Off the Record 7/19/2024

A READER WRITES:

It appears that the Supervisors already know what they want to do with the State Controller's report. They want to de-legitimize it. McGourty angrily decried that he was not asked any questions by the State Controller, and other Supervisors agreed. Of course, it doesn't matter what the opinion of individual Board members is, but their collective actions are what matters. He still doesn't understand that, even as he rides off into the sunset of retirement. Did the CEO interact with the State Controller? Hmm. They also accused the report of being written by a “low level” staffer, not worthy of any serious attention. They thought the State Controller would absolve them of any responsibility, but the report instead laid it squarely at their feet. They're angry about it. Now they're fearful a more robust $800,000 audit will expose even more information not to their liking. No doubt they were all on the phone with [state senator Mike] McGuire over the weekend upset that the party line, or more specifically that the Board's fantasy was not backed up. “We offered help!” an exasperated McGourty muddled out of his mouth. But did you plan beforehand? Openly? Did you work with those who actually perform the work? No you didn't, Glenn. McGourty shook the tree and is angry that an apple fell on his face.

FROM THE MENDOCINO DISPATCH-DEMOCRAT of Friday, January 16th, 1903, as retrieved by Jody Martinez of the UDJ: “Rhodes held to answer. The preliminary examination of Martin Rhodes, the man who shot the colored man Thomas Lewis at Boonville, took place last Monday. In order to get the injured man's testimony the Court Reporter, Constable and Attorneys went out to the hospital with the accused. Rhodes was held to answer. Lewis is in a fair way to recovery.”

ED NOTE: Much of the true history of Mendocino County lies a'moldering in the basement of the County Courthouse. How the above matter was resolved is down there somewhere, and it's a shame an archivist or an historian hasn't been allowed to mine it and many other matters about which the old newspapers, insofar as they still exist, are silent.

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HELLO! This is Red Beard here. I've been down here in Soledad Prison since I left Mendocino and I should have been writing you guys more, so I am going to start writing. I want to take my comic strip character to another level. I have some ideas that I can throw to you guys, Maybe you can get your artist to make some more. I also can get some comic strips made, but for now I could provide you with the ideas and then you guys can put it out there, etc. You know, The Adventures of Red Beard or something like that. I will write to you all soon with some ideas.

For now, I want you to listen to my friend Ryan here and hopefully publish his story. He is a well-known comedian who has been on TV and I've seen him on Comedy Central. He is a good dude who was viciously attacked by a well known drunken asshole and he was forced to defend himself and ended up killing the guy. But I'll let him tell you his story. It will blow your mind. His story is crazy, but he is not. I've talked with him quite a bit. Anyway, I told him I would try and hook him up with you guys to get his story heard. He is also a very talented writer. Ask him to send you a poem or something. They are pretty good, man. He has been done wrong by people he loves and the unjustice system. Let me know how it goes. If you publish his story, send it to him so I can read it, ok?

I want to write an apology letter to all my victims in Mendocino. For one thing I feel bad for not doing that already. We can make some comics that show me here in prison and all the crazy shit I'm dealing with in here, ok? I want Red Beard to go mainstream and then national and get a brewery to make Red Beard Ale. Stuff like that. I send peace and love to you. Say hi to Matt LaFever and Marilyn Davin.

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THE BACK STORY: William Allan ‘Redbeard’ Evers, was our famously slippery fugitive, managing to elude whole posses of cops for nearly a year before he was finally arrested in November of 2021. Often spotted over the nine months he was being sought in the wilds between Elk and Albion, with more than one sympathetic resident of Mendo's vast outback leaving food and refreshments out for him, finally an alert resident of Albion Ridge Road spotted Evers the day before he was caught crouched beside an outbuilding on the man's property as Evers sprinted off into the nearby woods.

Sheriff's deputies were soon at the site where they saw Evers from a distance, but the fleet-footed wanted man again evaded his badged pursuers.

The next day, the last Thursday (4th November) Evers would be free, three deputies returned to the area known among Albion people as the “Doughnut Shop.”

Approximately 300 yards downhill from the “Doughnut Shop” two deputies encountered Evers when, unaware of the deputies, Evers suddenly emerged from brushy terrain “eight feet away from us,” as a deputy described the encounter. Evers ran back into the brush as police dog Takota took up the chase. Takota quickly overtook Evers who kicked him away. But Takota resumed the hunt, eventually knocking Evers to the ground and biting his quarry in the lower leg.

Deputies soon wrestled Evers into handcuffs. The foot chase had covered approximately 50 yards, but the determined Evers, handcuffed, again attempted to flee but was again restrained by deputies, this time permanently. He was placed in wrap leg restraints in the back of a patrol car.

Evers, not what you'd call a portrait in contrition, was transported to the Sheriff's Office Ukiah station to meet with Mendocino County District Attorney Investigators, Sheriff's Office detectives and to be medically cleared prior to being booked into the Mendocino County Jail.

Some of us had assumed Red Beard was invincible, that our famous fugitive would stay out there forever, the man slowly becoming myth when he was no more. We’d also suspected that some old Albion outlaw, Captain Fathom or Beth Bosk, or maybe even Pebs Trippett at her place at the foot the deep south bank of the Navarro River, had perhaps provided a winter home for Red Beard.

But the Albion of 2021 is not the outlaw Albion Nation of 1975.

Beard, with drenching early rains falling on the parched county, had been holed up in a kind of brush cave he'd fashioned for himself off Albion Ridge Road near the "donut shop."

