIV is China’s first and only BSL-4 lab. WIV was the first to identify that COVID was caused by a coronavirus and was the first to fully sequence the genetic code for the virus. WIV shared this information very rapidly and fully with the world in February 2020, just three months after the first cases were identified in December 2019. WIV has been applauded by many world scientists for being forthcoming and transparent throughout this pandemic thus far.

Central to this question is the fact that China did not allow the WHO scientists to fully examine the records from WIV to confirm whether or not they were studying the virus prior to the onset of the pandemic. However, the Chinese government did allow the WHO investigators to interview scientists and other employees of WIV. China’s reluctance to be fully transparent is not, in and of itself, evidence of a cover-up as the communist country has a long history of secrecy on many levels. Thus, what appears to be suspicious may simply be their way of conducting business in general. Given the tense relationship between the US and China, it doesn’t seem too surprising that they may be less than enthusiastic about cooperating. 

China has countered allegations that COVID escaped from WIV by suggesting that the source may have been the US Army’s chief biological warfare lab at Fort Deitrick, Maryland. This seems a long shot as the pandemic is generally accepted to have first started in Wuhan, China. However, the burn is real as Fort Deitrick has a history of safety problems including being implicated in an accidental or intentional release of anthrax in 2001. In 2009, its activities were suspended by the CDC because of inadequate record keeping regarding what deadly diseases were being stored there. Its activity was again suspended in 2019 when the CDC determined that it was not following guidelines for appropriate decontamination of its wastewater.

As with many aspects of this pandemic, the question of the origin and China’s potential responsibility have become highly politicized. From ex-President Donald Trump’s insistence on calling it the “China flu” to President Joe Biden’s recent call for our own intelligence community investigation.

It will likely take many months if not years to fully work out the details of exactly how the virus moved from horseshoe bats to humans. However, we do not need to evoke a lab accident as an intermediary step. SARS-CoV-1 is the sister virus to the COVID virus (SARS-CoV-2). That virus caused a similar global epidemic between November 2002 and June 2003 known as SARS. While SARS never reached the levels that COVID has, we have learned much about it. We know that it started in the horseshoe bat in a cave in China about 1,000 miles away from Wuhan. That it jumped species to a small cat like animal, the civet, that is eaten as a delicacy in the region. That the virus then jumped species to humans and caused the epidemic, SARS. WIV played an important role in much of that research. It is of note that it wasn’t until 2017, fourteen years after the epidemic was over, that all of the steps in the process had been fully identified. It may take a similar length of time to answer all of the questions we now have about COVID’s origin. In the meantime, claims that WIV or some other lab played a role in the origin of the COVID pandemic remains unsubstantiated speculation. 

You can access previous Miller Reports by visiting www.WMillerMD.com. 

The views shared in this weekly column are those of the author, Dr. William Miller, and do not necessarily represent those of the publisher or of Adventist Health.

THE MANSON GANG IN MENDO

Assembled by Deb Silva

On a hunch I decided to look in the coast newspapers to see if there was any mention on Charlie Manson. I was not disappointed.

A guy by the name of Don Burleson had a column, Mendo-scene-o, in the Beacon and he apparently also worked for the post office in Mendocino. He mentioned that Charlie and a couple of the girls signed up to receive General Delivery mail at the Mendocino post office. I'm guessing that the girls were Lynette Fromme and Mary Brunner, Charlie's first two acquisitions.

The Beacon also had a little blip in the newspaper by their book reviewer and they wrote up a nice article on the front page about a possible connection between the Dulaney/Warren murders and the Manson Family. Though they did misname Sharon Tate as Susan Tate, I guess she just wasn't well known up this way. I've attached the articles in no particular chronological order.

Burleson's date of June 6, 1967 as the date when Charlie and the girls applied for General Delivery predates the July 31, 1967 arrest of Charlie in Leggett. Charlie was released from federal prison, Terminal Island in San Pedro near Long Beach, March 21, 1967. He really didn't waste much time making his way up to Mendo.

