Off the Record (Feb 17, 2016)

TIM STOEN, infamously, functioned as Jim Jones' legal fixit man at the late Peoples Temple, the only church in Christian history murdered, right down to its infants, by its pastor. Stoen, post-Jones, returned almost immediately to the scene of the horrendous crime he had a crucial role in committing. That scene, of course, is Mendocino County where Jones became so big so fast he moved on to San Francisco where, with the eager support of Frisco's liberal establishment, he became even bigger. And crazier.

I CAN UNDERSTAND a guy writing as a kind of cathartic download, but Stoen is not debriefing himself here, he's lying, making it seem as if he was simply a kind of unwitting bystander which, despite his best efforts, culminated in the Jonestown massacre. Stoen has now published an entirely faux atonement, sailing on at his day job as a prosecutor for Mendocino County where he's assigned to Ten Mile Court in Fort Bragg. Stoen's book tells us he's always been drawn to the prosecution to get bad guys off the street, but most "socialists" gravitate to the public defender's office, but the guy is all contradictions, all self-justification when he isn't portraying himself as downright heroic.

STOEN makes no sense, either as a personality or in his just-released book called, un-ironically, "Marked for Death — My War with Jim Jones, the Devil of Jonestown," as if he'd battled Jones for years, not beginning a few months before the kool-aid apocalypse. Stoen's war with Jones really didn't kick-off until the beast was cornered and bleeding in his Guyana bunker. If Stoen were on trial, if there'd been a kind of Nuremburg for all the Mendo and San Francisco big shots who helped Jones on his maniacal way, Stoen's book would hang all of them, with Stoen being first up on the gallows. Stoen was fatally belated to act on his self-alleged estrangement from Mendocino County's most spectacular tweeker, albeit a pharmaceutical one.

THE MASS MURDER Jones forced on his church was set in motion by Stoen's attempt to recover his son, although the boy's paternity has always been in dispute because Stoen famously signed a letter authorizing Jones, "the most compassionate, honest and courageous human being the world contains" to "sire" a child by his wife, Grace. Years later, and just before the child was among the murdered at Jonestown, Stoen conceded, "I signed it, and I was a fool. Not only was I a fool, it was an immoral thing to do and it was a sinful thing to do." The guy sounds like he's talking to himself as if he's at last realizing just how crazy he is himself.

"MY WAR" begins with a Peoples Temple-like forward by Giselle Fernandez, "a five-time Emmy award-winning journalist." Ms. Fernandez's warm-up act concludes, "When I think of Tim, I think of that beautiful song, 'Starry Night' by Don McClean, about painter Vincent Van Gogh. There's that line at the end that speaks of such purity it breaks your heart. McClean sings, 'I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you."

STOEN PROCEEDS to recount his life with the People’s Temple as if he had no idea that Jones was a maniac. But many people dropped out of the "church" when, as Stoen tells us, they understand they're in Cult Land. Many others attend one service and flee. Ukiah-area people will remember Jones' goon squad that showed up at the front door of people who'd left his hot box of a Redwood Valley church. Jones' Mendo critics were similarly harassed. And when locals saw armed men on a forty-foot gun tower Jones had erected in Redwood Valley to fight off imaginary Klansmen, most people realized something weird was up. Stoen tells us his own mother warned him that the Temple was not a wholesome enterprise, that Jones was not the break through pastor Stoen believed he was. And mom had only seen Jones at Stoen's wedding where, presumably, Jones would have appeared more or less normal. Stoen should have listened to Mom.

OK, OK. Nobody's perfect (sic). Any person who's party to horror on the scale of Jonestown would have to reconcile himself to it to go on living, but in Stoen's book the author absolves himself of all responsibility, basically telling us that his heart was pure but this doggone Jones guy was simply too crafty for the Stanford lawyer, too beguiling, and even if the reverend did shady stuff all the way back to Redwood Valley he did a lot of good, too. Stoen portrays himself as merely one more victim of the malevolent pill popper.

(AL KUBANIS, a Trumpian Ukiah lawyer, makes a cameo appearance in Marked For Death. Kubanis provides Stoen with some excellent post mortem advice, advising Stoen when Stoen reappears in Ukiah a couple of years after the Temple's jungle immolation, that he should change his name, disappear and try to make a new life for himself somewhere else.)