As Sheriff Kendall assessed Redbeard’s situation, “What he was up to was not sustainable. It’s not like being a plumber. Even an accomplished outdoorsman like him couldn’t stay out there forever.”

The Sheriff said it was the fugitive’s bicycle tracks that helped deputies locate him, although the Sheriff's Department had previously done some impressive electronic tracking of the Beard.

A trio of lawmen — Lt. J.D. Comer; Brandon Juntz; Brandon McGregor, and the intrepid Takota, had a clear idea of where he was.

Combining electronic surveillance with sightings and numerous burglaries presumably committed by the Beard, deputies zeroed in on his location within a very small radius on Albion Ridge. Then, following tire tracks from Beard's bicycle, and moving stealthily down a barely discernible path with police dog Takota, the famous outlaw suddenly appeared strapped into his trademark backpack stuffed with many pounds of his daily essentials.

Beard did try to make one more dash from beneath the two deputies trying to wrestle him into compliance but was finally subdued. The Sheriff said “he didn't really resist” arrest by fighting or cursing his captors.

Sheriff Matt Kendall had said that “this guy runs like an Olympic athlete. Without his pack he might have even outrun the dog, and even with 60 or 70 pounds on his back he's very fast.”

The Sheriff recalled an earlier encounter with Red Beard when, after allegedly snapping off a rifle round at a pursuing deputies, the Beard, running blind in total darkness, hurdled a fence and easily outran the deputies chasing him.

Sheriff Kendall said that deputies searched the area where Beard was caught, but no weapon was found.

The famous fugitive seems to have developed a love for Mendocino County when he’d served here as a state prison firefighter. A former cellmate remembers, “Evers was my cell mate/bunky in Humboldt County Correction Facility in 2002. 385 Workers Dorm. He is a really nice guy. He was a wildlands firefighter. He was going to get me a job as a firefighter but I decided to just go back into growing cannabis which was why I was in jail in the first place. I hope the best for him!”

Evers had no history of violence. People who know him say they are surprised that he’d shoot at anybody, let alone a cop. An acquaintance said he does have a serious drinking problem — he stole numerous bottles of alcohol during break-ins in the vastness west of Ukiah out to the Coast — but that he’d never been violent so far as she was aware.

Researcher Deb Silva reported her Evers investigation. “I looked up Evers and found lots of court cases from Shasta County. He was born in Shasta County, his parents married there and are still married. He has one brother who has been in a bit of trouble, too. His parents now live in Arizona, which is where the Arizona connection comes in. I could not find Red Beard at Been Verified nor is he on either of his parents BV reports, although the brother is on the reports. I expect that is because Evers has had no stable address, besides prison, and no employment for many years. Court records do not state exactly what crimes he was charged with, they simply say whether or not they were misdemeanor or felony. One or two of the records say that he falls under the three strikes sentencing. He was on parole during his recent time on the lam in the Albion area. His parole was revoked in June of this year. I could not find any newspaper articles about his arrests in Shasta County.”

Evers was assumed to have spent hours watching homes west of Ukiah and farther west in the Elk and Albion areas. When the surveilled residents were away Beard would dart inside to re-supply, with his acquisition focus being alcohol.

Residents of the Coast, especially the newly bourgeoisie upper Albion, were of course unnerved at the Beard's numerous break-ins and have mostly welcomed his arrest.

In his arrest photograph, Evers doesn’t appear to be what we might call a picture of remorse, but looks rather more like an indomitable kind of dude who, at least to us, lives up to the spirited figure we imagined him to be. More than a few Mendo people were saddened when he was finally caught.

Beard was sentenced to 25-to-life in March of 2022. His sentence wouldn't have been nearly as severe if he hadn't fired a rifle shot at a pursuing deputy, a charge Beard denies, claiming he'd fired in the air merely to discourage the deputy's pursuit.

Soledad State Prison houses both maximum and minimum security prisoners. Given his legal history, the ebullient, and previously non-violent Beard, is probably locked up with the really bad boys.

DOMBEY AND SON conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey's life. The world was made for Mr. Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the center.

— Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

ROBERT GATES:

So what happened to the $22 million that pg and e paid to the county for the 2017 fire which burned up much of redwood valley? I can’t seem to get an answer from the BOS. I can tell you they didn’t ask redwood or potter valleys what they thought. The settlement works out to about 40 thousand dollars per structure. I lost my house and another building and yet can get no answer. Is it possible they used as a slush fund? If so they should be sued. The residents of the fire suffered hard and these funds were meant for us.

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ADAM GASKA REPLIES:

The short answer is they have spent most of it.

Reports are here.

https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/departments/executive-office/county-budget/pg-e-expenditure-reports

Initially, Carmel Angelo did keep mum about the money then selectively told department heads to get their Christmas lists in order. Once it became public that the funds were available, there was a public outcry which led to money being made available to fire departments. Redwood Valley made substantial investments in new equipment which was long overdue. as did other county fire departments.

The County, and all government agencies, have strict rules about what they can fund. Direct payments to individuals are considered gifts of public funds which is a no-no. Many individuals who had losses have filled claims against PG&E which set up a separate victim fund. Many, but not all, have received payments. But in most cases, the payments were nowhere near the losses sustained.

