THE AVA’S BALLOT PROPOSITION RECOMMENDATIONS
To spare you reading through all the arguments in your General Election guide, and as our usual service to voters, we present our surefire, honest-to-gawd, straight skinny, how-to-humanely-vote on the State propositions.
Prop 2 10 bil for school facilities. This one, like many props past and present, is bond-funded, meaning big financial interests will buy in anticipation of lucrative paydays, in this case, $18 billion,. Bonds are very attractive investments because they're government backed. But, but, but… what if the government is irresponsible, spending billions to murder Arab babies and fund other wars far away and is headed for collapse anyway? These things probably won't ever be paid off. Think Big Picture! It's only another chapter in The Great Slide. But getting back to now, Do you want Our Nation's Future housed in falling down facilities and otherwise unsafe conditions? If you do, or don't care one way or the other, vote no. If you have some residual affection for the sugar-fueled, phone addicted little… vote YES.
Note: Given that the national debt is $35 trillion and climbing by the literal hour, and each and every American, if he were forced to cough up his share today, owes $102,000, let us reconcile ourselves to the fiscal fact that it's all funny money at this point in our nation's decline, that one of these grim days we'll have to pay up, and on that day the Federal Reserve, a consortium of privately owned banks Amercans are gulled into thinking operates in the national interest not the private, will simply print more money to cover the spread, and soon our currency will be worth nothing.
Prop 3 Right to marry. Kinda redundant at this point, right? Maybe not. According to the green hairs, there are new genders coming on-line darn near every day. Libs will vote YES, magas mostly no. Cut to the afternoon I'm watching the evening news with me dear old mum. On comes a segment of women marrying each other. Mum shouts, “Bruce, quick, turn that off!” I'm looking for the remote when Mum, with a resigned sigh, “Oh, nevermind. It's probably a good thing homely people find each other.”
Prop 4 safe water wildfire prevention climate change risks. A cornucopia of good things financed by another $10 billion bond issue. Population pressures have led to water shortages and millions of people (as in Mendo) living in fire-prone outbacks, the whole disastrousness of it exacerbated by global warming. YES, why not?, as the End of Days picks up momentum.
Prop 5 bonds for housing. Makes it easier to pass bond measures instead of two thirds vote and gives locals the right to issue bonds for stuff they think they need. More good than bad. YES
Prop 6 Involuntary servitude in prisons. You laugh? This prop makes it illegal for prisons to force inmates to work for literal pennies. If the convict prefers lying on his rack watching a government provided TV? Let him, he's still in jail, a definite No Fun experience. YES
Prop 32 minimum wage to $18 dollars an hour. Sure, why not? The Chamber of Commerce opposes it of course, but the real catch is that the minimum wage would have to be what? a hundred bucks an hour for the average worker to enjoy a more or less middleclass life? YES
Prop 33 rent control. Of course, Not tough enough, but name a single present officeholder who will take on capital even at this level. The Chamber is against, natch, the nurses are for this one, and if you can't trust nurses who the hell can you trust? YES
Prop 34 ensures healthcare funding gets to patients, not the owners of medical corporations. Women's groups, vets, and patients are for 34, billionaires opposed. YES
Prop 35 ensures medi-cal funding remains untampered with. Weak as it is, Medi-Cal is all that stands between millions of Californians and zero medical care is. YES
Prop 36 Increases penalties for drug and theft crimes. The failed war on drugs is back. The root of the drug scourge is, at bottom, the despair millions feel at their prospects. Which have flatlined for roughly a third of the population. Theft is inherent in a system skewed to some people having a lot, most people having not enough. “Them that has, gets,” as my grandad summed up the system.
THE GREAT defenders of democracy have always maintained a team of lawyers working to keep third parties off state ballots. They are especially afraid of the Green Party's presidential candidate Jill Stein, who is running strong against The Party of Joy's Kamala Harris.
ROBERT REICH wonders, “Is Trump lying or just losing it? Does he simply have no grasp of reality?” Orange Man has always been marginally coherent but, yes, he's gone full on 5150 as his debate with Harris proved to everyone outside his cult.
