Off the Record 10/19/2024

PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL BALLOTS MAILED OCTOBER 7, 2024

On Monday, October 7, 2024, the Official Ballots for the November 5, 2024, Presidential General Election, were mailed to all active registered voters in Mendocino County.

In past elections, the envelopes containing the ballots included an insert notifying voters of our local polling and drop off locations with the Official ballot mailing. However, with this election the inserts were not mailed out with the ballots. The print vendor created and printed a separate mailing with the polling and drop off locations that will be mailed to each active registered voter, at no additional cost to the County. The mailing uses a similar format as our outgoing ballot envelope (blue stripe on the left side of the envelope), so that voters will recognize that the information included was related to the ballot mailing. The outside of this flyer says “Important Voter Information” – this mailing is not another ballot, but information as to where you can drop off your ballots and where our local polling locations are.

Voters should also be aware; if you re-registered, through DMV or elsewhere, after September 20, 2024 (when we sent our voter file to the printer), you may receive an additional ballot. If you receive more than one ballot, please call the Elections Office and we will help you. We are required by law to send a new ballot if there is a new or a re-registration, this can be confusing. Please call the Elections Office if you need assistance.

To save time processing ballots, this election we did not include a perforated stub at the top of the ballot. The stub directed voters to remove it before returning it to us, many voters left the stub on the ballot. The stub had to be removed by staff before the ballot can be tabulated.

You can check the status of your ballot by visiting https://www.mendocinocounty.gov/government/assessor-county-clerk-recorder-elections/elections/vote-by-mail-absentee-status, or by calling our Election’s Office. If you have any questions, please contact the Election’s Office by calling 707-234-6819 or emailing us at mcvotes@mendocinocounty.gov

HERE’S A PIECE of unknown local history (unknown to me anyway) with large subsequent implications.

Look Tin Eli was born in Mendocino in 1870. In 1884 he left the country to visit China. When Look Tin Eli — undoubtedly an Anglicized corruption of his true name, which was Look Tin Sing — tried to re-enter the country at San Francisco during one of the West Coast’s periodic fits of Yellow Peril, he was told he was unwelcome in the land of his birth. He sued, and sued successfully, and thenceforth a person born in America was and is an American. From humble beginnings in Mendocino, Look Tin Sing went on to become a leading business figure in the Bay Area. He died a very wealthy man.

INCIDENTALLY, Chinese the world over don't work the first day of Chinese New Year because they believe if you work the first day of the year you’ll always be a slave to unfairly compensated labor, in this life and the next one.

I LEARNED about Look Tin Sing at the California Historical Society’s headquarters on Mission near 3rd in San Francisco in a fascinating exhibit on the history of Chinese in California, complete with artifacts and documents confirming their long persecution and eventual success. The original complaints about the Chinese were, basically, that they were smart, worked long and hard for low wages, always showed up, and had no vices that got in the way of their productivity.

THE LAZY, the stupid and the drunk became quite alarmed at Chinese labor. (As the descendants of the lazy and the stupid are alarmed today at the Mexicans.) There were lynch mobs, murders and burnings of Chinatowns up and down the state, many of them encouraged by elected officials.

MENDOCINO COUNTY'S noble Sheriff Standley, however, would not tolerate crimes against the Chinese or anybody else. He once rode out to confront a mob of drunks and loafers poised to burn down Mendocino’s Chinatown. Standley had a simple negotiation strategy. He said he’d shoot anyone who didn’t go home. The mob dispersed.

(LITTLE known local fact: It was Chinese labor and Jim Armstrong who dug the Potter Valley diversion tunnel.)

WALKING DOWN Mission towards the Bay one spring day with the vague intention of dropping in on Fan Day at the ballpark where, if I or any old random fan so desired, we could directly question the ballplayers and management, I decided against the ballpark because I didn’t have any questions beyond, “How come so many major league outfielders don’t know how to go back on fly balls?” And, “How come a lot of you millionaires don’t run out ground balls and some of you do?”

