Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, March 16, 2022

SUNNY AND DRY WEATHER is expected today once any lingering fog dissipates. Another chance of light shower activity will exist during Thursday, with a more substantial chance of widespread rain spreading across the region Friday night through Saturday. High pressure returns early next week bringing above normal temperatures and dry weather. (NWS)

7 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

UKRAINE WILL NOT JOIN NATO, says Ukrainian President Zelensky, as shelling of Kyiv continues. The Ukrainian president’s statement came as three EU leaders arrived in the city to express solidarity amid heavy bombardment. (theguardian.com)

SPECIAL MEETING OF THE MENDOCINO COAST HEALTHCARE DISTRICT, Wednesday: March 16 @ 6 PM

Discussion/Action: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87128722231

Please join us,

Norman, Vice Chair, 357.5555

Oxen Pulling Logs, Pudding Creek, Glen Blair, 1890

CAREER FAIR AT COAST HOSPITAL ON MARCH 24

Join Adventist Health Mendocino Coast for a Career Fair on Thursday, March 24, 2022 from 12 PM to 5 PM at the hospital campus, 700 River Drive, Fort Bragg. For more information, read the Career Fair flyer.

LEROY MITCHELL

Local Veteran Leroy "Dad" Mitchell died in Ukiah on March 9th 2022. After 77 years of life he passed away at home in bed, surrounded by family, after years long battle against diabetes. Congestive heart failure weakened his heart over the last few years and his kidneys could no longer function. Leroy was the oldest of 6 brothers born in Magee, Mississippi on Sept 21, 1944. His mother Willie Mae worked on her own to support the family. Leroy joined the workforce as a child at 10 to earn money for his family by picking cotton and farm work. Leroy along with his brothers Bobby and Terry were drafted in late sixties. Leroy and his brother Terry chose to join the Army but were never sent to Vietnam. His brother Bobby joined the Marines. Leroy was honorably discharged as a Sergeant in 1968. Later in life he had said that his biggest regret was not staying and going career military.

Once discharged he moved to Navarro, CA. The day after he arrived he went to work for Sanhedrin Logging Co. in Potter Valley. A month after returning to Mendocino County from this discharge he met his future wife Patricia Bennett by chance at her birthday party. A year and a half later they were married. Five years later the couple purchased a wonderful home in Ukiah, where they spent the remainder of their lives in comfort. Leroy was still working with Sanhedrin and as a reserve Sheriff's deputy when the couple started making a family. They had three sons, then a daughter. Leroy always said his favorite job was being a father, and he never really liked his name. He preferred to be called Dad or Daddy Lee. He worked hard as a heavy equipment operator for logging companies and when needed to fight wildfires until a stroke in 2010 temporarily weakened his ability to work. He filed for retirement and continued working hard to recover. He recovered, but never went back to work.

In his retirement he worked hard to take care of his family and renovate his house. Chief among his many home improvements was building a greenhouse and an extensive backyard garden. He loved the forest and was an avid fisherman his entire life. In his younger years he earned his commercial pilot's license and spent time flying, he loved cooking and was a professional chef for a few years. He was a mustachioed country boy who loved his time living in Texas, country music, and watching movies with his family, especially Westerns. Leroy is survived by his wife of 52 years Patricia Mitchell, his son Samuel Mitchell (Leslie Mitchell), his son Jimmy Mitchell, his precious daughter Kimberley Mitchell-Harpe (Todd Harpe), his only living brother Bobby Mitchell (Becky Mitchell), as well as numerous nieces and nephews including LeeAnne Bennett and Michael Bennett of Oahu.

His family and friends will be hosting an open invitation, graveside service at the Russian River Cemetery District on March 16th, starting at 2:00pm. The family is also planning a celebration of life event at a later date TBD.

JOHNNY SCHMITT on AV Schools bond measure: From the outside I’ve always been impressed as to how well both schools have been kept up… I agree with Jay, let’s focus on education and not worry so much about the physical comforts. As we’ve learned from the pandemic, you can learn in any environment if you open your mind and get creative. Also, getting back to some basics and teaching kids some building/maintenance skills would be a great starting point, let them rebuild their own schools… They will learn a lot more than they would sitting in the classroom, and maybe will be able to build their own houses, since it’s unaffordable for anyone but the rich to do so any other way!

CEO ANGELO KISSES MENDO GOODBYE

To the Honorable Board of Supervisors:

On January 6, 2022, I announced my retirement from County service. As time quickly draws near, please note that March 19, 2022 marks my final day. I have enjoyed my tenure as your first female Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the longest serving CEO in Mendocino County, only to be out-served by Chief Administrative Officer, Al Beltrami who became my friend & mentor in those early years.

There has not been a day that goes by, that I am not grateful for the opportunity to serve the Mendocino County community with the guidance & support of the Board of Supervisors, both past & present. Throughout these past twelve years, we have responded to numerous challenges ranging from wild fires requiring a coordinated emergency response between State & local staff, recruiting & training of disaster service workers, implementing prudent budget planning to ameliorate potential deficits and striving for adequate staffing levels for all departments along with equitable salary negotiations.

As I retire, I am mindful of the work that the County does that impacts our community, not the least of which, is the remnants of a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Also, there are never-ending challenges that accompanied the legalization of cannabis, the crisis of homelessness and ongoing lack of access to mental health services in areas of high need.

That being said, I am very proud of the work we did as a team to serve this community, even through the most difficult times. As a county team, we mitigated structural deficits, eliminated a $120M OPEB liability, saved close to $20M in Dedicated and General Reserves, purchased a hotel as permanent supportive housing for unhoused community members, built a mental health/public safety training center and a crisis residential center for our community members effected by mental illness, brought CSAC education and credentialing to our employees and many other worthwhile projects that will serve Mendocino County into the future.

Throughout the years, we focused on the Board's goals of fiscal stability, financial sustainability and organizational development. An example of organizational development that I am most proud of is the Leadership Initiative, started by a small group of 40 county heroes that wrote and presented a Leadership Philosophy to the Board of Supervisors and the whole County organization. This Leadership Initiative lives on today to serve our greatest asset, our employees. I believe it will be the Leadership Initiative that will carry this organization forward as the county embarks on implementing a strategic plan in the midst of future budgetary constraints, labor negotiations, community requests greater than county resources and many other ongoing and new challenges.

As I leave, if I can give any words of caution, it is to save county dollars, not to spend them on non-mandated services. Your workforce is the most important asset as that is how the work of the county is accomplished. The workforce should be considered first before money is spent on community requests.

Another area I am concerned about is the ongoing public disillusionment with government. As the legislative body, it is critical to seek information, rather than listening to the vocal minority that defames county representatives for self-satisfaction and personal gain. These attacks damage the County's ability to recruit and retain good employees. Public comment & criticism come with the job of elected and appointed officials, but those constant false allegations make it difficult to promote a career in public service.

Lastly, as I retire, I am appreciative of and confident in the administrative team, department heads, staff and emerging county leaders that are currently serving Mendocino County today. Thank you!

Again, I leave with a grateful heart.

Carmel J Angelo, Chief Executive Officer

EUREKA PRODUCTIONS LATEST NEWS MAGAZINE VIDEO

OPEN LETTER TO TED WILLIAMS

TO: Board of Supervisors (BOS) Chair Ted Williams:

My comments today regarding retiring CEO Carmel Angelo's proclamation (Agenda item 3-f) were neither “unfounded" or "uncivil”, as you said.

My three minutes of public comment today -- and the accompanying alternative proclamation which I submitted as "communications received" -- were truthful and accurate.

Every single thing I said was fact-checked. In fact, much of what I said has appeared over the last 12 years of Ms. Angelo’s tenure in the very pages of our local newspapers and grand jury reports.

In the proclamation that the BOS drafted for Ms. Angelo, there was nary a single mention of how Ms. Angelo made Mendocino County better. Instead, the proclamation went on and on about how Ms. Angelo was good at career management and networking for herself.

What followed the formal reading of the proclamation by the BOS was the usual orgy of self-congratulations by the county’s upper management. Not a single rank-and-file county worker spoke on Ms. Angelo’s behalf. Not a single member of SEIU or any of the county’s other unions or collective bargaining units spoke.

Also, Sheriff Kendall was notable by his absence, as were District Attorney Eyster and Treasurer Schapmire.

And the only member of the public to speak besides myself was John Mayfield who, for all intents and purposes, has been part of Ms. Angelo informal, and very pro-development, “kitchen cabinet.”

At the next BOS meeting, I will be asking you for an apology. Today, rather than refute anything specific thing I said in either my written comments or my three minutes of public expression, you read from a prepared statement that was as false and misleading as it was insulting.

Also, your comments today were self-serving. Everyone knows you someday have ambitions to run for State Senate or State Assembly, and all the politicos were all watching this morning.