I THOUGHT it was very brave of Stoen to resume life in Mendocino County and several times defended the guy when I thought he'd been unfairly attacked; after all he did lose his son to Jones and of course he had to go on living with his role in these ghastly events. But if I'd read this false book, I have to say I would have joined Kubanis in wishing the guy had simply disappeared, gone away to atone by himself.

"MARKED FOR DEATH," a title that implies the entire sad show was Stoen's personal trial, is replete with "brilliant" attorneys, "famous" political figures, "gutsy" judges, "stunning women," and so on to where you ask yourself, Are we still in Mendocino County, Toto? (The Temple women I knew were Madam Defarge types — utterly devoid of all irony, haggard, merciless, the Frisco politicians mostly straight-up crooks, the judges and lawyers undistinguished by an real standard.)

IT WAS LOVE at first sight with Stoen when Stoen meets Jones in the County Courthouse: "Although he did not propose policies, he faithfully attended the meetings. He was warm-hearted. He listened to others. He showed concern for poor people. He did not put on airs. He could tell a joke."

IN 1972, JONES rented the Ukiah Theater for a special showing of "Marjoe," the fake faith healer: "Jones' recommendation of that movie fortified my belief that his healings were genuine," Stoen writes. Marjoe couldn't make the blind see but Jones could.

FOR THE UNLETTERED people (mostly black) that Jones and his all-white inner circle exploited unto their mass death, it's one thing to be hoodwinked by faith healings, but a lawyer supposedly trained in skepticism?

MAYBE I'm being too hard on Tim Stoen. You read his book and tell me what you think. But I think what we've got here is a glib series of self-absolutions in book form for the crucial help Stoen gave a madman in the mass murder of more than 900 people, and the psychological murder of thousands more who lost whole families to the People's Temple. Mendocino County's famous tolerance for aberrant behavior has struck again.

 

ANY OLD BODY can see for himself the gradual chipping away at California's magnificent and allegedly protected ocean vistas. The kind of vulgarians who think they're entitled to build their ten thousand square foot second and third homes along the Pacific have successfully removed one of the good guys on the 12-person Coastal Commission, Charles Lester. A huge crowd of Lester supporters, organized by such dependable defenders of the shoreline as the Surfriders, turned out to support Lester at last week's Morro Bay meeting of Commission, but Lester, in closed session (of course), was given the boot.

THE MOVE to oust Lester was largely the work of Steve Kinsey, a Marin County supervisor who refuses to say why he wanted Lester out, although it's clears from Kinsey's stands as a supervisor he's a ten thousand square foot kinda guy. The Northcoast's State Senator Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Jim Wood supported Lester, as did Congressman Huffman. Governor Brown was silent.

PABLO BARRETO-CRUZ, a Mexican national, has been sentenced to five years, three months in federal prison plus a fine of $23,000 in restitution for growing marijuana on public land. Barreto-Cruz had some 3,000 pot plants under cultivation in the Mendocino National Forest from March to May of last year. Rangers said the garden caused serious damage to habitat and water quality, as Barreto-Cruz laid on the chemicals and diverted about 18,000 gallons of water a day from streams in the area.

BEAR DAMAGE? Mendo Forestry Advisor Greg Giusti posted the annual aerial forest survey this week, commenting that for the first time in a long-time it is possible to see bear damage from the air extending into Mendocino County. Giusti added, “The drought, as expected, has slowed the spread of Sudden Oak Death over most of the region. Ponderosa pines continue to suffer the wrath of the drought. I’m sure this will continue for some time regardless of the outcome of this year’s winter storms.”

A UKIAH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER has been arrested and charged with selling oxycodone, the increasingly prevalent soporific. Jared Wade Candelaria, 30, was arrested at his home in Cloverdale on a presumption that he was not only pill-peddling, the third grade teacher also possessed enough marijuana to convince the Cloverdale police he was selling pot, too, presumably not to 8-year-olds.

A READER WONDERS. "When did the board of supervisors become governmental therapists? When did it become their Tuesday job to listen to a litany of personal stories and whiney, temperamental brats? I thought ideas were supposed to be discussed, non-personal actual ideas. Can I go to the board next week and complain that I got a bad haircut?" (The provocation was the Supe's irresolute hearing on the recent turmoil at the Ukiah Animal Shelter.)

DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but we're feeling Pot Regulation Fatigue. All this marijuana reg discussion in the context of the federal trump card seems futile. The wackiest discussion we're seen occurred recently among the Clearlake City Council.

