Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Dec 26, 2015

• Hard Freeze
• Death Penalty
• Airport Trees
• Ukiah Wells
• Bleak News
• Christmas Catch
• U.S. Deportations
• Legalization Issues
• NYT Impressions
• Housing Homeless
• Borland's Decision
• Trump Says
• Rebel Jesus
• Light Dance
• Gun Sales
• 2015 Albums
• Rand Christmas

HARD FREEZE WARNING remains in effect for norcal inland valleys from midnight tonight to 9 am pst Saturday. Low temperatures...low 30s near the immediate coast. Away from the immediate coast...upper 20s. Locations include Boonville, Branscomb and Philo. For a detailed view of the hazard area...visit http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/map... Precautionary/preparedness actions... A hard freeze warning means sub-freezing temperatures are imminent or highly likely. These conditions will kill crops and other sensitive vegetation.

A PRO-DEATH PENALTY group has received state approval to gather signatures for an initiative that would speed up what has become a stalled process. The average stay on Death Row is now 25 years. The death people would require the state to rule on capital cases within five years, would limit appeals, tighten up appeals deadlines, and expand the pool of death penalty lawyers.

EXPANSION of the lawyer pool would mean any attorney who now takes on court appointed cases of the indigent class would also have to take on capital cases regardless of his experience. The initiative would not provide added funding to defend capital cases.

ANOTHER INITIATIVE, this one to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole, is also being circulated. This same initiative lost by 4% of the vote in 2012. Both initiatives require 365,880 signatures collected in 180 days to qualify for the ballot.

THE PRO-DEATH group already has more than a million dollars behind it.

THERE ARE PRESENTLY 750 men (all men, I believe) on death row. The last execution was in 2006 after which a federal judge ruled that the death potions were faulty and the people administering them were often poorly trained.

THE DEATH PENALTY, for or against, quickly segues into arguments by the pro people who cite the monstrousness of the crimes committed by the ignoble 750 and that a dead killer can't kill anybody else. They say that lawyers and bleeding hearts have gummed up the process.

THE ANTIS argue commonsense — that life without is cheaper than funding death penalty appeals, that the death penalty does not prevent future murders, and so what if the bastard suffers, look what he did. And, of course, a wealthy killer has seldom, if ever, been executed in this country. The poor get murdered by the state, the wealthy don't. The poor also comprise the large majority of people in prison, many of them doing life without for murders they committed when they were very young.

THE BOONVILLE NEWSPAPER has always been opposed to the death penalty because it clearly isn't a deterrent and a midnight needle in a chamber resembling the emergency room at Adventist Hospital in Ukiah means all of us in whose name the mad dog is being put down take no responsibility for his execution. A killer should be killed the old fashioned way, in public, and by hanging or a firing squad with at least one member of the victim's family directly involved in the actual execution.

I'VE THOUGHT a lot about it. I knew a guy, David Mason, executed at San Quentin. Mason was a very dangerous person, very dangerous. He was dangerous in prison, which is where he should have lived out his days. Could I have killed him? If he'd killed someone close to me? Absolutely. But if I couldn't do it myself I'd simply want him locked away forever.

* * *

“The death penalty is barbaric. And I think we as a society need to come face-to-face with that. If we’re not willing to face up to the cruelty, we ought not to be doing it.” — Judge Alex Kozinski, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

LITTLE RIVER AIRPORT: Last Tuesday (Dec. 15) Supervisor Dan Hamburg gave his colleagues an update on the Little River Airport tree situation. This issue started out as a logging plan years ago and the County has wasted upwards of $100k preparing for logging the parcel only to have the job delayed and delayed and delayed and finally stopped and converted into an attempt at forest conservation for just over 50 acres of second growth forest on the Coast.

EARLIER this year Supervisor Hamburg told his colleagues, “We do intend to recover our investment in this latest round in trying to go forward with the NTMP [Non-industrial Timber Management Plan].”

Recover their investment? This assumed they could somehow get an conservation group to pay upwards of $100k for 53 acres of trees, which have, according to Hamburg last week (see below), now gone further down in value.