I understand. But it's exactly what's wrong with government -- wrong at every level. City. County. State. Federal. Power elites are a tribe. They stick together.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah

COUNTY NOTES

by Mark Scaramella

TUESDAY’S SUPERVISORS MEETING featuring the Board’s final farewell to CEO Carmel Angelo signaled what sounds a lot like a return to a version of the old CAO Tom Mitchell era, Mitchell, long-time observers will recall, was famous for answering almost every question with either “I’ll get back to you,” then not getting back; or “I’m looking into it,” with the “looking” never resulting in anything; or “We’re working on it” which also dragged out with no end date. Several ordinary questions from the Board to County staff harked back to those near-forgotten Mitchell days. Say what you will about retiring CEO Carmel Angelo, but she seldom answered questions evasively and dishonestly like that. Angelo preferred to either dispute the Board’s recommendations and directives outright or simply ignore them and reporting their status as “in process” until they were no longer applicable to anything.

INCOMING CEO DARCIE ANTLE broke down in tears during her short appearance in Tuesday’s grand tribute to retiring CEO Carmel Angelo.

We haven’t seen anybody break down in tears in the Board chambers like that since when then-Fourth District Supervisor Patti Campbell broke down during a discussion of mental health service problems back in the 1990s.

Antle choked back tears as she recounted some difficult situations that she and Angelo had dealt with during Antle’s relatively short time in the Executive office. We don’t know why CEO Antle would cry though — she’s getting a big promotion and an accompanying big CEO-style raise. She should be laughing! If Ms. Antle is this fragile, however, she better buck up soon. Being CEO of Mendocino County isn’t for the feint of heart — especially these days.

FORMER SUPERVISOR JOHN PINCHES of Island Mountain on the Eel River told us Tuesday that there are “thousands” of abandoned vehicles and equipment and trailers and ATVs and so forth littering the County roads of the Third District, most of it abandoned by pot growers who have abandoned their grows in the collapsed pot market and much of what they had there, including many angry unpaid workers. The vehicles are themselves environmental hazards with leaking hazardous fluids and tires and the rest. Pinches also said that the battered and depleted Eel River is now increasingly becoming a trench for dumping abandoned gro-garbage and gro-trash much of which can be seen floating down the Eel. “Where are the environmentalists?” asked a seriouly perturbed Pinches. “This is the biggest environmental disaster I’ve ever seen in Mendocino County!” “What about the County’s Abandoned Vehicle Abatement program?” Pinches added, obviously rhetorically, because Pinches knows perfectly well that the County’s “AVA” program is overwhelmed and underfunded and mostly unmanaged — last we heard there were no wrecking yards left in Mendocino County taking wrecked vehicles. “This has nothing to do with covid, and everything to do with local officials’ misplaced priorities,” said Pinches. Pinches also said he’d noted that there are hundreds and hundreds of abandoned hoop houses in the area.

JAMES MARMON: RE: THE CRISIS RESIDENT TREATMENT HOUSE SERVICES CONTRACT

What a sweetheart deal [for Redwood Community Services / the Schraeders], a free building, $1 million a year, and any money they can get from billing Medi-Cal and/or private insurance companies. As for private insurance companies, they usually set a higher bar on the level of services to be provided and billing accountability for those services than the State does.

ED NOTES

AFTER READING CEO CARMEL ANGELO’S fact free whereases at Tuesday's bathetic meeting of the Supervisors Tuesday Board Chair Ted Williams said that criticism of the CEO is nothing more than “unfounded personal attacks.”

Then, in her farewell letter to the Supervisors CEO Angelo told the Board to ignore criticism, writing,

“I am concerned about the ongoing public disillusionment with government. As the legislative body, it is critical to seek information, rather than listening to the vocal minority that defames county representatives for self-satisfaction and personal gain. These attacks damage the County's ability to recruit and retain good employees. Public comment & criticism come with the job of elected and appointed officials, but those constant false allegations make it difficult to promote a career in public service.”

IT'S A TIME-HONORED tradition in Mendocino County, especially among the libs, to dismiss all criticism or unwelcome opinion as personal attacks, invariably without citing a single unfounded “attack” as an example.

I DEFY ANYONE to sit through a meeting with CEO Angelo and these five supervisors and come away with confidence in local government.

PLEASE NOTE the absence at today's cringe-inducing tributes to the disastrous reign of CEO Angelo of the County's truly capable (and self-respecting) department heads, including Sheriff Kendall; Treasurer/Tax Collector Sherri Schapmire; Howard Dashiell, Director of Transportation; Chamise Cubbison, interim Auditor/Controller, and so on.

AN ATTENTIVE READER puts the lie to Supervisor Williams' unfounded claim that CEO Angelo is underpaid: “Salary and title comparisons of our CEO and deputy CEO compared to other counties. The premise from Ted Williams being that our CEO’s pay is actually low compared to the other counties, I found that our CEO is the 13th highest paid person in California in a similar job description. Also the majority of the counties call that position chief administrative officer, CAO. Which is really what it is."

A WILLITS READER WRITES: “A little drama at today’s BoS meeting. Near the conclusion of CEO Angelo’s myriad of accolades from every big shot in this part of the county, let alone the state, John Sakowicz was allowed to speak. Mr. Sakowicz systematically presented his analysis of the many failures, faux pas, and deceptive practices of CEO Angelo’s tenure in Mendocino County. After Mr. Sakowicz had finished, Board Chair Ted Williams did a seemingly deadpan dismissal of Mr. Sakowicz’s negative analysis. It’s worth a look. It’s approximately 1:48 into Tuesday’s BOS meeting."

BILL KIMBERLIN NOTES: It was Gertrude Stein (heir to a San Francisco Cable & Street Car fortune) who told Hemingway, “If you want to learn how to write, you should read Grant's memoirs.” The memoirs were published by Mark Twain and were one of the most successful publications in American history.

MITCH CLOGG

To my everlasting shame, I’ve bought firewood. Surrounded by forest, I’m buying firewood, but hey what’re you gonna do? My chainsaw is busted, has been. And I’m oldish. So far (tap wood) I haven’t sawn part of me off…

Anyway: firewood. They’re all liars, woodmen. They all say they have good, seasoned wood—only they don’t.

So, earlier, I pitched this gadget to you FB frenz, a moisture meter. Some of you reacted with interest, so here’s an update:

The fires in my Vermont Castings Defiant wood stove, since I got that thing, have been hotter than EVER. I check every single stick of wood before I bring it in. The standard is 10 to 15% moisture, no more.

When I was little, the job of starting a fire in the fireplace fell to me, and I got good at it. I think I might have a gene or two of pyromania. I like fire—not the kind of fire we’re going to have in the late, great State of California this year, but good fire.

So I know firewood (I tell myself). The weight of it is a clue to how green it is or isn’t.

Wrong. I’ve picked up logs that felt like balsa wood. “This baby’s ready!” But no, the meter says it’s almost 30% wet. HOW COULD THAT BE? Chinese! This meter’s junk! But no, it’s not junk. Here’s another piece, all cracked and gnarly. Surely this one… nope. Well, goddamn it, this piece feels like ironwood, it’s so heavy. No way this could be dry. Wrong again. Meter says it’s 12.6%. Damn meter. This couldn’t be that dry and so heavy. Wrong yet again. It is.

So, among other things the meter teaches me, I’ve been a blind man inspecting an elephant, lo these many years. I can’t tell a rope from a tree trunk. METER!

IT STARTS, the wood, almost, with one match. You have to feed the stove more often than you used to because the wood burns so fast. Fast and HOT! The heat is not wasted drying out the wood as it burns. It goes to my bones instead, me auld bones.

I’d have to strain myself to think of a gadget that’s given me more satisfaction.

So. Moisture meter. Look it up. Lots of models. I forget what I paid—more than $20, less than $30, with shipping, I think. It’s still winter—for a few more days. Get yourself a moisture meter. Jus’ sayin’.

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 15, 2022

CHRISTOPHER ELLIOTT, Ukiah. Resisting.

JESSE HARNETT, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, probation revocation.

GERARDO JIMENEZ, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DONALD KEMPF, Loleta/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

GREGORIO SANCHEZ-ORTEGA, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI, suspended license.

NICHOLE SOTILLE-KONEVITCH, Laytonville. Assault weapon, loaded handgun not registered owner, large capacity magazine, ghost gun, short-barrelled rifle.

IN KHARKIV

by Hugh Barnes

I met Serhii Tytkov on a night train from Kyiv to Kharkiv. He was standing at the window of our compartment, looking up at the shell-bursts from Ukrainian anti-aircraft guns. ‘He no sit,’ I thought he said, with a big smile on his face, talking about himself in some weird action man slang. But then I realized he didn’t speak English, and what he’d actually said was henosid, as ‘genocide’ is pronounced in Ukrainian.

