Mendocino County Today: Thursday 5/23/24

By AVA News Service on May 23, 2024

COOLER THAN NORMAL TEMPERATURES are forecast for the interior through Saturday. Dry weather with locally gusty winds are expected to continue today before a trough aloft moves over on Friday bringing a low possibility for light rain. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Some high clouds & a cool 48F this Thursday morning on the coast. Yesterday sure got windy with scattered fog like clouds floating around, odd? Clear skies, falling temps & light wind for today & tomorrow. The wind will pick up for the holiday weekend with Saturday being the coolest day of all.

FIRE ON SHERWOOD ROAD DESTROYS MULTIPLE STRUCTURES

Fire crews are battling multiple structures on fire in the Longvale area between Laytonville and Willits after a structure fire was reported around 2:30 p.m. on May 22. According to scanner traffic multiple structures are on fire and some have “burned to the ground.”…

mendofever.com/2024/05/22/fire-on-sherwood-road-destroys-multiple-structures

OAKLAND WOMAN REPORTED MISSING NEAR FORT BRAGG

Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office is searching for a missing 70-year-old woman who has multiple medical conditions.

by Amy Moore

An Oakland woman is missing north of Fort Bragg, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

Elizabeth Schenk, 70, who was visiting the area, was reported missing shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday. Schenk has many medical conditions, making her an at-risk missing person.

At about 9:30 a.m., Schenk called a friend to ask for help when she got lost on a logging road near Bruhel Point Road north of Fort Bragg.

At 11 a.m., concerned that Schenk had not returned from her walk and was not answering her cell phone, the friend asked several neighbors to help search the logging road.

The group searched for several hours but did not find the woman.

Shortly before 5 p.m., Schenk’s friend notified the Sheriff’s Office that she was missing.

Local police, fire agencies and sheriff’s deputies, with Search and Rescue, California Highway Patrol and Cal Fire, searched through the night and into the morning but did not locate Schenk.

Additional agencies continued searching Wednesday morning, including helicopter assistance from CHP.

Schenk was last seen wearing a white sweater, a white vest, and white jeans when she left for her walk Tuesday morning.

She is described as a white woman, approximately 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighing about 150 pounds. She has graying brown hair and blue eyes.

Anyone with information regarding Schenk’s whereabouts should call the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

JIM MARTIN

James Edward Martin III was born October 16, 1959, in Boston, Massachusetts.

He attended Schools Germantown Friends, Fitler Elementary, Julia R. Masterman, Owen J. Roberts, The Hill School, University of Virginia (BA).

An early reader, Jim loved books as a child. He wanted to read them, write them, and make them. His first effort was called “Fast Cars, Planes and Boats,” a well-illustrated handmade chapbook, at six years of age.

Raised in Pennsylvania, Jim attended public schools in Philadelphia. His beloved grandfather, AP “Pop” Saunders, taught history for many years at the Hill School in Pottstown PA. Jim received a full scholarship at the boarding school, where he edited the newspaper and won an award for excellence in American History.

Jim studied writing at the University of Virginia with Pulitzer Prize winner James Alan McPherson. Mr. McPherson helped Jim find his voice as an author. Jim’s short story, “1968,” won the George Washington Prize at UVa.

Along the way, Jim worked a lot of jobs he later found out Americans were unwilling to do - bumper car wrangler at an amusement park, prep cook, warehouse packer. Jim settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1980, and got a dream job as a printer for Black Lightning Class Notes at UC Berkeley. Joining a local cooperative print shop called Red Star Black Rose in East Oakland, with like-minded community-oriented writers, Jim founded Flatland Books in 1984 to distribute the odd titles we printed.

Flatland evolved into a publishing venture, with a catalog of books, periodicals and pamphlets for distribution. The mail-order catalog functioned as a magazine, with articles of interest.

Jim discovered that the titles relating to conspiracy theories, the JFK Assassination, UFOs, paranormal science, etc, sold pretty well. Eventually, Hollywood came calling, and they made a movie about a guy with a conspiracy newsletter starring Mel Gibson, “Conspiracy Theory.”

Jim’s ancestors were Quakers. A dedicated ant-war activist, member of the Livermore Action Group, participated in several blockades of nuclear weapon installations.

Fishing buddy Ed Gehrman introduced Jim to Wilhelm Reich’s book Mass Psychology of Fascism. That triggered a deep investigation of Reich’s work, which Jim collected in his major book Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War (winner of the Lou Hochberg Prize).

Growing up in Philadelphia as a child in the 60s was tough, but during the muggy summers his family went down the Jersey shore for fresh air, and fishing. Jim came alive chasing blue crabs and weakies, starting a lifelong passion for collecting food from the ocean.

Eventually, as a Californian in the 1990s, the state shut down one fishery after the other. Jim got involved with numerous fisheries restoration efforts, and was honored to advocate for recreational fisherman at public hearings, including the Fish & Game Commission. He served many years on the Mendocino County Fish & Game Advisory Commission, and was Vice President of the Salmon Restoration Association, which hosted the “WORLD’S LARGEST SALMON BBQ” in Noyo Harbor, each Fourth of July. He served on the board of directors of the Alliance for Sustainable Fishing Communities and the Sonoma County Abalone Network (SCAN).

In 2004, Randy Fry was killed by a white shark. Jim was hired by the Recreational Fishing Alliance’s West Coast Regional Director, to keep the RFA’s fight for the right to fish alive. He was appointed to the Groundfish Advisory Panel of the Pacific Fishery Management Council and worked on rockfish issues.

MLPA - Mendocino County MLPA Outreach Coordinator

As conservation refugees, Jim and his wife Beth Benson relocated to Alaska in 2015. In Alaska they like fish, fishing and fishermen. Jim had worked off and on with the Alaska Charter Association for some years, and was hired as Executive Director. He retired in 2023.

Jim is survived by his beloved wife of 40 years Beth: Mother of our children; so many adventures. First born daughter & beloved Gracie:! A friend to flowers; Devoted mother to Aksel and Annika; growing her family with love and mama bear protection. So happy for her and her husband Davis Beekman, a good man and dad. Much-loved daughter May: Money! Sweet daughter with an uncrushable spirit. Strong. Competent. Fisherman! Aksel: Jim’s grandson and spirit animal. Good train man. Builder. Strong. Lovely loved granddaughter Annika: Sweet disposition, Jim’s Irish Lassie. Sister, Susan Saunders Martin and brother-in-law Chris Andrien.

ED NOTES

I MET JIM MARTIN in the pages of the eclectic, all-inclusive Boonville weekly after I'd commented, apropos of whatever the provocation was, that I thought, and think, Wilhelm Reich's orgone box was pure quackery, especially coming from the brilliant author of the prescient, The Mass Psychology of Fascism. (It's here, Wilhelm!) Not long after that odd exchange on an arcane subject of no interest to anyone except us, I met the man himself, who I took an immediate liking to, and who wouldn't enjoy a guy who laughed a lot and was open to argument without taking it personally? Jim, and Ed Gehrman, another Reichian who'd also argued for the efficacy of the orgone box, made me a big fan of Flatland, the monthly magazine they produced that delved into all kinds of arcane subjects from a skeptical perspective, which led them to the mystery of Wanda Tinasky and the mystery of how Mike Sweeney got away with bombing his ex-wife, the latter a question that cannot be asked anywhere in Mendocino County except here. Without veering off in obsessive directions, Jim and Ed persuaded the famous attributionist scholar, Don Foster of Vassar College, to examine the writings of the pseudonymous Tinasky, author of scathing assessments of Mendo poets, to discover who Wanda really was. Foster, a fine writer himself, discovered that Wanda Tinasky was an erudite old beatnik retired to Fort Bragg, who amused himself by writing hilarious literary evaluations to the only two papers who'd publish him, the ava and Marco McClean's Memo/Coast Peddler. Foster irrefutably found that it was a man called Tom Hawkins who'd created the Tinasky persona, and further discovered that Hawkins had murdered his wife, mourned over her for nearly a week before setting fire to their home on Trillum Lane and then driving himself into the Pacific near Westport, an ending radically unlike his jolly epistolary adventures with the ava and always-up-for-fun-guy McClean. We were wrong about Wanda at book length in a collection called ‘The Letters of Wanda Tinasky’ as we made the totally wrong case that Hawkins-Tinasky was the reclusive writer, Thomas Pynchon. That wrong book, incidentally, is something of a collector's item these days, going for a little over a hundred bucks for a new copy, a reasonable 30 bucks used.

FOSTER also evaluated The Lord's Avenger letter, another pseudonymous literary construct of a much more serious provenance in that it was written by the man who bombed Judi Bari, a well-known Mendo enviro figure of the late 1980's until her death in 1997, her life abbreviated by the after effects of the pipe bomb that nearly killed her when it exploded in her car in Oakland in 1990. Because the bomb didn't kill her, the bomber, Bari's ex-husband Mike Sweeney, naturally intent on diverting attention from himself, devised a thunderous, faux Old Testament confession signed The Lord's Avenger and mailed it to Mike Geniella of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where, incidentally, it has since disappeared. Professor Foster concluded, again irrefutably as in the Tinasky case, that Mike Sweeney, by then a Ukiah-based recycling administrator, was the author of The Lord's Avenger Letter. Ex-spouse Sweeney managed to elude suspect status throughout, the only ex-husband in the history of wife murderers to achieve that unprecedented status. This is all a long goodbye to Jim Martin, without whom neither of these “mysteries” would have been solved.

CRAIG STEHR has lived on the Northcoast for many years. Craig's one more unique character in the vivid human tapestry of our area and, given his good humored vivacity, and his years of postmodern, uniquely Hindu environmental agitation, futile but always amusing, and given his age and medical condition, Craig cannot be permitted to become unsheltered, especially via a formally bureaucratic eviction letter from the Building Bridges shelter where he's lived for more than a year. (Building bridges to homelessness for old guys?)

MIKE JAMISON WRITES: “Maybe there is a lawyer that can take Stehr’s case up and explore civil action. Maybe also a referral to the state Attorney General for possible criminal charges? Sending a 74-year-old man with heart disease to live outside might constitute a violation of various criminal statutes? I’m aware of shortcomings in the local voucher program, due to stories shared with me. Lack of available rentals is one factor.”

AV PRESCHOOL GRADUATION

Wow! Nothing touches your heart more than seeing a preschool graduation. Particularly poignant when some of our soon to be graduated high school seniors were in the audience. This valley knows how to celebrate achievement. Well done!