While the UDJ and the Beacon, in their articles written when the big arrest came down for the Tate-LaBianca murders, mention Charlie and Susan Atkins having been arrested prior in Mendo County, what they fail to mention is that Patricia Krenwinkel was also in that "Boonville Bust." She used an alias of Cathran Smith. Krenwinkel was perhaps the most vicious of all the girls arrested and convicted of murder. She participated in both the Tate and LaBianca murders. 

SORRY BILL, NO GUNS FOR YOU

On Monday, July 19th, 2021, Officers of the Fort Bragg Police Department served a search warrant in the 600 Block of N. Harrison Street at the residence of William Hill, 37, of Fort Bragg. 

The search warrant was related to a currently undisclosed felony investigation. During that search warrant, Officers found Hill to knowingly be in possession of four firearms despite being prohibited from owning firearms due to a served criminal protection order. During the investigation, Hill admitted to knowing that it was illegal for him to possess firearms. 

Hill was booked into the Mendocino County on the above charge. Due to Hill currently be out on bail from a previous investigation, and the nature of the ongoing felony investigation related to the above search warrant, the Fort Bragg Police Department requested and was granted a bail enhancement of $100,000. 

(Fort Bragg Police Presser)

MENDO HOUSING, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

People who work in Mendo, Napa, Sonoma and beyond have bought every available home in, you guessed it, Lake County, driving up the cost of housing there for all the honest, hard working citizens…

Ukiah is the damndest thing, people living permanently in 250 square ft old-motel rooms on State Street, homeless lying around everywhere while screaming at themselves, restaurants and coffee-places teeming with folks who don’t seem to have much to do at 10AM, and not much to draw folks into town besides Wal-Mart, Costco and Home-Depot…

There’s no homes for sale where 5 years ago there were plenty and they were cheap. Now it’s $600,000 plus.

Every business is staffed by folks commuting in from Santa Rosa or there are “Help Wanted” signs…

In Lake County, houses last 2-3 weeks on the market, and have shot up 40% in a year. Highway 20 has ruts from the commuters flying up to Ukiah and Willits.

Practically no new construction of homes in the area, but plenty of new “greenhouses”…

Newest housing in Lake County: Farmworker apartments in Kelseyville, and Senior/Disabled Apartments in Lakeport… Get them now!

THAT WAS A SHAMEFUL DISCUSSION the Board had with Sheriff Kendall on Tuesday. And whatever the beef was, it wasn't very apparent. On the one hand, Kendall outright refused to consider alternatives to hiring expensive Ukiah attorney, Duncan James for $50K, insisting that he needed James’ particular brand of legal muscle to protect his budgeting, and to ensure that the Sheriff retains control over his own law enforcement computer system. The Sheriff made it clear he is still peeved that a minor vehicle mileage glitch at the motor pool somehow morphed into a call for an audit of his budget, and he’s irked that the Supervisors and the CEO are saying that court-covered bailiff costs are somehow part of his overrun. He said he didn’t want to run a law enforcement outfit with the threat of the budget sword coming down on him personally or on his staff after the fact from people who are far removed from the department, adding that such a cloud would undermine public safety if he had to worry about how much money it was costing everytime an incident occurred.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the Supervisors seemed to think that the Sheriff is somehow wasting money and going over his budget without offering a single example of what they think the Sheriff is wasting money on.

HALF-HEARTED but well-meaning attempts by Supervisors McGourty, Haschak and Gjerde to postpone or negotiate the issue without hiring an attorney to mediate the increasingly bitter, but vague, legal-ish dispute between the Sheriff, the supervisors and CEO Angelo were unsuccessful because the Sheriff stood his ground, saying the Board had an attorney and he needed one too. County Counsel Christian Curtis said that the process could end up costing a quarter of a million dollars or more over as long as two years.

AT NO TIME, in the grilling of the Sheriff about his budget and the possibility of conducting some kind of audit, did any Supervisors ask any questions of the CEO or her budget staff for an opinion or to see if the dispute could be resolved on the spot — the discussion was only about the Sheriff and his $50k lawyer demand.