I WAS THINKING these big thoughts when I suddenly wondered how Sheriff Standley would have handled the person walking towards me, an unusually nutty looking street guy— pink ballerina’s skirt over levis, no shoes, a Muslim headwrap who, although he was deliberately fouling himself and the public sidewalk as he strode merrily along, not drawing so much as a second look from other pedestrians among Mission Street's human panoply. But here he came towards judgemental me, walking rapidly up the sidewalk, projectile vomiting as he went, pumping out seemingly inexhaustible streams of vomit at intervals suspiciously timed to the approach of female pedestrians, about half his spew landing on himself. “Hey! Stop that,” I yelled. “You toodle de doo,” he yelled back, keeping westbound, not breaking stride. But the vomitmeister had stopped his synchronized eruptions, probably because he was finally out of supply, but not before he’d managed to temporarily ruin a few minutes of a dozen people’s day, and any society that can’t keep its insane off its streets has truly lost its way.

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WHEN I VISITED my late brother once while he was living in San Francisco in the 1980s, my brother and I went out early one morning for a cup of coffee. It was a little before 6am. Chilly, foggy, the sun just starting to lighten the streets. As we approached a downhill intersection, a very macho looking man with lots of body hair and thick mustache and beard came rushing through the crosswalk in front of us wearing nothing but a see-through women’s lingerie teddy top and skimpy panties and high heeled shoes. As he strode past us, left to right, he turned to his right and growled at us in a very low, gruff, angry voice: “WHAT ARE YOU LOOKIN’ AT?”

(Mark Scaramella)

LEW CHICHESTER (Covelo):

To Tommy Wayne Kramer:

I certainly have enjoyed your writings, cranky with tongue in cheek, but there are “rail to trails” in other parts of the country which seem to have validity. The places where railroads were developed all over the place, long before cars, trucks or paved highways, have occasionally taken the abandoned rails and made them into pedestrian and bicyclist possibilities to actually get from town to town without getting on the highway. In both Georgia and New York there are bike trails I know about which not only provide a place to walk or ride a bike, they can actually be used to tour the countryside, town to town, and are popular destinations for people who like to do this sort of thing. Maybe not you, or me anymore, but years ago I found bicycling across parts of California, and then across Canada, to be one of the more rewarding and memorable youthful experiences. It would have been a lot better if I wasn’t on the highway. But yes, I tend to agree, the one around here seems to be essentially a scam with all the usual California complications.

Tom Hine Replies:

Thanks for the response and the insights. I doubt nothing you write, and think an entertaining column could come out of your hiking / biking experiences too. I write with a broad brush, without much nuance or opposing viewpoints mixed in. The column is too short. My aim is to (a) entertain the reader(s) and (b) maybe get them thinking my way. Thanks again, Lew!

ADAM GASKA (Redwood Valley):

Re Brett Adame, arrested for recklessly causing a fire near Ackerman Creek north of Ukiah.

I am glad he was in custody. We continued the clean up of Ackerman creek Monday. Looking into Adame’s past arrests, he seems to have a thing for guns and knives. Most people prefer not getting stabbed or shot cleaning up encampments. In the three rounds of clean up, we have removed 80 yards of garbage and there is maybe 10 more to go. Hats off to Pinoleville Pomo Nation for doing much of the heavy lifting. Thanks to MCSO, Social Services, and MCAHVN as well for all they contributed to making the clean up effort successful.

SHERIFF KENDALL REPLIES TO LEW CHICHESTER about tribal lands being effectively exempt from pot raids:

Good point, Lew. If tribal leadership wants to continue with this direction, I hope it is one where they are representing their constituents. Honestly I find it doubtful based on the calls I get from Round Valley. I see and hear the winds of change blowing as many good people in the tribe are fed up with the practice of leasing lands to non tribal growers.

I’ve been clear, I will assist the tribe, however I won’t direct them. And their assertion of sovereignty over marijuana cultivation combined with threats of litigation I am currently working through.

ELECTION NOTE

Ballots have been mailed. If you plan to wait until election day to vote that ballot, set it aside so you can find it on election day. If you come in to the polls without your ballot, and its envelope, you will have to vote provisionally. Provisional votes are counted last and require a lot more time and effort from pollworkers and voters.

“TO WHAT EXTENT was it an inter-species liaison between you and the does? I imagine they would butt up against your breasts; probably at those very times when you were nursing yourself. Did you get that first hit of awareness; how little differentiation there truly is between ourselves and other mammals?”