Serhii refused to speak Russian as a matter of principle. So our conversation had to accommodate two different languages, a bit like the Minsk Accords, which failed to resolve a dispute over language rights in Donetsk and Luhansk in the seven-year hiatus when Vladimir Putin could still plausibly claim that he was defending something.

Serhii was travelling to the front line in Kharkiv with a consignment of body armor, camouflage and eggs. He placed the camouflage in an overhead luggage rack and the body armor under the couchette with the eggs. He’d brought a picnic of bread and fruit that he offered to share with me. We ate cheerfully in the dark because all the light bulbs in the train had been removed to avoid giving the encircling Russians a visible target. On his phone he scrolled through pictures of his wife and eight-year-old twin daughters, who had moved west but not yet joined the refugee exodus out of the country.

‘What will you do?’ I asked.

‘We will win,’ he replied, with another big smile.

Serhii was always smiling. The only time I saw him look somber was a day or two later when he showed me a photograph of a bombed building in Kharkiv, his family home.

I expected non-stop shelling in Kharkiv but when I arrived my hosts said there had been a reduction in Russian air activity in recent days, as the Kremlin focused its murderous attention elsewhere. They introduced me to ‘Aslan’, a thirtysomething hipster who’d dyed his beard blue and yellow. A month ago, he would have been sipping turmeric lattes in one of Kharkiv’s pavement cafés. Now he was in command of a group of guerrillas engaging the Russians in the city’s streets. One day he took me to inspect a captured Russian tank and predicted that the Ukrainians would shortly repel the occupiers. ‘Right now we are not just defending our city,’ he said. ‘We are counter-attacking!’

Such details were impossible to verify. They often changed. Aslan boasted of catching twenty Russian agents provocateurs within Kharkiv’s city limits, but there was no solid evidence, and the next day the number had been revised down to ten. A week later, a report to NATO’s Atlantic Council gave the number of captured GRU agents in Kharkiv as three. I asked Aslan about the different figures. He became impatient. ‘Don’t listen to propahanda,’ he said. ‘Tell the truth, my friend.’

At the traffic lights on Sumy Street, in the center of Kharkiv, a convoy of Russian tanks and armored vehicles marked with a white letter ‘Z’ turned left towards Freedom Square. One of the largest squares in Europe, it’s home to Derzhprom, or the Palace of Industry, a spectacular constructivist building made up of towers and skyways that was photographed by Robert Byron in the late 1920s, and praised by Béla Bartók as a mix of Manhattan and the Bauhaus. There’s a black-and-white photograph of a Soviet T-34 tank parked in front of the Derzhprom during the Battle of Kharkiv in 1943.

On 2 March, during this year’s battle, a cruise missile damaged the building, creating a massive fireball that gutted the Kharkiv regional government headquarters opposite. A week later, I saw a couple of boys looking through a blown-out window next to the Derzhprom, and reckoned they must be using the bombsite as a playground, a bit like the characters in John Boorman’s movie Hope and Glory. But then I noticed the boys were apparently wearing combat uniform. Not quite child soldiers perhaps but hardly out of their teens, they were members of a much romanticized foreign legion of volunteers fighting on the side of the Ukrainian army.

An estimated 17,000 foreign fighters, including young people, mostly from the UK, US, Ireland, Canada, Spain and Portugal, have flocked to the conflict. Asked on television on 26 February if Britons should go to Ukraine to join the battle, the foreign secretary replied: ‘Absolutely!’ Doing so is a criminal offence under the Foreign Enlistment Act. Liz Truss later withdrew her remarks.

I met a veteran US marine who’d been in Kharkiv for three weeks, training volunteers. At first he wouldn’t divulge anything. He stared into space and avoided eye contact. Then all of a sudden he began to open up. ‘They want me to go to Kyiv but I’ve got to put this behind me. I just can’t sit and watch it happen anymore.’ For him, the war in Ukraine was not ‘the decisive thing of this century’, as Claud Cockburn described the International Brigade’s view of the Spanish Civil War.

‘It’s a shit show – with a 70 per cent suicide rate!’ he said. (He didn’t mean they were deliberately killing themselves, but that they might as well have been.) ‘I’m seeing things now you wouldn’t believe. Young unemployed kids living at home, with no training, no military experience, never even shot a gun. One day they’re sitting on the couch watching TV with their parents, the next they’re being sent straight to the front line.’

He showed me a photo he’d taken of a twenty-year-old Canadian’s passport. ‘He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing here. I said: “Go home, I’ll even pay your ticket.” Because there will always be another conflict. There will always be another battle.’

He was talking very quickly now, and without preamble. I grabbed inside my rucksack for a notebook, which I couldn’t find. The only thing that came to hand was the book I’d been reading on the train to Kharkiv, my old Penguin Classics edition of Homage to Catalonia. The US marine hadn’t heard of it, but he smiled at the irony once I’d explained, and got out his phone to take a shot of the cover.

(London Review of Books)

MARINA OVSYANNIKOVA, the Russian TV news editor who burst onto the set with a “NO WAR” banner during a live Russian broadcast, has apparently been let off easy with a $300 fine and no jail time. Everyone assumed she'd either be disappeared or sentenced to a long prison term. With the whole world watching, the Putin Gang seems to have concluded that it wouldn't do to do their usual to this now famous critic.

THE NEW INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE IN UKRAINE

Editor:

My generation supported the International Brigade immortalized by Ernest Hemingway in the Spanish Civil War. They were volunteers from many countries fighting the Nazi-supported Franco regime. Now, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, announced a new “international union,” of volunteers to join the fight against Russian aggression. Many U.S. veterans with combat experience are answering his call and planning to enter Ukraine through Poland to join the battle. What a brave and honorable act. Also, a dangerous one; Russia has said they would be treated as mercenaries, thus unprotected. More risky is what happens if a number of our veterans are killed by the Russians. What is our nation’s response going to be?

Jon Yatabe

Bodega Bay

THE SYMPHONY OF THE REDWOODS is looking for an Executive Director. The position is 20 hours per week, flexible hours.

The ED will be responsible to the Board of Directors for the management of the nonprofit organization including fundraising/development, human resources, strategic planning, programs, finance, and communications.

Represents the organization to government agencies, the community, and the public. Please go to http://symphonyoftheredwoods.org for more information and application instructions.

Eva von Bahr, on behalf of the Symphony of the Redwoods Board of Directors

ARE STATE FAIR OFFICIALS HIGH? They should not reward super-potent marijuana.

by Dr. Lynn Silver

Cannabis is making its debut at the California State Fair in July, taking its place among chardonnays, craft brews, tomato salsas, pickled peppers and satsuma marmalades as a product of the state’s agricultural bounty.

Don’t expect to see contest judges getting stoned in a booth between the popcorn and the piglets, though. Marijuana will be judged in a highly scientific competition, with licensed growers sending their weed to a lab that analyzes the plants for several chemical compounds associated with flavor and aroma, as well as mental and physical effects. Growers are submitting samples through the end of this month, and in May, gold and silver medals and trophies will be awarded in 11 categories.

It may seem surprising that a plant still categorized as an illegal drug by the federal government is featured at a state-sanctioned event. But California voters made cannabis legal for adults in 2016, so it’s reasonable for pot farmers to showcase their goods at the state’s annual agriculture celebration.

What isn’t reasonable is a contest category that recognizes the pot with the highest concentration of the acid form of THC, the ingredient that produces a high when it’s smoked, vaped, baked or otherwise heated. Health officials are raising alarms, and the state fair’s board of directors ought to listen to them.

Pot sold in flower form today is already much more potent than it was decades ago — average THC concentration shot up from about 4% in 1995 to 17% in 2017. (Some cannabis products, like extracts and oils, can be even more concentrated, though they are not included at the state fair.) Meanwhile, research shows that use of super-potent weed is associated with problems such as psychosis, anxiety and vomiting. The mental health risks are especially high for teens and young adults whose brains are still forming.

The potential danger of powerful pot was the main reason the Legislative Analyst’s Office recommended that California tax legal cannabis based on its potency. A higher tax on more potent products could discourage harmful use, the nonpartisan analyst argued. Lawmakers never acted on the suggestion.

Now, state officials seem to be going even further by tacitly encouraging legal growers to boost THC content in their cannabis plants. Winners of the state fair’s marijuana awards will get increased publicity, special logos to put on packaging and social media promotion.

Which has health officials screaming: Are you high?

Contest organizers point out that the competition is limited to marijuana plants — not the edibles, extracts or other products they can be turned into. And they claim that by competing for the concentration of THC (the acid form of the chemical compound) they are not promoting the ingredient that creates a high. Doctors say this distinction is irrelevant, though, because THC becomes THC when it’s smoked or otherwise heated.

