Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Nov 5, 2014

• Early Election Results
• Kerry Damon Donations
• AVHS Applications
• Skank Train
• Suspicious Death
• Text Evidence
• Love Me
• One Big Party
• Grassland Photos
• Tool Heist
• Catch of the Day
• Toy Trains
• California Politics

 [Morning update: Local Election Results]

...previously...

WHERE'S THE MENDO VOTE? What’s with the really weird final election night report? Only 37 of 249 precincts countywide, 14.86 percent, have been reported? Instead of the usual 100 percent. And the header says:

4th and Final Election Night Report - Results for this 
election will be certified at the completion of the canvass.

So Ms. Ranochak’s going to leave it at that until certification? Either there’s some kind of mistake on this report, or something even weirder is going on. Only 2 of 8 City of Willits precincts reported? And worse in Fort Bragg, where the city election is close among 5 candidates: only 1 of 19 precincts reporting in? and 3rd district supes, only 8 of 37 3rd District precincts reporting in?

Only a couple hundred more votes reported in the “Final Election Night Report” tonight for 3rd district supe race (2,369) than the 2,043 votes reported in the “Final Election Night Report” for 3rd district supe primary in June 2014? When the vote should almost be DOUBLED in the fall election?

KMUD reported around 11:45 that the Humboldt County elections office had reported 100 percent of the vote from the polling places. What the hell is wrong with the Mendocino County elections office?

It seems a decision has been made to count all ballots in a central location (as per email announcement a few days ago) wasn't such a good idea after all, but damnit, it's just not acceptable. Bad enough that all the mail-in ballots received on Election Day aren't counted until the election is certified.

* * *

EARLY ELECTION RESULTS

(as of 11/04/14 10:14pm)

for key Mendocino County Elections.

OVERALL: ONLY 6% of precincts reporting, mostly early votes cast by mail.

(*=Leading/elected so far)

Third District Supervisor:

Madrigal: 495/43.54%

*Woodhouse: 637/56.02%

 

Fort Bragg City Council (Top 3 win):

*Lindy Peters: 242/20.75%

*Michael Cimolino: 244/20.93%

Dave Turner (Incumbent): 210/18.01%

Heidi Kraut (Incumbent): 203/17.41%

*Mark Iacuaniello: 239/20.50%

 

Ukiah City Council (Top 3 win):

Mark Hilliker: 470/12.85%

Christian Luiz: 141/3.85%

John Johns: 353/9.65%

*Jim O. Brown: 747/20.42%

Phil Baldwin (incumbent): 493/13.47%

Miranda Mott: 244/6.67%

*Maureen Mulheren: 582/15.91%

*Kevin Doble: 626/17.11%

 

Willits City Council: (Top 2 win)

*Larry Stranske (Incumbent): 104/42.11%

*Ron Orenstein (Incumbent): 82/33.20%

Robin Leler: 61/24.70%

 

Coast Hospital Board (Top 3 win):

*William Rohr: 1114/25.10%

*Peter Glusker: 905/20.39%

*Kitty Bruning: 976/21.99%

Michael Carroll: 635/14.31%

John A. Kerman (incumbent): 769/17.33%

 

Measure S (Sovereignty/Fracking ban)

Yes: 5254/63.98%

No: 2958/36.02%

 

County Superintendent of Schools:

Paul Joens-Poulten: 2254/31.36%

*Warren Galletti: 4804/66.83%

Kathy Wylie (write in): 2

GET WELL KERRY!

The Damon family, Kerry, Bobbi, Morgan and Taylor lived in Anderson Valley for many years. While they lived here, they gave generously to this community! They now live in Bend, Oregon but they are still a big part of Anderson Valley with their many friends and family.

Recently, Kerry was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer! On October, 30th, he had robotic surgery in Seattle. Kerry and his family are now back in Bend where there will be continued treatment and procedures. Insurance will cover only 65% of the cost.

Kerry and his family have always been there to help friends and family in times of need and now it’s our turn to help them. Last year at Taylor and Tanner’s wedding, Kerry’s speech included a very apropos sentence when he said, “In a time of need, you should be able to look North, South, East and West…” He is right and now is the time when the Damon family needs our support. Let’s help by donating to either of the places listed below. Thank you for your support!