BIDEN, LIKE TRUMP, throws out mounds of words, many of them only tangentially related, but tonight, by Biden's (and America's) diminished standards, he did pretty well, stumbling big time only twice when he confused Putin with Zelensky and Kamala with Trump. Here at Boonville's national media desk, we turned off the Biden press conference agreeing that the old boy probably is the Democrats best bet to beat the Orange Monster, which is a measure of how far the Democrats (and America) have fallen. Biden on life support is superior to anybody else the Democrats can put up for "leader of the free world." Next up the final absurdity, the November election.

FRED GARDNER SENDS ALONG:

“Old Tools of the Trade.”

TWO OLD MEN ARE SITTING IN A BAR.

One of them looks at the other and says, “You look familiar… where you from?”

The second old man replies, “Ireland.”

The first old man looks astonished and says, “No way. I’m from Ireland myself, what a small world!”

The second old man then looks at the first: “What city?”

The first old man says, “Dublin?”

The second old man looks astonished.

“No way. I’m from Dublin meself! What a small world.”

The first man looks at the second old man. “What school you go to?”

The second old man replies, “Saint Mary’s class of 89.”

The first old man is absolutely baffled.

“NO WAY. Saint Mary’s class of 89 myself! What a small world!”

At this point, another man comes into the bar and says to the bartender, “Hey, Joe! Anything interesting going on?”

The bartender says, “Not really… But the Murphy twins are drunk again.”

HERE’S AN ENTERTAINING BIT OF SPAM EMAIL:

The Subject Line says: “YOUR $50 MILLION DOLLAR GRANT!”

And the sender is “Mrs. Jill Biden.”

“I'M, MRS.JILL BIDEN THE FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE CONTENT OF THE BELOW MESSAGE IS SIGNED AND APPROVED BY BANK OF AMERICA .”

After some instructions on how to get my own personal ATM Card with the pre-approved $50 million, the email concludes:

“you can contact my agent Mr Mark William on zangi for more detail Zangi only……10-6624-6309. Only. You can also add me on spike at (mrsjillbiden050@gmail.com) . you can also write me on google chat at (mrsjillbiden050@gmail.com). Thanks and always be bless. Mrs. Jill Biden, First Lady of the United States.”

I don’t recognize the sender’s actual email address, but I suspect it was misdirected. The sender must have meant to send it to Jim Mastin, the local Dems’ “Democrat of the Year for 2024.”

(Mark Scaramella)

EVERETT LILJEBERG CONFIRMS that this photo is Al Dompling's log truck when it went off the albion bridge in August of 2002. Dompeling had swerved to avoid an oncoming drunk driver and over the side Dompling went, 90 feet down, conscious the whole way. Although badly injured, Al recovered and went back to work.

SURE THERE ARE LARGER MENACES, but what about Star Thistle? Tom Wodetski of Albion valiantly organizes eradication teams to beat back this most persistent invader on the Coast but it marches on. Star Thistle seemed to be closing in on Boonville from three directions when I called the County Ag office some 25 years ago to ask what was being done to defeat the plant pest.

DAVE BENGSTON was Ag Commissioner back then, and he was always generous with his time, lucid in his explanations. He said that he defined eradication as “permanent removal,” and that Mendocino County had so far managed to confine the rampaging thistle to a mere 10,000 acres of its vastness, which was pretty impressive statistic. territory.

THE COMMISSIONER AGREED that Star Thistle had to somehow be stopped from spreading, then rolled back to non-existence because it refuses to co-exist, or co-exists in a way that leaves it so dominant it can't really be said to be co-existing. The Star Thistle, then, is the biological equivalent of Trump.

BENGSTON was a member of the state's “Bio-control Commission,” had been its chairman, in fact. “We've got several experiments going,” Bengston said, “and there have been promising uses in other countries of certain insects that eat the plant. Star Thistle seed is viable for 15 years, making it very difficult to permanently eradicate. There's a chemical spray called Transline that's about 96% effective, but it costs $60 an acre. And it's got to be applied for years. For the thousands of acres we're talking about in Mendocino County, bio-control is the only practical hope we have for stopping it.”

“STAR THISTLE,” the Commissioner continued, “is often introduced to an un-invaded pasture via hay. But once you've got it, you've got to be careful about hand eradication because it spreads horizontally. You might think you're getting it out but you're probably multiplying its root stock. If you disk, you can wind up chopping one root into ten, and even if you spray for ten or twelve years, then skip or miss a year, it'll come right back. The plant explodes into thousands of seeds when it's mature and can lie dormant for many years. Star thistle is still spreading, although some southern counties don’t yet have it. It hasn’t reached San Pedro.”

THE COMMISSIONER remarked that “in wet years competing grasses can ‘shade it out,’ but in dry years there's not enough shade from competing grasses and star thistle can really take off.” “But,” Bengston chuckled, “it's not all bad; star thistle does make the best honey in the world — clove-orange. It's ten times better than Tupelo honey. Back in the 60s and 70s beekeepers liked it because it was good for honey production.” Bengston mentioned a local beekeeper who still specializes in star thistle honey. “Still if you took a vote star thistle would be the number one pest of most ranchers and farmers. Although cows, sheep and goats will eat it, it’s poison to horses.”

A READER WRITES: “I've been reading your paper for a while now, and generally speaking it's been a pleasure. There's so little out there with an independent perspective that you are sadly almost without competition — the couple other locals news outlets are indeed “rags” — but even if there was some competition I suspect you'd still come out on top.

