Off the Record (September 20, 2023)

THE MOST DRAMATIC MOMENT at last Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting occurred when an aggrieved young woman complained she’d been mistreated by Mendo law enforcement:

“My name is Kelli Johnson. Last Tuesday I was the recipient of a free VIP tour of the brutal and inhumane conditions at the Mendocino County Jail. I got to see first-hand a litany of egregious constitutional violations. Despite committing no crime, Officer Jensen arrested me Tuesday afternoon as I was walking to the beach with nothing but the clothes on my back and a glass of water. Before I could even take a sip, Officer Jensen snatched the glass from my hand and smashed it into the street. He then shoved me into the back of a police car and I was sent on a grueling three-hour journey from this beautiful beach town to the Ukiah jail. I was severely dehydrated and begged for water. The officer steadfastly refused. He also refused to stop to let me use the bathroom. I was desperate. I had a bladder infection and I could not wait. The officer specifically instructed me to soil myself in the car. But since my hands were cuffed behind my back I had to struggle to scootch my sweatpants down inch by inch and lean my butt over the bucket seat and urinate on the floor, twice. Unfortunately, it is significantly easier to scootch down my pants than to pull them back up when your hands are handcuffed behind your back.. When we arrived at the jail my pants were still down and when the car door was opened my genitalia was exposed to half a dozen officers gathered to see the show. At this point I was having the most severe panic attack of my life. The officers chained my feet and dragged me out of the car, slamming me into a wall. The officers pinned me to the wall with brute force. Three officers. Officer Lopez twisted my wrists so hard that it almost broke. I cried and wailed but his vice grip would not release one iota. His utter lack of empathy triggered a memory of when I was the victim of a sexual assault. I begged him to stop touching me. But his supervisor said, You don't get to pick. They then dragged me down a long corridor, carrying my entire upper body by the chain of my handcuffs. The sharp edge of the cuffs buried itself into my wrist and I cried and wailed in agony. They threw me into a solitary confinement chamber with nothing but a small cup of water and a grate full of piss. They had taken my shoes. They were in the cop car. I left them there. They took my shoes. I was begging them for my shoes. I begged them for a phone call. How long was I going to be left in here? The room was, like, this big and it was all white and freezing cold. I had no shoes. I did not have my glasses. I was not even wearing underwear. I had my sweatpants and a sweatshirt and that was it. I could not even see. They left me. I was begging them. [Sighs.] Then the clock switched and it hit seven. It switched. It was like day and night. The nighttime officers came onto the scene and they took these broken shattered pieces that remained of me and swept me up, gave me a sweatshirt, they took me to the crisis clinic and they brought me back to myself. I drove here. I woke up at four in the morning to drive here from Sacramento to tell you to your face that this has to end now! It is incumbent upon you to root out this ingrained culture of toxic abuse! The Mendocino Sheriff's daytime officers do not serve and protect. They traumatize and torture. This is the most traumatic experience of my life. I beg you to fix it. I would like to request that the next meeting you have this agendized on it and I would like a list of concrete actions that you are taking to ameliorate these horrible, egregious violations of the supreme law of the land. Specifically, I would like officers Jensen and Lopez to be fired immediately. I invite you to review the surveillance footage. And I insist that you fire every officer who participated in or spectated this assault. I have a handout for you.”

Ms. Johnson got a round of applause from the Coast residents in the overcrowded church meeting room.

Board Chair Glenn McGourty's response: “Okay, so I was not expecting that.”

And then they returned to their regular programming.

KELLI JOHNSON of Sacramento was booked on September 5, 2023 at 4:02pm for “disorderly conduct-under influence of drug,.” She was released without bail on September 6 at 9:52pm. 

According to LinkedIn, Ms. Johnson is a staff attorney for the California Air Resources Board in Sacramento. 

Since she got no response from the Board, and given her reference to “the surveillance footage,” and the level of intensity of her presentation, we have probably not heard the last of Ms. Johnson. Her next steps could include filing a claim against the County, and/or filing a lawsuit. 

