Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, June 25, 2014

• Buckway Arrested
• Negotiators Busy
• Catch of the Day
• Fan Removal
• Navarro Trickle
• Health Center Questions
• Sick Screen
• Copper Campbell
• Deacons for Defense
• Cause and Effect
• Drought Legislation
• Om Om Om

TIMOTHY SCOTT BUCKWAY, 41, described as a transient, was arraigned in Mendocino County Superior Court Tuesday on multiple felony criminal counts that include child endangerment and abuse, sexual acts with a minor child, using force to commit the crimes and domestic violence. Buckway first came to the attention of the Ukiah police when he was arrested on May 23 for hitting his wife.

UKIAH POLICE said Buckway, his wife, and four female children, ages 4, 6, 9, and 10, were living in a van when his wife reported that he had hit three of the four girls with a metal pole. The police then learned that Buckway had been molesting all four of the children. His bail has been set at $1.7 million, one of the highest bails in recent memory.

A READER WRITES: I saw that item you ran recently from County CEO Angelo crowing that “agreement reached with Mendocino County Deputy Sheriff’s Association.” The item went on to say that “Negotiations formally began on September 3, 2013 and included nine bargaining sessions,” but that the agreement “largely extends the prior agreements and the 10% reduction with no enhancements to benefit or salary levels in the contract.” It concludes with “the term covers the one-year period since the expiration of the prior agreement on June 30, 2013.”

Hmmmmm. Let’s re-state that: We’ve been bargaining since September of last year over nine sessions (plus whatever was done over and above the formal negotiating sessions) on a contract that expires in two weeks that basically changes nothing.

What’s that, the negotiators full employment act? And now, the next contract begins in just a couple of weeks on July 1 when another round of negotiations will result in more of the same?

No wonder Mendocino County is facing what the CEO calls “an economic crisis.” They’re spending too much money on wasteful, pointless “bargaining” and not enough on cops and other services.

CATCH OF THE DAY, TUESDAY, JUNE 24^TH

CHRISTOPHER BUENROSTRO, Ukiah. Lurking, loitering.

JACK CARDIN, Ukiah. Tweeking and tweeked.

RAUL DELOSSANTOS, Calpella. Lurking and loitering on private property.

KEVIN DUNCAN, Willits. Tweek.

NOE GARCIA, Ukiah. DUI, battery.

TIMOTHY HINDE, Sebastopol. Battery and failure to appear. This guy was groping girls at the World Music Festival, Boonville.

IVORY MILLER, Willits. Petty theft, tweek possession and under its influence, revocation of probation.

RICKY PONTS, Fort Bragg. Revocation of probation.

ARON PRASAD, Modesto. Possession of methamphetamine.

DYLAN REID, Potter Valley. DUI, revocation of probation.

CARLOS TAYLOR-LOPEZ, Willits. Driving on a suspended, failure to appear, revocation of probation.

ROEDERER, the large, French-owned winery near Philo, has removed its giant frost fans from its vineyards. Neighbors speculate that the removal could be in anticipation of a lawsuit against Roederer from a neighbor for maintaining an ongoing nuisance. We think it's more likely that the machines were rented and have been returned. We also think that Roederer is more sensitive to public opinion and dreads the bad publicity expected in a couple of months as outside media become aware of the widespread unhappiness in the Anderson Valley with the giant noisemakers. At least one unhappy party will soon seek a court order permanently prohibiting vineyards from using the machines.

WHAT'S THE DROUGHT looking like from the bird's eye view of the Anderson Valley? The flow gauge on the Navarro River is hovering at about 5 cubic feet per second. Same week last year it was 12. The year before that, 2012, it was 23-24. The 60-year median for this week in June is about 35 cubic feet per second.

CONCERNED LOCALS emerged from Monday evening's hurry-up meeting of the Anderson Valley Health Center's board of directors with new questions packed on to the old unanswered ones. Something's happening, but what that something is remains unclear. But there was mention of a "transition" team with no explanation what Anderson Valley was transitioning to or from, and no mention of local persons as members of the "transition team."