ON THE POETRY FRONT, the AVA is a mixed bag. Some of the local writings are good and interesting, but others are almost embarrassing to read and truly seem to be filler. I've definitely liked your inclusion lately of well-known poets: Auden, Sandburg, and more recently Elisabeth Bishop, etc.

One poet you might like is an old man now, living somewhere up in Vermont I believe, by the name of Hayden Carruth. His most recent book of poems is Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, which I think won the National Book Award, for what that's worth. Many of his poems are short enough that they'd do well in your paper's format…"

I LIKE POETRY, always have, ever since I figured out I had no gift for writing it. Believe it or not, I know the diff between good and bad verse. I also know that I've invented a new literary genre — charity poetry, which accounts for the, ahem, uneven quality of some of the verse that appears on the cyber-pages of this fine publication. I've also recast some pretty good poetry as prose and run it as fillers just to see if anybody noticed; if they did, nobody troubled to complain.

HAVING ESTABLISHED my credentials to the satisfaction of local standards, of which there are none that I know of, I'll say there are very few big shot poets I really like. You can have Hass, Pinsky, most of Milosz, most of Merrill. Of the ones I do like there's Sharon Olds and some of your man Carruth. I like Taslima Nasreen best of all the contemporary poets I've read over the past ten years, but she seems to have disappeared in a blizzard of fatwas. (She's so strong a writer she seems just as strong in translation, although I'm sure she's even more powerful in Bengali.) I like an academic poet named Hirsch, and I like Ferlinghetti very much and am always irritated when he's patronized and dismissed merely as a “beatnik poet.” I've always liked William Carlos Williams. Of the furriners, I like Lawrence and a lot of Robert Graves. Mostly though, as an insular kinda dude, I go back to American poets when I need poetry — Whitman, Dickinson, and to the later American poets like Hart Crane and Robert Frost. Unpopular as he is with lefties, I think Tom Wolfe is right about the nugatory effect Seminar Land has had on American lit, prose and poetry, not that Wolfe's novels approach Balzac as he suggested in his famous essay complaining that modern novels weren't about anything but their authors' interior lives. The only novelists I rush to read are Richard Price and Robert Stone, and Stone is gone now. I like Annie Proulx. The best novel I've read lately is Paul Theroux's ‘Burma Sahib,’ a reimagining of George Orwell's days as an imperial policeman in Burma. All this hurry-up lit chat isn’t to say I don't often see random stories and poems I like very much.

SUPERVISOR HASCHAK’S JULY REPORT

Hot weather and hot issues are here. The Office of Emergency Services has been dealing with the extreme heat and advising people on how to stay safe. Please take care of yourself and others who might be vulnerable to the heat. Check on your elderly and at-risk neighbors. Since not everyone has air conditioning, consider libraries and stores as places to get a break from the heat. Mendoready.org has additional preparedness tips. Watch Duty is an app that is very useful in tracking fires and emergencies in your area.

Brooktrails Special Assessment vote is ongoing. The public hearing will be on July 23 during the Board of Supervisors meeting. This assessment, if approved, will provide maintenance and fuel reduction for the Willits Creek and Firco roads as emergency access routes. This is a pilot program using assessments for a special benefit. Appreciation to the property owners along the emergency access routes, Sherwood Firewise Council, and the Brooktrails Board.

The State Controller’s office conducted an audit of the County’s fiscal operations. The three main findings were: 1. the Board (with me as the lone dissenting vote) consolidated the Auditor/Controller and Treasurer/Tax Collector positions without doing a risk assessment which resulted in loss of staffing and institutional knowledge 2. Payroll did not have sufficient checks and balances (the payroll has been taken into the Executive Office with checks and balances in place) and 3. 14 financial accounts were not in the software system (they are now). More work needs to be done on the fiscal department’s processes and procedures so that everything is consistent and transparent.

There has been controversy about the number of licenses allowable in the cannabis ordinance. To be clear, staff did not usurp Board power but rather read the exact language of the ordinance. It states that a person may obtain two cannabis cultivation business licenses on a parcel. This allows for up to 22,000 sq. ft. Previously, this allowed cultivation and a nursery. County Counsel says that the language allows for two different types of cultivation such as mixed light and outdoor. Only four people have applied in the last two months (while 135 have been denied or withdrawn in 2024 so far). Applying for a second license applies to non-resource land since these applications are under Phase 3 rules. This is all consistent with the CEQA review and the Mitigated Negative Declaration which considered parcels having up to 22,000 sq. ft of cultivation. Many feel that the intent of the ordinance was to limit cultivation to 10,000 sq. ft. Since there are two very different views on this issue, I will be bringing it as an agenda item for the Board to resolve.

There will be a Talk with the Supervisor Thursday, July 11 at 10:00 at Brickhouse Coffee in Willits. I am available by email haschakj@mendocinocounty.gov or phone 707-972-4214.