Places to donate:

You can donate online at

https://www.giveforward.com/fundraiser/tm76/kerry-damon

Or call the Bank of Cascades at (541) 617-3500 or (877) 617-3400 or mail a donation to:

Bank of Cascades; P.O. Box 4445’ Sunriver, Oregon 97707. Account #63738. Account name “Kerry Damon Donations”

On behalf of the Damon family,

— Shirley Hiatt-Tompkins

PSSST! Here's the latest from the Anderson Valley Health Center:

"At the moment we are dealing with the very real crisis of replacing the CEO. IT IS EXTREMELY TIME CONSUMING. At the meeting at the Elementary School I did explain what the procedure is for applying. But let me tell you personally so that you can tell others. Applicants fill out an application which is available at the Clinic. Then they are interviewed by a committee of the Board. after I explained the process, Eric or Rick, I don't remember which one, encouraged people to apply so that we can build up a pool that we have as people resign or term out. I don't know why they didn't announce that Claudia and I had been added. I think they got so overwhelmed with the questions and obvious dissatisfaction from the community that they forgot. Also the make up of the Board is in flux at the moment. Sandy Parker resigned and last week Lynn Sawyer resigned. So, as of this moment the members are Rick, Erick, JR, Gail, Wally, Claudia, Mayte, Max and myself. I want to reassure you that we are actively encouraging people to apply and are working quickly and responsibly to meet all the obligations of the Board and the requests of the community." If you have any wish to be on the Board, please do get this application and file it. I have not been to the clinic to see where it is or how it is handled; if you have done, please comment to all of us if you think it will work, or if there appear to be problems. The current by laws which contain requirements for board compostion and selection and service are at: http://www.avhc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/FinalApprovedAmendedBylawsofTheAVHC4-28-14.pdf

Heidi Knott, hknott@mcn.org, who chaired the meeting at the Grange so effectively, is heading up the Concerned Citizen's Committee. They have had an organizational meeting and will work on issues of AVHC governance for starters. Tell Heidi if you are interested in helping in any area.

We saw the loss of two community leaders this week: Rod Basehore and Diane Paget. Attending their memorial services I was reminded of the many community efforts both had engaged in over the past three decades to build the structure of Anderson Valley that we enjoy today. Many of you commented to me that we had managed somehow to settle the issues that threaten our clinic, and our health care. I think we may have made a beginning in getting the Board to talk to us, but the future of the clinic is far from assured. Your skills in financial management, information technology, physical plant maintenance and development, personnel recruiting, public relations, fund raising, volunteer organizations, grant solicitation and management, program needs assessment and planning, are all areas where this board needs help. Please think about your own skills and experience and consider talking to Board Chair Ric Bonner, rabonners@gmail.com or to Heidi about how you can volunteer to help.

SKANK TRAIN. Excuse me? We have a Skunk Train, sir, fun for the whole family.

ACCORDING to our informant, a young-ish man familiar with Mendocino County's more decadent circles, Fort Bragg's venerable tourist line isn't always the wholesome venue we assume it to be.

EVERY FALL for several years now, the Skunk is rented to private pot magnates for an all-day rolling debauch. The flier for the annual event reads, "Many of our guests are having sex in the bathrooms as soon as the train pulls out of the station." And it pulls out about 11am, returns about dusk.

THE YOUNG WOMEN walk around the train with their mogambos hanging out, the young men grab whatever they can in the context, and everyone pounds down their preferred dope, lots of people are quickly drunk.

THE GENDER RATIO is about 60-40, with women in the majority. Four bars, live music and, as our guy describes what he calls the "Skank Train," "pure debauchery all the way out to Northspur," and back into unsuspecting Fort Bragg where the party continues in rented quarters. Price? $80 per person, bring your own illegal substances.

PD UPDATE of apparent Kayla Chesser rape/murder story.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/3057266-181/suspicious-death-of-willits-woman

ANOTHER SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE, MENDO BRANCH. The following text messages were entered as evidence in the prosecution of a certain Mr. France of Ukiah. Mr. France steadily denied attacking one Johnny Valdez, also of Ukiah, and continued to deny his guilt despite this message he sent Carly Simpson: “Hey sis wake up and good morning. I love your life. I need numbers for Mona and James ASAP. Wake up now Carly. It’s a high alert emergency. No Doubt.”