The competition will “lead people to believe that the ‘best’ cannabis products are simply the ones with the highest concentrations,” the California Conference of Local Health Officers wrote in a letter to the chair of the state fair’s board of directors last year. The group is made up of doctors who oversee public health in cities and counties across the state.

“This framing is likely to result in inappropriate and unhealthy views of cannabis and to exacerbate the public-health concerns around its use,” it wrote.

Can’t you just imagine cannabis brands boasting about their gold medals to advertise the most potent pot — probably on billboards that teenagers will see?

The state fair also hosts competitions for wine and beer, but it does not give out medals for concoctions containing the most alcohol. In fact, the wine competition includes categories for low- and no-alcohol wines.

Californians voted to legalize marijuana with a vision of treating pot more like alcohol — as a tightly regulated product for adults. Since then, the legal marketplace has struggled to compete with the black market. To the extent a cannabis competition at the state fair can help bolster the legal industry, it should not be shunned. The state fair’s current plan includes responsible measures like restricting the cannabis exhibit to age 21 and over.

But Gov. Gavin Newsom, who campaigned for marijuana legalization and serves as an ex-officio member of the state fair’s board of directors, has a special obligation to ensure that California balances support for the legal industry with what’s best for public health — and that should include responsible messaging about legal marijuana. He and the rest of the board should reconsider the contest category encouraging growers to develop more potent strains of pot when existing research demonstrates their dangers.

(Dr. Lynn Silver, MD, MPH, FAAP is a Senior Advisor at the Public Health Institute, 555 12th Street, 10th Floor, Oakland, CA 94607)

SOCIAL WORK SUPPORTING COMMUNITY ELDERS

Ukiah, CA – For over 100 years social work has provided a professional title to those helping others overcome obstacles to achieving a healthy and independent life. Columbia University offered the first social work class in the summer of 1898. Since then, communities across the United States have been supported with the knowledge, experience and kindness of this profession.

Mendocino County Social Services currently employs 71 social workers within Family & Children, Adult & Aging and Employment & Family Assistance Services providing support and guidance to the most vulnerable Mendocino County residents. One such social worker is Crystal Fogelsanger, Social Worker Supervisor with Adult & Aging Services. “I didn’t grow up planning to be a social worker. In fact, I had the perception that social workers were the ones that took people away. Now I know that we are the ones that offer connections and help people to live their best lives.”

Beginning with a career of helping people through elder residential care, Ukiah Valley Association for Habilitation (UVAH), and youth support services with Multiplicity, Crystal has built upon her personal drive to help others and dedicated her career to social work. She is currently enrolled at Humboldt State University furthering her education as she earns a Master’s Degree in Social Work (MSW). Under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the California Social Work Education Center (CalSWEC) will receive over 4 million dollars to continue and expand a pilot stipend and training program for MSW students committed to working within Adult Protective Services (APS) programs. The additional funding will expand the program statewide to provide stipends to as many as 254 MSW candidates over the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years in exchange for their commitment to work in county-operated APS programs in California following graduation. Mendocino County Social Services is working to ensure this program will be made available locally and encourage new social work applicants.

Mendocino County Adult Protective Services (APS) helps elder adults (60 years and older) and dependent adults (18-59 who are disabled), when these adults are unable to meet their own needs, or are victims of abuse, neglect or exploitation. APS social workers investigate reports of abuse of elders and dependent adults who live in private homes, apartments, hotels or without homes providing short-term case management (up to 90 days). Services are provided without regard for income, and acceptance of services are voluntary.

Fogelsanger shares, “If you go into social work you will experience your own personal growth while giving back to the clients and our community. We’re a close team supporting each other and I wouldn’t choose any other career!”

If you would like information on a career in social work with Mendocino County, please visit the Mendocino County website at https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/mendocinoca.

CORRUPTION AND CRACKDOWNS in California's Marijuana Market — Black markets thrive under mismanaged legalization.

by Scott Shackford

After California voters decided to legalize the cultivation and sale of recreational marijuana in 2016, the vast majority of the state's cities banned those activities within their borders. But Adelanto's leaders were eager to embrace the newly legal market. The small desert town of 31,000, best known for its nearby prisons, had a reputation for poverty and emptiness. Local politicians hoped legal marijuana would change that.

In May 2017, the Adelanto City Council approved a plan to license recreational growers and retailers, making the town one of the first in the state to do so. That early, atypical choice attracted a lot of national press coverage. In an interview with The New York Times, then-Mayor Richard Kerr predicted that Adelanto could raise $10 million annually by taxing local marijuana businesses.

It didn't happen. Adelanto's budget for 2020–21 anticipated just $1.4 million in marijuana revenue, less than a third of the city's projected $4.5 million budget deficit. While that $1.4 million is money the town would not have seen without legalization, it clearly isn't enough to save Adelanto.

Kerr is no longer Adelanto's mayor. The FBI raided his home in 2018 as part of a corruption investigation. Three years later it arrested him on seven counts of wire fraud and two counts of bribery. Kerr is accused of taking at least $57,000 in bribes and kickbacks to approve permits for marijuana businesses. His arrest came four years after then–City Council Member Jermaine Wright was accused of taking a $10,000 bribe from an undercover FBI agent posing as an applicant seeking approval for a local marijuana transportation business.

Other local officials in California have been implicated in similar corruption. In July, marijuana magnate Helios Dayspring pleaded guilty to bribing a now-deceased San Luis Obispo County supervisor for years in exchange for favorable policy votes. The plea agreement did not name the supervisor, but news reports identified him as Adam Hill, who died of an overdose that was deemed a suicide in 2020.

After Dayspring's guilty plea, the Los Angeles Times implied that the problem was California's "nascent, ill-regulated marijuana industry." Stories about California's marijuana market commonly describe it as a "Wild West" situation.

It is true that California has badly mishandled legalization—so badly that, more than five years after voters approved that change, the black market still accounts for an estimated two-thirds of cannabis sales. But far from the result of weak regulation, the disastrous rollout of legal marijuana stems from giving officials too much power to decide who can produce and sell it.

Where Are the Shops?

Most California cannabis consumers do not buy pot from state-licensed shops. Market observers such as Global Go Analytics estimate that illegal cannabis sales in California total $8 billion a year, double the amount of legal sales.

One reason for the black market's persistence is that many Californians do not have easy access to legal retailers. California has only two licensed dispensaries for every 100,000 residents, compared to about 18 in Oregon and 14 in Colorado.

Proposition 64, the ballot initiative that legalized recreational marijuana, authorized municipalities to cap the number of local retailers or prohibit them entirely. For every California city that allows dispensaries, two have banned them.

While Prop. 64 allows people to grow their own marijuana, that alternative has little appeal for consumers who lack the requisite space, equipment, and know-how. In the parts of the state where retailers are banned, this policy is akin to letting people brew their own beer while denying them the ability to buy the finished product from a local store.

Online orders are another theoretical option. State regulations issued in 2020 seemed to bar local governments from interfering with state-approved marijuana deliveries. But 24 cities that had outlawed sales challenged the regulation, claiming it interfered with their local bans. A Fresno judge dismissed their suit, but in a way that left a lot of regulatory uncertainty.

For Californians who live near licensed dispensaries, the price of marijuana can be exorbitantly high due to state and local taxes. The state imposes a 15 percent excise tax on retail marijuana sales, along with a weight-based cultivation tax that is indexed to inflation. Thanks to rising inflation in 2021, cultivation taxes jumped at the beginning of 2022, even though the market value of cannabis had declined.

Prop. 64 also allows local governments to impose their own taxes, and many do. In Los Angeles, legal cannabis buyers pay a 10 percent local marijuana tax, along with the state's marijuana taxes and an additional 9.5 percent general sales tax. All told, taxes increase the retail price of legal marijuana in L.A. by more than a third. People who buy marijuana from illegal dealers, by contrast, can avoid that burden entirely.

Meanwhile, the power that Prop. 64 gave local governments fosters corruption. When Adelanto leaders announced that they would let the marijuana industry in, there was a land rush. Because so few cities were welcoming of marijuana businesses, everybody interested in establishing a presence in the industry wanted to set up shop in Adelanto. Property values tripled.

For these early speculators, it was very important that the property they purchased end up in areas zoned for the marijuana industry. As the Adelanto City Council prepared to vote on the locations where marijuana retailers would be allowed, according to the federal indictment against Kerr, he asked for a boundary change to accommodate a specific business property; a week later, Kerr deposited a $5,000 check from the real estate trust account of that property's owner. According to the FBI, Kerr received additional checks from this unnamed individual and others as the city continued to craft its marijuana ordinances, and he helped the owner get a dispensary permit.

