Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, August 20, 2014

• Lodge Fire
• Ruffing Review
• Slow News
• Celeb Spotting
• Pot Commandos
• The Greenrush
• UFO Night
• Ukiah Bust
• Tortured Parrots
• Gualala Redwoods
• Rural Broadband
• Official Vacation
• Catch of the Day
• Bear Proliferation
• Cannabis Renaissance
• Mental Woes
• Middebrook Notes
• Good Cerberus
• Big Oil
• Spiritually Available

AS OF AUGUST 19 at 7pm the Lodge Wilderness Fire had expanded only a little more to 12,535 acres but was up to 90% contained, about three frantic weeks after the lighning-strike that started it. No structures are threatened. No new injuries. The firefighting effort continues to wind down and has moved into final “mop up” stage with 5 engines and 8 clean-up crews along with 9 bulldozers, 1 helicopter, 11 water tenders and 401 remaining, and probably exhausted, firefighters. The three-week long firefighting effort is estimated to have cost almost $40 million, probably more by the time it’s over. On Tuesday evening CalFire reported that “Crews continue mopping up and looking for hot spots within the contingency lines; steep terrain is making access difficult. Interior portions of the fire will continue to burn and may produce smoke for an extended period of time in the Ukiah Valley. Fire Suppression Repair and Rehabilitation will continue throughout the fire area. Resources continue to be released from the fire to other incidents or back to their home units.”

LAST WEEK in the aftermath of Fort Bragg Police Chief Scott Mayberry’s resignation it was widely known in Fort Bragg that the City Council had already planned to conduct a performance review of City Manager Linda Ruffing in the near future. (Ruffing seemed to have been the main reason Mayberry resigned based on comments at the big meeting last Monday when he announced his retirement.) The Council conducted a special closed session review meeting Tuesday night (August 19) and conspicuously invited former Chief Mayberry into the closed session for over an hour. As we went to press Tuesday night, there had been no announcement out of closed session. But several Fort Bragg citizens were left to wonder why the City Council waited until after the popular Mayberry resigned before taking the time to listen to whatever complaints he had with Ruffing.

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT'S website featured this lead story: “Police: Sebastopol DUI suspect caught with beer — A Santa Rosa man pulled over for running a stop sign was spotted with a beer between his legs, police say…” Like, this is news?

HOW TO TELL you live in the sticks, this clue from the Lost Coast Outpost: “The Comedian Performing at Humbrews Tonight Was in Scorsese Movie.” Which reminds me of the time I thought I saw Robin Williams on the Larkspur ferry. Another time I'd just left a restaurant when Joe Montana came in.

RECURRENT rumors from Humboldt County claim black-clad commandos are rappelling out of helicopters into pot gardens. I believe these boys are merely the annual, DEA-funded Pot Price Support Unit, mostly local cops from several police forces supplemented by a couple of DEA fantasists who enjoy acting out video game-like scenarios. They descend on the more remote gardens, chop down the plants and disappear into the sky. As any woman will tell you, American men never quite grow ALL the way up. “Pot Price Support Unit”? O yea. Take off enough dope every year and prices stay high enough to attract even more people to the industry, not that pot prices are the object of the raids. The stated aim of the raids is, well, what?

REDWOOD GUY, writing to Lost Coast, comments:  “In a lot of ways Humboldt County's large scale pot farmers (who are now a very solid majority of the overall number of pot farmers) are a microcosm of the situation in the USA as a whole. Sort of like our version of defense contractors or Wall Street banksters. They privatize the profits and socialize the costs. They get cash, and the majority of Humboldt is left with a sad legacy of environmental devastation, crime, and inflated prices for land. Also everyone is affected by our low quality local businesses that don't offer innovation and employment, in part because of easy money from marijuana trafficking. Has anyone here ever tried to run/even expand a small business that competes against some pot farmer who uses a business as a money laundering front and doesn't have to care about costs or profit? It's impossible. I've been there. Many of them have money buried, property in other countries. They and their greenrusher allies will talk all sorts of highfalutin baloney about organic this or that and peace/love, but its all smoke and mirrors and they only care about themselves and squeezing as much as possible out of the land as quickly as possible. People are waking up to this.”