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In his monthly report for July, Supervisor John Haschak commented on the State Controller’s finding that “Payroll did not have sufficient checks and balances.” Haschak claimed that “the payroll has been taken into the Executive Office with checks and balances in place.” Haschak based this comment on a passing remark by Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Sara Pierce at Tuesday’s Board meeting who made a similar claim. Ms. Pierce, at least theoretically, no longer works in the Executive Office, so how would she know? Further, Ms. Pierce reported that “another set of eyes” now looks at payroll, whatever that means, and that “another set of eyes” is “checks and balances.” Sorry, but nice as another set of eyes may be, it hardly amounts to “checks and balances.” This kind of casual dismissal of a formal complaint from the State Controller is typical of Mendo officialdom. If Haschak were serious, he’d ask the CEO’s office to provide a copy of the written procedure that they consider to be “checks and balances.” Then he’d ask for a checklist or record showing that those checks and balances were complied with. If this is an example of the way the County is going to respond to the State Controller’s office report, then that will prove again that the Board and its casual lack of oversight is indeed responsible for the County’s messy and loosey-goosey finances that the State Controller’s office reported. (Mark Scaramella)

A READER WRITES:

Regarding the County’s fiscal checks and balances, since the Executive Office has “taken over” payroll, there have been too MANY mistakes. They have overpaid some county employees in overtime, in some instances by a couple thousand dollars, then they wanted the employees to repay the overpayment at an incorrect amount. There have been cases of Social Workers not being paid the proper on-call pay. And at least twice now the County has miscalculated sick rate accruals, with the last one happening just this week. As for the request of policies and procedures in writing, it won’t happen without some type of order. If there is something in writing, then the Executive Office can’t change the rules as they go. How convenient that they have strategically positioned themselves in “temporary” department head positions throughout the County, yet want to blame everyone else for the problems that are currently happening.

A READER WRITES:

Jim Shields: You are right on so many points. (Re: “The Main Solution to Solving the Mental Health Crisis.”) I could see what was happening with the new law. I was a psychiatric technician at Mendocino State Hospital. I was working on the acute receiving and treatment ward RT-2. We had a long history of treating and returning patients to their home. When the act went into force patients would be leaving prior to recovery. So I left the job to become a Mendocino County Deputy Sheriff. I wound up dealing with many of my old patients. If I was on duty I was sent on 100% of the mentally ill calls. We had a unit called PUFF where 5150 WIC allowed us to place mentally ill people to be treated for 72 hours. In my opinion it was an abysmal failure.

It was staffed by people who worked the “back wards” at MSH [Mendocino State Hospital] and decided to stay in Ukiah after the hospital closed. They were not the most motivated individuals. Later the county put an individual in charge who was a total failure at dealing with the mentally ill, and just closed the unit and turned the sick out on the street compounding the problem for everyone. Now we are dealing with 50 years of this failure.

RACHEL MADDOW’S ASSESSMENT of the Big Boy press conference: “President Biden showed a startlingly impressive command of the issues at his press conference. He is not only strong on foreign policy, he is just just fundamentally right on foreign policy in the way that he talks about it. It just shows you he is a master of the foreign policy field and has been for decades in his career.”

THIS “MASTER OF FOREIGN” POLICY voted for the most destructive war in US history and is now supervising a genocide in Gaza, refusing to engage in diplomatic talks to end a bloody stagnated war in eastern Europe and actively trying to antagonize China across the Pacific….

— Jeffrey St. Clair

“VIOLENCE has no place in our democracy.” Please. Violence is our democracy, from its bloody beginnings until now, as the accelerating violence of the present propels US toward what looks like our second civil war. Violence has been what sets “our democracy” apart from most other democracies. (Mexico excepted.) Our culture worships violence, celebrates it, has built an entire entertainment around it.

“OUR DEMOCRACY”? You mean the one with a figurehead president behind whom unelected people have made our national decisions for the past four years?

“OUR DEMOCRACY” ends at the county line unless, of course, you get invited to San Francisco where the Democrat insiders choose our congressman, our state senator and our assemblyman for us. Ever hear of Mike McGuire, or Huffman, or Wood before they appeared as our “representatives”?

TRUMP’S always talked up violence, especially against weak, undefended people, while the Democrats have compared him to Hitler and said he was “the greatest threat to our democracy in our nation's history.”

ANY WONDER a dumb kid thinks to himself, “Well, gee, I could be one for the history books if I knocked this guy off.”

WHICH isn't to approve of assasination as a political strategy, but is anybody really surprised when it happens, as it does in mass shootings and millions of violent episodes every day somewhere in our unraveling country?

TRUMP'S FIRST TERM AS PRESIDENT, with a tip o’ the hat to Fintan O’Toole for the facts:

Didn't repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something beautiful.

Or make the rich pay more taxes.

Or drain the swamp of lobbyists or any other swamp creatures.

Or become the voice of American workers.

Or eliminate the federal deficit.

Or open up all the coal mines in West Virginia.

Or build a coast to coast wall and make Mexico pay for it.

FRED GARDNER:

When I heard the news Saturday night I went online to find the latest, and this is what came up:

THE COMMENTARIAT seems to think that Trump is a shoo-in after surviving the failed assassination attempt, that he'll get a ton of sympathy votes. I think his selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate puts Trump over big time.

I READ VANCE'S book when it came out. J.D.’s one of these guys who grew up with the wolf at the door but drew the wrong conclusions from his experience, by which I mean he basically blames the poor for being poor, and for lacking the bootstrap discipline that vaulted him outta there into the Ivy League and, probably, to the White House to preside over the final shopping sale. It doesn't occur to Vance that a system that encourages, indeed profits from, aberrant behavior might be the root of despairing behavior from people who have nothing to lose. And Vance himself says in his book it took the Marine Corps to rout him from sloth and indiscipline.

UNLIKE his boss, Vance is smart and articulate, which makes him a double menace in the Trumpian context. And he has a wife of East Indian derivation, the whole package making Vance the quality candidate the Democrats have no answer for among their weird collection of uninspiring sociopaths and bubbleheads. If Vance were the Democratic candidate he could probably beat Trump.

