Mendocino County Today: Monday, March 7, 2022

OVERNIGHT LOWS MODERATE the next couple of nights before dropping again late this week. Dry weather persists through the work week, with the next chance for precip possibly occurring next weekend. (NWS)

ANOTHER ESCALATION: Russia's Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov has warned countries against hosting Kyiv's military aircraft, saying they could end up being involved in an armed conflict. He said that some Ukrainian combat planes had redeployed to Romania and other Ukraine neighbors he did not identify and warned that if those warplanes attacked the Russian forces from the territory of those nations, it “could be considered as those countries' engagement in the military conflict.” It comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said today that plans for Poland to send fighter jets to Ukraine had been given the “green light.” The deal would see Ukraine take Poland's 28 Russian-made MiG-29 warplanes, which would in turn be replaced by a fresh set of F-16's by the United States. It comes as Vladimir Putin's lawless invasion of Ukraine continues. Earlier Sunday Chief of Staff General Mark Milley was seen arriving for a meeting with US soldiers at a training range in Lithuania.

RUSSIAN FORCES RESUMED SHELLING major Ukrainian cities today, but have captured no significant territory after a weekend of heavy fighting with Kyiv claiming to have inflicted punishing losses. Thirty Russian helicopters moved to an airfield near the captured city of Kherson were destroyed overnight, Ukraine's military said, while also claiming to have re-taken the city of Chuhuiv, near Kharkiv, in the early hours - killing Russian commanders Lt. Col. Dmitry Safronov, and Lt Col. Denis Glebov in the process. Kyiv now says more than 11,000 Russian forces have died fighting, losses that experts say are "slowly becoming unsustainable for Russia." All of which has sparked hopes - however faint - that the unlikeliest of victories could be on the cards for Ukraine. Asked by the BBC on Sunday whether victory for Putin's men was "inevitable" - as many had predicted before fighting started - UK general Admiral Sir Tony Radakin replied: "No."

(Daily Mail)

DANGEROUS DRIVING ON 253:

This vehicle was driving toward Ukiah near the 10.6 mile marker at 6:21pm this evening and was *mostly* in the oncoming lane going around one of the highest, most dangerous curves. The California Highway Patrol says that even though the 4k video clearly shows what happened, and the officer said that even if provided with a license plate number there is "nothing they can do" because it could have been someone else driving the vehicle, etc. A light colored, likely 2010-2012, Ford Fusion.

CORRECTION #1: The just released Sheriff’s response to the Grand Jury report calling for consolidation with County Information Services (which we mentioned yesterday) pushes back on the attempt by the Supervisors and CEO Angelo to take over the Sheriff’s computer system. The Sheriff’s response was apparently delayed because of the lawsuit between the Sheriff and the Supervisors over the Sheriff’s right to hire his own attorney. County Counsel Curtis admitted he had a conflict of interest with the Sheriff but convinced the Board not to hire the Sheriff’s choice for legal counsel, Duncan James of Ukiah. This resulted in months of legal wrangling. Judge Moorman decided a couple of months ago that a conflict does exist regarding the computer consolidation issue and the Sheriff is entitled to independent counsel, but on procedural grounds Moorman left unresolved whether or not the Sheriff can hire his attorney of choice, Duncan James. We do not know who is paying for the considerable hours Mr. James and his legal staff are racking up for the Sheriff. But to the best of our knowledge, the County has not paid him anything so far.

CORRECTION #2: "Mr. James is incorrect in his stated timing of any snooping. While I was the Assistant CEO in 2015, the alleged incursion had happened prior to my arrival and various security measures had been implemented by that time which precluded any such activity from happening again. I trust upon a more careful review the record will corrected." (Alan Flora)

NOT FLORA

To the Editor:

Today, March 6, in the Anderson Valley Advertiser's blog "Mendocino County Today", former Mendocino County Assistant CEO stated the following: "Attorney Duncan James is incorrect in his stated timing of any snooping. While I was the Assistant CEO in 2015, the alleged incursion had happened prior to my arrival and various security measures had been implemented by that time which precluded any such activity from happening again. I trust upon a more careful review the record will corrected."

Alan Flora is absolutely correct. He is blameless.

It was Assistant CEO Kyle Knopp -- Carmel Angelo's chief deputy -- who committed the wiretapping violation at the direction of Ms. Angelo, and the year was 2013.

In 2013, Knopp surveilled those county workers who were SEIU shop stewards when SEIU was renegotiating its contracts with Mendocino County. SEIU was renegotiating its contracts after Carmel Angelo's massive firings and furloughs of county workers, followed by a five-year salary freeze for those workers who survived the cuts.

Those draconian measures were implemented by Ms. Angelo during the recession of 2008. By 2013, the economy had recovered, but Ms. Angelo had county workers where she wanted them...down and out, desperate and subservient, and most of all, afraid of losing their jobs.

Immediately following the discovery of the illegal wiretaps, Kyle Knopp quit his job and left Mendocino County. Carmel Angelo found Mr. Knopp a job as the city manager of Dell Rio in Humboldt County.

Mr. Knopp took the fall, but he landed on his feet -- resilient lad -- and the whole affair was swept under the carpet.

The coverup was aided by Kathy Wylie, foreman of the Mendocino County Grand Jury whose own 2021-2022 grand jury report of recent snooping by the CEO into the Sheriff's Office makes specific reference to the 2013 affair.

Want to do some fact-checking? Here's Mr. Knopp's phone number: (707) 764-3532. Call him. See if he'll talk with you. I bet he won't.

Perhaps, Alan Flora will come forward and tell what he knows.

What should we do now? The illegal wiretaps and the coverup that followed should be investigated and prosecuted. It should happen now. Right now! Even if the statute of limitations has passed, the terrible truth of Carmel Angelo's "Reign of Terror" should be exposed.

Sheriff Matt Kendall are you listening?

SEIU are you listening?

John Sakowicz, Ukiah

ROD SHIPPEY: I am available for electrical work in the valley. Commercial, industrial, residential. 510-407-4587

MORE COMMENTS ON EATING OUT AND TIPPING

[1] I also know that Sea Pal Cove has a policy of splitting the tips between ALL the workers. I applaud these policies. We should all read through the information the food establishments give us, and ask smart questions. It's getting more expensive each time they buy groceries, boxes, and napkins BTW. When I worked as a waitress, our crew always gave the bussers and kitchen staff a portion of our tips, although it was a small portion. The wage we got was laughable, much smaller than minimum wage, based on the wait staff living off those tips. It's crazy, we should do it the way they do in Europe.

[2] I know of one local business that has a 20% charge added. That money is split between ALL the workers— cashiers, wait staff, cooks, cleaning crew. That seems fair to me. If added to prices, the business might lose customers? I don’t know how other food businesses handle the situation.

* * *

(from Mendocino News Plus)

[1] In the good old days, tipping was an incentive to provide excellent service. Businesses never added on a gratuity unless it was a large group, party or special occasion and agreed upon beforehand. Nobody tipped on counter/take out or fast food. Tips were mostly cash and the personal business of the customer and the service worker. In the 1980s that all started changing with the proliferation of plastic money and the Reagan administration ordering the IRS to go after restaurants and traditional tipped industries as well as the "sub minimum" federal wage. I believe the automatic gratuities are added on and used to subsidize the wages of all the employees. I've worked at some establishments on the Coast where the owners/management took a cut as well. California labor code says participation in a tip pool by owners and management who have "power" over regular staff is a definite "no-no.” … Owners and management may accept tips if they are "working a section" of their own, performing most of the duties themselves. They are not allowed to take a share from the common pool distributed amongst hourly employees. Back when I first started working in the industry it was considered bad taste to tip owners. I worked at a family owned steak house in Napa County. One of the owners took the bartender shift on the regular man's days off. Most locals did not tip her, but when tourists left money she saved it up for a Christmas party and birthday gifts for us. Was a good place to work.

[2] Good Life Café in Mendocino has an implemented 15% service charge which is split among all the workers. I started this during COVID. When we reopened it became clear quickly that a lot of the visitors weren’t tipping because they were angry at the restrictions and the limits on service. We were forced to restrict everything and serve to-go only, My staff gave up stimulus and unemployment to return to work.

The employees are paid better hourly than most restaurants. If I wanted to pay them all $25 an hour which is the living wage around here, I’d have to raise my prices 40% to account for payroll taxes and all the other costs involved. Also, our service structure is different than most places so we implemented this in order to be able to compete in the industry with places that have different service models. Our staff definitely earns their gratuity and we pool the tips to ensure a team effort in serving all the customers well.

I’m sorry this is resented by some folks. Many have said they love it and Some also choose to tip on top of the fee. There are several places that charge automatically 20% gratuity in the area. Not sure how they split it but ours go to everyone who works here. In general, our staff is known to be very accommodating and can now pay their rent a little easier here on the coast. Also we tell everyone at the time they are paying that the service fee is included as well as post it in several places in the line. Hope this is helpful.

Most other countries have service fees in the ticket. Some give that to the servers and some don’t, which of course I disagree with. I am hopeful this will be a trend and more restaurants will follow suit. The town of Mendocino is a very hard place to be in as a restaurant owner, let me tell you. It costs me a lot more in all sorts of ways to implement the service fee. Service industry folks deserve to make a living wage. Restaurants (especially mine which buys the best and sells for less than most in the area) have a small profit margin already. Everything costs more now, including labor.

Sorry for the long rant… it’s a sensitive topic for me.

— Teddy Winslow, owner, Good Life Cafe & Bakery, Mendocino

PS (from the Good Life facebook page): Hi friends. We won’t be quite ready to re-open tomorrow March 1 as we had planned. We’ll need a few more days to get things squared away [with a new kitchen] but check here for updates! We will be sure to announce when we’re back up and running.

A FAN'S NOTE

Editor:

We wish we had a paper like yours.

Traveling through as a tourist on Sunday, I stopped for breakfast and bought a copy of your paper. What a change from what passes for journalism in much of the Bay Area.

It was both fresh, irreverent, yet full of the kind of local news and analysis that is too often missing.

Our town of 28,000 has a single local paper with only one reporter/editor and publishes virtually anything someone sends in.

I don’t know how you manage so much more in a much less populated area, but as an ardent fan of local journalism, it would be great to replicate your work down here.

Keep up the good work.