Carly Simpson: “Who the fuck is this?”

Mike France: “It’s Carly’s Baby’s Daddy.”

Carly Simpson: “What the fuck is up? Why you wake me up?”

Mike France: “Yeah motherfucker I just whacked somebody and I’m hungry for more. I brought my Savage .300 rifle and Ruger Blackhawk.”

Carly Simpson: “? ?”

Mike France: “I think I killed a man last night.”

Carly Simpson: “Why you bringing trouble to my house with all these kids here? Where are you?”

Mike France: “I’m not bringing anything to you or your kids. It was a home invasion on my sister’s house.”

Carly Simpson: “Where are you?”

Mike France: “No, only the dude got it right thru the heart. Nobody did anything illegal except the guy who got it thru the heart.”

Carly Simpson: “Where are you?”

Mike France: “I’m pumped up on adrenalin right now. Do not tell anyone I’m here. I took a Greyhound to Florida…”

AND THIS GOES OUT on election day, November 2014, to the Democratic Party of Mendocino County, Supervisor Dan Hamburg, the warm, wonderful folks at KZYX, the Westside of Ukiah, Corners of the Mouth, and the Superior Court of Mendocino County. A one and a two…

* * *

LOVE ME, I'M A LIBERAL

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers

Tears ran down my spine

I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy

As though I'd lost a father of mine

But Malcolm X got what was coming

He got what he asked for this time

So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

 

I go to civil rights rallies

And I put down the old D.A.R.

I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy

I hope every colored boy becomes a star

But don't talk about revolution

That's going a little bit too far

So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

 

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen

My faith in the system restored

I'm glad the commies were thrown out

of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board

I love Puerto Ricans and Negros

as long as they don't move next door

So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

 

The people of old Mississippi

Should all hang their heads in shame

I can't understand how their minds work

What's the matter, don't they watch Les Crain?

But if you ask me to bus my children

I hope the cops take down your name

So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

 

I read New Republic and Nation

I've learned to take every view

You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden

I feel like I'm almost a Jew

But when it comes to times like Korea

There's no one more red, white and blue

So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

 

I vote for the democratic party

They want the U.N. to be strong

I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts

He sure gets me singing those songs

I'll send all the money you ask for

But don't ask me to come on along

So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

 

Once I was young and impulsive

I wore every conceivable pin

Even went to the socialist meetings

Learned all the old union hymns

But I've grown older and wiser

And that's why I'm turning you in

So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

— Phil Ochs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u52Oz-54VYw

ONE BIG PARTY

GRASSLAND: THE NEW YORKER UNVEILS HUMBOLDT’S CANNABIS CULTURE

by Kym Kemp

The New Yorker just published a photo piece with lush images from Grassland, a book about—what else? – marijuana in Humboldt County. There’s just a short paragraph of writing but a dozen images rich with the sensory experiences of cannabis culture accompany the feature. Want to see the spread? Go here. Want to see more about the book? Go here.

ON MONDAY, October 27, 2014, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies were dispatched to the 32000 block of Ocean Meadows Circle in Westport, California regarding a burglary. Deputies arrived and learned that approximately $6,000.00 worth of construction tools had been stolen from a trailer which was being stored at the location. The victim, a local construction contractor, had parked the trailer at the residence while completing a remodel for the owner. During the next several days, Deputies followed up on investigative leads and developed a possible suspect, identified as being Richard Allen Lambeth, 46, of Fort Bragg. On 10-31-2014 at approximately 12:47 PM, Deputies contacted and questioned Lambeth in regards to the burglary. On 10-31-2014 at approximately 3:20 PM, a Game Warden with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife conducted a vehicle check on a suspicious subject carrying a large black bag into a wooded area in the 30000 block of North Highway 1 in Fort Bragg, California. The Game Warden contacted the subject, who was identified as being Lambeth. During the contact the Game Warden found Lambeth to be in possession of construction type tools and believed Lambeth was hiding the items in the woods. The Game Warden located numerous construction tools hidden in the woods and observed additional tools in Lambeth’s vehicle. In addition to the tools, Lambeth was found to be in possession of approximately 2.7 grams of suspected methamphetamine and methamphetamine smoking paraphernalia. The Game Warden detained Lambeth and contacted the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office to respond to the scene to continue the investigation. The local construction contractor was summoned to the location and positively identified the stolen tools. Lambeth was placed under arrest for Possession of Stolen Property and Possession of Methamphetamine. Lambeth was transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $15,000 bail.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Nov 4, 2014

JOELL BECK, Fort Bragg. Domestic assault.