JUST A BEER & A NOSH

What’s the big deal of my enjoying a beer and a nosh a few times over the past two years? It is normal and sane.

Craig Louis Stehr

PS. For the record, I asked that I be removed from consideration at The Canadian 20 blocks or so south of Talmage Road on S. State Street, because as a 74 year old high risk heart patient, it would have been dangerous for me to have moved in there, so far away from regular transportation and medical services. The housing navigator, Alexis Lyon, apologized for showing it to me, saying that it was a mistake to have done so. Regardless, even during my so-called interview yesterday with the Building Bridges supervisor, he surmised that one of the reasons that my request for an extension (so that I could make the last two dental appointments) was denied, was because I did not take the place, thus setting me up to advance to a better place later. Please note that this is beyond stupid, and Redwood Community Services/Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center ought to be told that!

I have today advised everyone that my goal at this point is to make the last two dental appointments, and then LEAVE Mendocino County. I have advised the new housing navigator Jennifer McQuaid of this today. I have also made it clear that the county government could grant me an exception extension at Building Bridges until July 21st, in order to make the last two dental appointments, and then I would happily leave Mendocino County. Otherwise, I have advised all that I will not walk out of the gate with my belongings and a letter to law enforcement to deter my arrest due to necessary "camping". I have emailed both Sheriff Matt Kendall and the Ukiah Police Department inviting them to take me into custody for my protection. And frankly, it would be fine with me to be interviewed by the FBI at Building Bridges. Let's talk about the constant narcotics and extreme alcoholism that I have witnessed for the past two years, permitted under the crazy policy of a "low barrier environment". As someone who was part of Catholic Worker for 23 years (Plowshares locally is part of that network), serving the "poorest of the poor", I have a very different understanding of what helping means.

Thank you very much for anything that you might do to assist me in being stabilized indoors, making the last two dental appointments, and leaving Mendocino County.

Sincerely,

Craig Louis Stehr

MIKE GENIELLA:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JIM EDDIE.

This fine gentleman turned 89 this week. Jim is a sterling example of a longtime local - the Eddie family has been in Potter Valley since the 1850s - who stepped up and served on the county Board of Supervisors with distinction. He was knowledgeable and fair and made preserving the county's ag land a priority. Personally, Jim is a good man and a great storyteller. Everyone adored his late wife, Judy.

DANIEL ARMAS is youngest son of murder victim Joan Lefeat who was murdered at her country store in Brooktrails by Chris Coleman (with a gun given to him for that purpose by his teenage friend Jamison Jackson) back in 2001. For the last few days Mr. Armas has been trying to reach DA David Eyster or one of his staffers to oppose the parole of Coleman who is up for parole today (Thursday, May 23). Mr. Armas has called and left messages with the DA’s office several times with no response from Eyster or his assigned deputy or his Victim-Witness office. Given the cold-bloodedness of Coleman’s execution style gunning down of the popular store owner as she begged for her life behind her store counter, you would think that the DA would want to weigh in at Coleman’s parole hearing (being held via zoom at 8am Thursday morning). But, Mr. Armas says he hasn’t seen or heard a word from the DA or his office. Coleman, 15 at the time, was tried as an adult and received 25-to-life back in 2003. Coleman’s co-murderer, Jamison Jackson, was tried as a juvenile and was paroled back in 2010 after eight years in the California Youth Authority, only to commit another murder and attempted murder in a vehicular shooting murder in Covelo in 2021. At that time the DA issued a strong press release about the conviction of Jackson mentioning the earlier murder by Coleman and Jackson, so there’s no doubt Eyster is quite familiar with the Coleman case. Given DA Eyster’s consistent record of openly opposing parole for serious criminals like Coleman, we were surprised to hear of Mr. Armas’s complaint.

(Mark Scaramella)

BETH SWEHLA:

This tile mural was under another painted mural that was being removed as there will be construction at AVHS this summer. What do you know about it? It looks to me to be from the 1960’s. Do you know who made the mural? The mural is in the breezeway across from the office.

KATRINA ALSTON (facebook): OK, I need assistance. I unfortunately cannot remember the last name of the lady who is renting the property at the bottom of my aunt’s property off of Anderson Valley Way. My aunt Kathy Rapp unfortunately I just got news passed away this morning. I need to speak to Terry who rents the property for her horses from my aunt. So if anyone can please get me that information as soon as possible, I would be greatly appreciative.

SKUNK TRAIN FEDERAL APPEAL HEARING VIDEO, Ninth Circuit Panel. Skunk vs. Coastal Commission ruling that the Skunk Train has to comply with the Coastal Act.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irYEwRGSyMo

MENDOCINO COUNTY BALLOT MISPRINT LEADS TO PRINTER’S DECERTIFICATION and Legal Fight

by Sarah Reith

The ballot printing service that botched the ballots for the primary election in Mendocino County has lost its certification as a ballot printer in the State of California, according to a letter from the Secretary of State dated May 17th. The company contends that it did not violate state code, and has indicated that it’s preparing to litigate.

Katrina Bartolomie, the Assessor Clerk Recorder Registrar of Voters, reported to the Board of Supervisors Tuesday. She added that, “We have been in talks with a couple other California certified ballot printers…We are working on that, and have been working on that.”…

mendofever.com/2024/05/23/mendocino-county-ballot-misprint-leads-to-printers-decertification-and-legal-fight

REDWOOD VALLEY COMMUNITY GROUP: This morning my daughter caught a man filming a young adult, possibly teen girl, in the gym in Redwood Valley. She pointed him out to me and I saw what he was filming… He was zooming in on her rear end while she was on the stair climber. I went into mama bear mode, walked up to him and told him to stop. Then I told the girl and pointed him out to her. He tried to say he was filming himself working out but my daughter has a photo of him sitting on the bench doing nothing but filming the girl. He tried to argue and I said nope, I saw you. He got his stuff and left. We reported the incident to the gym right after he left so hopefully they can track him. Watch your back friends, and look out for each other!

LOSS OF SCOTT DAM

Editor:

There is an intricate viaduct system that provides water in Lake County. It provides necessary water to residents and property owners to keep the area green and hardy. The planned removal of Scott Dam is, I believe, a direct attempt to avoid necessary upgrades and efficiencies to a project that has been long overlooked for maintenance and repair. PG&E should be held responsible for its upkeep and restoration of services. It is a vital resource for fire prevention. Without it, a fire would prove to be devastating for an entire community and adjacent outlying area. This would be irreversible. Another attempt by PG&E to shirk responsibility for lack of required maintenance. Shame on PG&E.

Tina Turner

Kelseyville

SHERIFF MATT KENDALL:

Over the years I have received a lot of advice from some folks who have watched a few episodes of “COPS”.

I am constantly amazed at the solutions the untrained can come up with. While many are well meaning folks, nicking someone’s gun hand isn’t a true solution. Although it did seem to work well for Roy Rogers.

These folks have been largely uninformed and often I ponder the outcome if a new television series titled “PILOTS” was brought to prime time. I wonder how many people would be offering advice to airlines pilots on how to “stick the landing”

Don’t get me wrong I have been a student of YouTube university from time to time. Mostly due to a lack of understanding regarding how to replace a stater in a motorcycle. That being said when it comes to defusing the atomic bomb although my viewing experience urges me to not cut the red wire… I can promise you I will stand back and refrain from offering advice to the EOD team on the operation.

MAZIE MALONE:

BOS… PHF… Measure B…

I have stated before the PHF is a band aid which is true, the only thing it will achieve is lightening the load on the ER, but not by much. 2026 is a long way off to allow the suffering of families and their loved ones with Mental Illness to continue to struggle. People in Mental Illness Crisis sometimes are in the ER 3 or 4 days before a bed is found elsewhere in another county at a PHF. That is unacceptable but there are not enough psych beds statewide. The PHF is brief and it is what occurs within the system before and after a psychiatric crisis is where change can occur and it is necessary. Until the system stops feeding off false ideas we will never solve the issues with addiction, mental illness and homelessness.

How many service committees do we have working on this? …

All that money for a PHF and nothing gets accomplished.

It is very disturbing and we should focus on providing appropriate and meaningful service to families.

That is the infrastructure necessary to support a PHF.

Families!

BERNIE NORVELL:

The PHF is not a stand alone solution. It will be a part of the care system. for example, we had a woman sleeping on the streets for months. cold wet rainy nights refusing any services including the Emergency Winter Shelter. What we found out is she is bipolar schizophrenic not taking her meds. no drugs, no alcohol. She walked away from permanent housing in Santa Rosa and for some reason ended up here in Fort Bragg. After months of CRU time establishing a relationship with her, trust was finally gained. We did get her into the EWS a few nights but not being on her meds her decision making was erratic at best. Collaborating with RCS we were finally able to get her conserved. I believe one night in the ER and then off to an out of county PHF where her meds were stabilized. Without the PHF it is my opinion she would not being doing well and not back into permanent housing, which is her current position. Instead she would still be on the street suffering. The hurdle in the entire process was the high threshold to conserve someone. The PHF is just one piece of the puzzle.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

Scary Ride Up The Northwestern Pacific Railroad Along The Eel River Years After The Railroad Closed

by Tom Proctor

2007 footage of crazy washed out tracks, stunning river gorges, and a redwood trestle.

The first part of the film includes a short trip up the first section of track north of Fort Seward with my daughter. This was the easy part, a straight and safe section about 1 mile. The next day the footage continues where we left off. The young girl did not venture down the more unsafe sections of track with us. This footage is of the historic closed railroad taken from a modified Suzuki Samurai “rail cart.” It starts north of the Fort Seward Railroad Depot and goes past the 226 mile marker north of Eel Rock (The “Begin South Fork Block/End Fort Seward Block” sign is where we start here). The Northwestern Pacific Railroad was one of the most scenic and expensive sections of railroad in US history because of the awesome scenery it offered between San Francisco and Eureka. This footage goes over a redwood trestle bridge at Brock Creek, with stunning river views around the 222 mile marker, then over tracks hanging in the air. The Samurai plows blindly and boldly through 10 foot high vegetation in a thrilling ride better than Disneyland. We were the very last “car” ever to venture up this track and it's some interesting footage. The track has long since further deteriorated with landslides and mass movement of the hillside, and the overgrowth has made it completely impassable. Here, we had on and off track capability as some sections were subject to landslides (or a missing piece of track!) and we had to 4-wheel around some areas. On this occasion, I took the most video and we went the furthest we ever did. Cool stuff for rail buffs. There is very little record of this storied rail line on video. 00:00 - A quick look at the Samurai01:40 - Start traveling north at 1/2 mile north of the Fort Seward Train Depot 18:22 - Redwood trestle bridge at Brock Creek 19:28 - Stunning river views around the 222 mile marker 20:30 - Tracks hanging in the air from mass movement of hillside 26:30 - Pulling a log off the tracks with a winch 28:53 - Passing the old bulldozer 30:00 - Continuing North 38:30 - Plowing through high vegetation south of Eel Rock 40:38 - Eel Rock Rd. 45:54 - Big landslide blocking the tracks after mile marker 226 north of Eel Rock. We couldn't get around it, so we headed back to Eel Rock Rd, where the video ends. The Samurai was originally built by local legend and friend Johnny B. That vehicle had nine lives.