ACCORDING to the Ukiah Police Department, the DEA “was assisted by the Ukiah Police Department on the execution of a search warrant at a large residential property in the 300 block of South Highland Avenue. During the execution of the warrant, officers seized approximately 74 mature outdoor growing marijuana plants spread-out in various gardens along the hillside within Ukiah city limits, 47 growing indoor marijuana plants, processed marijuana that had been harvested, concentrated cannabis, cocaine and other suspected controlled substances along with an Audi A8 vehicle valued at $60,000, according to a UPD news release. UPD reports this is an ongoing investigation that will likely result in criminal charges. The names of the suspects are being withheld at this time while the investigation is being conducted.”

THE LATEST in unneighborly annoyances from the wine industry include the recorded sounds of a distressed parrot played at top volume. The idea is that the sound of a tortured psittacine scares lesser birds off ripening grapes. At least we get the parrot calls and the bird guns during daylight hours. Frost fans kick off anytime between midnight and 4am, and stay on until the sun's all the way up.

GUALALA REDWOODS INC. is being put up for sale. GRI's timberlands consist of 30,000 coastal zone acres in southern Mendo and northern Sonoma County.

IN OTHER NEWS from the fog belt, a Bay Area-based non-profit called the De Novo Group “develops and deploys novel wireless network technologies in Northern California, bringing broadband internet to rural communities.” DeNovo has just begun serving a trial area running from Elk to Point Arena, meaning that participating people and businesses can get reliable high speed net service. Google put up $2 mil in seed money.

HIGH IN THE HILLS east of Boonville, none other than the US Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Foxx, is presently rusticating with his wife, Samara and children, Hillary and Zachary.

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 19, 2014

WILLIAM BARRY, Ukiah. Drunk in public. (Frequent flyer.)

MANUEL DIAZ-HERNANDEZ, Fort Bragg. Driving under the influence of alcohol, probation revoked.

JAMES GARDNER III, Fort Bragg. Vehicle theft, driving without a license, probation revocation, possession of meth, possession of drug paraphernalia, resisting arrest. (Picture Not available.)

DAVID JOHNSON, SR. Ukiah. Failure to register, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

JAI KAMKE, Ukiah. Possessing an inhalant with intent to inhale, probation revoked.

ISMAEL MARTINEZ, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

JODY MCCOY, Ukiah. Possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, probation revoked.

DANIEL MEDINA, Fort Bragg. Lewd act on child or dependent person, three or more acts of substantial sexual conduct with a child under age 14 in not less than three months, penetration by foreign object by force, violence, duress, menace, etc. (Picture not available.)

JAMIE PATRICKO, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

NICOLE WRIGHT, Ukiah. Forger, receipt of stolen property. (Picture not available.)

