Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Mar 22, 2016

• Restraining Force
• Recommended Reading
• Spit Matters
• Piano Show
• Yesterday's Catch
• Trump's Path
• Psych Beds
• Donor Logos
• New Disposition
• Looming Crises
• Measure W
• Greenwashing Brown
• Whiskey River
• Postmodern Fog

REGARDING the old Psychiatric Health Facility, or Puff Unit, a lock-up place on Bush Street, Ukiah, where people could be held for, as I recall, 48 hours, a reader asks, "And why should anyone think the County would do a better job operating a PHF now than it did then? And if the purpose of the Sheriff's initiative is to build a PHF (and the other facilities he names in his little essay) why is that not mentioned in the initiative? Why not say build a building for mental health services as described in Exhibit A?"

BECAUSE THE SHERIFF'S PLAN is a plan in broad outline, and he's trying to keep costs down, and it's apparently offered on the safe assumption that the Supervisors will do absolutely nothing, give it time to work. It will be a minor miracle if it gets past the voters, but lots of people agree with Sheriff Allman — the problem of disturbed and/or helpless and/or globally incapacitated, untreated persons on the streets is a growing problem unlikely to be effectively addressed by our leadership.

ONE MAJOR PROBLEM with the old PHF was the Ukiah PD's weariness at being constantly summoned there to restore order. The incompetents running the place were unable to subdue the more volatile nuts and, I suspect, the very sight of certain psychiatrists caused the violence prone to immediately go off. (One episode saw the staff lock themselves in their offices while a large, young psycho raged up and down the hallway, threatening them with mayhem.)

I'M MOS DEF not saying here that mental health workers should be prepared to wrestle crazy people when they report for work, but psych units have been capably (and humanely) managed for years. The secret? Big guys. And big women to subdue the female 5150s. Experienced psych techs — the aforementioned large people — "wrap up" the nuts, hugging them to immobilization. Or long enough to slip them into less physically exhausting restraints.

ACCORDING to a retired Talmage Mental Health Technician there are seven steps to restraining a physically menacing or combative patient: 1. Grab mattress off nearest bed. 2. Turn mattress into vertical position. 3. Push nut into nearest corner with mattress and hold until nut calms down. 4. If necessary use a thick blanket either with or instead of mattress. 5. Apply neoprene restraint pancho (like those in current use at the jail). It covers nut's upper torso and arms. 6. Cinch pancho with velcro fasteners at waist and under crotch. 7. Get the nut, er, patient on the right meds.

THE PSYCH WARD at SF General, and the hospital's emergency room, both urban war zones, depend on the uniformed presence of mammoth Samoans. They are absolutely necessary and are frequently called upon to subdue mammoth Americans of all ethnicities. The libs just can't face the obvious fact that this country is off the rails, that force must often be exerted — not excessive force or assaultive force, simply restraining force.

RECOMMENDED READING: "A Resolute Man" by Annie Proulx in the March 21st issue of The New Yorker, the jolliest incest story you'll ever read. In the same issue, "The Go-Between — The Mexican actress who dazzled El Chapo" by Robert Draper, is an interesting account of the tripartite rendezvous of El Chapo, Sean Penn, and Kate del Castillo.

OVER the long, long years I've found The New Yorker contains really good stuff on an average of about every third edition. This week, even a long, silly piece, with pics, of China's new wave fashion designers, and an equivalently lengthy political thumbsucker about Bernie and Hillary, the innately boring politicians, couldn't deflate the pure delight provided by Ms. Proulx's story. (I hasten to add that I like Bernie, hope to be able to vote for him, but he's about as interesting as my sock drawer. Check that: My sock drawer can be pretty exciting. I keep a gun there and a half-pint of quality booze. The excitement would begin with the tandem appearance of weapon and hooch, not that that's likely. Hillary might be interesting if we got unedited film of her and Bill at home, which would undoubtedly be a profane version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

AS AN EARLY RISER, I snap on my radio to learn if the world made it through the night while I'd bagged my six or seven hours of shut-eye. The only station available in the Anderson Valley is Public Radio Mendocino County or KZYX. I don't reference the station here to slight it, but I only hear it a few minutes at a time, and almost always early in the morning, although yesterday a blip on afternoon NPR informed me that the Huffington Post is a left-wing newspaper! O well. In a world of misinformation what's one more?

IT TOOK ME MONTHS before I could distinguish between early morning yappers John Hockenberry and Thom Hartmann, their smug, glib-lib opinions being interchangeable, and unleavened by even so much as a hint of irony let alone wit. They're both boring and irritating as hell because they're so, so, so… predictable, blandly predictable. And they have zero to say outside the suffocating parameters of mainstream lab-lib. Their pretense is the call-in format, but neither one of them is interested in what their callers have to say, often cutting callers off one sentence in so they can string out their own platitudes.