Steve Young

Benicia Mayor

NY TIMES OBITUARY FOR DENNIS CUNNINGHAM

nytimes.com/2022/03/06/us/dennis-cunningham-dead.html

RIP DENNIS CUNNINGHAM, sunset gathering tonight, Big River Beach.

San Francisco civil-rights lawyer Dennis Cunningham died of cancer Saturday night. Local friends of Dennis will gather at Big River Beach at sunset today (Sunday 3/6/22) in his honor. Dennis headed the legal team representing forest/labor activist Judi Bari, winning a $4 million jury verdict against the FBI and Oakland Police for trying to frame her for the 1990 Oakland car bombing that nearly killed her. He also represented the Q-Tip pepper-spray activists in their successful civil right suit against the Humboldt County Sheriff and Eureka Police. He was a co-founder of the People's Law Office in Chicago defending anti-war activists from charges in the riots outside the 1968 Democratic Convention. The list goes on. He was a friend and a very good man who dedicated his life to defending activists and suing bad cops on their behalf.

— N. Wilson, Albion

ED NOTE: Not exactly. Bari fired her first attorney, the late Susan B. Jordon, for asking, one time too many, “How about the ex-husband? People are telling me he did it.” Bari, who knew what happened, applied to the FBI for partial immunity from prosecution; the FBI said no. Enter the infinitely elastic Cunningham who brought the federal suit, dictated to him by Bari and, ultimately, co-written with the Justice Department, to exclude any mention of what actually happened. Cunningham was a weak, rather pathetic character who couldn't be trusted to competently present the phony federal case. Enter Tony “Tony The Actor” Serra who did all the talking. The scam prevailed. Bari and Darryl Cherney had raised a lot of money on the Dupe Circuit — the Pacifica Network primarily, locally via KMUD and KZYX, promising that if they won their federal suit they'd do lots of good things for the environment. Cherney bought a dope farm near Garberville, the Bari estate further enriched Bari's wealthy daughters, and the true history of what really went down resides with the ava in its archives.

PS. No one associated with this breathtaking fraud, including Cunningham, would ever debate me despite many invitations, and no mention of the case is allowed at “Free Speech Radio, Mendocino County.”

THE COUNTY’S POT PROGRAM: INHERENT AMBIGUITY, INHERENT CONFLICT, INHERENT FAILURE

by Mark Scaramella

Agenda Item 4b of last Wednesday’s all-day, all-pot permit program meeting (sponsored by the ad hoc committee of Supervisors Haschak and McGourty) said, “The vast majority of the cannabis applications going into the [pot permit application] portal, which closed on November 2, have been marked as having at least one requirement incomplete. The portal will re-open for a 30 day period. The cannabis program is only giving these re-submitted applications one review. If it is deemed incomplete after that review, the application will be denied. In these hundreds of cases, there will certainly be a sizable number that feel that they have done everything possible to complete the application in the portal, yet issues around technology, standards and guidelines that have been misunderstood or mistakenly reviewed, or reliance on third party consultants or agencies have caused the application to be deemed incomplete. Complete applications may also be denied for non-compliance with Chapter 10A.17 [Mendocino County’s current but unworkable cannabis cultivation ordinance].

“There will be those who are denied and feel that they have a reason that they should not be denied. Some will seek a legal remedy [i.e., sue the County in Superior Court] if not given the chance to have an appeal process. The creation of an appeal process will provide an opportunity for review of the reasons for denial of an application.

“The cannabis ad hoc [committee consisting of Supervisors John Haschak and Glenn McGourty] recommends that the MCP [Mendocino Cannabis Program] work with County Counsel in developing an appeal process for these cases. The cannabis ad hoc would like direction to be given by the Board of Supervisors on two particular points: (1) whether a fee should be charged for full cost recovery of the cost of the appeal, and (2) should cultivation be permitted to continue while the appeal is being processed.”

Before the Board discussion of the appeal process got underway, Supervisor Ted Williams wondered if the County could just issue permits to all current active permit applicants and let the state sort it out since the state permits are the only long-term permits that matter.

All four of his colleagues disagreed.

Williams, who pushed hard for unlimited pot cultivation expansion, has petulantly sought to wash his hands of the whole mess after his dreams of expansion were derailed by a referendum petition. Williams bascially argues that it’s the state’s program so let’s repeal ours and let the state deal with it. It’s typical of the seemingly sensible but simplistic non-solutions that Williams regularly trots out.

Mendo finds itself in the impossible position of having some 1,100 or so applicants most of whom will never get a Mendo permit, much less a State permit. The financial and bureaucratic and technical obstacles are nearly insurmountable.

The biggest hurdle comes in the form of an “inherent conflict” between Mendo’s unworkable program and the state requirement for site specific CEQA [environmental review], something that Mendo’s program lacks. Mendo’s “ministerial” ordinance assumes that there is no significant environmental impact on a program wide level hence no individual reviews. “Appendix G" to the unworkable ordinance was developed as a very imperfect workaround in an attempt to satisfy the requirement for site specific CEQA.

Meanwhile, things only got worse when the Board attempted to switch to a case by case land-use permit ordinance. That was blocked by a successful county-wide initiative petition which convinced the Board to withdrew their ordinance rather than have it go to a county-wide ballot. The Supervisors might have been able to salvage the ordinance except they stuck with the dream of nearly unlimited expansion, even after the Planning Commission recommended two acres maximum as a reasonable compromise.

Supervisor John Haschak, believing that Mendo’s unworkable program would work if only staff would quit sabotaging it, led the charge to prevent the county from enacting any land use permit ordinance that would provide the required site specific CEQA. Haschak and the Keystone Cops of Cannabis Advocacy (Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, Covelo Cannabis Advocacy Group, Michael Katz, Hannah Nelson, Monique Ramirez, et al), aligned with an odd assemblage of “legacy growers,” black market growers, anti-business environmentalists, anti-cannabis diehards and neighbors pissed off at illegal grows, successfully sabotaged the only workable solution, a land use based permit system. But the other four Supervisors share in the blame for their ill-fated attempt at overreach.

The Board, except for Haschak, have since then consistently attempted to distance themselves from the pot debacle, showing a kind of pot-fatigue and indifference,

A well-meaning Mendocino County pot permit applicant named David King opened public comment at last Wednesday’s day-long pot permit program discussion describing his untenable and contradictory situation.

King: “I am a marijuana farmer. Thanks to the board for this special meeting. As a permitted farmer since 2017 I have endured many changes which have led to me not having any income during this process. It has been impossible for me to create and execute a business plan in this ever changing environment. Today I was told that I can never grow in hoop houses and must invest in substantial grading infrastructure before a certain date to proceed with a commercial greenhouse. Then I was told I can use hoop houses, but the infrastructure I was forced to install now puts me in jeopardy of CEQA [environmental review] compliance due to vegetation removal on land that has been in continuous logging and grazing since the mid- 1800s. As a person on forest land who has managed timber harvest plans, I was in a perfect position when I applied and I started my CEQA in 2017. I was told to stop that process because I would not be allowed to include the information in my county file because the county had a mitigated negative declaration. We need a path to grandfather in legacy farmers on resource lands so they can move forward into Phase 3 with full CEQA if necessary. [Mr. King is mistaken on this point. Because the Board rescinded the land use permit ordinance, Phase 3 applicants will be stuck with the same unworkable ordinance confronting current applicants.] I am told not to despair because the governor wants this program to succeed and has made grant money available for the process. [Except the Board has been unable to get the grant money into the hands of the applicants who need it.] I was then informed that since I am not up to date on my taxes due to no cannabis income I will not be approved for grant funding even though I have a low income. The taxation is burdensome to this non-functioning industry. As a farmer, we need tax relief like four other counties and nine other cities are doing. We need relief from these taxes and an opportunity to utilize the grant money so we can proceed in the industry and make an income to pay the taxes. Without being able to cultivate or sell product at a profit, how are we supposed to pay the taxes? The cannabis bubble has burst. The system has been designed for well-funded operators. Yet the well-funded operators have left the county and are exiting the industry due to market collapse. I do not foresee Phase 3 enticing large operators and becoming a boom for our local economy. We still have a valuable asset in our community in the form of legacy operators. We have the skills and the land. Essentially we have a dispersal of a local wealth across the County combined with local talent that we can build a local industry on. We can increase the County income while dispersing the impact. Also, please develop a fallow system that is functional. Last year I had no crop nor a functional fallow system I could enter at the county level. Thank you.”

But the agenda item was limited to a proposal to develop an appeal process for the hundreds of permit applicants who have been denied or found to be incomplete.

Supervisor Glenn McGourty asked about the land use permit process, apparently thinking that somehow individual permits could be dealt with case by case, but he was contradicted by County Counsel Christian Curtis.

Curtis: “In regards to Supervisor McGourty's observation that this is a land-use permit question, this is not a land-use permit. The structure of the ordinance that the board had done previously that was subject to referendum would have made it a land-use process. It would have made it a discretionary process subject to environmental review at this time. This [the original ordinance] was devised specifically to not be a land use permit in part to avoid any discretionary determinations, and any site-specific environmental review. Unfortunately, that was before the state decided how they were going to function and when the state set up their process they decided they would have a discretionary process requiring environmental review but they were under an assumption that the environmental review would be conducted by the counties in advance even though we had set up a structure that did not require that.”

McGourty: “So we have an inherent conflict built into this whole process?” [The light finally flickers on for McGourty who seemingly is hearing for the first time that there’s an inherent conflict between the state requirement for site specific CEQA and Mendo’s programmatic Mitigated Negative Declaration.]

Curtis: “Yes. And that's really been a struggle, I would say for the last few years, trying to reconcile the process that the county put in place before the state decided what it was doing, that set up a ministerial permit process so as to avoid having to do site-specific environmental review and then the discretionary process the state put in place that assumed that there would be a site-specific environmental review on the part of the counties.”

McGourty: “How is the Sensitive Species [Habitat] Review and Appendix G not an environmental review like that?”

Curtis: “That was the suggestion they [state agencies] came up with. Appendix G it is not a product of the county's ordinance, Appendix G is something that the state, after the fact, asked the county to create to sign off on so the state would not have to do its own environmental review. We are essentially doing the state's work for them. I think they have been fairly explicit in acknowledging that so that they would not have to do their environmental review. We are doing it for them. But this is an odd creature. My understanding is that they tried to get a legislative change to allow this to be CEQA compliant. This is a whole scheme they came up with to try to get around their own environmental review.”