— Beth Bosk, asking a question of an interviewee for her ‘New Settler Interview’ magazine

THE PRIMARY FUNCTION of the Democratic Party is to sell stuff to the populace the Republicans can't get away with on their own, like throwing single mothers and children off the welfare rolls or exporting America's blue collar jobs to Mexico and China. Briskly enough, Bill Clinton handed economic policy over to the Wall Street traders, led by his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. The Clinton years saw a bubble boom, pushed along by consumer-spending by the rich. The ratio of wages for the average worker to the pay of the average CEO went from 113 to 1 in 1991, just before Clinton stepped into the White House, to 449 to 1 when he quit. The overall bargaining position of labor got worse, as did the situation of the very poor. Two-thirds of Clinton's famed fiscal turnaround stemmed from cuts in government spending relative to GDP (54%), something well beyond Republican capabilities.

— Alexander Cockburn

TOM WODETZKI WRITES: “Because I'm a long-time local progressive who studies the issues, lots of folks ask me for voting advice. I also ask dozens of politically aware, community oriented locals for their election advice. Here below are my resulting ballot recommendations. I hope it’s helpful to you, and if it is that you pass it on to others who might appreciate it.”

I WOULDN'T DARE, TOM, because in my immediate circle Democrats are viewed accurately as the softer side of the Orange Menace.

I'VE KNOWN ‘WODO,’ as Wodetzki is known around the ava, for many years. I like and admire the guy for his many good works, among them his annual volunteer assault on star thistle and, more grandly, his consistency over the long years for being on the correct side of local political struggles. And I am in total agreement with him on the propositions.

WE PART COMPANY on the candidates. I don't think Wodo has thought hard enough about what professional Democrats now represent and, to a lesser extent, what generations of their professional officeholders have done to the Northcoast, from their soft support for the rapacious corporate timber cash-in of our forests to their quiet transfer of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad to themselves for a party jobs program that destroyed the line, and then appropriating its right of way for an entirely bogus, never-to-happen, Great Redwood Trail, not to mention the numbers of incompetents the Democrats have supported for local office.

MANY OF US had hoped that light rail would eventually reach beyond Willits, perhaps as far north as Dos Rios, which was entirely feasible. Nope. We may not even see rail service to Cloverdale, whose optimistic city council built a nifty little station years ago in anticipation of a train that never arrived. (The local Democrats intend to plunk down an eyesore new County Courthouse on Ukiah's former rail yard with, of course, the full support of the Democrat Board of Supervisors, the Democrat Ukiah City Council and the Democrat Superior Court of Mendocino County.

THE LAUGHABLY INCOMPETENT Mendo Board of Supervisors is another example of gross dysfunction installed by the local lockstep branch of the Democrats. (The joke's on us, and it’s expensive.)

ON THE NATIONAL LEVEL, the grim fact that a garbled fascist like Trump can be seriously considered as president (twice!) is the greatest crime yet by the Democrats because they haven't been Democrats since McGovern in '72. A huge number of working people have been lost to the MAGA fantasy who used to be Democrats because Democrats used to represent ordinary people. No more. They're funded by the same grasping class of the super rich as the Republicans.

“OUR” DEMOCRACY? That's a hot one coming from the party that sues to keep third party candidates off the ballot. “Our” democracy ends at the county line because we have no say in candidate selection and zero influence with the party, and how can any more or less human being enthusiastically be for a Democrat who supports more of the same in Gaza, the greatest ongoing crime of our time?

ADAM SCHIFF? This character pedaled the huge lie that Trump was Putin's creation for the entire duration of fake president Joe Biden's four years of his handlers pretending he was the boss. But when it was revealed that Russia Gate was in fact untrue and a creation of Democrats, oh well, and Schiff sails on into a Senate seat. Trump is bad enough by himself without going to all the trouble of making him appear more villainous than he is.

AND HOW DANGEROUS is Orange Man? He's not even in it with the great fascists of yesteryear who had much more popular support, were much smarter, attracted smart people as henchmen. Trump is a third rate fascist who inspires so much opposition from inside and from out that the only real damage he did his first term was appoint fascists to the Supreme Court.

President & VP: Kamala Harris & Tim Walz (Democrats). NO!

US Senator: Adam Schiff (Dem) NO!