BUT THIS MORNING, this Hartmann character managed to grab all of my interest when, dropping the name of some media big shot he was going to dinner with to solidify his own shaky cred as a media big shot himself, or at least that's how it sounded to me, Hartmann said he and Mr. Big had passed through about "thirty or so" street people, most of them black, among them a young couple, both of them black. (I think the scene was Washington, DC.) Hartmann said he suddenly heard a familiar noise from the American sidewalk sound track — the launching of the loogie or lunger, i.e., the expulsion of an accumulated gob of chest effluvia as it's hocked up and propelled outward. In this case it was the young black man who'd loogied in the general direction of Hartmann.

IT WAS ONLY when Hartmann and Mr. Big got to the restaurant, and Hartmann had hung up his jacket that he realized the guy had spit on him. Before he got to that startling fact, or after, Hartmann informed us that the jacket had cost him $180 at a certain named store but would have cost him $400 at another named store, solidifying my suspicion that he's the kind of feeb this stuff is important to. (These guys talk in an insanely excited, stream of consciousness rush leaving listeners to pick out meaning from all the burble-gush.)

"WELL," Hartmann concluded, "he's been spit on all his life so…" So it's fine with me that he spit on me because he's a victim of historical injustice and I'm a member of the race that did it.

HARTMANN'S BRAND of doormat liberalism is pretty much standard in lib circles any more and it's entirely false. And disgusting. Anybody of whatever ethnicity who spits on a total stranger should be confronted and, I would say, if the lunger vic can manage it, knocked straight on his racist ass. Which is what most of us would do regardless of race, religion or creed.

AT A MINIMUM, Hartmann, when he realized the punk had spit on him, should have gone back and engaged the young black gentleman in liberal dialogue, maybe invited him on to his program where the young man could explain why he feels free to lob lungers on white passersby. Maybe he and Hartmann could re-enact the episode for his listeners.

BREWER & REINHART IN AV

This Saturday, March 26 at the Anderson Valley Grange in Philo, pianists Spencer Brewer and Ed Reinhart will be 'Dancin' on the Ivories', sharing the stage performing their unique and broadly varied styles of music. From boogie-boogie to jazz, boot stomping blues to semi classical, these two brothers from a different mother will wow, swoon and bring a smile to the audience. Performance starts at 7:30, admission is $15 and tickets can at be purchased at the door. The Philo Grange is located at 9800 Hwy 128 in Philo. For more info call 895-2958.

Spencer & Ed are renown for their three productions of dueling pianos. Opening the Willits Theatre 25 years ago, they performed with a full cast in the 1860's, 'Please Don't Shoot the Piano Player' to a sold out run. Several years later they stared in Ukiah Players month long show of 'Dueling Pianos' set in a Chicago 1920's speakeasy to 16 sold out shows. The last series which they co-wrote and starred in was 'Drooling Pianos', set in a retirement home in the future where they battled out who was going to play at Woodstock's 50th Anniversary. This Saturday evening at The Grange will feature them trading stories, licks, songs and of course their wit. They both have been part of the highly successful "Professional Pianists' concert series for the last 24 years.

Ed Reinhart has been playing piano since the age of three. "But", he says, "I like to think I have improved considerably since then." Some of his stage names over the years have been "Rico Suave", "Bud Shake", "Earl Dixon" and many others. Ed is well-known to Mendocino County audiences for his solid left hand boogie-woogie rhythms. He has appeared many times at the Ukiah Professional Pianists' Concert Series, and has played in a wide variety of situations around the world, from ballet accompaniment to providing background for silent movies. Over the years, Ed has cashed in on his talent to travel to venues in Europe, South America, Mexico, Canada, and Thailand. He toured extensively throughout the western U.S. during as a honky-tonk player with a country rock band, and also claims the honor of having been the only piano player ever to tour as a member of The New Christie Minstrels.

He has been the front man for many boogie/R&B bands including the "Burning Sensations," the "Air Conditioners" ("because they're always playin' it cool"), and the "Suede Shoe Operators".

Spencer Brewer has been a composer-pianist-producer with 17 solo and duet albums to his credit. Brewer’s music has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Sex in the City, 30 Something, Home Alone 2, the 1988 thru the 2004 Olympic World games, and thousands of stations world-wide. He wrote the National YMCA theme song, the National Big Brothers/Big Sisters theme song, scored the award-winning films on racism, "The Color of Fear" and "Last Chance for Eden," “If These Halls Could Talk”, music for the feature film "Heartwood," and has honored twice as the Arts Champion of Mendocino County by the Mendocino County Arts Council.

As a local community promoter, Brewer has helped birth many successful local events/organizations such as Sundays in the Park, Acoustic Café, The Professional Pianists Concert, Redwood Valley Outdoor Environmental Center, Ukiah Educational Foundation, Music for Youth, Bandslam, Sunset at the Cellars, Happination and many others. He hosted the popular KZYX show 'The Wonderful World of Pianos' for several years and started The Ukiah Music Center that grew to be the largest music store in three counties. He is currently putting together the 25^th anniversary of Sundays in the Park for this summer's series.

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 21, 2016

JESUS ARIZMENDI, Eureka/Ukiah. Pot possession for sale.

MARK BURLEIGH, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

ANNE HASH, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license.