THE IMPLICATION seemed to be that Dr. Mark Apfel was "transitioning" to fewer hours and may not function much longer as the Clinic's medical director. Apfel himself, before leaving the meeting early, said that he takes full responsibility for whatever compliance difficulties there are with the Clinic's drug dispensary. (By all accounts, that dispensary is strictly run. It's not as if local drug addicts are walking out with their pockets full of oxycontin.) There was also mention of a young new doctor being hired, but he or she was not named, nor was it revealed when that person might join Clinic staff.

COMPLAINTS were expressed that although Clinic management has five names, i.e., Ms. Agee, Renteria and Turner, plus new administrative hires, local girl Fabiola Perez and Shannon Spiller, it still isn't clear who's in charge. I'd assume the formidable Ms. Agee, although she and her two fellow administrators had said they resigned because they feared "personal liability" for non-compliance issues. "Personal liability" doesn't end simply because you exchange your paid consultancy for a volunteer one. And aren't Perez and Spiller now personally liable if this vague non-compliance continues?

AND VAGUE is a huge problem, if not the problem. Why the secrecy? What's really happening? Is the Agee team attempting a coup, a takeover of the Anderson Valley Health Center? Are they trying to get rid of Apfel, with whom the Agee contingent is said to be at odds? Whatever the end game is here it's making a lot of Anderson Valley people very, very unhappy. The Anderson Valley Health Center is literally our baby. We birthed it, and we don't want to adopt it out.

WHAT WASN'T HIDDEN were the allegedly resigned trio of interim Clinic administrators from the Gualala Health Center, Diane Agee; Lucresha Renteria; Dave Turner. Agee and Renteria not only attended Monday's meeting they sat up front with Clinic trustees. It was explained that the three now serve as "volunteer" advisors to Anderson Valley's struggling health center.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I agree that there are some seriously ill people who find relief in using marijuana. The part I find disgusting is when people who are intent on sneaking in full legalization for recreational use wheel out the sick folks in a ploy for our compassion. And then everybody blows up huge fake medical greenhouses with xeroxed copies of recommendations for people "suffering" who bought them from doctors who never saw them and if you ever point this out then growers turn on you like you're the asshole. It's a major shit show…all played out supposedly for some very sick people who should never be used like that.

ON THE MORNING of June 18, 2014, a deputy with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office took a theft report of copper fittings associated with fire hydrants on the grounds of Nor Cal Wood Products in Ukiah, California. A vague description of the suspect was provided by a witness along with a description of an older model white van. On June 19, 2014, deputies learned a person identified as Ryan James Campbell, 39, of Redwood Valley, had turned in brass fire hydrant fittings on June 18, 2014 at a recycling center in Ukiah and that he had returned on June 18, 2014 with additional copper pieces. The deputy was able to identify Campbell from paperwork at the recycling center and the deputy was able to recover the stolen fittings that Campbell had turned in. The fittings were identified and returned to NorCal Wood Products. At 4:45pm deputies located Campbell standing next to a white van in the 300 block of Talmage Road. Campbell was found to be on formal probation with the Sonoma County Probation Department for possession of stolen property. A search of Campbell's van lead deputies to discover yet even more copper fittings from fire hydrants as well as additional evidence of metal thefts. Campbell was arrested for possession of stolen property and for violating his probation. During the investigation deputies learned that some of the additional items found in Campbell's possession were stolen from fire hydrants belonging to the City of Ukiah and the Hopland Utility District. Campbell was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held on a “No Bail” status. (Sheriff’s Press Release)

GUNS AND LOVE

Deacons for Defense: Black Armed Resistance

by Clancy Sigal

This week marks the 50th anniversary of “Freedom Summer” and the murder by Mississippi Ku Kluxers of three young civil rights volunteers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and “Mickey” Schwerner. The triple killing was world news mainly because Goodman and Schwerner were white Jewish New Yorkers. If it had been only the African American Chaney, nobody outside the “beloved community” of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee would have cared. The deep south’s culture of violence against blacks was a given.

What’s not so given, even today, is the black community’s long tradition of armed resistance. I’m riffing off Charles Cobb’s new book “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible”. Cobb, a Brown university professor, is a former SNCC field worker, a bland way of saying he was under constant fire. I’m also dipping into my own experience in the Freedom Summer south…but also north.