After more aimless back and forth Curtis tried to clarify, but failed. In fact he made it worse.

Curtis: “To be clear, we are talking about slightly different issues with respect to the Sensitive Species Habitat Review versus the vegetation or tree removal. There were some policy choices on the tree removal side and some of them were environmental mitigation measures and some were simply policy choices by the board. There is essentially two different prongs. One is regardless of Sensitive Species Habitat Review, the board wanted to prohibit certain types of tree removal and restrict what could be done in the context of the tree removal. There was a date that was picked for tree removal that was different from the date for the CEQA baseline. The date that was picked for tree removal was a development of the ordinance and the intent was to sort of put people on notice at a point that they should not be removing any trees for prospective cannabis gardens and they were going to treat it a little bit differently if it was going to be for that. The date for the Sensitive Species Habitat Review, and I would say that I have not spoken to [Cannabis Program] Director Nevedal, but it isn't necessarily January 1. It may be more appropriate to look at the date on the environmental documents. But that's really for determining what is and is not a significant environmental impact and what is and is not a pre-existing condition. Well, pre-existing condition is the wrong phrase, but baseline. It already established the baseline for the purpose of CEQA review. So these things are a bit different and I think the question before you now is essentially when there is this contiguous expansion, when can you say that it is sufficiently within baseline to not require the Sensitive Species Habitat Review. That's going to be a different question from the tree removal because the review is just to see what the environmental impact is and whether or not there is a significant environmental impact. That's the Sensitive Species Habitat [Review]. Whereas the tree removal issue may turn on completely different criteria including whether or not it is a commercial species.”

Is that clear to everybody?

After being contradicted a few more times by County Counsel, Supervisor McGourty, half of the County’s ad hoc pot permit committee, declared, “I guess I don’t feel qualified to legislate on this subject.” At least he’s honest about it. His colleagues have yet to admit their utter lack of qualifications to “legislate” pot permit program provisions. But the proof is in the pudding. Or in this case, lack of pudding, as the county continuously struggles with a pot permit program that fails to deliver pot permits and remains hopelessly stalled.

Supervisor Haschak, the other half of the pot permit ad hoc committee said he had called the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife and “they didn’t want to talk to me because of the politics or whatever of it. … What we have to do now is just go along with what CDFW [the State Department of Fish & Wildlife] is saying. … There are a lot of other issues we need to deal with and this is not one we need to take on and fight over.”

The real reason CDFW doesn’t want to talk to Haschak (according to a departed cannabis program employee) is that Haschak is unwilling or unable to understand and accept what he’s being told. The departed staffer told us Haschak will ask the same question and get the same answer ten times. Is he unable to understand the answer? Or is he unwilling to accept it? Either way he doesn’t get it. Haschak opposed the land use permit system (that McGourty thinks was adopted) because he stubbornly insisted the current failed program would work if only staff would let it.

Corrine Powell, a frequent and astute pot permit program commenter summarized the situation:

“After listening to the comments today and the questions from the board, and the apparent willingness of Board Chair Williams to recommend that the Mendocino Cannabis Program move forward without more direction or input from the Board, I see that the situation is shocking and outrageous. I realize that Supervisor Haschak has been willing to tackle these issues. I appreciate that Supervisor McGourty has wanted to participate on a limited scale. But many of the issues brought to this board by the cannabis department have become increasingly arbitrary and increasingly against what the board has previously directed. Many, many things are obstacles to local permittees getting licenses. It is irresponsible of the board to rubberstamp staff recommendations when they were not presented to the public in a reasonable amount of time. Some of the local community's input has not been considered. Please vote to postpone actions that you are discussing now regarding tree removal and vegetation and any department proposals that have not been adequately noticed to the public.”

Haschak noted that “Without an appeal process the County may be sued.”

McGourty agreed, saying, obviously, “We want to avoid lawsuits.” [The county probably will be sued, no matter which way they go, which is probably why it was revealed later that outside pot permit cannabis counsel had been “monitoring” the meeting at a cost of hundreds of dollars per hour.]

Haschak noted, “If you’re denied, you can’t grow until you win an appeal.”

Supervisor Dan Gjerde seemed to not care whether there was an appeal process because no matter what they do, “We will still get complaints. We have to keep adjusting the program and be pro-active on complaints.”

Haschak added: “We have egregious grows. We have bad actors. But we have a lot of good actors who are acting on good faith. Because of a glitch or because they can’t prove from five years ago that somebody did something, they are denied. So we need an appeals process. We need to work with the [completely failed] ordinance that we have. So I move to have staff create an appeals process. And that it include options for full cost recovery, but if they win they shouldn’t be charged. [Which isn’t “full cost recovery” and would create an incentive for whoever’s running the appeals to deny the appeals so the county makes more money.] And addressing questions of whether they can continue to grow while the appeal is being processed. We don’t want to put people out of business. I want options on that.”

Haschak may not want to put people out of business but so far the board is only deciding if the applications are complete. And as of now, many are not. The hundreds of “incompletes” are down to one last shot at the portal. But, once they are judged on their merits, many, perhaps most, of the portal survivors will be torpedoed by the inherent conflict between Mendo’s failed ordinance and state required CEQA.

All of a sudden another outside attorney appeared out of the ether in the virtual meeting, a Mr. Bill Abbott of Abbott and Kinderman, Sacramento. They claim to be “land use specialists.” Apparently, they are yet another expensive outside law firm hired by the profligate County Counsel Curtis because his eight attorneys, one of whom, Mr. Kiedrowski, specializes in pot permit legal issues, just can’t handle the the morass. Mr. Abbott said he had been “Monitoring the hearing today.” Hundreds of dollars per hour for “monitoring the hearing.” But none of the Supervisors asked for his opinion and he didn’t offer one.

Supervisor Maureen Mulheren asked: “What about previous or current denials?” — a reference to applications denied already.

Curtis said they can go to court — if the statute of limitations has not already run out.

McGourty said he thought that appeals should only be allowed for applicants who have submitted their application through the County’s unbelievably complicated and contradictory and seemingly arbitrary and nitpicky permit portal. McGourty added, “We may have to think about criteria [for allowing an appeal] as part of what we do. We should only allow appeals for active portal applicants.”

But Haschak pointed out that “There are other issues out there too, which would have to be considered. Sometimes consultants [for applicants] didn’t submit paperwork [through the portal] after being paid” to do it.

McGourty, clearly frustrated by even having to try to deal with such a screwed up program, commented, “I thought all applications were in the portal.”

At this point the pot applicants had to be tearing their hair out since applicants lucky enough to get a permit or whose applications were deemed complete, were able to skip the portal. Only applicants whose applications were deemed “incomplete” were “invited” to submit to the portal process. Which is beginning to sound like a form of medieval torture. Which is what it must feel like to the long suffering mostly well meaning applicants, who, after years of struggle, find themselves without a permit and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy as the costs of compliance mounts and the price of pot plummets — if they can find a buyer.

County Counsel Curtis said that there was “inherent ambiguity” in the idea of whether an applicant should be allowed to grow while their permit was denied, but under appeal.

Ultimately, the Board voted unanimously for Haschak’s motion to have “staff” prepare an appeals process with options. (Probably meaning it will fall to the Sacramento outside attorneys that nobody seems to care about spending more money on.) Meanwhile, those “increasingly arbitrary” denials described by Ms. Powell will continue “in the sole discretion of the [Cannabis] Program Director.”

SHORTAGE OF WATER, ELECTRICITY IS CONCERNING

Editor,

In his recently published commentary, Dan Walters indicated that the state is undergoing a chronic crisis in water and electricity supply. Water is critical to life. Electricity is critical to civilization. They are both critical resources.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. officials plan to raise its monthly electricity rates by more than 9% for the average residential customer. Our rates will most probably be among the highest in the nation. But, given that PG&E is responsible for managing the forestry for an area as large as many nations, it will remain one of the highest cost electricity producers.

Meanwhile, according to recent reports, Michael Burry, the eccentric investment genius who pretty much invented credit default swaps on mortgage-backed securities and was featured in “The Big Short” film, is now investing heavily in water. He is purchasing water rights, buying water-rich farmland and investing in water utilities, infrastructure and equipment. His foresight should be a wake-up call for all of us.

Gaetan Lion

Mill Valley

CHRIS SKYHAWK: I made this friend today and learned something new about them - after getting highly caffeinated at S- Bux, I rolled out toward the ocean - I just really needed to try it, the wind was fierce and drove me home, but b 4 it did a Kestrel landed on a fence right near me - I had a nice little moment with it, and asked how the hunting was going? it seemed to be listening, suddenly it took off swooped to the ground and grabbed something, and went back to its perch and started munching it seemed to be trying to show me, but its catch was too small for me to see, I was surprised and thought maybe an insect? which I did not think they ate, got home and found they are known to hunt insects, pretty cool, then an even bigger gust of wind came and it lifted off, and I went back to the nest b 4 I froze - they are nearly the prettiest birds around, their colors and patterns are marvelous!

TECH TIP: For anyone who may have broke their cell phone screen, like I did, might I suggest Mendo Tech Guru Alberto Aldaco. He saved me big bucks of having to replace my phone. He quickly, within 10-15 minutes, replaced my screen. He worked with my schedule to be able to come by for the repair and when the screen he put in ended up faulty, he instantly had me come in and replaced it. No charge of course. He warranties his work for 90 days. Very reasonable prices. Great guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGbdJ2XrN4M

JOHN McCOWEN: For much of the last two years, many small business owners/entrepreneurs had to struggle against arbitrary, confusing and contradictory government mandated restrictions and shutdowns that were not supported by science, logic or common sense. Ashley Cali was among the many local small business owners who came forward with very detailed, factual and well thought out protocols for safe re-opening of small businesses, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. It was very frustrating to me that local health authorities and a majority of the Board of Supervisors were indifferent to the plight of local small business owners and their families. Local small businesses and entrepreneurs are the social and economic life blood and creative force that defines and sustains our communities. And they are always deserving of our support.

INSANE CLOWN POSSE: THREAT OR MENACE?

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

A friend has two kids in public school, so I apologized to her for the education they’ll not receive, and she went on to tell me what they do when classes let out:

Video games.

They come home from Ukiah High and Pomolita Middle School and play video games until their fingertips bleed and vision blurs, and then fiddle with their smartphones. She assumes homework requires getting to Level Six on Mario Brothers or, more likely, achieving Ninja status on War Commando Black Ops Series 9. All she knows for sure is that there’s a whole lot of shooting and exploding going on.