ARMAGEDDON, THE LATEST: Israeli forces wiped out a whole block of residential buildings south of Beirut on Friday afternoon to get one guy, claiming that the central headquarters of Hezbollah was underneath the neighborhood. The airstrikes came shortly after Netanyahu delivered his usual speech to the UN declaring that “We have to kill ’em all because they're trying to kill all of us.” Many people walked out as the Israeli fascist thundered on.
MEANT TO SAY EARLIER, that it’s the Skunk’s appeals of its non-case about it being a full train-train when it isn’t so long as it doesn’t run regularly between FB and Willits and, it seems to me, if the Skunk had gotten financing to clear the tunnel and shore up the track we wouldn’t be where we are — seemingly endless litigation that costing large sums of money that might have been spent on getting the tunnel cleared and repaired. The entire hassle could have been avoided with basic goodwill on the Skunk side rather than big shot-ism and legal blunderbusses. Ditto for our DA’s bullshit case against the former Auditor, an apparent bookkeeping dispute with no evidence the Auditor was stealing. It could have been worked out informally, but the DA, piqued because the Auditor had rightly challenged his spending, blew it up into a felony prosecution with the whole farce costing Mendo taxpayers tons of money in legal fees and court time in a broke ass county that can barely keep its roads paved.
RECENT HED in the Press Democrat: “Cloverdale Seeks Identity.” Cloverdale better seek water or stop hooking up new housing tracts to its sole source, the radically diminished and overdrawn Russian River which, as you know, depends entirely for its summer flow on the radically diminished Eel River diverted through a hundred-year-old-tunnel hand-dug-by-Chinese labor at Potter Valley. But if Cloverdale's priority is an identity, Santa Rosa looks like the best fit.
DIANNE FEINSTEIN'S mansion in Pacific Heights sat midway on the Lyon Street Stairs, a round-the-clock vertical exercise track busy with Type A's rain or fog, including me, and a more scenic exercise venue does not exist even in scenic Frisco. An old easement gives the public a perpetual right to huff and puff past Feinstein's lavish front door. Given the self-serving givens of contemporary politics, it's surprising the easement survives. Feinstein, no longer with us, probably wished it didn't. One morning the splendid little plaza on the long stairway through which the rabble huff and puff at all hours, and which doubles as Feinstein's front yard, was once covered with chalked messages reading, “Out of Iraq,” “Shame on Feinstein,” and so on. A few blocks east where Nancy Pelosi resides in comparably pasha-like splendor, the chalked messages and even a few protesters are familiar sights.
AN 18-YEAR-OLD was arrested in San Francisco the other day for shooting another kid to death. The shooter's mother said, “My son breaks into cars. He doesn't shoot people.”
THE CHRONICLE recently featured a series of tired reminiscences about The Summer of Love from the same old Summer of Lovers — Wavy Gravy, Grace Slick, Country Joe and other A-List Hippies. The fairest assessment I've read of that dreary, foggy summer of race riots and prevalent bad urban vibes, comes from a fellow survivor named James Pendergast of Sonoma: “The Summer of Love per se may not have had much meaning, but many features of the counterculture had a great effect that is still powerful today: the organic food movement, the peace movement, sustainable agriculture, back-to-the-land, protecting the environment, ‘living lightly on the earth,’ ‘small is beautiful’ and more. On the other hand, I witnessed many transcendent examples of ignorance, naiveté, mindless hedonism, venality, and plain old American stupidity. And drugs ruined many promising things. As David Crosby said later, ‘We were wrong about drugs; we were right about everything else’.”
BACK IN 2007 an amusing audio file was going around the internet. It’s a cop’s parody of a new 911 answering machine message: “Hello! You’ve reached the police department’s voicemail. Please pay close attention as we update choices often as new and unusual circumstances arise. Please select one of the following options: To whine about us not doing anything to solve a problem that you created, press 1. To inquire as to whether someone has to die before we’ll do something about a problem, press 2. To report an officer for bad manners when in reality the officer is trying to keep your neighborhood safe, press 3. If you’d like us to raise your children, press 4. If you’d like us to take control of your life due to your chemical dependency, press 5. If you’d like us to instantly restore order to a situation that took years to deteriorate, press 6. To provide us with a list of officers you personally know so we will not take enforcement action against you, press 7. To sue us, or tell us you pay our salary and will have our badge, or to proclaim that our career is over, press 8. To whine about a ticket and/or complain about the many other uses for police rather than keeping your dumb ass in line, press 9. If you want a ride to the hospital, press 0. Please note your call may be monitored to assure proper customer service and remember, we’re here to save your butts not kiss them. Thanks for calling your local police department and have a nice day.”
