Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 5/29/24

Sunny/Breezy | Palace Wall | Dem Party | Pet Adoption | Ed Notes | Mendocino Headlands | Conservation Easements | Ukiah Homeless | Memorial Day | Mendo Baseball | Pet Bandit | Wrongful Judge | Steve's Grass | Community Solar | Wild Mustard | New People | Boonfire | Patty & Bill | Yesterday's Catch | Honeybunch Kaminski | Illicit Medetomidine | Mom? | Delta Tunnel | Slug Oils | Dismantle Dams | Brain Worm | Star Clown | Useless Congress | Your Privacy | Human Speech | Trump No | Gentleman Don | Rafah Push | Young Dolly | Billy Kid | Watering

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A WARMING TREND will kick off this week with the hottest inland valleys reaching the upper 90s late this week. A regular cycle of stratus and gusty afternoon onshore flow will persist for the coast. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 49F & overcast this Wednesday morning on the coast. Windy again today then not so much rest of week. Clear skies in general are forecast.

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HERE YOU HAVE IT, AMERICA…

Exhibit A from Outback Mendocino County where half of all families with children depend on CalFresh and food banks, but these insensate yobbos are throwing a fifty dollar event unaffordable by the people Democrats used to represent.

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Celebrate our 2024 Democrat of the Year Jim Mastin! Democracy! How Sweet It Is!

Please join us on Sunday June 23 from 3:00 - 6:00 PM overlooking Lake Mendocino in Ukiah to celebrate our local Democrat of the Year Jim Mastin! Musical entertainment will be provided by Barney McClure and Roseanne Wetzel. Tickets are $50 for a delicious wine and dessert pairing to honor a true champion for all the values we share.

For tickets, please go to https://secure.actblue.com/donate/democracy.how.sweet.it.is

Or send checks to

Include your name, address, occupation and employer for reporting purposes. Space is limited, so reserve your tickets now!

For more information, contact Helen Sizemore at helensize@gmail.com

For inclusion in the Tribute to Jim memory book, please consider including your own personal well wishes by sending photo ready copy to Susan Savage at sksavage2@comcast.net by June 15.

The cost for inclusion in this 8 1/2 X 11 booklet is:

Any questions, email Susan at sksavage2@comcast.net

Make your memory book payment via the Act Blue link, or by check to the Mendocino County Democratic Party, mark the note on the check “Memory” and mail it to the MCDP P.O. Box 28, Ukiah, CA 95482.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

— Mendocino County Democratic Party

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ED NOTES:

MENDOCINO COUNTY has a whole lot of “advisory boards” that allegedly oversee the county's public bureaucracies, especially those bureaucracies that require “public participation” in their funding process. This being the Age of the Big Fear, and Mendocino County being as fearful a place as there is because the public jobs are just about the only good jobs there are, our public bureaucracies are very careful about who gets appointed to “advise” them, meaning independent persons whose critical faculties are fully operational need not apply.

NOT TO BE too harsh about it, but if you're invited to sit on an advisory board most likely the inviting agency regards you as a patsy, A sap. As pliable as its dominant paid persons, hence most school boards, the Mendocino County Planning Commission, KZYX's board of directors, the Juvenile Justice Commission, the Behavioral Health Advisory Board, the Civil Service Commission and any group “advising” the Department of Social Services, the Department of Mental Health, or the MTA and its ghost riders.

I ATTENDED an advisory board meeting one futile day long, long ago that I knew going in would be a waste of my time and whatever energy I had left for fending off enemies of the people. It was the last advisory meeting I'd ever attend.

THIS ADVISORY BOARD, as I knew, was wholly dominated by agency people paid to be there. They took up the first ten minutes of the meeting getting their mileage reimbursement forms filled out. Every time I said something, Dr. Gregory Sims of Boonville, a member of the board, followed with, “What Bruce is saying…” as he proceeded to translate my remarks into the exact opposite of what I'd just in fact plainly said. I like Sims but try to avoid him because he seems to speak in riddles. It works both ways. I remember saying a cheery good morning to the late Debra ‘Doobra’ Keipp, formerly of Point Arena and Boonville. “Sorry, Bruce, I don't have time for your bullshit today.” Jeez, Doobs, I hadn't intended to offload any.

ON EACH WALL of the meeting room, which was at Juvenile Hall, there was a faded nature photo inscribed with an implausible piece of advice like, “First ask yourself what you want to do, then do it.” I imagined a kid reading that and saying to himself, “As soon as I get out of here I'll ask myself, ‘Do I want to rob WalMart or a liquor store?’” I asked myself what I wanted to do and answered myself that I would like to punch all the men in the room.

NOT TO BE TOO PC about it, but I thought the only three reality-based people present were three Indian women from Covelo, all from families whose names I recognized. When I arrived, only Mrs. Hoaglin was in the room. “Do you want me to sit at the other end of the table or next to you?” I asked her. “Indian people always like their enemies close to them,” Mrs. Hoaglin replied with a chuckle. Mrs. Duncan and Mrs. Azbill were also present and on task. I liked all three of them. I didn't like anybody else.

THE PALE FACES were predictably defensive. Nothing was wrong or Nothing could be done. One person didn't know where or what Ten Mile Court was. Another said he'd just had lunch with “Jon Lehan” and darned if Jon had the foggiest idea of why he'd had been transferred from his Fort Bragg judge sinecure to Ukiah, an hour and a half from his home. Because, I explained, the judge persistently flashed his female staffers and a state complaint was pending against him. My advice to that advisory board on the care and handling of juvenile delinquents was to disband.

I ONCE APPLIED for a vacant slot on the Mental Health Board. I went over boffo with the interview committee composed of “clients,” but the presumably sane members of the board said no way, and that was that.