US Representative: Jared Huffman (Dem) NO!

State Assembly: Chris Rogers (Dem) NO! (He isn't vapid enough anyway)

Mendocino School District: Jim Gagnon.

Mendocino Coast Health Care District: Michael Blaisdell & Paul Katzeff. YES on Katzeff, NO on Name Change Blaisdell.

Fort Bragg City Council: Lindy Peters and Bethany Brewer YES!

Fort Bragg School District: Sage Statham.

SO LONG as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

— George Orwell

MIKE GENIELLA: EYSTER OFFS THE PUBLIC

David Eyster, Mendocino County's District attorney, continues to ignore the most basic right of a citizen to respond to his social media posts as an elected public official.

Eyster thumbs his nose and continues to block or limit people from commenting on public business even though the U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in. He has been asked several times to follow guidelines established by the courts.

As usual, Eyster's most recent post about a local criminal case includes the following admonition: “Mendocino County District Attorney limited who can comment on this post.”

No one is challenging Eyster's right to restrict comments on his personal social media page. Public business, however, is another matter.

The County of Mendocino should know that potentially costly litigation could occur. The ACLU, for example, is already involved in other jurisdictions over the public's right to comment on official business.

Hopefully, Eyster, his staff of attorneys, and Mendocino County's County Counsel's Office will recognize his public obligations as an elected official. He has been in office since 2011, so there should be no surprises.

For the record, DA Eyster typically gets a free ride from local media, which publishes his press releases verbatim and without question. In today's shrinking business of journalism, that is their choice. However, the public can comment publicly and raise questions about Eyster's relentless, pro-prosecution posts on his Mendocino County District Attorney site.

The following is a definitive explanatory story: https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/supreme-court-defines-when-public-officials-can-block-social-media-followers

IDLE THREAT DEPARTMENT, FROM THE NYT: "The United States has warned Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian supplies into the war-devastated Gaza Strip within the next 30 days or risk losing military aid, American officials said Tuesday.

The warning came in a letter signed by the American secretaries of defense and state that was sent on Sunday to Israel’s defense minister and its minister of strategic affairs. It was confirmed on Tuesday by a State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller.

Mr. Miller said the amount of aid entering Gaza in September was the lowest it had been at any time since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the Israeli invasion.

“What we have seen over the past few months is that the level of humanitarian assistance has not been sustained,” Mr. Miller told reporters in Washington. “In fact, it has fallen by over 50 percent from where it was at its peak.”

SO, I'M STROLLING along yesterday afternoon, keeping a wary eye out for kids on electric-powered bicycles, wondering why the things don't require a license, given that they seem to be capable of life-threatening speeds. Tiny little girls have whizzed past me at about 30 mph. Last year, a mini-mob of middle school boys, mounted on e-bikes, invaded the CVS store in the Red Hill Shopping Center, zipping up and down the aisles to loot negative food value items. Marin has always had major Clockwork Orange potential.

ANYWAY, an elderly woman, propelling herself with aluminum ski pole-like walking sticks, pulled up next to me. Jeez, I really am old if I can't stay ahead of this old girl, I thought, as she said, “Excuse me, sir. Have you voted?” I can't reply normally because I can't talk. My voice box has been removed, presumably with the affliction that had infected it. I've got a button in my throat, which I depress with a thumb to croak out no more than three barely intelligible words at a time. Yes, I wheezed. “For Kamala?” No. “Trump?” She seemed to step back in alarm. No. “Who?” Jill Stein, I rasped. “I can respect that,” she said, and scooted off, and soon had about fifty yards on me before she disappeared around a bend in the road. I think I might be the only third party voter she'd ever seen.

JILL STEIN: “So, what we said about Putin was that his invasion of Ukraine is criminal. It's a criminal and murderous war.”

CONTRARY to the constant defamation of the Green Party's presidential candidate, she's not friendly to Putin. Neither is Trump for that matter.

A VOTE for Jill Stein is a vote for Jill Stein. A vote for Ralph Nader was a vote for Ralph Nader. If Democrats weren't co-sponsors of everything gone wrong in our country, the oligarchic genociders wouldn't have to vilify their principled opposition in lieu of explaining themselves.