Bribes also can be used to gain a competitive advantage through regulatory exceptions. Dayspring confessed to paying for an exemption from a proposed county moratorium on outdoor cultivation operations. In a text to Hill before county supervisors approved the exemption in 2018, Dayspring emphasized that "it's really important u guys extend the timeframe for submission and don't allow other people in yet."

Because marijuana is still banned by the federal Controlled Substances Act, financial institutions are leery of serving businesses that grow or sell it, which under current law could expose them to criminal charges, forfeiture, and potentially ruinous regulatory sanctions. Thanks to that threat, state-licensed marijuana businesses frequently have to operate without access to banking services. Instead, they generally rely on cash, which increases the risk of theft and robbery.

All that cash also facilitates corruption. Some of California's bribery cases feature literal wads of money changing hands.

In June 2020, two former officials from Calexico, a city on the Mexican border with a population of about 40,000, pleaded guilty to accepting envelopes stuffed with cash from undercover FBI agents they thought were trying to open a marijuana dispensary. David Romero, a former councilman, and Bruno Suarez-Soto, the city's former commissioner for economic development, had promised to fast-track the license for the fictional business.

According to the FBI's complaint, Romero and Suarez-Soto also offered to "revoke or unduly delay cannabis business permit applications filed by applicants who had not paid bribes, in order to ensure favored treatment for later-filed applications submitted by individuals who had paid or agreed to pay bribes." They set up a shell company that appeared to be a consulting firm but existed primarily to launder the bribes they had received.

Douglas Berman, executive director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at the Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, thinks federal prohibition fuels such corruption. "Everybody is breaking federal law," Berman says. "The kind of elaborate corporate structures and real estate transactions that are necessitated by federal prohibition makes [corruption] easier or more likely." Berman adds that California's burdensome licensing system, which requires marijuana businesses to get state and local permission before they can operate, might make would-be growers or retailers feel they have to grease some wheels just to get off the ground.

The Scourge of 'Local Control'

All of these corruption cases revolve around the reality that marijuana legalization under Prop. 64 has given local officials a tremendous amount of power to determine who can participate. With two-thirds of California cities banning marijuana businesses, dozens of supplicants converge on jurisdictions that have decided to allow them and fight each other for limited licenses and approved locations. Cities add their own taxes in the hope of covering budget shortfalls or jump-starting their economies, which makes it harder for legal businesses to compete with the black market.

Rather than liberating its citizens from the drug war, California has turned government officials into cartel bosses. It's no wonder that the black market still dominates marijuana sales: The government's terms are terrible.

In a sense, this system is what California voters approved. The fact that cities could say no to marijuana businesses was one of Prop. 64's selling points. While polls consistently show that a large majority of Americans favor marijuana legalization, that does not necessarily mean they would welcome pot shops in their neighborhoods. And those who would can be outmaneuvered by small numbers of powerful naysayers.

"Local control is the primary factor that is crippling California's market," says Hirsh Jain, founder of the marijuana consulting firm Ananda Strategy and chair of the Los Angeles Marijuana Chamber of Commerce. "Local control is often framed as a democratic virtue. In practice, local control is being used to thwart the will of the voters."

In dozens of California cities where most voters favored Prop. 64, Jain notes, local politicians nevertheless are blocking dispensaries. Last fall, local residents who object to that situation started gathering signatures for ballot initiatives that would force officials in places like Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach to let retailers in. Some cannabis business advocates are pushing for a new statewide ballot initiative that would restrict or remove cities' authority to completely ban marijuana sales.

Even when cities allow dispensaries, they often impose arbitrary caps on the total number or create maddening bureaucracies that frustrate people who try to follow the rules. It has been more than five years since Prop. 64 passed, and Fresno only recently began approving licenses for recreational stores. Last fall the city manager, who has the final authority to decide who can sell marijuana, approved 21 applications (three in each city district) based on interviews and a complicated scoring system. Four companies that were denied licenses sued the city in November and December, complaining that the process was opaque and that some successful applicants had hired frontmen to feign local ownership, which earned them bonus points.

In Los Angeles, the incredibly slow speed of the licensing process has left aspiring cannabis entrepreneurs hanging. As of January, L.A. had 217 licensed recreational retailers serving a population of 4 million. By comparison, Denver, with a population of about 700,000, lists 476 retail locations.

Three years ago, Los Angeles created a "social equity program" that was supposed to assist applicants who had been arrested, convicted, or otherwise harmed by the war on weed. But the rollout has been a mess. Since the program launched, Jain notes, only 20 social equity–approved storefronts have opened. Dozens more struggle to navigate the bureaucracy.

The program does not seem to be designed for the disadvantaged people it was supposed to serve. "Applicants needed to secure a property" to qualify, Jain notes. "Some had to take loans and were paying rent for storefronts. It bankrupted some applicants and made sure only the most well-capitalized could participate." Not exactly a winning model for lifting up the poor.

Cannabis entrepreneurs who survive the licensing gauntlet still have to deal with complicated, burdensome, and expensive regulations imposed by two levels of government. Fresno, for example, requires more than $8,000 in application fees from those vying for the small number of licenses being distributed, and the eligibility process requires applicants to include six separate plans describing different components of their proposed business's operational models. Each of those plans can have a dozen or more city-mandated information requirements.

The barriers that keep cannabusinesses from operating in California look a lot like the barriers that keep developers from building new housing in the state. Citizens can even use the broadly worded California Environmental Quality Act to block marijuana businesses, just as they can with apartment complexes they oppose. In April, environmental groups in Humboldt County filed a lawsuit aimed at preventing approval of an 8.5-acre marijuana grow operation.

Given the legal barriers in both areas, it is not surprising that California's cannabis corruption resembles some of the state's development-related scandals. In June 2020, a federal indictment charged Jose Huizar, then a member of the Los Angeles City Council, with taking $1.5 million in gifts and bribes from real estate developers who wanted to get their projects approved. In a separate case last year, the city agreed to a $150,000 settlement with Jesse Leon, a former Huizar aide who claimed he was fired for alerting federal investigators that his boss might have been looking for campaign donations from marijuana businesses in exchange for similar favorable treatment. Huizar, who has not been charged with taking bribes from cannabis companies, denied Leon's claims, pointing out that Leon himself had gotten into ethical hot water by attempting to participate in L.A.'s marijuana social equity program while working for the city.

California's New War on Weed

"California can emerge from this marijuana mayhem by flipping the incentives," the Los Angeles Times editorialized in December. "It's too easy and profitable to remain in the black market and too onerous and expensive to join the legal one. By easing licensing procedures or reducing taxes temporarily, and ramping up enforcement and penalties for illegal operators, the state has a better chance of coaxing fence-sitting operators to get licensed."

So far the government's response to "this marijuana mayhem" has focused on tougher enforcement and penalties rather than lighter taxes and regulations. Prop. 64 authorized civil penalties against unlicensed marijuana growers and sellers, who also are guilty of misdemeanors punishable by a $500 fine and up to six months in jail. A law that took effect at the beginning of 2022 doubles down on that approach, allowing civil fines of up to $30,000 per violation against anyone guilty of "aiding or abetting" unlicensed cannabis commercial activity. Each day of assisting illegal sales or cultivation is a separate violation.

The Drug Policy Alliance and the American Civil Liberties Union opposed that law, warning that the wording is vague (it doesn't define "aiding and abetting") and will let local law enforcement target low-level employees, who could have their wages garnished and driver's licenses suspended. But the United Cannabis Business Association welcomed the new penalties, saying "the illicit cannabis market must be shut down to ensure that legal operators can see an increase of patients and consumers, which creates union jobs."

In October, California Attorney General Rob Bonta bragged about a 13-week operation by state and local law enforcement officials that rounded up and eradicated more than 1 million illegally grown marijuana plants. The cops targeted growers who tried to escape oppressive fees, taxes, and licensing demands by operating in rural areas.

Raids like these were a familiar feature of life in California for decades before voters approved legalization. The difference now is that the government is promoting a black market not by banning marijuana but making its production and sale absurdly difficult to accomplish legally.

(Courtesy, Reason.com)

DEMONIZING RUSSIA RISKS MAKING COMPROMISE IMPOSSIBLE, AND PROLONGING THE WAR

by Patrick Cockburn

In August 1914, the German army launched an unprovoked invasion of Belgium during which they killed some 6,000 Belgian civilians which they held as hostages, wrongly suspected of sniping, or simply in order to instill fear. In the village of Dinant near Liege on 23 August some 644 villagers were lined up in the village square and shot by German firing squads, the youngest victim being a three week old baby.

Over five days from 25 August, German soldiers looted and burned the town of Louvain, killing hundreds of its inhabitants and destroying its medieval library, one of the greatest in Europe, which was filled with irreplaceable books and manuscripts.