CALL BACKS from county bureaucracies? Depends on two things: The head of the department and you. If the department head doesn't it make it clear to his subordinates that it's department policy to return constituent calls, that department's personnel won't call you back. If the department head doesn't like you, nobody in that department will call you back. Ever. (cf DA Eyster) The judges are the worst for call-backs. They don't do call-backs, never respond to their mail, never make themselves available to the public except on those rare occasions when they have opposition at election time, then it’s “So great to see you again.” Mail is intercepted by one of their gofers and returned unopened as “ex parte communication,” meaning a forbidden attempt to say something to one of them.

A READER WRITES: “I have not been a pot smoker since the Department of Transportation instituted drug testing back in ’86. I know that dope does not improve people. Plenty of nasty folks smoke weed. I know that you put the anti-pot articles in the paper just to annoy some of the local navel gazers. What I suspect about pot smokers is that they would not have amounted to much anyway. It is not like without weed they would be leading the social revolution. But I do feel that dope de-criminalization is a big step up from, say, struggling to establish doggy parks. De-criminalization might result in a few more blissed out stoners, but it could also reduce the population of the rape cages, aka the penal system.”

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LAND TRUST VICTORY SECURES 16,000 ACRES OF MENDOCINO FORESTS

After more than two years working together, The Conservation Fund (TCF) and the Mendocino Land Trust (MLT) are pleased to announce that TCF has conveyed two conservation easements (CE) of forestland along the Big River and Salmon Creek in Mendocino County to MLT. The two conservation easements comprise more than 16,000 acres. 

“MLT is delighted to be able to take over the perpetual role of monitoring and enforcing the CEs on these two stunning and large acreages,” said Conrad Kramer, MLT’s executive director. “It is always a pleasure to work with our friends at The Conservation Fund, and we are particularly pleased to be involved with these acreages that benefit our local economy, our local wildlife, and our global climate.”

“Land conservation efforts such as this benefit our communities as much as they benefit wildlife,” said Holly Newberger, program manager at TCF. “Clean water is something we all need – and the result of this work will help ensure the people, animals and plants around Mendocino County can thrive together well into the future. As the local expert and as a mission-driven organization, MLT is the ideal caretaker for this property. We at TCF couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.”

These forests are richly productive and particularly important to the conservation of the endangered coho salmon, steelhead trout, and northern spotted owl. The Big River Forest is in the middle portion of the Big River Watershed and contains tributaries, including the Little North Fork, Two Log Creek, and Laguna Creek as well as a central portion of the main stem of the Big River. The Big River Forest is 11,707 acres and the Salmon Creek Forest is 4,389 acres. The Salmon Creek Forest is located three miles southeast of the town of Albion along the mainstream of Salmon Creek and is situated between Albion Ridge and Navarro Ridge Roads.

Both of these CEs and their land are high-priority watersheds for anadromous salmonids as identified in the “Recovery Strategy for California Coho Salmon.”

The combined forests include 34 miles of fish bearing streams, 41 miles of perennial streams, associated riparian habitats, four major sub-basins currently supporting coho, and an array of additional sensitive species. The size and locations of the forests provide significant contributions to the integrity and ecological viability of their respective watersheds and the larger ecoregion. The forests are typical of the north coast of California, dominated by native conifers (primarily redwood and Douglas fir) and adapted to the steep slopes and heavy rainfall common to the region. Old-growth redwoods and other conifer species, along with hardwoods, will be protected forever.

Forest Management Plans have been updated and prepared for both forests The forests will continue to be managed as working forests that will maintain and enhance habitat conditions for the northern spotted owl, coho Salmon, and steelhead trout by increasing structural diversity, high canopy closure, late seral forest characteristics, and the maturity of the riparian forests that promote and restore cold-water fisheries. The Mendocino Land Trust will be responsible for monitoring activities on the properties, ensuring that the CE provisions are followed and that forest management is consistent with the Forest Management Plans.

Both properties were acquired in November 2006 by TCF with the support of the State Coastal Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Board, State Water Board, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The Conservation Fund will continue to own and manage the properties.

For more information, please contact Conrad Kramer at the Mendocino Land Trust (ckramer@mendocinolandtrust.org) or Josh Lynch at The Conservation Fund (jlynch@conservationfund.org).

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‘UKIAH VAGRANT WATCH’ (facebook)

This woman has been rolling around Orchard Plaza for the past 2 years often wailing about disrupting the peace. Last summer she was passed out exposed to 105 degree sun in the parking lot for 5 hours. Yet another example of a county and city policy that tolerates life on the streets and disruption of businesses. There should be no option to live on the street, if the Ukiah city council will not act perhaps the lawn on Oak and Seminary at City Hall should be open as a homeless camp ground? The changing weather has invited a growing number of encampments around the city, this has been increasing on the S. State Street sidewalk in front of the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center. We cannot allow these to ramp up, contact your City of Ukiah council member and demand no encampment enforcement throughout the city.

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MEMORIAL DAY

Things I didn’t know about until today:

Clip your toenails when wet and they won’t crack.

The white in birdfeathers comes from the moon,

the yellow from the sun,

the black from night herself.

And that at three p.m. today

when we have our full minute of silence

for our millions of war dead,

their ghosts beyond the invisible carapace

above the green and blue turning earth

(from which birds get other colors),

the ghosts will vomit up the remnants

of their bone dust on hearing the strident

martial music rising up to them,

the hard-peckered music of the living,

the music of the machineries of war

in the wallets of the rich. And the ghosts ask

us to send up the music of earth:

three tree frogs, two loons, splash of fish

jumping, the wind’s verbless carols.