CLEARLAKE? Is there an entirely sober person over the age of ten anywhere within those city limits? Or anyone outside, perhaps — a big perhaps — outside the police department who would pay the slightest attention to local pot regs even if adopted?

FROM WHAT WE CAN GATHER, Clearlake has, however, passed a medical marijuana ordinance that would ban commercial cultivation altogether (har de har), place a six-plant limit on properties of any size, install an annual permitting system, and would ban "growing in scenic and beautification corridors, near water bodies, or close to parks, schools and daycare centers."

ALSO JUMPING ONTO pot regulation's hamster wheel is Mike "Mikey" McGuire, State Senator from Healdsburg. Li'l Mike has introduced a bill "to tax medical marijuana as its sold at 15% and claims his Marijuana Value Tax Act is expected to bring the state as much as $100 million dollars in new revenue."

WHICH IS PURE FANTASY but got Mikey some ink from his stenographers at places like the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, perhaps the most credulous publication in California. If the scrappy second baseman's new proposal magically becomes law, some of the revenue would create the “Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation.”

THING IS, if the millions of twenty year olds with bad backs face a big price increase in their medicine they will continue buying it where they've always bought it — their long-time dealers. Legalization in Colorado has seen no diminution in illegal pot sales because illegal remains cheaper than legal, and it will always be thus because illegal is tax free.

BESIDES WHICH, as we never tire of pointing out, illegal marijuana makes the Northcoast economy go round. It employs lots of badged people hunting it down who take off just enough every year to keep prices up, and lots more people growing and distributing it.

THE 2015 grape harvest was down about 25% from 2014. According to the USDA Mendocino, Lake, Napa, and Sonoma counties gathered 400,174 tons of grapes last fall. But while the yield was down, the prices were up. Napa County grapes went for an average of $4,329 per ton, Sonoma County $2,441 a ton, Lake County $1,600 with Mendo averaging $1,515 a ton. Pinot goes for almost $3,000 a ton in Mendo. (By comparison, a vegetable farmer is lucky to get $100 a ton for commercial tomatoes.)

THE LOCAL ANGLE: Marin's supervisors have rejected adoption of Laura's Law on a 4-1 vote. If applied, Laura's Law mandates court-ordered outpatient treatment for the mentally ill who otherwise refuse treatment. The Marin No Vote was recommended by Dr. Grant Colfax, home-schooled in Boonville, a Harvard graduate and presently Marin's health and human services director. According to a column in the San Rafael Independent Journal by Dick Spotswood, Colfax, eldest son of former 5th District supervisor, David Colfax, advised the four Marin supes that implementation of the law would only help "five to 14 individuals."

A DOZEN FAMILY MEMBERS of mentally ill Marinites disagreed. Spotswood agreed, writing, "that common sense and a walk around downtown San Rafael show there are easily 100 mentally challenged Marinites unable to realize they need treatment. As a mother of a homeless youth told the supervisors, 'If you saw a person with dementia walking in the middle of traffic, you'd stop them and take them to a facility for treatment'."

MARIN DOES BOAST the Helen Vine Center, a facility designed to rehab drop-fall drunks. Police can take persons paralyzed by drink directly to Helen Vine where they dry out and have the opportunity to rehab. Of course drunks aren't crazy, merely one more public nuisance these days. The worrying street people are the insane among them and the criminals also prominent in the street mix. There's no place for the mentally ill homeless other than jail most places, and jails are not staffed to help the insane regain themselves.

HEY! IT’S ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE A METAPHOR! On February 9, 2016 at about 3:00 PM, Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputies were advised of an [unidentified] victim located at the Laytonville Fire Department that was suffering from a gunshot wound. Upon arrival Deputies learned, a 28-year-old adult male had been cutting wood in a wooded area on Cahto Peak Road when he had accidentally shot himself in the foot with a 12-gauge shotgun. While cutting wood the adult male had removed a shotgun from his vehicle. After finishing the task of cutting wood he started to place the shotgun back into his vehicle, at which time the shotgun accidently fired resulting in pellets impacting his left foot. The adult male was transported to the Laytonville Fire Department by family members and was subsequently transferred to Frank Howard Memorial Hospital by ground ambulance. The adult male was treated for the injuries to his foot and later discharged from the hospital. (Sheriff’s Press Release)