Ever since slaves were imported to Jamestown in 1619, armed self defense was an authentic part of the African American experience. I don’t just mean well-known rebellions like Nat Turner’s, but ordinary day to day. Almost every household I ever visited in the south had a hidden shotgun or pistol under the bed. This contradicted MLK’s dominant peace-and-love message, his honestly-held outreach to whites, many of whom (like me) flocked to his Gandhian banner. Less publicly known is that wherever “Martin” traveled he was bodyguarded by men with guns. Indeed, his own Atlanta home was a discreet arsenal of weapons.

Even less public was the role of armed black women who for decades had to endure sexual and physical assaults by white southern cops and other thugs who, given immunity from prosecution, felt they could rape at will. Attending church services in Tuscaloosa, Selma or Montgomery, I was no longer surprised sitting next to a respectable black woman who opened her purse to fan herself revealing a modest little .22. Cobb cites the well-known story of Mama Dolly Raines in southwest Georgia (where I stayed with SNCC) sitting by her window with her shotgun to protect the Rev. Charles Sherrod, a passionate believer in nonviolence, who was staying with her.

In Albany, Georgia, where I was longest, love and commitment were the hallmarks of community organizing. The locals we were embedded in took us in like their own children. We were family. They would do anything to protect us from the constant threat of beatings and death. Or as Mama Dolly, a midwife, told Sherrod, “Baby, I brought a lot of these white folks into this world, and I’ll take ‘em out of this world if I have to.”

It’s sometimes hard for civilized nawthenuhs to remember how American-cherrypie violence was in the south. In Chattanooga, where I first went to school, streetcar conductors wore holstered pistols; city bus drivers all over the segregated south “packed”. You shot a “nigger” who gave you lip without second thoughts or fear of arrest. If you’re the local sheriff in rural Georgia and fancied a black man’s woman you erased him from the picture by beating him up and jailing him for assault.

Passive resistance began to change when WW2 veterans, trained in weapons, came home. Suddenly bad whites were confronted by armed ex-soldiers in the Deacons for Defense or ex-Marine Robert Williams’ Black Armed Guard (with an NRA charter yet!) in Monroe, North Carolina, to defend against racist attacks. Historically, there had always been the odd, defiant black man with a shotgun standing on his porch confronting KKK cross burners. Now, here and there, wherever Rev. King went, or was afraid to go, was collective resistance. In Birmingham when one of King’s bodyguards was asked how he protected his man, he replied, “With a nonviolent .38 police special.”

Up nawth the black mind set wasn’t all that different but with an entirely different circumstance. When I held a seminar on Black Nationalism at Monteith College for half a dozen young street blacks each one of them proudly showed me his shiv or cheap pistol. My sweet tempered Detroit host, Jim Boggs, the African American auto worker and Marxist activist, walked me to the corner bus stop on my last day but not before reaching behind his prized bust of Lenin on the mantelpiece and withdrawing his own .38 to escort me a city block. In my old Chicago neighborhood my host, a postal worker, waved me up to his apartment by pointing a shotgun out of the window to signal to the gang kids downstairs, including his own son, he meant business.

The 10th District cops I rode with, both African American, were armed: each hid a .45 under his clipboard, wore a hip holstered .38 and an ankle .25 caliber as backup to the backup plus two Mosberg 500 riot shotguns in the rack. “And you know what,” said my police driver, “we’re still outgunned.” His theory was that much of Chicago’s black-on-black violence was a form of culture shock. “These southern boys come up north with their mamas looking for work. Down in Alabama and Mississippi they had to toe the line or get lynched. Yassuh noesuh shonuff suh. All that peckerwood crap. Take that train up to Chicago and the chains drop off. They ain’t no more oppressed. Run wild. Cuss, shoot dope, murder each other or white folks. They wouldn’t dare do that in Yazoo County.”

So in honoring Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, martyrs to a beloved community of non violent resistance, I can’t help thinking how it might have turned out differently if on that lonely Mississippi road in 1964, they’d been tailed not by murderous morons but by the Deacons for Defense.

(Clancy Sigal is a screenwriter and novelist. His latest book is Hemingway Lives.)

CAUSE AND EFFECT

the best often die by their own hand

just to get away,

and those left behind

can never quite understand

why anybody

would ever want to

get away

from

them

— Charles Bukowski

NORCAL LAWMAKERS CALL FOR OPENING UP SECRET DROUGHT BILL NEGOTIATIONS

by Dan Bacher

Six Northern California Congress Members on June 23 called on Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer to open up secret negotiations on controversial drought legislation that threatens salmon populations, family farmers and California Indian Tribes.