— Jim Harrison

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Herding dogs are some nimble and brainy canines, and Bandit is no exception. Bandit is very people-friendly and easy to walk on leash; when you’re walking with him, he always looks backs to check on you. Bandit likes to be close to his people but would also love a nice big yard to explore, and nap in the sun. If you enjoy activities you can share with your dog, such as agility, obedience, and flyball, Bandit will most likely love to be your partner! Who knows, with his Herding Dog smarts, he just might win a few purple ribbons! Bandit is 4 years old and 52 pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com Join us every first Saturday of the month for our MEET THE DOGS Adoption Event at the shelter. We're on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/ For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

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IT COULD HAPPEN HERE

Humboldt County judge resigns after admitting to unwanted touching, improper conduct

by Bob Egelko

The state’s judicial disciplinary agency says a Humboldt County judge has resigned after admitting numerous wrongful acts, including failure to disclose friendships with parties in his court, and grabbing or slapping a husband and wife on the rear end at a social gathering.

Superior Court Judge Gregory Kreis presided over at least 44 cases in which he did not reveal his social or working relationships with the lawyers or their clients, the Commission on Judicial Performance said Tuesday. The commission also cited an incident at a party in Eureka in 2018 hosted by an attorney and his wife, both longtime friends of Kreis.

Kreis had drinks before and during the party, then saw a couple he had met previously. He approached the husband, “grabbed and/or slapped his buttocks, and said words to the effect of ‘everyone’s going to get one,’ ” the commission said in its findings, which were also signed by Kreis. The findings said the man’s wife told Kreis not to touch her, but he then grabbed her by the buttocks as well.

“Treating women disrespectfully, including unwanted touching, reflects a sense of entitlement completely at odds with the canons of judicial ethics and the role of any judge,” said the 11-member panel. The commission imposed a “severe public censure” on Kreis and said he had permanently resigned as a judge on Monday.

Kreis had been a deputy Humboldt County public defender for seven years when Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to the court in 2017. He was elected to a six-year term in 2018, but after his disciplinary charges were made public, he was defeated for reelection this March by April Van Dyke, a public defender who received 60% of the vote. His term had been scheduled to run through December, but the court will now appoint an interim replacement.

During an election debate in January, the commission said, Kreis was asked about past disciplinary action against him and he replied, “I’ve never been disciplined.”

But the commission said it had issued Kreis an “advisory letter,” a form of disciplinary action, for his remarks at a 2018 sentencing hearing, in which he called the defendant “a dirtbag of the highest order,” and added, “What’s kind of burning me up right now is the fact that he was paid more than I’m paid, to sell cars, and then he stole money on top of it.”

The 44 cases in which Kreis failed to disclose his past connections with lawyers or their clients included 18 handled by a woman with whom he had “a close personal relationship” during their seven years together at the public defender’s office, the commission said.

And in a 2017 case while he was still a public defender, he got into an argument with the female prosecutor about a possible settlement of a criminal case. As she walked out of the courtroom and could no longer hear him, the commission said, Kreis “called her a ‘bitch’ or a ‘pretentious bitch.’ ”

Kreis’ lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(SF Chronicle)

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LAURA DIAMONDSTONE: If anybody knows Steve please tell him that grasses are dangerously high again. 3 homes downwind from church pasture. And the sheep don't like it either. This happens every year.

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CALIFORNIA IS ABOUT TO SIDE WITH PG&E — AGAIN.

This time to kill community solar projects

The state Public Utilities Commission plans to vote on a proposal that could effectively doom solar projects to help renters and low-income residents

You would think, given California’s ambitious clean-energy goals, that the state would be eager to incentivize solar projects of all shapes and sizes.

Think again.

In 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission drastically slashed the rate that utilities pay homeowners with new solar panels for excess energy sold to the grid — cratering demand for residential solar and sparking thousands of layoffs of solar workers. In 2023, the commission significantly reduced incentives for schools, businesses and apartment buildings to install solar panels.

On Thursday, the commission is scheduled to vote on a proposed decision that could effectively doom community solar projects, smaller-scale facilities often paired with battery storage intended to be located relatively close to the communities they serve. Renters, low-income residents and others who can’t afford or access home rooftop solar panels can “subscribe” to the clean energy produced by these facilities and receive bill credits for the environmental value and energy provided to the grid.

Community solar is a win-win: more clean energy available to a wider range of people. These projects can reduce the need for larger facilities and expensive long-distance transmission infrastructure, limiting some of the uglier adverse impacts of the transition to green energy. And they represent a cost-effective way for builders to comply with state regulations requiring most new construction to be connected to solar power.

But community solar has been slow to get off the ground in California, largely due to complex and stringent regulations, low to nonexistent returns on investment for developers and volatility for customers.

Assembly Member Chris Ward, D-San Diego, wanted to change that with AB2316. The 2022 law directed the Public Utilities Commission to establish a community renewable energy program that would ensure at least 51% of its electricity went to low-income customers, prohibit costs from being covered by people who aren’t subscribed to the program and pay prevailing wages — which are essentially union wages — to facility construction workers.

These provisions help explain why a highly unusual coalition of interest groups that often fight each other tooth and nail — including solar developers, ratepayer advocates, climate activists and labor unions — joined forces and urged the Public Utilities Commission to support the same community solar plan.

Central to that plan is a new compensation structure they say will make it easier for community solar projects to pencil out and stabilize customer credits — incentivizing both developers and ratepayers to participate.

But California’s private utilities, including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, don’t like the idea. They argue this payment structure is illegal under federal law. The utilities put forth alternative proposals to tweak, rather than overhaul, current programs — which they admit have resulted in few projects.

Nevertheless, the Public Utilities Commission sided with the utilities and issued a proposed decision that closely resembled Southern California Edison’s ineffective blueprint.

This horrified pretty much everyone — other than the private utilities.

Neil Chatterjee, who led the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under former President Donald Trump, warned California Public Utilities Commission President Alice Reynolds in an April letter that the proposed decision would “unsettle markets across the country” and undermine other states’ community solar programs by questioning their legality. John Podesta, President Joe Biden’s clean energy adviser, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul reportedly raised similar concerns. A bipartisan group of California lawmakers also urged the commission to reject the proposed decision.