EDDY JONES II, Navarro. Failure to appear.

SYDNEY KUHN, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license.

TARA SHEPARD, Willits. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

SALVARDO SORIA, Fort Bragg. Domestic assault, drunk in public.

EARL WARD JR., Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

ASAHEL WEAVER JR., Willits. Failure to appear.

TRUMP’S CONTINUING PATH toward the 2016 GOP nomination has already confounded the pundits, political junkies and oft-quoted scholars. Before last week when he won big in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina, the Nation’s William Greider wrote, “The Democratic Party could find itself obliterated by this election" and offered "a sequence of events I find plausible.” He started with Trump getting the nomination, Bernie Sanders retiring “gracefully so he will not be labeled a spoiler,” and then Trump doing something not seen in a long time: taking hard-right and hard-left positions.

“Then, in the fall campaign, Trump changes his style and launches a ferocious and substantive assault on [Hillary] Clinton, with devastating effect. He does this essentially by taking over Sanders' economic agenda. He denounces HRC as a tool of wealthy plutocrats and speaks for working-class discontents, much as he has done in the primary season,” wrote Grieder. “Imagine a campaign that merges Bernie’s straight-talk values with traditional Republican values.”

Trump is already doing this. As he said after winning the Florida primary, his campaign started with two issues: trade and borders. The first, bad trade deals, is near and dear to progressives and labor activists, even if his statements are dated or incorrect; the second plays to the least tolerant right-wingers, xenophobes and white supremacists. But the larger point is there are many issues where Trump can posture and run to the left of Clinton or neutralize her — and Clinton, the likely nominee, is running a traditional campaign and can be blindsided.

To be sure, it’s not clear what Trump would do if elected, because so many of his “positions” are little more than sound bites. Still, here are six issues in which he is mixing progressive or liberal Republican stances amid his authoritarian outbursts. That strange brew means that for the first time in decades, Americans could be facing two candidates with progressive planks on many issues.

1. The Anti-Free Trader. On no other issue does Trump so closely parallel Sanders as he is when slamming trade deals and bragging that he, the great negotiator, would push American CEOs into keeping jobs here or bring them back. Last week, he singled out Carrier Air Conditioning, Ford and Eaton Corp. for moving manufacturing abroad. A week before, he boasted, “I’m going to get Apple to start making their computers and their iPhones on our land, not in China. How does it help us when they make it in China?”

Suffice it to say that Trump is to the left of Clinton on trade deals, at least when it comes to sound bites.

2. Cutting America’s Military Budget. That sounds out of sync coming from Trump, who has repeatedly said he wants to rebuild the military and never misses a chance to threaten ISIL. But according to reporters who have trailed him since last year, he has repeatedly called for cutting military spending by closing America’s overseas military bases. “Donald Trump could be the only presidential candidate talking sense about the American military’s budget. That should scare everyone,” wrote Matthew Gault in a detailed piece for Reuters. “As Trump has pointed out many times, Washington can build and maintain an amazing military arsenal for a fraction of what it’s paying now. He’s also right about one of the causes of the bloated budget: expensive prestige weapons systems.”

It’s hard to imagine that Trump will be the “peace candidate” in the campaign, as a liberal strategist told the Nation’s Greider. But closing overseas bases would be a hard break from both Republican and Democratic Party orthodoxy, including under Obama, where the Pentagon budget keeps rising and temporary cuts, like sequestration, are seen as creating unnecessary crises. Here, too, Trump’s positioning could track to the left of Clinton. And unlike Sanders, whose state has an F-35 fighter plane base, Trump has explicitly said that plane was a waste of money. “Like so many Trump plans, the specifics are hazy. But on this issue, he’s got the right idea,” wrote Gault.

3. Rejecting Big Money Political Corruption. You can expect Trump will go after Clinton as a corrupt insider cashing in on her connections, no matter how many millions he, as the nominee, would end up raising for Republicans for the fall or take from party coffers because presidential campaigns cost upward of $1 billion. Trump has the higher moral ground, compared to Clinton, who hasn’t even released the texts of her speeches to Wall Street banks or discussed returning speaking fees. As Trump touts, he’s been on the check-writing side of America's corrupt but legal system of financing candidates for decades.

Trump’s stance here echoes Sanders. It barely matters that Clinton has said she would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn decisions likeCitizens United, which created giant new legal loopholes for wealthy interests and individuals. Being the rich outsider forced to play along, not the political insider taking the checks, is in Trump's favor — pushing him to the left of Clinton.

4. Preserving Social Security and Medicare. As most progressives know, millions of baby boomers approaching their senior years are going to be relying on Social Security for most of their income and for Medicare as their health plan. Progressives also know that Social Security benefits could be cut by a fifth after 2030 because of that demographic bump, and have proposed raising payroll taxes to preserve benefits and increase them. Trump, unlike the other GOP candidates, wants to leave Social Security alone — saying a booming economy will fix the shortfall. While we have heard that before — Reagan’s fake rising tide lifting all boats — Trump's status quo stance is completely at odds with the modern GOP, which wants to up the age when one can start taking Social Security benefits, create new payment formulas, means-test recipients or flat-out privatize it.