KAMALA HARRIS won't be able to debate this guy. Sure, she'll show up, but Vance is way too much for her, leaving Democrats with a ticket of a dead guy and a woman who was over her head even when she was a merciless, illiberal prosecutor back in San Francisco. The Democrats are over. They've been killing themselves for more than 50 years. McGovern was the last truly democratic candidate they've had, and now they're a woke joke as millions of working people go out and vote against themselves for Trump and Vance, the billionaire's dream ticket.

BEFORE CDF'S borate bombers you lived in the hills of Mendocino County at your summer-time peril. Now that there are thousands of people living in the hills, CDF's aerial fire fighting capacity is more crucial than ever to them, the hill muffins.

CDF scared hell outta the muffs years ago when the crucial agency announced that the “air attack” base at the Ukiah airport was closing and moving to Santa Rosa the better to cover a wider area and where they were easier to support and maintain. The big planes with their bombs away loads of chemical fire retardant, the helicopter with its flame dousing water basket, the advance spotter plane that guides the aerial firefighters to the blaze, were ten minutes farther away from the Hopland-Ukiah-Boonville areas, and twenty minutes farther from deep Spy Rock, Covelo, Leggett. It worked out. Despite a lotta scare talk aerial firefighting capacity has never been more effective, more efficient.

SO WHY DON'T the hill muffs tax themselves to create their own fire fighting air force? CDF said that by moving its Ukiah planes and pilots to its base in Santa Rosa it would save a lot of money. Maybe it did, but not before Mendo's neo-hill people furiously deconstructed CDF's rationales, pointing out that CDF wastes a lot of public money on non-essentials. Ho hum. Show me a public agency that doesn't squander a lot of public dough.

THAT HULLABALOO about CDF's move to Santa Rosa was really about the suburban assumptions of the thousands of well-to-do people who have set themselves up deep in the outback. Their most delusional assumption of all is that their remote aeries are entitled to instant, tax-paid fire protection. And paved subdivision roads. And cops five minutes away. And more entertainment options than are available in most of San Francisco, as Mendo Rural became Mendo Suburban.

WHEN it was only a bunch of straggly-haggly hippies living in the hills CDF's policy was Burn, Baby, Burn! Wild fires were good for the land, they said. Good science. Perfectly natural. Hell, the Indians used to do it. Hippie eradication was a wildfire side benefit. But then the hippies started buying fire insurance and their parents were building 12,000 square foot retirement homes next door, and the very idea that CDF's aerial fire attack capacity might not be instantly available caused a major uproar that came and went when there was not discernible fall-off in CDF's ability to respond to wildland fires as they always have, quickly and effectively. But now that insurance companies are cancelling fire policies everywhere on the Northcoast, it is doubly perilous to live where fifty years ago few people dared domicile.

80 YEARS AGO, as recorded by the Mendocino Beacon of January 29, 1923, “High court rules against A. Zmak and his conviction on a charge of selling liquor to minor high school boys is approved. Judge Preston imposed a fine of $500 and 4 months in jail as the sentence.”

The Mendocino County Veterans Service Office finally back in their cottage on Observatory, only six months after being unceremoniosly ousted and only four months after the Supervisors retracted their decision and directed that they be returned to their original building. (Photo by Mazie Malone.)

MICHAEL TURNER:

Maybe I missed it, but I am surprised that there has been no public outcry about the awful “improvements” being inflicted on the once sublime Montgomery Woods. Walked down the slope Tuesday expecting a cathedral of light and color and instead came upon a gathering of trucks, a tractor, and about 15 workers. I was told they were building an elevated boardwalk because the valley floods in the winter and people can’t get “access.” (Who goes to Montgomery Woods in the rainy season anyway?) That word “access” always means clumsy bureaucratic meddling, and in this case the wonderful footpath has been effaced by an 8 foot swathe running a straight line along the west valley margin, soon to support an elevated walkway with metal stairs and railings, whose reflected light will no doubt brighten the place up. At present the valley floor is now a construction site, filled with debris, and bags of cement and littered with the remains of secondary plant growth. No more will you be able to walk single file through a mysterious, magical world, wondering what’s around the next bend in the trail. On the other hand, next time I can bring my skateboard!

WHO ARE the rightwing talk jocks these days now that Limbaugh and Savage are gone? Only heard Limbaugh a couple of times and Savage once, and have ever since been unable to understand what attracts even the dumb white guys to either one of them. Limbaugh wasn't funny on his own terms, and Savage, a short fat guy who talked like he was ten feet tall, was your basic puff ball.

THE CHRON once ran a mostly laudatory piece on Savage as if he and his opinions were in any way credible, complete with a sidebar of Savage's typically witless remarks. “I live in a place in Northern California, Marin County, that's filled with phony liberals… They're just filled with themselves. They call themselves environmentalists, and then they run their wood stoves and pollute the air.” A dozen or so similarly imbecilic remarks, every one of demonstrably false, were highlighted by the Chron as if the piece was celebrating someone like Oscar Wilde and not a calculated commercial audio fraud as obvious as Savage. The one remark of Mr. Tough Talk's that did make me laugh was his statement that he couldn't tell the Chron or any other media where he lived in Marin because of “death threats.”

LESS DEFENSIBLE than Savage was his hypocritical boss, Jack Swanson, identified by the Chronicle as “operations director at KSFO” and “a self-described ACLU liberal who nonetheless created KSFO's all-conservative ‘Hot Talk’ format.” Swanson said Savage, whose real name was Michael Weiner, “is a phenomenal talent.”