MS. JOHNSON, in full lawyer mode, posted a records release request on the Sheriff’ website: “Hello, I would like to request all body camera, vehicle camera, and detention facility surveillance, including accompanying or additional audio that covers the events from initial contact through to release from custody for the following case involving Mendocino County Sheriff. Additionally, I would like copies of the police report and any other investigatory documents related to the case.

Booking number 2023-00003089

Subject Number 119854

Name: Johnson, Kelli Donner

Booked 9/5/2023 4:02 PM

Bond number 2023-00002857”

SHERIFF KENDALL told Matt LaFever of Mendofever.com that “It is absolutely wrong that anyone cast judgment when they don't have both sides of the story. … We live in a time where anything that is said about law enforcement is immediately jumped on. We need to reserve judgments until we have all of the facts. … I'm absolutely appalled by the round of applause [that Ms. Johnson got from the audience after her statement to the Supervisors on the Coast], anybody who rushes to publicly make judgments against anyone, I hope they are just as eager to publicly apologize.”

THE SHERIFF’S activity log noted a disturbance a little after 9 am and again a little after 1pm at 45340 Little Lake Rd. on Sept 6. The latter resulted in a 647F arrest.

Description of that address:

Available in 2024 Luxury long term vacation rental in Mendocino Village. Remembered by many as the house in the movie Summer of 42, is a very special one of a kind unique artists home on a double lot in an unparalleled location in the Mendocino Village. This historic house is privately situated on the quiet northwest corner of town, with panoramic unobstructed views overlooking the Mendocino Headlands State Park and the Pacific Ocean.

SHERIFF KENDALL told us Friday that his office has taken Ms. Johnson’s complaint seriously and is in possession of the video and audio involved. Kendall said he’s frustrated that he can’t release the video and audio while the case is under investigation as Ms. Johnson continues with her high-visibility version of events. But Kendall said he will welcome the opportunity to release it when the time comes because it will show that the deputies involved did nothing out of line, despite the passionate presentation of Ms. Johnson before the Supervisors on Tuesday. 

Apparently, the Sheriff's Department has video from a witness who recorded the encounter between Deputy Jensen and Ms. Johnson on their cellphone. Additionally, there is audio and video from the patrol car and the jail. (Mendo deputies do not as yet have body cameras, but should be equipped with them in the near future.) 

Besides the audio and video, the Sheriff said there’s an important backstory to the incident that will also support the actions of his staff. 

There are two tracks underway which might lead to the release of the video and audio and other related evidence: 1) If/when the DA decides to file charges and the disorderly conduct charge goes to court; or, 2) If Ms. Johnson files a formal lawsuit and the evidence is provided via ordinary discovery, although in the latter case, she could choose not to disclose it. 

Meanwhile, Sheriff Kendall requests that the public hold off on drawing any premature conclusions about the case. 

(Mark Scaramella) 

RECOMMENDED READING: A fascinating history of Ukraine called Borderland, A Journey Through The History Of by Anna Reid — in which the author mentions this slogan of one of Ukraine's fascist parties: “Vote for us and you'll never have to vote again.” And if that doesn't exactly fit the Democratic Party of the gerrymandered Northcoast, I'll eat one of my tastier hats.

FROM THE AVA COMMENT LINE: “My answer to you is Joe Biden!!!! We have never seen a more corrupt Government. The Dems hate Trump so much that they used Covid to elect this horrible individual. And now we all pay. The con man’s America is a breath of fresh air compared to the hell we are currently standing in. TWK’s article speaks truth, and sometimes the truth hurts. Just look at California under the current rule. San Francisco’s beauty is gone, homeless rule the State, sanctuary cities have crime at its highest levels, illegals get better health insurance than you and I, insurance companies leaving California along with residents. But let’s keep voting this Moron in, while Dems forge a path for him to be President!!! The only thing TWK left out of his article was, you can’t fix stupid. And that’s the real truth of today’s Democratic Party.”

