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Mendocino County Today: May 10, 2013

DOGGED INVESTIGATIONS by Frank Hartzell of the Fort Bragg Advocate reveal that a mega-bucks Florida man named Jeff Greene has bought and will re-open the Heritage House, the once glorious inn just south of Mendocino. In anticipation of his restoration effort, Greene has purchased a liquor license owned by the Carvajal family of Point Arena who’d operated the Arena Cove Bar and Grill down in the Point Arena Pier area.

ACCORDING TO HARTZELL, “parties unknown paid $8 million for six parcels of Heritage House property on March 27, 2012, county records say, then another $470,000 to add a new parcel next door.” Those parties unknown seem to consist solely of Greene. According to its website, Heritage House will reopen this summer.

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Jodean MayberryJODEAN ‘JOE’ MAYBERRY, former Fort Bragg Police chief, has died at the age of 85. He went to his heavenly home on May 5, 2013, while surrounded by all of his family. Born in Acme, Texas, Mayberry grew up in Willows and returned to Willows when he retired as Fort Bragg’s Chief of Police. His son, Scott Mayberry, has succeeded his father as the town’s Police Chief.

MAYBERRY never got the credit he deserved for his department’s excellent work on the Fort Bragg Fires of 1987, during which, in one spectacular night of brazen arsons, the Piedmont Hotel, Ten Mile Justice Court and the Fort Bragg Library went up in flames. There were several related fires prior to these, which also were never solved. Mayberry’s officers knew within days who’d set the fires, and they knew the logistics man for the arsons, and they knew in whose interests the fires were probably set. A small army of FBI and the ATF agents soon shouldered aside the local cops who’d done the basic work on the case, which, as we know, died with then-DA Susan Massini who failed to prosecute the responsibles before the statute of limitations ran out, and never did seem inclined to go after them.

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OTHER UNPROSECUTED Mendo crimes include the murders of Ukiah’s Susan Keegan and Fort Bragg’s Katlyn Long, and the car bombing of the late Judi Bari, an attack that abbreviated Bari’s life. Keegan’s death has been officially declared a homicide, and it occurred with one other person in the home at the time — Dr. Keegan. Katlyn Long’s killer, a well-connected young Fort Bragg man named Matson has not only not been arrested, let alone charged, he’s never even been questioned by the police. The Bari case can be resolved by existing dna evidence but local, oblivious from the beginnings of the 1990 event, and federal authorities, specifically the FBI, announced years ago that since “no one” would talk to them, they were giving up. The primary suspect in the attack on Bari remains Mike Sweeney, a self-reinvented Maoist now functioning as the top garbage bureaucrat in Mendocino County where everyone is whatever they say they are, and history starts all over again every morning.

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MENDOCINO COUNTY’S AIDS/Viral Hepatitis Network says about 1 in 12 residents of the County suffer from infectious Hepatitis C, which is ordinarily transmitted blood-to-blood by needle sharing among dopers. If that statistic is true, Mendocino County has just about the highest Hep C infection rate in the state.

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Miller
Miller

A HUGE MANHUNT has commenced on the Lost Coast near Petrolia for Shane Miller, 45, of Shingletown, Shasta County. Miller shot and killed his wife and two little girls on Tuesday and fled west to the Mattole Valley where his Dodge truck has been discovered. The fugitive apparently is familiar with the Lost Coast from his days as a marijuana producer. As of Thursday afternoon, residents of the Mattole have been advised to stay in their homes with their doors locked.

Humboldt County Sheriff Mike Downey told the Lost Coast Outpost that his department, local police departments, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, and representatives from the US Marshal’s Service from the North Coast and Sacramento offices held a 6am meeting at the Calfire office in Fortuna to plan the hunt for Miller. Downey said that the Mendocino County manhunt for suspected killer Aaron Bassler, back in 2011, is very much on his mind. In each case, the suspect — assumed to be armed and very dangerous — was intimately familiar with the backwoods in which he took shelter. However, Downey said the mostly uninhabited Lost Coast is much larger than the Jackson State Forest region where Bassler eluded police for a month.

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MORON ALERT! An AP story claims there is growing concern among health professionals that Whip-Its -- small canisters filled with nitrous oxide (intended as whip cream canister refills) that can be used as a recreational drug and were reportedly used by Demi Moore shortly before she was rushed to the hospital in January -- are making a comeback among teenagers and young adults across the country. "What makes them really popular is they're easily accessible," said William Oswald, founder of the Summit Malibu drug treatment center. "You can get them at a head shop, you can get it out of a whipped cream bottle."

SURE ENOUGH, right here in Ukiah…

Northrup
Northrup

On April 25th at about 5:30 PM Ukiah Police Officers were conducting patrol in the WalMart parking lot, 1155 Airport Park Boulevard, due to repeated problems with subjects drinking alcohol, fighting, panhandling, and failing to properly control their animals. An officer observed 23 year old Amanda Theresa Northrup, of Grass Valley, standing in the open driver’s door of her parked vehicle. There were several subjects standing and seated in the vicinity, and there was a “boom box” playing loud music atop the vehicle. Upon seeing the approaching officer, Northrup quickly placed something onto the driver’s seat of the vehicle, closed the door and stepped away slightly. Suspecting Northrup had tried to conceal something the officer looked into the vehicle and saw an open box of nitrous oxide containers, known as “whip-its”, on the seat and a device used for inhaling the gas, known as a “cracker”. Because there was a vicious dog inside the vehicle the officer asked Northrup to retrieve items, which she did. The officer determined there was a balloon connected to the cracker, and that some of the subjects in the vicinity had been openly inhaling nitrous oxide gas from the “whip-its” to experience a temporary “high”. Northrup was arrested for possessing nitrous oxide gas with the intent to inhale. (Ukiah Police Department Press Release)

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MonicaValdezMS. VALDEZ has been arrested in Ukiah for assault on her sig other. Her height, we note, is listed as 2 feet and an inch which, if it isn't a typo, means our Mendo Man Beaters are getting smaller and our wimps are getting bigger.