THE ONLY listenable SF talk show used to be the one hosted by Michael Krazny at KQED Radio. His replacements are unlistenable. Krazny was hyper-informed, always polite to the chronophagic callers before he moved on to the next caller, his guests were the kind of people from whom one could actually learn things, and nobody yelled, although the discussion was often heated. Krazny was the only crossover talk show guy around in that all kinds of people listened to him. Unfortunately, the talk shows offered by Pacifica stations and the piously lock-step fake public radio stations we suffer on the Northcoast seldom do open lines talk, partly because their dominant figures tend to be non-verbal and partly because they have even less respect for their listeners than the audio bully boys like Limbaugh and Savage.

THERE ARE LOTS of radlibs around who could do commercial talk radio and do it well, and there are lots who could host lively call-in shows on what passes for public radio north of the Golden Gate Bridge if they could get past the fearful little censors at KMUD, KZYX and the truly pathetic public radio station in Sonoma County, whatever it's called. But…

UKIAH CRITICS of this fine publication were overheard recently denouncing the editor as a “drunk and a low-life.” Since none of my immediate family members were visiting Ukiah that day, I can't for the life of me believe that random citizens would say such a thing. Haven't had a drink in years, and who among us is so bold as to call another citizen a low-life given the personal behavior of recent presidents and innumerable elected office holders, formerly regarded as pillars of the community and even the nation?

NEXT DOOR TO A DOPE HOUSE

WITHOUT mentioning either the name of the vic or the town where the following crank-driven home invasion occurred, the following is an eyewitness report: “I could see out perfectly, while they had no idea I was watching them; They were wearing clothes as if from a warmer climate like the folks wear in Philo, Boonville or Ukiah, and looked nothing like the composites the children later described —tropical rayon short sleeve shirt, bamboo print with buttons, shorts, wife beater body shirts, and black Ben Davises. I saw the first two invader rats plain as day in my driveway as they adjusted themselves from what looked like a long car ride. They walked like Sumo wrestlers down to the house they were looking for. I remember getting the feeling that wherever they entered, they weren't going to knock first! Sure 'nuf; and a whole bunch of little kids live in that place! I had just seen most of the children leave the house on their way to the store, so I had no idea there were little girls still at home asleep in their pajamas. It was an unusually quiet morning, and very cold. The driver went in to the house too, after parking, and also sticking out like a sore thumb dressed in a wife beater shirt, black Ben Davis pants and stocking cap; Warm weather clothes; not what Coast folks wear even on a warm morning. Two wore stocking caps while the third made no effort to hide what he looked like. One of the little girl's said she could only identify them by their butt cracks as they tossed the place, which she could see from beneath the duct tape they wrapped around her eyes. (At least she's trying to have a sense of humor about it, even though her little eyebrows took awhile to grow back.) She said one guy kissed her on the head and said, Tell your daddy, your uncles are looking for him.” She said to me afterwards, “I don't have any uncles.” She's eight years old. It took the cops one hour and 45 minutes to arrive. One day soon after the invasion, I stopped for gas at an inland service station and saw their car parked behind the closed garage door of one of the bays. I called the Ukiah investigator and he told me the local sheriff would arrive with composites for me to look at, but I never received a call. I had a talk with the Dad about his crank habit, and told him to either get off it or move, because the creeps could have walked into my house by mistake that morning, even though my house doesn't look like a crank house. He went on to tell me that they were only after money, and that his girls weren't hurt. I responded with, “Then I know you gotta be on crack if your one major concern remains the money you SAY they took. instead of the welfare of your young daughters and the trauma you've caused them by your nasty habit! Why do you owe those gangsters money, anyway? Those were crank dealing thugs the driver let out in my driveway!” I told him that's what I told the investigator in Ukiah, and that I wish he'd either get over his drug days or move. because he “can't hide behind his child daughters now that he's soooo busted.”

POINT ARENA MURDER VICTIM IDENTIFIED

As a part of this continuing investigation, the homicide victim from this case was identified as Kevin Taeuffer, a 54-year-old male from Annapolis. Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Detectives made contact with the victim's legal next of kin who was notified of Taeuffer's death. An autopsy for Taeuffer has been scheduled for Wednesday 7-17-2024, but the official cause and manner of death will not be released until the autopsy and toxicology reports are available.

This case is actively being investigated and anyone with information related to this incident is encouraged to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Detectives by calling 707-463-4086. Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the non-emergency tip line at 707-234-2100.

(Previously)

On 07-11-2024 at approximately 8:06 PM, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Communications Center received a 911 call from 47-year-old Pan Jasper Brady of Point Arena, reporting that he had just shot a person. Brady reported that he had been in an argument with the victim, a 54-year-old male, and Brady retrieved a handgun and shot the victim. Brady secured the firearm while awaiting the arrival of responding law enforcement personnel.

Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Deputies and California State Parks Peace Officers responded. Due to safety concerns related to the nature of the call, medical personnel staged in the area awaiting law enforcement. Upon the arrival of law enforcement personnel, the victim was found to have succumbed from injuries that included at least one gunshot wound. Brady was detained by deputies and Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Detectives responded to take over the investigation. Brady was ultimately arrested and booked into the Mendocino County Jail on a charge of homicide, and an additional charge for using a firearm during the commission of a homicide. Brady is being held in custody in lieu of $1,000,000 bail.