ED REPLY: The Democrats are mos def half the prob, and Biden is like some weird cosmic joke, but a word in favor of Frisco, my old home town. The downtown area is a national disgrace, SF City government being the equivalent in competence of Mendo’s supervisors and our lead figures. But North Beach is mercifully free of the walking wounded except for a few shuffling on through, and most neighborhoods, except for some heavy infestations in areas of the Mission, are bum and junkie-free, or are confined indoors because they live there. The problem in Frisco, as in Ukiah, as in everywhere in the land, is that well paid, deluded helping professionals, with the best of intentions perhaps, maintain a large population of dependent people upon whom the helping pros feast. These armies of helping pros are, of course, joined at their plump hips to the Democrats, for whom they vote and are a crucial electoral bloc, hence another big addition to the prevalent political entropy. Prior to the government takeover by the deluded and the corrupt, circa '67, people who were unable or unwilling to care for themselves were confined to a humane state hospital system, dismantled by the usual “bi-partisan” consensus, the same bi-partisan consensus that’s brought us into constant wars with the Arab world as the same "bipartisan" stranglehold gins up war with China and has no exit strategy from the bottomless fiscal pit of Ukraine. Republicans don't have any solutions to the slo mo implosion of the country and always make everything worse, faster. Solution? Return to Roosevelt-era taxation to pay for all the social amenities we used to have, meaning our lightly taxed ruling class would again pay at 90 percent. There would be bi-partisan opposition, of course, because the very wealthy fund both parties.

ON THE MASTHEAD of an old Fort Bragg Chronicle, c. 1913, “A Good Paper For All Good People.” There were fuzzy warms even then on the Mendocino Coast, but the booze ad from the same edition of the paper offered both relief and medical advice: “If rough strong whiskey burns your mouth, gags you when you swallow it — what will it do to the delicate lining of your stomach? Drink Cyrus Noble — mild and pure.”

WASHBURNE’S GUGGENHEIM GRANT

Good day, AVA, and readership. Flynn Washburne here. I am writing to inform of my intent to apply for a Guggenheim grant. They ask that I submit the names, email and home addresses of four persons who are “familiar with your work and to whom the Foundation may write for judgment concerning your abilities, especially in relation to your proposal.” That being essentially a more cohesive and comprehensive book-length version of my work for the AVA. So, if any of y’all would like to assist in this matter I would be very grateful and would certainly remember you in my acknowledgements. I think I’m actually ready to do this. I thank you all in advance and hope you are well and thriving. 

Please send emails to lettersandsodas77@gmail.com

Flynn Washburne

FLYNN’S brilliant and popular contributions to the AVA from 2013 to 2020 can be found at: theava.com/archives/author/flynn-washburne

THE PRAISE for the late Richard Wilson of Round Valley is well deserved. One of the big things Wilson is credited with doing is stopping the damming of the Middle Fork of the Eel thus turning Round Valley into a giant lake. Which he mostly did. A lot of people don’t know the behind the scenes assistance Wilson got from my late Uncle Joe Scaramella as recounted in Ted Simon’s fascinating book “The River Stops Here: How One Man’s Battle to Save His Valley Changed the Fate of California.” Joe Scaramella was Board chair of the Supervisors at the time and opposed the Dos Rios dam project for his own unique reasons, different from the reasons Wilson presented. But of course, the reasons for the opposition to the dam — which were many —  didn’t matter. The dam had to be stopped. Joe Scaramella always put the County’s interests first and in this case, the County’s interest was financial. If Round Valley was flooded, thousands and thousands of acres of productive — and taxable — ag and timber land would be taken off the County’s tax rolls just at a time when the state was imposing more and more tasks on counties for which funding would be needed. Soon after being elected in the early 1950s, Joe Scaramella had written the County’s first board rules, most of which are still in place to this day, so he knew them better than anyone else. In the case of the Dos Rios dam, Joe Scaramella used a variety of savvy procedural delaying tactics to slow down the local dam process and give Wilson time to organize his opposition, which ultimately worked. It happened over a period of years, not just the semi-mythical version that Wilson simply had a nice chat with his friend then-Governor Ronald Reagan and Reagan promptly nixed the idea. Without Joe Scaramella’s slow-walking the process, there’s a good chance that Wilson wouldn’t have had the time necessary to put together a compelling political and environmental coalition to get the projected halted. Joe Scaramella never expected or received the kind of praise that Wilson justifiably got for his quiet maneuvering. But without Joe Scaramella’s support, Wilson’s “One Man Battle” would have been lost before it got rolling and the beautiful Round Valley would be a lake and its dam would be defended by whatever interests would have come to depend on it to this day. (Mark Scaramella)