MARY ZEEBLE:

We have a couple nice apartments for rent off Highway 128 in Philo. It's an easy walk to to Lemon's Market as well as the Navarro River and Indian Creek.

Two Bedroom Apartment $1400

The apartment is large and has a full bathroom and kitchen. New floors and paint. There is also shared free laundry. Included in the rent is water & propane. PG&E is additional. Move in is first month rent, and security = $4,200.

Also available:

Studio Apartment $850. The apartment has a full bathroom and kitchen. There is also shared free laundry. Included in the rent are ALL utilities: electricity, wifi, water & propane. Move in is first month rent, and security = $2,550.

There is a large shared garden, a greenhouse and picnic area, as well as hiking trails. Beautiful views of the redwoods nearby and killer sunsets! There is plenty of parking on the property for you and visitors. Looking for respectful long term tenants who are quiet and stable. A $15 credit and background check will be done. Equal Opportunity Housing. (Deposits can be paid over a few months) No drugs. No smoking. Small dogs ok. Cats ok. Room for goats & sheep. Send us an email and let us know which apartment you’re interested in. If you include your cell phone number we can text you more pics. email: philorental@gmail.com or text 415 550 9090

Cheers and thank you!

STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE

Editor:

At what point does our government expect the average American worker to be able to afford to survive in today’s society? The one that keeps rising in inflation. In the American economy, it is getting extremely hard to sustain an affordable lifestyle. Today, a 40-hour workweek no longer sustains the rising cost of consumer goods or the price of gas. The cost of gas rises and changes daily. Grocery prices climb higher every week. Insurance companies are charging their customers premiums that many cannot afford. Anyone living on the new minimum wage will definitely struggle to keep their head above water. I’ve met people who have three to five different jobs just to make ends meet. Companies need to pay workers what they’re worth in order to survive in today’s society.

N.M. Sartain

Ukiah

MIKE GENIELLA:

RE: Ivan Boesky, epitome of Wall Street trading scandal, dies at 87 (Washington Post)

The North Coast learned about this guy during the turbulent takeover of venerable Pacific Lumber Co. in the 1980s. Boesky helped Texas financier Charles Hurwitz pull off a surprise corporate buyout of the grande dame of timber companies, leading to accelerated logging, the emergence of Earth First! in the region, and the company eventually filed for bankruptcy. A way of life for generations of families who lived and worked for the company vanished.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wendesday, May 22, 2024

JOEL COWAN, Willits. Probation revocation.

ELIZABETH DOCKINS, Ukiah. Forgery, bad check, probation revocation.

OCTAVIO GARNICA-TREJO, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JASON GOWER, Willits. Attempt to bring controlled substance or paraphernalia into jail.

MIA JIMENEZ, Ukiah. Violation of domestic violence court order.

LAROY MADDEN-STEPHENS, Ukiah. Domestic battery, concealed dirk-dagger.

JALAHN TRAVIS, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation, resisting.

ESMERELDA VELASQUEZ-CHAVEZ, Richmond/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

KYLE WAKELAND, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

MALISSA WARNER, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I was trying to set up a venmo because its like paypal…First thing that pops up on their website, two smiling black females, and one gay as hell looking blond haired Asian man laying in between them smiling….I told my brother “So this is what they mean by diversity….Boy this shit looks so totally forced it’s not even funny anymore.”

THREE KLAMATH RIVER DAMS COMING DOWN AT ONCE

by Sage Alexander

Demolition of three dams on the Klamath River is currently underway, as the drawdown phase that emptied massive reservoirs wrapped up. This month, crews started taking out Iron Gate and J.C. Boyle.

“Frankly, we can see the end of the dams in sight, literally, as they’re coming down so quickly.” said Mark Bransom, CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation reached by phone Friday.

Deconstruction of the earthen part of J.C. Boyle, a 68-foot-tall concrete and earth fill dam in Southern Oregon, began last week on Monday. The removal of Iron Gate began May 1, the largest dam out of the bunch at 173 feet tall. Thursday, a dynamite blast on Copco No. 1 took off about 30 feet of the dam — removal of which started in March as the concrete structure allowed for any spring flows to pass over the top.

Holes were blasted or opened up in the dams earlier this year, which released water carrying tons of accumulated sediment downriver, some collected over a period of a hundred years. Turbidity peaked at Iron Gate and downriver at Klamath in January and February this year, according to

USGS monitors, but have since sunk down again. In a March news release, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted this turbidity was expected in the process.

“Our biological opinion expected the turbidity to have some short-term impacts on fish this year. We anticipated the turbidity would provide much greater long-term benefits to future generations of fish,” the NOAA release said, noting poor water quality in the reservoirs sometimes killed fish and fueled parasitic outbreaks.

KRRC got another approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to go ahead with full removal of Iron Gate Dam in early May for this phase of the project; the organization aims to have the dams completely out later this year.

Bransom said there’s a mixture of tension and excitement when in the middle of a major construction project, billed as the largest dam removal in U.S. history. He said removal is a little bit ahead of schedule, each dam slated to be out around late summer and early fall. In Nov. 2023, crews finished deconstructing Copco No. 2, the smallest dam slated for removal.

“We will pretty much be wrapped up by the late September, early October timeframe,” he said. Restoration projects have been underway, and these will continue into 2025, he said.

The goal is to have the dams removed and water quality favorable for the returning adult Chinook Salmon, who normally come up the river in September, he said. Removal of PacifiCorp’s dams will open about 400 miles of salmon-spawning habitat, and dam removal aims to improve water quality and stop warm water conditions that have historically contributed to widespread deaths of fish on the Klamath.

A month ago, a half million young salmon, including Chinook and coho, were released in the Klamath. In March, hundreds of thousands of young fish died who were released above Iron Gate, which the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said was due to gas bubble disease from when the fish migrated through the Iron Gate Dam tunnel, opened in January for drawdown. This tunnel will be removed in this project.

Dam removal is contingent on flows, especially tenuous during spring months, but Bransom said that the weather is warming up and drying out. He said spring moisture has kickstarted green blooms at the former reservoirs, which are being replanted by crews including the Yurok Revegetation Crew who have planted thousands of native plant seeds.

Dam removal follows decades of tribal and environmental advocacy. In 2021, the FERC allowed PacifiCorp to be removed from the license for the hydroelectric project and it was transferred to California and Oregon and KRRC. FERC’s final approval for dam removal came in Nov. 2022. The contractor doing removal is Kiewit and the project is funded by PacifiCorp customer surcharges and California Proposition 1 water bond funds.

(Eureka Times Standard/Ukiah Daily Journal)

LESSONS FROM RATTLESNAKE CLASS

In a study, scientists used a fake leg to simulate a person stepping on a rattlesnake. Out of 175 snakes that were physically “stepped on” by the booted foot, only six bit the leg. The rest tried to get away, froze in place, or wriggled in surprise but didn't react aggressively. It's actually really hard to get bitten by a rattlesnake. They just want to be left alone.

Rattlesnakes also don't rattle before striking. A rattle doesn't mean aggression, it's an “excuse me, I'm down here.” They rattle to tell you, or other large animals, that you are about to step on them, since they blend in very well with their surroundings and they'd rather you didn't smush them accidentally. Strikes are generally noise-free acts of last ditch desperation.

Only about 1% of rattlesnake bites are deadly, and those that are generally happen in situations where medical care was delayed. A quarter of rattlesnake bites don't actually involve any venom at all, they are “dry bites” intended as a warning only. As long as you get to a hospital in a reasonable amount of time, you will probably be fine. This is not a situation where minutes count, just move promptly towards medical care. The deadly bites generally happen in very remote areas, when people are hiking alone, or when drugs and alcohol are involved, since all of these can increase the amount of time it takes someone to get to help or result in poor decision-making. First aid for a bite? Just get the person to a hospital, promptly, but safely. There is nothing else you need to do, and anything you might think about doing is just wasting time getting the person to a hospital and potentially complicating things by rubbing germs into the wound or further stressing the currently stressed tissue in the area. Don't ice it, tourniquet it, or suck on it, just call 911 or start hiking back to the trailhead.

The anti-venom products ERs use are combination formulas, which work for multiple North American venomous snake species. One works for multiple species of rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, and copperheads. A second anti-venom product works for various rattlers if you know you heard a rattle but aren't sure of the exact species. Coral snake bites can be identified by looking at the bite itself by hospital staff because the venom works on the body differently and there is a separate antivenom product that works for them. All of this means you don't need to try to take a closeup picture of the snake that bit you, coax it into a box to bring with you, or kill it to bring in and show to the doctors. In the case of rattlers, copperheads, and cottonmouths, they have what they need to treat a bite without knowing exactly what species of snake it was, and in the case of coral snakes, can figure out that one bit you without seeing the snake. Don't waste time or risk a second bite messing with a snake that is already very upset.

Here is the study: wpr.org/news/lessons-from-rattlesnake-class-in-the-american-southwest

FUEL BREAKS SAVED LIVES DURING THE CAMP FIRE. THEY CAN SPARE CALIFORNIA FROM FUTURE DEVASTATION

by John Hawkins

In the relentless battle against wildfires in California, it’s clear that agencies and landowners must prioritize and implement wildfire prevention measures while continuing to build and maintain firefighting resources.

Fuel breaks have emerged as an effective approach to wildfire suppression, and it’s vital these projects move forward expeditiously on private and public lands. If strategically placed, these areas of reduced vegetation can slow the spread of wildfires, buying wildland firefighters more time to get ahead of rapidly developing wildfires.

Fuel breaks are critical buffers to protect infrastructure such as homes, roads and powerlines. When weather allows, fuel breaks can serve as an effective drop zone for aerial fire retardants. They are also a safe place for firefighters to navigate the landscape.

