NOTE TO RED BEARD: Dude! Or Bro! Whichever, and what’s the diff exactly? The letter you sent us is illegible. Please try again. Preferably print.
THE DISGUSTING war on Ukraine goes on and on, and I'm a little disgusted with myself for having grown unmoved at the daily accounts of the major atrocities Putin is committing there. But what are the options? Fight him with the Ukranians as surrogates as we're doing, or fight him directly?
IT CAN HAPPEN HERE! A California man threatened to bomb Merriam-Webster's HQ over the dictionary's definition of the word female as “a gender identity that is the opposite of male.” Jeremy David Hanson, 34, of Rossmoor, has been arrested for being so disturbed about Merriam-Webster's woke-def that he was poised to begin assembling a more emphatic protest.
A WOMAN called to say a recently departed Willits man, a man of substantial wealth, had been her secret boyfriend for many years, but the man's family has cut her off without a dime. She rattled on about true love untainted by fiscal considerations. “Money means nothing to me. I loved that man,” she said. “I'd live with him in my van down by the river, wherever. He was the love of my life.” Then, suddenly, “Are you Mark Scaramella?” I confessed I wasn't, that Mark was at an all day meeting of The Armed Sons of Italy in Ukiah. “Where in Ukiah?” she demanded. “The location is secret,” I said. “Frankly, I think they're up to something, but he's always had clandestine nationalist sympathies, and anyway it's none of my business.” “I’ll call back later,” she promised.
AS FRESHLY RETIRED CEO Angelo retreats to San Diego to draw a lush pension many times greater than the annual income of the Mendo serfs who fund it, and far from the turbulent county she steered onto the rocks, she's one of many of our public servants who feasted off Mendo's largesse then headed outtahere.
THE FRONT (1976) is a very good movie about leftist writers trying to make a living in 1951 when McCarthyism was still on the rise. It's set in NYC, where the television industry used to be centered. Woody Allen plays Howard Prince, an apolitical, low-end bookie who agrees, for a 10% commission, to submit scripts in his name that were written by an old friend from the high school chess club (Michael Murphy). The ruse works, and other blacklisted TV writers start using Howard to put his name on their scripts, too. Howard wins the heart of classy Andrea Markovici, a network employee who thinks he’s a great writer and politically liberal. The Front is not a Woody Allen movie — Walter Bernstein (blacklisted in 1950) wrote the script and Martin Ritt (blacklisted in '51) directed it. Which may be why it's Allen's best performance. When the movie came out in ‘76 I was so down on the US left that I found fault with it. The Hollywood 10 got so much publicity, I groused, you’d never know that public school teachers like my mom were losing their jobs because they wouldn’t answer questions about Local 5… Dalton Trumbo and Gordon Kahn didn’t have it so bad down in Cuernavaca… Etc., etc. But watching The Front on TV the other night I was moved and grateful that Bernstein and Ritt had made such a heartfelt fairy tale about how they and their colleagues hustled and made it through the season of the toad. (Trumbo's phrase — unfair to toads.) Many a writer and artist suffered a class fall, and several committed suicide (as Zero Mostel does in The Front). The actors Canada Lee and Walter Bromberg are two I recall the grown-ups talking about… Some say that the stress of the class fall brought on John Garfield’s heart attack at age 39. (Fred Gardner)
ATTENTION EARTH WARRIORS! The very ultimate in fake environmentalism is coming up as the “34th Annual Bioneers Conference” at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. For a people's price of $525 you can attend a day's worth of blah-blah from enviro-hustlers, all of whom are paid fat “honoraria” for wowing the wealthy-gullible with eco-fantasies. (Big shots aren't paid, they get “honoraria” wrapped in gold-tinged stationary.) But a mere $550 for all three days. Such a deal.
AS THE BIONEERS stomp across the skies from one jive conference to the next to reassure the bourgies that by separating their plastics from earth fill and voting for Biden they're saving the planet, you have to wonder how these eco-hustlers justify their destructive lives, their parasitism on the lives of real environmentalists.
ON THE SUBJECT of delusionals, the invited mob at CEO Angelo's send-off last weekend held at, of course, a winery, reminded me of one of those police stings, you know, where the cops start a rumor that they'll be giving away Super Bowl tickets to every crook who shows up with a stolen item. But at the Angelo event, attendees were admitted only if they believe that official Mendocino County is not a sinkhole of incompetence, opportunism, nepotism, and petty corruption. Bingo! Not a skeptic in the bunch.
BERNIE NORVELL, Mayor of Fort Bragg, responds to a letter lamenting the state of the town:
“Better yes. Great probably not. In the last six years we have changed our focus on CDBG grants from providing facilities to service providers that don’t value the city or its community to focusing on our own infrastructure. We have paved the way for ADUs’ to be more affordable to build. We even produced our own set of engineered plans for free. We have allowed buildings in the commercial zone that look like homes to be converted to residential. We have allowed for vacation rentals in the downtown to be located above commercial spaces to increase housing opportunities as well as getting these spaces occupied. We have rebuilt our sewage plant and continue to add improvements. We have added water storage and a desal plant to help with water resilience. We brought back the imo failed food truck ordinance and made it workable. We have help provide 63 units of low income housing and are nowshifting ourfocus to workforce housing via a CLT. We changed our plans of streets and alleys every year to streets one year and alleys the next in order to get more done. We have adopted a balanced budget each of the last five years. Not done previous to my tenure. We secured a million dollars from Measure B to provide a crisis respite in town. Which we hope to have up and running soon. We have secured a grant to allow two social workers in our police department to help with that clientele and hopefully keep them out of crisis. We took on the EWS this year and proved it can be done correctly and with minimal problems. Directing almost all the funds directly to the clients. We started a homeward-bound program that allows us to get transients home that our stuck here and can relocate to an area with more services. Which has been extremely successful. We have gone from an imo troubled PD that struggled to maintain officers to a leadership that has brought us back to almost full staff. Just recently we voted no to a water rate increase to the users. We have held meeting with the downtown businesses to address their issues. We have brought the Hospitality House into compliance with their use permit and forced them to be better neighbors. We just recently applied and received a grant that helped fund two new all-weather soccer fields at the city park. We have taken an active role in gang prevention after a few dangerous years.