Experts aren’t persuaded by the commission’s argument that the coalition proposal violates federal law. In his letter, Chatterjee noted that the federal government has historically declined to intervene in state regulations for community and home solar programs.

The proposed decision “would absolutely eviscerate the incentives and the opportunities for community solar,” Ward told the editorial board. “We need to make a program viable rather than tweaking an unworkable program.”

We agree.

The commission should get behind a more reasonable plan. The coalition framework is a good place to start. Some details merit further discussion — such as facility size and distance from customers — but the commission needs to move quickly.

Given the uncertain outcome of the November presidential election, a delayed decision could hamper California’s ability to use or maximize federal funding, such as the $250 million it was recently awarded to develop community solar programs “that enable low-income and disadvantaged communities to deploy and benefit from residential solar.”

“The Biden administration has made community solar a priority. They want to get to 20 gigawatts of community solar by 2025,” enough to power 5 million homes, Derek Chernow, Western regional director at the Coalition for Community Solar Access, which developed the coalition framework, told the editorial board.

“We can’t get to our national numbers without California. It’s that simple.”

Nor will California be able to reach its own climate goals without an aggressive, all-of-the-above approach that encourages solar projects of all sizes — from rooftop panels to community facilities to utility-scale developments.

Instead, the state is going out of its way to ensure that the green energy transition remains the exclusive domain of private utilities and their chosen partners.

In a world increasingly ravaged by climate change, utility-scale developments shouldn’t be the default. Just as we need more infill housing, we need more infill power.

California residents are grappling with the nation’s second-highest energy bills. The Public Utilities Commission says it wants to lower these costs, but its recent approval of a flawed plan to allow private utilities to charge customers a monthly fixed fee in exchange for a slight reduction in electricity rates leaves many ratepayers in the dust.

The commission should be empowering communities to produce more of their clean electricity locally, sustainably and cheaply.

(Chronicle Editorial)

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R.D. BEACON:

Guess what friends, it's Mendocino Film Festival, not really a local supported event, it's the new shakers and movers, that are moved into our community, as well as the coast, the big problem, no place to stay the two hotels, or shut down, the whole thing is wrapped around wringing money to Mendocino, the people who moved here, and bought up expensive properties, do not supply structure, for people to stay, throughout California, it seems like every community, it is ever had them will be, made in its town comes up with the idea, it needs a film festival, most communities, have sufficient housing, for people to stay in doing the weekend event, these are all things, that the new people, the moved in from outside our little world, have brought with them, it's all about them, and how good they look, to each other, thinking that the storeowners, and businesses will buy into their bull crap, spend lots of money in the neighborhood, but the simple fact is, it is a shadow, of its former self, and they would be better off moving it, to Fort Bragg, where they have more population, an actual movie theater, and places to stay, and to eat, not everyone likes to go, and have a campsite at the park, or travel great distances in their motor home, only to find is no place to park it, as the newcomers came to the coast they drove the price of staying in a nice place to the overhead, that regular people can't come here anymore, as our state government did away with fishing, and abalone, put another nail in the coffin of business, on the coast, recreation here in about the coastal area, is almost nonexistent, there are rooms available, but nobody was to pay $600 a night, when you can go to San Francisco and in a room and a big hotel for half that money, and have places to go, if I want to watch old movies, I can either rent come, or watch them on Turner movie Classics, and enjoy the fact that I will not have to put up with, a bunch of coughing runny nose, tourists, who are wrapped up in their own self-importance, thinking they're going to rub elbows, was somebody that it may have been famous, decades ago, the festivals that they hold on the coast are becoming a shadow more like a ghost, of what they used to really be, and if the want of the, self-important individuals, moved to our coasts, think this is a way to keep their little world alive, they are sadly mistaken, you really don't see the true local people, come out to these events, it is all the strangers that moved into our County, it will come to an event like this, trying to drag what little culture they may have in their life, or would like to have, let's face it folks, the only true adventure we have as locals is when they actually make a film here, and we may run into one of the actors, and one of our local taverns, it appears yelling out, he might try and hustle when the local females off to his room for an interesting night, every once in a while, but not every year a few people straight down to the top of the mountain, look at the Sunset, and hear stories and yes yesterday, what it was like in the distant past, and then they go back to the town of Mendocino to be taken advantage of by the local merchants, with more overpriced stuff, only to come back and following year to go through the same program again, I personally would rather watch television there are a lot of old movies available, without feeling with people with a bad cold, and a bad attitude.

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PATTY HEARST & BILL WALTON REVISITED

by Fred Gardner (Feb. 22, 2017)

I just read Bill Walton's book "Back From the Dead" — one of the 50 greatest autobiographies of our time! Coincidentally, Patricia Hearst Shaw's French bulldog just won best of breed at the Westminster Dog Show in New York! Patty Hearst & Bill Walton, two survivors, for sure...

In the '70s I recorded a song that I stopped singing long ago because I sensed that Walton wanted to erase the memory of his radical years, in which some tension had flared between him and his beloved coach at UCLA, John Wooden. "Back From the Dead" is so honest and revealing that I changed my mind.

Nobody bats a thousand, not even our greatest teachers and mentors. Nobody's perfect. Bill Walton personifies a beautiful kind of courage. (Alfred Adler called it "Social Interest.") His ideal is to be part of a team — a band, a group with a purpose — that is striving for perfection... In earlier years he was held back from volubility by a stutter. Now he is a highly expressive broadcaster, a fount of insight about the game and info about the players and their backgrounds.

lyrics

Patty Hearst & Bill Walton made a striking pair
she was only five foot two, he had that much long red hair

He studied at UCLA with Wooden you know
he was following Alcindor, Wicks, Allen, Farmer and Rowe

And they be heavy brothers, reading Malcolm X
If you're supposed to be the white Kareem where do you go next?

