ELEVEN BLACK WOMEN were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train on Saturday for enjoying themselves. The specific charge was that they were too loud. Accounts of the episode are flooding social media.
WINE TRAIN spokeswoman Kira Devitt said Sunday that the company “received complaints from several parties in the same car and after three attempts from staff, requesting that the group keep the noise to an acceptable level, they were removed from the train and offered transportation back to the station in Napa. The Napa Valley Wine Train does not enjoy removing guests from our trains, but takes these things very seriously in order to ensure the enjoyment and safety of all of our guests,” Devitt's press release said.
AT THE ST. HELENA station, the group had to do the “walk of shame,” as one of the ejected women put it, as they were escorted past passengers on the six other cars and met by officers from the Napa Valley Railroad and St. Helena police departments.
BUT SOMEONE from the Wine Train posted an account of the incident on Facebook that read, “Following verbal and physical abuse toward other guests and staff, it was necessary to get our police involved. Many groups come on board and celebrate. When those celebrations impact our other guests, we do intervene.”
WHICH turned out to be totally untrue. But accusations of racism are so overworked anymore that when it happens, as it clearly did on the Napa Wine Train on Saturday, the term doesn't begin to cover how dispiriting the real thing is.
ANOTHER SWEETHEART DEAL for Ortner and Fort Bragg's Hospitality House. The Supervisors, at their meeting on August 18th, approved via their automatic yes vote by consent calendar, $95,039 to the privately managed Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center for "homeless and indigent services." How the money will actually be spent is vague to the point of unintelligibility. The Supervisors, of course, were uninterested in the specifics, waving the money right on through with nary a question from any of them.
PATRICK PEKIN of Fort Bragg is apparently challenging Keith Faulder for that soon-to-be-empty judge's robe. Pekin's working the phones, calling up members of the local bar hoping to line up support for the looming Superior Court vacancy. One question ought to be asked of all candidates for judge: Do you support a new County Courthouse? If the answer is Yes, vote No on that candidate.
COUNT US AMONG the saps who voted for Prop 39 because (1) It raised taxes on corporations and (2) The money raised would go to the creation of clean energy jobs. Three years later, according to an AP story, Prop 39 raised nowhere near the promised money and produced less than ten percent of the jobs promised. The board of trustees sworn to guarantee Prop 39 accountability? It has yet to meet.
THE END IS TRULY NEAR: Former Press Democrat reporter and columnist Chris Coursey is vice-mayor of Santa Rosa.
FORT BRAGG'S Old Coast Hotel "Wellness Center" in Fort Bragg opened for the homeless business on Monday, homelessness being a growth industry in Mendocino County, which now generates roughly $8 million annual dollars for a private mental health hustle based in Yuba City called the Ortner Management Group.
AMONG MENDOCINO COUNTY'S ongoing semi-disasters, consider the County's animal shelter, recipient of ten separate complaints from the Grand Jury. But, properly managed, there's money in abandoned dogs and cats, whose numbers, like abandoned humans, grow every year. To shed itself of yet another public responsibility, look for Mendocino County to deal off our animal shelter to the Petaluma Animal Services Foundation, a SoCo non-profit that seems to be claiming it can efficiently manage the Ukiah shelter and come out fiscally ahead. Which they probably can. Come out fiscally ahead, that is. If the County makes a deal for cats and dogs like the deal it made with the Ortner Management Group for mentally ill human strays, Petaluma Animal Services will soon be in the chips.
PSEUDO-RABIES, a disease commonly found in domestic and feral pigs, has been detected in a wild pig near Lake Mendocino. The Army Corps of Engineers manages the area. They said the virus is not transferable to humans, but could be fatal to dogs and other infected animals.
WE WAITED TWO LONG WEEKS before the Board of Supervisors meeting video for August 4 was finally posted Saturday morning. We were especially interested to see if our initial impression about the August 4 discussion of the Stepping Up initiative was correct.
IT WAS EVEN LAMER than we anticipated. All the County can think of to do to reduce the number of mentally ill held in the County Jail is more (unspecified) training for cops. Implicit in this pathetic stance is the cops will continue to do mental health's heavy lifting for the foreseeable future. (How much more training and for whom exactly isn't even estimated — just give us the money and we’ll figure something out.)
ALTHOUGH the rambling August 4 Stepping Up discussion touched on the importance of “diversion” before a crazy, drug-addled or homeless person commits a crime and is packed off to the County Jail, all the County's staff could muster as possible ways to spend the $150k the board has tentatively allocated was for more "training" for cops. That vague direction was entirely unquantified with even Sheriff Allman getting on board the buzzword train with Health and Human Services Director Stacey Cryer and Public Defender Linda Thompson riding shotgun. (On her best days, Thompson is barely coherent while Cryer talks like a wind-up doll programmed to recite clichés. Allman has to live with these people, hence his apparent acquiescence in the fantasy that Stepping Up is a Step Forward.)