The massacres in Belgium – the German policy of Schrecklichkeit or frightfulness aimed at preventing popular resistance – outraged the world, having a particularly powerful impact in Britain where the atrocities fostered support for the war and led great numbers to volunteer to fight. On 2 September, just as the sack of Louvain was coming to an end, Rudyard Kipling published a poem reflecting the general anger, four lines of which read: ‘For all we have and are/ For all our children’s fate/ Stand up and take the war/ The Hun is at the gate!’

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s such belligerence was out of fashion and accounts of German massacres of civilians in the First World War, had been outpaced by the Nazi genocide and, in so far as they were remembered at all, were dismissed as exaggerated war propaganda in a conflict for which all sides were held to be more or less equally to blame. This was the message of the film Oh! What a Lovely War which showed naïve young recruits being lured to the slaughter by jingoistic slogans and a glamorised vision of the Western Front.

The high emotions of 1914 were discounted as war hysteria – largely ignoring the fact that the German atrocities were all too real – and there was nothing wrong or hysterical about being angry over the mass killings of civilians.

The furious reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February is very similar to that provoked by the German invasion of neutral Belgium on 4 August 1914. Even President Vladimir Putin with his shallow macho and incoherent claims that Ukraine is run by local Nazis bent carrying out a genocide against the Russian speaking minority has more than a passing resemblance to Kaiser Wilhelm 11 who also stumbled into a war he was unlikely to win.

Putin’s bid to demonise the Ukrainian government as born-again Nazis bent on violence recalls the Kaiser’s inept self-justifying claim after the destruction of Louvain that, while his heart bled for Belgium, he blamed what had happened on “the criminal and barbarous actions of the Belgians.”

Both the German and the Russians a century later showed signs of being caught off guard by international rage and condemnation of their behaviour. The Russians were unable to decide if a maternity hospital in Mariupol had been blown up by the Ukrainians themselves or was a Ukrainian military post that they had rightly destroyed by Russian forces.

This has been denounced as a particularly Russian way of war but every bombardment of a city that I have witnessed from Gaza to Douma in Damascus and Aleppo to Raqqa and Mosul ends up with the mass slaughter of civilians. The difference in the cases of Belgium and Ukraine is that the outrage of the rest of the world is more intense and sustained.

The danger is that the understandable reaction to the butchery of civilians turns into all-embracing Russophobia that lets Putin off the hook and makes it very difficult to bring the war to an end. Thus, the owners of Facebook and Instagram are to allow users in some countries to say “Death to Putin” and express similar slogans about killing Russian soldiers, though not civilians.

This is the modern equivalent of popular cries of “Hang the Kaiser” that became a slogan towards the end of the First World War. But this total demonisation of an enemy carries a price because it makes compromise impossible and ensures that wars will be fought to a finish. The crudest patriotic cards become trumps. Diplomatic flexibility is pilloried as treachery. The crass and unforced errors of the Kaiser and Putin are obscured by a sense that the entire nation is in danger.

This was the deadly pattern in 1914. “The more the Allies declared their purpose to be the defeat of German militarism,” and an end to their ruling dynasty, wrote Barbara Tuchman in the Guns of August, about the first month of the First World War, “the more Germany declared her undying oath not to lay down arms short of total victory.”

Not many people in the Kremlin today can have any hope of victory – with the possible exception of Putin himself. But, whatever they think privately, they are stuck with the consequences of Putin’s mad gamble, which is likely to be a historic defeat for Russia from which it may never recover. As the former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski put it: “without Ukraine Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

No bad thing, many will respond. But Russia is unlikely to depart quietly from the front line of great powers. Its army may have fought poorly in Ukraine, but it has not yet suffered a defeat. Ukrainian videos showing successful skirmishes and ambushes probably give an exaggerated idea of Ukrainian military prowess and of Russian incompetence. It is chilling – and very First World War – to see the blitheness with which commentators now denounce compromise with Putin without understanding that this means a prolonged campaign which is all too likely to escalate into a nuclear conflict.

The very same people who portray Putin as a power-mad potentate appear to assume that he will show cautious moderation when it comes to evening the odds against Nato by using a low yield nuclear weapon then say they are sure that he would never use a tactical nuclear weapon to wipe out a convoy or an airbase – and show that he is still an enemy to be feared.

The problem is that the hatreds generated by war gain momentum during the conflict and do not have a reverse emotional gear. Collective punishments against Russians are likely to elicit a collective response. The British prime minister Lloyd George had a prescient idea a few months after the Armistice in 1918 about the likely consequences of maintaining economic sanctions as a form of pressure against Germany.

He told the Supreme War Council and the Allies that “the memories of starvation might one day turn against them […] The Allies were sowing hatred for the future […] not for the Germans, but for themselves.”

(Patrick Cockburn is the author of War in the Age of Trump (Verso). Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

So, does a guy have to have his parts removed or can he just claim that he is a woman, grow his hair long and wear a dress and thereby qualify for a high power, six figure income with the government and beat out any biological women applying for the job? I am not so sure that that would be too much to ask to get such a special deal, as long as you don’t have to chop anything off.

Boy, our feminist leaders sure are nice people to allow we men to totally take over their domains if we stop cutting our hair. I am looking forward to watching the first heavyweight boxing match between a woman and Bruno the Team Switcher. I never thought about being a professional athlete, but doors may be opening for all of us guys. Sweet.

AN INTERVIEW WITH CHESA BOUDIN In NY Times Magazine:

When Chesa Boudin was elected district attorney for San Francisco in 2019, his victory was seen as part of a wave that swept him and other progressive prosecutors into office, including Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Kim Foxx in Chicago and Rachael Rollins in Boston. Boudin, like others in his cohort, promised to work to reform the criminal-justice system by focusing on, among other tactics, decarceration and addressing root causes of crime.

Perhaps predictably, Boudin — whose parents are former members of the Weather Underground who served long prison sentences for their roles in a 1981 robbery of a Brink’s armored car that left two police officers and a guard dead — has been met with heavy resistance from those who believe that his office has compromised public safety.

While a host of metrics complicate that perception, it remains potent: Boudin, who is 41, is facing a recall election on June 7. “We’re doing things that have never been done before,” he says, “and that does make some people uncomfortable.”

Your critics make the argument that your policies, and by extension progressive prosecutors, create a perception of permissiveness that emboldens criminals. What’s your response?

I was clear as a candidate, and our efforts have followed through, that we would focus resources on crimes that cause the most harm: violent crimes, murder, sexual assault. Those are where our charging and conviction rates have gone up. If you are someone who believes in a tough-on-crime deterrence model of the justice system or public safety, then that model must begin with the police making arrests in a high percentage of cases.

With theft in San Francisco, people believe they can get away with it because only 2 percent of reported thefts result in arrest. We can hang people in the town square, but the most effective thing at deterring crime is certainty of arrest.

But the police make arrests in less than 3 percent of reported auto burglaries. Not blaming the police: These are crimes that are hard to make an arrest in. Because of that, people don’t fear consequences. It has nothing to do with my policies.

There has been a lot of friction between your office and the police. Do you believe they’re trying to undermine you? [Before Boudin’s election, the San Francisco Police Officers Association funded fliers calling Boudin “the #1 choice of criminals and gang members.”]

Some police officers, absolutely. The police union has been out to get me since before Day 1. I also know there’s a lot of San Francisco police officers who hate the politics and want to do their job and do it well, and they’re doing a difficult job under historically challenging circumstances.

I have tremendous sympathy and admiration for the members of the San Francisco Police Department who do their job with integrity. It is a dereliction of duty by those other members who, instead of doing their job well, tell the victims that they can’t do anything because they don’t like the district attorney.

Your mayor has also been critical. Do you think she finds it politically expedient to not be more supportive of you with the recall election? [On Kara Swisher’s “Sway” podcast in January, Mayor London Breed said in response to a question about how she planned to vote in the recall: “I do know how I’m going to vote. But I’m not ready to reveal what I plan to do publicly."]

There’s a structural flaw in the way that San Francisco’s recalls are designed, which is that the mayor appoints the replacement after a successful recall vote. It creates an incentive for the mayor to always support a recall, because who wouldn’t want to appoint a citywide elected official? Why would she ever oppose a recall?

Maybe I’m a Pollyanna, but “Why would she ever oppose a recall?” — because she thought the person was doing the best job.

You haven’t spent much time in San Francisco politics, David. In San Francisco, the county and the city are contiguous. She has the budget of a city and a county combined. The resources are immense, and with those resources come high expectations. When we have problems like the Tenderloin or a housing crisis or an opioid-overdose epidemic, it is convenient for someone with access to those resources and power to have a foil when people are upset. When you have that much power, if people are upset, it’s convenient to have a place to shift the blame.

