Mendocino County Today: January 31, 2013

A UKIAH MAN arrested when 19 guns and a bomb were discovered in his home, was arraigned Friday on an array of charges. DA Spokesman Mike Geniella said Wesley Shultz, 43, pleaded not guilty January 25 before Judge Richard Henderson to charges that he was armed with a concealed weapon while being under the influence of a controlled substance, and that he allegedly possessed a bomb and silencers. According to the Ukiah Police Department, officers were serving an arrest warrant in the 200 block of Cherry Street shortly before 8pm on January 15 when they were contacted by another man who appeared to be under the influence of a controlled substance. The man, identified as Shultz, reportedly had a loaded, .45 caliber handgun concealed on his person and was arrested on suspicion of being armed while under the influence of a controlled substance. The Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force and UPD detectives responded to assist with the investigation and subsequent search of Shultz's home, where officers reportedly found 19 firearms, an improvised explosive device and homemade gun silencers. Shultz was booked into Mendocino County Jail under $50,000 bail. According to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, Shultz is no longer in custody.

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THE ART OF DISAPPEARING

When they say Don't I know you?

say no.

When they invite you to the party

remember what parties are like

before answering.

Someone telling you in a loud voice

they once wrote a poem.

Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.

Then reply.

If they say We should get together

say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.

You're trying to remember something

too important to forget.

Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.

Tell them you have a new project.

It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store

nod briefly and become a cabbage.

When someone you haven't seen in ten years

appears at the door,

don't start singing him all your new songs.

You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.

Know you could tumble any second.

Then decide what to do with your time.

— Naomi Shihab Nye

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THE CALIFORNIA Department of Justice says 19,784 registered gun owners are listed in its “armed prohibited persons system,” meaning that these people have committed felony-quality crimes that should prevent them from possessing guns. These “armed prohibited persons” own 39,000 handguns and more than 1,600 assault weapons. Assault weapons are banned in California, but people who purchased them before the ban can legally own them. California has this DOJ system to cross-check registered gun owners with offenses that result in a prohibition on ownership, but it does not have the manpower to keep up with the rapidly expanding list, which grows by about 3,000 people per year, according to Stephen Lindley, chief of the bureau of firearms within the state Department of Justice.

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REPUBLICANS and the NRA’s LaPierre recently stated: “We have no national database of these lunatics.” The NRA has opposed the creation of a national gun sales database for many years. The NRA and the gun industry got their Republican gofers to pass a law that makes it illegal for the ATF to create such a database. What's the point of keeping track of people with mental illnesses if you can't know that they own a gun or 100 guns? A reader points out: “James Holmes who committed the mass murder in the Aurora theater, had been in therapy. His interactions with his therapist had set off major red flags and she had reported her concerns to her superiors, but nobody knew about his guns. So even if they'd forwarded her report to ‘government authorities,’ and even if he'd been added to such a database, it wouldn't have done any good because his therapists didn't know, and ‘the authorities’ couldn't have known about the firearms he'd already purchased, or that he'd recently purchased 6,000 rounds of ammunition online. It's wildly hypocritical for the NRA and the GOP to pretend that they care about public safety when they willfully obstruct the creation of the most useful tool law enforcement authorities could have in identifying criminals and crazies who illegally purchase/possess guns: a national gun sales database. It's not about the Second Amendment. It's about the profits of the gun mongers, same as it ever was. But now two-thirds of the American public support the creation of the registry. Let's see how the NRA and the GOP try to weasel their way out of it this time around.”

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AIRPORT SCREENING RESULTS

The Transportation Security Administration recently disclosed the official Airport Screening Results

October 2012 Statistics On Airport Screening

From The Department Of Homeland Security:

Terrorists Discovered: 0

Transvestites: 133

Hernias: 1,485

Hemorrhoid Cases: 3,172

Enlarged Prostates: 8,249

Breast Implants: 59,350

Natural Blondes: 3

It was also discovered that 535 members of Congress had no balls.

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MOSS HENRY of Santa Rosa writes: “John Kiriakou, former CIA officer and whistle-blower, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison. In 2007, he confirmed the use of waterboarding and described it as torture. He joins Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning and many others pursued by the government in an effort to intimidate those with access to ‘secrets’ from releasing them. When President Obama was campaigning, he indicated he would support whistleblowers. Now, in power, he doesn't, though whistleblowers are supposedly protected by the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989. Hypocrisy is an equal-opportunity pastime. And no one involved with torturing detainees has been sent to prison. What a surprise. For a democracy to function, citizens need to know what's really happening. And we don't.”

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THE MENDOCINO COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT announced Wednesday that a woman smoking a cigarette outside her home in Gualala suffered a severe eye injury when she was struck by shotgun pellets fired in the direction of the home. A description of the car from which the shotgun was fired led Sonoma County deputies to the Kashia reservation at Stewarts Point where they arrested Lamont Salgado, 18, and Christopher Ochoa, 21, and took a .20-gauge shotgun from them. The 39-year-old victim was flown to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and has not been identified. She'd been standing outside the home a little after 10pm when a white car passed by and someone fired four to five shotgun rounds in her direction. Salgado and Ochoa were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy and booked into the Mendocino County Jail.