Big Red, you were a boy and a half
I ain't gonna laugh at that man anymore

Patty got engaged to a liberal and a snob
even with all that money getting married was a good girl's #1 job

But a fire burned within her some desire to be free
and one night she left him, she called him a class enemy

Tanya! You were a girl and a half
I ain't gonna laugh at the woman anymore

Drafted up to Portland Bill got hurt in that first year:
Before I take more cortisone I'll just set a pick on my career

He said athletes are workers, they treat us like cattle
I will not play the owners' game, it's just not my battle at this time

And Patty was in trouble, too, running from the law
she'd become an armed robber but what's more she gave daddy what for

How she made him list his assets, how she made him show his face!
Their house became a tourist trap, just like their San Simeon place

Tanya, you were a girl and a half
No I ain't gonna laugh at that poor woman anymore

So Bill the civil servant's son was finally makin' bread
heard a comrade needed some, most likely said Yeah, go ahead

I bet he wrote that check out to Jack or Micki Scott
I bet he knew who it was for although I bet he swears he does not

Big Red, you got that nice soft touch
you don't say too much to the FBI

There's other show-biz radicals, such as Tom and Jane
Joan Baez, Julian Bond, Warren Beatty, Shirley McLaine

But Patty Hearst and Bill Walton ran a fast break with my heart
I'll think of them as together, although they may be far apart.

fredgardner.bandcamp.com/track/patty-hearst-bill-walton-revisited

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, May 28, 2024

JAQUELYN BOWLES, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

KAYDEN COSTA, Willits. Robbery, assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury.

MATTHEW HILL, Ukiah. Petty theft, probation revocation.

LON HUNOLT, Willits. Felon/addict with firearm.

TINA IODENCE, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Petty theft, controlled substance, disobeying court order, conspiracy.

KIMO KEAWE, Gualala. DUI, suspended license, failure to appear, probation revocation.

MICHAEL KUBAS, Nice/Willits. Probation revocation.

ANTHONY LOPES SR., Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MICHAEL MCCLELLAN, Fort Bragg. County parole violation.

RICKY PHILLIPS III, Willits. Domestic battery, controlled substance sales, false ID.

LINDA TREVINO, Hopland. Petty theft, controlled substance, conspiracy.

EDUARDO VENCES, Ukiah. DUI.

PATRICK WARREN, Petaluma/Ukiah. DUI.

LYDELL WILLIAMS, Ukiah. Vandalism, probation violation.

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ALARMING NEW DRUG IS SHOWING UP IN OVERDOSES ACROSS THE U.S.

by Maggie Angst

Just as San Francisco is seeing a slight dip in fatal drug overdoses, a new powerful animal sedative has made its way into America’s illicit drug supply and is causing waves of overdoses across the country.

Medetomidine is the latest street drug to appear alongside fentanyl. A synthetic drug used for veterinary anesthesia, medetomidine reportedly causes “heightened sedation” and “profound bradycardia,” or slowed heart rate, according to researchers.

Medetomidine is in the same class of drugs as the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine, commonly known as “tranq,” which was first found in San Francisco overdose victims in late 2022. The emergence of xylazine in San Francisco alarmed public health officials at the time, but since then, the drug has only contributed to a small number of deaths. Of the city’s 258 fatal overdoses recorded so far this year, xylazine was only found in 12 while fentanyl was detected in 187, according to city data.

Xylazine can increase the risk of overdose, worsen withdrawal symptoms and cause wounds that lead to amputation for those who inject it. Medetomidine may lead to similar “harmful and abrupt” withdrawal symptoms, but it is not clear if the substance causes wounds like those seen in xylazine users, according to Pennsylvania public health officials.

In most cases, medetomidine is mixed in with fentanyl and xylazine or heroin, according to the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education.

The possible emergence of another street drug underscores the volatility and uncertainty faced by public health officials as San Francisco and the nation continue to see high overdoses and communities are devastated by addiction.

Although it’s unclear whether medetomidine has been detected in San Francisco’s illicit drug supply, the substance has been identified elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada, and recently triggered a spike in overdoses in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Chicago.

“The big problem is that we have an unregulated drug market and that means that anyone procuring drugs never knows what is actually in them,” said Alex Kral, an epidemiologist from the nonprofit research institute RTI International. “That can change in a moment’s notice and we won’t really know when that happens.”

Kral said there’s no cause for alarm in San Francisco, but the detection of the drug elsewhere serves as a reminder that “we need a robust drug surveillance system.”

San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey on Tuesday asked the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Department of Public Health and the Police Department’s Drug Market Agency Coordination Center about whether the city’s illicit drug supply was being monitored closely enough for the presence of medetomidine.

“I think it is also important during budget time that we be making sure that we are making the appropriate investments in monitoring the drug supply,” Dorsey said, specifically highlighting the city toxicologists who are testing and tracking what drugs people are accidentally overdosing and dying from.

The Department of Public Health began a wastewater drug testing program late last year, but it does not screen for medetomidine. The department said in a statement Tuesday that it is working with city departments and nonprofit partners to monitor for novel synthetic drugs, prepare treatment options and “quickly respond in the event they become prevalent.”

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said its forensic toxicology lab tests for more than 200 drugs, but medetomidine is not one of them. The department said in a statement that it it works to add new drugs “whenever possible” but that additional resources are necessary.

According to data from the medical examiner, 56 people fatally overdosed last month — a 21% decline from April 2023. In the first four months of this year, 258 people died of accidental drug overdoses, down slightly from 275 during the same time period in 2023.