IN THE PAST, the Board just put in a knowingly low-ball place holder overtime budget in the hopes that they wouldn’t need too much more than that. Then after the usual overtime overrun, at the end of the year the books were magically balanced, funding from various under-runs was juggled, the overtime was funded, there was no problem, and nobody accused the Sheriff of a budget overrun. Besides, state and federal money usually covers at least some of whatever overtime the Sheriff expends on declared emergencies.

IF IT WAS US, we’d just tell the Sheriff that he can have what he asked for in his budget application and he can keep his own computer operation unless somebody can point out that something specific is unnecessary or too expensive. As far as we know, nobody is saying that Mendo is overpoliced or that any of the Sheriff’s costs are excessive or unreasonable.

CHAIR DAN GJERDE summed up the Board’s position, saying that apparently nobody on the Board would authorize hiring Mr. James because his costs are high and he apparently is suing the County on “another matter” (former Ag Commissioner Harindar Grewal’s wrongful termination suit). So the Board asked County Counsel to suggest a couple of other slightly less costly out-of-county law firms and bring them back to the Board on August 3. And then sometime after that the question of which lawyer would be hired would “go before the Presiding Judge” later in August and the judge would supposedly pick the Sheriff’s attorney.

GREAT WORK MENDO! Wasting $50k on outside counsel, and initiating a costly open-ended legal dispute on an unnecessary inside-Mendo dispute that should not have arisen in the first place and probably wouldn’t have if the Supes hadn’t huffed and puffed about holding Department heads personally responsible for budget overruns. Meanwhile, there is the usual in-house maneuvering to create an overblown Countywide IT Chief job for a loyal CEO deputy which the Sheriff is afraid might endanger the confidentiality of some of his law enforcement information and which appears to have been the source of the proposal to incorporate the Sheriff’s computer with the rest of the County’s system. 

(Mark Scaramella)

FORMERLY THE CRUSH RESTAURANT, UKIAH

ROAD RAGE INCIDENT Near Leggett Lands Yuba County Felon In County Jail Accused Of Brandishing Firearm At Other Driver

A Marysville woman stands accused of multiple charges including driving under the influence, brandishing a firearm, and carrying a concealed weapon after a traffic collision on July 16 near Leggett resulted in a roadway confrontation originally reported as a woman firing a machine gun…

kymkemp.com/2021/07/20/road-rage-incident-near-leggett-lands-yuba-county-felon-in-county-jail-accused-of-brandishing-firearm-at-other-driver/

THIEVES ARE STEALING CALIFORNIA’S SCARCE WATER. Where’s It Going? Illegal Marijuana Farms.

FROM CALMATTERS: "In Mendocino County, the thefts from rivers and streams are compromising already depleted Russian River waterways. In one water district there, thefts from hydrants could compromise a limited water supply for fighting fires, which is why they have put locks on hydrants.

“Any way that you can imagine that somebody is going to grab water, they’re doing it,” said Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall. “For goodness sakes, everybody knows what is going on.”

It’s as predictable as a dreary economics lesson: When a commodity becomes scarce and demand soars, it’s worth stealing. 

Officials say water thefts are increasing at about the same rate as the decline in California’s water supplies. Complaints have risen sharply this year, mirroring the drought’s inexorable advance.

Halfway through this year, 125 Californians have reported thefts to state authorities, more than twice as many as a decade ago. Those numbers don’t capture calls to local officials or small water districts that shoulder the bulk of enforcement responsibility. 

The water thefts not only strain police agencies but also damage valuable equipment. In the Antelope Valley, water main breaks, which can cost $10,000 each to repair, had been averaging about two a year. In the past year, there have been a dozen, Saraiya said.

lostcoastoutpost.com/2021/jul/20/thieves-are-stealing-californias-scarce-water-wher/

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I don’t understand why cannabis growers think they need so much water. Cannabis is naturally a dry climate plant. Drowning it isn’t going to make it bigger or more potent. Back in the day, I grew cannabis in small batches in the Nevada desert, relying on a tiny spring to provide water. Drip irrigation was efficient and I grew high quality weed that I had no trouble selling to friends. I wasn’t greedy… a good crop was six to eight plants.