Then we talked about her job and her mom’s health. What we never talked about is the terrible impact video games are having on the tender emotional state of kids these days.

Which means that just one measly half-generation later we don’t hear a whisper about the grave threat video games hold for our nation’s teenagers. Not a syllable.

But we all remember the outcries a dozen or so years ago of the violence and crime spikes certain to come in the wake of children being exposed to the evil world and twisted values created and promoted by video games.

Therapists and child psychologists issued grave warnings and made solemn predictions about the rising tide of sociopaths soon to swamp society. There were newspaper stories featuring interviews with school counselors and social workers, all with headlines reading “VIDEO GAMES: Threat or Menace?”

On television it was just as bad except you also had to look at the faces of worried talk show guests who came armed with statistics (“By the time the average American teenager reaches high school he or she has witnessed 98 million video game homicides!”) plus more dire predictions and more alarming conclusions.

The stats were always delivered with worried looks, furrowed brows and quavering voices. Dismayed talk show hosts shook their heads.

To meet the threat, Tipper Gore wrote books, Congressional panels impaneled panels, concerned parent groups circulated petitions, Joe Biden sniffed women’s hair, and video game executives made billions of dollars.

I well remember those years filled with heated up sociologists and angry analysts. Son Lucas was a teenager at the time, midway through the purgatory of Ukiah High’s diploma assembly line, and he played video games as if getting paid.

Among his favorites was Grand Theft Auto, a jolly compilation of thuggery, prostitution, drug running and dozens of murders, all within one block and/or 30 seconds of the game’s first carjacking. Loads of fun.

He had a small library of such fare, and he spent a lot more hours playing those games than he spent practicing his saxophone. He sometimes played video games competitively among friends who gathered upstairs; I could hear jeers, cheers and laughter at the mayhem those teenage warriors visited upon one another.

Then, without me even noticing, they all grew up. And not one of his former teen buddies has ever killed anyone or stolen a car or come within a mile of a misdemeanor. Lucas himself hasn’t played video games in more than a decade.

And the nationwide spike in crime and violence the shrinks and experts confidently predicted? Never happened. Crime rates, including homicide rates, continue to drop. It’s such a non-issue that embarrassed psychologists haven’t bothered to do research to determine the extent of emotional damage video games induced compared with teens who had instead been playing saxophones.

It would be easy to dismiss it all as just more of the merry-go-round passing for news cycles, but how often do we, as a society, fall for it when similar (or even dissimilar) trends pop up among youngsters?

As kids in the ’50s, we did “Duck and Cover” drills so we wouldn’t die from nuclear fallout. And in 10 years how many of us died? Zero.

Today we forbid little tykes from touching, smelling, talking with, playing with or looking at each other, and also make them wear face masks. How many children have died from COVID 19? Statistically, zero (with a 3% margin of error).

Did rock’n’roll doom teenagers? Record albums were reportedly stuffed with secret satanic messages, so Tipper Gore wrote books, congress blah blah blahed, pastors burned Beatle albums, Joe Biden bumped his head, hard, and yet no one sacrificed goats on altars to Beelzebub.

And no team of sociologists ever did research to determine if Motley Crue admirers suffer mental disorders at higher rates than Presbyterians. Who among us still stays awake nights worrying about the Insane Clown Posse?

Mendocino County once was hard hit by paranoiacs convinced microwave ovens caused brain lesions (and refused to enter restaurants that used them) and we endured a surge of resistance at the notion of eating genetically modified foods. These were labeled “Frankenfoods” by clever but dishonest promoters of a ban on GMOs. The referendum of course, passed by an unhealthy margin, and today you and I are not allowed to grow alfalfa using cloned dolphin kidneys.

We still spot faded “Hang Up Your Phone & Drive” bumper stickers and we remember car wrecks were predicted, laws were passed, editorials were written, Joe Biden had his 38th brain scan, and a week later technology morphed into smartphones. We survived. Do cell phones still cause ear cancer?

The future promises endless fodder to feed the perpetual motion machine of insanity-generating bubbles in our intellectual sewage system called the Internet. Do Walmarts have prisons hidden in their basements? Does Instagram make you bald?

Will emails and texting reduce national literacy back to grunting, pointing and emoji hieroglyphics?

(Tom Hine, author of this and every other TWK column, will be ready when the world devolves into nothing but emojis and clever messages like LOL, WTF and ASAP.)

GO YE FORTH UNARMED…

On Friday, March 4, 2022 at about 7:40 PM a Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputy was patrolling Cropley Lane in Willits.

The Deputy noticed a male, identified as William Goforth, 54, of Willits, standing next to a vehicle.

The Deputy noticed Goforth was prying a metal object into the door frame of the vehicle. The Deputy believed the subject was possibly trying to break into the vehicle and contacted Goforth.

When contacted Goforth advised he had a pistol in his pocket. The Deputy located and removed a fully loaded .380 handgun from Goforth's jacket pocket. The Deputy also located three concealed knives on Goforth's person.

Sheriff's Office Dispatch confirmed Goforth was prohibited from owning or possessing firearms or ammunition. Goforth was found to be on probation in Mendocino County with a term to obey all laws. Williams was further found to be addicted to and had recently used a controlled substance.

Goforth advised he owned and lived in a motor-home which was parked near the location. Goforth consented to a search of the motor-home.

In the motor-home, Deputies located a fully loaded 9mm rifle with characteristics of an assault style rifle. This rifle did not have any serial numbers, and the barrel was only 8 inches in length.

Goforth was arrested for Possession loaded firearm by prohibited person, Possession of an assault weapon, Possession of firearm while under the influence, Carrying a concealed weapon, Manufacture of short barreled rifle, Carrying a concealed dirk or dagger and Violation of Probation and booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $15,000 bail.

COVELO, SIGH

On Saturday, March 5, 2022, at about 3:05 PM, Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputies were dispatched to a local business in the 76000 block of Highway 162 in Covelo.

The Deputies were advised there had been an altercation at the location and a subject had been stabbed in the neck.

Round Valley Fire personnel arrived prior to Deputies arriving and transported the victim (adult male) to the Round Valley Airport. The victim was flown to an out of county hospital for medical treatment.

The suspect left the scene prior to the Deputies arrival but Deputies learned the suspect was a 17 year-old male juvenile.

It appeared the victim and suspect got into an argument and began physically fighting, when the suspect produced a weapon. The weapon was used to inflict the victim's injury.

Deputies were able to locate and arrest the juvenile male for attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

The juvenile male was booked into the Mendocino County Juvenile Detention Center.

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 6, 2022

JENNIFER BOWMAN, Domestic battery, contempt of court, probation revocation.

DORIS CAMP, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, assault with deadly weapon not a gun, probation revocation.

TREZ FOORD, Ukiah. DUI.

TAYLOR HALE, Laytonville. Domestic battery.

EUGENE HARRIS, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, concealed dirk-dagger (Frequent flyer.)

JAVIER MENDEZ, Ukiah. Protective order violation, witness intimidation, probation revocation.

STEVEN SIMPSON, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, failure to appear.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Most people have a large supply of stored-up anger–usually without acknowledging the real causes of their anger, even to themselves. They are really very eager to have someone/something to direct their anger AT. They are on board with anyone who will give them an object for their anger. it can be rather pleasurable to indulge in anger.

Many bloggers play on this human foible. Karl Denninger (whom I greatly admire) is an example. It’s very easy to become an anger junkie.

The anger junkie is on board with whoever is the first to supply them with their fix, and the MSM gets to most people first.

WENDELL BERRY, a quiet and humble man, has become an outspoken advocate for revolution. He urges immediate action as he mourns how America has turned its back on the land and rejected Jeffersonian principles of respect for the environment and sustainable agriculture. Berry warns, “People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped; by influence, by power, by us.”

2013 interview with Bill Moyers: youtu.be/2ejYAfcjJmY

2022 story by Dorothy Wickenden: newyorker.com/magazine/2022/02/28/wendell-berrys-advice-for-a-cataclysmic-age

THE UN INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL on Climate Change report, released last week, that rising temperatures are now affecting all living things. The report says that if global warming isn't limited to just another couple tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways with some being 'potentially irreversible.'

'The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,' the report said.

Delaying cuts in heat-trapping carbon emissions and waiting on adapting to warming's impacts, it warns, 'will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.'

WAR - the scale of moral and psychological damage is huge and leaves scars forever.

During World War II, around 200,000 ethnic Polish children as well as an unspecified number of children of other ethnicities were abducted from their homes and forcibly transported to Germany for purposes of forced labour, medical experiment, or Germanization.

Only 10 to 15% of those abducted returned to their homes.

When Allied effort to identify such children ceased, 13,517 inquiries were still open, and it was clear that German authorities would not be returning them.

Some children suffered emotional trauma when they were removed from their adoptive German parents, often the only parents they remembered, and returned to their biological parents, when they no longer remembered Polish, only German.

WHY RUSSIA IS MEETING HEADWINDS IN UKRAINE

Moscow’s miscalculations and unexpected resistance derail plans for a quick victory

wsj.com/articles/russian-advance-is-blunted-by-ukrainian-tactics-war-tested-troops-and-western-weapons-11646575579

GIRLS MAKING PETROL BOMBS during the Battle of the Bogside, Ireland, 1969

CALIFORNIA HOUSING

“…only about 15 percent of Californians can currently reasonably expect to be able to even think about buying a home, once the bedrock of American — let alone California — society.

Which brings us to the question — Qui bono?

Surprisingly, it’s not necessarily the “evil” local developers, many of whom see a massive market opportunity and are trying to fill it — by building new units -as fast they can. The very specific beneficiaries are the massive hedge funds currently buying up single-family homes – with cash - in hundreds of local neighborhoods.

Vast numbers of standard homes have been bought and converted into rentals.

thomas699.substack.com/p/affordable-attainable-or-impossible

CALIFORNIA FAILING TO PREPARE FOR DROUGHTS

Climate change isn’t a problem for the future. It’s here, and California isn’t remotely prepared to deal with the consequences.

The state’s latest snowpack report makes that clear. The Sierra Nevada snowpack provides nearly one-third of California’s water supply. On Tuesday it was at 63% of its historical average for that date. That’s despite the heavy storms in October and December. The months of January and February were the driest in the state’s recorded history, meaning Californians are facing a third consecutive year of severe drought.