Clinton said she wants to preserve Social Security and raise payments to people who need it most — such as widowers, who see cuts after a spouse dies, women and poor people who have historically been underpaid compared to white men. Sanders, in contrast, said benefits must be raised for everyone. Trump’s stance on this issue is far from ideal, but it’s outside the GOP’s mainstream. It’s neither constructive nor destructive, but that tends to neutralize the issue in a fall campaign with Clinton.

5. Lowering Seniors’ Prescription Drug Costs. Here’s another issue where Trump is saying he wants to do what Democrats like Obama, Clinton and Sanders have long called for, but which has been blocked by congressional Republicans. Trump wants the feds to negotiate buying in bulk from pharmaceutical companies, which has been explicitly prohibited by the GOP in past legislation. “We don’t do it. Why? Because of the drug companies,” Trump said in January before the New Hampshire primary. This is another issue where he is blurring the lines with Clinton and the Democrats.
6. Breaking Health Insurance Monopolies. Trump has also railed against the health insurance industry for preserving their state-by-state monopolies under Obamacare, saying neither Democrats nor Republicans made an effort to repeal a 1945 law that prevents Americans from buying cheaper policies in another state. “The insurance companies,” Trump said, “they’d rather have monopolies in each state than hundreds of companies going all over the place bidding… It’s so hard for me to make deals… I can’t get bids.”

We know that Trump has pledged to get rid of Obamacare and he hasn’t said much about its replacement other than it would involve consumers crossing state lines. But this is another area where Trump’s sound bites can superficially push him to the left of Clinton, who has made defending Obamacare part of her campaign and agenda if elected president.

An Authoritarian Strongman and Liberal Republican?

Democratic presidential candidates haven’t faced such a bizarre mix of left, right and center stances from a demagogue opponent in decades. Of course, it is impossible to know where Trump will land on many issues, should he be elected, because his posturing is all over the map. But that doesn’t mean that the angry and frustrated Americans propelling his candidacy — including many independents and people who haven’t voted before — won’t look at him, ignore his excesses and say, “He’s different. Why not give him a chance?”

As Grieder writes, “Lies, lies, lies. Yes, Donald Trump tells lot of lies himself, but they seem modest alongside the monstrous deceptions that Democrats and Republicans used to mislead the country… Year after year, political leaders and presidents of both parties essentially lied to the people about fundamental matters — war and peace, lost prosperity, and the bruising generation of lost jobs and declining wages.”

— Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

NO PSYCH BEDS FOR MENDO

http://www.calhospital.org/PsychBedData

CALIFORNIA POLITICIANS Could Be Forced to Wear NASCAR-Style Logos Identifying Their Donors

A well-funded signature campaign is underway for a ballot measure requiring state leaders to wear the names of their top donors.

by Paige Austin

If politics make for strange bedfellows, then so does political satire.

An idea long promoted by Dead Kennedys punker Jello Biafra and advocated by wrestler turned Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, has found an unlikely champion in the form of a wealthy San Diego Conservative.

If Jon Cox gets his way, California state legislators will don stickers or badges identifying their biggest political donors. Picture the state capitol overrun with NASCAR drivers. The idea isn’t so far-fetched. The politician’s dress code is part of a ballot initiative cleared for signature gathering. Bankrolled by Cox to the tune of $1 million, professional signature collectors are well on their way to getting on the ballot, Cox maintains.

The initiative needs signatures of support from 365,880 registered voters to get on the November ballot. Cox thinks it’s a shoe-in. He also thinks voters will love it.

“Who is going to vote against it, lobbyists? Lobbyists and fundraisers are the only ones who are going to vote against it,” Cox insists.

The proposed measure reads, “When providing testimony or participating in any vote of a State legislative committee or subcommittee, or any rollcall vote on the floor of the Senate or Assembly, every elected state officer shall display on his or her person the names of the persons who have made the ten highest cumulative contributions to the officer's controlled committee(s).”

For Cox, the measure is about getting corruption out of California government. Cox said he learned about corruption in politics as a kid watching his mother, a Chicago schoolteacher frequently brought to tears by an unqualified school principal appointed to the position by a city alderman.

“Corruption isn’t just stealing money,” said Cox. It’s when political influence dictates decisions instead of doing the right thing.”

An attorney who made his money in land development, Cox is also a self avowed political junky. He had hoped to get support for the measure from the two presidential candidates who don’t have special interest political action committees supporting their campaigns. However, neither the Donald Trump nor Bernie Sanders campaign has responded to him.

“I still vote. My wife wants to know why. I believe it’s my duty. I vote, but I don’t think my vote matters in Sacramento.”

Cox holds no illusions that the measure will remove big money influence from state politics, but he does think it will embarrass state leaders who allow donors to have undue influence on their decisions.

“The is not going to change anything, said Cox. “People who have criticized it by saying it wouldn’t make a difference are right, but that is not the point. The point is to ridicule an absurd system that on any planet or solar system would be considered the definition of corruption, but in California it is business as usual.