“People have said fentanyl changed the game, but I think the truth is synthetic drugs are just changing the game in new and evolving ways every couple of years,” Dorsey said, “And it’s really scary out there.”

Other changes in the city’s street drug supply that have alarmed officials include the presence of a dangerous new form of fentanyl, fluorofentanyl, which has been found in dozens of San Francisco fatal overdose victims since 2022, and the presence of “designer benzos” or fake Xanax. A designer benzo called bromazolam was found in the systems of 38 overdose victims last year — a big jump from prior years.

(SF Chronicle)

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DELTA TUNNEL PROJECT MAY BE NEARING HISTORIC DECISION

State officials have worked for decades on a plan to divert more water from Northern California into a southbound aqueduct.

by Dan Walters

It’s been almost a half-century since I first heard the term “peripheral canal” uttered by William Gianelli, who was then-Gov. Ronald Reagan’s top water official. The project, in one form or another, had already been kicking around for decades.

The California Water Project became operative in the 1960s and was the most prominent legacy project of Gov. Pat Brown, whom Reagan had defeated in 1966.

The project dams the Feather River near Oroville and releases impounded water to flow down the Feather into the Sacramento River and eventually into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Pumps at the southern edge of the Delta suck the water into the California Aqueduct, which carries it down the San Joaquin Valley to more pumps over the Tehachapi Mountains into Southern California.

Pumping water out of the Delta changes the massive estuary’s natural flows and, as widely recognized, damages habitat for fish and other wildlife. The envisioned 44-mile-long peripheral canal would have carried water around the Delta to the head of the aqueduct thereby, it was said, improving water supply reliance and protecting fish.

However, there was widespread opposition, mostly from environmentalists who doubted the canal would have a beneficial impact. The project stalled until Pat Brown’s son, Jerry, became governor in 1975 and attempted to complete the last remaining link in his father’s landmark water plan.

Brown relentlessly pressed the Legislature to authorize the canal and finally succeeded, but the compromise version failed to mollify environmentalists and alienated San Joaquin Valley farmers. The two disparate groups formed an odd-bedfellows alliance that defeated the project in a 1982 referendum, the same year Brown’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat failed.

Voter rejection put the project in political limbo for two-plus decades, until Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor and proposed twin tunnels, instead of a canal, to bypass the Delta. Jerry Brown returned to the governorship in 2011 and once again sought to get it done.

It was still just an idea when Gavin Newsom succeeded Brown in 2019. Almost immediately he downgraded it to one tunnel and ordered the Department of Water Resources to get it going. The much-revised project barely survived a 2016 ballot measure that probably would have killed it, and with Newsom’s governorship down to its last couple of years, it is nearing the decisive moment.

The project has undergone several name changes over the decades but is now dubbed the Delta Conveyance Project. Recently, the water agency released an updated report on the tunnel, raising its cost to $20 billion but insisting that it still pencils out in a cost-benefit analysis.

“For every $1 spent, $2.20 in benefits would be generated,” Department of Water Resources officials declared. “The report also shows the very real cost of doing nothing, posing significant future challenges to supplying water to California communities.”

Cost-benefit claims of big public works projects are notoriously subjective because they rely on notoriously unreliable cost estimates and equally squishy definitions of benefits.

The tunnel’s $20 billion cost is already many billions of dollars over earlier estimates. As costs climb, the willingness of downstream water agencies to cover construction bonds is still uncertain, and environmental groups are still as opposed as they were in 1982.

By its nature, a bypass tunnel would reduce water flows through the Delta. As Newsom’s administration tries to clear financial and environmental issues, it is also trying to get San Joaquin Valley farmers to take less water from its rivers so that more can flow through the Delta.

The interplay between those two somewhat contradictory efforts is one of the project’s most intriguing aspects.

(CalMatters.org)

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LET THE SALMON RUN FREE

by John Waldman

In his 1937 book, “Kennebec: Cradle of Americans,” the poet Robert Tristram Coffin called Maine’s sprawling river a “paradise for fish.” But pollution and dams that block spawning runs for Atlantic salmon, sturgeon and shad put an end to that world.

The Kennebec River now runs mostly clean, thanks to laws that reduced pollution. Yet four hydroelectric dams, two built in the early 20th century and the other two in the 1980s, remain on the lower reaches of the 150-mile-long river and continue to prevent endangered salmon from reaching their single most important spawning tributary, the Sandy River. Now a confluence of factors makes this the time to right this wrong.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering relicensing one of the dams, the Shawmut, the third in line upstream from the Gulf of Maine, which would allow it to operate for up to 50 more years. At the same time, the commission is considering amending the licenses of the other three dams to permit their operator, Brookfield Renewable, which also owns the Shawmut, to pursue feeble efforts to develop ways for fish to bypass these blockades. (The deadline for public comments on its draft proposal is June 4.)

A company spokesman said Brookfield seeks to “carefully balance public, economic, energy and natural resource interests.” But there is no real balance in its proposal. The commission should order the removal of the dams. This is hardly an outlandish proposal. Dams are being removed from rivers across the country. Last year, 80 were demolished, reconnecting obstructed waterways with 1,160 upstream river miles.

It is true that the loss of these dams would mean a loss of energy production. The four dams have a combined capacity to generate nearly 47 megawatts of electricity, enough to power tens of thousands of homes. But their output is only 6 percent of Maine’s overall hydroelectric capacity. Moreover, their output would be dwarfed by plans by the State of Maine for enough wind turbines in the Gulf of Maine to generate 3,000 megawatts of electricity by 2040 — nearly 70 times the capacity of those dams. A utility-scale solar power plant of several hundred acres could replace much of the electricity production that would be forgone.

A Changing Climate, A Changing World

Climate change around the world: In “Postcards From a World on Fire,” 193 stories from individual countries show how climate change is reshaping reality everywhere, from dying coral reefs in Fiji to disappearing oases in Morocco and far, far beyond.