These are some of the positives that I have had a hand in. Some will call these “Pet Projects” of mine but they are all issues that I ran on and the community was asking for. As far as dissolution, that question has already been asked and answered. Not arrogance just a concern. Why be afraid of information. BTW the city does not play a role with the MCHCD nor do we get to vote on dissolution.
So are we better than 10 years ago? I say yes or at least headed in the right direction. Great, no, not there yet. Lastly, let me turn this question back to you. What have you done for your community and how?”
ESCALATION-CREEP. Putin said last week that Russia will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against any country that tries to “interfere” in the war in Ukraine or threaten Russia itself. Since many countries are interfering by supplying Ukraine with weapons, and since there have been at least two fairly major attacks on oil and arms facilities inside Russia, the Boonville Global Affairs Desk worries that Putin is close to going off as he's threatened.
INCIVILITY seems to have overtaken civility, or what's left of it. Step into public spaces from Boonville to San Francisco and here they are, the wild things, your fellow citizens doing stuff in public places that used to be unheard of, adult men and women offhandedly throwing the f-bomb around and the “music” blasted out by the many mobile cretins who sound-attack everyone as they drive past. Which is the least of it.
IN RECENT DAYS, the Press Democrat has run stories about Little League umpires, mostly high school kids, being verbally abused by the parents of Little Leaguers. And then there's this guy, versions of whom are popping up everywhere in the country.
SHELBY PRYOR, an anti-vaxxer, shows up at SoCo supervisor meetings to present his learning-impervious vaxx views to people who have no option but to endure him. But last week, Pryor, a man with the big muscles that dumb guys get out of bottles not work, shouted at the chairman of the board, a wine and cheese lib named Gore, “Gore, Gore, come out here and fight me. Bring your fists, I’ll take you down. Bring a gun if you want … Oh, yeah, I know how to use guns better than you, too, and will take you out. … I’m going to get you. I will follow you around everywhere you go… You better be ready.” Included in the deluge of threats were vile insults aimed at Gore's wife.
THE OAF has since apologized, kind of, as Gore and the SoCo supes scramble for restraining orders which, as we know from the daily news, do nothing to restrain the unhinged, and the libs wonder why Americans are arming up?
A HOT LOCAL NEWS ITEM that should get a lot of attention is that the MCCSD (Mendocino City Community Services District) has lost all its appeals and are now required to pay Mr. Gomes his legal fees with 7% interest. Gomes showed that the MCCSD's Groundwater Management Plan was illegal. Partial payment of $150,000 was approved at the last MCCSD Board meeting. The actual number is to be released at the next meeting. This has also likely cost hundreds of thousands that the MCCSD has spent on legal fees. The entire mess is likely around $400,000. This is an outrage. The ratepayers within the MCCSD may be on the hook for this. There is a LOT more to this story and it needs exposure."
(via Mendocino News Plus)
MATT TAIBBI: “I wrote then that press people in particular were making a huge mistake in cheering the end of the old litigation-based method for dealing with things like Jones’s Sandy Hook reporting, and turning authority over to faceless groups of executives working behind the scenes with legislators to fulfill a vague mission of preventing the ‘foment of discord.’ When Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said deleting Jones was only a ‘good first step,’ I thought that should have been a clue even to the densest media critic that much more radical changes were coming that may not work out as they expect.”
AS A GUY only vaguely aware of Twitter and no intention of ever using it, I'm still happy that Musk has liberated it from committees of blue noses and their pious algorithms. Let 'er rip, I say. The legions of the woke are much more dangerous than the foul talk and opinions they think they're eliminating by excluding it. Bottom line: The woke don't trust people to sort things out for themselves, and the woke, much as the would-be power trippers desire control of opinion, certainly can't be trusted to decide what can or cannot be expressed by the rest of us.
I ALSO liked Musk's joke that he was going to buy Coca Cola and put the cocaine back in it. He'd sell more Coca-Cola than Teslas if he did. (I better say here that I'm not an admirer of Musk for all the reasons the woke would approve of.)
ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE gone terribly wrong in this country, our celebrities are more comprehensively awful than ever. But contemporary celebs, along with political figures, who are also more offensive than they've ever been, are force fed to us by media, even media one would think wouldn't stoop so low. Madeline Albright and Johnny Depp dominated last Wednesday's tv news, and even the BBC news, which usually doesn't descend so low as to cover the affairs of people like the depraved Depp and his demented ex-wife felt the BBC's upmarket audience would be interested. Albright's sendoff, though, was media-unavoidable given her major role in the destruction of the Middle East. At least she got a line-up of eulogists she deserved — Hillary and Bill and Biden — right there three harbingers of national doom lamenting the loss of another moral monster.
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN, MENDOCINO WOMEN'S POLITICAL COALITION, UKIAH DAILY JOURNAL CANDIDATE FORUM Monday, May 9, 2022 6:00 p.m. In preparation for the June 7, primary election, the Mendocino Women's Political Caucus, the American Association of University Women, and the Ukiah Daily Journal will host a CANDIDATE FORUM on Monday, May 9, 2022 in the UKIAH CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS located at 300 Seminary Avenue in Ukiah. The forum will begin at 6 p.m.
This forum will present the candidates for the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors,District 5, The Mendocino County School Superintendent and Katrina Bartolomie and David Eyster, unopposed candidate for county-wide office.
JUDGE TOSSES CANNABIS GROWERS’ CLAIMS OF MENDOCINO COUNTY SHAKEDOWN CONSPIRACY
Attorneys for the grower plaintiffs had argued they've got more evidence to show and urged the judge to keep their case alive.
FORMER SUPERVISOR JOHN MCCOWEN comments on the Federal Judge’s ruling:
“As Judge Illston noted, ‘The allegations, though lengthy and quite interesting, are speculative and conclusory and just don't amount to a RICO [Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization) claim.’ In other words, it's really hard to win a case when you have no evidence to support your claims.”