However, not everyone thinks Californians will even get the chance to make elected officials the butt of the joke.

Timothy Zick, a law professor at the College of William and Mary, told U.S. News and Report the measure likely runs afoul of the First Amendment protection against compulsory speech.

“Politicians do not shed their free speech rights when they take office,” said Zick. “Absent compelling justification, government cannot compel speakers to convey particular viewpoints or subject matters against their will.”

(Courtesy, Patch.com)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Those far away days when Dad had a job and few of us had any reasonable prospect of homelessness are not coming back. Fashionable leftists sneer, they claim the Reagan-esque white-picket fence vision of lawns and barking dogs and kids playing on bicycles never existed, that they’re a Hollywood delirium, at best a wishing for a time that never was. The problem is people like me and a multitude of others who were eye-witness to it. So prospective Winston Smiths in various ‘ology departments can dump all the records they want down the memory-hole, they can falsify history in the name of this or that racial or gender or social particularity, none of it changes what we lived. Sorry ‘ologists, I wipe my ass with your academic and civil service career aspirations. Moms weren’t miserable pill addicts, dads weren’t abusive drunks, they really did sweat at the same factories for thirty year stretches, they really did shut up and do their jobs and wash the car and put food on the table. And yeah, there really were some reasonably good men at the podium. Ike was no figment of the imagination, neither was Harry Truman, who looks much better in hindsight than he did at the time. Thanks to Mr Trump, the Republican Party is burning on the scrap heap of failed arrangements. And good bloody riddance. See, Trump, for all his crudities, is one of a very few politicians (Bernie is another) that at least pretend to call bullshit on the whole offshoring-globalization agenda that ruined the lives of tens of millions. And there’s this consideration — globalization isn’t an irreversible process, especially given that the underlying business and economic model doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it CAN’T work and there’s no Fed machination that can MAKE it work, and so like it or not, the world is on its way back. The question is, What awaits us? There will be a new disposition, those rosy days of prosperity were the product of circumstances as they were way back then. But those days are gone. Ike is dead and so are Mr and Mrs Cleaver.

THE USES OF DISORDER

by James Kunstler

Many thoughtful and patriotic citizens entering the Kubler-Ross free-fire zone of desperate bargaining with reality are at work attempting to chart an orderly course around the Godzilla-like figure of Trump looming outside the desecrated once-shining city of American democracy. I doubt there is such an orderly way through this political bad weather. When storms hit, things break up.

It can be argued endlessly whether times produce the man or vice versa, but except in the most schematic and wishful sense, is there any question that Donald Trump is unfit for the office he’s seeking? Personally, I am tortured by the question: why him? Why this vulgarian who can’t string together two sequentially coherent thoughts? Are there in this land of 320 million-plus people no other men or women with comfortable fortunes and better minds bold enough to take on the matrix of mafias running our affairs into the ground? Apparently not.

Then there is the question — only nascently theoretical at this point — of where such an orderly course of decision and action might lead this country. For Trump, it seems to be a restoration of the 1950s, when armies of “breadwinner” factory workers churned out cornucopias of Maytag washers and Zenith black-and-white televisions, and the less numerous Wogs of the outside world busied themselves with basket-weaving, and Atoms For Peace would make electric power “too cheap to meter,” and popular entertainment came in the chaste form of Dinah Shore urging the upward-aspiring masses to “see the USA in your Chevrolet!”

That was, of course, the time of Trump’s childhood (and my own), and if there is anything more certain than night following day, it is that America is not going back to that sunny moment. Trump and I are way past done growing up as human organisms and America is done growing as a techno-industrial political economy. People decline and die and are replaced by new people, and political economies wither and morph into sets of new activities and relations.

The forces of history want to take us to this new disposition of things, and just about everything on the American scene these days is a manifestation of resistance to that journey. The destination is a much re-scaled and down-scaled edition of daily life in a de-globalized economy, with far fewer luxuries and a greater demand for earnestness, purposeful work, generosity-of-spirit, and plain dealing. These are not qualities exhibited by Trump, who represents only the poorly-articulated and grandiose wish to “make America great again.”

The institutional collapse of the Republican Party is in full swing now thanks to Trump. By the way, it could easily be matched by an equally brutal collapse of the Democratic Party if the head of the FBI makes any criminal referrals in the matter of the Clinton Foundation’s entanglements in official State Department business via an email slime trail. It would be an awesome and wondrous event if the nation landed on November 8 with both parties in complete disarray and more than a couple of rump factions posting candidates with dubious legitimate credentials to stand for election. In over two hundred years we have not seen a national election postponed, or canceled.

I’ll repeat my assertion that professional observers on the political scene appear oblivious to the financial shit-storm gathering out-of-sight of land, and how it might affect electoral events at landfall. There’s a fair chance that six months from now, the USA may be in some kind economic emergency, with the banks either disabled or shuttered, and businesses unable to transact with one another, and the just-in-time supply lines to America’s Big Box merchandise depots badly interrupted, with the shelves bare. Americans at large, lost in the their cell phone app raptures and Kardashian masturbation fantasies have no idea how fragile the systems they depend on are.