Representatives Jared Huffman, George Miller, John Garamendi, Jerry McNerney, Doris Matsui, and Mike Thompson on June 23 asked for "public and transparent negotiations" between the Senate and House on legislation responding to the historic California drought.

In a letter to California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, the members noted that "negotiations to date have left the public without adequate information or opportunities for input." Any compromise between the Senate drought response bill and the destructive House-passed bill, the members argued, would ultimately be harmful to California.

The House bill, H.R. 3964, severely undermines numerous state and federal statutes, would irreparably damage the Bay-Delta, degrade drinking water quality, and cost California thousands of jobs, according to the Representatives.

“We are deeply concerned that it appears that negotiations with the House majority are being held out of the public eye. We believe the process by which Congress responds to this drought crisis should be transparent,” the members wrote. “Our constituents are rightly concerned about a closed-door approach that picks winners and losers amid California’s statewide drought, and they deserve a public discussion of the merits of the legislation being considered.”

"The House majority has already demonstrated their intention to irresponsibly override state water law and decades of federal protections for clean water, fisheries, and northern California tribes, farms, and cities – all to benefit a select few," they said.

"The House-passed H.R. 3964 provides neither new resources nor useful tools, but instead undermines numerous state and federal laws, including: the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Act, and the California constitution and its public trust doctrine. We all agree that this would take California in the wrong direction, and the House majority’s draft Energy & Water appropriations bill would continue this harmful approach. Our state cannot risk the negative repercussions of trying to reconcile the differences between H.R. 3964 and S. 2016," they wrote.

The members also called for direct assistance to communities hurt by the drought, including farmworker and fishing communities. Neither the Senate nor House-passed bills provide any new funding for emergency drought relief projects, water recycling infrastructure, or conservation and efficiency projects, in contrast to the House Democrats’ bill and an earlier Senate bill, they wrote.

Feinstein is the primary author of the emergency drought relief bill, S 2918, that was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate in May. House Republicans passed their own, even more dangerous legislation in February that would waive Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections, repeal the restoration of the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam and override the federal “wild and scenic river” designation for a short stretch of the Merced River.

Environmental groups, fishing organizations and Indian Tribes oppose Feinstein's bill, since they say it will enable more Delta water to be exported to corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley during the current drought.

Restore the Delta (RTD) on May 16 issued a strongly-worded statement criticizing Senator Feinstein for pushing S 2918 “to allow more water to be exported for Westlands’ and Kern Water Districts’ mega-growers in the midst of a severe drought.” The group also blasted Feinstein’s bill for posing a grave threat to Central Valley salmon and other fish populations and wildlife refuges.

“It is disappointing that Senator Feinstein has chosen to rush harmful legislation with no public hearings, debate or scrutiny, so that industrial growers who have planted tens of thousands of acres of almonds and other permanent crops in the midst of the past several very dry years,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta. “Sen. Feinstein is using every tactic she can to aid these growers at the expense of the rest of California. There’s a better solutions, despite Sen. Feinstein’s statement that she has received no useful input on alternatives. She has received the input, but has ignored it.”

“Sen. Dianne Feinstein is rushing legislation through Congress that uses the current drought to make changes that undo critical protections for our salmon and other fisheries, and the people who rely on our river system. While it makes sense to take prudent steps to address the drought, it is unwise to use the current lack of water to do the bidding of mega-growers who want more and more water for permanent crops on unsuitable lands. That’s who gets most of the water in our public projects: huge industrial farming operations in the Westlands and Kern Water Districts. Sen. Feinstein is responding to the urging of these growers, many of whom have contributed mightily to her campaigns,” said Barrigan-Parrilla.

S 2918 is harmful to salmon migration, since it would lock in a 1:1 ratio of San Joaquin-San Francisco Bay Delta water inflow to water exports, according to Restore the Delta. This permits exporting water that can be diverted by massive pumps in April and May, and affects the San Joaquin River’s flow at a critical time when salmon and steelhead are migrating down the river to the ocean.