THIS WEEK’S LETTER TO “TERRY,” purportedly is speaking for “retired employees of MCOE.” It is passed along as if it's truthful by Nicole Glentzer, candidate for County Superintendent of Schools:
Dear Terry,
We are writing today with an important personal message about the future of the Mendocino County schools and ask you for your help.
As retired employees of the Mendocino Office of Education we know firsthand that who holds the office of Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools has an enormous impact on every school district and charter school in Mendocino County.
We also know that the last four years have been especially packed with challenges: fires, floods, staffing shortages, and covid-19 adaptations.
These have been monumental hurdles for our schools and they need support. Unfortunately, the current County Superintendent has been unable to adequately provide that support.
When our schools needed developed covid protocols to safely reopen for in person learning, the County Superintendent was not prepared to offer support. School leaders were left to fend for themselves. School districts in other counties were able to rely upon their County Superintendent for timely information and templates. Schools in Mendocino County did not receive this support.
The simple truth is that we need new leadership at Mendocino County Office of education and Nicole Glentzer is right for the job. Nicole's experience as a paraprofessional, teacher, coach, administrator, and parent gives her the insight that is necessary to understand our challenges and she has a proven track record of working collaboratively with the unions, parents, students, administrators, and state leaders.
Through her 26-year career in education, Nicole Glentzer has built trusting relationships and worked collaboratively to overcome challenges. We need a county leader who will build bridges, not walls.
ED NOTE: Another straight-up lie from the candidate who, one would expect from a school leader, would have at least a plausible regard for the truth. Superintendent Hutchins has replied previously to this libel circulated by Mrs. Glentzer, and we re-print Ms. Hutchins’ reply a second time here:
Incumbent Superintendent Michelle Hutchins Responds:
"…The number of meetings I organized shows she is mistaken. During the first two months of the pandemic, I facilitated meetings between school personnel and the county public health office every day for the first two months. Afterwards, I facilitated a weekly meeting, totaling 125 meetings in all. Additionally, the school superintendents who support my opponent wanted to exclude charter and private schools from these meetings. But I refused; every student needs to be represented, and every student needs to be safe.
With rapidly changing direction from the State of California, sometimes daily, I sent out over 195 emails explaining these changes to district personnel. I received countless accolades from teachers, staff, and superintendents for the speed of information they received, from me, to protect our children. My office also delivered over 45 tons of protective equipment to our schools in 2020.
In collaboration with their community, parents, and unions, I insisted that every school develop a plan to meet the state requirements, knowing that each school district had unique needs.
My office also provided material resources to support schools in reopening to in-person learning, and it is well documented through newspaper articles and KZYX radio shows.
My opponent’s claims that districts had to go outside or around Mendocino County Office of Education (MCOE) to get the services they needed is a complete misrepresentation of what is actually a very strong relationship with neighboring counties for bettering the environment for all our students. Contrary to her claim, MCOE supported 37 local educational agencies and received compliments from the State as well as local public health for our level of support and collaboration with schools.
My opponent is either ignorant of what a County Superintendent does or is deliberately exploiting everyone's frustration with the pandemic to advance her campaign. Sadly, this only insults and hurts the hard-working people at MCOE.
Although I am elected official, I am not a “politician.” In fact, it would be improper for me to solicit endorsements from people who work for the districts and whose paychecks I write. I have, however, been endorsed by Sen. Mike McGuire, Assembly Member James Wood, and the unprecedented endorsement by every independently elected member of the County Board of Education and a growing number of prominent community members."
IT LOOKS LIKE CHESA BOUDIN will be recalled as San Francisco's DA, which will be quite remarkable when even the libs feel so menaced by the growing disorder that they remove a liberal prosecutor like Boudin from office. Not to be too cynical about it, but make Robespierre the prosecutor with Madame Dafarge and ten guillotines chopping heads in Union Square and there would be no diminution in crime. Crime is what happens when people don't have the money for food, shelter and NetFlix. I'm surprised there isn't more crime. Boudin is doing an impossible job in an impossible time.
THE COUNTY has received $16.8 million that's supposed to go to people and small businesses who took big hits during the pandemic. No surprise to the 15 people who closely follow the supervisors — on big audience days 25 citizens may zoom in for a few minutes to witness supervisor incompetence — but almost $400,000 of that money was used for the “security” re-model of the Supe's chambers, that expenditure including seven metal detectors. And no one, except maybe Kathy Wylie who runs interference for the Supes and the CEO's office as foreman of the Grand Jury, noted that Supervisor Williams would like to plop the bulk of the covid relief money into the county's general fund because there is suddenly a budget deficit. But, but, but… Didn't CEO Angelo say just before she retired that her savvy fiscal management had stashed $20 mil in cash reserves? So why not move some of that reserve into the general fund? In any case, nobody knows the true state of the county budget because county accounting is so loosey-goosey true figures can't be known.
BIDEN’S “Disinformation Governance Board” is not the bad joke it seems, and neither is the crackpot the Biden admin has installed as the board's chief, announcing that Nina Jankowicz is a “Russia expert” and “an expert on online disinformation,” having characterized Hunter Biden's laptop as a Russian plant and that the Steele Dossier proved Trump was a Russian agent. We laugh at the Republicans as a nest of cranks and nuts, but the Democrats, these days, are running neck and neck with them in the Nutpie Sweepstakes.
ADAM SCHIFF was on tv every night for a year claiming the reality of RussiaGate, which then disappeared from his and the nation's agenda with no apology from Schiff for a year's worth of accusing Trump of treason, as if there aren't a zillion real crimes Trump is guilty of.
ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] That’s what wrong with most people who suffer from emotional problems: They have no real problems.
Thomas Merton’s thoughts on this have resonated with me over the course of many years. He said that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer from inconsequential things, until you are made miserable over miniscule or even imaginary troubles.