America is going to learn something about the uses of disorder before this year is out. One of these is to compel the construction of a coherent consensus as to what is actually happening in the world, apart from our wishes and fantasies. That is, if we are not torn apart in the process of getting to that.

(To support Kunstler’s writing go to his Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler)

TOWN HALL MEETING IN MANCHESTER ON 4/10

The Charter Project of Mendocino County is hosting a series of nine Town Hall meetings around the county to introduce people to Charter Commission candidates for the June 7^th election, and also to canvass the public about what they would like to see in a county charter.

What is a charter, anyway? What does home rule mean to Mendocino County? Get the answers at one of these Town Hall meetings.

The third Town Hall meeting will be held on Sunday, April 10, 2016 at the Garcia Grange, 43970 Crispin Road in Manchester from 3pm to 6pm.

The Measure W question will be in the ballot in the June election, "Shall a Charter Commission be elected to propose a Mendocino County Charter?"

There will also be candidates running for the post of Charter Commissioner. You will be able to vote for 15 of them in June.

Meet 2 Charter Commission candidates:

David Sowder, Aquaponic farmer, has been living in Mendocino County since 2002 and has been active in fighting unlawful foreclosures. He believes the law regarding the recording of foreclosures by the County Recorder is flawed. Jed sees the county charter as an opportunity to correct that error and eliminate most fraudulent foreclosures.

We are delighted to feature famed Community Rights advocate Paul Cienfuegos, longtime activist and community organizer. In 1994, POCLAD helped Paul realize the insidious impact of corporate rule. In 1995, he co-founded Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, which began works to dismantle corporate political power. Paul now leads Democracy workshops and talks across the nation. He will speak about Community Rights and how the charter can secure our rights.

Free admission. Refreshments by donation. Raffle & silent auction fundraisers. Music to follow by the Casuals.

Help us pay for these 10 Town Hall meetings with your financial support.

All registered voters are welcome!

More information is available on our website: http://mendocinocountycharter.org. You can also take the opportunity to donate money online there.

We welcome all contributions of ideas for a county charter at our WindTunneling page: <http://join.windtunneling.com>. Create a login & password, and choose Project Code: MendoCountyCharter.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: THE GREENWASHING OF GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN

by Dan Bacher

I published the below article in November 2013 about the greenwashing of Jerry Brown, one of the worst governors for fish, water and the environment in California history. Since that time, Brown's environmental policies have only become worse as he aggressively pushes the California Water Fix to build the Delta Tunnels, promotes fracking, and supports water management operations that have brought winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species even closer to extinction.

The population of Delta smelt, an indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, has declined to a new record low population level, according to the spring 2016 surveys conducted by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). (www.dailykos.com/...)

The Delta smelt collapse is part of an overall ecosystem decline driven by water diversions by the federal and state water projects, The CDFW's 2015 Fall Midwater Trawl demonstrates that, since 1967, populations of striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7, 98.3, 99.9, 97.7, 98.5 and 93.7 percent, respectively, according to Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

His administration has been embroiled in a number of major scandals, including delaying the declaration of an emergency in the Porter Ranch Gas Blowout for many months while his sister, Kathleen, received a big salary as a board member of Sempra Energy, the company that owns SoCalGas. His appointees on the Coastal Commission recently fired the respected Executive Director, Charles Lester, under pressure from big developers and corporate interests.

Under Brown, the Department of Conservation has become known as a virtual subsidiary of the oil and gas industries as it has been mired in one scandal after another. The scandals range from Browns’ firing of the two top oil industry regulators in 2011 because they wouldn’t violate the Clean Water Drinking Act by expediting oil drilling permits, to the appointment of a Big Oil industry executive as district deputy for the Bakersfield in the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. (www.eastbayexpress.com/...)

Jerry Brown also oversaw the completion of so-called “marine protected areas” under the privately funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, overseen by a Big Oil lobbyist and other corporate interests, in December 2012. These faux “Yosemites of the Sea” fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling, fracking, pollution, corporate aquaculture and all human impacts on the ocean other than sustainable fishing and gathering.

The “marine protected” areas created under the process continue to violate the traditional fishing and harvesting rights of the Yurok Tribe and other North Coast Tribes and are based on false assumptions and terminally flawed “science.”

Unfortunately, in spite of all of these horrible policies and scandals, the mainstream media still provides fawning coverage of Brown’s cynical grandstanding about “climate change” and "green energy” at climate conferences and photo opportunities across the globe even though Brown continually promotes the agendas of Big Oil, corporate agribusiness and other Big Money interests here in California.

When the mainstream media and NGOs greenwash Brown’s abysmal environmental record, they not only provide a false narrative about his policies, but become complicit in his war on fish, rivers, the Delta, the oceans and the people of California. As far as I know, I’m the only journalist who has looked at Brown’s environmental policies as a whole, and not just specific areas of it such as the Delta Tunnels and fracking.