PAUL TROUETTE of the Black Tailed Deer Association (which also works with the Sheriff’s Department to clean up toxic pot gardens in the northern part of the County) is also a member of the County’s Fish and Game Commission. When asked by Supervisor Pinches what the Fish and Game Commission was doing to improve the deer herds in Mendocino County, Trouette replied, “A lot of things are being done for deer in Mendocino County. The Mendocino Fish and Came commission partially funded the Covelo deer herd study which is finished now. That is some science that's coming out. The number one reason we have no fawn recruitment in the national forest is the bear population. That was clear. All of the fawns that we captured in the forest and tagged — unofficially — were the result of bear predation. That's something we need to look at. This was a very interesting study. We had to find out where the deer population is going in the national forest. The forest is not being managed for fire or ecology. The vegetation management plan that is supposed to be implemented by the Forest Service is not happening. So we have 100 year old brush and timber that is a based on a decadent preservationist model. That is not going to grow critters out in the forest because if you don't feed those animals it's much like ranching, they don't grow. So their numbers are continually declining. When you have a high concentration of bears, that's a limiting factor. It's not the entire factor. We believe that habitat is critical to fawn survival. Nutrition is critical for wildlife in the forest. Bears can eat trash, they can eat anything out there. They strip trees and do a lot of stuff. So they grow exponentially under a bad management plan in the forest. The only way we will get the deer herds back in the forest is to change our management plan. I have been working on that tirelessly. We have a grant that was awarded to us in 2009. The Forest Service has still not given us our project which is the Clifton Ridge prescribed burn project in the Black Butte drainage. There have been many attempts to go to the Forest Service land managers on my behalf and on behalf of the Fish and Game Commission and the Black Tailed Deer Association to get these guys to understand that we need to manage our public lands in order to facilitate growth of all of the wildlife species out there. So we are working on deer — tirelessly. It may not be in the form of the money and grants, but it's kind of difficult when you get a $5000 grant in 2009 and it has not been implemented yet because of the land management by the US Forest Service. So I don't want to go after another grant until we get those grants done. … We have multiple discussions going on with the Forest Service. It's not an easy thing to get fire introduced in that ecology as you well know. We have had the big fire in Laytonville going on. But the habitat is the number one reason for the deer decline. That's a very big deal. How you get that habitat changed — whether it's thorugh logging practices or something else, I don't know. I'm very supportive of the bio-char and the bioplant project. The 15-year plan the Forest Service has says that they are supposed to be burning 108,000 acres of brush every year. That has ceased. The Fish and Wildlife Department and the Forest Service do not have a relationship at all right now. It's been that way for 20 years. So getting these different agencies to work together is difficult. One manages game and the other manages the land. The game people tell the Forest Service what they need to bring that deer herd back up, but the Forest Service continues to lag in implementing those projects and those plans that would facilitate the growth and healthy rejuvenation of that forest and bring those herds back. On top of that we have the bear population. In our study in the last three years we have seen that mountain lions eat deer and if the deer herds are shrinking, guess what else is shrinking? The lion population. In our study we found that the mountain lions in the national forest model — you have to consider this: Brooktrails has supplemental feeding programs and it also has refugia which is natural refuge from predators. You have dogs in the neighborhoods, you have people there. So the lions are less apt to come into those neighborhoods to get deer. So you have supplemental feeding of roses and ceanothus bushes and other bushes that people plant in Brooktrails which feed the deer. And people feed the deer. So you have a protected area there and that's why you see a lot of deer in Brooktrails. In different ecosystems you will find things like that happening. Wherever deer are protected and fed and have better habitat you'll see more of the deer herd. For instance in John Pinches’ territory that's Oak woodlands savanna habitat and that is the number one habitat for black tailed deer. But in the National Forest you have 70% of the ground is timber and old decadent brush. If that's the model they’re going to follow in that forest that's going to result in no deer. It's very critical to understand how deer live and what they need. The deer that are there now are shrinking because of that preservationist model in the National Forest, the late successional forest model. You need early successional forest for deer habitat. Early successional habitat. Then the deer birth rates and weights go up and the nutrition levels go up. Because of the lack of nutrition in the forest for the deer now, they are not as healthy when they are born and they are much more susceptible to predation. With the high bear population — over 15 or 20 bears per square mile now — you have groups of young adult and juveniles bears combing through the fawning areas during May and June. They have very sensitive olfactory organs and they can smell the placenta and other areas where deer are born and they literally devour the fawns right now.”

MENDOCINO COUNTY SHERIFF, Tom Allman, will be the 8th and final guest speaker in the Long Valley Garden Club's 2014 Cannabis Renaissance speaker series on Sunday, August 31st, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm at the Long Valley Garden Club, 375 Harwood Road in Laytonville. Sheriff Allman will be addressing issues related to local law enforcement of cannabis regulations as they now exist in Mendocino County. This event is free and the public is invited to bring your questions. Call 984-6587 for info.

COMMENT OF THE DAY: Even if Robin Williams’s well-known depression, which long-predated his Parkinson’s diagnosis, was involved in his decision to end his life, the liberal notion that we can and ought to rely on mental health professionals to guide us to health and sanity is more than a little suspect.  There is no evidence that this group suffers lower rates of depression than the rest of the population, nor any that any kind of therapy has a cure for it. In fact, the evidence suggests that the mental health profession plays a crucial role in perpetuating a status quo within which depression is said to be growing by leaps and bounds. Psychoanalyst Joel Kovel demonstrated in the early 1980s that psychotherapy and counseling had become indispensable parts of the capitalist economy, especially in the United States, where turning socially induced misery into false questions of self-improvement long ago reached the status of a quasi-religious movement. Subsequent to Kovel’s published insights came the “diseasing” and drugging of hyper-active American schoolchildren due to what eventually came to be known as “ADHD.” In more recent years, we have seen how “happiness psychology,” particularly the work of conservative academic and writer Martin Seligman, a former chairman of the American Psychological Association and adviser to the US military, informed the Bush Administration’s torture program at Guantanamo Bay. All of this should make us quite skeptical about claims that therapy and counseling have the answer to our mental woes.

