- Kudos To The AVA's Mark Scaramella
- Jackson State Forest Contradictions
- Anonymous Law Enforcement
- For Many People, Wood Smoke Is A Health Hazard
- Following The Immigration Process, Then And Now
- Great For Insurers
- Once Upon A Time
- M.E.A.T.
- Ice Activities Don’t Square With ‘Worst Of The Worst’
- Fair Wages, Not Tips
- Destroying America For Bitcoin And Gold Baubles
- That’s Our Boy
- Ocean Temperature, Prey Are Threatening Whales
- More Staff Broiler Dinners
KUDOS TO THE AVA'S MARK SCARAMELLA
Editor,
I was dumbfounded to read his account of the discussion at this week's meeting of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors about a state finding that DA David Eyster's use of asset forfeiture funds to host annual steakhouse dinners for staff and their guests constituted a 'gift of public funds.'
Scaramella reported that interim County Counsel Kit Elliott suggested the state finding was much ado about nothing.
What the hell?
Perhaps Ms. Elliott, individual county supervisors, DA Eyster and every county voter should pause and reread the state Audit conclusion about “gift of public funds.”
Let's not forget Eyster’s practices of hosting year end dinners for staff and their quests under the guise of training flies in the face of the county's own policy about staff parties, and state and federal guidelines surrounding the use of asset forfeiture funds seized by law enforcement agencies from from criminal activities
The DA's practice was a key source of contention between him and county Auditor Chamise Cubbison who questioned the expenses.
Eyster's disputed “training sessions” have been going on for years, representing use of public funds greater than the $3,600 cited in a special year-long state audit of the County of Mendocino's finances that reportedly cost California taxpayers $800,000.
Mike Geniella
Ukiah
JACKSON STATE FOREST CONTRADICTIONS
Dear Editor:
Jackson Demonstration State Forest is at a crossroads, and so are we. For years, tribal leaders, local residents, and climate advocates have called for a new direction at JDSF: one centered on restoration, carbon storage, and true tribal cogovernance, not commercial logging on public land.
Cal Fire now has a draft Forest Management Plan that talks about “modernization” and “comanagement,” but the underlying problem hasn’t changed. The Public Resources Code still points Jackson toward “maximum sustained production of highquality forest products,” while trying to juggle recreation, wildlife, water and cultural values.
That legal mandate quietly tilts every plan back toward logging, no matter how many listening sessions are held. And now, as Assemblymember Chris Rogers considers legislation to delete the “mandate to log,” the state is seeking tribal endorsements of this new plan, endorsements that can and will be used to argue that the community supports business as usual.
If we are serious about forest health, climate resilience and justice for Pomo homelands, we have to change the rules, not just the rhetoric. That means no tribal or local endorsement of any plan that keeps commercial logging at its core, and a simple statutory fix that rewrites JDSF’s mission toward restoration, climate and binding tribal decisionmaking power.
I urge readers to do two things: contact Assemblymember Rogers’ office to support a bill removing the logging mandate at JDSF, and publicly stand with Michael Hunter and Tribal members who refuse to endorse any plan that undermines their sovereignty and the sacred lands they protect.
Destiny Laird
Mendocino
ANONYMOUS LAW ENFORCEMENT
Editor:
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claims ICE agents need to remain anonymous for their safety. Like the president, Noem may have forgotten that our government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” All the people. Why is it that ICE, a taxpayer-funded entity ostensibly for public safety, is using tactics similar to the Taliban?
Taxpayers fund their $50,000 hiring bonuses and wages, but we can’t know who they are? Are they mercenaries or Jan. 6 rioters? Maybe if they showed their faces and identified themselves, they’d be less inclined to act like a paramilitary force. Our military has the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but ICE has immunity?
ICE in its current form mirrors this administration: forced obedience, little credibility and even less accountability, always the victim, creating a problem then forcing everyone to accept the solution. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights seem to impede their idea of law and order.
Our president once said our military should train in American cities for the enemy within. Is ICE training to help this administration enforce “law and order” during upcoming elections?
D.C. Galloway
Sebastopol
FOR MANY PEOPLE, WOOD SMOKE IS A HEALTH HAZARD
Editor:
The recent hazy skies and “Spare the Air” alerts are an important reminder about the dangers of burning wood. With wintertime stagnant air, pollution from wood burning and other sources can get trapped closer to the ground and create hazardous air quality for everyone. As a respiratory therapist, I am particularly concerned about the thousands of people living with asthma, COPD and other lung diseases in the North Bay who are at greater risk.