This article discusses two overt examples of NGOs and state officials greenwashing Brown’s terrible environmental record in 2012 and 2013:

* * *

The Greenwashing Of Governor Jerry Brown

Right Stuff’ award in 2013 preceded by ‘Ocean Champion’ award in 2012

by Dan Bacher

The Blue Green Alliance on October 17, 2013 greenwashed Governor Jerry Brown's terrible environmental record by giving Brown the "Right Stuff" award for his alleged "environmental leadership" just a month after he signed Senate Bill 4, Senator Fran Pavley's green light for fracking bill.

Faced with a protest of over 60 indigenous leaders, environmental advocates and labor activists, Brown decided to not show at the gala dinner at Le Parc Hotel in San Francisco that evening. (www.indybay.org/...)

Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, urged Brown to reject REDD+ carbon trading credits, which allow corporations to grab huge swaths of land in developing countries in order to keep polluting at home, endangering indigenous communities and the environment across the globe.

“Governor Brown is moving ahead with a policy that grabs land, clear- cuts forests, destroys biodiversity, abuses Mother Earth, pimps Father Sky and threatens the cultural survival of Indigenous Peoples,” said Goldtooth. “The policy privatizes the air we breath. Commodifies the clouds. Buys and sells the atmosphere. Corrupts the sacred.” (www.ienearth.org/...)

Michael Preston, from the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, spoke out against the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels and Shasta dam raise that will cause the extinction of Sacramento River winter-run chinook salmon and other fish species and destroy the Delta in order to divert water to corporate agribusiness, developers and oil companies.

However, this is not the first time that NGOs have greenwashed Brown's toxic environmental legacy. In a previous award ceremony for Brown in Sacramento hosted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in March 2012, there were no protesters gathered to greet Brown – and the press was barred from the event. And you can expect to see more greenwashing of Brown's war on salmon, the Delta, the ocean and the people of California by NGOs and other politicians.

No press allowed

On March 26, 2012, I received a media advisory from the Governor's Office stating that "Governor Edmund G. Brown will attend a reception commemorating Ocean Day this evening sponsored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium where he will receive the 2012 Ocean Champion Award." The event was held that evening at 6 p.m. at the Sutter Club in Sacramento.

However, the release noted, "This event is closed to the press."

The media advisory listed a representative of Environment California as the contact for more information about the Ocean Day that the reception was part of.

I found it interesting that the press was barred from this event. Could this because the media might ask some embarrassing questions about why Governor Jerry Brown was receiving the 2012 'Ocean Champion' award when he has committed himself to continuing many of the abysmal environmental polices of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger?

David Gurney, independent journalist and Co-Chair of the Ocean Protection Coalition, noted that the Governor and the sponsors of the event employed the first and perhaps easiest way to “manage the news” - simply to deny reporters access to information or an event. (noyonews.net/...)

“Members of the press were left to wonder why reporting was barred from an event which logically, the Governor would want proudly publicized. Since the free press was barred, one can only wonder if Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association, and chair of the MLPA Initiative for the South Coast, was on hand at the ‘Ocean Champion’ awards banquet ?” said Gurney.

Gurney said the sponsors of the event, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Julie Packard of the Packard Foundation, and other Resources Legacy Fund Foundation billionaires who funded the “Initiative,” were no doubt on hand in full force. “They did not want their quality time with the Governor impinged upon by the prying eyes of the press,” he noted.

“Our impoverished Governor, Jerry Brown, no doubt welcomed both the free seafood dinner, and the private funding of tens of millions of dollars that financed the outlaw public process, that claims to ‘save the ocean,’” Gurney quipped.

“The financiers of the Marine Life Protection Act ‘Initiative’ were celebrating the success of their experimental plan to both illegally privatize a governmental process, and appropriate about 14% of California’s offshore resources,” Gurney continued.

“It seems the main thing ‘protected’ by this corrupt version of ‘the Act,’ were the special interests who financed it. As such, the MLPA ‘Initiative’ should in reality be called: the marine life protection racket. Apparently, the bitter hypocrisy of super-rich ‘ocean guardians’ – eating a haute monde ‘sustainable seafood’ dinner in secrecy, to celebrate the faux conquistador of sustainable fishing communities – was totally lost on these corporate plutocrats,” Gurney concluded.

I agreed with Gurney about his criticism of the effort by the Governor's office and event sponsors to exclude the press from this event. This would have been a great chance for reporters to ask Brown about his policies on the oceans, Delta and other environmental issues.

Brown’s policies threaten salmon, rivers and oceans

In addition, I found it puzzling that Brown was bestowed the “Ocean Champion” award by NGOs when his administration has continued Schwarzenegger administration policies that threaten ocean, Delta and Central Valley fisheries.

Brown signed a couple of good bills for ocean fisheries, including a bill limiting the number of crab pots used by commercial fishermen and legislation banning the sale of shark fins in California. However, on the biggest and most controversial issues regarding our oceans, estuaries and freshwater resources, Brown has been firmly on the side of corporate interests that seek to privatize and exploit public trust resources.