A study published Feb. 14 notes that the past two decades ranks as the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years in the American West.

“Here we are 22 years into a bad drought, and because of climate change we are now surpassing the severity of megadroughts that have always been thought of as the worst-case scenarios,” said Park Williams, an associate professor of geography at UCLA and lead author of the study.

The state Department of Water Resources acknowledged the need for action during a Sept. 14 presentation to the California Water Commission, saying California should “expect by mid-2050s a 50% chance in any year to experience conditions like the 2012-2016 drought or worse.”

Yet the state is doing far too little to address this reality.

California’s water system is designed for a climate that no longer exists. Day by day, month by month, year by year, we are not keeping pace with climate change. The state’s failure to address this fundamental crisis threatens our urban and agricultural future.

“If we don’t change course and start making smart investments, we’re going to be even worse off 10 years from now,” says Doug Obegi, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Yes, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature allocated $5.2 billion over three years to deal with the drought. And he is seeking an additional $750 million more for water conservation programs, financial assistance for water agencies and grants for farmers to modify their operations. But that’s a drop in the bucket to what’s needed to fundamentally address California’s challenges.

The Bay Area is woefully behind its Southern California neighbors when it comes to water conservation. It’s time for the region’s leaders to push for additional large-scale water recycling and storm water capture efforts at a scale large enough to meet our long-term needs.

But California can’t hope to solve its water woes until it addresses its Big Ag issue. Farmers use about 75% of California’s available water supply, much of it on almond and pistachio orchards that cannot be fallowed in dry years and for crops that are mostly sent overseas to India and China.

The situation holds many parallels to the oil industry. California’s farmers are seeking to maintain the status quo, resisting inevitable change in order to cash in on highly profitable crops for as long as possible. If Big Ag isn’t interested in adapting to the realities of climate change, Newsom and the Legislature need to take steps to help growers, landowners, farmworkers and the communities they live in move toward a more sustainable future.

It’s time we acknowledged the degree of our water challenges. Serious, lingering droughts are the new norm for California.

—The Editorial Board, Bay Area News Group

PLANNING COMMISSION WRONG

To the Editor:

The Ukiah Planning Commission has outdone themselves this time. They have approved a permit for a cannabis dispensary (like we need another one) near a meeting place for people who are recovering from substance abuse. The Commission must meet with the City of Ukiah council members to see what the next idea is they can come up with that makes no sense.

Sherice Vinson

Ukiah

BILL KIMBERLIN:

This image of San Francisco is from about 1852. In that year the wages for a worker were about $6 dollars a month. Then something happened.

On January 24, 1848, James Marshall, discovered gold at John Sutter’s mill-works on the south fork of the American River. The place was called Coloma.

Shortly thereafter it was almost impossible to hire anyone to work for wages. In fact, one Colonel Richard Mason found his soldiers deserting at every turn.

“The struggle between right at six dollars a month”, he said, “and wrong at seventy five dollars a day, is a rather severe one.”

The Times of London wrote, “Those who could not procure better means of collecting gold, wandered off in its quest with tin pans, buckets, and whatever else could be used to separate the metal from the earth by washing… Since no capital is required, they are working in companies of equal shares, or alone with their basket.”

“No capital required.” The Times did not care for this notion, commenting, “The effect produced in California by this new source of wealth has been anything but beneficial to the colony or advantageous to the public service... From the fact that no capital is necessary, a fair competition in labour without the influence of capital, men who are only able to procure a month’s provisions have now thousands of dollars of the precious metal. The labouring class have now become the capitalists of the country.”

The Times goes on to say, “As yet, all attempts to employ capital in procuring the gold have resulted disastrously. Those who have organized a company to collect the precious metal have lost their outfits, for the persons hired for such a service invariably leave on their own account, taking with them the implements entrusted to them.”

Yet another problem is seen by a Washington newspaper, “This grain gold is now shipped off in large quantities to Mexico, Chili, and Peru, where it will be coined under the insignia of those republics, and lost to the metallic base of our own circulating medium. This gold can be secured to our own country only by a mint.”

Since San Francisco had no mint, the gold dust itself was traded for goods and services. And the thunk of these small heavy bags of dust could be heard to drop on every bar in the City.

The Washington Union concludes by trying to dissuade the skeptics who have heard, but don’t believe, the tales from California, “When the wealth of these gold mines is really known and believed in the United States, there will not be wagons and steamers enough that can be spared, to bring the emigrants there.

You are now all incredulous; you regard our statements as the dreams of an exiled imagination; but what seems to you mere fiction is stern reality; it is not gold in the clouds or in the sea, or in the center of the rock-ribbed mountains, but in the soil of California—sparkling in the sun and glittering in its streams. It lies on the open plain, in the shadows of the deep ravine, and glows on the summits of the mountains.”

If that wasn’t enough incentive to make a young man want to go to California, nothing ever would be enough. For those men who stayed in the East, their great-grand children are probably still there. For as Nathaniel West once remarked, “It was as if someone had turned the country on it’s end and everything that wasn’t nailed down rolled in to California.”

I guess my ancestors weren’t too nailed down because they rolled in sometime in 1849 and founded the brewery pictured just opposite Meiggs Wharf which is jutting out into the bay. Instead of looking for gold my great grandfather decided to sell beer to gold miners. This turned out to be a wise decision.

POLICE ARREST MORE THAN 3,000 AS PROTESTS GROW ACROSS RUSSIA

by Anton Troianovski

Despite the threat of yearslong prison terms, thousands of Russians joined anti-war rallies across the country Sunday in a striking show of the pent-up anger in Russian society about President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Police reported more than 3,000 arrests — the highest nationwide total officially reported in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests, OVD-Info, reported detentions in 49 Russian cities.

Video from independent Russian news outlets covering the protests showed throngs of people chanting “No to war!” on St. Petersburg’s central avenue, Nevsky Prospekt, and on Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square, just outside the Kremlin walls. Other clips showed protesters being beaten and kicked by police, including next to a stand of balloons and gift boxes inside Moscow’s storied children’s department store, Detsky Mir — next door to the headquarters of the domestic intelligence agency, the FSB.

In the city of Kaliningrad near the Baltic Sea, a woman protesting the war was recorded in a video posted on Twitter telling a police officer that she had survived the Nazi siege of Leningrad.

“Are you here to support the fascists?” the officer responded, repeating the Kremlin narrative about the war in Ukraine, before calling over other policemen and telling them: “Arrest them all.”

The thousands of Russians who protested Sunday represented only a slice of those furious over the invasion. Thousands more fled the country in the past 10 days, as their savings evaporated amid the collapse of the ruble and the West’s crushing sanctions.

“There is no more Russia,” Anton Dolin, one of Russia’s best-known film critics, wrote Sunday, announcing his departure. “We are suffering a catastrophe — no, not an economic or political one. This is a moral catastrophe.”

In a phone interview from Latvia, Dolin, 46, described how he spent four hours in the cold waiting to cross the border on foot Saturday with his wife, two children, their dog and a few suitcases.

“We have realized we are most probably departing for a long time,” he said. “We never prepared for this departure, and never in our lives even thought we would ever leave Russia.”

Putin remained defiant, despite phone calls with the presidents of France and Turkey on Sunday in which both leaders urged Russia to consider a cease-fire.

“An end to the special operation is only possible if Kyiv stops its military action and fulfills Russia’s well-known demands,” the Kremlin said.

By Sunday, the Russian government had blocked access inside the country to the websites of virtually all popular independent media outlets reporting on the war. Putin on Friday signed a law punishing “false news” about the war with prison sentences of up to 15 years.

(nytimes.com)

THE MAN IN THE WOODS

When a mind begins to unravel, who has the right — and the responsibility — to step in?

by Ashley Powers

It’s cold in the woods. Dark, too. This redwood thicket outside Fort Bragg, California, feels like a passageway to some other realm. Redwoods have that effect. They’re Grimms’ fairytale trees: They render you small and disoriented, a child who’s wandered off. Look up: Their branches brawl for space with Douglas firs and grand firs, and the canopy of green nearly blots out the sun. Look ahead: You can’t see farther than a few yards.

There aren’t many well-groomed trails here, just skid roads etched by logging equipment. Ferns and branches web across them, as hard to untangle as knotted hair. They hide gopher snakes, turkey vultures, coyotes, gray foxes, mountain lions, black bears. What kind of man would squat here — not in the homeless camps near the forest’s edge, but deep in the wilderness?

One summer morning, Jere Melo tromped into the thicket. A beloved city councilman in Fort Bragg, a coastal town three hours north of San Francisco, Melo had spent much of his 69 years in these woods: first as a forester and now as a property manager for a timber company. Clad in an orange vest and aluminum hard hat, he checked that gates were open and roads closed, or vice versa. If he stumbled on a marijuana garden (this was Mendocino County, in the heart of California pot land), he slashed water pipes, hauled out beer cans, and gave the sheriff’s office a heads-up. The growers didn’t rattle him much. Most reacted like teenagers at a kegger and fled.

On this trek, Melo was accompanied by Ian Chaney. A tiling contractor who lived on nearby Sherwood Road, Chaney was the one who’d told Melo about the man in the woods, Aaron. Chaney didn’t know his surname, but he’d repeatedly run into Aaron near timber-company land and recognized his shaved head, broad shoulders, and tattered black wardrobe. A few weeks back, Chaney noticed a firelike glow in the forest. A chainsaw whirred. Soon Chaney spotted Aaron lugging a grower’s kit of potting soil and fertilizer into the woods. “An eccentric person,” Chaney warned Melo. “A bit unstable.”

It was midmorning when the men huffed up an incline, wind in their faces. They peeled back some brush and discovered a waterline. Chaney assumed they would write down GPS coordinates for the sheriff, then hike back. Instead, Melo followed the line, hacking it with his ax, and Chaney reluctantly tagged along. They soon arrived at a bunker: a fortress of dirt and logs a few feet deep, with a fire pit inside and barbed wire on top. Nearby were neat rows of red poppies. Opium poppies. Gave Chaney the creeps.

Melo put down his ax and picked up his camera. That’s when Chaney saw a bullet casing. “We got to go,” he whispered. Something crackled. Leaves, probably. The men turned around.

There he was, a few yards upslope: shaved head, broad shoulders, clad in black.

“Hey!” Melo called. “What the fuck are you doing over there?”

“FBI!” the man yelled. Then, gunfire.