Fuel breaks have proven their efficacy in several instances, but to those of us who call Stirling City, home, one example is forever seared in our memory. In November 2018, the Camp Fire tragically burned over 150,000 acres, killed 85 people and destroyed over 18,000 structures – a harrowing reminder of how wildfire prevention measures can be the difference between life and death.

As the Camp Fire raged closer to our community, Cal Fire and volunteer firefighters quickly leveraged existing fuel breaks to connect new containment lines, further protecting our community. The U.S. Forest Service, Butte County officials and private landowners had worked together to implement fuel breaks long before the Camp Fire tragedy, and it ultimately saved our community.

Through these proactive measures and combined quick actions, a nearby elementary school, countless homes and lives were likely spared. I personally watched an enormous DC-10 plane drop retardant on the west side of our town, directly on the shaded fuel break built only a couple of years prior by the landowner.

Our neighbors in Paradise had also completed fuel breaks and a community wildland preparedness plan. Unfortunately, due to the incredibly speed of the wildfire, their community faced catastrophic loss.

One success, though, was a fuel break installed east of Paradise Lake. The fire came up from Feather River to the ridge but slowed once it reached that shaded fuel break, making it easier to stop. That fundamental fuel break is credited with saving upper Magalia and beyond.

Paradise continues to rebuild six years later, but we are all still reminded of the urgent and ongoing need for wildfire prevention measures in California. Efforts by a very capable and active Butte Fire Safe Council have helped homeowners better prepare for the possible recurrence of fire on the ridge.

Although fuel breaks may not stop wildfires entirely, they are an essential tool to slow their spread. Fuel breaks also cause wildfires to burn at lower temperatures, preserving soil composition and making regrowth efforts far more successful. Lower burn temperatures maintain the soil’s cohesion, resulting in less debris contamination in our creeks and river systems, too.

For fuel breaks to be most effective, their placement across the landscape must be done in a coordinated, strategic manner. For example, the U.S. Forest Service must work with the state of California and private landowners to not only share information on the location of fuel breaks but also redouble efforts to construct fuel breaks in strategic areas that leverage existing work to protect homes and communities.

Fuel break effectiveness also hinges on continuous management. Over time, vegetation and debris can regrow in these areas where the fuels were removed, so consistent monitoring and maintenance across multiple landowners and agencies is imperative for established fuel breaks to remain viable. Maintenance of fuel breaks is done effectively using herbicide, mechanical mastication and even goat and sheep grazing.

This is another reason for state and federal lawmakers to establish long-term maintenance funding for these projects.

While fuel breaks are a crucial component of our wildfire prevention and suppression strategies, we must view them as one part of a comprehensive approach to wildfire management. Incorporating fuel breaks with fire retardants, prescribed burns and strategic community planning can maximize our ability to prevent future catastrophes.

We must arm ourselves with every potential resource.

Many Californians still remember the Camp Fire like it was yesterday, and we know all too well that tomorrow is never promised. This is why we must do everything we can to plan and implement projects that lower wildfire risks and protect our homes and properties.

(CalMatters.org)

OAKLAND REACHES LANDMARK DEAL TO SELL COLISEUM SITE TO DEVELOPERS, ENDING DECADES OF OWNERSHIP

by Eli Rosenberg

The city of Oakland announced a tentative deal to sell its half of the Coliseum site to a private developer, ending decades of involvement in the city’s sprawling professional sports and entertainment complex and heralding its potential redevelopment for other uses.

Oakland will sell its share of the Coliseum to the African American Sports & Entertainment Group, an Oakland-based group of largely Black developers and investors, for a minimum of $105 million, a windfall for the city that could help stave off deep cuts as it works to close a steep budget deficit of some $177 million. The site includes the Oakland Arena, which has found a lucrative second life as a venue for events such as concerts and Disney on Ice.

The sale comes after years of disappointment and recrimination over the departures of the Warriors basketball team, the Oakland Raiders football team, and the Athletics baseball team from the Coliseum and Arena.

City planners and real estate developers have for years dreamed of transforming the huge site — which sits near the airport at the nexus of major transit arteries and is served by a BART station — into a mega-complex that could include retail, hotels, restaurants and housing as well as potentially serving as a lure for sports teams, but complications and hurdles remain.

Chief among them is that the A’s are in the process of completing a purchase of the other 50% stake of the Coliseum, which was owned by Alameda County, even as the team is leaving the city for Sacramento next year. That purchase could still fall through, pending the outcome of a court case scheduled for September. The dual ownership of the site has long complicated decisions about the site’s future.

Initially, the city had hoped to work with the A’s to sell ownership of the entire site to the developers, but in the end, facing the prospect of painful cuts to critical services like police and the fire department, an arrangement was worked out to sell its share. Meanwhile, AASEG continues to negotiate a deal with the A’s.

City Hall representatives said they believed that the A’s and AASEG have agreed on potential terms of a sale, but details were not immediately clear. Last year, the baseball team rejected an offer of $115 million from AASEG for its half, which it acquired for $85 million from the county in 2019. An earlier appraisal, done about 10 years ago, put the value of the stadium at around $160 million.

Ray Bobbitt, the founder of AASEG, declined to comment on the current negotiations in an interview, but he said that the group was looking forward to progressing with plans on the site.

“All of us are born and raised in East Oakland,” he said. “We know that the Coliseum has a great opportunity to be revitalized.”

The A’s did not respond to a request for comment.

The Coliseum deal is being celebrated by City Hall, which is under pressure over concerns about crime in Oakland and a post-pandemic economic downturn that has reduced economic activity downtown and hammered the city’s budget.

City administrators were preparing to move forward with plans that could have included closing four fire stations, reducing the staff of the police department into the 600s and laying off between 50 and 90 city workers in other departments. The cuts would have occurred just as City Hall felt the city was showing signs of turning the corner.

Instead, the Coliseum stake sale allows the city to avoid that fate. The new budget, which will be released Friday, does not include a single layoff of city staff, although nearly all unfilled positions will see a hiring freeze extended indefinitely.

Oakland will be able to use the funds from the sale over the next two fiscal years; the last installment will come in 2026. The city administrator’s office estimates that about $60 million of the sum will be available to help narrow this year’s deficit.

The complicated public-private ownership of the site did help in one way: It allowed the city to avoid some of the byzantine rules governing the sale of public property and move quickly with AASEG when the opportunity arose. The biggest difference now was the A’s willingness to begin bargaining over their half with AASEG, after deciding earlier this year to relocate temporarily to Sacramento, City Hall said.

The sale closes more than a half-century of Oakland’s involvement in the 112-acre site five miles southeast of downtown. Construction began on the Coliseum in 1962; the Raiders and the A’s both had their first games there in subsequent years. The site has experienced boom and bust, hosting legendary concerts, the World Series, football playoffs and other events.

But it has also become a bit of a white elephant. The city is still paying off debt on Mount Davis, a 20,000-seat grandstand the city and county built as a concession to the Raiders in the 1990s, even though the team subsequently turned its back on the Bay Area and moved to Las Vegas. This sale doesn’t change the last two annual payments owed on a remaining $9 million of debt, according to City Hall.

The Coliseum is now considered outdated as a sports facility, and the site underutilized. The city has pushed for a development that could not only better use the huge area, but also help revitalize East Oakland.

AASEG has floated plans to build a $5 billion megaproject with housing, restaurants and a new convention center, and has expressed interest in luring professional soccer, women’s basketball and an NFL expansion team to Oakland. Bobbitt said the firm envisions a hotel and restaurant row built around the Oakland Arena, as well as housing, retail and other uses being developed, similar to the L.A. Live complex near the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

“There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity,” he said.

(SF Chronicle)

CALIFORNIA’S BURSTING BUDGET MORPHED INTO A $45 BILLION DEFICIT IN JUST 2 YEARS

by Dan Walters

The much-revised 2024-25 state budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom released last week contains hundreds of spending reductions and other actions to close what he says is a $44.9 billion deficit.

Exactly two years earlier, Newsom boasted as the state enjoyed a $97.5 billion budget surplus, thanks to surging revenues from the post-pandemic economic recovery.

“No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this,” Newsom said as he unveiled a revised $300 billion 2022-23 budget, which was $14 billion higher than his original proposal.

The budget he signed a month later was even larger, $307 billion, with immense new commitments, including cash payments to poor families and expansions of health care and early childhood education.

So, one must wonder, how did a $97.5 billion surplus morph into a huge deficit and a budget that is pulling back much of the new spending Newsom and the Legislature had so eagerly approved?

The new budget takes a stab at answering the question, basically saying that revenues fell well short of projections.

“Due to the revenue spike from 2019-20 to 2021-22, the budget acts of 2021 and 2022 were based on forecasts that projected substantially greater revenues in the last two fiscal years than occurred,” the budget declares.

However it doesn’t reveal why those erroneous projections were made in the first place.

In 2022, Newsom’s budget staff evidently looked at a spike in tax revenue as the state’s economy recovered from the pandemic, mostly due to massive amounts of federal relief funds, and concluded that the cornucopia would continue indefinitely.

That conclusion — or wishful thinking — led to extrapolating that a $97.5 billion surplus would emerge in 2022-23 and future years. However that number never appears in budget documents and was merely a verbal boast from Newsom.

A chart in then newly revised 2024-25 budget contains the pertinent numbers of the miscalculations.

According to the chart, the 2022-23 budget projected that revenues from the state’s three biggest sources — personal and corporate income taxes and sales taxes — would top $200 billion through 2025-26. In fact, however, they have fallen well short of that level every year since, and are now expected to remain far below for the remainder of Newsom’s governorship.

“The total difference across the four fiscal years is a negative $165.1 billion,” the new budget declares.

That’s an enormous amount of money that Newsom thought the state would be receiving but didn’t — a phantom surplus that fueled unsustainable spending.

The administration was also not alone in assuming in 2022 that the state was on the verge of a big increase in budget revenues. The Legislature’s budget analyst, Gabe Petek, largely confirmed Newsom’s rosy 2022 projections, tabbing revenues from income and sales taxes to hit $214 billion by 2023-24, $36 billion more than the current revenues from those taxes.

Those who crunch numbers in the Department of Finance and Petek’s office are seasoned professionals who, we must assume, honestly believed that California’s treasury would overflow with cash.

Their error apparently reflected models for revenue forecasts that are outdated, particularly when judging how wealthy Californians fare in taxable earnings on investments — a major but very volatile aspect of the revenue stream.