Law enforcement needs to crack down hard on these illegal grows. Find them and take ‘em down. In the desert, grows such as those described in the [CalMatters] article could be torched, including vehicles. In our mountains, rip everything out and I mean everything. Plants, water lines, dams and stream diversions, structures, and vehicles. If someone is found at the grow, arrest their ass. Find out where the money is and confiscate it. That’s the only thing that’s going to stop this bullshit… strict enforcement and consequences.

Illegal growers aren’t selling their crops legally. What they grow is transported to states where cannabis is still illegal. Sellers and their customers are murdered on a daily basis over it and the only ones benefiting are the cartels and street gangs. Legal cannabis is fine, I enjoy edibles myself, but illegal stuff hurts society. And before some idiot here says “Well it should be legalized everywhere,” the fact is that it’s not and probably won’t be for a long time, if ever. If you’re growing illegally, then you have blood on your hands; unfortunately, I doubt you care.

CATCH OF THE DAY, July 19, 2021

BHAKTI DILLENBECK, Albion. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

WILLIAM HILL, Fort Bragg. Purchase of firearm in violation of restraining order. 

LLOYD HOAGLEN, Covelo. Hit&run with property damage.

DUSTIN JORDAN, Ukiah. DUI w/blood-alcohol over 0.15%. 

ABIMAEL LOPEZ-LOPEZ, Ukiah. DUI.

JOSEPH NELSON, Ukiah. Lewd-lascivious with child under 14 with force etc.

PEDRO PEREZ, Clearlake/Ukiah. DUI, no license.

CASEY RIGGS, Laytonville. Domestic battery, assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury, personal use of firearm, purchase of firearm in violation of a restraining order, criminal threats, vandalism. 

TYLER ROWE, Willits. Probation violation.

RICHARD STARK, Ukiah. Vandalism, conspiracy, probation revocation.

PELOSI MAKING MILLIONS IN STOCK TRADES in Companies She Actively Regulates

Ever since ascending to the top spot in the House, Pelosi and her husband, Paul, keep getting richer and richer. Much of their added wealth is due to extremely lucrative and “lucky” decisions about when to buy and sell stocks and options in the very industries and companies over which Pelosi, as House Speaker, exercises enormous and direct influence. 

scheerpost.com/2021/07/17/nancy-and-paul-pelosi-making-millions-in-stock-trades-in-companies-she-actively-regulates/

KLEPTOCRATS

To the Editor,

Another perfect word to describe the Democratic Party, this one is courtesy of the author Daniel Silva via the Oxford English Dictionary, and the word is kleptocracy (klep’takrase) a ruling body or order of thieves.

How fitting.

Thank you,

David Anderson

Ukiah

TALKING MUHAMMAD ALI WITH KEN BURNS

On September 19, PBS will debut the new documentary Muhammad Ali by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, and on this week’s show we speak to them about how to bring a larger than life figure back down to earth and what they learned from the project. We also have “Choice Words” about the IOC’s shocking and casual display of anti-Asian racism from Thomas Bach. In addition, we have “Just Stand Up” and “Just Sit Down” awards to ESPN personality Jay Williams and NFL Network’s Rich Eisen for speaking out about the need to get vaccinated, and ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith for his stupid and bigoted comments about baseball sensation Shohei Ohtani and the Nigerian olympic basketball team. We also have a tribute to Hip-Hop legend Biz Markie, who recently passed. All this and more on this week’s show!

thenation.com/podcast/society/ken-burns-muhammad-ali/

NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT NOW

I've got a long list of real good reasons
For all the things I've done
I've got a picture in the back of my mind 
Of what I've lost and what I've won
I've survived every situation 
Knowing when to freeze and when to run
And regret is just a memory written on my brow 
And there's nothing I can do about it now.