INSPIRED by the cop parody we followed the cop’s answering machine message with a newspaper office version.
“Hello. You’ve reached the offices of your local newspaper. Please listen to the following options as we try to maintain a more or less viable business while still telling the truth as much as possible. If you'd like free advertising for your silly event that you’re charging money for, press 1. If you'd like us to print only your version of events, press 2. If you'd like us to complain about somebody you don't like without giving your name, press 3. If you'd like us to run your 2,000 word essay about how bad the Republicans are, press 4. If you'd like to complain privately about the content of somebody’s letter which we had nothing to do with, press 5. If you'd like to explain that the letter you sent us about a public matter wasn't intended for publication, press 6. If you'd like to tell us that you're going to put us out of business because of something we said about something you wrote for public consumption, press 7. If you'd like to run an ad in the paper that's going to the printer in less than an hour, press 8. If you'd like to tell us we misquoted you, but you don't know which quote is the misquote, press 9. Thank you for calling your local newspaper and remember, we’re here to keep you informed, not to make you happy.”
DAVID SEVERN (2005): I took a couple days off to visit my daughter Dandelion in Fresno. What I found interesting, and I’m glad Dandy had the where-with-all to take me there, was what locals called “Tent City.” This was a privately owned city block just South of downtown that housed most of the city’s homeless. It was chock full of 6 foot by 8 foot mini-shacks built out of plywood with a corner of porta-potties. Most of Fresno’s homeless were apparently housed there since I saw very few homeless people anywhere else in the city. A rescue mission was a block away and I suppose it supplied food and other basics. I spoke to three homeless men at random, one white, one Mexican and one black. They did not seem crazy or drugged out. I felt I could have had a meaningful conversation with either of them and I got the sense that most of these “Tent City“ people were pretty much in touch with their sanity. On the other hand my experience of homeless populations in Ukiah indicates many, if not most, homeless individuals have mental health and/or drug problems. I asked Dandy about this and she said it was probably because Fresno has six mental health facilities that care for street people and that a major function of the commercial ambulance service she worked for was to transport 5150s to appropriate care.
VOLUNTEERS CAME TO CLEAN UP MENDOCINO’S WATERWAYS. INSTEAD, THEY FOUND ENCAMPMENTS.
This last Saturday, September 28, 2024, community members converged on multiple Mendocino County waterways targeting areas inundated by refuse. Volunteers did not just find simple trash to pick up but entire makeshift communities built by the Ukiah Valley’s unhoused population directly in vulnerable waterways. In the end, thousands of pounds of waste were pulled from local riparian habitats.…
ADAM GASKA:
Today I helped with The Mendocino County Resource Conservation (MCRCD) sponsored clean up, the Streets to Creeks.
A few weeks ago, after walking Gibson Creek, I was appalled at the garbage and open drug use happening. I organized a handful of people to assist me in cleaning it up.
After multiple conversations with others in our community, I decided it was time to intervene. I was made aware of a few large encampments in local creeks and decided to target Ackerman Creek.
I lined up local law enforcement to do some pre clean up preparation by assisting in clearing out people that were camped out. A local security company got wind of my efforts and offered their support day of.
Even though I was forewarned of the level of impact, I was appalled at what I saw today.
Large scale soil disturbance through devegetation and terracing of the stream bank. Multiple cabins constructed replete with showers, bathrooms and a few even had TV. There was evidence of drug cartel and trafficking activity.
We got all the cabins broken down and a lot of garbage removed, but there is much more to do. I am working with the Pinoleville tribe to continue the clean up for the next few weeks. I am in contact with Sheriff Matt Kendall to help support the efforts through security.