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VERBAL TICS and Political Routines. By Norman Solomon

A lot of what we say and do becomes habit-forming. Groundhog Day 2013 could serve as a reminder that some political habits should be kicked. Here are a few:

• “Defense budget” — No, it’s not a defense budget. It’s a military budget. But countless people and organizations keep saying they want to cut “the defense budget” or reduce “defense spending.” Anyone who wants to challenge the warfare state should dispense with this misnomer. We don’t object to “defense” — what we do oppose, vehemently, is military spending that has nothing to do with real defense and everything to do with killing people, enforcing geopolitical control and making vast profits for military contractors. And no, they’re not “defense contractors.” President Eisenhower’s farewell address didn’t warn against a “defense-industrial complex.” The fact that there’s something officially called the Department of Defense — formerly the Department of War, until 1947 — doesn’t make its huge budget a “defense budget,” any more than renaming the Bureau of Prisons “the Bureau of Love” would mean we should talk about wanting to cut the “love budget.”

• “Pro-life” — Last week, midway through a heated debate on the PBS “NewsHour,” the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America said that some politicians get elected while hiding their extreme anti-abortion positions — but would be rejected at the ballot box “if they ran on their pro-life values.” “Pro-life” values? Not a label that abortion-rights advocates should use for opponents of a woman’s right to choose an abortion. One of the main reasons those opponents keep calling themselves “pro-life” is they want to imply that supporters of abortion rights are anti-life. Why help?

• “Globalization” — In many realms, globalization can be positive, even essential. For instance, wonderful results flow from globalizing solidarity among workers around the world. Likewise, the planetary spread of awareness and cooperation among people taking action to protect the environment, stop human-rights abuses and end war. Corporate globalization is another matter. Its destructive effects are lashing every continent with voracious commercialization along with exploitive races to the bottom for cheap labor, extraction of raw materials, privatization, flattening of protective tariffs, overriding of national laws that protect workers and replacement of democratic possibilities with the rule of big money. Putting “corporate” before “globalization” may seem cumbersome, but it’s worth another three syllables. There’s a world of difference between globalization for human cooperation and corporate globalization. Blurring it all together misses the chance to clarify the distinct possibilities.

• “Moderates” — 55 years ago, in his book “The Causes of World War Three,” sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote about what he called “crackpot realism” — policy nostrums widely touted by mass media outlets and other powerful institutions as wisely reasonable, yet actually disastrous. In a similar groove, these days, we hear about how certain elected officials are “moderates.” And we might refer to them that way ourselves. But the grim results of crackpot moderation — climate change and environmental degradation, incessant warfare, more poverty, widening economic inequities, abuse of civil liberties and so much more — are all around us. So-called “moderates” fuel the infernos of catastrophe. What’s moderate about the extreme injustices and destructiveness of the status quo?

• Skimming the Headlines — We all do it sometimes — glancing at headlines and scarcely reading the stories — one of the reasons why, all too often, what we think we know actually isn’t so. Case in point: a headline at the top of the New York Times front page days ago, no doubt leaving many quick readers with the belief that President Obama is getting tough on Wall Street. Well, that’s what the headline conveyed. “SIGNAL TO STREET IN OBAMA’S PICK FOR REGULATORS,” it began, followed by an elaboration in big type just below: “A Renewed Resolve to Hold Financial Firms Accountable.” Mostly focusing on the appointment of Mary Jo White to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, the article offered a fleeting indication in its eighth paragraph that the “renewed resolve” might actually be wobbly. “While Ms. White is best known as an aggressive prosecutor,” the article noted, “she also built a lucrative legal practice defending Wall Street executives, a potential concern for consumer advocates.” The basis for that potential concern, however, did not gain any further elucidation until the article’s twenty-sixth paragraph, which provided the other mention of why consumer advocates might be concerned: “Ms. White could face additional questions about her career, a revolving door in and out of government. In private practice, she defended some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former chief of Bank of America. As the head of litigation at Debevoise & Plimpton, she also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley.”

So much for headlines.

(Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.)

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ANN MAXWELL and The Mendocino Land Trust Create Gleason-Prescott Wildlife Refuge — After four years of working towards a vision, Ann Maxwell and Mendocino Land Trust have collaborated to create the Gleason-Prescott Wildlife Refuge. In the winter of 2009, Mendocino Land Trust President, Winston Bowen and Trustee, Alan Falleri met Maxwell on her property near Willits accompanied by Forester and Land Conservation Consultant Roger Sternberg and UC Cooperative Extension advisor Greg Giusti. The plan was to investigate the possibility of placing a conservation easement on her land. Bowen remembers, “It was February, and we were lucky to have good weather.” Maxwell purchased the property with the intention of protecting it and donated this conservation easement to Mendocino Land Trust in order to do so. The easement permanently prevents subdividing the land and places strict limits on any kind of development. Along with other restrictions, it enables the Trust to protect the land forever. “Early in the history of the land trust movement, it was recognized that if we want to protect plants and animals, we must protect their homes. And that is what Ann [Maxwell] has done,” said Bowen. On December 27, 2012 the Mendocino Land Trust finally closed escrow on the easement and the “Gleason-Prescott Wildlife Refuge” became a reality. The 423-acre property includes pasture lands, forest and old structures remaining from its sheep ranch days. About 120 acres of the property is mixed conifer trees and approximately 250 acres are oak woodlands along with grassy rolling hills studded with some massive older trees. Maxwell has named some of the more magnificent trees. One is called “Mother Superior” and she enjoys showing it to visitors. “Her enthusiasm for the natural world and this piece of it in particular is infectious. Alan [Falleri] and I were both captivated by the land and by Ann's love for it,” said Bowen. Maxwell named the conservation easement the “Gleason-Prescott Wildlife Refuge” after her step-father and an aunt who helped her acquire the land. It is a loving testament to them both. Thank you, Alyson Blair, Mendocino Land Trust, PO Box 1094, Mendocino, CA 95460. Phone: 707-962-0470.