It would do the “woke” a world of good to be dropped off in the wilderness with nothing but a pocket knife, and left there for a few years.
Of course they may soon have to face what is in many ways a worse situation: living in the new America without money–that is, without a working monetary system. Such an America will be a very dangerous place.
[2] It’s hard to believe that any reasonably intelligent person cannot draw a dotted line from the escalation of events from 2004 forward, but I guess it gives too much credit to the theory that most people are reasonably intelligent. In fact they are not. And even if they have the mental capacity they are consumed with the adventures of the Kardashians, the terrible comic book cartoon characters displayed in all the movie theatres, and engaged in the pursuit of modern day asset accumulation absent of anything that nourishes the soul or intellect.
[3] HEALTHCARE ON THE NORTHCOAST: Get a referral anyway you can to where the specialists are- UCSF is the closest here. Period. Open Door might accommodate. A referral to the local “specialists” is a crap shoot where the odds don’t favor the player. I was lucky to find a recently arrived doctor to do that but like so many good ones, he only stayed a couple of years. Make a friend of a local nurse of medical assistant so you sign up with a new doctor the day they arrive. Otherwise you’re stuck. It doesn’t matter whether you have good insurance or not. They do what the ACA and/or Medicare Boards advise and nothing more, even if it is useless. Eventually they decide it’s all in your head anyway.
Why cash doesn’t work? I offered that to an out of area specialist when I was sick and basically it was no referral, no appointment. Because it turned out that Medicare rules covered them even though I wasn’t on Medicare. Those rules in essence say that they cannot treat patients differently if they have even one Medicare patient they expect to bill. With Medicare it’s all or nothing and few doctors can afford nothing. And Medicare shapes the whole system- private insurance or government. Even though I had a doctor, he just kept shining me on with setting up test after test locally or referrals to local specialists who accomplished nothing. When I finally got referral to UCSF, one visit got me set up for the right test, the test lead to a surgery and within three months, I recovered. After more than 10 years of local failure. I know it seems like an unreasonable burden but there is really no alternative. The kind of insurance you have makes no difference even if some if commenters here think it’s all capitalist greed.”
[4] They don’t do wars like they used to anymore. Not the least of which, nobody’s actually used the word “war” yet, at least officially. Of course the US kind of rendered that word meaningless in the last half of the 20th century, with nary an official Declaration of War in any of our foreign adventures. I think the pols got wise and figured out if they said “war,” people would get upset. But if they used nice words like “liberation,” “special operation,” or the all-time best: “peacekeeping operation,” everyone would go back to work and ignore it, content in the act that it was just something that “needed to be done.”
[5] I for one am looking forward to the ‘The White House Correspondents Dinner’ on Sat. nite. Word is Kim Kardashian will be in attendance this year! Sure it’s a big Hollywood Showbiz — MSM — Lefty Pol Circle Jerk, and at a time when the international order is collapsing and the Proles out in Dirt Land can’t afford a tank of gas for their car, but so what? The dinner entree’ will be delicious, the Champagne cold … plenty of yuks will be had, lots of mutual ass kissing and back slapping amongst these American elites. Yesterday in a speech Putin stated “We will not permit NATO occupation in what is part of historical Russia”, which seems like the crux of the whole war. Putin also threatened nuclear annihilation for any NATO country directly interfering with Russian activity in Ukraine; that ought to get a good laugh out of the luminaries at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
[6] It’s entropy made visible. Most new schools going up look more like minimum security prisons than anything else. No trees, windows that open, no attempt at charm or warmth. But most of the kids come from the suburbs that mirror this soulless, antisocial (as in it’s difficult to know your neighbors, not in the criminal sense) and treeless environment.
[7] Free speech is free speech. And social media has nothing to do with that. “Free speech” is not social media’s product; user data sold to advertisers is the product. Contrary to Elon Musk’s claims, Twitter is not a “town square” and social media in general is a horrible format for debating issues vital to humanity’s future. One of the biggest mistakes our “leaders” have made over the last decade is to use social media as a proxy for the electorate, apparently assuming that it accurately reflects the electorate. But it doesn’t. It reflects the talking points of the loudest and most persistent yellers and those with the most “followers”. Most Americans aren’t even on Twitter. Social media is not democratic, never has been, and probably never will be. This argument that it has anything to do with free speech is a big fat red herring.
[8] THE TRUE STATE of county functioning: “People are leaving County jobs because the pay sucks. There’s only five steps that you can have a raise so after you’re there 5 years you’re Tapped Out. The wages of neighboring counties are much higher. A lot of folks work in those neighboring counties than live in Mendocino. For the staff that stay on especially in CPS having to work 12 or more hour days while also trying to care for your own family is not sustainable. With the staff shortages there’s a lot of overtime. Several year backlog on data entry. Go figure.”
[9] Here’s the latest from my “Dumb Government” file:
My wife’s driver’s license expired and she went to get it renewed. It was, but now they give you a piece of paper with your picture on it instead of a real license that acts as an acceptable ID, and you have to wait 7-10 days for the real one to be received in the mail. She got an email from the DMV saying they couldn’t mail the real ID until they got her original social security card. My wife’s ss card, which was issued over 60 years ago, has been lost for a long time. My wife, being a smartie, had made a photocopy of it before she lost the original. This was what she used as an ID to get her license renewal.
Unfortunately, the gov’t won’t accept a photocopy – she needs a so-called original.
So now she has to drive to a social security office to get a real copy. Unfortunately, she can’t get one because they need to see her original driver’s license!!!!! The other acceptable ID is an active passport. But her passport expired last year. Why renew it with the state of the world the way it is? What, we had to cancel our plans for a nice vacation in Ukraine? Now, do we have to reapply for a new passport so we can get an ID driver’s license? But she doesn’t have an acceptable driver’s license to use as an ID for a passport application.
Now if I were a different person I’d be tearing my hair out, but I think this is so ridiculous that I just have to laugh. We’ll get it all straightened out, but really!!
