Letters (Nov 18, 2015)

• Foodbank Season
• How Can Coast Hospital Be Broke?
• If Pg&E Wins, We Lose
• Gop Self-Marginalizing
• Waiving Shrimp Boy's Rights
• Oaky Joe Sez…
• Withholding Care
• Kunstler Clash
• Keep Earth Alive
• Room For Three, Please
• Empty Suits

FOODBANK SEASON

Dear friends of the Anderson Valley food bank,

The season of asking and giving is upon us. We at the Anderson Valley Food Bank again ask for your support for our continued effort to provide food for those in our community who are in need. Without your continued help we could not provide this valuable community service.

The Food Bank continues to serve from 50 to 70 or more families per month. We distribute food on the third Tuesday of every month from the Boonville Methodist church. Often, some of our produce makes its way to the Anderson Valley Senior Center to be distributed among their lunches on Tuesdays. We are glad to pass it on and are grateful that it is happily accepted there as well as at the church.

We have made a concerted effort to provide more fresh produce than ever before. We buy all our produce through Boont Berry Farm, and Lemons Market has been kind enough to handle our dry goods, holiday meats, and other commodities. We look forward to developing further relationships with local businesses and farms.

We wish to take this opportunity to thank those in our Valley who have contributed in the past, both cash and produce from farm and garden. Thank you for considering the Anderson Valley Food Bank for your 2015 donations.

Sincerely,

Denise Mattei, Director,

Anderson Valley Food Bank

PO Box 692, Boonville, CA 95415

HOW CAN COAST HOSPITAL BE BROKE?

Letter to the Editor

Suspect 501c3 Foundation

My 2 cents...

The Mendocino Coast Hospital Foundation's Winesong fundraiser brings in hundreds of thousands annually and has millions in brokerage accounts, yet does close to nothing significant for the hospital. Ah, yes— new imaging equipment in the radiology department. Three years ago, the foundation made no attempt to rescue the hospital from bankruptcy.

I had three meetings with the Executive Director, Jeri Erickson, about a year ago. My repeated request for IRS records, MCHF meeting minutes reflecting amendments and changes to the by-laws, Winesong's detailed expense accounts, were ignored and I finally gave up. By law, a 501c3 is required to produce the above listed documents to anyone who requests them. On the MCHF's website are suspect audits.

As community members, I urge you to petition the MCHF to step up to the plate and support the hospital in its time of dire need.

To learn more about the questionable operations of the Mendocino Coast Hospital Foundation, go to: www.ripoffreport.com and type in Mendocino Coast Hospital Foundation.

Margaret Paul

Fort Bragg

IF PG&E WINS, WE LOSE

Dear Editor,

Stop PG&E from Making California Consumers The Biggest Losers!

Local clean power reduces air pollution, creates jobs, and can lower energy costs for all members of our communities. But PG&E — along with their other utility cronies — is attempting to destroy the California rooftop solar market. It’s time for consumers to take action to stop PG&E from winning, and making California consumers and our natural environment the biggest losers.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is now considering proposals made by PG&E and the other big utilities, which would gut the solar “net metering” program. The decision is expected to be made by the middle of December 2015. The decision is still being considered, so now is the time to act!

Net metering has made it economically feasible for Californians — including Mendocino County residents? to convert their homes and businesses to clean, green solar energy. When solar powered homes and businesses create a surplus of electricity, net metering makes it possible for the homeowners, businesses, nonprofit organizations and churches to sell their daily surplus to PG&E and to receive credit for that electricity.

The utilities propose to severely reduce the credit that consumers earn for selling back daily surplus electricity, and to greatly increase monthly fees charged to solar customers. Together, these changes would destroy the economic incentive for installing solar, and would make it much harder for solar energy systems to pay off. Our thriving, job creating industry will be decimated by this change.

At a time when we are trying to reduce the impact of coal and natural gas on climate change, the utilities are attempting to get rid of rooftop solar. Is this just business as usual? Will we let them get away with this?

We urge Californians to contact the CPUC and stand up for rooftop solar! There are several ways to take action. First, email the CPUC Public Advisor at public.advisor@cpuc.ca.gov or call 866-849-8390. Then, sign the petition at saverooftopsolarca.com.