— Michael K. Smith

LOCAL NOTES from Jonathan Middebrook of Redwood Valley — One Valley Over:

KZYX — Irritation in long-term relationship: Monday morning’s repeated broadcast of Friday’s weather & fire report. Like Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, I’m already pretty well unstuck in time & don’t need local radio’s help. -- Still, last Monday, David Steffen gracefully made the crucial fire-report correction in timely fashion (evacuation order lifted), & lively too. All forgiven.

K.C. MEADOWS— (in Ukiah Daily J.) sums up our 2013-14 Grand Jury’s activity, understatedly: “This year we had several very interesting . . . reports” (UDJ, 8/17). She then writes that officialdom has responded, predictably, with denial. She suggests that the GJ respond to official denial by saying “here’s the evidence.” – My two senses: 1) As far as Library matters go, our GJ already has given enough evidence (legal citation and conservative financial calculation); 2) our GJ has no budget line for hiring expert witnesses to bolster its case. Our fellow citizens on the GJ got as far as they impressively did, all on their own. – By contrast, CEO Angelo reportedly (UDJ, 7/19) “enlisted” an L.A. law firm specializing in “preventive education” to prepare her response. (I doubt that they worked for free; Acting County Counsel e-mailed me [7/31] that he will tell me how much we all spent, as soon as he knows.) – It’s time for our Supervisors to do a little no-bid contracting of their own: hire a LOCAL law firm to follow out the leads our GJ has developed and issue a public report. Then (the big “Then”) our BoS should take publicized, corrective steps which might include a clear “hire local” directive covering such matters as life coaching. Would at least cut down on travel expenses to that different country, SoCal.

BTW—Acting County Counsel says that releasing an employee’s professional qualifications (that life coach’s p.q’s) to the public constitutes “an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Yet the CEO published interim Librarian Clark’s socko! CV. Did she unwarrantably invade his personal privacy? Is there one law for librarians, a different law for life coaches?

LET’S SAY— each of us is everything we’ve done since birth (or since our zygote selves first heard Mozart played through Mom’s fallopian tube). – At a specialist MD’s office, I checked every answer box on line two of The Form, affirming that I am: Minor, single, married, divorced, widowed. It was an old, so 20th-Century form, missing a 21st-Century box I’d happily check. I’d be thinking of Isis.

REASONABLY SECURE — and relieved, to read (UDJ, 8/16) that Sheriff Allman & Chief Dewey have largely resisted Homeland Security’s & DoD’s Mephistophelean offers of big-ticket weaponry. (Think tanks, followed by virtual interrobang.) One SWAT vehicle is enough, says our Sheriff, we don’t need two, and Chief Dewey reports that the County and cities are working toward a single, combined SWAT team. Same principle: One  team + one vehicle is enough to deal with holed-up, armed psychopaths.  The list of Mendocino-approved, accepted and subsidized gear is a good one: radios, medical emergency trailers, plus training (necessary, alas!) for active shooter mayhem, etc. – I’m not keen on dressing police in paramilitary fatigues (which are also on Allman’s & Dewey’s list), since the clothing medium is a message. I prefer the message sent by distinctive, civil police & sheriffs’ uniforms. Those uniforms are snappy, visible reminders  of social order. In our very rare, local SWAT situations there’ll be our One-is-Enough team, dressed for combat & riding their sufficient vehicle.

POLST — That’s a lurid, fuchsia legal form and an acronym for “Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment.”-- A certain sort of person pastes her/his POLST to the refrigerator, where first responders look for it. Since I mostly live alone & out of town, I figured years ago that my likely fate is headfirst fall off a ladder. I did & do not want to be revived to a vegetative state. I count on being unconscious of circling buzzards. Simple decision on a sunny day: checked the DNR (do not resuscitate) box, tied my bootlaces & got on with what my boarding school taught is “The real and serious business of living.” – OK. A while ago I noticed that the form requires a physician’s signature. Excellent Dr. Coren wouldn’t sign w/o a focused discussion. POLST form becomes part of my electronic record, instantly available at, say, the scene of my car wreck in a city (Ukiah comes to mind) with emergency services at hand. – The form is not simple. My post-Coren advice: talk POLST over, in detail, with “your provider,” as we now say. Stuff befalls. Parents, talk with your children around driver’s license time. At 18, we’re on our own. I think that ACA pays for your provider conversation, unless Republicans killed that provision.

DEER SEASON— As I type at sundown, a first and a finishing shot in the valley. If the hunter is good people, s/he’ll feed her folk with what s/he’s killed. “The partaker partakes of that which changes him” (Wallace Stevens).