NOTE TO RED BEARD: Dude! Or Bro! Whichever, and what’s the diff exactly? The letter you sent us is illegible. Please try again. Preferably print.
THE DISGUSTING war on Ukraine goes on and on, and I'm a little disgusted with myself for having grown unmoved at the daily accounts of the major atrocities Putin is committing there. But what are the options? Fight him with the Ukranians as surrogates as we're doing, or fight him directly?
IT CAN HAPPEN HERE! A California man threatened to bomb Merriam-Webster's HQ over the dictionary's definition of the word female as “a gender identity that is the opposite of male.” Jeremy David Hanson, 34, of Rossmoor, has been arrested for being so disturbed about Merriam-Webster's woke-def that he was poised to begin assembling a more emphatic protest.
A WOMAN called to say a recently departed Willits man, a man of substantial wealth, had been her secret boyfriend for many years, but the man's family has cut her off without a dime. She rattled on about true love untainted by fiscal considerations. “Money means nothing to me. I loved that man,” she said. “I'd live with him in my van down by the river, wherever. He was the love of my life.” Then, suddenly, “Are you Mark Scaramella?” I confessed I wasn't, that Mark was at an all day meeting of The Armed Sons of Italy in Ukiah. “Where in Ukiah?” she demanded. “The location is secret,” I said. “Frankly, I think they're up to something, but he's always had clandestine nationalist sympathies, and anyway it's none of my business.” “I’ll call back later,” she promised.
AS FRESHLY RETIRED CEO Angelo retreats to San Diego to draw a lush pension many times greater than the annual income of the Mendo serfs who fund it, and far from the turbulent county she steered onto the rocks, she's one of many of our public servants who feasted off Mendo's largesse then headed outtahere.
THE FRONT (1976) is a very good movie about leftist writers trying to make a living in 1951 when McCarthyism was still on the rise. It's set in NYC, where the television industry used to be centered. Woody Allen plays Howard Prince, an apolitical, low-end bookie who agrees, for a 10% commission, to submit scripts in his name that were written by an old friend from the high school chess club (Michael Murphy). The ruse works, and other blacklisted TV writers start using Howard to put his name on their scripts, too. Howard wins the heart of classy Andrea Markovici, a network employee who thinks he’s a great writer and politically liberal. The Front is not a Woody Allen movie — Walter Bernstein (blacklisted in 1950) wrote the script and Martin Ritt (blacklisted in '51) directed it. Which may be why it's Allen's best performance. When the movie came out in ‘76 I was so down on the US left that I found fault with it. The Hollywood 10 got so much publicity, I groused, you’d never know that public school teachers like my mom were losing their jobs because they wouldn’t answer questions about Local 5… Dalton Trumbo and Gordon Kahn didn’t have it so bad down in Cuernavaca… Etc., etc. But watching The Front on TV the other night I was moved and grateful that Bernstein and Ritt had made such a heartfelt fairy tale about how they and their colleagues hustled and made it through the season of the toad. (Trumbo's phrase — unfair to toads.) Many a writer and artist suffered a class fall, and several committed suicide (as Zero Mostel does in The Front). The actors Canada Lee and Walter Bromberg are two I recall the grown-ups talking about… Some say that the stress of the class fall brought on John Garfield’s heart attack at age 39. (Fred Gardner)
ATTENTION EARTH WARRIORS! The very ultimate in fake environmentalism is coming up as the “34th Annual Bioneers Conference” at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. For a people's price of $525 you can attend a day's worth of blah-blah from enviro-hustlers, all of whom are paid fat “honoraria” for wowing the wealthy-gullible with eco-fantasies. (Big shots aren't paid, they get “honoraria” wrapped in gold-tinged stationary.) But a mere $550 for all three days. Such a deal.
AS THE BIONEERS stomp across the skies from one jive conference to the next to reassure the bourgies that by separating their plastics from earth fill and voting for Biden they're saving the planet, you have to wonder how these eco-hustlers justify their destructive lives, their parasitism on the lives of real environmentalists.
ON THE SUBJECT of delusionals, the invited mob at CEO Angelo's send-off last weekend held at, of course, a winery, reminded me of one of those police stings, you know, where the cops start a rumor that they'll be giving away Super Bowl tickets to every crook who shows up with a stolen item. But at the Angelo event, attendees were admitted only if they believe that official Mendocino County is not a sinkhole of incompetence, opportunism, nepotism, and petty corruption. Bingo! Not a skeptic in the bunch.
BERNIE NORVELL, Mayor of Fort Bragg, responds to a letter lamenting the state of the town:
Better yes. Great probably not. In the last six years we have changed our focus on CDBG grants from providing facilities to service providers that don’t value the city or its community to focusing on our own infrastructure. We have paved the way for ADUs’ to be more affordable to build. We even produced our own set of engineered plans for free. We have allowed buildings in the commercial zone that look like homes to be converted to residential. We have allowed for vacation rentals in the downtown to be located above commercial spaces to increase housing opportunities as well as getting these spaces occupied. We have rebuilt our sewage plant and continue to add improvements. We have added water storage and a desal plant to help with water resilience. We brought back the imo failed food truck ordinance and made it workable. We have help provide 63 units of low income housing and are nowshifting ourfocus to workforce housing via a CLT. We changed our plans of streets and alleys every year to streets one year and alleys the next in order to get more done. We have adopted a balanced budget each of the last five years. Not done previous to my tenure. We secured a million dollars from Measure B to provide a crisis respite in town. Which we hope to have up and running soon. We have secured a grant to allow two social workers in our police department to help with that clientele and hopefully keep them out of crisis. We took on the EWS this year and proved it can be done correctly and with minimal problems. Directing almost all the funds directly to the clients. We started a homeward-bound program that allows us to get transients home that our stuck here and can relocate to an area with more services. Which has been extremely successful. We have gone from an imo troubled PD that struggled to maintain officers to a leadership that has brought us back to almost full staff. Just recently we voted no to a water rate increase to the users. We have held meeting with the downtown businesses to address their issues. We have brought the Hospitality House into compliance with their use permit and forced them to be better neighbors. We just recently applied and received a grant that helped fund two new all-weather soccer fields at the city park. We have taken an active role in gang prevention after a few dangerous years.