And don’t forget to contact your California state elected officials to tell them you support solar energy and you want them to help protect net metering. To find out how to contact your local representative go to: findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov. You can find more information on the fight to save solar energy at our company’s website: mendocinosolar.com.

Sincerely,

Bruce Erickson & Maggie Watson,

CoOwners, Mendocino Solar Service

Mendocino

GOP SELF-MARGINALIZING

Dear Editor:

In watching most of the GOP debate, it is quite clear most of the positions on undocumented immigrants and improving the income and health care of those below the poverty level certainly will not help them with the African-American and Hispanic communities. While the GOP candidate does not need 50% or more support from these communities he/she certainly cannot win without a significant increase over recent presidential elections.

The GOP through various new Jim Crow laws is trying to make it difficult to vote. Needless to say the Democrats will mount an all out drive to get these folks to the voting booth.

The debate also made it clear there is no place in their party for single women and the LGBT community. In looking at the demographic changes in the US where now whites will be in the minority, unless the Republicans dramatically change course a GOP president will be something of the past.

In peace and love,

Jim Updegraff

Sacramento

WAIVING SHRIMP BOY'S RIGHTS

Editor,

I am furious to learn that federal prosecutors in the Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow case have refused to share with his defense lawyers "the names of the undercover agents who will testify at his trial," on the grounds that "identifying them could affect national security." This brazenly violates his constitutional right to confront his accusers.

I never heard of Chow before this case, but if I were a member of his jury, I would vote to acquit him on this ground alone, regardless of whatever other evidence the prosecutors present. It is high time we sent a signal to Washington: Stop using these kinds of Gestapo tactics against citizens.

John Davidson

San Francisco

OAKY JOE SEZ…

An open letter to cops:

I would like to invite all law enforcement officers to contact me if they or their loved ones need medical marijuana. I've supplied medical marijuana to veterans for over 10 years. I know a lot of vets go into law enforcement when they're discharged from their service. I'm hoping that if law enforcement officers hear from the veterans themselves that medical marijuana indeed helps them, they they'll look more closely at medical marijuana. If someone you know is messed up, let me know. This is not a stupid joke. I was born at West Point, and I have very close ties to the military.

As always, I need an up-to-date recommendation from a doctor. PS. To any potential thieves, our new policy is to not have any cash on the premises.

Oaky Joe Munson

Sonoma

WITHHOLDING CARE

Editor,

My name is Terry Leo Kramer. I am a prisoner in the Mendocino County Jail. I have been here for 11 months now and in this time I have been subjected to countless civil rights abuses at the hands of those in charge of taking care of us.

I was severely injured in my left shoulder twice while in the jail and I am and have been forced to remain in extreme pain for months while the jailed doctor, a Mr. Medvin, has ordered his staff to give me not so much as an aspirin as my agony and torture continues because our only avenue of pain relief is we can buy five packs 200 mg Motrin per week out of the canteen for any and all of our pain needs. I am forced to get my aspirins from the welfare inmates who get two aspirin packs a week as their welfare package and I eat so many of these because I also suffer chronic migraines and have for years and I know it's causing me liver damage, but I can't for the life of me get any help from the medical department which falsely accused me of "cheating" a pill the very first time I was given one as from that time on I have been forced to suffer and also my mental health medications are messed with as I was forced to go without them for months while my mental health deteriorated to a point where I am now dubbed insane by the court system because I was intentionally deprived of mental health care by the jail psychologist, a Mr. Johnson, who intentionally lied about the matter after me having to file a writ with the court to get the care I have a civil right to and I have paperwork contradicting his lies as he stated it was a mere oversight on his part that I was not seen for several months when in truth he intentionally denied me access to the care I am entitled to.

As I am sure you are well aware there are many problems being talked about in the local papers, yours among them, as we are not being properly cared for by the medical or mental health departments here at the Mendocino County Jail. It is not only very brutal but inhumane, cruel and unusual punishment we prisoners are being subjected to while in the custody of the Mendocino County Jail as our rights are being violated and from the inside of this place it's so hard to receive any help as our outgoing mail comes up missing as we attempt to get help but the people who are in power here are so cruel we are literally dying in here because of the intentional lack of care we are inhumanely subjected to.