Newsom is proposing a couple of budget process changes to adjust for the volatility in addition to the current practice of setting aside rainy-day reserves. He would not spend spike revenues until they are actually in hand, and write budgets that look ahead to future years.

Those are steps in the right direction. Spending money based on volatile revenue estimates is not only foolish but cruel because — as this year proves — it raises expectations that later turn to pixie dust.

(CalMatters.org)

FREEDOM ISN’T ANTISEMITIC

Editor:

Amy B. Jolly’s letter in yesterday’s Press Democrat certainly exhibits her good instincts. She says she admires the students who stood up for Palestinian human rights at their Sonoma State University encampment. But she goes on to quote half of a slogan she says is antisemitic. The full slogan is “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. She attributes this slogan to “Palestinian terrorists who call for the end of Israel.”

However, there is nothing in this slogan that implies the end of anything, other than the end of Israel having power over Palestinians. Because freedom means everybody has equal power in a country that was known as Palestine.

Perhaps it is the name “Palestine” she believes is antisemitic, meaning anti-Jewish. As an observant Jew, brought up by my Jewish parents to believe in equality for all, I find the message to be Jewish-positive.

I will, however, grant Jolly that it is anti-Zionist. Here’s what Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party’s 1977 manifesto said, “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” So freedom for all would mean sharing power, which would be a threat to Israel’s absolute power.

Lois Pearlman

Guerneville

WHO IS PRO-ISRAEL REP. JARED HUFFMAN, REALLY?

by Peter Byrne

Protestors probe his political psyche and we follow the money.

Northern California congressperson Jared Huffman, 60, held his annual “Hootenanny” campaign fundraiser at Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma, California.

Press were denied entry to the private party, but the real story was outside, as CounterPunch discovered.

The fundraising event did not go karmically well for the occasionally progressive Democrat who has represented Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino and other North Coast counties since 2013. About 80 of Huffman’s constituents were motivated to attend his fundraiser—not to donate money, but to protest his political stance regarding what he labels a “justified war” on the people of Gaza. Huffman consistently votes to fund Israeli war machinery that targets Palestinian civilians, and he opposes an unconditional ceasefire.

Confined inside a barricaded “free speech” zone patrolled by heavily armed Petaluma police officers, the youthful, keffiyeh-wearing crowd waved Palestinian flags and brandished signs calling for a ceasefire and freeing Palestine from decades of Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal warfare. The protest chants and songs could be heard inside the restaurant as Huffman worked a microphone, thanking about 150 attendees for donating money to his 2024 campaign.

ATM Politics

Huffman’s campaign treasury is flush, holding more than $1 million in cash. Operating expenses for his 2022 campaign were $580,000, according to Federal Elections Commission datasets. But political coffers are always in need of lucre. That is because donations to Huffman are purchasing much more than streams of pan-handling email spam generated by his blue world marketing consultants. Cash is the arterial blood of influence and power in the purportedly democratic plutocracies of the West. Cash pays for newspaper, television, and social media advertising, gifting political allies, and more fundraising affairs. Without oodles of cash on hand to purchase media attention and generate popularity, a member of Congress is constantly at risk of becoming yesterday’s loser, a sudden nobody with only a phat pension left as the remainder of congressional power perks. As Bob Dylan’s immortal song about America’s propagandized culture observes, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” It also seduces; without buckets of cash to spill, there simply are no votes to be had, Ma. Hence, most politicians will kiss anyone who flashes a Benjamin while police are keeping constituents carrying protest signs at bay.

Down Home With Jared

The loud and lively demonstration calling for Huffman to stop supporting killing the people of Gaza was organized by Sonoma County for Palestine and Marin County Democratic Socialists of America. At the request of U.S. Capital Police, the Petaluma Police Department assigned five officers to back up private security hired to deal with political disruption. Petaluma police chief Brian Murphy confirmed that the Huffman campaign is not covering the cost of providing police protection at the private party. But why did Huffman order up the police in such force?

By comparison, in 2021, a Huffman town hall meeting in San Rafael was disrupted by a mob of hundreds of enraged anti-vaxxers who rushed the stage. One person attacked an elderly, masked man; the MAGA mood was rude and ugly. Huffman gamely tried to debate with the protestors, but they were rambunctious, uncontrollable. Pointedly, Huffman declined to call in the police, who were staged a few blocks away. Take a note: these were mostly middle aged, white home-owner types living in the heart of Marin—not Black Lives Matter or “pro-Palestinian” radicals or politically awakening Generation Zs.

Inside the police-protected Lagunitas party were two dozen elected officials hailing from Marin and Sonoma counties, including four members of the Marin Board of Supervisors, Mayor Kevin McDonnell of Petaluma, and three Petaluma City Council members. Since October, many of these gray-haired, aging officials have successfully agitated to keep ceasefire in Gaza resolutions off their meeting dockets.

Outside the party, the crowd was loud, but peaceful and polite. Norman Solomon of Roots Action—who ran against Huffman in his first race for Congress in 2012—coolly handed out “Ceasefire in Gaza” signs. Two MAGA-type scowling provocateurs faced passing cars wielding an American flag and “Fuck Huffman” placards; they did not share the other protestors’ agenda. The mostly white, middle aged and elderly Huffman donors were compelled by the presence of the demonstration to park hundreds of feet away and to walk in front of the protestors to gain entrance to the Hootenanny. Many strode by with their heads down, perhaps chagrined, perhaps angry, but some shot the protestors “V for Peace” finger signs, as if to indicate that they, too, oppose the slaughter in Gaza, really.

Inside the brewery hall, the guests were entertained by SoloRio, billed as “a rock gospel stone soup band.” According to a Hootenanny attendee, Huffman himself plucked a guitar, singing a hobo ballad, “Wagon Wheels.” Huffman’s media campaign portrays the bookish lawyer cum politician as a down home, folksy yet progressive kind of farm-lover who likes to sport fish, play volleyball, josh and hootenanny with the country guys and gals.

Outside, the protestors portrayed Huffman onomatopoeically as “Genocide Jared,” noting that he had broken with 33 members of the House Progressive Caucus in an April vote to give Israel $17 billion in bombs, weapons, and infrastructural support to wage its explosively industrialized war on starving, thirsty, environmentally decimated, wounded and grieving Gazans, who were definitely not invited to the Hootenanny.

The protestors were also upset with Huffman because he has long opposed calling for a ceasefire in Gaza unless the negotiated terms are greenlighted by the Netanyahu administration; permanently disarm Hamas, but not Israel; call for the release of hostages held by Hamas, but not Palestinians held by Israeli Defense Forces.

Huffman also voted for a controversial bill equating criticism of Israeli militarism and apartheid practices with antisemitism.

Cognitive Dissonances

Leading up to Lagunitas demonstration, Huffman twice engaged in candid colloquies with members of the Marin Country DSA. The participants failed to find much in the way of political common ground with their representative regarding Israel and Palestine, but transcripts provided by the Marin County DSA reveal the process by which Huffman masticates facts as he ponders how to vote on politically controversial issues.

On Netanyahu

In a May 10 interview on Zoom with members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee of the Marin County DSA, Huffman said, “I really don’t like Netanyahu. I think he is a thug and a fascist.” He said this while doubling down on affirming his support for giving Netanyahu and his generals the means to continue their collocated wars on Gaza, the Occupied West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Huffman described himself as “heartbroken and concerned” about the annihilation of Palestinians at the same time that he is legislating their continued destruction as a people, which many genocide scholars argue is isomorphic to genocide, although Huffman does not agree with that analysis.

On geography

Huffman told the DSA interlocutors, “There are better ways to pressure Israel’s war plans than a full withholding of [military] aid and the reason is I want Israel to be able to defend itself … it’s a pretty delicate time for a country that is about the size of Marin County.”

Fact: Marin County’s population is 262,231; its land mass is 520 square miles. Israel’s internal population of Jews and Arabs is 10 million; its land mass is 8,019 square miles. Israel has 38 times the population of Marin County and 15 times the land mass.

On Biden

Huffman said he steadfastly supports the Biden administration’s actions regarding the war on Gaza, claiming that Biden “passionately wants to protect Palestinian lives … and try to get a ceasefire.”

Fact: The Biden administration has vetoed multiple calls for a ceasefire at the United Nations as it continues to arm Israel with bombs to explode Gazans. Biden and his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken—whom Huffman referred to as “Tony” during the conversation—refuse to effectively condition supplying weapons to Israel upon Netanyahu re-opening the sealed borders of Gaza to allow humanitarian aid to flow, preventing mass starvation and even more deaths from disease, wounds, hunger and despair.

On apartheid

Huffman insists that Israel is a democracy and not an apartheid or settler colonial state, but that the West Bank “looks a lot more like apartheid [and] the occupation is a disaster.”

Fact: Israel is a fundamentally theocratic government created through acts of terrorism and population removal and expanded by IDF-backed settlers violently seizing and colonizing Palestinian lands. According to the Council of Foreign Relations, Israel denies equal rights to Arabs living inside its borders under socially and economically segregated conditions. Inside its national borders and in Gaza and the West Bank, “Greater” Israel has erected a vast military, digital and architectural apparatus to separate populations based upon ethnicity. The Israeli state regularly “mows the lawn” in Gaza and the West Bank, which means blowing up and bulldozing residences and businesses of Palestinians and murdering, torturing, and incarcerating stone-throwing resisters, including thousands of teenagers and children. Huffman claims to oppose these current and historical depredations, even as he votes for funding them.

On antisemitism

Huffman strongly opposes the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which he (incorrectly) labels as anti-Semitic. Huffman voted for a controversial congressional bill that equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. In that regard, he told the DSA, “I’m a lawyer so I speak with a little bit of authority: the bill does not codify a definition of antisemitism. … It requires consideration of that definition … and I do want to show support for addressing antisemitism because it’s a thing, it’s real, and it’s raging right now.”

Fact: President Biden and most members of Congress regularly equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

On campus protests

Huffman opined that some of the pro-Palestine protestors “want world peace and are wonderful non-violent ideologues … others are nihilists and haters and want to fight and destroy things … Some police forces have shown incredible restraint … in allowing protest … others have not.” Regarding the politically reactionary mob of white males that attacked the student encampment at UCLA, Huffman “deplored” their violent actions, and he also “deplored the assault reportedly on the one Jewish student that the counter protestors thought justified their violence.”

Fact: There is no evidence of any assault prior to the mobs’ violent attack and beating of protestors, in fact, it is the so called “counter protestors,” many identified as right wing provocateurs, who initiated the fighting and assaulted the peacefully protesting students as the LAPD watched and did nothing.