These are some of the positives that I have had a hand in. Some will call these “Pet Projects” of mine but they are all issues that I ran on and the community was asking for. As far as dissolution, that question has already been asked and answered. Not arrogance just a concern. Why be afraid of information. BTW the city does not play a role with the MCHCD nor do we get to vote on dissolution.
So are we better than 10 years ago? I say yes or at least headed in the right direction. Great, no, not there yet. Lastly, let me turn this question back to you. What have you done for your community and how?
ESCALATION-CREEP. Putin said last week that Russia will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against any country that tries to “interfere” in the war in Ukraine or threaten Russia itself. Since many countries are interfering by supplying Ukraine with weapons, and since there have been at least two fairly major attacks on oil and arms facilities inside Russia, the Boonville Global Affairs Desk worries that Putin is close to going off as he's threatened.
INCIVILITY seems to have overtaken civility, or what's left of it. Step into public spaces from Boonville to San Francisco and here they are, the wild things, your fellow citizens doing stuff in public places that used to be unheard of, adult men and women offhandedly throwing the f-bomb around and the “music” blasted out by the many mobile cretins who sound-attack everyone as they drive past. Which is the least of it.
IN RECENT DAYS, the Press Democrat has run stories about Little League umpires, mostly high school kids, being verbally abused by the parents of Little Leaguers. And then there's this guy, versions of whom are popping up everywhere in the country.
SHELBY PRYOR, an anti-vaxxer, shows up at SoCo supervisor meetings to present his learning-impervious vaxx views to people who have no option but to endure him. But last week, Pryor, a man with the big muscles that dumb guys get out of bottles not work, shouted at the chairman of the board, a wine and cheese lib named Gore, “Gore, Gore, come out here and fight me. Bring your fists, I’ll take you down. Bring a gun if you want … Oh, yeah, I know how to use guns better than you, too, and will take you out. … I’m going to get you. I will follow you around everywhere you go… You better be ready.” Included in the deluge of threats were vile insults aimed at Gore's wife.
THE OAF has since apologized, kind of, as Gore and the SoCo supes scramble for restraining orders which, as we know from the daily news, do nothing to restrain the unhinged, and the libs wonder why Americans are arming up?
A HOT LOCAL NEWS ITEM that should get a lot of attention is that the MCCSD (Mendocino City Community Services District) has lost all its appeals and are now required to pay Mr. Gomes his legal fees with 7% interest. Gomes showed that the MCCSD's Groundwater Management Plan was illegal. Partial payment of $150,000 was approved at the last MCCSD Board meeting. The actual number is to be released at the next meeting. This has also likely cost hundreds of thousands that the MCCSD has spent on legal fees. The entire mess is likely around $400,000. This is an outrage. The ratepayers within the MCCSD may be on the hook for this. There is a LOT more to this story and it needs exposure. (via Mendocino News Plus)
MATT TAIBBI: “I wrote then that press people in particular were making a huge mistake in cheering the end of the old litigation-based method for dealing with things like Jones’s Sandy Hook reporting, and turning authority over to faceless groups of executives working behind the scenes with legislators to fulfill a vague mission of preventing the ‘foment of discord.’ When Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said deleting Jones was only a ‘good first step,’ I thought that should have been a clue even to the densest media critic that much more radical changes were coming that may not work out as they expect.”
AS A GUY only vaguely aware of Twitter and no intention of ever using it, I'm still happy that Musk has liberated it from committees of blue noses and their pious algorithms. Let 'er rip, I say. The legions of the woke are much more dangerous than the foul talk and opinions they think they're eliminating by excluding it. Bottom line: The woke don't trust people to sort things out for themselves, and the woke, much as the would-be power trippers desire control of opinion, certainly can't be trusted to decide what can or cannot be expressed by the rest of us.
I ALSO liked Musk's joke that he was going to buy Coca Cola and put the cocaine back in it. He'd sell more Coca-Cola than Teslas if he did. (I better say here that I'm not an admirer of Musk for all the reasons the woke would approve of.)
ALONG WITH EVERYTHING ELSE gone terribly wrong in this country, our celebrities are more comprehensively awful than ever. But contemporary celebs, along with political figures, who are also more offensive than they've ever been, are force fed to us by media, even media one would think wouldn't stoop so low. Madeline Albright and Johnny Depp dominated last Wednesday's tv news, and even the BBC news, which usually doesn't descend so low as to cover the affairs of people like the depraved Depp and his demented ex-wife felt the BBC's upmarket audience would be interested. Albright's sendoff, though, was media-unavoidable given her major role in the destruction of the Middle East. At least she got a line-up of eulogists she deserved — Hillary and Bill and Biden — right there three harbingers of national doom lamenting the loss of another moral monster.
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN, MENDOCINO WOMEN'S POLITICAL COALITION, UKIAH DAILY JOURNAL CANDIDATE FORUM Monday, May 9, 2022 6:00 p.m. In preparation for the June 7, primary election, the Mendocino Women's Political Caucus, the American Association of University Women, and the Ukiah Daily Journal will host a CANDIDATE FORUM on Monday, May 9, 2022 in the UKIAH CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS located at 300 Seminary Avenue in Ukiah. The forum will begin at 6 p.m. This forum will present the candidates for the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors,District 5, The Mendocino County School Superintendent and Katrina Bartolomie and David Eyster, unopposed candidate for county-wide office.
JUDGE TOSSES CANNABIS GROWERS’ CLAIMS OF MENDOCINO COUNTY SHAKEDOWN CONSPIRACY
Attorneys for the grower plaintiffs had argued they've got more evidence to show and urged the judge to keep their case alive.
courthousenews.com/cannabis-growers-say-they-can-prove-mendocino-county-shakedown-conspiracy/
FORMER SUPERVISOR JOHN MCCOWEN comments on the Federal Judge’s ruling:
“As Judge Illston noted, ‘The allegations, though lengthy and quite interesting, are speculative and conclusory and just don't amount to a RICO [Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization) claim.’ In other words, it's really hard to win a case when you have no evidence to support your claims.”