Melo spun and fell. Chaney plastered himself against the bunker, whipped out his pistol, and popped off a few rounds. Aaron kept firing as Chaney slid-ran down the hill, fumbling with his cellphone.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“OK, listen to me right now. I’m being shot at —”

“Where are you at?”

“I’m out in the woods, and I think Jere Melo has been hit. I got —” Gunfire interrupted. “Shit!”

“Where are you at?”

“Goddamn it!” Some beeps. Chaney was thumbing the phone. “I’m out in the fucking woods!”

There isn’t much to Fort Bragg, population 7,200, a longtime logging town whose last mill shut down in 2002. You can zip through in less than ten minutes, stoplights included: welcome sign, RV park, weathered vacation lodges (Harbor Lite, Seabird, Ebb Tide), Safeway, Rite Aid, charming downtown peddling mango-pepper jelly and candy cap mushroom ice cream. But the real attraction unfurls on both sides of the city: untamed California.

To the west is the Mendocino coast, a stretch of wide beaches and lush headlands as sinuous as the edge of a puzzle piece and a Hollywood stand-in for rugged Maine in Murder, She Wrote. Fort Bragg’s swath is known for its glass beaches, former city dumps where waves polish broken tail lights and beer bottles into “sea glass” that resemble Jolly Ranchers. To the east, the redwoods don’t just soar above the town, they swallow it entirely. The forest is so immense, so impenetrable, that the quickest way to some parts is the Skunk Train, a logging route turned tourist railway that chugs 40 miles inland.

The redwoods have long beckoned loners and miscreants, seekers of fortune and refuge: flower children and tree sitters and cults (not far from here, Jim Jones was a teacher before moving his Peoples Temple to San Francisco and then to Guyana). Growing up in Fort Bragg, Aaron Bassler found solace here, too — he was a woodsman, not a lost boy.

Aaron was born in 1976 to a young couple, Jim Bassler and Laura Johansen. Their rocky union, at times more a brawl than a marriage, lasted only four years before they divvied up their possessions — Laura got the TV and washing machine, Jim the table saw and yellow couch — and tried to start anew. Both stayed in Fort Bragg and eventually remarried, and Jim had another son; Aaron and his younger sister, Natalie, sometimes felt they were floating between the two families, never entirely part of either one.

Aaron quickly sprouted from towheaded Gerber child to sullen teen who studied too little and drank too much. In his senior picture, in 1994, he’s dashing in a tuxedo and bow tie: thick dark hair, sapphire eyes, lips taut in an almost-smile. He was a lean 6-foot-1, and for a time, he played baseball and skied. But as far as his friends knew, he never had a girlfriend. Something about him warned: Stay away.

In the forest, though, he sprang to life. He and his buddy Jeremy James poached salmon, hunted quail, hiked the tracks, camped. They tended pot gardens and prided themselves on dodging security. One whiff of laundry detergent, an interloper’s scent, and they escaped to forts they’d made along the Noyo River, their sleeping bags wrapped in trash bags and tucked under brush.

The boys loved movies and quoted them constantly; their escapades must have felt like scenes in Stand by Me. They dreamed of joining the Army. Under “Future Plans” in his yearbook, Aaron wrote, “Get into the Special Forces.” For a quote, he riffed on a Neil Young lyric: “It’s better to burn out than fade away.” Perhaps it was a hint as to where Aaron’s mind was: That spring, Kurt Cobain used it as the sign-off to his suicide note.

The search for Aaron began immediately. Following Chaney’s directions, the local SWAT team started to retrace Melo’s path. They had chased plenty of cases into the woods, but usually farther inland, where the climate was warmer and more conducive to pot growing. This terrain was less navigable. “Jurassic Park,” joked one.

By nightfall, the team hadn’t even located the bunker — brush-choked trails had slowed them; at one point, a few guys tumbled into a ravine. They camped in the pitch-black forest, huddled around a glow stick, caked in dried sweat, shivering. After sunrise, they crunched their way through the brush and found Melo’s body. Nearby were 7.62 x 39 mm casings (from Aaron), 9 mm casings (from Chaney), a sleeping bag, foil twisted into a marijuana pipe, and silver Hershey’s Kisses wrappers — but no sign of where Aaron had fled.

The SWAT guys wanted to stake out specific locations, but with only a few dozen deputies to police the entire county, the department didn’t have the manpower. Instead, they rode the Skunk Train into the forest, each clad in camouflage and humping at least 30 pounds: a helmet, night-vision gear, a vest with rifle plates, water, ammunition, and a rifle whose size and power rivaled that of Aaron’s Norinco SKS Sporter. (Later, redwood gawkers sometimes joined them on the train. The operator, a man known as Chief Skunk, joked that the trip had probably never been safer.) They hiked around the woods, trying to flush out Aaron much as they would a pheasant, with few hints as to his exact location. Aaron didn’t carry a cellphone or anything they could track. Aircraft streaked across the sky but couldn’t see through the awning of branches.

They hiked around the woods, trying to flush out Aaron much as they would a pheasant, with few hints as to his exact location.

One of the team’s leaders, deputy Jason Caudillo, had served in the Army, the same branch Aaron once dreamed of joining, and he felt strange deploying Ranger School tactics here. The men hiked single file, or “ducks in a row.” When they spoke, they whispered. They’d likely hear Aaron, or wildlife spooked by Aaron, before they spotted him. They found snuffed-out fires. They found pigeon carcasses. They found more than one crosshair. At least, that’s what they called them: circles with a cross in the middle — a taunt or a warning or nothing at all. This guy’s well-armed, Caudillo thought. He’s in shape. He’s obsessed with military tactics. He could be behind this redwood tree or that stump. He could be up that slope, around that bend. Someone’s going to die.

Aaron backed out of enlisting in the Army at the last minute. His friend Jeremy blamed the easy money of weed. But other problems soon cropped up. Aaron was guzzling peppermint schnapps and tinkering with acid and psychedelic mushrooms; when he wasn’t plastered, he was avoiding eye contact and mumbling about Nostradamus and quantum physics. His father was alarmed. But mustachioed, flannel-shirted, plainspoken Jim was a fisherman, not a shrink. Aaron’s an addict, he told himself.

Jim tried to protect his son. He moved Aaron into an old farmhouse across the street, on an overgrown patch of family land. Their neighborhood, near the northeast edge of Fort Bragg, has a rustic feel: goats chomping yards, a sign hawking PIGS RABBITS EGGS, the ocean salting afternoon breezes. One day, Aaron lit a fire in the farmhouse’s wood-burning stove, and the flames raced off and eviscerated the roof. It’s sunny today, Jim thought afterward. Warm, too. Why build a fire?

Aaron was closer to his mom, Laura, though their conversations were mostly pragmatic, with Aaron asking her to cook dinner or wash clothes. Aaron tried a few square jobs: delivering newspapers, cleaning a theater, chopping firewood, fishing with Jim (though that was always ill-fated; Aaron got seasick). But he preferred his marijuana gardens — in the woods, he was alone. Though he was constantly running from timber-company guards, he was able to earn enough to buy a black leather couch, a big-screen TV, a guitar, and some guns, as well as stash a few hundred dollars in a can (and then bury it) and brag to Jeremy, “I’m rich!”

In the days following Melo’s murder, Aaron’s mug shot glowered from downtown windows under the words ARMED AND DANGEROUS. It was an eerie counterpart to that long-ago yearbook photo: Now his face was hard, the light in his eyes dim. To the town, he was the bogeyman.

The sheriff charged with finding him, Tom Allman, had been a cop for three decades. Silver-haired and genial, Allman was probably best known for his tolerance of small mom-and-pop grows and his efforts to wipe out huge ones. Earlier that summer, he’d led a multiagency charge — including hundreds of officers and a squadron of helicopters and planes — that, authorities said, uprooted more than 600,000 marijuana plants. But he’d never overseen such a sprawling hunt for a fugitive; to his knowledge, no one in county history had.

The operation was run out of the Fort Bragg substation, a squat blue building whose walls were papered with maps reminding him how daunting his task was: 400 square miles of skid roads and game trails that Aaron had hiked for much of his life, many unmarked and so clotted with vegetation that you practically had to chainsaw your way through. A local logger, Allman would later tell reporters, summed up his predicament best: “‘So, Tom, what you’re saying is, in 400 square miles, you’re not trying to find a rabbit. You’re trying to find the rabbit — and the rabbit has an assault rifle.’”

As deputies searched, detectives interviewed Aaron’s parents. Jim had cleared away brush near his house so Aaron would have no place to lurk, and he’d been sleeping with a pistol nearby. He didn’t think his son would shoot him — but he didn’t want to confront him unarmed, either. In other moments, though, he softened into a worried dad: What if Aaron kills himself in the forest, he wondered, and no one finds his body?

Laura was equally distraught. Until now, she told detectives, Aaron had either stopped by her house or called every week. The last time she saw him, they went grocery shopping, and he bought 15 packs of ramen, some Best Yet rice, white-grape juice, bananas, Skittles, Milky Ways, Starbursts, Butterfingers, Milk Duds, and Hershey’s Kisses. (He’d always had a sweet tooth.) Then she drove him about 45 minutes up Highway 1 to a redwood grove that parted to a stunning expanse of sea; Aaron hopped out with his groceries and his rifle, a recent loan from an uncle.

Jim had cleared away brush near his house so Aaron would have no place to lurk, and he’d been sleeping with a pistol nearby.

When Laura mentioned the grove, detectives were startled. It was a potential clue in another homicide. About two weeks earlier, Matthew Coleman, a 45-year-old land manager, had been murdered. He was an unlikely victim: an avid reader and “gentle giant,” according to his sister.

Coleman arrived one morning at a conservation group’s property where he was clearing trails. He placed a weed eater and a pickax near his white Saturn station wagon. Then he was shot twice. That night, colleagues found his driver’s side door ajar and the car radio humming. Coleman was face-down, his head on the door frame, his right leg frozen midcrawl. Someone appeared to have defecated on his body. A search team discovered Hershey’s Kisses wrappers and foil twisted into a marijuana pipe. The results of a test comparing DNA on the foil pipe to DNA from Aaron’s blood came back soon after: They were a match.

As the manhunt entered its second week, Fort Bragg prepared for the annual Paul Bunyan Days parade, an homage to its logging heritage and the culmination of a weekend of fish frying, tricycle racing, water fighting, and ugly-dog judging. The procession would honor Jere Melo, and his City Hall colleagues planned to display a blown-up photo of him in a lumberjack shirt.