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] I’ve mentioned before Disney’s tv show Texas John Slaughter starring Tom Tryon (Texas John Slaughter made them do what they oughta ’cause if they didn’t they died). Anyway, one of the character’s shtiks was that when he sensed danger he would get this itch in the back of his neck.

Well, that’s how I feel. I’ve been getting this danger sense, stronger and stronger as time goes by.

I believe that every important thing that’s happening now is just an illusion that TPTB are trying to put over on us so we don’t realize what is really occurring. It’s like we’re taking the wrong pill in the Matrix.

Let me tell you, this feeling is very unsettling. I’m just waiting for the hammer to drop.

But still, I sleep well at night – for now.

Life is going to become very difficult for us, I’m afraid. I’m not even close to being properly prepped.

Last week my car unexpectedly had a computer glitch saying my brakes were malfunctioning – pull over now! I wasn’t going to do that as I was 20 miles from home. I did get home ok, and the next day brought my car to the dealership. The mechanics thought it was the computer messaging, not the brakes themselves. They said this was a common issue with hybrid cars. The problem was they had to find the defective part, order it and then re-set everything. The process took 6 days.

They had no loaner cars available, so we were carless for those 6 days. We had plenty of food and water, but it was very inconvenient.

It was then that I realized how unprepared we were, and how much we were dependent on a machine we couldn’t repair ourselves. I’ve been thinking maybe we should buy bicycles.

[2] Joe Biden announced resolutely that he would only step aside for the candidacy of President, if he was instructed to by God Himself, over a week ago.

Now major democratic names are declaring that they will “respect Biden’s decision whether or not to run, when he makes it.” A decision he already made…

Does the cognitive malaise run through the entire party?

[3] I have a son who currently lives in Mexico, on the Yucatan peninsula. As we all know the Mexican Peso is worth far less than the US dollar, currently. A Snicker’s candy bar in Mexico costs 25 pesos. Mexicans live in smaller homes. Drive one car or get around on bikes. And, get this, for the most part, my son finds the average Mexican to be a delightful person. They are usually very family oriented, hard working, religious, somewhat moral and happy. They know how to have conversations with each other.

I don’t see a collapse in the USA as a bad thing. Forcing a people to go back to what matters in this world is not a bad thing. Wealth and materialism has brought us nothing but misery and death.

Part of me admires how the Mexicans live. They live a simpler, happier lifestyle because they don’t have nearly as much crap as we Americans do. They make do with what they have.

[4] A 130 yd. shot with a clear line to the president? Good snipers can hit from ten times that distance and more. Trump was extremely lucky. Something wrong here. That building should have been secured.

Great photos of a bloody, defiant Trump. This should help him. It was disgusting to hear the likes of Biden and Obama regurgitate the usual platitudes about violence, having not done much to prevent it at all, almost endorsing it.

I hope that Trump and his advisors handle this incident with a firm and militant resolve, no talk about all getting along bull crap, but building on the incident and using it to point out the Left’s dangerous demagoguery and his extreme vilification, such as being compared to Hitler and him putting people into “gulags.”

Flaws and all, what’s not to love? The bloody, defiant face and fist. Will this be the face that launched millions of votes and burnt the topless towers of tergiversation?

[5] Trying to hit a target at 130 yards with a short barrel rifle is hard for even the best shooter. Trump uses a lot of body language when he talks, from the time of target acquisition to actually pulling the trigger, plus the fraction of a second for the bullet to fly 400 feet, we’re looking at half a second, maybe more, that’s more than enough time for someone who speaks the way Trump does to move his head. People taking bullets in the crowd behind Trump isn’t surprising, it was a densely packed crowd, it makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that Secret Service was supposedly notified by people in the crowd that there was a rifleman taking up an active shooter position on top of a building nearby and the Secret Service did nothing until after 8-9 shots were fired, after which the assassin was promptly neutralized with a head shot, makes one wonder, especially with how shady our politics have become.

One thing is unfortunately very certain, this moment has dramatically increased our chances of civil war. I thought the chance was very low before this point in time and people were just fear mongering, but now I think it is definitely within the realm of possibility.

[6] Speaking of Amazon, and Bezos, (who was raised by a Cuban “refugee”, so is probably Catholic or a reasonable facsimile), he is a multi-billionaire who makes his money on the forklift drivers who do the actual work.

There was a tornado around here that wiped out an Amazon warehouse, and a worker talked about it the next day on Facebook. I saved it so that people can know how lousy they are treated.

“I’m on the phone with Amazon ERC and they’re telling me I’ll be marked as a missed shift even though the state police just told me to go home. Then he got the nerve to get smart with me and say if I want the points removed, I need to go back to the site and speak to HR. There is no HR or management office…. It’s buried and the building is surrounded by emergency management and cops. All I know is they better pay me and relocate us to DLI5 or something. The whole weird thing is all week building maintenance and different crews have been in there watching us doing inspections on the equipment and started hiring for the safety committee yesterday…

The “tornado safe” areas aren’t there anymore. My manager said she’s waiting to hear from upper management about if they’re going to transfer us out or terminate us. Nothing is in our employee app and no one has said anything to us from DLI4. My friend works across the street and they told her to come in. She was there then they sent them home stating business will resume tomorrow. They’re currently towing cars from DLI4 to STL4 where my friend works. As of right now I’m still marked as a no show for last night and scheduled for tonight. For a company that has all these policies and high standards for us….they clearly don’t have anything for this.”