The logging job paperwork should have cost no more than $10,000 in the first place, but the County’s alleged “forester,” Roger Sternberg, kept finding new nits to pick in preparing the perfect Timber Harvest Plan (which later morphed into the NTMP). Every time they thought they were close, Sternberg found a new agency to “coordinate” with, thus delaying the job time and again — and increasing his fees.

Last Tuesday Hamburg reported [with annotations], “This is another issue where we have not achieved resolution. [sic] We had several meetings [on top of a whole bunch of meetings in prior years] with environmental groups looking at the possibility of a land exchange [now it’s an exchange, not a buyout, meaning no chance of “recovering” any investment] that would involve the southeast runway and exchanging that for some [“some”] of the timberland. We have been in touch with FAA which has demanded that any trade that we made, any land exchange, be of equal value. [Where does the FAA get off on land exchanges in Mendocino County?] So the proposal that we arranged that we initially talked about with the Nature Conservancy which would have been a trade of roughly 80 acres for roughly 36 acres [down from 53] is probably not going to fly with FAA. We had a report from Howard [DeShield, County Transportation Director] regarding his staff meeting with the FAA and there are still a couple of questions that they have not gotten back to us on. [Now the entire project has been turned over to the County’s Transportation Department and all that money for Sternberg’s THP “work” is now officially wasted.] The Department of Transportation did get the trees cut that were of the most concern because they were the closest to the runway. [They didn’t need a THP after all!] So we are currently in compliance with regard to FAA instructions. The main issue that remains is the second growth redwood and old-growth residuals that are in a special five acre area. [Now it’s down to just five acres.] These have been marked for removal by Caltrans Aviation [which also apparently needs no THP] so that issue still remains. FAA of course controls the property rights. [If that were true, why did the County prepare the THP in the first place all those years ago?] We really need to get a complete answer from Mr. Lee [not identified] and the FAA before we know how to proceed.”

OFFICIAL MENDO AT WORK!

BIDS FOR NEW UKIAH WELLS REJECTED

by Justine Frederiksen

The city of Ukiah will again collect bids for two new wells it hopes to build, after the Ukiah City Council approved rejecting both bids it received this month.

“We had some irregularities in both of the bids, and we’re uncomfortable going forward,” said Public Works Director Tim Eriksen, telling the council last week that his staff also needed to change its specifications for the projects, which are to install a replacement for Well No. 4, the city’s oldest on Lorraine Street, and putting in a new well on Brush Street that will be Well No. 9.

“We had a little bit of the burden, because one of the requirements was not thought out, so that’s something we should change, but we also had two errors on the part of the contractors,” said Eriksen, explaining that the irregularities on behalf of the contractors related to “how they drill the wells and how they perfect them.”

When Council member Kevin Doble asked what changes would be made to the specifications, Eriksen explained that staff had asked “for a guaranteed gallon per-minute rate in the pumping, which would be hard for them to guarantee if there’s no water. We will change that so it’s not an actual requirement.”

Doble also asked if the bidders were notified of the irregularities, and staff confirmed they had notified the companies of the problems.

The two bids received were submitted by Weeks Drilling and Pump Company of Sebastopol, with a bid of $725,040; and Norcal Pump and Well Drilling of Yuba City, with a bid of $1.084 million.

The council unanimously approved rejecting the bids. Eriksen said staff will likely have new bids to bring forward in February.

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Christmas, 2015

JUSTIN BLAKE, Calpella. Honey oil extraction, receiving stolen property, possession of controlled substance, paraphernalia and burglary tools, resisting, conspiracy.

ROMAN CHAVEZ, Ukiah. Court order violation, probation revocation.

DANIEL MONTALVO, Redwood Valley. Receiving stolen property, possession of burglary tools, conspiracy.

TIFFANY MOODY, Calpella. Honey oil extraction, receiving stolen property, possession of saps/similar weapons, controlled substance, paraphernalia, burglary tools and tear gas.

THERE ARE PEOPLE who think Obama is a liberal. Raids and deportations that would target hundreds of families who fled to the United States from Central America in 2015 are being planned by the Department of Homeland Security, The Washington Post reported. The operation will be handled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents next month and will reportedly be the largest nationwide effort to deport families who have fled violence in that region. The Post said that more than 100,000 families have made the journey in the past year. Adults and children whose removal has already been ordered by an immigration judge will allegedly be detained wherever they are found and immediately deported.