I know that you talk a lot about wanting to address root causes of crime. But to what extent can a district attorney even do that? Isn’t your ability to address root causes largely dependent on other actors — like the police, like the mayor — that are part of the system? This is a big question.

I want to describe examples of what we’re doing to address root causes. So, we know that gun violence is on the rise across the country, with significant numbers in San Francisco. A traditional prosecutor might say that if someone is in possession of a gun illegally or uses a gun to do something unlawful, we’re going to punish them as harshly as the law allows, and that’s our way of deterring crime. The thing that frustrates me about that approach is that we are accepting that we don’t have a role to play in promoting public safety until after a crime occurs.

We’re trying to be proactive in my office. In San Francisco, instead of waiting for the police to make an arrest in homicides involving a ghost gun and punishing the individual that committed the harm, we are suing the ghost-gun companies and asking the courts to prohibit them from shipping their weapons into our community.

Another example is expanding partnerships with the state attorney general to get guns out of the hands of people who we know are prohibited from having them. These are proactive approaches to prevent gun violence. A crime prevented: There’s no viral video of that. But if we are serious about good policy, we must be proactive about preventing crime.

What about something like, for example, property theft? Unlike gun violence, it seems to be a bigger problem in San Francisco than it is in some other cities. Is there necessarily going to be a lag between the time it takes to address root causes and a subsequent reduction in that kind of crime?

It’s not a new problem. That’s one thing to bear in mind. A second part of that is if you look at the data, overall thefts last year went up a bit but were still well below their 2019 levels. So despite the viral videos and breathless headlines to the contrary, the empirical evidence is that property crime is moving in the right direction.

The other thing is, I want to complicate the assumption that it’s not an issue in other cities. I went to New York in November to visit my dad when he got out of prison, and we went to Duane Reade. We wanted to get him basic things: deodorant, a hairbrush, a toothbrush. We went in, and even deodorant, which was like five or six dollars a bar, was behind plexiglass.

People on social media would have you think that it’s only in San Francisco where people are so desperate that they’re going to go into Duane Reade or Walgreens and shoplift. The reality is that’s a feature of modern American urban life, in large part because of the horrific wealth inequalities, the poverty, the lack of access to housing, the internet marketplaces where people can resell stolen products. Those trends are national and have nothing to do with me or my policies.

That said, this country has spent decades building up a system that efficiently processes individual cases for conviction and incarceration. We can’t, overnight, expect to have a comparable infrastructure for responding to crimes in ways that are more than just warehousing people. Which is why it’s important to recognize that we are focusing wherever possible on root causes. At the same time, we have increased our conviction rate for murders, our charging rate for sexual assaults. My charging rate for drug sales is higher than in years.

I brought up property theft in San Francisco and you made a comparison with Manhattan. But Target is limiting its hours in your city, and Walgreens is closing stores explicitly because of too much theft. There’s also those viral videos of flash-mob robberies....

Sorry, David, you’re saying you didn’t see videos of flash-mob burglaries in other cities?

I haven’t, no.

Chicago. Walnut Creek. The notion that this is [just] a San Francisco problem is demonstrably false.

Then that’s my mistake. But property theft in San Francisco is a problem. What needs to be happening differently to address it? The major change that has happened when it comes to retail theft in particular is that stores like Walgreens have decided it’s not in their interest to have their security detain shoplifters.

The reason is that the police almost never make it to the stores in response to a shoplifting call in time to effectuate an arrest. They rely on store security to hold people long enough for the police to arrive. If Walgreens or Target or any other store decides that it’s too risky, in terms of people getting injured or racial-profiling lawsuits or disturbing other customers — if those costs outweigh the benefit of having their staff make arrests, how do they expect me to prosecute?

If the police can’t make arrests, to then say it’s the district attorney’s fault simply doesn’t add up.

Let me ask about another subject that I suspect you might say has been distorted nationally: the Tenderloin, which the mayor declared an emergency zone. But whether anything actually new is happening there is almost beside the point. The point is that an open-air drug market is a bad thing for a city. What can you be doing to improve the situation?

The Tenderloin has been an ongoing public-health crisis and state of emergency for at least a decade. This is not a new problem. In fact, one of your colleagues at The New York Times wrote an Op-Ed in which he was highly critical of me. He linked to a video of the Tenderloin and the Civic Center BART station that adjoins it as an example of progressive prosecutors failing. But the video was from 2018. I hadn’t even run for office yet. I’m not saying that to be catty about your colleagues or the fact-checking at The New York Times.

I’m making a broader point, which is that the right-wing media — I’m not saying this about The New York Times — has for years loved to point to the Tenderloin as an example of the failures of progressive policies. The reality is that every city in the United States has at least one neighborhood where, historically, through red-lining or policing or zoning, poverty has been consolidated. If you go to New York City, you can’t pretend that the South Bronx doesn’t exist, that deep east Brooklyn doesn’t exist. Those are parts of New York City, just like the Tenderloin is part of San Francisco.

I wouldn’t argue that other parts of the country don’t have historically problematic areas. My question was whether anything should or could be done differently in the Tenderloin.

Absolutely. The Tenderloin is an emergency. It is a priority. In San Francisco, we need to have safe consumption sites, because people don’t die of overdoses at safe consumption sites. The second thing we need is people who are drug-addicted to have an easier time accessing treatment and services than they do buying drugs on the street corner.

We are prosecuting people the police arrest. It’s not working because there is an insatiable demand for drugs from people who don’t have housing, access to health care, access to employment and access to treatment that can help them reduce their dependence on dangerous drugs.

There’s statistical evidence that your approach is working, but that seems to be coming up against a segment of the San Francisco population’s lived experience, insofar as there may be people thinking: The numbers are pointing in the right direction, but then why are there citizen-safety patrols in Chinatown? Why does my car keep getting broken into?

The data speaks for itself, but you’re right: The way that people feel matters, too. If you walk down a busy street, and there are a couple of people who are living in tents or asking for money, you don’t feel unsafe because there are lots of other people who look like you.

After the pandemic, for reasons that have nothing to do with my policies, the financial district is empty. So the number of homeless people hasn’t increased significantly, but that population — people who are mentally ill, addicted, vulnerable to being victims of crime — is more visible in ways that make people who have access to social media, who donate to political campaigns, who have access to reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle or Examiner feel less safe. It’s not wrong or unfair for people to feel that way, but the connection with me is an explicitly political one driven by the recall.

You can point to factors beyond your policies affecting the situation in San Francisco; you can also point to things that you’re doing well. If those things are true, what’s motivating the recall? Where’s the disconnect for San Franciscans?

Here’s what’s important to know: To get elected, the most any donor could give me was $500. Recalls are allowed to accept unlimited donations. That’s significant, because the single biggest contributor to the recall is a committee that has given about a $1.5 million so far.

We’re not dealing with a grass-roots movement. We’re dealing with a small number of wealthy individuals, many of whom are national Republican major donors, who have financial interests in the real estate industry, in the gig economy and in using the police and the criminal-justice system to force aggressive displacement and gentrification so that their real estate investments can go up.

And this is critical: I created a worker-protection unit that filed lawsuits against some gig-economy companies that are systematically misclassifying their employees, calling them independent contractors in blatant violation of California law, in order to avoid paying minimum wage, workers’ compensation insurance, unemployment insurance and all the other things that they’re required to do to compete fairly.

Isn’t part of what’s also motivating the recall a philosophical disagreement about the nature of law enforcement? The rhetoric being used by the recall committee is that they support criminal-justice reform too.

They know that if they’re honest about their political perspective, they will not win. I’ll give you one example: I had a meeting in 2019 with one of the major donors to the recall. His name was William Oberndorf. At that meeting — I was running for district attorney — he said he would support me if I would oppose San Francisco’s sanctuary-city policy. I said I couldn’t do that. He got very angry, and when someone has the kind of money that he has, he can express his anger in a recall context, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. [When reached for comment, Oberndorf strongly disputed Boudin’s recounting of their meeting and said that he never suggested any sort of quid pro quo regarding sanctuary-city policy and his support of Boudin.]

You said the recall was not a grass-roots movement, but the petition for it got 83,000 signatures — you’re shaking your head.

It’s more complicated. It’s a self-reported number of signatures. That number has never been audited or validated.

It doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people seem to have signed.

What any political consultant in California politics will tell you is that you can qualify anything you want for the ballot if you spend enough money to hire professional signature gatherers. They incentivize them by paying them per signature they gather. And they send them across the city, and the gatherers say things like: “Do you want to stop sexual assault? Sign here.” If you are allowed to employ those tactics and have unlimited money, then, yes, you will get lots of signatures. That’s a reflection of the money you spend, not necessarily popular support.