Allowing people to live in squalor while they destroy our creeks is unacceptable. Simply being homeless isn't a crime. Destroying our environment and endangering public safety is, and should never be tolerated regardless of social station. Wrong is wrong.
IRAN fired several waves of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening in a sudden assault that left Israel fighting simultaneously on three fronts and raised the likelihood of a direct all-out war between two of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East.
THE ATTACK from Iran, estimated at over 200 missiles, was the culmination of a dizzying sequence of events over less than 24 hours that began with Israel launching a ground invasion into Lebanon to pursue Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Lebanese militia. Israel pounded Lebanon from the air throughout Tuesday as its troops advanced on the ground and Hezbollah fired rockets deep into Israel. Informed speculation has it that Israel is planning a large scale attack on Iran’s oil infrastructure as the escalation proceeds.
MARIN is an oppressive sea of Harris/Walz placards. If there are Magas, they keep a low profile, although in lieu of placards they fly American flags year round, and there are lots of flags in Marin, more and more of them from Marinwood north through Novato.
DAVE BUDD provides some Marin electoral history: “Marin was once a pretty Republican redoubt. Between 1948 (when Dewey won Marin) and 1980 (when Reagan captured the county), Marin voted Republican in every election with the exception of Johnson’s landslide victory over Goldwater in 1964. In 1960, the year the JFK narrowly defeated Richard Nixon, Marin was as Republican as Orange County (both giving Nixon about 60% of their votes).
MARIN in the mid to late 1960s began to shift to the Democrats as people moved out of urban San Francisco and Oakland. No Republican has come close to carrying the county since 1984. In that year, when President Reagan won one of the most lop-sided elections in modern history, Walter Mondale defeated him in Marin County by a half percent (650 votes total out of 110,000).”
PLASTERED on my mailbox one morning was a yellow sticker with this message: “Election Gonna Be Close but we got this! Don't Dissociate… Keep donating and volunteering! Call4Change Focus4DemocracyNextGenAmerica IndivisibleMarin. Kamala 2024.” Obviously the work of high school kids, the next generation of middle-of-the-road extremists.
THE CANNED EDITORIAL circulated among outback media on the safe assumption no one will read it except the editors at the Press Democrat and the ICO, began, “We can all be proud Americans. We are often criticized for the lack of sacrifice we endure (sic) when so much of the world suffers in war, poverty, hunger and ignorance… Yet we are among the most generous people in the world and our men and women in harm's way are sacrificing a great deal in their dedication to serve.” (Enduring a lack of sacrifice is certainly exhausting. Pass the chocolates.)
THE MAJORITY of us don't sacrifice in the least as America sails a disastrous imperial course set not by Congress as our quaint old ignored Constitution requires, but by a tiny minority of fanatics and incompetents occupying the power chairs. Their murderous blundering will be paid for by future generations. At the mo, we have no idea who the shot callers are, but we know they don't include Biden.
MANY of the people put “in harm's way” are either family people who volunteered for the home front via the National Guard, or professional warriors who love to be where the bullets are flying. Most of the 40,000 troops presently in the Middle East are elite fighters from the various service branches, not high school dropouts. I'm pleased as all heck to be an American, but my pride is on hold until we get our government back.
WHILE WE'RE working the dark side, a female reader writes: “When I was 15, 16, I'd go to frat parties with my girl friends. I was promiscuous but cunning. On several occasions, about three weeks after the party, I'd have one of my girl friends, posing as my aunt, call up the boy I'd entertained and tell him not only was I underage, I was pregnant. An abortion would cost $500 and he better come up with the cash. They always did.”
ANYONE who tries to follow the Press Democrat’s coverage of the water situation on the North Coast must be hopelessly confused. Sometimes there’s plenty of water. Sometimes there’s too much water. Sometimes there’s not enough water. Sometimes Sonoma County is supposed to conserve (although there’s not much enforcement). Sometimes the fish are in trouble. Sometimes the fish are almost gone. Sometimes the fish are coming back. Sometimes the grape growers are “conserving.” Sometimes even the wine gang should conserve. Sometimes cutbacks are being ordered in the Eel River diversion, from which much of Sonoma County's finite waters flow. Sometimes the cutbacks are being restored. Sometimes there’s not enough water for new housing. Sometimes there's plenty of water for new housing. Sometimes the water consuming population is conserving water, sometimes water users are not conserving enough.