The day before the parade, there was a break in the case. A sergeant spotted Aaron near his mother’s house, and though Aaron quickly ghosted into the woods, deputies retrieved a backpack and a fanny pack belonging to him. It felt like rummaging through junk drawers. There was a bar of soap, a blue disposable razor, three aspirin. A bag of coffee grounds, several packs of fish hooks, a stained red rag. Two bags of seeds and dozens of rounds of ammunition, same caliber as the ones that killed Melo.

And then, wrapped in an ocean-tide chart and jammed into a plastic bag with a Raiders patch: 18 playing cards, each one an eight of spades.

That last discovery especially troubled Sheriff Allman. The case had been consuming him. He kept dreaming about it, jolting awake, reaching for his phone to see if there was any news. That night, he couldn’t fall asleep. He sat in his sweats, Googling: “eight of spades,” “8 of spades,” “8 symbolism,” looking for meaning.

In most crimes, a motive quickly emerges: money, dope, pride, love. Once you grasp that, you start to understand the man, think like him, guess his next move. Only Aaron didn’t make sense. His own father compared him to an animal, cowering in familiar turf. There’s no explanation, Jim said. The sheriff had known someone a little like that: his brother.

A water-treatment operator who lived one county to the north, Mike never lashed out like Aaron. But his lifelong storminess mystified his siblings, and when they tried to broach the subject, he waved them off. Even after Mike shot and killed himself — news the sheriff learned while guarding hospitals in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — his family would never know why he unraveled. His obituary lamented only that his “big heart and compassionate nature was, in the end, unable to overcome his battle with alcohol.” Years had passed, and yet nearly every time Allman talked to their elderly mother, she found a way to bring it up.

When the sheriff realized how unsettled Aaron was, it reframed how he saw him: as a prisoner of his delusions. Allman was hunting someone whose trust he couldn’t win, whose motives weren’t grounded in reality. The meanings of the cards, the crosshairs, the crimes — they were all lost in the wilderness of Aaron’s mind.

In the winter of 2009, two years before the manhunt, Laura got a call. Aaron, then 32, had been arrested in San Francisco. Starting a few weeks earlier, Aaron had made several trips to the Chinese Consulate, a blocky white building that mostly blends into the surrounding Fillmore District. Sheathed in black, he left packages there. Diplomats panicked and called the police; a bomb squad found no explosives inside. Three times, the packages contained a drawing of a red star and a message: “Alpha RE, Martian Military and Chinese Weapons Designs.” The fourth time, when a cop saw Aaron heave a package over the fence and arrested him, the package held a black jumpsuit with red stars. Later, Aaron told a friend that Martians had been helping China build technology to invade the United States.

Following the arrest, while Aaron was briefly locked up, his sister, Natalie, walked over to his latest residence: a small, gray outbuilding behind the farmhouse he’d burned down. Natalie was three years younger than Aaron and as blond and charming as he was dark and brooding. They were never close, but Natalie still wanted answers about Aaron’s behavior and hoped they were inside.

Aaron had thrown up a 6-foot-tall fence and padlocked most everything, but a window was open, and she wriggled through. It was dim inside, with the windows shrouded by black sheets. The kitchen floor was black, too. Natalie didn’t see any dishes; Aaron refused to turn on the gas stove, convinced he smelled a leak, though the utility company had checked and found nothing awry. He’d gotten rid of nearly all his furniture, except a large drawing table.

Natalie didn’t look in what the family called the dungeon, the roughly 8-foot-by-12-foot basement her brother had constructed as a sleeping chamber. She didn’t need to. The living room was a whirl of paper, hinting at the thoughts that consumed him: giant world maps, sketches of aliens. Natalie thought of A Beautiful Mind. For so long, she’d dismissed her brother as a jerk, a weirdo, a creep. Aaron’s really sick, she realized, and she was almost relieved he was behind bars. Maybe there, she reasoned, he’d get help.

Like Aaron, 40-year-old Californian Scott Thorpe had reached an age when his peers had chosen careers, married, started raising kids. Instead, Thorpe shrouded his windows and stockpiled guns to fend off an FBI assault imminent only in his mind. Alarmed by his slipping grasp on reality, his family asked his psychiatrist to commit him, to no avail. Then one day in 2001, Thorpe brought a gun to a mental-health clinic in Nevada County, California, shot and killed two people, drove to a restaurant he believed had poisoned him, and gunned down a third.

In the aftermath, the family of one of his victims, a 19-year-old college student named Laura Wilcox who was filling in at the clinic over winter break, began lobbying for a bill that came to bear her name. Passed in 2002, Laura’s Law makes it easier to court-order those who are rapidly and publicly deteriorating to be treated at home, a program known as assisted outpatient treatment.

Laura’s Law is designed as a compromise between giving those with mental illness responsibility for their own care and locking them in state psychiatric facilities, many of which were considered inhumane. California was at the forefront of a movement that made it harder to commit people with mental illnesses and shuttered facilities nationwide (including one in Mendocino County; it’s now the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, a monastery and training center). This deinstitutionalization was an effort intertwined with the civil rights era, as new antipsychotic drugs afforded the seriously mentally ill a chance to reclaim their autonomy.

The fallout from this system is apparent from San Francisco’s Tenderloin to Los Angeles’s Skid Row and in nearly every correctional facility. If Aaron’s story had ended with him as a 32-year-old marooned in a cell, obsessing over an alien conspiracy, it wouldn’t have been exceptional. A few years ago, when a grand jury visited the Mendocino County lockup, close to a fifth of the inmates had psychiatric troubles, on par with estimates from around the country. A dozen were in bad enough shape that they should have been hospitalized — including an inmate arrested on a misdemeanor charge who’d spent months waiting for a psychiatric bed. And those in jail aren’t the worst off. Last year, The Washington Post analyzed close to 1,000 fatal shootings by police and found about a quarter of those killed were either mentally ill or in the throes of emotional crises — and in many cases, panicked families or neighbors had been the ones to seek the cops’ help. “We as parents really have nowhere to turn,” says Dan Hamburg, a Mendocino County supervisor whose son has schizophrenia and once led police on a high-speed chase.

To patient-rights advocates, solutions like Laura’s Law are a throwback to the asylum era. Laura’s Law gives power to a roommate, family member, therapist, or law-enforcement officer to start a process that could force people into intensive treatment overseen by a judge, sometimes before they’ve even broken any laws. We don’t force cancer patients to undergo chemotherapy or diabetics to inject insulin, and the perception that the mentally ill are responsible for more violence than others is, for the most part, untrue.

At least half of people with schizophrenia, however, can’t recognize they’re sick, and so most states have some kind of involuntary outpatient commitment law. Several of them, like California’s, are modeled after a 1999 New York measure called Kendra’s Law. When researchers evaluated Kendra’s Law a few years ago, they found participants were more likely to keep adequate medication on hand and less likely to end up hospitalized. Sparsely populated Nevada County, where Scott Thorpe’s rampage took place, was the first county to fully implement Laura’s Law, in 2008. Its program is small, with fewer than two dozen participants during the most recent yearlong reporting period. They spent 79.5 percent fewer days homeless, 77 percent fewer days hospitalized, and 100 percent fewer days jailed — numbers consistent with past years of the program.

But the state didn’t provide funding for Laura’s Law, as New York did for Kendra’s Law, and it has to be approved county by county, meaning 58 separate conversations few people want to have. At the time of Aaron’s descent, Mendocino and nearly every other county hadn’t opted in. Only after a string of mass shootings involving disturbed young men — after Tucson and Aurora and Newtown — did state lawmakers agree to counties using certain funds to implement the law. Ever since, much of the state has grappled with the question that dogged Aaron’s family: How far should we let someone crumble before we step in?

In the third week of the search for Aaron, detectives found that someone had jimmied open a window at a former Boy Scouts facility, Camp Noyo. On the other side of the building, they found a cross made of sticks. There was a motion-activated camera nearby, and they downloaded a stream of black-and-white photos. The sheriff had been toying with the theory that Aaron was less of a mountain lion, stalking prey through the forest, and more of a bear, lashing out only when threatened. In fact, Aaron had run into at least one transient, and he hadn’t turned on the man — he’d shared a joint with him. Maybe if they approached him the right way, he’d surrender?

But the photos hinted at a darker outcome. The man in them had a spectral quality. He stood outside the Camp Noyo kitchen, a rickety wood structure, his back to the camera, his gaze fixed on a small window reflecting a knot of branches. He wore a dark jacket, though because of the camera’s night vision, it gleamed white. His pants had split in the rear, and he’d tucked the ankles into pulled-up socks, pseudo-military-style. In his right hand, Aaron clutched a rifle, as large as anything in the movies. The position of his index finger made Allman shudder: He rested it alongside the trigger, as cops and soldiers do. There’s a killer in the woods, the sheriff thought, and we’re not smart enough to find him.

The search was stretching past a month; it had included dozens of law-enforcement officers pulled from the U.S. Marshals Service and from agencies up and down California. They’d scoured the woods but couldn’t stay indefinitely, and the rainy season loomed: storms pelting the coast, fog shrouding the forest. What else could they do?

Deputies had scattered 40 motion-activated cameras through the woods and ended up with an album’s worth of wildlife photos. Community groups offered a $30,000 reward, and mostly kooks responded. (One psychic claimed Aaron was hiding “around tall trees near to a large body of water,” which basically describes the entire Northern California coast.) The sheriff considered tucking notes in the brush, urging Aaron to give up — there was really no other way to communicate with him. But U.S. Marshals behavioral experts were helping with the case and warned that Aaron’s mind was too jumbled: Instead, they suggested, try short messages describing specific locations as either SAFE or UNSAFE.

As desperate as the sheriff was to find Aaron, he also felt a tug of sympathy for his family. Not just because of his own brother’s suicide, but because, as sheriff, he’d sat across from numerous parents who had begged him to help rein in their mentally unstable child, and he had been able to offer little beyond his condolences. He’d enlisted Aaron’s dad in the search. Sleep-starved and frazzled, Jim had considered trying to track down Aaron himself, an idea his wife nixed. He kept chewing over how the manhunt might end — with Aaron dead, probably. Just don’t let him kill anyone else first.