First, the Governor presided over record water exports out of the Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, in 2011. The annual export total was 6,678,000 acre-feet of water in 2011, 208,000 acre-feet more than the previous record of 6,470,000 acre-feet set in 2005.

The total includes 4.003 million acre-feet through the Banks Pumping Plant of the State Water Project (SWP), 2.570 million acre-feet through the Jones Pumping Plant of the Central Valley Project (CVP), 69 thousand acre-feet through the Contra Costa Canal (CVP) and 37 thousand acre-feet through the North Bay Aqueduct (SWP).

Second, the Brown administration presided over a record fish kill in the Delta pumps in 2011 - and has continued to pursue policies that continue to drive winter run Chinook salmon, Delta smelt and other fish species towards the abyss of extinction. A record number of 8,989,639 native Sacramento splittail were "salvaged" in the Delta pumps in order to ship record amounts of water to corporate agribusiness, developers and oil companies in 2011. The annual splittail “salvage” number is 1,201,585 fish, according to the Bay Institute’s report, Collateral Damage,bay.org/...

The report emphasized that “Salvage numbers drastically underestimate the actual impact. Although the exact numbers are uncertain, it is clear that tens of millions of fish are killed each year, and only a small fraction of this is reflected in the salvage numbers that are reported.” One study of “pre-screen loss” estimated that as many as 19 of every 20 fish perished before being counted (Castillo, 2010).

This massive kill was just a fraction of fish, including Central Valley chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, threadfin shad, American shad, striped bass, largemouth bass and other species, massacred by the Delta pumps in recent years.

A California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) white paper report released in March 2013 reported, “Between 2000 and 2011, more than 130 million fish have been salvaged at the State and Federal Project water export facilities in the South Delta. Actual losses are far higher. For example, recent estimates indicate that 5-10 times more fish are lost than are salvaged, largely due to the high predation losses in and around water project facilities." (www.restorethedelta.org/...)

More recently, the DFW's Fall Midwater trawl survey revealed that the indices for Delta smelt (7), striped bass (23), threadfin shad (70), and American shad (135) were the second, second, third and second lowest, respectively, in the 46 years of the survey. The index for longfin smelt (36) was comparable to the very low indices of recent years.

"In other words, Delta smelt, striped bass, longfin smelt, American shad and threadfin shad populations in 2013 have plummeted 98.9, 99.6, 99.7, 89.1, 98.1 percent, respectively, from the average of the initial six years of the survey (1967-1972)," said Bill Jennings, Executive Director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. "The splittail index was not released but the 2012 September-October index was zero."

Third, the Governor has fast-tracked the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels to export more water to corporate agribusiness interests irrigating drainage impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. If built, this canal will likely result in the extinction of Central Valley steelhead, Sacramento River chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other imperiled fish species, as well as threaten salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.

For more information about Governor Brown’s abysmal environmental legacy, go to: www.dailykos.com/...

WHISKEY RIVER

Whiskey River take my mind,

Don't let her mem'ry torture me.

Whiskey River don't run dry,

You're all I've got, take care of me.

 

Whiskey River take my mind,

Don't let her mem'ry torture me.

Whiskey River don't run dry,

You're all I've got, take care of me.

 

I'm drowning in a whiskey river,

Bathing my mem'ried mind in the wetness of its soul.

Feeling the amber current flowin' from my mind.

And warm an empty heart you left so cold.

 

Whiskey River take my mind,

Don't let her mem'ry torture me.

Whiskey River don't run dry,

You're all I've got, take care of me.

[Instrumental]

I'm drowning in a whiskey river,

Bathing my mem'ried mind in the wetness of its soul.

Feeling the amber current flowin' from my mind.

And warm an empty heart you left so cold.

 

Whiskey River take my mind,

Don't let her mem'ry torture me.

Whiskey River don't run dry,

You're all I've got, take care of me.

— Johnny Bush

GREEN COMMUNISTS

After five days of camping in Maryland with a decades long green anarchist friend and his communist partner (including her cat), the temperature suddenly plunged 20 degrees with cold rain appearing during the cold snap. This necessitated my return to the district on Sunday, wherein I am now booked into travel hostels until the end of March. Will be meeting with a participant from Beyond Extreme Energy as soon as I change hostels tomorrow, and will also check in with Philippo who is maintaining the anti-nuclear vigil in front of the White House. The annual cherry blossom festival is upcoming, as the beautiful hues are now starting to emerge from the ancient cherry trees planted around the tidal basin, originally a peace gift from Japan. Meanwhile, my situation is the same: to remain mentally centered spiritually, thus allowing the Divine Absolute to work through me unobstructed. I have no other desire nor goal. Therefore, I mentally repeat the mahamantram "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare" continuously, letting what needs to happen, happen. When one finally and at last wakes up out of the postmodern fog, one stops being stupid and feeling the need to accommodate everybody else's ego in every possible existential societal situation, and therefore one is at last liberated, to just be oneself. Besides, it's fun promoting revolutionary ecology, world peace, and social justice.

Wishing all the brightest spring season,

Craig Louis Stehr

CraigStehr@inbox.com