- The Don
- Self-Defense, Pard
- Three Strikes v. California
- The Nut Of The Prob
- Sandbags, Not Drama
- Oblivion
- Secular Oregon
- The End Is Near
THE DON
Dear Editor,
I get the sense that Mr. Trump would like to be called Don. Vote for Don Trump! It has a kind of ring to it.
Hillary, feel free to refer to him as Don. I think he'd appreciate your caring.
Sincerely,
Bill Bradd
Ten Mile
SELF-DEFENSE, PARD
Dear AVA,
Happy new year. I just thought I would let you know that my address has changed. I am here for short term housing until we find out if the Lassen County District Attorney's office is going to file charges against me for battering on staff. Self-defense, Pard. These two-bit correctional officers use mental and physical abuse against us every day. I could hand any correctional officer my dinner plate that I just washed in my sink and he would call me a punk. I don't have that coming. But it's all part of the mind control game behind these dungeon walls!
I witnessed two other inmates being assaulted and I acted in self-defense. Long story. I am here in Folsom with the Folsom blues because I have not received a paper recently and my subscription is up. I would appreciate it if America's last newspaper could extend my subscription for six months and send it here.
I always enjoy reading about my good friend Dorotheya Dorman, one of the last real hippies in Mendocino. I saw that chomo Tree Frog Johnson in High Desert prison. He is on B-yard. Now you know.
I wish you a blessed 2016 new year's harvest. My father passed away in October of 2015 on the Hearst Road.
Marc Hunter
Represa
PS. I look forward to any penpals who may be interested. (www.outlawsonline.com.) Females: do not respond please.
THREE STRIKES v. CALIFORNIA
Letter to the Editor:
What is this three strikes law really doing? It may prevent some crime but the cost of this "minority report" prevention is the bane of countless other people. The vast majority of the three strikes victims were not out on a rampage or crime spree and were not going to stop short of "suicide by cop." Most just made mistakes as youngsters and these stupid indiscretions were later used against them to take their lives. Sometimes decades after their first strike. There is never any consideration given to the countless other people who are affected in virtually every three strikes sentence. What about the striker's family? Their children? Now there are fatherless children growing up knowing that the government took their father away. In nearly every three strikes case a life sentence is not warranted. There is no justification for taking a man or woman's life short of that person committing murder or child molestation.
But taking a life for a theft? A simple assault? Drugs? Hopefully your kids never have to experience losing you. There's been some baby steps taken recently to correct this draconian assault on the citizens of California. But just barely. It mostly affects those with very minor third strikes like petty theft, possession, DUI, etc. The government can still go back as far as it takes to find any felonies that can be called strikes. Mine were from 1985, ten years before the law came into affect! I took a gun from someone so he wouldn't shoot me in the head and he had two friends with him so they called it three armed robberies, thus three strikes!
I know a guy, Tony M., who had a couple of burglaries back in the 1950s when he was a teenager. He got struck out when he was over 70 years old! That's what the people of California voted for? Someone's grandfather spending his last years in the California gulags? And he's just one of the thousands who should not be in prison. I haven't seen him in over 10 years but I hear he's still around, now in his 80s.
Most people wish for a long life. Do you think he does? Do you think I do? I got a 32 years to life sentence for a crime that has a four-year maximum. I've got 17+ years in. It must be impossible for the unsympathetic California citizen to imagine the psychological hell, horror and torture that being imprisoned invariably causes. The merciless suppression of human life has pushed countless three strikes hostages to such states of hopeless desperation and levels of frustration that suicide becomes a viable option and a seemingly rational solution.
And why not? The government has declared us as enemies of the state and then sentences us to "death by incarceration." So how long should someone who is "jailed to death" continue to be in collusion with their captors to keep this slave train rolling?