MAIL LOCAL — USPS counts mail drop-offs at local P.O.s (Redwood & Potter valleys, etc.) and the count matters: USPS recently cut back Calpella’s window hours to M-F, 10-2. I now drop mail off at the Redwood Valley P.O. (no longer leave it in my RFD box) on Black Bart Trail. – A benefit: gives me a chance to chat with Roxanne & Amber, while making respectful eye contact with their boss, Scott Butler.

Good thing— I’m not a bibliophile (lover of books more as objects than as scripture), since I recently wanted to read Wallace Stevens’ “Notes toward a Supreme Fiction.” It’s a longish poem (30 pages or so), originally printed as a single volume in 1942 & not reprinted in its entirety in any anthology I have at hand.  So I checked Village Books in Ukiah for a used copy. No go. Online, cheapest copy was $243. Next step, online to Ukiah Library, which promptly replied it would get me a copy through interlibrary loan. I doubted, but the book showed up. From UCBerkeley, no less. Our County Free Library’s connected! Original binding missing, but pages bound in protective plastic boards. – The poem is wonderful. I wanted my own copy (but not a $243 want) so I made a copy: Xeroxed UCB’s, cut sheets to 5”x7” & glued them into a stylish little notebook (about $7 for 80 sheets). Many blank pages remain, for me to make notes toward my own fictions, supreme or otherwise.

WHY STEVENS?— 1-- He risks the unadorned, Big Statement (“Life’s nonsense pierces us with a strange relation”) and he’s a self-deprecating snob (“The poem goes from the poet’s gibberish to/ The gibberish of the vulgate and back again”). 2-- He made a bundle as an insurance exec, to support his poetry-writing habit (and he would accept the pun, that poetry is a habit, like a monk’s habit). 3-- He’s a wise-guy, with an alter-ego named Canon Aspirin. (Call-Me-Al approves.) 4-- He’s the ultimate Protestant. That is, if Protestantism is a man alone with his Bible (no intercessory or stained glass), the ultimate protestant is a man alone, writing his bible. Stevens shares a habit with Canon Aspirin, “He chose to include the things/ That in each other are included, the whole,/ The complicate, the amassing harmony.

AUGUST 6, 1916 — Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers.)

…but I was dead, an hour or more.

I woke when I’d already passed the door

That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road

To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed.

Above me, on my stretcher swinging by,

I saw new stars in the subterrene sky:

A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars,

And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars.

I felt the vapours of forgetfulness

Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless

Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake,

And, stooping over me, for Henna’s sake

Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me back

Breathless, with leaping heart along the track.

After me roared and clattered angry hosts

Of demons, heroes, and policeman-ghosts.

“Life! life! I can’t be dead! I won’t be dead!

Damned if I’ll die for any one!” I said….

Cerberus stands and grins above me now,

Wearing three heads—lion, and lynx, and sow.

“Quick, a revolver! But my Webley’s gone,

Stolen!… No bombs … no knife…. The crowd swarms on,

Bellows, hurls stones…. Not even a honeyed sop…

Nothing…. Good Cerberus!… Good dog!… but stop!

Stay!… A great luminous thought … I do believe

There’s still some morphia that I bought on leave.”

Then swiftly Cerberus’ wide mouths I cram

With army biscuit smeared with ration jam;

And sleep lurks in the luscious plum and apple.

He crunches, swallows, stiffens, seems to grapple

With the all-powerful poppy … then a snore,

A crash; the beast blocks up the corridor

With monstrous hairy carcase, red and dun—

Too late! for I’ve sped through.

O Life! O Sun!

— Robert Graves

BIG OIL HAS SPENT $63 MILLION ON LOBBYING IN SACRAMENTO SINCE 2009!

by Dan Bacher

While there are many powerful industries based in California, ranging from the computer and high tech industry to corporate agribusiness, no industry has more influence over the state's environmental policies than Big Oil.

An ongoing analysis of reports filed with the California Secretary of State shows that the oil industry, the largest and most powerful corporate lobby in Sacramento, collectively spent $63,947,616 lobbying California policymakers between January 1, 2009 and June 30, 2014.

The Western States Petroleum Association, led by President Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the former chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create so-called "marine protected areas" in Southern California, topped the oil industry lobby spending with $26,969,861.