JOSE CABRERA, San Berdoo/Ukiah. Robbery, in concert with others.

DYLAN COOK-SCHULETER, Ukiah. Domestic assault, battery, probation revocation.

ATHENA DOYLE, McKinleyville/Ukiah. Attempted murder.

LONNY ELLIOTT, Ukiah. Pot cultivation, processing; possession of drug paraphernalia, under influence of controlled substance, probation revocation.

RICHARD EZELL, Eureka/Ukiah. DUI, pot possession for sale.

KEVIN LITZIN, Ukiah. Drunk in public. (Frequent flyer.)

CHRISTOPHER MONTOYA, San Berdoo/Ukiah. Robbery, in concert with others.

PATRICIA MOORE, Ukiah. Under influence of controlled substance.

FILOMENO NUNEZ, Compton/Ukiah. Robbery, in concert with others.

JONATHAN OTERO-CRUZ, San Berdoo/Ukiah. Robbery, in concert with others, illegal entry.

WILLIAM RHODES, Rohnert Park/Ukiah. Vandalism.

DIEGO SPAGGIARI, Willits. Probation revocation.

ACROSS 80 YEARS OF POLITICS IN CALIFORNIA

In the Depths of the Great Depression a Socialist Ran for Governor, Pushing California and the Nation to the Left. Today A Centrist Democrat Pushes Fiscal Austerity

by Darwin Bond-Graham

Exactly eighty years ago, minus two days, an epic political battle culminated in California’s Fall election. Socialist rabble rouser and author Upton Sinclair had clinched the Democratic Party primary and headed into the November election of 1934 with a groundswell of grassroots support that terrified the state’s ruling class. EPIC, of course, stood for End Poverty in California, and Sinclair’s plan to do this was spelled out in his book, I Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty, published the year before not as fiction, but as a work of historical foresight. Audacious to the point of impossible, it probably surprised Sinclair when EPIC clubs popped up across California, and even other states. Volunteers promoted Sinclair’s ideas, synthesized as they were from the writings of socialist political economists and designed to feed the hungry and set idle factories in motion. The implications were that if elected, Sinclair would do more than expand the social safety net. He’d redistribute wealth and heavily tax major corporations. His campaign took off under the power of hundreds of thousands of disillusioned and angry working people seeking an end to the cycles of boom and bust, and hoping to quash the growing power of the financial oligarchy. Suddenly the radical left seemed potent in American politics on a grand scale. Sinclair’s campaign pushed Roosevelt’s New Deal to the Left.

Eighty years forward, California and the nation are in similarly dire economic straits, but the big ticket political races no longer offer epochal alternatives between capitalism and socialism, between austerity and New Deals. Instead voters in the Golden State, like across much of the U.S., will punch ballots crammed with centrist corporate Democrats running against wild-eyed Republicans. The main difference in California is that the general election this year feels like a formality, so dominant is the Democratic Party now that their primaries usually are sufficient to determine who holds office. Few statewide seats are actually contested. Incumbents are mostly assured reelection. And Ballot propositions, once the great hope of the progressives and democratic reformers, a means of using direct democracy to revise the state constitution, now ballot propositions offer up a schizophrenic range of pathways for the state’s future. As often as they’re used to decriminalize drugs or tax the rich, they’re also used to criminalize immigrants, expand the prisons, and defend corporate power.

Back in 1934 America was five years into the Great Depression. One in five working adults was unemployed. Bankruptcies among small businesses and households threatened to pull the national economy downward in an deflationary spiral. Hoovervilles of the homeless ringed cities. LA’s Hoover City, a jumble of tents and box shacks and broken down vehicles on several acres near the intersection of Firestone Boulevard and Alameda Street in Watts was home to hundreds at it’s peak. Oakland had Sewer Pipe City, an industrial yard near the port storing three foot diameter sewer pipes into which destitute men crawled, eventually fashioning tiny shelters.