DEANNE RIMERMAN DISAGREES: “Sure is odd how every major forest protection lawsuit against Pacific lumber, Georgia Pacific and their ilk also named him alongside them as a defendant is now being posthumously portrayed as conservationist? Conservationists of his era never ever once mistook him for who he really was and the work he did to ensure forest protection laws were ignored or nullified under his watch. Few people have done more than him over his lifetime to destroy California’s forest ecosystem in irrevocable ways. The author of this article knows the truth of his legacy and lived through that era, yet choose to lie about what this man really did and deliberately chose to portray him as the exact opposite of who he really was.”

COULDN'T HELP but noting this startling lede over a para by Jade Tippett of Fort Bragg (I think.) “Health Care District Vice-President Advocates Closing Coast Hospital.” Tippett continues: “Had a conversation over the weekend with Mendocino Coast Health Care District Vice-President Paul Katzeff, in which Katzeff advocated closing what is now Adventist Health Mendocino Coast Hospital as a strategy for preserving the character of the Mendocino Coast. It gets worse. According to Katzeff, the climate crisis will result in an influx of ‘millionaires’ on the coast who will drive the local people out. According to Katzeff, closing the hospital would make the Mendocino Coast less attractive to rich people, preserving the existing character of the Coast. When I pointed out that closing the hospital would make expendable people on the Coast who could least afford it, and result in unnecessary deaths of people who need immediate surgical intervention in trauma cases, Katzeff suggested that 100 unnecessary deaths — his number! — would be an acceptable cost to prevent people from being driven out by an influx of the rich. I pointed out that even if they were driven out, they would still be alive. A point he conceded. My final response to Katzeff was that we have a moral responsibility to not make other people's lives expendable.”

KATZEFF in triage mode? I suspect Mr. Tippett may have taken Katzeff too literally, which wouldn't be unusual in these irony-challenged times. I remember once joking in print that I might get a tough guy of my acquaintance to do a drive-by in Elk, which sent Elk's purple population into a collective tiz, the lesson being that joking in print without a warning in big block red letters — BEWARE JOKE NEXT PARAGRAPH is guaranteed to alarm the reading-reality handicapped. 

THE FORT BRAGG coffee mogul is a nice guy, a benign guy, a humane guy who has always been on the side of the community's best interests. I can't imagine him blithely wanting to knock off anybody in the interests of down-sized medical care.

BUT TIPPETT INSISTS: “On reflection, my first reaction to Katzeff's assertion was to simply be stunned. Closing the hospital to preserve the Coastal community seems so contradictory that it borders on lunacy. Given Katzeff's faith and given the history of the Shoah, I am still horrified that he would advocate for — and put an “acceptable” number on — the unnecessary deaths that would be caused by his proposal. In hindsight, I now understand Katzeff's harassment and demands that I stop performing the duties of Treasurer while I was on the Board: paying bills, filing reports, investigating and reporting to the Board the financial complexities the District is facing, etc. Katzeff clearly wanted — still wants? — the District to collapse and the hospital to follow.”

HMMM. Close textual analysis not required. Tippett is personally angry with Katzeff, soooo…

BIDEN IMPEACHMENT? My function here is to peel back the layers encasing the big issues of the day, as I pretend to know more about them than you do, and probably less in most cases. The issue with Poor Old Joe and his scapegrace son, Hunter, boils down to this: In all sonny boy's lucrative dealings with foreign governments did Poor Old Joe get a cut? It wouldn't surprise me given the old grifter's history, but unless the Maga-brains have the evidence that POJ was getting his share of Hunter's cash-in of the noble Biden name, they've got nothing on the old boy. Biden's wayward son obviously managed to parlay the Biden brand into long layovers with crack pipes and exciting women, but unless Pop was in on Hunter's shakedowns of that Ukraine power company and some Chinese crooks, Pop is in the clear.