I hear that MSNBC came in here at some point and things were better for a short time so I am begging, if anyone out there can please help us get somebody from outside to help us I know not only will lives be saved but those like me who are forced to remain in agony because of the intentional lack of care here can get some help so the forced pains we are subjected to undergo can be brought into the light so we can receive some humane treatment here at the Mendocino County Jail. Please help us.

On September 4, 2015, I had an article I wrote in the Ukiah Daily Journal but nothing came of it. There is only so much I can do. I try to file writs in the courts etc. But I need some outside help. So if anyone is able to help please do so as I will do all I can to do the work needed to help us prisoners here get changes made so we are no longer subjected to these inhumane ways of care we are forced to endure at the hands of people paid well to help us.

Thank you all for listening and I hope someone will be able to guide us to the help we so badly need.

Respects to all,

Mr. Terry Leo Kramer, prisoner being abused

At the Mendocino County Jail, Ukiah

KUNSTLER CLASH

Dear Editor:

In initially approaching James Kunstler's commentary "Good Little Maoists," I was inclined to believe he was the victim of some kind of political correctness run amok, but sadly his lengthy exposition of what he really meant with his comment about blacks needing to learn standard English and what his views on race really are, just dug him in deeper with the issue presented being not at all some trivial caricature involving "micro-aggressions" or lack of "trigger warnings." It is much more serious than that. This is because Kunstler reveals he actually is mired in deep seated and fatuous racist stereotypes about African-Americans: that they don't speak standard English the way most other Americans do, like say working-class whites and Latinos, and have somehow "opted out" of mainstream American society. How does he know this? Well, just "turn on HBO sometime."

Of course when Kunstler uses vulgarism's like "batshit" and "clusterfuck" he is not so much departing from standard English as he is communicating via colloquial terminology and slang like the youth depicted on the street on television (who are as likely to be Latino or white as black) do through hip-hop lingo and otherwise, assuming arguendo those depictions are an accurate reflection of reality.

But why engage in pettifoggery about "correct usage" in that context? No, that blacks depart from accepted standard English usages in more formal settings at work or at school more than any other ethnic group is a contention Kunstler offers no evidence to support. So Rhonda Frederick is right, that is a patronizing racist stereotype that she as an educated African American has every reason to resent.

More telling in revealing that Kunstler really doesn't know what he's talking about is his commentary about blacks having opted out of society, as if their condition and that of the large segment of the working class more generally that is pauperized has nothing to do with economic conditions and yes, the continued prevalence of racist attitudes that Kunstler's commentary itself reflects so blatantly.

But this is nothing new, merely being another shopworn reiteration of the smug old Tory trope that first came into vogue during the Victorian era: all those poor people are poor because they "choose" to be poor; the Irish are destitute because they are shiftless, not because we're exploiting them and occupying their land. It's not class privilege, national oppression and the operation of predatory capitalism that cause social inequality, but the lack of moral fiber of these benighted masses and their rebellious "oppositional" attitude which has caused them to make bad individual choices in life that is the real problem; an outlook that is as obtuse and self-serving as it was 150 years ago.

Kunstler or any other neocon hack for that matter is free to express whatever views he chooses. That is not the question at all, but rather as Professor Frederick stated, whether Boston College should subsidize him in doing that by doling out thousands of dollars in honoraria to him. Clearly, it has a right to decline to do so.

Thank you,

Tom Quinn

Fort Bragg

KEEP EARTH ALIVE

Ah Editor and Fellow AVAers,

Stop subsidizing sprawl. That's all. Stop subsidizing sprawl. In Mendocino County and beyond. Naked ladies, redwood and the ocean. Let's draw a corporate stall, as America works toward cleaner than coal electric power generation. Praise Manhattan that planted one million trees in three years: shade reduced street temperature, reduced air pollution with absorption of carbon.