Fact: On November 6, Huffman issued an apology to “my friends in the Jewish Community” for voting against a bill proposed by Burgess Owens, a Trump supporting Republican representative from Utah that had condemned Students for Justice in Palestine and professors at major universities as Hamas supporters. The Owens resolution subsequently supported by Huffman falsely accused universities of “the glorification of violence and usage of anti-Semitic rhetoric [which] creates a hostile learning and working environment for Jewish students, faculty, and staff.” Huffman explained in the local press that he now regrets not voting for the MAGA bill because it “was seen by many in the Jewish Community as a test of where members of Congress stand on growing scourge of college antisemitism.” Perhaps a few campaign funders put Huffman to the test.

On self-defense

Huffman, self-described as a “lawyer with a little bit of authority” said he does not support the right of Palestinians to armed self-defense against attacks by Israel’s military forces or settler militias.

Fact: International law supports the legal right of occupied people to resist attacks by colonizers and oppressors.

On the Nakba

Huffman said, “The Nakba was a real thing … And I think there are interesting debates about the scale and the reasons for it. But … many of those folks were told to leave by the Arab countries. There are some people in other countries who said, uh, we will destroy Israel and you’ll be able to return when we do. [There are] nuanced counter narratives [and] I have heard them and I’ve found some credibility there.”

Fact: Huffman holds an ahistorical view of the Nakba which occurred in 1947-48. The catastrophic ethnic cleansing, forcible expulsion and murder of indigenous people by the Jewish colonialists is exhaustively documented.

On international law

Huffman participated in another interview with Marin DSA on February 29, the day of the Flour Massacre, when the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) shot and killed 188 Gazans and injured hundreds of civilians who were seeking food for their starving families from the trickle of humanitarian aid trucks that had managed to pass through IDF and settler blockades. Huffman said, “It’s a problem that several UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] staffers in Gaza took part in the October 7 massacre.”

Fact: There is no credible evidence that UNRWA staff participated in the massacres, but that unproven allegation is a common talking point pushed by IDF public relations arms and Jewish non-profit funding foundations lobbying against locally elected officials supporting a ceasefire in Gaza. Huffman’s main talking points in his interviews with Marin DSA and his public statements since October 7 echo the positions of Israeli state-supporting organizations, such as the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, that strongly and loudly oppose elected officials even considering measures to endorse a humanitarian or any type of ceasefire in Gaza.

On bombing the Iranian consulate

Huffman attempted to excuse Israel’s April 1 bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed seven Iranian military officers, by suggesting, without producing a scintilla of evidence, that there may have been “some terror act afoot,” adding “Let me be clear, the IRGC are not good guys.” Huffman then proffered an incoherent analogy, “But the Saudis chopped up Jamal Khashoggi in an embassy, so I’m not here to say that just because you walk in the door of an embassy you can do anything you want, I just don’t know enough about it.”

Fact: The 1961 Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Relations states, “The premises of the embassy shall be inviolable.” Huffman appears to be suggesting that assassinating Khashoggi was (perhaps) not a violation of diplomatic immunity because it was committed by Saudi Arabia at its own consulate in Turkey and not at Turkey’s consulate in Saudi Arabia. By this hair-splitting cognitive convolution: since the Iranian consulate was located in the capital of Syria, and not inside the borders of Israel, it was not a violation of the strictures of diplomacy to bomb it and kill high ranking Iranian officials. Bombing an embassy or consulate is an obvious act of war, however, and Iran treated it as such.

An “Imaginary” Solution

Huffman opposes the very idea of creating a democratic one state model of Israel in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights. “It is a euphemism for ending the state of Israel .. . there would not be a Jewish homeland of any kind.” In the same breath, Huffman said he opposes the long time Israeli occupation and illegal settlements of the West Bank and is willing to “pre-recognize a demilitarized Palestinian state [but] we’ve been waiting for decades for this kind of imaginary negotiated solution between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. It’s just not working.”

Fact: Huffman admits to supporting a “two state” political model that he views as “imaginary” and unobtainable.

On genocide

Huffman told DSA, “I think we have to be careful when we use a term like ‘genocide’ because we don’t want to diminish its impact when something that truly is a genocide happens.” Huffman apparently does not view Israel’s decades of invasions, assassinations, destruction of mosques, hospitals, and universities combined with torture, imprisonment without due process, and the concentration camping of Palestinians because of who they are as “truly” a genocide. In response to a DSA query, Huffman declined to state whether he will respect the decision of the International Court of Justice if it orders Israeli to cease committing genocide presently in Gaza. To reiterate, Huffman, a lawyer who is a sworn officer of the court, and who claims to speak with a little bit of authority, is apparently prepared to officially disregard a ruling by an international court if it does not accord with his personal opinion.

Disrupting Support For Genocide

Four of Huffman’s constituents paid $40 each to attend the Hootenanny. As Huffman played master of ceremonies, the undercover protestors rose one by one to defend the people of Gaza. Each disrupter was quickly surrounded by pistol holstered policer officers and summarily pushed outside to the parking lot. Cell phone videos show Huffman trying to maintain the flow of his fundraising spiel throughout the commotions, pausing briefly as one protester was forcibly expelled to say, “This is democracy, this is democracy, and we are going to get through this together.”

In interviews with CounterPunch, the expellees recalled their experiences as disrupters.

S: “I walked out in front of the band between songs and pulled out a printout of a Palestinian flag. I said ‘I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday, on behalf of all the mothers in Palestine, free Palestine, free Palestine’.”

Expelled by police.

Sé: “I said, ‘Jared Huffman you are a coward not a leader! Shame. Call for a permanent ceasefire. Why is your number one donor Honeywell Industries, which collaborates with Israel and has contracts for nuclear weapons production? Why do you have such a weak stance when it comes to ethnic cleansing, and genocide? Why are you still voting in favor of sending arms to Israel when they have shown over and over and over again that they don’t give a fuck about civilian lives? Palestine will be free! Permanent ceasefire now!’”

Expelled by police.

J: “Huffman mocked Republicans for trying to defund the IRS and that got me to jump up and start with him defunding UNWRA and closing all humanitarian aid to Gaza. I spoke about the horrors of 50,000 dead and 30,000 women and children. Then as they almost had me out of the room I heard him mock Republicans again. I said he was no different—they are all empire.”

Expelled by police.

The Buck Stops Where?

When Huffman served Marin and Sonoma districts prior to 2013 as a state assemblyman, he told Marin Magazine that his political hero is US President Harry Truman. (Truman ordered the atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945.) Channeling his Missouri-born hero’s favorite campaign aphorism, Huffman, who was also born in Missouri, had likewise decorated his desktop with a placard reading, “The Buck Stops Here.” Charming.

Federal Elections Commission data and Open Secrets show that since Huffman first ran for congress in 2012, he has raised $5.4 million and spent $4.3 million for a net “profit” of more than $1 million. Why the surplus? Who gives him the bucks? Where do the bucks stop? Let us see.

Huffman campaigns as a fervent environmentalist. But his bona fides are undercut by looking at who funds his campaigns. The current cycle is topped with $10,000 from the political action committee of Honeywell International, a global conglomerate which supplies the US and Israel with many weapons systems and engages in fossil fuel and metals extraction and nuclear weapons manufacturing. By itself, Honeywell is a world class source of carbon gases and pollution, but it has consistently funded “environmentalist” Huffman throughout his career. For that matter, Honeywell regularly donates tens of thousands of dollars to Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden. Honeywell is not stupid; it knows what it is buying: allegiance. Notably, Honeywell only saw fit to give $28 to Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, who is a dedicated environmentalist who voted against funding Israel’s war on Gaza in April.

In the prior election cycle, Huffman’s top contributor was J Street PAC ($13,500), a “liberal” Israeli lobby in Washington DC. By way of comparison, J Street PAC only gave $7 to the iconic New York City progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

This year, according to Open Secrets, retired people like Huffman to the tune of $90,963, and the casino/gambling industry skimmed him $43,500. Because Huffman serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, greenhouse gas generating rail and air corporations and transportation unions granted him in excess of $50,000.

In past cycles, Huffman’s major donors have included industrialized agribusiness and a portfolio of global climate heaters, such as Sierra Pacific Industries, PG&E, Goldman Sachs, Carnival Corporation, Bechtel Group and General Motors.

A quick tour through Huffman’s campaign expenditures this year is instructive. Someone likes to fundraise on the hoof, with a $2,811 tab at Charlie Parker Steakhouse on March 8. Last September 6, the campaign paid $11,850 for “lodging” at the Gold River Lodge and Historic Requa Inn in Klamath, California—resorts for sports fishing.

(Huffman did not reply to a query about why his campaign paid for staying at these fishing resorts. For that matter, Huffman did not respond to CounterPunch’s repeated requests for comment on all aspects of this story.)

Huffman gifted thousands of dollars to political cronies, including $4,000 to the Sonoma County Democratic Party; $2,500 to Democratic Central Committee of Marin County; $5,000 to Biden Victory Fund.

On March 13, Huffman gave $1,000 to the New Israel Fund, which supports civil rights activities inside Israel. And on March 16, Huffman donated $1,085.50 to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) in Berkeley, California, which renders material aid to children suffering in Occupied Palestine and Gaza. Huffman did not respond to a query about what the contribution to MECA was for—but if it was to buy off a guilty conscience, he got more of a bargain than the children did.

At the end of the day, it is apparent that Huffman does not fear the voices of protestors, nor nightmare echoes of the cries of burning children in Gaza, as much as he fears the political power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is spending at least $100 million this year to destroy “progressive” members of congress who dare to criticize Israel. We all get it, Jared: You are afraid.

(CounterPunch.org)

THE REAL COMPLAINING PARTY

by Michael O’Connor

The problem with international law has traditionally been that it has no bark and no bite. It isn’t only that courts are powerless to punish without the co-operation of nation states; it’s also that crimes under international law often aren’t prosecuted at all, especially when conflicts are ongoing and leaders still in office. International law tends to catch up with its criminals long after their crimes have been committed. Considerations of power politics have often prevented even the consideration of potential crimes.

Given this, the decision by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, to seek arrest warrants against senior leaders of both Israel and Hamas is unprecedented. Khan has applied for warrants to arrest the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and defense minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as three senior Hamas officials: Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza; Mohammed Deif, who allegedly orchestrated the attacks on 7 October; and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s overall leader. This isn’t the first time the ICC has targeted a sitting head of government: in 2009, the chief prosecutor sought and was granted a warrant for the arrest of the then president of Sudan, Omar Bashir. But this is the first time since it was set up in 2002 by the Rome Statute that the ICC has intervened so forcefully in such a high-profile situation while it is still unfurling.