I've got a wild and a restless spirit 
I held my price through every deal
I've seen the fire of a woman's scorned 
Turn her heart of gold to steel
I've got the song of the voice inside me 
Set to the rhythm of the wheel
And I've been dreaming like a child 
Since the cradle broke the bow 
And there's nothing I can do about it now.

Running through the changes 
Going through the stages 
Coming round the corners in my life
Leaving doubt to fate 
Staying out too late 
Waiting for the moon to say goodnight 
And I could cry for the time I've wasted 
But that's a waste of time and tears, 
And I know just what I'd change 
If went back in time somehow
But there's nothing I can do about it now

Running through the changes
Going through the stages 
Coming round the corners in my life
Leaving doubt to fate
Staying out too late 
Waiting for the moon to say goodnight 
And I could cry for the time I've wasted 
But that's a waste of time and tears
And I know just what I'd change 
If went back in time somehow
But there's nothing I can do about it now.

I'm forgiving everything that forgiveness will allow 
And there's nothing I can do about it now

— Beth Nielsen Chapman

NPR’S BRILLIANT SELF-OWN

by Matt Taibbi

National Public Radio complains about a media figure who tells people "what their opinions should be" and uses political "buzzwords"

Yesterday’s NPR article, “Outrage As A Business Model: How Ben Shapiro Is Using Facebook To Build An Empire,” is among the more unintentionally funny efforts at media criticism in recent times.

The piece is about Ben Shapiro, but one doesn’t have to have ever followed Shapiro, or even once read the Daily Wire, to get the joke. The essence of NPR’s complaint is that a conservative media figure not only “has more followers than The Washington Post” but outperforms mainstream outlets in the digital arena, a fact that, “experts worry,” may be “furthering polarization” in America. NPR refers to polarizing media as if they’re making an anthropological discovery of a new and alien phenomenon.

The piece goes on to note that “other conservative outlets such as The Blaze, Breitbart News and The Western Journal” that “publish aggregated and opinion content” have also “generally been more successful… than legacy news outlets over the past year, according to NPR's analysis.” In other words, they’re doing better than us.

Is the complaint that Shapiro peddles misinformation? No: “The articles The Daily Wire publishes don't normally include falsehoods.” Are they worried about the stoking of Trumpism, or belief that the 2020 election was stolen? No, because Shapiro “publicly denounced the alt-right and other people in Trump's orbit,” as well as “the conspiracy theory that Trump is the rightful winner of the 2020 election.” Are they mad that the site is opinion disguised as news? No, because, “publicly the site does not purport to be a traditional news source.”

The main complaint, instead, is that:

By only covering specific stories that bolster the conservative agenda (such as… polarizing ones about race and sexuality issues)… readers still come away from The Daily Wire's content with the impression that Republican politicians can do little wrong and cancel culture is among the nation's greatest threats.

NPR has not run a piece critical of Democrats since Christ was a boy. Moreover, much like the New York Times editorial page (but somehow worse), the public news leader’s monomaniacal focus on “race and sexuality issues” has become an industry in-joke. For at least a year especially, listening to NPR has been like being pinned in wrestling beyond the three-count. Everything is about race or gender, and you can’t make it stop.

Conservatives have always hated NPR, but in the last year I hear more and more politically progressive people, in the media, talking about the station as a kind of mass torture experiment, one that makes the most patient and sensible people want to drive off the road in anguish. A brief list of just a few recent NPR reports:

“Billie Eilish Says She Is Sorry After TikTok Video Shows Her Mouthing A Racist Slur.” Pop star caught on tape using the word “chink” when she was “13 or 14 years old” triggers international outrage and expenditure of U.S. national media funding.

“Black TikTok Creators Are On Strike To Protest A Lack Of Credit For Their Work.” White TikTok users dance to Nicky Minaj lyrics like, “I'm a f****** Black Barbie. Pretty face, perfect body,” kicking off “a debate about cultural appropriation on the app.”

“Geocaching While Black: Outdoor Pastime Reveals Racism And Bias.” Area man who plays GPS-based treasure hunt game requiring forays into remote places and private property describes “horrifying” experience of people asking what he’s doing.