POJ is also kinda in the clear on runaway inflation. Biden wouldn't dare roll back then freeze escalating fuel prices, the primary driver of the inflation that's really, really, really hurting working people, most of whom are barely getting by without the inflation of the last year. But even if he or any of the Magas had the welfare of everyday Americans as first priority, because the U.S. is largely dependent for fuel on furriners, the furriners would likely cut US off entirely in retaliation for any interruption in their vast profit-taking.

CHARLES ARTIGUES (Statement to the Board of Supervisors, Tuesday, September 12, 2023): I have lived in Cleone on the coast for 21 years. I am retired. I love it here. I am here to talk about housing. We all know there is a housing shortage. I have seen the stock of available housing plummet in the last five years to the detriment of working families. In my humble opinion a major factor is the fact that our housing stock is being converted to short-term vacation rentals. This is just another form of resource extraction. Corporations and individuals come up here, buy up housing, convert it to AirBnB and take away the money. I live about a mile and a half from the ocean in the woods. But even there, the house next door to me for 28 years was lived in by three different families. Two years ago a techie from the Bay Area came up and bought the house, converted it to an AirBnB and has 3-5 families in there every month. I personally believe that there should be a total ban on short-term vacation rentals in the county. That may seem kind of harsh. But at the very least I think there should be a limit of 30 days per year for any non-owner-occupied dwelling. Don't think it can't be done. West Hollywood has a total ban on AirBnBs. Dan Gjerde, I read an article a few months ago where a journalist asked you how many AirBnBs there are in your district? You said you didn't know. If you don't know, to me you are not doing your job. I recognize that you are a short termer. Maybe you don't care. And the rest of the board, maybe you are far away and you don't care about the coast. But I am here to put Bernie [Norvell] and Georgina [?} on notice. Are you listening Bernie and Georgina wherever you are? If you want my vote next year then I think there should be some sort of plan to eliminate if impossible, or at least cut back short-term rentals in this county. No response at all from the Supervisors. 

THE AVA HAS received several communiques complaining about the editor’s remarks on the homeless. I thought I'd offered humane strategies pegged to taxing the rich at 90 percent, which was the rate of taxation when the average American was prospering and optimistic, circa 1955. But given that the oligarchy funds both political parties…..

HERE'S WHERE the AVA is coming from on the homeless issue: Persons unwilling or unable to care for themselves have no right to live on the streets; it’s cruel to them and bad for public morale because having them there ruins public space for everyone else and, inevitably, leads to very cruel solutions to the prob. Persons who incapacitate themselves via drug and drink should be confined to rehab centers until they are well again. The small minority of persons on the street because they can’t afford the extortionate rents our swinish owning classes charge for basic shelter, should be issued guns and maps to the addresses of the most ruthless landlords.

MORE BROADLY, the left, presently invisible in this country and for all practical left purposes non-existent, should aim at a basic social floor for America, consisting of a federal jobs program, housing, guaranteed annual wage, free education as far as Big Bird can fly you, medical care, and livable pensions for the elderly. Instead the left offers seminars, web sites, pie tosses, costume shows, songs, tenure, vaguely targeted demos, and the Pacifica Network.

THE AVA RECOMMENDS the di Rosa Preserve in Napa. For a measly ten bucks you can enjoy a collection of art that it would take the MOMA and the Bay Area’s zillion galleries the next ten generations to accumulate. I’m surprised the di Rosa hasn’t gotten more attention, but I didn’t know what to expect prior to my visit, only seeing the di Rosa mentioned as a “sculpture garden” somewhere in the Napa Valley. That terse intro translated to me as maybe a few neo-Caltrans concrete blobs and other un-artful abstruse concoctions.

WRONG. The di Rosa Preserve is the best collection of art I’ve ever seen, not that I’ve spent a lot of time on the art beat. But I’ve been to the MOMA several times, been to lots of galleries, looked at a lot of pictures of art in art books, and I’m here to tell you that I could have spent three weeks at di Rosa. What this guy and his late wife have done is collect some 2,000 pieces of high end creativity, everything from oils to large-scale sculpture, all of it the work of NorCal artists working here over of the past 50 years. 