WILL THIS REALLY HAPPEN?

To the Editor:

After reading several articles on the implementation of Marijuana Regulation in Mendocino and California my initial impressions seem to have been spot on. The State of California’s interest is in the never ending quest for new sources of revenue from taxes and permit fees. With these new monies, they promise to fund things they have not adequately funded in the past (like roads and mental health) and likely have no intention to adequately fund in the future. The State has created a bureaucratic maze in which they think growers who currently operate with a cash only backpocket accounting system will understand and gladly embrace. The growers will need to pay substantial fees to legally establish their businesses as well as to transport their product. They will need formal payroll systems for their employees in order to deduct state, federal income taxes, and payroll taxes. They will also need to file state and federal income tax returns and carry insurance policies of many kinds. Does anyone really think this is going to happen if the growers have been successful operating as they have before? State Senator McGuire is introducing a bill that will establish a special 15% statewide retail sales tax on marijuana sold in dispensaries in addition to the current 8% sales tax. Does anyone really think with all of these business obligations, with extra taxes and fees piled on, there won’t be needed the same level of law enforcement activity to ensure compliance?

Again, I am not a user, not an advocate for using, and am not in the supply chain and have no desire to be. My motive is to reduce crime associated with marijuana as well as make our wild lands safe for loggers, hunters, hikers, and naturalists. I think that if marijuana is legalized, the street price will drop such that cartels, gangs and other nefarious characters will no longer see this business as “economic” thereby reducing crime and insecurity in our communities. There will certainly be an uptick in addiction related issues, but would we rather have more personal freedom with personal consequences or a tyrannical nanny state?

D.E. Johnson, Ukiah

FRED GARDNER WRITES:

Big feature in the NYT sports section today with some suggestions from Experienced Coaches on how to beat the Warriors...

But that's not the item, as Herb Caen used to say. In recent years, extremely ugly computer-generated art has replaced text in large swaths of the Paper of Record, often taking up half a page or more. The trend started when The Owners hired Consultants who advised the Top Editors that an Important Demographic was so accustomed to looking at computer screens that they wanted their newspaper to look like a computer screen, too. Also, it's much easier and cheaper to slap a graphic across the page than to assign, lay out, read, revise, correct, and proofread 60 column inches of text.

I decided to send the NYT's Warriors-can-be-beaten story to some hoops lovers of my acquaintance. When I found the link, I saw that the associated graphic — an army of defenders facing crude cartoon figures identified as Green, Curry and Thompson — is moving in a nausea-inducing back-and-forth pattern. Just when you think they can't make it any worse, they pick up the Ugly Stick and whomp away some more.

I try to struggle against Luddite Tendencies but...

* * *

Both obits are of people who died at 74. I can't afford to.

* * *

Termites emerged from a crack in the porch on Wednesday — some crawling, some flying, it's quite a lively entrance they make into the sunlight to start another cycle of cellulose destruction. That afternoon, when the inspector from Omega Pest Control came, he said the termites were a minor problem — compared to the dry rot. Come spring we're going to have to move all our stuff out of the basement. Madame is a hoarder and I have trouble getting rid of books because if I've read them I might want to refer to them, and if I haven't read them, how can I get rid of them? Plus three of the offspring are using the space for long-term storage.

* * *

2016 will be The Year of the House.

* * *

It says here the Cavs today by 9 and the Spurs to win the West. Also, Paul Ryan to head the Republican ticket, with Rubio as his VP. If I can get 300 to 1 from a London bookie maybe I can pay for the new porch.

* * *

So let's end this on a positive note: Porches are underappreciated. Lucky is the man who has a porch.

TINY HOMES A BAD IDEA

To the Editor:

“Tiny homes” for the homeless are an extremely bad idea. For $1 million a facility can be built that offers the comprehensive services people need.

These “tiny homes” will force people to have to go outside and into another building to use the bathroom, even when it’s in the low 20s and when it’s pouring rain outside. There also will not be room for personal items, for pet companions, and for families. And during the day people will still be forced to be out on the streets, which is what the people of Ukiah are trying to avoid.