THE BEST WAY to spend the $150k -- as we've said many times over the years -- would be for the County to at least set up a county farm pilot program and a 24-hour crisis van that would roll on police calls involving crazy people, most of whom are already well known to cops. A percentage of the frequent flying and most difficult mental health population might thus be diverted from the jail for a while, and perhaps save some money on the other end.
BUT MENDO COUNTY'S LEADERSHIP is unable to come up with anything more than $150k to talk about the obvious fact that the population of seriously disturbed people on the street is increasing.
THERE WERE, however, two interesting stats that came out of the discussion (although we have no way of knowing if the one about Mental Health Court is even close to correct).
PUBLIC DEFENDER THOMPSON told Supervisor Gjerde that a paltry 85 people have entered the Mental Health court in the four years since it started and of those 85, ten have “exited.” (Which Ms. Thompson implied means “graduated,” but who knows? She might have meant "executed." The entire conversation is skewed because we have wacky people talking about crazy people, not a known path to program clarity.) Ms. Thompson wasn’t sure how many of the "exits" were Coastal residents and how many were inland "exits". But it’s safe to assume that these are the “clients” who are at least sane enough to participate in the program and manage to negotiate the full range of basic requirements: appointments, travel, discourse with authorities, etc. The hard cases are not likely to be among the 85.
THE OTHER interesting stat came from Supervisor Dan Gjerde who noted that if Ortner Management Group charged the same “administrative services” percentage as Redwood Children’s Services does for essentially the same kind of work, “that would liberate $870,000.”
NO ONE in the room even acknowledged Gjerde’s observation, much less agreed to look into it, although he was talking about saving the meaty part of a cool mil.
IRONICALLY, Sheriff Allman was back before the Board of Supervisors later in the August 4 meeting to propose a jail expansion which would, in part, house more mentally ill inmates. The Board supported Allman’s $20 million grant application. If approved the County would have to hire upwards of $1.5 million in additional jail staff and spend about $1 million in County matching funds.
THE COUNTY, as noted above, recently allocated $150,000 to train local cops in mental health program availability. In other words, pure blah-blah. At the same time, Sheriff Allman got the go ahead to apply for twenty mil to expand the jail to include housing and purely fanciful rehab for the mentally ill. Meanwhile, Boonville's beloved community newspaper, an inexhaustible fount of practical solutions to local government dilemmas, has suggested a County farm for frequent fliers both mentally ill and chronically drunk, a mental health van that would respond to 5150 calls to assess and direct the mentally ill to appropriate treatment schemes whether or not they exist, which they mostly don't, and this one just in: You know that abandoned convalescent stalag on deep South State Street, Ukiah? That visually repellant structure was once the last earthly stop for about a hundred of the indigent elderly, an evil send off venue for abandoned citizens we don't care to consider here, other than to say you don't want to be old, feeble and broke anywhere in this country. The County is now spending $15 million annually to treat the mentally ill to zero discernible effect — there are presently more free range nuts than ever on the streets of our county seat, for instance, without doing a head count in Willits or Fort Bragg where there are also growing numbers of drug and alcohol-dependent vagabonds. For less than two mil the County could buy that abandoned structure on South State Street, slap a few geraniums outside, paint some sunflowers on its street-facing walls and house the habitual drunks in one wing, the more volatile of the mentally ill street people in the other, with all the County-paid helping professionals in the offices up front: Total package, excluding the helping pros who are already County-paid but don't do much but go to meetings and eat gluten-free jelly donuts, $10 mil. Or less, much less with the present mental health apparat doing all the work of the place including the cooking.
BUT OUR SUPERVISORS, more pathetic by the week — check that — more pathetic on the weeks they even bother to meet — don't lead on any issue facing the people of Mendocino County, some of whom actually expect (and falsely assume) that the Supes provide leadership! ideas! fiscal prudence! intelligent strategies! Nada, from any of them. My fellow Mendolanders, we seem to have achieved a perfect entropic pitch. Nothing good will happen here because nothing good can happen.
SPECIAL JIVE-O recognition goes out to the president of the Point Arena School Board, Ron Miles for this remark at the board meeting of August 12th: "Our attorney said there were no Brown Act violations, ethics violations et cetera."
IN FACT, the Grand Jury confirmed that the PA school board frequently paid no attention to the laws requiring public bodies do the public business in public.
MOREOVER, the legal advice Miles was brandishing comes from a Santa Rosa-based quasi-public law firm funded out of school money by the individual school districts of Mendocino County. These legal hacks and hackettes routinely dish out errant advice to outback school districts, and have you ever heard of a lawyer who took a bite out of the hand that fed him? The routine flouting of the Brown Act won't stop until the DA moves on people like Miles. And the Grand Jury has done all the background work for DA Eyster! It's simply a matter of walking that baby on into court.