Jim boarded the Skunk Train one day with deputies. They handed him a bullhorn, and as the train lurched along, he pleaded with Aaron. Jim tried for a casual tone, as if his son were late for dinner, but he struggled to stay composed. Laura couldn’t bring herself to go. Instead, she shouted into the trees near her home — “Aaron!” — or left him a bag of food with a note:

“Aaron, If you come across this bag it’s from me, your mom. The bag is not bugged or anything. Please turn yourself in we are all worried sick about you. Please leave me a note. Love, Your Mom & Family

P.S. No one knows I left this.”

As far as his family knows, Aaron was never diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder — though medical privacy laws mean they only know what he chose to share. After the Chinese Consulate scare, he was enrolled in a federal pretrial diversion program. If he went to counseling, his charges would be dismissed. Sharing his dark thoughts seemed to help, though he told a friend he wasn’t like the other patients: They were nut jobs.

As the summer of 2010 became fall, and Aaron’s case wrapped up, he hurtled downhill. He screamed obscenities at an off-duty cop waiting for his kid’s school bus. He parked on Highway 1 for days, eating Skittles while hunched inside his Toyota Tacoma, whose entire dashboard, including the speedometer, he’d spray-painted black. He was speed-talking and fidgeting, jabbering about survivalism, one-man warfare. His family was his only tether to society, and by then they were terrified of him.

On a cool winter evening in 2011, Aaron barreled his truck into a chain-link fence outside the middle school tennis courts, barely missing a clutch of students. His blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit, and when officers arrived, he thrashed and kicked so furiously that it took several of them — plus pepper spray and a taser — to pin him down and arrest him.

To those around him, Aaron’s DUI arrest was welcome. At least in jail, guards could subdue him if he careened out of control; on the outside, his family was powerless. Natalie was convinced that Aaron would kill himself, and she asked her dad repeatedly: What can we do?

Jim had been poring over a medical guide, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and he believed Aaron had schizophrenia. He consulted a woman named Sonya Nesch, whom he’d met through the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She’d written a book on mental-health advocacy and offered Jim a suggestion that, in her years of counseling families, had never failed to get some response: Send a letter to every official who could help, asking for a psychiatric evaluation and possible treatment. So Jim listed Aaron’s symptoms — paranoia, recklessness, rage — and implored for someone to intervene: “His family fears for his safety, there [sic] own safety and that of the community, if this psychiatric disorder is not addressed.”

Jim sent his letter to the county psychiatrist and to his son’s public defender. He was surprised when Aaron was sentenced to only a few weeks behind bars and ordered to attend a drunk-driving program.

In the spring, Jim opened his door and found Aaron on his porch. Father and son sat on blue furniture draped with blankets, the walls covered in horse art and family photos. Aaron chattered about his jail stint and his wrecked truck, and Jim listened intently. Then Aaron shared his plans: I’m going to go into the woods and get my head together. Jim thought, Great idea. In the woods, Aaron would be safe from society — and it from him.

During the course of the manhunt, police had been tracking someone who was breaking into cabins. The thief had bypassed electronics, marijuana, and anything else of value, and instead filched bread, peanut butter, jam, sausage, rice, pasta, hot dogs, a rack of ribs, dozens of soup and vegetable cans, two Coronas, and a bottle of cheap vodka. He swiped blankets, binoculars, a pair of firearms: a 12-gauge shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle. These were smash-and-grabs, and the thief left only whiffs of his presence.

Then, during one burglary, in the community of Northspur, the thief apparently lingered: muddying the kitchen, confetti-ing marijuana trimmings across a futon, swigging Jim Beam. The bottle was dusty, and a deputy noticed fingerprints on its neck. One turned out to be Aaron’s right thumb.

The sheriff had been toying with the theory that Aaron was less of a mountain lion, stalking prey through the forest, and more of a bear, lashing out only when threatened.

The morning after that discovery, a three-man team pulled up to a logging road and spotted Aaron, rifle in hand. Aaron opened fire, then disappeared. But the cops were closing in. The next day, just before dinnertime: a report of another break-in. Though the shop was on the outskirts of Fort Bragg — roughly a 14-mile hike from Northspur — the thief’s identity was clear. Among his plunder: a half-eaten bag of Lay’s barbecue chips, five boxes of ammunition, and brown hiking boots, size 12.

Deputy Caudillo arrived with a floppy-eared bloodhound named Willow, who usually worked the concrete sprawl of eastern Los Angeles County. She sniffed the shop’s rug. Padded over to a bench. Rocketed into the trees and led deputies straight toward Aaron’s bunker.

Every law-enforcement team was sent to the vicinity, and several hunkered down overnight near the dirt paths Aaron might use to escape. They melted into the hulking trunks, the gnarls of ferns, the darkness of a forest veiled in branches. It was October 1, 2011, a few months since Aaron decamped to the woods and 36 days since the manhunt began. Hours crawled by; sunlight eked through the trees; a new crop of officers rotated in. Finally, one deputy nudged the others, a prearranged signal.

A man was striding around the bend: stubbled head, broad shoulders, clad in black. He lugged a backpack with the stolen .22-caliber rifle, a couple hundred rounds of ammunition, and more eights of spades. He grasped the Norinco rifle, safety off, a round in the chamber. It wasn’t long before Allman, at the Fort Bragg substation, heard the radio crackle: “Target down.” Aaron was dead, struck by seven bullets.

The letters Jim sent, it turned out, had disappeared into a bureaucratic void. The county psychiatrist apparently never saw them and never assessed Aaron.

For a long time after Aaron’s death, Natalie pilled herself to sleep. During the day, she busied herself with her family and tried to pretend her brother never existed. When he flickered into her head, she sobbed for his victims, their families. She still can’t keep pictures of him around.

Jim sat on the county mental-health advisory board for a spell and repeatedly pressed supervisors to adopt Laura’s Law. This year, Mendocino County became one of nine California counties to use it. It’s just a small test program, though, and Jim knows that a law can’t prevent every tragedy. When he speaks about Aaron now, his shoulders sag and his gaze drifts across the room, as if a ghost of sorts has entered.

The sheriff eventually self-published a book about the manhunt with a co-author. In it, he recounts the moments after hearing about Aaron’s death: hopping into a truck, speeding down Sherwood Road, passing Laura’s house. It’s the part of Fort Bragg where the forest envelops the town, and the roads soon peter into dirt. He stopped at a logging road cordoned off with crime-scene tape, and a deputy pointed up a hill. Seeing Aaron’s body, the sheriff felt relief, but no surge of victory. This was the same forest Aaron had played in as a child. He had been one of them, and now he was a crumple of black.

(photos at: story.californiasunday.com/aaron-bassler-fort-bragg-manhunt/)

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Eric Sunswheat March 7, 2022

Dollar Reserve Currency Impact

RE: You are now all incredulous; you regard our statements as the dreams of an exiled imagination; but what seems to you mere fiction is stern reality;
(Bill Kimberlin)

—>. LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) – Credit cards issued by Russian banks using the Visa and Mastercard payment systems will stop functioning overseas after March 9, Russia’s central bank said on Sunday, adding that some local lenders would look to use China’s UnionPay system instead.

—>. REUTERS MARCH 07, 2022 / 06:48 AM IST
Several Russian banks said on Sunday they would soon start issuing cards using the Chinese UnionPay card operator’s system coupled with Russia’s own Mir network, after Visa and MasterCard said they were suspending operations in Russia.

Announcements regarding the switch to UnionPay came on Sunday from Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, as well as Alfa Bank and Tinkoff.

Kirk Vodopals March 7, 2022

Re: Weed whining….
All these “agriculturalists” whining to the County about the permit program are really just pissed cuz now the price on the traditional market is in the toilet. How many years can you pretend to play the permit game while shoveling your product out the back door under the radar? The jig is up.
And change the water in your weed boat cartoon to sand.

Harvey Reading March 7, 2022

” It comes as Vladimir Putin’s lawless invasion of Ukraine continues.”

And, how long did Bush2’s lawless invasion of Iraq continue?????? Or our lawless invasion of Vietnam for that matter? And on and on. What hypocrisy, of the sort that can be inflicted only on a population completely conditioned to obey its masters. How many “major cities” has the US bombed over the decades? Disgusting!

Harvey Reading March 7, 2022

DANGEROUS DRIVING ON 253

More like stupid driving.

“The employees are paid better hourly than most restaurants.” LOL. The typical whine of the peddler class.

A FAN’S NOTE

When a politician praises a noozepaper, you can safely conclude that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

- Bruce Anderson March 7, 2022
  
  Right, Vladimir.
  
  - Harvey Reading March 7, 2022
    
    OK, Nikita!
    
Harvey Reading March 7, 2022

“…on the land and rejected Jeffersonian principles…”

Do those “principles” include raping and impregnating his 13-year-old female slave?

Bill Pilgrim March 7, 2022

re: Another Escalation.
The Ukraine military said… Ukraine’s military said… Ukraine military officials say…Ukraine neo-nazi militia leaders say… (whoops, delete that one!)…..

- George Hollister March 7, 2022
  
  In war one has to question all accounts, but “Neo-nazi”? Ukraine’s president, and leader is Jewish. How does that fit? Then, what exactly does Neo-Nazi mean? Does it mean anything? Putin has been throwing the term around a bit, which gets back to the first point.
  
  - Harvey Reading March 7, 2022
    
    ?
    
    As usual. You have the wisdom of the average trumpenstein monster.
    
  - Bill Pilgrim March 7, 2022
    
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/zelensky-and-the-fascists-he-will-hang-on-some-tree-on-khreshchatyk.html
    
Craig Stehr March 7, 2022

~Keeping the Mind United with the Source~
Warmest spiritual greetings, Please know that my entire focus right now is to perform spiritual practices for the purpose of keeping the mind united with the Source. The practices range from a repetition of Catholic prayers, to chants from the sacred places in India, includes OMing, and the use of will power.
The sole object is to keep the mind united with its Source. That is the way of peace and freedom from the hell of the mind’s thought realms, which are miserable and full of suffering. Beyond this, my goal is to be a member of a spiritual group doing that which is pleasing to God.

Craig Louis Stehr
Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com
Telephone Messages>>>Building Bridges: (707) 234-3270
PayPal.me/craiglouisstehr
February 7th, 2022

Jim Armstrong March 7, 2022

I hope there is someone out there writing a better account of the Aaron Bassler tragedy.

Joe Hansem March 7, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/us/dennis-cunningham-dead.html

Mendocino County Today: Monday, March 7, 2022

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