Aid mitigation. The majority of New York water comes from the Catskills and Delaware River watersheds. Two massive tunnels deliver water to the city. Time to complete tunnel #3 which shall cost billions. Stop subsidation. Manage adaptation: today's climate extremes. Adaptation to climate change with methods of mitigation. "There is no silver bullet, but silver buckshot." February 2009, the MTA renovated the Wall Street subway station which exists in a flood zone.

To what levels of flooding and where do we have to protect? Uncertainty plagues us like the rising thermometer. Black death in the metropolis. Michael Oppenheimer mentioned, "Three feet of sea level rise shall submerge Sunset Park." The average US household could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% within six months by walking or biking to work instead of driving. We have the chance to avoid "catastrophic climate change," which shall effect an increase and a decline in rain. An increase in rainfall? A decline in rain? Both? How far above sea level is your house? The less dependent we can be on a car and other petroleum technologies, the better. "If society as a whole does not act, even valiant individual efforts will have limited effect." Begin today, walk to Safeway, Okay.

Farina bangs her Let's Keep Earth Alive dish,

Deadtree, Mendocino. Chill in the air, particles of ice on the dumpster.

Diana Vance, Mendocino

PS. Let's keep earth alive. Yes. Happy Thanksgiving!

ROOM FOR THREE, PLEASE

Editor,

I want to add a little depth to a phrase that is in the news of late.

The feds, or state, will build a prison for 750 prisoners, single occupancy cells with 90 square feet of floor space as per federal law. (About 7 x 13 feet.) Then before the prison even opens the president or governor will sign a continuing emergency order to allow the addition of another bunk. Weld it right over the existing bunk, the only place there is room for it. Then fill the prison to 1500 prisoners.

The kitchen/dining room, medical department, school, gym, yard, etc. were all built for the original total population number of 750.

They don't stop there. Now that there are two men in every cell, they put in a third man. He comes with a mattress, sheets and blanket and finds a place at night on the floor where he can roll out his mattress, his head away from the toilet. The other two men are careful not to step on him when getting out of their bunks.

So now you have a fuller understanding of the phrase in the news, "Our overcrowded prisons."

Freedom,

Paul Jorgensen

Victorville USP, Adelanto

EMPTY SUITS

Editor:

Wealth As Personhood (Empty Expensive Suits)

Only an economic system rigged to give personhood to corporations would give authority to persons with little to no redeeming social value, based only on their wealth. That same twisted system will subject us all to the insanity of allowing some bigot asshole billionaire to run for President without any actual qualification for the office. The highest office in the land has been hijacked, mocked,vulgarized, trivialized, and insulted by being for sale. Just another thing that any ego maniac millionaire can buy like a women or a jet. How does a stupid bigot who's also so vain and dishonest that he can't even face the fact that he's going bald, get taken seriously in a run for the Presidency? The answer is not any prettier than his ridiculous hair do. I don't know about you, but I've never trusted men who are so vain and delusional that they'd part their hair just above the ear and comb it up and over the offending dome. The absurd living toupee! Utterly embarrassing! A sure sign of an unstable personality. Not a good situation. When all one has to have is great wealth, and as it increases become less and less accountable for personal defects. As  wealth increases so does the number of small minded ass kissing grovelers who'll help the rich assholes substantiate their assumed greatness. Very twisted! We need a minister of culture to protect us all from these market perversions. Someone to push the reject button with a loud buzzer anytime these overrated overpaid bastards attempt to impose their mega rich incredibility on us. In a sane society corporations would not be people. And people would not be aloud to amass obscene amounts of wealth=power=influence. Rare indeed is the human mature enough and righteous enough to properly administer massive wealth. Tax the greed heads until they can no longer afford to plague civil society with their well heeled follies! Tax the ridiculously wealthy until our nation is on a better financial footing, and keep taxing them. A side benefit would be keeping these freaks out of the way and out of places of power and influence. Trump rhymes with; stump-hump-bump-clump- chump-rump-slump-sump-dump-lump-pump… also with; skunk-punk-stunk-stunt-blunt-shunt- hunt-brunt-crumb-frump.

As always, best of luck,

Marvin Blake

Elk