“Broadway Is Reopening This Fall, And Every New Play Is By A Black Writer.” All seven new plays being written by black writers is “a step toward progress,” but critics “will be watching Broadway's next moves” to make sure “momentum” continues.

“She Struggled To Reclaim Her Indigenous Name. She Hopes Others Have It Easier.” It took Cold Lake First Nations member Danita Bilozaze nine whole months to change her name to reflect her Indigenous identity.

“Tom Hanks Is A Non-Racist. It's Time For Him To Be Anti-Racist.” Tom Hanks pushing for more widespread teaching of the Tulsa massacre doesn’t change the fact that he’s built a career playing “white men ‘doing the right thing,’” NPR complains.

Mixed in with Ibram Kendi recommendations for children’s books, instructions on how to “decolonize your bookshelf” and “talk to your parents about racism” (even if your parents are an interracial couple), and important dispatches from the war on complacency like “Monuments And Teams Have Changed Names As America Reckons With Racism, Birds Are Next,” “National” Public Radio in the last year has committed itself to a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of the most moralizing, tendentious, humor-deprived, jargon-obsessed segment of American society. Yet without any irony, yesterday’s piece still made deadpan complaint about Shapiro’s habit of “telling [people] what their opinions should be” and speaking in “buzzwords.”

This was functionally the same piece as the recent New York Times article, “Is the Rise of the Substack Economy Bad for Democracy?” which similarly blamed Substack for hurting “traditional news” — and, as the headline suggests, democracy itself — by being a) popular and b) financially successful, which in media terms means not losing money hand over fist. There, too, the reasons for the rise of an alternative media outlet were presented by critics as a frightening, unsolvable Scooby-Doo mystery.

It’s not. NPR sucks and is unlistenable, so people are going elsewhere. People like Shapiro are running their strategy in reverse and making fortunes doing it. One of these professional analysts has to figure this one out eventually, right?

MURDER IS MY BUSINESS

by Caroline Fraser

A guilty pleasure—that’s what true crime is said to be, by everyone from avid fans to literary scholars. A recent article called “The Ethical Dilemma of Highbrow True Crime” by the essayist Alice Bolin describes the “centuries-long obsession” as an addictive hunger, something on which readers have “gorged.”

Reporting on crime has always been voyeuristically enjoyed, yet the taste has often been indulged surreptitiously. Its forebears in the English language include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British crime broadsides originally sold at public executions. The shame of purchasing such crass items, according to one scholar, inspired subterfuge: “Although respectable London families would not themselves be seen buying broadsheets describing the most recent outrage, they would send a footman out to buy half a dozen copies from a street hawker.” Thomas De Quincey’s 1827 satirical essay, “On Murder, Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” mockingly elevates the genre, positing the existence of a gentleman’s club, the “Society of Connoisseurs in Murder,” whose members were aesthetes, “Murder-Fanciers,” who “amidst some carnal considerations of tea and toast” relished “masterpieces” of the art.

Theories have attempted to explain the appeal. There’s the desire to see justice done, the satisfaction of solving mysteries, the need to allay fear by studying crimes, lest they happen to us. But no explanation ever seems to erase the vulgarity by association, and the appetite continues to inspire defensive justification. As such, true crime has become a literary outlier, a strangely unstable genre marketing itself as fact but often falling back on fictitious recreations and resolutions, as if truth alone could scarcely grapple with human depravity. The early broadsides were typical, purporting to be true narratives of offenses committed by the condemned but laced with moral truisms and gory clichés, in which throats were invariably cut from “ear to ear.”

For decades, little changed. While the passion for crime stories in this country began with Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin (in pieces collected in the Library of America’s 2008 volume True Crime: An American Anthology), the genre became the province of yellow journalism and near-pornographic detective magazines, once called “dickbooks” (“dick” being short for “detective”), specializing in the debasement of female sex objects: temptresses, sex kittens, jail bait, and lost women. Even the more respectable modern works, such as Truman Capote’s landmark In Cold Blood (1965), dabbled in fiction.