I want to ask you about recidivism. There have been cases used as a cudgel against you in which repeat offenders committed tragic crimes when they were back out on the street.

Obviously we can always say the counterfactual: If the repeat offender was in jail, that wouldn’t have happened. But locking up every offender for life is not a realistic response to the problem of recidivism.

My question, though, is whether progressive prosecutors are asking people to accept some increased collective risk of recidivism in the short term in exchange for a greater collective good in the long term?

We have to recognize that the tough-on-crime approach has had lots of opportunities to reduce recidivism rates, and it hasn’t worked. California went through a drastic expansion of incarceration during the 1990s and early 2000s. About two-thirds of the people being released from state prison after local prosecutors had thrown the book at them were rearrested within a couple of years.

The other important thing to recognize is that when people talk about recidivism in San Francisco — if you look at the cohort of people we’ve resentenced because we believe they’ve served more than enough time, the recidivism rate is infinitesimally small. But people are going to focus on the Willie Horton case, the one case where something does go wrong, and they’re going to blame my office.

I imagine, given your personal history, that throughout your life you’ve encountered people with strong preconceptions about who you are and what you believe. Is that at all factoring into the opposition you’re facing?

If you never spend time with me — and sadly, because of the pandemic, there are far fewer residents and civic leaders in San Francisco who have had an opportunity to do that — it’s easy to be fooled by the dishonesty of the police union and their allies in terms of who I am and what I’m about.

The people who work closest with me, the people who know me, the people who have seen the way I approach the problems we face in this office understand that I’m deeply committed to justice and public safety and that I believe that criminal-justice reform can make us safer. That’s why I’m implementing these policies. For no other reason.

* * *

Rob Anderson's comment:

When London Breed was asked about how she would vote on the Boudin recall, she said “I do know how I’m going to vote. But I’m not ready to reveal what I plan to do publicly.” That obviously shows she supports the recall.

That's not surprising coming from Breed, a dim bulb who's always been in over her head politically. The pandemic has made it easier for her to hide her political/intellectual shortcomings, since the public health emergency put a lot of public policy decisions on autopilot, taking a lot of decisions out of the hands of our political leaders.

Friar Blanderfield and Connie Hansen, Greenwood, 1915

ROMNEY'S "TREASON" SMEAR OF TULSI GABBARD Is False And Noxious, But Now Typifies U.S. Discourse

The Founders limited "treason" in the Constitution due to grave concerns it would be weaponized to criminalize dissent: exactly how the term is now routinely used.

by Glenn Greenwald

On Monday, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) considerably escalated the attacks on Gabbard's patriotism. In a mega-viral tweet, the four-time-draft-dodging, son-of-a-rich-politician, investment-banker Republican — who skipped the Vietnam War after protesting in favor of it, opting instead to send other Americans to fight and die, and then justified the fact that all five of his sons avoided military service on the grounds that helping him get elected was their "service” — accused the life-long Army officer and Iraq War veteran of being a traitor…

greenwald.substack.com/p/romneys-treason-smear-of-tulsi-gabbard

U.S. SENATE APPROVES BILL TO MAKE DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME PERMANENT

by David Shepardson

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent starting in 2023, ending the twice-annual changing of clocks in a move promoted by supporters advocating brighter afternoons and more economic activity.

The Senate approved the measure, called the Sunshine Protection Act, unanimously by voice vote. The House of Representatives, which has held a committee hearing on the matter, must still pass the bill before it can go to President Joe Biden to sign.

The White House has not said whether Biden supports it. A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to say if she supports the measure but said she was reviewing it closely.

Senator Marco Rubio, one of the bill's sponsors, said supporters agreed the change would not take place until November 2023 after input from airlines and broadcasters.

The change would help enable children to play outdoors later and reduce seasonal depression, according to supporters.

"I know this is not the most important issue confronting America, but it's one of those issues where there's a lot of agreement," Rubio said. "If we can get this passed, we don't have to do this stupidity anymore."

"Pardon the pun, but this is an idea whose time has come," he added.

The National Association of Convenience Stores opposes the change, telling Congress this month "we should not have kids going to school in the dark."

On Sunday, most of the United States resumed daylight saving time, moving ahead one hour. The United States will resume standard time in November.

Since 2015, about 30 states have introduced legislation to end the twice-yearly changing of clocks, with some states proposing to do it only if neighboring states do the same.

The House Energy and Commerce committee held a hearing on the issue last week, where Representative Frank Pallone, the committee's chairman, said, "The loss of that one hour of sleep seems to impact us for days afterwards. It also can cause havoc on the sleeping patterns of our kids and our pets."

Pallone backs ending the clock-switching but has not decided whether to support daylight or standard time as the permanent choice.

At the hearing, Beth Malow, director of the Vanderbilt Sleep Division, argued daylight savings time makes it harder to be alert in the morning, saying it "is like living in the wrong time zone for almost eight months out of the year."

Pallone cited a 2019 poll that found 71% of Americans prefer to no longer switch their clocks twice a year.

Supporters say the change could prevent a slight uptick in car crashes that typically occurs around the time changes and point to studies showing a small increase in the rate of heart attacks and strokes soon after the time change. They argue the measure could help businesses such as golf courses that could draw more use with more evening daylight.

"It has real repercussions on our economy and our daily lives," said Senator Ed Markey, another leading sponsor.

Daylight saving time has been in place in nearly all of the United States since the 1960s after being first tried in 1918. Year-round daylight savings time was used during World War Two and adopted again in 1973 in a bid to reduce energy use because of an oil embargo and repealed a year later.

The bill would allow Arizona and Hawaii, which do not observe daylight saving time, to remain on standard time as well as American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

(Reuters.com)

A Dove Has Spreads Her Wings and Asks for Peace, by Maria Prymachenko, 1982

10 Comments

Kirk Vodopals March 16, 2022

Carmel Angelo always looked like Cruella DeVille to me. Mendo County should get her a few dalmatians for retirement

Kirk Vodopals March 16, 2022

Re: super high THC weed at the state fair….
I couldn’t agree more that heavy, high THC stonering in the formative years can lead to psychosis and such, but, c’mon, it’s the love drug. It pairs well with a deep fried Twinkie and a foot long corn dog.

Kirk Vodopals March 16, 2022

My rain gauge reads 2.18 inches since Jan 1. This is Mendocino County, not Barstow. Insert your image of me raising my fist at the sky

Eli Maddock March 16, 2022

Permanent DST
Sen. Rubio representative of Arizona sponsor of the bill is exempt from his own legislation! Wtf!?

- Marmon March 16, 2022
  
  Rubio represents Florida, not Arizona
  
  Marmon
  
  - Eli Maddock March 16, 2022
    
    Oops, I was reading late last night. Thanks for the correction.
    That guy sucks even worse than I thought before
    
Irv Sutley March 16, 2022

Bodega Bay’s Jon Yatabe in “International Brigade” above misses the point about the International Brigades who went to Spain to defend the republic there from the Falangist Franco who was supported by the armed might of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy
In 1936, the volunteers of the International Brigades started coming from the working-class parties of countries around the world: Canada, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina. the U.K., France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, China, Finland . . .and on and on.
The Soviet Union not only had volunteers go to Spain, they provided infantry weapons, artillery as well as pilots and planes to attempt to stave off the terror bombing of the Luftwaffe which famously did in the city of Guernica.

The USSR forces and support for a democratic Republican Spain included both Russians and Ukrainians just as they would do later in World War II.

The Biden-Harris administration here can’t get through any of the programs they professed to believe in, in the 2020 election, but B-H seems to have no problem raising and delivering billions and billions of dollars in “Ukrainian aid” which really only benefits the world’s arms manufacturers and those who speculate in military-industrial “services”

George Hollister March 16, 2022

DEMONIZING RUSSIA RISKS MAKING COMPROMISE IMPOSSIBLE, AND PROLONGING THE WAR

by Patrick Cockburn

So much of what Cockburn is saying is correct, but speaking for myself, hate for Russia doesn’t ring true any more than hate for any other people who are living under a dictator. Lack of respect, yes. Hate, no. Ukraine might have other thoughts, but for even them, my impression is they will brutally push Russians out but will stop at their pre-Putin borders. The Russian Army, and Putin will be defeated, and it will diminish them as a world power, and dramatically elevate Ukraine. But Russia still has China as a friend, a country that wants Russia’s resources more than it needs, or wants Russia’s people.

This sets the world up for the next chapter which might involve China, and its possible puppet Russia.

Mt March 29, 2022

Scaramella laughing at someone for crying in public. What a juvenile!

- Mark Scaramella March 30, 2022
  
  Not laughing. Pointing out the lamentable level of blind devotion to the boss, and the fragility of the personality of the person who has been promoted to run a $300 million-plus organization.

Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, March 16, 2022

10 Comments

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