"The oil industry is spending over $1 million per month lobbying Sacramento, with the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) as the second overall leading spender so far in 2014 with almost $3 million spent in the past six months," according to Stop Fooling California (http://www.stopfoolingca.org), an online and social media public education and awareness campaign that highlights oil companies efforts to mislead and confuse Californians. "Chevron, with $1.3 million spent so far in 2014, is also among the top five. If money speaks, Big Oil has the loudest voice in politics."

WSPA was California’s second overall leading lobbyist spender, with $1.5 million spent in the second quarter of 2014. This is the second largest quarter going back to January 2009.

WSPA is on pace to exceed the previous annual (2012) total in 2014. So far this session, WSPA has paid over $2 million to KP Public Affairs, the state’s highest paid lobbying firm, during the current (2013-14) legislative session, according to the group. WSPA spent $4,670,010 on lobbying in 2013 and $5,698,917 in 2012.

Chevron is the fifth overall spender in California through the second quarter of 2014, having spent $784,757 over the past quarter, an increase of nearly $300,000 over the prior quarter.

Since 2009, WSPA ($27 million) and Chevron ($14.7 million) accounted for $42 million, two-thirds of the industry total.

The other "Dirty Dozen" spenders in the oil industry since 2009 were:

• BP - $3,407,467

• AERA Energy - $2,678,910

• Occidental - $2,678,910

• ConocoPhillips - $2,352,767

• Exxon - $2,297,452

• Shell - $2,258,610

• CIPA - $1,916,231

• Phillips66 - $1,715,416

• Fueling CA - $669,049

• CIOMA - $523,069

The money that the Western States Petroleum Association and other members of the oil lobby spend is well spent, since it has allowed Big Oil to sabotage state and federal laws protecting the air, water and environment. In 2013, the oil industry added poison pill amendments to gut an already weak fracking bill, Senator Fran Pavley's Senate Bill 4, in order to clear the path to the expansion of fracking operations in California.

WSPA and other oil industry interests also were able to defeat a bill, sponsored by Senators Holly Mitchell and Mark Leno, to impose a moratorium on fracking in the state. In fact, the Legislators who voted against the bill received 14 times the amount of money from Big Oil that those who voted yes received from the industry.

But oil industry influence extends behind the money it spends on lobbying and political campaigns. Oil industry officials have also sat on key panels crafting environmental regulations in California and the U.S.

For example, WSPA President Catherine Reheis-Boyd, in one of the biggest conflicts of interest in California history, chaired the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create alleged marine protected areas in Southern California.

She also served on the task forces for the Central Coast, North Central Coast and North Coast, as well as on a federal NOAA marine protected areas committee.

The "marine protected areas" that she and other task force members helped to create fail to protect the ocean from fracking, offshore oil drilling, pollution, military testing, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering.

While Reheis-Boyd served on the task forces to "protect" the ocean, the same oil industry that the "marine guardian" represents was conducting environmentally destructive hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations off the Southern California coast. Documents recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and media investigations by Associated Press and truthout.org reveal that the ocean has been fracked at least 203 times in the past 20 years, including the period from 2004 to 2012 that Reheis-Boyd served as a "marine guardian.”

Stop Fooling California recently pointed out that the former Chair of the MLPA Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force opposes a ban on offshore drilling in the Vandenberg State Marine Reserve.

“Big Oil, we know you're no stranger to conflicts of interest. But you have outdone yourself this time!” the group stated.

The campaign was referring to WSPA's opposition to Senate Bill 1096, a bill to ban offshore oil drilling in state waters in the Santa Barbara Channel known as Tranquillon Ridge.

You can't make this stuff up. Only in the oil-soaked politics of "Green California" would an oil lobbyist charged with the task of creating "marine protected areas" go on record against protecting a "state marine reserve" from oil drilling!

However, the money Big Oil spends on lobbying and campaign contributions is just chump change for them, since the oil companies continue to post mind-boggling profits every year. The top five oil companies made over $93 billion in profits in 2013 and have made over $58 billion in profits this year to date.

FULL CIRCLE: Warmest Spiritual Greetings, Please know that I have returned via Greyhound to Berkeley, am staying for two nights at a friend's place. I am available for just about anything (spiritually related). I will require a place to keep my backpack and duffel bag and sleep. If this interests, please contact me immediately. Yours for being centered in the Divine bliss which permeates all, Craig Louis Stehr Telephone messages (510) 529-4420