Fortunately, there are ways to create a welcoming environment in the home without all the smoke, like using electric fireplaces or LED candles. In addition, if you’re looking for a cleaner heating option, the Clean HEET program through the Bay Area Air Quality Management District gives out grants to help residents reduce the cost of replacing their wood-burning device with an electric heat pump. We can all do our part to help keep our air clean this winter. Please think twice before burning wood.
Ricardo Guzman
Napa
FOLLOWING THE IMMIGRATION PROCESS, THEN AND NOW
Editor:
Tim Holt is super supportive of the job ICE is doing because his immigrant wife went through the process of formal immigration to the U.S. 25 years ago. It’s great that they got to go through the process unencumbered by ICE agents waiting at her court appearances to pick her up and deport her while she was “doing the necessary paperwork.” Also great that there were immigration judges still employed to listen to her case and make a determination in her favor.
I dare say that her process would not be so smooth today and that she could very well be thrown into a hellscape of a detention center before deportation to some random country not of her origin. That’s today’s reality for immigrants trying to do the right thing. What is happening with ICE is not about immigration, it’s about making America white. Plain and simple.
Martha Johnson
Santa Rosa
GREAT FOR INSURERS
Editor:
Lisa Jarvis’ column on Donald Trump’s proposal to put federal money in Health Savings Accounts rather than subsidizing health insurance premiums highlighted many of the proposal’s problem, but it left out one of the most significant problems. Trump said you can “buy your own health care. And you’ll make a great deal, you’ll get better health care for less money.”
We know someone — self-employed in the building trades, with no preexisting conditions — who had individual insurance before the Affordable Care Act. His insurance premiums increased every six months and had reached over $900 a month before he signed up for an Affordable Care Act plan with better coverage and a total premium less than half that.
Trump’s proposal assumes that individuals have negotiating strength equal to that of insurance companies. But the average individual would have to spend hours researching plans, interpreting marketing language, etc.; and then choose from among limited, and often bad, options, with no power to negotiate and no recourse against premium increases. The Affordable Care Act used the power of large insurance pools to negotiate plan rates. Individuals won’t have that power.
The Trump plan is a terrible idea for people — likely a great idea for insurance companies.
Bill Houghton
Sebastopol
ONCE UPON A TIME
Editor:
I’m old enough to remember the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. Investigative commissions were established. Back then, television film helped parse the evidence. Forensic specialists examined wounds and ballistics, and details were accounted for. The intent was to assure the public that the investigations’ findings were valid and accurate.
Consider the death of Alex Pretti. Amateur street journalists provided multiple camera angles of the killing. They legally bore witness to how ICE chooses to enforce laws. The sequence of what happened and when is indisputable because multiple camera angles provide the data.
Who removed Pretti’s gun? How many agents fired shots, and were they all in Pretti’s back? Data determines cause and effect, but evidence was removed by ICE agents, contaminating it. The government stepped in and claimed that city and state officials had no investigative jurisdiction. They then claimed ICE had full immunity. There would be no accountability.
Striving for transparency in government, the U.S. once encouraged unbiased investigations. Now we’re mired in a swamp of finger-pointing partisanship. Recognizing his party’s low standing in opinion polls, Donald Trump floated the idea of canceling future U.S. elections. Believe him, because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Roy Camarillo
Santa Rosa
M.E.A.T.
Editor:
Donald Trump’s philosophy in office can be summarized by an acronym — MEAT for Make Everything About Trump. He started on day one flourishing his black Sharpie as he signed numerous executive orders and followed with 12 months of MEAT-generated chaos.
Trump coerced foreign countries with import taxes (tariffs) to gain concessions, held a communist-style military parade in Washington, had the East Wing of the White House demolished for a gigantic ballroom, added his name to the Kennedy Center and proposed building a copycat American Arc de Triomphe in greater Washington.
He constantly used Truth Social to attack those who disagreed with him, including the Kennedy family after JFK’s granddaughter died; no condolences here.
Trump set ICE on the American people, had the Venezuelan president abducted, threatened Canada and Greenland and finagled the Nobel Peace Prize from the winner. Trump alone accomplished all this regardless of the law because the GOP-controlled Congress let him.
I hope Democrats take control of Congress this year and the presidency in 2028. That would end Trump’s MEAT malignancy and allow recovery to begin. A good step back to normality might be demolishing Trump’s triumphal arch, if built, leaving behind a pile of rubble titled “The Trump Memorial Dump.”
Sherman Schapiro
Eureka
ICE ACTIVITIES DON’T SQUARE WITH ‘WORST OF THE WORST’
Editor:
I think Tim Holt is mistaken in his praise of the Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino and ICE. We have been told they were going after the worst of the worst — real criminals here illegally. We were told the enforcement was targeted and warrants were issued. That doesn’t square with immigrants being picked up at scheduled immigration hearings. That doesn’t square with people being randomly accosted at gas stations or store parking lots. That doesn’t square with random traffic stops based only on the driver’s skin color. That doesn’t square when off-duty Minneapolis police officers are being stopped by ICE.