Prisons are big business and by far the biggest in California. People are just commodities to this state. The more people in prison, the more money the state gets. The CCPOA, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which is the most powerful union in this state, is busting its ass to keep everyone in prison. They are making way too much money to want to let anyone out, or to provide rehabilitation to anyone. The more people in prison, the safer their jobs are. Fuck us and fuck our families. As long as they are getting insanely overpaid as they are they would lock up every one of their friends and half of their families. The vast majority of California's budget goes towards their paychecks. It takes a certain sick kind of evil to raise your kids on this blood money earned from the misery of so many humans, from the crime victims to the three strikes victims and their families. But hey! This is the United States of America and when there's that much money being made anything can be justified.
Animosity? Yeah, I got it. And that can be justified as well.
The CDCR is California. It's the heart of this police state. It has one singular evil purpose: the imprisonment and enslavement of the "undesirables" for profit. The unholy alliance between the CCPOA and state legislators wants more prisons. More prisons, more profit.
Just a few years back there was a big scandal about the state taking money earmarked for seniors, the disabled and schools and rerouting it to the prison complex. Has everyone forgotten about that? Of course they have. Those poor prison guards need bigger paychecks and those old people are about to die anyway!
They use a handful of truly bad criminals, usually sexual predators, to smut all prisoners up. This political strategy is so obvious to anyone who takes the time or cares to look and it has sinister implications. The more they can falsely portray the average California prisoner as a psychotic sociopath and dangerous predator the easier to justify paying their security guards so damn much money. After all, they're walking "the toughest beat in the state." Yeah, right. Ask a CHP officer how he feels about that claim.
I'm not going to deny that the guards in California's level 4 prisons like the one I'm in have a sometimes dangerous job, but violence towards guards is relatively rare and almost always elicited by their treatment or disrespect of the offending prisoner. Of course, that's not always the case. In high stress prisons sometimes people snap. The state's false claim that the average California three striker is a bloodthirsty gang banger who will rape, rob and kill if they are ever let out is nothing short of political deceit used to secure the fear vote from the average uninformed taxpayer. How do you think they managed to justify an unwarranted expenditure of tax dollars for the prison guards, 37% pay increase between 2001 and 2006?
Thousands of so-called American citizens will continue to be railroaded off to spend the remainder of their lives bouncing endlessly between physical and emotional exile in the monotonous routine of prison life and the occasional fight for their lives. This mass incarceration is a crime of social genocide that creates generations of fatherless children. But hey! Having a father in their lives isn't really important, is it? That should tell you a lot about what the government feels about its citizens: fuck your kids! There is money to be made!
The moral and ethical implications will forever haunt the conscience of all who wrongly voted the three strikes law into effect. At least I hope it does! This law is an attack on the people of California disguised as a law to save them. But it does much more harm than good. All in the name of money. It's an act of treason waged against society's least able to defend itself from it. It is class war. Which way did you vote? Is there blood on your hands? Are you one of the people who voted to keep my son fatherless? Which way will you vote next time?
Eventually most three strikers will get out and most of them are mad as hell! What's going to happen then?
Your friendly, neighborhood Enemy of the State
Scott Pinkerton
Lancaster
PS. "We will fight for ever. Until the end releases us!" — Ian Stewart (RIP) www.betweenthebars.org/blogs/1347
THE NUT OF THE PROB
Editor,
Let’s for sake of discussion agree that the American political process is owned top to bottom, left to right, by private concentrations of wealth — including but not limited to corporations.
In that political system, what design goals are being served by Donald Trump and the handful of other Republican candidates with their overly simplistic rhetoric of contempt for democratic principles? Or even, for that matter, the pointless rhetoric of marginally acceptable “liberal” yet Wall Street friendly candidates such as Hillary Clinton?
What purpose is being serve by the breathless mainstream media coverage of ersatz “controversy” in lieu of real concerns for the problems of working Americans? Why is the political process and the mainstream devoted to focusing Americans’ attentions on everything except their own social and economic well being? Don’t count on the mainstream media to ask the questions, let alone provide the answers.
Riley VanDyke
San Francisco
SANDBAGS, NOT DRAMA
To the Editor:
With the media bombarding us with warnings about the looming El Nino storms and urging us to prepare for them I have a suggestion that might help. In past high water incidents, the County and certain business have made sand and bags available for free to help folks protect their property from flooding. Since the scientists are sure its going to happen, how about let’s get the sand and bags out now so there won’t be so much panic and drama as the last time. I happened to be going to Friedman’s the last time this was happening and I witnessed a near riot of frightened men, women, and children with shovels (weapons) almost coming to blows trying to fill their sandbags. Come on “powers that be,” let’s get ahead of this and skip the drama.