It’s time to stop these crazy ideas and focus on building a facility that will offer the services people need. Ukiah once did have a facility like this. Sadly the administrators were clueless and ended up closing it. Now Ukiah has to start over again.

I’ve been homeless twice in my life. And I have worked in homeless and mental health services. The homeless community has it’s own culture and it’s own rules. It’s about basic survival. It can be difficult to understand.

It’s time for a common sense solution. It is not time to for “creative” solutions that are out of touch with the needs of the homeless. Maybe it’s time to allow those that are homeless and/or have been homeless to have the majority voice on the homeless services committee. Clearly those that have been “trying” to help have not been successful so far.

William French, San Francisco

WHY THE NFL SHOULD BE SCARED OF CHRIS BORLAND

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nVYJIJTxAw

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Here are some of the issues I agree with Trump: Trump is fine with affirmative action. Trump is fine with gay marriage. Trump supports assault rifle ban. Trump supports relations with communist Cuba. Trump says Black lives matter (Aug. 2015). Trump supports teaching citizenship and voting. Trump won’t go to circuses due to animal rights. Trump says TPP is a horrible deal; no one has read its 5,600 pages. (Nov 2015). Trump says government should do public works. Trump says don’t cut Medicare.

THE REBEL JESUS

All the streets are filled with laughter and light

And the music of the season

And the merchants' windows are all bright

With the faces of the children

And the families hurrying to their homes

As the sky darkens and freezes

They'll be gathering around the hearths and tales

Giving thanks for all god's graces

And the birth of the rebel jesus

 

Well they call him by the prince of peace

And they call him by the savior

And they pray to him upon the seas

And in every bold endeavor

As they fill his churches with their pride and gold

And their faith in him increases

But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in

From a temple to a robber's den

In the words of the rebel jesus

 

We guard our world with locks and guns

And we guard our fine possessions

And once a year when christmas comes

We give to our relations

And perhaps we give a little to the poor

If the generosity should seize us

But if any one of us should interfere

In the business of why they are poor

They get the same as the rebel jesus

 

But please forgive me if I seem

To take the tone of judgement

For I've no wish to come between

This day and your enjoyment

In this life of hardship and of earthly toil

We have need for anything that frees us

So I bid you pleasure

And I bid you cheer

From a heathen and a pagan

On the side of the rebel jesus.

— Jackson Browne

CALLING ALL DRUIDS

Join us on Sunday, December 27th, 3-6pm for our special Return of the Light Celebration

Come join us at the Mendocino Recreation Center, School and Pine Streets in Mendocino, from 3-6 pm. Candles will light the darkness at this Winter Solstice celebration and there will be a break for holiday snacks. Bring finger food to share if you can (anything with a toothpick stuck in it qualifies as finger food). Some dancers like to wear white under a black or dark over garment that they can fling off at the lighting of the candles to embody the rebirth of the light! but no dress-up is necessary and Gwen will bring extra white and black garments if you feel moved in the moment! There will be a wealth of dances, some very simple some beautifully layered and complex. Please tell your friends to come. Not dancing is totally fine. This is a very nice place to be to nurture and celebrate Community and the hope that comes with the lengthening days and a new year.

For further information, contact Devora at 937-1077 or drossman@mcn.org or Gwen at gwen@mcn.org or 964-2411.

No experience or partners necessary! All dances are taught before each dance.

Circle Dance groups are a grass roots phenomenon. There are hundreds of dance circles in The US, England, and throughout the world. The Mendocino group has been dancing every month for 15 years. As one dancer put it, “We are doing what people have been doing for millennia, on beaches, in forest glens, around campfires -- dancing together in circles to express their joy, their passion, their solidarity, their pain, their faith.” A small donation is requested to help with the room rent. For further information, contact Devora at 937-1077 or drossman@mcn.org or Gwen at gwen@mcn.org or 964-2411.