THIS WEEK’S LETTER TO “TERRY,” purportedly is speaking for “retired employees of MCOE.” It is passed along as if it's truthful by Nicole Glentzer, candidate for County Superintendent of Schools:
Dear Terry,
We are writing today with an important personal message about the future of the Mendocino County schools and ask you for your help.
As retired employees of the Mendocino Office of Education we know firsthand that who holds the office of Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools has an enormous impact on every school district and charter school in Mendocino County.
We also know that the last four years have been especially packed with challenges: fires, floods, staffing shortages, and covid-19 adaptations.
These have been monumental hurdles for our schools and they need support. Unfortunately, the current County Superintendent has been unable to adequately provide that support.
When our schools needed developed covid protocols to safely reopen for in person learning, the County Superintendent was not prepared to offer support. School leaders were left to fend for themselves. School districts in other counties were able to rely upon their County Superintendent for timely information and templates. Schools in Mendocino County did not receive this support.
The simple truth is that we need new leadership at Mendocino County Office of education and Nicole Glentzer is right for the job. Nicole's experience as a paraprofessional, teacher, coach, administrator, and parent gives her the insight that is necessary to understand our challenges and she has a proven track record of working collaboratively with the unions, parents, students, administrators, and state leaders.
Through her 26-year career in education, Nicole Glentzer has built trusting relationships and worked collaboratively to overcome challenges. We need a county leader who will build bridges, not walls.
ED NOTE: Another straight-up lie from the candidate who, one would expect from a school leader, would have at least a plausible regard for the truth. Superintendent Hutchins has replied previously to this libel circulated by Mrs. Glentzer, and we re-print Ms. Hutchins’ reply a second time here:
Incumbent Superintendent Michelle Hutchins Responds:
"…The number of meetings I organized shows she is mistaken. During the first two months of the pandemic, I facilitated meetings between school personnel and the county public health office every day for the first two months. Afterwards, I facilitated a weekly meeting, totaling 125 meetings in all. Additionally, the school superintendents who support my opponent wanted to exclude charter and private schools from these meetings. But I refused; every student needs to be represented, and every student needs to be safe.
With rapidly changing direction from the State of California, sometimes daily, I sent out over 195 emails explaining these changes to district personnel. I received countless accolades from teachers, staff, and superintendents for the speed of information they received, from me, to protect our children. My office also delivered over 45 tons of protective equipment to our schools in 2020.
In collaboration with their community, parents, and unions, I insisted that every school develop a plan to meet the state requirements, knowing that each school district had unique needs.
My office also provided material resources to support schools in reopening to in-person learning, and it is well documented through newspaper articles and KZYX radio shows.
My opponent’s claims that districts had to go outside or around Mendocino County Office of Education (MCOE) to get the services they needed is a complete misrepresentation of what is actually a very strong relationship with neighboring counties for bettering the environment for all our students. Contrary to her claim, MCOE supported 37 local educational agencies and received compliments from the State as well as local public health for our level of support and collaboration with schools.
My opponent is either ignorant of what a County Superintendent does or is deliberately exploiting everyone's frustration with the pandemic to advance her campaign. Sadly, this only insults and hurts the hard-working people at MCOE.
Although I am elected official, I am not a “politician.” In fact, it would be improper for me to solicit endorsements from people who work for the districts and whose paychecks I write. I have, however, been endorsed by Sen. Mike McGuire, Assembly Member James Wood, and the unprecedented endorsement by every independently elected member of the County Board of Education and a growing number of prominent community members."
IT LOOKS LIKE CHESA BOUDIN will be recalled as San Francisco's DA, which will be quite remarkable when even the libs feel so menaced by the growing disorder that they remove a liberal prosecutor like Boudin from office. Not to be too cynical about it, but make Robespierre the prosecutor with Madame Dafarge and ten guillotines chopping heads in Union Square and there would be no diminution in crime. Crime is what happens when people don't have the money for food, shelter and NetFlix. I'm surprised there isn't more crime. Boudin is doing an impossible job in an impossible time.
THE COUNTY has received $16.8 million that's supposed to go to people and small businesses who took big hits during the pandemic. No surprise to the 15 people who closely follow the supervisors — on big audience days 25 citizens may zoom in for a few minutes to witness supervisor incompetence — but almost $400,000 of that money was used for the “security” re-model of the Supe's chambers, that expenditure including seven metal detectors. And no one, except maybe Kathy Wylie who runs interference for the Supes and the CEO's office as foreman of the Grand Jury, noted that Supervisor Williams would like to plop the bulk of the covid relief money into the county's general fund because there is suddenly a budget deficit. But, but, but… Didn't CEO Angelo say just before she retired that her savvy fiscal management had stashed $20 mil in cash reserves? So why not move some of that reserve into the general fund? In any case, nobody knows the true state of the county budget because county accounting is so loosey-goosey true figures can't be known.
BIDEN’S “Disinformation Governance Board” is not the bad joke it seems, and neither is the crackpot the Biden admin has installed as the board's chief, announcing that Nina Jankowicz is a “Russia expert” and “an expert on online disinformation,” having characterized Hunter Biden's laptop as a Russian plant and that the Steele Dossier proved Trump was a Russian agent. We laugh at the Republicans as a nest of cranks and nuts, but the Democrats, these days, are running neck and neck with them in the Nutpie Sweepstakes.
ADAM SCHIFF was on tv every night for a year claiming the reality of RussiaGate, which then disappeared from his and the nation's agenda with no apology from Schiff for a year's worth of accusing Trump of treason, as if there aren't a zillion real crimes Trump is guilty of.
ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] That’s what wrong with most people who suffer from emotional problems: They have no real problems.
Thomas Merton’s thoughts on this have resonated with me over the course of many years. He said that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer from inconsequential things, until you are made miserable over miniscule or even imaginary troubles.