Hugh McAvoy
Ukiah
OBLIVION
Editor,
It would take a lot to get people out of their comfort zones and make a stand. The majority of the population goes through life fat, dumb, and happy thinking that all food comes from the store, the lights will always go on, and the government is taking care of them and looking out for their best interests. I have tried to make a stand but as one, without any financial reserve to bolster me up, all that happens is I wind up in handcuffs again. I was on a Smart Meter panel and voiced my concerns that, while I had no problem with EMFs or the accuracy of the meters, I had a problem with PG&E's pricing where the hourly KW hour rates meant that in a 24 hour period the cost would be the same, but with the convoluted chart they had, everyone's monthly bill would go up. I was not asked to return for the next meeting and the next week I came home and found a tech installing a smart meter at my house. After physically stopping him and getting a visit from a manager and two deputies I was allowed to sit quietly (while cuffed) until the installation was done. Of course when I asked the tech how many others he installed in this area, I find that I have the only smart meter in a 4 mile radius. It's been three years and they still have a reader come by every month. We won't even go into the blatant 4th Amendment violations we are subject to while flying commercial. Suffice it to say my name is on a list there too.
Lee Johnson
Livermore
SECULAR OREGON
Dear Editor;
Your on-line list of new Oregon laws was a very impressive list of liberal actions that other states including California should emulate. I would point out that Oregon is one of the more secular states and on Birth Control their action was affirmation of women's reproductive rights. Also, the expansion of school education classes to include gender identity topics was an affirmation of LGBTQ rights. As I commented Oregon is one of the more secular states and Christian Fundamentalism plays a much smaller role than in the Red States. It takes more of humanist approach to social problems rather than an inerrant biblical approach to social issues. What I see in Oregon is the same type of secularism as there is in Europe and their humanist approach to the welfare of their citizens.
In peace and love,
Jim Updegraff
Sacramento
THE END IS NEAR
To the Editor:
I have heard the remorse and desperation in the local farmers’ voice regarding the impending legalization of the Herb here in California as it must be so in 2016.
“Vote no! No! No” they cry!
They have seen visions of the miles of neat green rows racing off in each direction from Highway 5, the seas of green crop destined to drop the price of the almighty pound to something along the lines of organic asparagus.
It is not their sense of righteousness which forces the issue of this yell, it is the anticipation of the death-knell of their way of life, cashing in on the inconsistencies of laws between states and governments silenced at last by a reasonable piece of legislation.
I am reminded of the slave owners who went to war over losing their cash crop. They were not necessarily pro-slavery as an ideal; rather, capitalism created the necessity of free labor to continue their luxurious way of life, one founded on an illegal precept (slavery was, after all, unconstitutional). Just as the slaveholders damned the liberation of their “property,” the ganja farmer begs we keep it illegal, we keep the price, the profits, high. Even though they, more than any, know there is righteousness in this step — it is a necessity in our evolution to decriminalize something as mundane and a part, I believe, of our promised freedom to choose whether or not we care to light the spliff.
But be sure, life here will change in ways none of us can expect. Restaurants, clothing stores, and new cars will be a thing of the past and we will all have memories of a bygone era when people threw out stacks of clean $100s to buy, baby, buy.
This was our roaring ‘20s before the depression. This was our tech boom. And it was a beauty while it lasted. But soon, we now know, it will be a memory of central-American escapades for Christmas and construction companies that never actually built. Where will Mendocino county employ these new hordes of farmers and their families desperate to maintain the semblance of a standard of living they have enjoyed for 15 years? They will have to scrap and dig in and look for professions consistent with their job-skills and education — and what have those been? Thus the rest of the world has long toiled.
The party will soon be over though much is unknown to us all.
Happy 2016 and work that green thumb one last season. The ride is about to end.
Ben Gold
Ukiah
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