NOTHING SAYS CHRISTMAS LIKE GUNS:

"Gun sales are shooting through the roof this Christmas. Mass shootings are generally good for business for gun manufacturers, but this year, which featured 355 mass shootings in 336 days, was a veritable marketing bonanza for the gun industry. Even though there is no evidence to support the idea that armed citizens prevent mass shootings — and, in fact that the murder rate correlates strongly with higher levels of gun ownership — the fantasy of being a bad-ass who does a barrel roll and kicks the bad guy out with a direct shot to the head will not be quelled by reality…"

SOUND GRAMMAR

The Best Albums of 2015

by Jeffrey St. Clair

Kamasi Washington: The Epic (Brainfeeder) — LA tenor man Kamasi Washington’s daringly encyclopedic record, backed by a big band and choir, struck me with the same force that Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew did the first time I dropped the needle on that revolutionary album. The Epic isn’t just a sonic statement, it’s a funky manifesto, a three-hour long panorama of the ways in which jazz of the past, particularly the 1960s recordings of John Coltrane, shape the sounds of the Now.

Amir AlSaffar and Two Rivers Ensemble: Crisis (PI) — Amir AlSaffar is a Chicago-born trumpet player of dazzling talent, whose father is Iraqi. In 2002, with the neo-con invasion of Iraq looming, AlSaffar traveled to Baghdad to study the traditional maqam modal music of Iraq. Since then AlSaffar has been seamlessly integrating the microtonal structures of Iraqi maqam with post-bop jazz. The result, as heard on the deftly played Crisis, is lush, complex and hauntingly melodic. Myra Melford: Snowy Egret (Enja) — Keyboard virtuoso Myra Melford has done the impossible. She has transcribed the spirit of Eduardo Galeano’s Memories of Fire into a bluesy, intimate, convention-defying dreamscape. Probably the most original recording of the year.

Seasick Steve: Sonic Soul Surfer (Bronze Rat) — Sleazy surfer blues recorded in a living room somewhere in rural England on primitive equipment with a fleet of top-notch players sitting in, then dropping out, including Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Star. The music sounds as raw and bloody as if you were dancing on Steve’s porch while he sharpens his axe and slides down for the kill.

John Trudell and Bad Dog: Wazi’s Dream (Sobeit) — Released a few months before Trudell died, Wazi’s Dream may be the spoken word master’s most intense and visionary record since AKA Graffiti Man. Powered by the hard-driving blues of Bad Dog and Quiltman’s traditional chanting, Trudell digs deep into the nature of identity, love and the struggle for a meaningful existence on a wounded planet.

Kurt Vile: b’elieve i’m goin down (Matador) — Vile recorded much of this dazzling double-album out in the Mojave near Joshua Tree and the songs bear down on you with the austere sonic force of desert blues: dry, stony and a little mystical, as if he’d communed down in the rocks with the dusty spirits of Gram Parsons and Woody Guthrie.

Paris: Pistol Politics (Guerrilla Funk) — Don’t look for the groove-oriented emotional empathy of Kendrick Lamar’s much-accoladed To Pimp a Butterfly here. Paris, the political conscience of hip-hop, returns with this mammoth recording that unfurls with the urgency and immediacy of the streets in a kind of rap verité. An uncompromising, angry and surprisingly lyrical portrait of life-on-the-edge in post-Ferguson urban America.

Laurie Anderson: Heart of a Dog (Nonesuch) — Ostensibly the soundtrack to Anderson’s luminescent documentary about the death of her remarkable rat terrier Lolabelle. But this album stands on its own artistic merit, as an exquisite and emotionally condensed suite of songs about love, death and absence, with the spirit of Lou Reed floating behind every chord. Anderson’s most coherent and humane record.

Mbongwana Star: From Kinshasa (World Circuit) — Dense, enthralling, trippy and beautifully strange. This shape-shifting record by Congolese stalwarts Coco Ngambali and Theo Nsituvuidi is like hearing a new idiom of music being born, born fully-formed.

Protoje: Ancient Future (Overstand) — Protoje, a leader of the Conscious Reggae movement, provides nothing less than a kaleidoscopic history lesson on the last 50 years of Jamaican music, charged by deep grooves and politically militant lyrics.

(Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence (with JoAnn Wypijewski and Kevin Alexander Gray). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

21 AYN RAND CHRISTMAS CARDS

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/22/1353470/-21-Ayn-Rand-Christmas-Car