But now, amid an explosion of renewed popularity, the genre is evolving, its practitioners setting aside self-consciousness and questioning the idea that crime is not worthy of rigorous, accurate, and analytical attention. In true crime’s latest iteration, writers, reporters, bloggers, documentary filmmarkers, and podcast hosts — many of them women (alongside empathetic men), many of them energized by the Me Too movement — have taken a soiled brand and turned it into a collective exercise in retributive justice, recording and correcting the history of sexual violence.

(New York Review of Books)

WAVES & TUNES – Summer Dance Party With Dj Sister Yasmin

Date: Friday, August 6, 2021

Time: 3:00pm - 8:00pm

Place: Point Arena Pizza, 790 Point Road, Point Arena, CA 95468 at the historic Point Arena Cove

Join the fun and Dance to incredible music, all styles for a Funky, Soulful Summer Dance Party.

From Ray Charles to Ray Barretto, Bob Marley to Bob Dylan, Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Aretha, Michael-- all styles to get you out on the dance floor, joyfully mixed by DJ Sister Yasmin.

"Get up on the floor, let's boogie some more!" (inspired by Jackie Wilson)

Enjoy celebratory music, waves, tunes, delicious food, drink, and the amazing vibes at the Pt. Arena Pier!

All ages welcome. No cover charge. This will be an outside, covid-safe event, on the deck/patio.

Point Arena Pizza serves brick oven Pizzas, local, organic salads, and beer and wine.

Truly "Pizza for The People". Yum!

For more information: 707-884-4703

Rock & Groove With Me!

Sister Yasmin

ONE BIG LIE, MANY SMALLER LIES

If you've been watching Fox News since last November, you believe that:

Democratic voter fraud was rampant in the 2020 presidential election, which Donald Trump probably won.

The January 6 insurrection was a false flag operation of some kind that was planned and carried out by liberals, the FBI, and other parts of the Deep State who then tried to blame it on Trump supporters.

There is no reason to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Our nation's public schools have been taken over by left-wing teachers who tell white kids that they should all be ashamed of being white.

Laura Miller on Slate:

....If Landslide has an argument, it’s that while Trump and a handful of his most demented loyalists—first and foremost, Rudy Giuliani—were fully ready to overturn the election, they were far too isolated in that resolve to accomplish anything beyond spinning their wheels. 

“The nature of the Trump chaos,” Wolff writes, “is that, beyond his immediate desires and pronouncements, there was no ability—or structure, or chain of command, or procedures, or expertise, or actual person to call—to make anything happen.” 

While his staff, and GOP politicians hoping to appease Trump voters, put on a show of supporting the president and seriously entertaining his allegations that millions of votes had been either fraudulently cast or suppressed, “everyone” understood that Joe Biden had won the election and would become the 46th president of the United States. 

The staffers were accustomed to humoring Trump in order to (by their own accounts at least) moderate his heedless uninformed impulses. The politicians were dependent on Trump’s base. 

Neither thought that a pretense of going along with his “stop the steal” campaign until his term ran out would cost them anything—not until Jan. 6....

— Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

ISRAEL VOWS TO 'ACT AGGRESSIVELY' AGAINST BEN & JERRY'S

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s prime minister vowed Tuesday to “act aggressively” against the decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling its ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories, as the country’s ambassador to the U.S. urged dozens of state governors to punish the company under anti-boycott laws.

The strong reaction reflected concerns in Israel that the ice cream maker's decision could lead other companies to follow suit. It also appeared to set the stage for a protracted public relations and legal battle.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's office said he spoke with Alan Jope, chief executive of Ben & Jerry's parent company Unilever, and raised concern about what he called a “clearly anti-Israel step.” He said the move would have “serious consequences, legal and otherwise," and Israel "will act aggressively against all boycott actions directed against its citizens.”

apnews.com/article/ben-jerrys-israel-west-bank-east-jerusalem-879a896549a304ba34223a95a593c391