Within hours of the announcement, Joe Biden accused the ICC of seeking to draw a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas. But that isn’t how the law works. As Khan said on Monday, ‘international law and the laws of armed conflict apply to all. No foot soldier, no commander, no civilian leader – no one – can act with impunity.’

In defending Netanyahu so fiercely, and on such tenuous grounds, Biden has exposed the inadequacy and inconsistency of American policy. It is now virtually impossible to toe the line between respect for international law and uncompromising defense of Netanyahu.

The UK government, meanwhile, objected to the prosecutor’s applications on the grounds that the ICC lacks jurisdiction because ‘the UK has not yet recognized Palestine as a state, and Israel is not a state party to the Rome Statute.’ According to one influential view, crimes against humanity can and must be prosecuted irrespective of national borders: at the Nuremberg trials, the American prosecutor, Robert Jackson, declared that ‘the real complaining party at your bar is civilization’. In any case, a panel of legal experts convened by the ICC agreed with Khan’s view that the ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestine and by Palestinian nationals because Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute in 2015. Setting all of this aside, the UK government’s position is inconsistent with its previous pronouncements. When the ICC indicted Vladimir Putin for crimes against humanity, this was warmly (and rightly) welcomed by the UK government, even though Russia is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.

The ICC prosecutor’s applications hold out the promise of a world in which actions are accepted to have consequences, the conduct of states is governed by law rather than brute strength, wrongs are recognized as wrongs, and human beings are treated as human beings. One can only hope that the US and UK choose to be a part of it.

17 FACTS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT IRAN:

Iran is home to one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, Susa, which dates back over 6,000 years.
The world's highest number of nose jobs per capita is recorded in Iran, making cosmetic surgery surprisingly common.
Iran boasts one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions, Zoroastrianism, which dates back over 3,500 years and influenced the development of other major religions.
The city of Tabriz in Iran was the capital of the Mongol Ilkhanate in the 13th century and served as a major hub on the Silk Road.
Iran is one of the few countries in the world where hand-chopping is still used as a form of punishment for certain crimes.
Tehran, Iran's capital, is the second-largest city in Western Asia, after Istanbul.
Iranian cuisine is incredibly diverse, with each region boasting its own distinct culinary traditions, such as the spicy and aromatic cuisine of Gilan in the north.
Iran has one of the world's largest populations of Persian leopards, which are endangered and mainly inhabit the Alborz and Zagros Mountains.
Iran is home to one of the world's oldest universities, the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Qom, founded in 859 AD.
Despite its largely desert climate, Iran is home to over 7,000 plant species, many of which are endemic to the region.
Iran has a rich tradition of poetry, with poets like Hafez and Rumi being celebrated worldwide for their profound and lyrical verses.
The ancient city of Yazd in central Iran is known for its unique wind towers, which have been used for centuries to provide natural ventilation in buildings.
Iran is one of the few countries in the world where women outnumber men in higher education, with more women enrolled in universities than men.
The traditional Persian New Year, Nowruz, is celebrated on the spring equinox and has been observed for over 3,000 years.
Iran has the highest number of female students studying engineering and science at the undergraduate level compared to any other country in the world.
The Iranian city of Isfahan was once one of the largest cities in the world and served as the capital of the Persian Empire under the Safavid dynasty.
Iran is home to one of the world's oldest bazaars, the Grand Bazaar of Tehran, which dates back over 200 years and spans over 10 kilometers of labyrinthine alleys and bustling market stalls.

ROBERT CREELEY

Today we note the birth date of Robert Creeley (May 21, 1926—March 30, 2005), American poet and founder of the Black Mountain movement of the 1950s.

In 1955, after receiving a B.A. from Black Mountain College in North Carolina, he joined Charles Olson on its faculty and was editor of the Black Mountain Review for its first three years. The Review published poems by the then little-known Creeley, as well as poems by various other faculty members and poets.

Creeley visited San Francisco for two months in the spring of 1956, having heard from Kenneth Rexroth about a local poetic “renaissance” underway. There he met Allen Ginsberg, who had recently completed Howl, and befriended Jack Kerouac. Creeley later met and befriended Jackson Pollock at the Cedar Tavern in New York City.

In 1957, Creeley met Bobbie Louise Hawkins; they lived together until 1975, having two children, Sarah and Katherine. He dedicated his book For Love to Bobbie.

Creeley’s poems of the 1950s and ’60s reveal the influence of William Carlos Williams. In For Love (1962), the collection of poems written between 1950 and 1960, Creeley emerged as a master technician. Similar to Williams’s poems, Creeley’s works are short and to the point.

In his later books of poetry, most notably Pieces (1968), Creeley’s poems are equally self-contained. His poetry, characterized by understatement, down-to-earth flippancy, and a studious adherence to economic and precise language, influenced many younger poets.

Creeley joined the English faculty of “Black Mountain II” at the University at Buffalo in 1967. He would stay at this post until 2003, when he received a post at Brown University.

Creeley’s Selected Poems appeared in 1976; The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975–2005 was published in 2006. From 1989 to 1991 he was New York State’s poet laureate, and in 1999 he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for achievement in American poetry.

Robert Creeley died in the morning of March 30, 2005, in Odessa, Texas of complications from pneumonia.

WATER MUSIC

The words are a beautiful music.
The words bounce like in water.

Water music,
loud in the clearing

off the boats,
birds, leaves.

They look for a place
to sit and eat—

no meaning,
no point.

— Robert Creeley

A CRAB scuttling across the barren sand was looking for a clue

He needed divine intervention to direct him what to do

The frustration he held deep in his soul being misunderstood had taken its toll

For all the other crabs that he knew were constantly telling him what to do

Be wary & cautious

Hide under a rock

Step to the side

Do not make any jokes

Be quiet as a mouse & cause no trouble

Never ever pinch another

He was dead tired it was hard work being something you are not

Crab was fighting trying not to give up

Surely If he complies to the demands he would end up rotting in the hot sand

Belly up legs in the air little crab died no one cared

He thought that was his fate, no doubt

Death by oppression

A one way ticket out

Until suddenly he realized he could escape the claws of others by being himself not an imposter

So he hurried across the shore looking for a hint

Drawing lines in the sand as he went

Unable to see behind him

He was missing what was happening

his eyes fixated up ahead looking for the prize

Thinking the gift was in front of him he continued for quite some time

Until he had to stop, weak from the heat and sand in his crotch

He sat and stretched then turned around

A dumbfounded crab unable to utter a sound

He was stricken by the beauty of his art

Sparkly sand swirls, intertwined elegant lines filled the beach as far back as he could see

A grin emerged upon his face as he realized the truth

That bravery is the key to setting yourself free

— Mazie Malone

27 Comments

Eric Michael May 23, 2024

Bizarre contribution from sheriff Kendall. Pilots and nuclear eod technicians must adhere to rigorous standards and certifications. To become a cop all you need is a GED, don’t even have to finish high school. Many cops also ABUSE their power and authority at the expense of the rest of us. We don’t really see that behavior among pilots and eod techs. So the sheriff, an elected public official, will have to put up with the rest of us offering suggestions every once in a while. If you can’t stand the heat stay out of the kitchen.

Reply
- Matt Kendall May 23, 2024
  
  My bizzare contribution was published by the editor from a comment I made yesterday afternoon. The comment was regarding the topic of a football player offering advice to a women’s college.
  “ Pilots and nuclear eod technicians must adhere to rigorous standards and certifications” exactly the same as a Deputy Sheriff. My cousin was an EOD Tech in the armed forces which required a high-school diploma. And continued training. An old friend was a pilot and still is, he also has a high-school diploma and continued training. Again the same as a Deputy Sheriff.
  Many cops abusing authority? I’m afraid we need a definition on “many” and “abusing”.
  As far as the temperature in my kitchen, it’s fairly comfortable. This should be evident by the fact I sign off on comments using the name my father gave me and without the invisibility cloak of a pen name.
  It’s often difficult to think through problems and find solutions therefore lots of folks simply sit back and judge, that’s a growing problem in our nation.
  I do thank you for proving my point in the first comment of the day.
  Take care, God bless and may we all find peace somewhere.
  
  Reply
  - MAGA Marmon May 23, 2024
    
    The D.A. should file a felony criminal charge against Kendall, and the Board should immediately replace Kendall with someone from the CEO’s Office.
    
    MAGA Marmon
    
    Reply
  - Eric Michael May 23, 2024
    
    If the AVA took your quote out of context that’s their problem. My comment still has legs.
    Yeah, sure, some people with credentials do become cops. I’m not disputing that. Cops get a lot of training, too. But at ground level a lot of that is just how to violently subdue or kill citizens with impunity. Learn some jiu jitsu and be able to center mass mag dump a moving target, maybe some fake empathy community policing “training” and you can be a cop or corrections dep. There are real reasons why citizens are starting to question the absolute lethal authority of our police forces. And a quick review of the job requirements for say CHP or MCSO (again, no high school diploma required, only GED. As opposed to say, a pilot?) tells me the entry bar is set pretty low for people who will be granted lethal authority over citizens, impacting “many” lives. I’ve lived all over California, and I’ve personally witnessed several corrupt cops in my limited experience. You could ask me about that time a mendo deputy stole a 5-figure cash bundle during a traffic stop at the county line about 20 years ago. That’s a pretty bad apple in a small barrel, no matter how you slice it. And there’s more to talk about here in mendo, but who really cares? Like a true bureaucrat you’d rather spar over the definition of “many” and “abuse”.
    
    My point is- you, as an elected public official, should not be so resistant to suggestions or even criticism. You seem personally offended that you should be held accountable to the public. Is your job really that bothersome?
    
    And sheriff Kendall: how are you so certain this isn’t the name my father gave me? Maybe you are making assumptions, or maybe you are making use of law enforcement surveillance tech for personal reasons?
    
    I’d say thanks for proving MY point, but instead I’ll say sorry for striking a sensitive nerve I guess. All due respect
    
    Reply
    - peter boudoures May 23, 2024
      
      Hey Eric do you follow the sheriffs comments in the press? He isn’t exactly the type who gets defensive or won’t stop and talk to you in public. He’s relatively open and his deputies are reasonable people from what I’ve seen. I don’t recall his department getting into much trouble.
      I’ve been arrested a handle full of times and if there’s a department I’d complain about it’s the Glenn county sheriffs department who treats a weed offense like crack cocaine, or the willows chp office who over reacts at even the slightest scent of cannabis, or the Yosemite park rangers who set up midnight stings over 10 grams of weed.
      