MR. di ROSA has a truly great eye, and an eye for humor too. This isn’t the kind of solemn, Smithsonian-style collection arrayed in a funereal setting. It’s displayed to be looked at, not worshipped. You'll find the serious mounted next door to whimsy, the radical and the effete side by side, which is probably their correct neighborhood. There’s that wonderful painting called The Battle of San Francisco, a bunch of the great Arneson sculptures and ingeniously-rendered gags like di Rosa's “office” consisting of a desk and a coffee cup over which water constantly flows from a fountain lamp. (Mary Robertson, a fine painter herself, denounced Arneson to me as “the Red Skelton of the art world.” She has a point, but you should see at least one, and there's one at the SF Moma.) There are also complicated mobiles and even a sweeping photo of the Dallas Klan circa 1920, and another photo collage of a topless middle-aged woman preparing a pot of chicken soup, to give you some idea, however truncated, of the range of the collection. 

EVERYWHERE the eye falls there’s something wonderful, often something that makes you laugh out loud. There are three large housed groupings of stuff apart from the sculpture spread over several meadows on an estate which began life as a vineyard and winery, reorganized to de-smoke since the big fires of a few years ago.

THE FINAL STOP on the tour is the di Rosa home, a rambling structure full of art. It’s connected to gallery number two by an underground passage in the middle of which is a mini-theater where slides of the Sistine Chapel’s famous Michelangelo ceiling play on a sunlit wall. The preserve part of the di Rosa experience consists of meadows functioning as settings for large sculptures. All this and a 35-acre lake and an 80-bird flock of peacocks. The largest hall, the second stop on the tour, greets the visitor with this message inscribed on a rafter: “Divinely regional, superbly parochial, wondrously provincial — an absolutely native glory.” It is “an absolutely native glory,” but di Rosa's far too modest in this assessment of his collection; it’s amazing variousness astounded this provincial who wished the tour had lasted at least another three hours.

WHICH REMINDS me of another benefit of this particular tour — it limits groups to about 25 persons at a time so you’re not jostled along by the mob, which is always the case at the MOMA and lots of other Bay Area shows. We did the 9:30am tour which ended at noon. It was led by two older women who functioned as chaperones not docents. If they’d been docents tours would last for a year because there’s so much to see and explain. The first building, a semi-industrial metal structure houses some robustly large pieces, including a 30-foot stack of boxes each of which was embossed “Blah-Blah.” 

WINE AND ART are almost pure blah-blah these days, but the di Rosa is the anti-blah-blah with a vengeance. 

THE FIRST TIME I visited, di Rosa himself, since deceased, togged out in threadbare khakis and a baseball cap inscribed “di Rosa Preserve” looked like a twinkly retired maintenance man who’d shown up on a Saturday to check on the boiler room and tell a few jokes to whomever might listen. With no intro from the guides he welcomed us, invited us to enjoy ourselves and, as we were ushered onto an electric shuttle wagon for the trip to the next gallery said he was finished “blah-blahing,” concluding his introductory hospitalities with, “Onward, whether or not you’re Christian soldiers.” 

THERE IS PLENTY to offend Christian soldiers at this memorable art venue, which of course is another reason for making the trip to see it. di Rosa and his marvelous collection reminded me vaguely of Guy Grand of Terry Southern’s funny little novel, ’The Magic Christian.’ From what I could gather, the old boy’s a Yale grad who set out for Paris in the 1920s to be a novelist, gave up fiction for democratic aestheticism in the Bay Area where he worked as a feature writer for the Chron. He and Mrs. di Rosa developed the Carneros Winery and collected art becoming, it seems, perhaps the only truly civilized outpost in an industry now synonymous with philistinism, especially in its Mendocino County incarnation, the incarnation I happen to see up close on a regular basis. I resisted an impulse to ask di Rosa if I could move in. I liked the place that much. Tours are five days a week between September and June. Reservations should be made at least two weeks in advance — it took me that long to secure three places on the tour — and costs $10. Call (707) 226-5991 for tickets. There’s no place like it, and you definitely won’t be disappointed.