MICHAEL MOORE'S LATEST, Where To Invade Next, takes us to European countries and Tunisia to demonstrate deficiencies in fundamental areas of American life — education; labor policies; children's food; gender relations; crime strategies. Lots of places do it better, as most super-informed, cool-o ava readers know. The rightwing, of course, will view the film as "America bashing," not that it is and not that Moore doesn't conclude by pointing out, for two examples, that the labor reforms much of the world enjoys, or at least pays lip service to, were hard-won first here in the United States, as was free higher education via state colleges and universities. The weakness of the movie is that Europe is not as rosy as Moore paints it, with huge financial dilemmas and, now, an ugly, and often violent, reaction to the thousands of Arab immigrants trying to find peace and safety in Europe who have been forced from their homes by endless civil war. I got the feeling much of the filming occurred before the immigration crisis.

WE LEARN a few things even a muy sophistico guy like me didn't know, such as the only bank in Iceland that didn't go broke in 2008 was a bank owned by women. "We didn't invest in anything we didn't understand." I did know that in the aftermath of Iceland's collapse a special prosecutor, assisted by an American, put Iceland's most egregious financial criminals in prison. Our crooks got big bonuses and jobs advising Obama.

THE MOST STRIKING segment in the film for me was lunch time at a French public school where elementary students enjoyed a healthy four-course, sit down meal served by cafeteria workers on real china, a meal that we'd pay $60 or $70 for in a high end restaurant, and this was a working class school that could have been Boonville if we didn't know we were in France. French children, at an early age, learn how to eat well and master some table manners in the process. The school chef, shown photos of a typical American school menu, seems stunned, then says, "This isn't food."

AN AMERICAN WORKER suddenly enjoying the wages and general standard of living of an Italian or German worker would think he'd been re-born in paradise. American prisoners will be staggered to learn that Norwegian prisoners, even in the max facilities, keep the keys to their own cells. And Finn schools are the best in the world largely because private schools are outlawed. The rich, therefore, go to school with everyone else, and the rich, even the educationally handicapped ones like Trump, don't tolerate bad schools for their children. This film ought to be required viewing, especially by wage workers and, as they grandly call themselves these days, American "educators."

BOOKING LOG PROBS: SHERIFF ALLMAN EXPLAINS:

"We have spent a considerable amount of time trying to get the booking log up but the problem is with our record management system administrator. This is the vendor, and not any Sheriff’s Office personnel. I have a huge amount of trust in our computer guys, and they have assured me that the problem is not with our system, but rather our vendor. I certainly hope that we can take care of it next week (early). Fyi, there are no other agencies locally who offer this service so when it goes down, we are the only ones complaining.

PS. Update: Sorry to report that even though we spent more time on this today (Saturday), the problem is not solved. Hope to have better results soon.

PPS. As for the animal shelter, if the Board of Supervisors has the desire to approach me and discuss it, my door is always open. I have taken the day to day responsibility of Emergency Services and Animal Control, however at budget time, the budgets that these departments had rarely make it to our budget. I'm not complaining, I am simply predicting the future, if the shelter is given to the Sheriff’s Office. I certainly appreciate the research you are putting into the animal shelter and mental health. Welcome to my world.

UNSETTLED TIMES, HIGH AND LOW. At the low end, we fielded several breathless messages the other day telling us a dead baby, probably murdered, had been found in Ukiah. (A breathless message, incidentally, is an excited voice on the telephone. In print, a breathless message is heavy on caps and exclamation points.)

THE UKIAH PD soon announced that they'd searched the area of Brush and Orr with a police dog and found nothing but dead trash and faint memories of the Buddy Eller Center. The whole show turned out to be based on the vaguest of vague rumors that may or may not have begun with a homeless person.

THE HUFF has teamed up with 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben and a bunch of enviros to introduce the “Keep It In the Ground Bill." Sixteen other Congresspeople have signed on, but our very own rep, Congressman Jared Huffman, wrote the thing. McKibben put it this way: "The legislation would prohibit new leases for coal, oil and gas on all federal lands and waters, halting new leases for offshore drilling in the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico and permanently protecting the Arctic and Atlantic coasts.

"ANYONE who does the math of climate change knows we need to keep most fossil fuel underground,” said McKibben. “Public lands—as multiple presidential candidates have pointed out—are the logical place to start, and this is even more obvious in the wake of the Supreme Court stay on the president's Clean Power Plan. In a record hot world, let's hope Congress acts on this at record speed; we will do all we can to make it happen."