DEPARTMENT OF HOLLOW LAUGHTER: "This year, the Mendocino County Board of Education bids farewell to two dedicated trustees who have made lasting contributions to the county’s educational community. Charline Ford and Drew Duncan have both chosen not to seek re-election, closing out their tenures with the board…"

IN FACT, two really, really Nice People got paid to attend a boring meeting a month, plus health insurance, to rubber stamp whatever mercenary scheme the boss lady had come with, all in the “service” of a redundant, parasitic, pseudo-educational apparatus that does nothing that the individual school districts of Mendocino County couldn't do better and cheaper.

WHEN The Terminator was governor, having noted the state's county offices of education as a big drain on the state budget, he wondered aloud, “Vot's dis? Terminate dem!” The edu blob, natch, rose as one: “But we love the kids and we're totally dedicated to them.” The Terminator had to back off because the edu-blob, an adjunct of the Democratic Party, votes as a bloc “for the kids.”

Mark Scaramella adds:

“Every governor proposes moving boxes around to reorganize government. I don't want to move the boxes around; I want to blow them up,” Schwartzenegger said in his first State of the State address in January 2004. “We have multiple departments with overlapping responsibilities. I say consolidate them. We have boards and commissions that serve no pressing public need. I say abolish them.”

Through his reform-oriented Chief Staff, Susan Kennedy, a long-time Democrat party insider, Schwarzenegger ordered a study — later named the California Performance Review — which issued recommendations in August 2004 that would have been the largest reorganization of state government since the 1960s.

The performance review, which was based on a series of ideas from the Little Hoover Initiative, proposed consolidating 11 agencies and 79 departments into 11 major departments while eliminating 12,000 state jobs. 53 of those “boards” were county offices of education. 117 of the 339 boards and commissions it examined were to be eliminated to save $34 million a year and 1,153 jobs, many paying more than $100,000 a year.

“No one paid by the state should make $100,000 a year for only meeting twice a month,” Schwarzenegger said in his January 2005 State of the State address. Nor do County Board’s serve any function that can’t be re-allocated to the state or local districts. At the state level, however, Schwarzenegger continued appointing members to many of those same boards, using the appointments as every governor before him had — for patronage and to reward termed-out lawmakers who had supported his proposals.

Eventually, after push back from interest groups via the Democrat-dominated legislature, most of the boards survived and Schwarzenegger went on to other things.

KTVU-TV Filtered their list by salary alone and found that San Jose is the priciest city, with an annual income of $265,926 needed to “live comfortably.” Coming in at second place with another quarter million-topping income requirement ($252,878) was San Francisco. Anderson Valley? Mendocino County? Hmmm. Probably half that, although the average annual Mendo income is, last time I looked, about $35,000.

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] I don't speak to my family and friends about political issues on which I know we strongly disagree. I want to keep my connections, and I don't trust people to be either tolerant or mature enough to respect a different perspective. It can get lonely, but at least I am still connected to people I want to remain connected to. Maybe this is self-serving of me? I know more about who they are than they know about me.

[2] If you have always felt that you had your political compass fixed, but are increasingly feeling lost at sea, that’s because we are in the midst of a fundamental reorientation of our political landscape – a sea change. If someone had predicted eight years ago, or even four, that Dick Cheney would ever back a Democratic presidential candidate and, in the same year, RFK Jr. would side with the Republican, they would have been laughed off the stage. Aren’t Republicans supposed to be the authoritarians? Then why are the Democrats putting the foundation for totalitarian control of our lives in place? Aren’t Democrats supposed to defend our civil liberties? Then why are their leaders intent upon revoking our inalienable right to Free Speech?

[3] My parents live in the Tampa Bay area. I am glad they are allowed to evacuate to safety. I am furious at my own government for denying this right to people in Gaza, which thanks to the US and Israel has become “a mass death trap. ” The moral stain will be indelible.”

[4] Trump will never, ever be allowed back into the White House no matter what. Have you seen that Kamala TV ad with all the apoplectic generals and national security officials declaring that Trump is the biggest threat to America in history? That message is not meant to persuade but to inform.

[5] Anybody who is OK with welcoming their baby sons into this world by having the end of their dicks cut off should be shot by firing squad. If they're OK with THAT, what else are they OK with?