I think when they say targeted, they mean anyone who looks brown. Anyone with an accent. Even if they are here legally waiting for an asylum or citizenship hearing. I would suggest that if Holt’s wife was in Minnesota, she might find it necessary to carry proof of citizenship and even then might be at risk of detention.
Lew Larson
Sebastopol
FAIR WAGES, NOT TIPS
Editor,
Another debate as an employer asks customers to tip more. A bakery. Table service and counter service. Should I tip the O’Reilly salesperson who spent more time and effort with me and probably earns less than the food service person? What about the vet tech who removed my dog’s stitches? A shoe salesperson who spends time and effort, often a no-sale anyway? Pay employees and price products accordingly. Workers should not be, as Blanche DuBois said, dependent “on the kindness of strangers.”
Wendy Tohtanjoseph
Sebastopol
DESTROYING AMERICA FOR BITCOIN AND GOLD BAUBLES
Editor:
We know men by their deeds. In Minneapolis and other cities where ICE is deployed, we are witnessing the predictable outcome of allowing these men to violently attack both citizens and noncitizens with impunity. Who sprays pepper spray into the face of a person lying, restrained, on the ground? Who shoots a protester who is trying to drive away from the protest, in the head, at point-blank range? Who shoots a man trying to help a woman who is being pepper-sprayed, after he is lying defenseless on the ground — again and again and again? ICE is attracting sadists and sociopaths, and Donald Trump is well pleased with the theater of indiscriminate force.
This is what it looks like when a ruthless regime begins taking over our America by force. Trump is pre-conditioning his base and the military for military deployment to prevent the free and fair elections this November that would return Democrats to control of Congress in a blue tsunami. If he succeeds, American democracy will end in November 2026.
Trump will jackboot American exceptionalism into the trash bin of history and call the failure of American democracy a win. For Bitcoin and gold baubles.
Nancy Shaffer
Glen Ellen
THAT’S OUR BOY
To the Editor:
Let’s see if I have this right: The president of the United States, the president of the United States, yes, the president of the United States in the last several months has posted a video of himself flying in a fighter jet spreading excrement over demonstrators, badmouthed Rob Reiner after his murder and portrayed the Obamas as apes. Really, the president of the United States?
George Schroeter
Halfmoon, New York
OCEAN TEMPERATURE, PREY ARE THREATENING WHALES
Editor:
I thank David Haynes for prompting deeper krill research. He is right that krill are vital to ocean health, transferring energy from phytoplankton into the food chain, sustaining whales and many other species, and contributing to carbon sequestration.
Conversely, his claim that Pacific whales are harmed by krill overfishing appears to conflate Antarctic and Pacific species. Of roughly 80 krill species worldwide, the most heavily harvested is Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), fished near Antarctica under precautionary limits approaching 620,000 metric tons annually and feeding Southern Hemisphere baleen whales.
Pacific krill (Euphausia pacifica) are found in the North Pacific Ocean, ranging from Japan to Southern California. They are harvested in far smaller quantities, primarily by Japan, whose harvest has historically been between 50,000 and 60,000 metric tons annually. Canada’s harvest in British Columbia is capped at 500 metric tons per year. The West Coast of the U.S. is closed to krill fishing.
This would suggest that the primary pressures on whales along the Pacific Coast are more likely driven by changes in ocean temperature and prey distribution than by overfishing of Pacific krill.
Janet Leisen
Santa Rosa
MORE STAFF BROILER DINNERS
Dear Superintendent Kubin (Ukiah Unified School District),
I’m writing to suggest that the Ukiah Unified School District begin hosting an annual dinner/training for all employees and their spouses at The Broiler, a beloved local steakhouse.
I’m guessing you would agree that UUSD personnel — everyone from support staff to the grounds crew to teachers and administrators — are among the most dedicated and hard-working professionals in the whole county who have earned the right to enjoy a tasty meal compliments of the public while they participate in a work-related training session with their spouses present.
The UUSD could take advantage of a program similar to the Burton Fund in Sacramento County, which is an asset forfeiture program used by that county to pay for “any programs involving educators, parents, community-based organizations and local businesses.”
I know what you’re thinking. How could such a fund provide dinner with appetizers and drinks at $50 a head for 400 district employees and their spouses? If everyone brings a plus-one, that’s forty grand for one training session!
I admit it sounds like a lot of money. But if the quality of the training is high, I am confident most stakeholders will approve.
I hope you will consider this proposal, and I look forward to your reply.
Respectfully,
Andrew Lutsky
Ukiah
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