The role of our leaders: Writing at the end of 2020, Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, found reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency, a feeling perhaps borne out by the passing of major climate legislation. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been criticisms. For example, Charles Harvey and Kurt House argue that subsidies for climate capture technology will ultimately be a waste.

The worst climate risks, mapped: In this feature, select a country, and we'll break down the climate hazards it faces. In the case of America, our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths.

What people can do: Justin Gillis and Hal Harvey describe the types of local activism that might be needed, while Saul Griffith points to how Australia shows the way on rooftop solar. Meanwhile, small changes at the office might be one good way to cut significant emissions, writes Carlos Gamarra.

Maine does not need those four dams. Allowing them to remain for decades more would perpetuate a continuing disaster for the river and its fish.

The number of salmon spawning in Maine rivers has fallen to fewer than 2,000 today, from as many as a half million in colonial times, and the Kennebec’s population is down to single digits in some years, from a high of as many as 200,000 before the dams. Sadly, because of these dams, the few salmon that still show up in the main stem of the Kennebec must rely on the internal combustion engine to reach their spawning grounds — a form of triage in which they are trapped and carried by truck to reach the Sandy River.

Salmon on the road in Fairfield, Maine. They are being transferred around the Lockwood dam by truck to their spawning grounds.Credit…Joshua Duplechian

In 2023 the National Marine Fisheries Service offered a tortured opinion of the effect of allowing the dams to remain. The agency said that proposals by Brookfield to build fish lifts and other conveyances to help the fish get past the dams “may adversely affect but are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of Atlantic salmon. This is an unaspiring assessment of these halfway measures. Fish ladders and similar technologies on rivers with just a single dam often perform poorly. The track record for such contrivances on rivers with two or more dams is dismal.

Dam removal has already revitalized other parts of the Kennebec and rivers elsewhere in the United States. The demolition of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec in 1999 allowed migratory fish access to 17 miles of river that had been blocked for 162 years. This stretch of river quickly surged back to life, most notably with river herring (an important baitfish for Maine’s lobster fishery) recolonizing the Sebasticook, a tributary where in a few years their numbers skyrocketed to nearly six million from zero.

Such was their impact that the town of Benton began an annual festival celebrating the return of these fish. Bald eagles took note, too, with as many as 64 of the avian predators seen feasting on the herring one day, forming what may be the largest summer aggregation of these birds in the Northeastern United States.

On the West Coast, four hydroelectric dams that block California’s Klamath River are being dismantled in a bold effort to help ensure the river’s ecological recovery, a decision in keeping with the growing dam removal movement across the United States. The owner of those four aging dams, PacifiCorp, facing hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades ordered by the federal government, agreed to remove them. The dismantling of the first was completed last year, and work to remove the remaining three will begin this summer.

It is heartening to see nature accelerate in response to river restoration efforts. The Kennebec is shouting that it could be a paradise again. In June 2023 there was a migration of giant sturgeon into a small Kennebec tributary, the Cobbosseecontee. Had the Edwards Dam still been standing, this migration might not have happened. At its peak there were about 200 sturgeon as long as 10 feet spawning in a trout-stream-size pool, all visible to an enraptured public viewing the scene from a bridge.

Arriving too late to witness this phenomenon, I relaxed by the Kennebec and was overjoyed to see a four-foot-long sturgeon make a great arching leap just yards away from me while an osprey carried off a river herring — unmistakable signs of a river already partly reborn from the removal of just the Edwards Dam.

(John Waldman is a professor of biology at Queens College and the author, most recently, of “Running Silver: Restoring Atlantic Rivers and Their Great Fish Migrations.”)

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ANDREW NEIL: Donald Trump's hush-money trial in New York has always had something of the circus about it. So it was only fitting that, on the day prosecution and defense gave their closing statements before the jury begins its deliberations, it should turn into a full-scale Big Top. Robert De Niro appeared as the Star Clown, haranguing Americans outside the Manhattan court for even daring to think about voting for Trump and claiming, in a rant that got ever more bizarre, that The Donald was going to 'destroy the world'. Perhaps this is what passes for sophisticated political analysis in Hollywood. Or maybe it was just an embarrassing attempt at clown comedy.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Congress is completely useless, and NOT on the side of the people. That should be obvious from the middle class people that enter congress and within a year or two are multi multi millionaires. They are irrelevant and, from this point forward, they should be ignored, along with everything else from the so called “federal” gubmint.

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AS IF the soul's fullness didn't sometimes overflow into the emptiest of metaphors, for no one, ever, can give the exact measure of his needs, his apprehensions, or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity.

— Flaubert, Madam Bovary

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STOP THE ORANGE BEAST

Editor:

As a U.S. Army volunteer in November 1952, I raised my right hand and took an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. The war in Korea was raging. To my knowledge, every young man in my high school graduating class stepped up and did his part. Only one of us was killed in action. I cannot imagine that any one of us thought we would live to see an American president refer to us as “suckers” and “losers.”

That same president is trying to regain the White House in the upcoming election. For the life of me, I cannot understand how any person currently serving or who has previously served in the military can support this man. He has made it abundantly clear that if he wins, he will destroy our current form of government and use the military as his personal revenge force.

All patriotic voters this time around with a past or current connection with the military, and their families, need to stand as one and send this draft-dodger back to Mar-a-Lago, permanently. If he succeeds in regaining the presidency, the America we know and love will no longer exist.

Jim Coleman

Santa Rosa

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ISRAEL PUSHES INTO RAFAH AS DISPLACED PALESTINIANS SEARCH FOR SAFETY

The Israeli military said it had deployed additional combat troops to the southern Gaza Strip, even as a growing chorus of voices demand an end to the fighting.

by Cassandra Vinograd, Hiba Yabek & Thomas Fuller

Israel’s military said it was pressing on with its ground assault in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday despite mounting international outrage over its operations there, including an airstrike over the weekend that killed dozens of civilians.