Corporate farms in places like the San Joaquin Valley were plagued not by blights or pests, but by overabundance of crops for which there no buyers. A Steinbeckian surplus of displaced labor built tent cities in the creeks and ravines around the Salinas Valley, and the plantations ringing Bakersfield, Fresno, and Sacramento. Growers doused mountains of oranges and pears with gasoline to burn the over-production away.

The wealthiest industries of the era, companies like Du Pont de Nemours (the Koch Industries of its time) were beginning to accumulate profits again, and they paid political operatives millions to undermine the New Deal, and sabotage unions and the Left while building a long-term infrastructure for resurgence of the Right. Hollywood, the wealthy and glamorous industry of the sunshine state, was turning a profit too, and life was good for the millionaires of Los Angeles and San Francisco. But the elite feared the riotous energy of the masses of unemployed, striking workers, and migrant laborers. And they feared what the proletarians might do at the ballot box.

Today the official unemployment rate is 7 percent in California, above the national average, and probably under-counting the numbers of workers without adequate income. Debt, the real measure of economic malaise today—mortgage debt, student debt, credit card debt, automobile debt, small business debt, medical debt—still hangs over the entire economy. Resembling the early 1930s better than any other period in history, wealth today is now held by a tiny elite. Most Americans have no claim on the productive assets of the economy. No stock holdings. No bonds. No financial assets at all. Millions of Americans have lost the only asset they ever possessed, their home. Income has also split apart into two grossly unequal streams, with a small class of Americans doing better than ever, claiming a big slice of the nation’s total income, and a majority of the nation, wage earners, seeing their paycheck’s stagnate in terms of real value.

Whereas once where there were Hoovervilles around California’s industrial and agricultural estates, now there are homeless encampments like San Jose’s “Jungle” where the dispossessed hide among the canes and cottonwoods along the banks of Coyote Creek, a few blocks away from the headquarters of multi-billion dollar Silicon Valley corporations. For a brief moment in 2011 the Occupy phenomenon, spontaneous encampments of protesters talking about wealth and inequality, frightened America’s political class. Where did it go?

Life is still good for the billionaires of LA and Frisco. In fact the number of billionaires in California has grown. In 2009 Forbes estimated 89 billionaires among California’s 30 million or so residents. This year the magazine counted at least 111 billionaires under the West Coast sun.

Across eighty years the problems might be quite similar, but the political responses are notably different. Today Californians have no socialist running as a Democrat on their ballot to vote for. There is no plan today, as utopian as it might have been, to end poverty in California. There is no rhetoric, backed by potent social protest, to push the two party system back from the altar of neoliberalism. The billionaires of California lose no sleep over any of the candidates running for state office.

Instead California has Jerry Brown, the most dominant politician in the state’s recent history. Brown, 76, was once a progressive. But since the tax rebellion of 1978 cracked over his back like a gilded whip, Brown has retreated far into the center of the political spectrum. From this position he lectures the public frequently about “the prudence and the discipline to live within our means.” Brown plays up his own reputation for frugal living as the embodiment of a new state model of fiscal asceticism.

This year Brown ran a virtual non-campaign to return to the governor’s office. Instead of campaigning for himself he appeared in advertisements championing two ballot propositions, and spent the millions he raised from both labor unions and corporate patrons on these laws. One of these ballot propositions will will expand California’s already colossal system of dams and aqueducts. The main beneficiaries of these water bonds will be California’s potent Central Valley industrial farms, and the engineering and construction companies, and labor unions, that build this hydrologic infrastructure. The other ballot proposition Brown is shepherding will sequester state income tax revenues into a rainy day fund by the billions, only to be used in the event of an “emergency.” This ballot measure is predicated on the notion that California’s main fiscal problem is revenue “volatility,” thus the solution is to normalize the current levels of state spending, and simply redistribute tax receipts across future years.

Brown has said that he plans to let a significant tax increase on high-incomes expire in 2018. Proposition 30, approved by voters in 2012, boosted the marginal rates paid by households earning $250,000 and up, thereby contributing billions to the state’s budget during the Great Recession. You might think it shows that Brown still holds progressive values because he worked for passage of this tax two years ago. However, Proposition 30 was drafted as an emergency response to a true millionaire’s tax that would have raised more revenue purely by taxing the state’s top income earners, and this alternative measure wouldn’t have regressively increased the state’s sales tax, as Prop 30 did. Brown’s tax measure displaced the more progressive tax proposal, and put the temporary fixture in its place.

Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial substance as a centrist with deeply conservative fiscal tendencies, and a love for grandiose water projects fits neatly into the tone of the Brown dynasty. His father, Edmund “Pat” Brown, was a Republican lawyer and a supporter of Herbert Hoover who changed his party registration during the Great Depression because of the charisma and obvious impact Roosevelt had calming the nation in crisis, and saving the capitalist system from itself. Pat Brown as governor was much more progressive than his son, however. While governor in the 1950s and 1960s Pat Brown oversaw an expansion of the public sector, especially California’s schools and universities. Pat Brown raised state revenues and normalized a growing public sector that benefited a prosperous middle class. Jerry Brown instead is consolidating decades of budget cuts into a more austere reality.

Tying father and son together is the penchant for searching out the middle, the compromise, the moderate position, which in American politics means steadily drifting to the right. In 1934 Pat Brown supported moderation by working for Raymond Haight’s third party campaign, and against Sinclair. Sitting governor Frank Merriam would be the beneficiary of this vote splitting, and Merriam’s first moderate act as governor—he assumed office a few months prior after the sitting governor died in office—had been helping to crush the longshore strike in San Francisco with state troops.

In a bit of a contradiction, Merriam also fought for passage of California’s income tax in 1935, which has become one of the most progressive mechanisms of public finance in all the states. It probably took the threat of Sinclair’s EPIC program to set the political stage on which a Republican governor could end up creating a powerful redistributive tool, raising $11.8 million in its first year, mostly from high income earners.

As Greg Mitchell has shown in his book about Sinclair’s run for governor, Campaign of the Century, it took millions of dollars and the invention of a whole new kind of politics, the media-driven smear, to tear down Sinclair and prevent him from pushing California beyond the New Deal’s envelope. And here is about the only parallel between the election of 1934 and 2014.

Money, big money spent by big corporations out to expand their profits, weaken labor, and avoid taxes, still sways voters on the major questions of the day. This year there’s no singular politician to destroy, but there are several ballot propositions in the sights of California’s corporate powerhouses. Proposition 45, for example, would subject health insurance companies to the same kinds of regulatory oversight that utilities and car insurance companies currently face in California. That is to say, the health insurance giants would have to open their books and justify rate increases before a democratically elected official, the state Insurance Commissioner, rather than unilaterally upping insurance rates to enrich shareholders.

Wellpoint, Kaiser, Blue Shield of California, Health Net, Anthem Blue Cross, and the California Chamber of Commerce all oppose Proposition 45 for the obvious reason that it will tamper with corporate profit streams. Proposition 45 had support among most voters early on, but after a slew of negative ads costing upwards of $40 million blanketed the state’s airwaves in October, polls now show the measure going down in defeat. And Jerry Brown appears to be sitting on the sidelines, letting one of the only progressive measures on the ballot wither.

Jerry Brown’s opponent this year, the insurgent Neel Kashkari, is an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who was brought into the George W. Bush administration to manage the TARP bank bailouts. Kashkari is running on a platform that calls for eliminating teachers’ tenure protections, expanding oil drilling, and gutting business and environmental regulations. Unlike Sinclair 80 years ago, Kashkari stands virtually no chance of winning. But his campaign is Sinclair-like in that he’s pushing California’s political debate by advocating for a kind of utopian dream, albeit one for the wealthy capitalist, not the struggling wage earners. His campaign web site adds that he “currently resides in Orange County with his two Newfoundland dogs, Winslow and Newsome.”

Brown, by contrast, lives in the Oakland hills with his wife, a corporate lawyer, and his dog Sutter, a Corgi who has his own Facebook page. According to Sutter’s Facebook, politically he’s a Whig, “practical and not carried away by the barking constituencies,” just about what Jerry Brown thinks of himself.

(Darwin Bond-Graham is a sociologist and investigative journalist. He is a contributing editor to Counterpunch. His writing appears in the East Bay Express, Village Voice, LA Weekly, Anderson Valley Advertiser and other newspapers. He blogs about the political economy of California at http://darwinbondgraham.wordpress.com/)