HIGHLIGHTS from a recent Ukiah Daily Journal interview with Sheriff Kendall by reporter Karen Rifkin. During the interview the Sheriff is clearly unhappy with recent state legislation which makes it harder to deal with drug addicts, complaining about the light punishments which essentially forces law enforcement into a catch and release posture, instead of using a combination of incarceration and treatment to change people’s behavior:

“These rounds of realignment legislation removed the teeth from law enforcement and being able to get people into treatment. We cannot arrest people for simple possession; we’re mandated to give them a citation—for heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine—and they go to court and pay a fine.” … ““They are misdemeanors, only remedied by a citation. People have stopped reporting crimes; thefts are not being reported because nothing is going to happen if they do report them; and people know that.” … Last year the county had 69 coroner cases that were accidental deaths—vehicle accidents fire, drownings. Of those, 48 were overdoses, just about 70 percent. … “There was no framework set up for social services to become a conduit into treatment and it would require a really robust social services network… that we don’t have.” … “All these legislative changes were cloaked in the idea of decency, that we have to treat people differently than we’ve done in the past. But when people are dying on the street of overdoses, laying in a ditch, I’m not sure how humane that is; that’s slow homicide for these people.”

SIDESHOW IN COVELO? One of the weirdest events imaginable occurred there Friday night:

Lazarus (Willits):The population of Covelo is only about 1,400. Either this was a “Flash Mob”-type event with out-of-towners. Or the residents are getting restless…Dealers choice. Be well and good luck.

Lew Chichester (Covelo):I was in town at the end of the football game Friday night, about 8:30, (Round Valley v Potter Valley), and sure enough there was a very large contingent of vehicles all parading, mostly pickup trucks with Mexican flags flying. I didn’t witness 200-300 vehicles, but who knows how this developed as the night went on? The trucks I saw were not familiar, so perhaps they came from somewhere else? Hard to believe; it’s a long way to Round Valley from anywhere.

Lazarus: I wonder if the Sherriff will issue a Press Release of how this unusual event in Covelo, of all places, was dealt with and played out. It may be a stretch to say 200 to 300 local drivable vehicles could participate in a sideshow in Covelo. If there were that many vehicles, many must have come from elsewhere. Regardless, it is a very queer story…

Sheriff Kendall: I will put something out when we are finished with everything that needs to be done. I was up there most of the night. Lots of arrests make for lots of paperwork and my back side is dragging out my tracks. Like my pop always said, Hard work is always a guarantee you will get more hard work.

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] The people? The people are lost, evolved into a mess of gimme lemmings. Young people with no future, working class people who do not like to work, and older folks that remember a much better America but do not have the wherewithal to do anything about it. It is time for the true Americans to either politically separate, or get the heck out of Dodge. SSA records show they are paying 9 million expats right now. The primary answer from those expats for their departure is the condition of DC, the politics, AKA the Deep State. I wonder how many folks under 65 are either out of here or thinking about it.

[21] 911, AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

It only took a dozen terrorists… In hindsight, 9/11 looks like it might have been the beginning of the end of the American empire.

It spawned the worst and most destructive foreign policy in the country’s history. The government response to 9/11 birthed the constitutional abomination that is the modern warrantless surveillance state. The Patriot Act enabled the government to weaponize its vast resources against its own people. Bush’s failed foreign policy led to directly to Obama’s presidency, and indirectly to Biden’s, both of which are responsible for diminishing the U.S. at home and abroad, militarily and economically. After two failed forever wars that wouldn’t have happened without 9/11, our government is now desperately trying to foment potentially nuclear forever war against Russia.

Meanwhile, all the massive surveillance powers claimed by the U.S. after 9/11 are being ruthlessly deployed against American political enemies of the regime via the most insidious censorship-industrial complex the world has ever seen. And then there’s the crippling legacy of debt enabled by America’s response to 9/11. Not content to spend trillions on poorly thought out invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, our leaders spent as thoughtlessly at home, creating insane amounts of new entitlements, while doing nothing to put the country on a sound financial footing. And where are we today? The ruling political party is criminalizing its opposition and attempting to throw its top political opponent and his supporters in prison, all under the guise of “democracy.” We generally remember 9/11 as the day that the towers came down. I wonder if historians will look back on it as the day that America started to fall.