S 2918 also weakens protections for salmon and regulates the flow rate at which Old and Middle Rivers, two channels of the San Joaquin River that feed the Bay-Delta, can be made to flow in the reverse of their natural direction by the operation of the federal and state pumps that export water south. Those pumps redirect the flow of the Delta and pull millions of salmon and other fish to their deaths each year.

Between 2000 and 2011, more than 130 million fish were ‘salvaged’ at the State and Federal Project water export facilities in the South Delta, according to a white paper published by Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, on March 7, 2013. Actual losses are far higher. For example, recent estimates indicate that 5-10 times more fish are lost than are salvaged, largely due to the high predation losses in and around water project facilities.

Feinstein is pushing the dangerous legislation as Jerry Brown is fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels. The same agribusiness interests advocating for Feinstein’s legislation are the same ones promoting the construction of the tunnels.

The project, estimated to cost up to $67 billion, would hasten the extinction of Central Valley salmon, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species, as well as imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Klamath and Trinity rivers.

The full letter from the Congress Members is below:

June 23, 2014 

The Honorable Dianne Feinstein 
United States Senate 
331 Hart Senate Office Building 
Washington, DC 20510 

The Honorable Barbara Boxer 
United States Senate 
112 Hart Senate Office Building 
Washington, DC 20510 

Dear Senators Feinstein and Boxer: 

We applaud you for your effort to produce workable solutions to California’s statewide water shortages, and for your leadership in expediting state and federal agencies’ response to the drought. The passage of S.2198 in the Senate has sent a strong message that California’s drought requires the highest level of attention and continued action, and we hope to continue to work with you as we push for solutions. However, we are deeply concerned that it appears that negotiations with the House majority are being held out of the public eye. We believe the process by which Congress responds to this drought crisis should be transparent. 

The House majority has already demonstrated their intention to irresponsibly override state water law and decades of federal protections for clean water, fisheries, and northern California tribes, farms, and cities – all to benefit a select few. The House-passed H.R. 3964 provides neither new resources nor useful tools, but instead undermines numerous state and federal laws, including: the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement Act, and the California constitution and its public trust doctrine. We all agree that this would take California in the wrong direction, and the House majority’s draft Energy & Water appropriations bill would continue this harmful approach. Our state cannot risk the negative repercussions of trying to reconcile the differences between H.R. 3964 and S. 2016. As the Los Angeles Times observed in their June 8th editorial, “a compromise between the two bills would be bad for California.” 

We believe Congress should focus on solutions, and we cannot accept the destructive Valadao-Nunes approach, which flouts state and federal law, will irreparably damage the Bay-Delta, degrade drinking water quality, and cost our state thousands of jobs. We strongly urge you to prioritize providing the resources and additional tools that California needs to respond to this and future droughts, as both H.R. 4239 and your original S. 2016 would have done. Although we still have concerns with a provision from S. 2016 that remains in S. 2198, we believe both S. 2016 and H.R. 4239 have important provisions in common that would: directly assist communities harmed by the drought, including farmworker and fishing communities; provide funding for emergency drought relief projects; expand funding for water recycling infrastructure, conservation, and efficiency projects that can be rapidly brought online; ensure that drought damages are properly recognized under the Stafford Act; and reduce wildfire risk. Not one of these priorities is addressed by H.R. 3964. 

Since neither H.R. 3964 nor S. 2198 received a public hearing nor considered by committees in open session, and a formal conference process is not possible at this point, we strongly urge you to conduct any further negotiations in public, and to seek comment from the relevant state and federal agencies, as well as tribes, recreational and commercial fishing interests, water managers, farms, counties, and cities. Our constituents are rightly concerned about a closed-door approach that picks winners and losers amid California’s statewide drought, and they deserve a public discussion of the merits of the legislation being considered. The changes envisioned between both bills are so great, and there are so many stakeholders at risk, it would be a great disservice if these decisions were made without transparency and public input. 

Thank you again for your leadership. 

Sincerely, 

NOTHING LEFT BUT OM, Craig Stehr throws up his hands.

OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM

Craig Louis Stehr

Permanent email address: CraigStehr@pamho.net
Telephone messages: (504) 302-9951
Snail mail: 333 Socrates Street, New Orleans, LA 70114
Blog: http://craiglstehr.blogspot.com