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THIS VERY FUNNY EXCHANGE was reported in a recent New Yorker story about a man who claims to be the world’s best backgammon player who goes by the nickname “Falafel.”

Falafel said, “You know, I’m the No. 1 backgammon player in the world.” He glanced at a card. (He was playing poker.) “None of you could beat me.”

A skeptical player wearing a Miami Dolphins cap picked up his smartphone to verify. To his left, another old man asked, “Is it in the Google?”

“I’m checking,” the skeptic replied. “I’m just getting a lot of restaurants.”

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: “The medley of voices on the internet has dented monopoly media power, though the same monopolies are now consuming the web. ‘Social media’ are largely introverted, a look-at-me peep show for the digitally besotted.” — John Pilger

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ELIZABETH WARREN: Give Students the Same Deal As Big Banks. By Katie Davidson

Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced her first standalone piece of legislation Wednesday, calling for the government to give student borrowers the same deal it gives big banks when they need a loan.

The measure would allow students who are eligible for federally subsidized Stafford loans to borrow at the same rate that banks get from the Federal Reserve when they need a short-term infusion of cash from the central bank’s discount window.

"If the Federal Reserve can float trillions of dollars to large financial institutions at low interest rates to grow the economy, surely they can float the Department of Education the money to fund our students, keep us competitive, and grow our middle class," Warren (D-Mass.) said on the floor of the Senate Wednesday.

Warren is a leading critic of Wall Street banks and the freshman senator’s floor speech Wednesday showed she is looking to highlight government support for the banking industry to make the case for her other policy priorities.

The proposal drew some blowback from the banking industry.

Patrick Sims, a director in policy research at Hamilton Place Strategies, argued a short-term loan from the discount window during a time of crisis is not at all comparable to a long-term student loan.

While some people have called for higher rates or penalty rates for banks that access the discount window, the point of the funding is to prevent a liquidity crisis and is not how banks fund themselves over time, Sims said.

"Using something completely unrelated and feeding into populist animosity toward large banks to increase the sympathy for the student loan body or students in general, it just kind of sounds like a weird way to legislate," Sims said. "I don’t know if it necessarily helps our student loan situation in the United States today."

Under Warren’s proposal, the Fed would make funds available to the Education Department for one year to make loans to students at the same rate offered to large banks.

The bill would give students relief from high interest rates while giving Congress time to find a long-term solution to the increasing costs of Stafford loans, Warren said.

She noted that large banks can currently borrow from the Fed’s discount window at a rate of about 0.75 percent, but if the rate for new Stafford loans increases — as it is set to do on July 1 — a student borrower seeking a loan this summer will pay almost 7 percent.

"In other words, the federal government is going to charge students interest rates that are nine times higher than the rates for the biggest banks — the same banks that destroyed millions of jobs and nearly broke this economy," she said. "That isn’t right."

This is only the second time Warren has delivered a Senate floor speech. The first was just a few weeks ago, when she spoke about the bombings at the Boston Marathon.

The CFPB, Warren’s brainchild, is scheduled to hold a field hearing on student loans later today.

The bureau said last year that student loan debt had topped $1 trillion, and it has warned about the ripple effects on the economy if those borrowers are unable to buy a home or save for retirement.

Warren also noted the "serious risk to the recovery" that student debt poses, and said students are just as important to economic growth as big banks.

Warren dismissed the idea that the bill would be too expensive. The federal government earns 36 cents in profit on every dollar it lends to students, she said, which will bring in a total of $34 billion next year.

"We shouldn’t be profiting from our students who are drowning in debt while we’re giving great deals to big banks," she said. (Courtesy, Politico.com)

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MY GARDEN 2013 Fundraiser-Live Auction Sneak Peak

My Garden 2013. Saturday. May 25th. 2013 ~ 4pm.

The featured speaker will be Kate Frey, Mendocino’s resident world class garden designer, specializing in sustainable, bio-diverse, ecological gardens and landscaping. Kate won the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show in London, receiving gold medals in 2005, 2007 and receiving a Silver Gilt in 2003. In 2009 she was invited to participate in the World Garden Competition in Hamamatsu, Japan, and in 2011 she participated in Malaysia’s Floria Flower Show. Kate also consults and works part time in Saudi Arabia on a small, organic farm near Riyadh for one of the Saudi Princes.

* gourmet farm-to-table sit down dinner

* specially crafted beer from North Coast Brewing Company

* award winning wines from Yorkville Cellars

* live auction of brilliantly hand crafted one-of-a-kind: garden items built exclusively for My Garden 2013 by Mendocino County craftsmen.

Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, 18220 N. Highway 1 . Fort Bragg . ca 95437. preview auction items & purchase tickets at www.gardenbythesea.org

(http://gardenbythesea.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=47f057ea8c09e1519b2e52094&id=410402091c&e=85053924b3)

(http://gardenbythesea.us6.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=47f057ea8c09e1519b2e52094&id=46fd6486dd&e=85053924b3)

Limited Seating Available.

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