The military said its troops were engaging in close-quarters combat with Hamas fighters and that it had deployed an additional “combat team” to Rafah, without specifying how many more soldiers were sent to the southern city.

The military has said that its strike on Rafah on Sunday — which ignited a deadly fire that killed at least 45 people — targeted a Hamas compound.

On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said it was a “tragic accident” that civilians in the camp, many of them displaced from other parts of Gaza, had been killed.

His comments, however, did little to quell a chorus of voices demanding accountability and a halt to the fighting, which came amid reports of another deadly strike in nearby Al-Mawasi on Tuesday.

An official in Gaza, Dr. Mohammed Al Moghayer of the Palestinian Civil Defense, said that at least 21 people were killed and dozens injured on Tuesday when strikes hit tents housing displaced people in Al-Mawasi, not far from the city of Rafah. Israel has declared an area of Al-Mawasi a humanitarian safe zone. Tuesday’s strike appeared to occur near the humanitarian zone but not in it, according to videos verified by The New York Times.

The Israeli military, which has previously told civilians to go to Al-Mawasi, said its attack had not been carried out inside the safe zone.

(NY Times)

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BILLY THE KID REVISITED

by Alexander Cockburn (May, 2002)

Lincoln, New Mexico — This nicely rehabbed little place about 160 miles south by south east from Santa Fe is the wellspring of the Billy the Kid saga. He hung out here, was jailed here, escaped from jail here, and so forth. In this same saga two of the eternal verities, military procurement and insurance, were the primal forces at work, along with the third verity, tardy authors.

In 1850, with the exception of coastal California and east Texas there was barely a cow or steer west of the Mississippi. There were more cattle, nearly a million, in New York State than anywhere else. By 1870 the total was up to 15 million and by 1900 that had doubled again, to 35 million. Texas alone had 6.5 million. Industrial meat-eating had come of age.

US army units needed beef to sustain them in their campaigns against Indians watching their protein disappear as cattle replaced bison. Based in Lincoln, Irish good old boys known as The House had the local meat contract stitched up with friendly US Army officers in Fort Stanton. They rustled the cows from John Chisum’s vast herds further south, grazed them on land stolen from the Hispanics, then sold them to the Army or drove them to Abilene or up into Colorado. Everyone was happy, except for the Hispanics, the Indians and presumably the cows.

Enter the archetypical dude, John Henry Tunstall. He’s a rich kid from England, with a fine horse imported from New York, the most refined clothing, the softest Indian blankets. His plan: after forming an alliance with a local lawyer, Alexander McSween, he will break the House, grab the meat contracts, steal all the business of Lincoln from the Firm’s store. Of course this is standard business procedure and the reason America is great. But an important part of the standard procedure is not to underestimate the opposition, which Tunstall fatally does.

Irked by his maneuvers, the House uses the excuse of an insurance claim to go to Tunstall’s ranch. Encountering the Englishman they shoot him dead. Not long thereafter they attack McSween’s house, setting it on fire. McSween dies attempting to escape. Billy the Kid and others make their way through the flames to safety, as does Mrs. Susan McSween.

These Lincoln County wars are minutely documented in papers in the various museums in Lincoln, one of them endowed by the oilman R.O. Anderson, based in Roswell, 70 miles east. Hundreds of articles and books, starting with Pat Garrett’s memoir ghost written by Ash Upson and rushed out after Garrett had killed Billy, chronicle the Kid’s final years on a daily, sometimes an hourly basis. Photographs by the thousand document all the players staring grimly into the camera. They include the famous tintype of Billy, which has promoted the erroneous notion that the Kid was left-handed.

But amid this wealth of mostly amateur history, there are huge and obvious gaps. Sex, for example. From Calvert and deLeon's History of Texas we learn that ratios in Texas in 1880 were 111 men to one woman. Same ratio ten years later. Conditions in the bunkhouses must heve been similar to those before the mast. My friend the Austin-based writer, Bill Broyles, who’s researched the Billy saga extensively for a novel some smart publisher should speedily snap up, says Tunstall was gay and “very close to a German called Weidemann.” The only other person for whom he appears to entertained erotic attraction was his own sister. So maybe Tunstall’s murder was a hate crime, to be requited by Billy. Was Billy gay? Maybe, like another mythic character, Neal Cassady, he was polymorphous in preference. He was certainly mourned by many Hispanic girls.

The town bike, as we used to say in Ireland, was Susan McSween, later known as “the cattle queen of the west.” Her amorous activities were abundantly alleged in depositions on Col Dudley's trial. She used to take Hispanic masons “down to the river.” After McSween bit the dust she took up with a one-armed lawyer with psoriasis who was gunned down on the main street in Lincoln very near the Patron store, while looking for fresh milk for milk plaster on his face. She then married a man with a prolapsed rectum. Chisum, who gave her 500 cattle, was consorting with her even while McSween was alive. Her ranches were finally taken over by Fall and Doheny, who were the prime villains in the Teapot Dome scandal. My innkeepers at the Patron house are now part of a case battling the owner of Ruidoso racetrack from building a fourth golf course, thereby possibly depleting vital water supplies. All in the mainstream of American history.

Billy would probably have been okay, if New Mexico’s governor, Lew Wallace, hadn’t been trying to finish his novel, Ben Hur. The Kid was hoping to bargain his way out of a death sentence by snitching on his pals who had most recently gunned down the man with psoriasis, who was Susan the town bike’s lawyer. Brooding on troublesome problems with Ben Hur’s plot, Wallace allowed the switch deal to lapse. Instead of fleeing to Mexico, Billy was still angling for a pardon when Garrett nailed him. Never trust an author.

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