      Reply
      - Eric Michael May 23, 2024
        
        Mendo deputies will screw you just as fast and hard as Glenn, willows, Yosemite or wherever. Especially when cash is involved. Did you not read my comment? I am still awaiting the sheriffs answer how he knows I’m not using my dad’s name. Don’t kid yourself, Peter.
        
        Reply
  - Doug Holland May 23, 2024
    
    “Pilots and nuclear eod technicians must adhere to rigorous standards and certifications” exactly the same as a Deputy Sheriff.
    
    Four minutes of laughter, followed by four minutes of giggling.
    
    Reply
Mazie May 23, 2024

Good Morning…💕

Thank you AVA for publishing my poem!! Regarding the predicament of Mr. Stehr, the excuse by BB that he did not accept housing is ridiculous, he has had at least 2 extensions since that time. He also as I understand had lost his voucher for HUD housing assistance and unsure if that has been reinstated? The county purchased motel on Orchard for homeless people should be an option for him at least as a transitional arrangement. Housing Navigation through RCS /BB should make his situation priority as they should have all along. One of the issues I have brought up before is the expectation for people in these situations to maneuver through all the hoops on their own, that is the expectation, they put in all the effort with guidance which is just lip service. It is in itself a barrier to be at the shelter, it is not low barrier it is the brick wall !!!

When I worked at DSLC after I was fired from Manzanita Services in 2020 for saying that Mental Health Services are inadequate I worked very hard to get a Schizophrenic Arsonist housed, do you see the dilemma in that? Arson is a huge liability! If we can house that man and all the sex crime parolees at Royal 8 then there is no reason the system is not stepping up to make sure Craig Stehr is adequately housed.

mm 💕

Reply
- MAGA Marmon May 23, 2024
  
  “The county purchased motel on Orchard for homeless people should be an option for him at least as a transitional arrangement.”
  
  That motel is being filled with Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma County veterans. I don’t think Craig is a veteran. Megan Van Sant made it very clear it would not have an impact on housing your ordinary run of the mill homeless folks
  
  MAGA Marmon
  
  Reply
  - Mazie May 23, 2024
    
    James,
    True he is not a vet
    I know someone who was housed there not a Vet under 40 and an addict. … I am not surprised at that statement, however average run of the mill homeless folks? Ones without addiction and Mental Illness? !! …
    
    mm 💕
    
    Reply
    - MAGA Marmon May 23, 2024
      
      Helping the homeless – transforming lives
      Officials respond to community’s concerns regarding Best Western purchase
      
      “Those eligible to apply will arrive with a funding source: veterans with housing vouchers but have not yet found a place to live; seniors who have access to senior housing vouchers; those with mental illness who are enrolled in the Whole Person Care Program; and small families involved with Child Welfare or with CalWORKs Housing Support Program.”
      
      I believe Craig’s senior voucher has expired.
      
      https://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/2020/11/15/helping-the-homeless-transforming-lives/
      
      MAGA Marmon
      
      Reply
      - Mazie May 23, 2024
        
        Thanks James…,
        
        The system within the system inside the system around and around! A snake eating its own tail!!! 🤦‍♀️😢🙏
        
        mm 💕
        
        Reply
      - Marco McClean May 23, 2024
        
        Where’s the sense in a senior voucher expiring before the senior does?
        
        Reply
        
        Eric Michael May 23, 2024
        
        Words of wisdom
        
        Reply
- Lazarus May 23, 2024
  
  Mr. Stehr is a casualty of the numbers. There are too many that have been waiting for a bed too long. And perhaps Mr. Stehr has been his own worst advocate also.
  There are those here who refer to Mr. Stehr as a bum, freeloader, etc, which may be true.
  Mr. Stehr has been offered housing via a voucher, but he declined. The locale was not, in Mr. Stehr’s opinion, suitable.
  The only reason Mr. Stehr’s situation is known to us is because the AVA is supplying the vehicle for his lobbying for his situation.
  I suspect hundreds, thousands of Mr. Spehrs are out there, wandering around looking for a place to stay or simply a place to sleep as he is.
  The entirety of the homeless is overwhelming, and the system, as it is now, is ill-prepared to deal with it.
  The government and leadership have failed them horribly.
  And then there’s…Life is about choices and chance.
  Laz
  
  Reply
  - Mazie May 23, 2024
    
    All true Laz….
    However sometimes things happen to you that are not a choice! And usually that is via other people doing them to you! Oddly enough my brother wrote a book everything is a choice and unfortunately he is full of shit! hahaha…
    
    mm 💕
    
    Reply
    - Lazarus May 23, 2024
      
      Mazie, that is why I added “Chance.” Chance is the only reason we’re still alive. So many times, there were chances to fail or die. And through no choice or fault, I didn’t.
      Be well,
      Laz
      
      Reply
      - Mazie May 23, 2024
        
        Laz,
        
        Yes … thank you !!! Be well yourself my friend…. 💕
        
        mm 💕
        
        Reply
        
        Lazarus May 23, 2024
        
        And to be clear, I am not unsympathetic toward Mr. Stehr. Give him a bed, Building Bridges!
        But sometimes life can come down to how the dice roll or the cards come. And putting it all on Red or Black works less than 50% of the time…metaphorically speaking.
        Thank you,
        Laz
        
        Reply
        
        Mazie May 23, 2024
        
        Laz,
        I know you are not unsympathetic! no worries ..
        
        mm 💕
        
        Reply
- Eric Michael May 23, 2024
  
  I too am dismayed at the way Craig Stehr is being treated. It seems he is being punished for daring to make a couple reasonable requests of the helping pros. Who are they so eager to replace him with? Probably someone on the destructive end of the human spectrum, someone more beholden and reimbursable to the $ystem. Hopefully Craig can at least be accommodated during completion of his scheduled dental work. It is not surprising he is considering leaving mendocino county altogether. The top-to-bottom daily insanity here is too much for me sometimes as well. Whether he chooses to leave or not I expect he will continue to keep us informed of his situation. And I hope his beer is always cold and the nosh tasty, best wishes to Craig.
  
  Reply
Fred Gardner May 23, 2024

re Ed Notes noting “Wanda Tinasky was an erudite old beatnik retired to Fort Bragg, who amused himself by writing hilarious literary evaluations to the only two papers who’d publish him, the ava and Marco McClean’s Memo/Coast Peddler.” I think The Hawk didn’t exactly retire, he retreated to Mendocino, having failed to make a living as a writer. His bitterness turned murderous when his wife began achieving some success (as a potter, if memory serves, which it does less and less these days). There was something perverse about his spirit that we got infected by… The book project, as you observed, brought out the worst in all of us… During the move I came across the interview in which Ed Mendelson expressed certainty that Pynchon was Wanda. Now I have to find it again… Next day Mendelson was told by Melanie Jackson, Pynchon’s wife/agent (how handy), that her man had written “not a word of it.” Hawkins being Wanda Tinasky doesn’t mean that Pynchon, living in Trinidad and Arcata while writing Vineland (his most readable book), wasn’t aware of the AVA. I’d bet 2-to-1 he wrote two letters to the editor signed “General Newcomb” or “Newcombe.”

Reply
Mazie May 23, 2024

Remember the campaign I think early 2 thousands, A hand up not a hand out??!!! …. 😢😂!!!

That failed…… and definitely not because people like me gave street people food or money…. and still do!!!

mm 💕

Reply
Harvey Reading May 23, 2024

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/23/a-brutal-suppression-of-speech/

Welcome to Freedomlandia, where you are free to say anything the fascists and Zionists want you to say… Republicans (which these days includes Democrats) and MAGAts love it!

Reply
Matt Kendall May 23, 2024

Mr. Michael
I didn’t dip out on the conversation however was extremely busy on the North Coast today. I’m back and wanted to cover a couple more points with you

“All due respect“
I didn’t take your correspondence as disrespectful in the least and I certainly hope you’re not hearing any disrespect in my correspondence as well. With the written word it is easy to misinterpret the feelings of the writer.

The AVA did not take my comment out of context. I was simply providing some commentary as to the reason I had given that comment.

I am not seeing deputies attacking and killing with impunity and as far as sparring over “many and abuse” facts do matter. A simple anecdotal statement that the training of officers is “. how to violently subdue or kill citizens with impunity” is absolutely false.

I am seeing a lot of one sided coverage of events by various media sources which are nothing less than misleading and harmful not only to peace officers however also to the public.

When we see a news clip which has intentionally been clipped short only showing the actions of the officer and not the suspect, there’s an issue.

I have seen many deputies attacked on duty. I have personally been attacked on duty. I and my deputies will defend ourselves and will fight back because that is the job. It’s also human nature to want to get home alive every night.

“My point is- you, as an elected public official, should not be so resistant to suggestions or even criticism. “
I am not resistant to conversations when they are constructive. Our discord today should show some proof of my willingness to engage and I hope you see this as well.

Often however many things brought forward even by the most well intending person can be best described as uninformed and uneducated on the topic in which they speak. I can certainly dismiss those when I hear them because of my education and experience.

I never accused you of not using your real name. I simply pointed out the fact that I do use mine. Again we are in a strange time where many folks can spew with impunity whatever they like with no real accountability for what is said.

I am from a time when discord and rhetoric were considered healthy things. Often well meaning people have to engage in this or both sides aren’t heard. The byproduct of this rhetoric was that the folks watching were educated by the interaction and were able to make their own decisions based on the facts brought forward. Sadly it seems the digital media age is slowly killing this.

Anytime there is a vacuum of information. People will fill that vacuum with whatever makes the most sense to them. That is simply human nature. Sadly we are in a time where if you don’t watch the news you were uninformed and if you do watch the news often you are misinformed.

Again take good care and God bless. Get some rest where you can.

Reply
Eric Michael May 23, 2024

I stand by my own experience and sentiment. But I appreciate your response, Sheriff. We have room for discussion, and I do respect you for putting yourself out there. I don’t necessarily think you are a bad cop or a bad person. God bless, and hope you enjoy the holiday weekend with family and friends

Reply
- Matt Kendall May 23, 2024
  
  Appreciate that! And hope you have a great weekend as well. Until next time, go easy When you can, it is a luxury we should all be afforded once in a while
  
  Reply

Mendocino County Today: Thursday 5/23/24

27 Comments

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