It would do the “woke” a world of good to be dropped off in the wilderness with nothing but a pocket knife, and left there for a few years.
Of course they may soon have to face what is in many ways a worse situation: living in the new America without money–that is, without a working monetary system. Such an America will be a very dangerous place.
[2] It’s hard to believe that any reasonably intelligent person cannot draw a dotted line from the escalation of events from 2004 forward, but I guess it gives too much credit to the theory that most people are reasonably intelligent. In fact they are not. And even if they have the mental capacity they are consumed with the adventures of the Kardashians, the terrible comic book cartoon characters displayed in all the movie theatres, and engaged in the pursuit of modern day asset accumulation absent of anything that nourishes the soul or intellect.
[3] HEALTHCARE ON THE NORTHCOAST: Get a referral anyway you can to where the specialists are- UCSF is the closest here. Period. Open Door might accommodate. A referral to the local “specialists” is a crap shoot where the odds don’t favor the player. I was lucky to find a recently arrived doctor to do that but like so many good ones, he only stayed a couple of years. Make a friend of a local nurse of medical assistant so you sign up with a new doctor the day they arrive. Otherwise you’re stuck. It doesn’t matter whether you have good insurance or not. They do what the ACA and/or Medicare Boards advise and nothing more, even if it is useless. Eventually they decide it’s all in your head anyway.
Why cash doesn’t work? I offered that to an out of area specialist when I was sick and basically it was no referral, no appointment. Because it turned out that Medicare rules covered them even though I wasn’t on Medicare. Those rules in essence say that they cannot treat patients differently if they have even one Medicare patient they expect to bill. With Medicare it’s all or nothing and few doctors can afford nothing. And Medicare shapes the whole system- private insurance or government. Even though I had a doctor, he just kept shining me on with setting up test after test locally or referrals to local specialists who accomplished nothing. When I finally got referral to UCSF, one visit got me set up for the right test, the test lead to a surgery and within three months, I recovered. After more than 10 years of local failure. I know it seems like an unreasonable burden but there is really no alternative. The kind of insurance you have makes no difference even if some if commenters here think it’s all capitalist greed.”
[4] They don’t do wars like they used to anymore. Not the least of which, nobody’s actually used the word “war” yet, at least officially. Of course the US kind of rendered that word meaningless in the last half of the 20th century, with nary an official Declaration of War in any of our foreign adventures. I think the pols got wise and figured out if they said “war,” people would get upset. But if they used nice words like “liberation,” “special operation,” or the all-time best: “peacekeeping operation,” everyone would go back to work and ignore it, content in the act that it was just something that “needed to be done.”
[5] I for one am looking forward to the ‘The White House Correspondents Dinner’ on Sat. nite. Word is Kim Kardashian will be in attendance this year! Sure it’s a big Hollywood Showbiz — MSM — Lefty Pol Circle Jerk, and at a time when the international order is collapsing and the Proles out in Dirt Land can’t afford a tank of gas for their car, but so what? The dinner entree’ will be delicious, the Champagne cold … plenty of yuks will be had, lots of mutual ass kissing and back slapping amongst these American elites. Yesterday in a speech Putin stated “We will not permit NATO occupation in what is part of historical Russia”, which seems like the crux of the whole war. Putin also threatened nuclear annihilation for any NATO country directly interfering with Russian activity in Ukraine; that ought to get a good laugh out of the luminaries at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
[6] It’s entropy made visible. Most new schools going up look more like minimum security prisons than anything else. No trees, windows that open, no attempt at charm or warmth. But most of the kids come from the suburbs that mirror this soulless, antisocial (as in it’s difficult to know your neighbors, not in the criminal sense) and treeless environment.
[7] Free speech is free speech. And social media has nothing to do with that. “Free speech” is not social media’s product; user data sold to advertisers is the product. Contrary to Elon Musk’s claims, Twitter is not a “town square” and social media in general is a horrible format for debating issues vital to humanity’s future. One of the biggest mistakes our “leaders” have made over the last decade is to use social media as a proxy for the electorate, apparently assuming that it accurately reflects the electorate. But it doesn’t. It reflects the talking points of the loudest and most persistent yellers and those with the most “followers”. Most Americans aren’t even on Twitter. Social media is not democratic, never has been, and probably never will be. This argument that it has anything to do with free speech is a big fat red herring.
[8] THE TRUE STATE of county functioning: “People are leaving County jobs because the pay sucks. There’s only five steps that you can have a raise so after you’re there 5 years you’re Tapped Out. The wages of neighboring counties are much higher. A lot of folks work in those neighboring counties than live in Mendocino. For the staff that stay on especially in CPS having to work 12 or more hour days while also trying to care for your own family is not sustainable. With the staff shortages there’s a lot of overtime. Several year backlog on data entry. Go figure.”
[9] Here’s the latest from my “Dumb Government” file:
My wife’s driver’s license expired and she went to get it renewed. It was, but now they give you a piece of paper with your picture on it instead of a real license that acts as an acceptable ID, and you have to wait 7-10 days for the real one to be received in the mail. She got an email from the DMV saying they couldn’t mail the real ID until they got her original social security card. My wife’s ss card, which was issued over 60 years ago, has been lost for a long time. My wife, being a smartie, had made a photocopy of it before she lost the original. This was what she used as an ID to get her license renewal.
Unfortunately, the gov’t won’t accept a photocopy – she needs a so-called original.
So now she has to drive to a social security office to get a real copy. Unfortunately, she can’t get one because they need to see her original driver’s license!!!!! The other acceptable ID is an active passport. But her passport expired last year. Why renew it with the state of the world the way it is? What, we had to cancel our plans for a nice vacation in Ukraine? Now, do we have to reapply for a new passport so we can get an ID driver’s license? But she doesn’t have an acceptable driver’s license to use as an ID for a passport application.
Now if I were a different person I’d be tearing my hair out, but I think this is so ridiculous that I just have to laugh. We’ll get it all straightened out, but really!!
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