[3] I think it is quite reasonable to ask questions of President Biden’s fitness for another four year term, but the lack of scrutiny on the right for former president Trump fitness on the same basis is a tad strange to me. The former President is old, and has a habit of saying many nonsensical things in a “sun-setting” rambling style that leaves me with the impression that he has also lost a step or three from his use of language earlier in his career. In any case, I think he is one fast food embracing, golf club hitting, cholesterol clogging heart attack away from leaving this planet if dementia doesn’t get him first.

[4] The problem is that no one seems to care enough to gather the momentum to do anything about anything. As long as there are still cheese doodles in the store, porn to stream online, NFL games to watch on Sundays, then people are not going to stand up and do anything about the plight in the world. For all the technology and interconnectedness we have today, I think getting people to stand together for a common cause now is harder than ever. I think back to the early founding of this country, people had a common cause to rally around, they could stand on a soap box in the public square, and post bills on the fences, all which had a profound impact on public discourse. Nowadays people are all squirreled away in their private tunnels doing and thinking exactly as “they” please, not as would please overall “society”. I would love it if people collectively said: “You know what, prices at McDonald’s are way too high for what you get, I am no longer eating their chemically processed meat fat”. No, instead they suck it up and just hand over the credit card for more garbage. I purposely refuse to buy certain things and do business with particular companies purely on principle. Now, I am only one small fish in a very large multi-national pond, so unless more people are with me then the effect is minimal. But at least I am doing what I personally feel is right.

[5] Earth is about 4 billion years old, but life only started on it a couple of billion years ago, and multi-cellular life only about 1 1/2 billion years ago. Plants and animals evolved less than a billion years ago. We tend to be quite cavalier about the ability of Earth to start all over, but I guess it doesn’t matter, once we completely wreck the place, if anything else manages to survive or not. At least, it won’t matter to us. Personally, I think that Earth is a wondrous place now, or actually was 75 years ago, before humans started using chemical weapons of war on plants and animals, and fossil fuels to vacuum the oceans, bulldoze the jungles and blow up the mountains.

[6] Nothing will change until we have a real armed insurrection. And unless that happens, we will be eating bugs and own nothing sooner rather than later. And after years of dumbing us down and making us obese, forget about the insurrection. As far as republicans and democrats are concerned, they are just two sides of the same coin, and that coin is owned by the owner of all central banks and especially our federal reserve, and that family name starts with an R and it sure aint the Rockefellers. Nothing happens in this world without the money, antifa, blm, haarp, you name it, everything happening now can be laid directly at the feet of whoever is printing trillions of currency out of thin air. DUH!

[7] Talking about the economy, I was speaking to a young man the other day, very young, probably early twenties. He mentioned needing to buy a new car, and the problems he was having with that. I mentioned that “they” don’t really want us having cars anymore, and although this was not a political conversation by any means, he seemed aware that there were plans afoot to get us all on the bus. He also spoke about the cost of living comfortably in this state, compared to what most people actually make. He brought up something I had just started to become aware of. He told me that when he went to a local dealer that advertises being able to find you credit to put you in a vehicle (this is a formerly reputable family business that now seems to be making its money through subprime loans) he was told he had no credit! He told me that he had paid off his student loans. He also had a steady job with not a high income but not especially low. That should count, right? Having steady work and a record of paying bills? This is the second time I’ve heard this, that someone who paid their student loan back has damaged their credit. The student loan racket badly needs a RICO investigation.

[8] A few days ago I cooked a steak for myself and a friend, and I have to say that I felt much more energetic the next day. The same goes after I eat a plate of liver, or other organ meats. The latter are cheap. There are very nice ways to cook them. This a.m. I am going to the next town, where there is a family-owned supermarket with its own butcher/meat department, to buy some organ meats. They sell beef liver, chicken livers, chicken hearts, etc. from the chickens that they purchase whole. Most people are disgusted by organ meats, but it used to be a nutrition rule of thumb to eat organ meats once a week and also fish once a week.