A READER NOTES:
Looks as though the rail decided to follow through with the appeal of the Meyer property: https://savenoyoheadlands.org/mrmdom/meyer/meyer_appeal/APPELLANTS_MOT_JUD_NOT_DEC_PAUL_BEARD_A168497_%20A168959.pdf
RANDY BURKE WONDERS:
Say dear editor and the Major, trust all is well in the heat. A while back you did a piece on Korla Pandit. I was one of his piano students back in the day in Pomona, California. Well, there was another falsehood in the town.Vic Tanny. I remember his gym and how he woo woo the women with his demonstration of the vibrating belt machine. Somehow he came to mind the other day whilst watching the Orange man. Is Trump Vic Tanny in disguise?
A READER WRITES:
Wonder why Mendocino Tourism (a/k/a Visit Mendocino County) is looking to raise the Business Improvement District tax by 100%, wonder no more. The answer appears to lie in the fact that they overspent in 2023 to the tune of $600,036, with the Executive Director making a cool $152,650. Nice job if you can get it.
Overspending: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/800427548
HEADLINE OF THE WEEK (Press Democrat)
“Shooting at Napa apartment complex prompts police investigation.” (Later revised to “2 dead in Napa apartment shooting; suspect in custody after standoff.”)
ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] A yurt is one thing. Nailing together some discarded wooden pallets is another. Are any small children living in one of these places? If so, is there access to clean water and sanitation? Or how about elderly? They also need to be kept safe. Heating is another issue. If using a wood stove, is it safe or is it a fire hazard that can start a fire that can spread to other structures or start a wildfire?
We have building codes for a reason. If we allow people to just slap together anything and call it good, then what’s to stop someone from cobbling together a three bedroom shack? Or to allow raw sewage to drain into sensitive watersheds? Or for some idiot to load a bag of briquettes into a hibachi to keep Grandma and the kids warm?
[2] So many congressmen and senators are elected paupers and leave multi-millionaires on a $180,000 salary. The Justice Department has to know something fishy is going on but don't seem to pursue the big fish.
[3] The last eggs I bought were $3.52/dozen. They were the cheapest ones at Winco. I don’t have a record of egg prices, but that seems pretty high to me. My grocery bills these days make my jaw drop. Adding insult to injury is the prevalence of shrinkflation. The last time I splurged on Hagen-daz ice cream I noticed that the container was 14 ounces and no longer a pint (12.5% less). The Winco store brand TP we use went from 286 sheets/roll to 242 (down more than 15%). Anyone else feel like their essential bills are up more than the statistical inflation rate?
[4] There is a shift in power happening and the blob doesn't like it. For one, few pay attention to the mockingbird press anymore. Because of this, the blob works feverishly playing whack-a-mole trying to limit online free speech but are not having a lot of luck. 12-year old girls on TikTok have viewership that Rachel Maddow would kill for and could never ever hope to have.
Force multipliers are now in the hands of the public as well. First off are the drones that Congress desperately wants to ban. Something like Waco is a lot harder to have when your opponent can see what you are up to. The public also has advanced optics, communications, night vision goggles, access to these a.i. like programs, etc. Coming after the public is going to be a lot harder when the agents are met with flamethrowing robot dogs. Naturally, they want to ban all of these things too but it is far too late.
Many have decided to go Galt and John Galt is a lot harder to deal with now.
[5] Without nuclear power net zero is impossible. Solar and wind aren’t energy dense methods of generation at all. They take hundreds of square miles of land to generate very little electricity. What’s the point of net zero if the land we are trying to save has to have miles of windmills and solar panels built all over it? The landscape will still be forever changed, much of the land is irrecoverable, and the projects only generate power for 20 years. The densest most renewable form of energy is constantly shunned. What’s with these clowns?
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