AGEE v. ORTNER. In a news item by Independent Coast Observer reporter Carolyn Young last week, Redwood Coast Medical Services CEO — and former AV Clinic Director Diane Agee, a person noted for her quick resort to the managerial bludgeon, had her bludgeon out to talk about problems with mental health services on the Coast, particularly Ortner Management Group (adult services) and Redwood Quality Management (children’s, i.e., under 25, services). Speaking about an upcoming August 27 “Quality Improvement Meeting” at the South Coast Health Center/clinic, Ms. Agee said she “hopes to provide input on the shortfalls she sees in mental health services in the Gualala and Point Arena areas. ‘I have been pleading and begging for help,’ said Agee. ‘It’s interesting that they do a meeting in the RCMS building but don’t invite me to attend.’ Agee said Redwood Quality Management and Ortner Management Group are not providing adequate services for the South Coast. ‘We’ve had horrible experiences with adults and children,’ Agee commented, explaining under the current county system adults needing care get sent to Ortner facilities in Yolo County; children get sent to Redwood Quality Management facilities in Ukiah and Fort Bragg. Agee expressed objection over patients being released as soon as the next day and added that inquires about patients are often ignored. Agee said she was disturbed over a case in which a 15 year old suicidal young woman was not treated appropriately. ‘Their (the County’s) response was to call the sheriff,’ Agee said. ‘She ended up in handcuffs. Will she tell anyone next time she feels suicidal?’ Agee welcomes the upcoming public discussion. ‘We need more of a public dialogue,’ she said. ‘I definitely plan to attend the meeting’.”
THE MEETING is technically supposed to only “gather public input” and “inform the public.” But the presence of the formidable Agee could turn the meeting into something much more interesting.
COREY HEINE, presently a Ukiah-based frequent flier, was described this way 30 years ago by the Ukiah Daily Journal's inimitable sports reporter, the late Glenn Erickson: “A two-point conversion run by Corey Heine [running back for the Ukiah JV football team] was stopped short, about the only time all night he was stopped, for 6-0 with 2:15 to go in the first quarter. Heine scored from 11-yards out with 4:16 to go in the first half, Aaron MacLeitch scoring the first of his five placement conversions, for 13-0. In all Heine had four touchdowns with an aggregate total of 56-yards, about half of his 100 plus total yards gained rushing.” Just last week, Heine was arrested in the attic of Safeway apparently trying to break into the pharmacy.
LISTENED to an excited Trump discussion on KPFA Sunday morning, the gist of which was that Donald Trump represents the onset of American fascism. The left has been warning that America is on the brink of a national goose step at least since 1960 when yours truly got going as an elastic anarcho-commie-beatnik. Now, as an enfeebled senior citizen, I'm more of a cargo cult-like Bernie liberal. I'm preparing to vote Green when Bernie joins Hillary or Biden on the big stage at the fixed-wing Democratic convention in the predictable show of party unity.
I THINK TRUMP is too stupid and too overtly vicious to get himself elected to much of anything, let alone the presidency. But, but, but... If he's so dumb how come he's made so much money? Because he started with a real estate fortune amassed by his father. Most of our oligarchs started out that way. The function of our political system is to ensure the money stays right where it is, which Trump certainly is dedicated to do. As are the Democratic candidates with the exception of Sanders.
I HAVE MORE faith in my fellow citizens than a lot of lefties, who tend to think Americans are so hopelessly out of it, so easily manipulated by for-profit media, so trivialized by that same media that they'll go for any damn thing, even a bellowing egomaniac with an endangered species living on his head.
OF COURSE there's the Fox News Axis which is fascist to the bone and, overwhelmingly, the place where badly educated older white people get their information. But how many young people, people under the age of forty, pay any attention to O'Reilly, Hannitty, and those weird blonde nazis like the one Trump clashed with? Never met a young Fox Newser myself but there's probably a few. The young fascisti stick pretty much to the Klan and Klan-like sites on the internet, don't they?
WHEN WE GET FASCISM in this country its front people will look and act like Bill and Hil, not some frother like Trump. They'll come across as lifestyle libs heavy on law and order, so heavy I think we'll soon get a form of martial law as things become more and more disorderly. It was Clinton's Crime Bill that ignited the prison boom and the War On Drugs. The Mendolib types will be all for smiley-faced fascism because they'll staff it, as they do now in all the non-profits and government agencies who live off the non-competitive sectors of our crumbling society.
STRAIGHT-UP FASCISM won't look much different than what we have now, which is a more and more muscular oligarchy. But to run it, the fascisti will need someone a lot smarter, a lot more generally acceptable than the buffoon from New York.
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