Mendocino County Today: Sunday, June 5, 2016

• U Vote
• Hawaiian Homeless
• Mailer/Ali
• Big Lion
• Ali Reverberations
• Bassler Story
• Mendocino Deadwood
• Prop Documentary
• Photo Essays
• Yesterday's Catch
• Tight Pants
• Weed Tax
• Medical Marinara
• Profiteers
• Pets!
• Prop 14
• Steinberg Questions
• Library Events
• Marco Radio

FORT BRAGG'S MEASURE U is probably going to be close. If you came in late, real late, a non-profit octopus called Hospitality House managed to steer a very large (by Mendo standards) hunk of public money to the purchase of an old landmark hotel in the middle of Fort Bragg called the Old Coast Hotel. Hospitality House, you see, can better serve the "homeless" from offices with ocean views. But Hospitality House, like every other grifter-op in the non-profit game, defines drug addicts, drop-fall drunks and petty criminals as "the homeless." If Old Coast were designated as respite for, say, single women with children, few people would complain. But dope heads, career drunks and free range scammers are not widows and orphans.

THE OPPOSITION to Measure U positively reeks of self-interest and jaw-dropping hypocrisy. To hear them tell it, Hospitality House is staffed by seaside Mother Theresas bathing the lepers, rather than highly compensated helping professionals. Get between a helping pro and a non-profit dollar and you'll instantly discover the depth of their idealism. Contrary to the straight-up lies of opponents that U is a generalized attack on non-profits, it isn't. The existing downtown nonprofits are grandfathered in. They would not be closed. Passage of Measure U would go a long way to rolling back the murky Old Coast Hotel deal, and go even further toward an honest discussion of an effective homeless strategy in Fort Bragg and other areas of Mendocino County where the "homeless" now occupy something like 80 percent of on-duty police time.

TUESDAY'S ELECTION seems to find eight registered voters living at 101 N Franklin Street. 186 signatures against U appeared in the Advocate News, but of those 186 only 64 are registered to vote in Fort Bragg. The anti-U forces have 106 "likes" on their Facebook page, and out of those 106 only 42 are registered in Fort Bragg.

HOSPITALITY HOUSE never has explained how a gardening project consisting of five (5) planter boxes of lettuce has cost over $50,000 for 10 months of alleged gardening.

AN ELECTION in a small town like Fort Bragg is easy to rig, esp with absentee ballots which a lot of people get nowadays. But I sense that the other side hasn't worked all that hard on voting it down, hard enough, but Fort Bragg's majority population seems to see clearly what's really involved, and depend on blue collar people to generally see things with the kind of clarity libs are unable to through the PC clutter of their lockstep minds.

A READER WRITES:

If FB didn't have HH, the homeless, i.e., drunks and dope heads, there would be no homeless in FB. Hawaii has the right idea, but don't expect SF to follow.

“Aloha and Welcome to Paradise. Unless You’re Homeless.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/us/hawaii-homeless-criminal-law-sitting-ban.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

THE FIGHT (An Excerpt)

by Norman Mailer, 1975

Kinshasa, Zaire — N'golo was a Congolese word for force, for vital force. Equally could it be applied to ego, status, strength or libido.

Indubitably did Ali feel deprived of his rightful share. For ten years, the press had been cheating Ali of n'golo. No matter if he had as much as anyone in America, he wanted more. It is not the n'golo you have, but the n'golo you are denied that excites the harshest hysterias of the soul. So he would not want to lose this fight. If he did, they would write up the epitaphs for his career, and the dead have no n'golo. The dead are dying of thirst — so goes an old African saying. The dead cannot dwell in the n'golo that arrives with the first swallow of palm wine, whisky, or beer.

Ali's relations with the press were now nonstop. Never did a fighter seem to have so much respect for the magical power of the written word. His villa with the High Schlock furniture was open to many a reporter, and in the afternoons at Nsele after training was over for both men, Foreman would ride back to the InterContinental Hotel and Ali would lie about in his living room, legs extended from a low armchair, his valuable arms folded on his chest, and answer more questions from the reporters sitting with him, his iron endurance for conversation never in question.

He ran a marathon every day with his tongue, strong, sure and never stumbling over anyone else's thought. If a question were asked for which he had no reply, he would not hear it. Majestic was the snobbery of his ear.

He was, of course, friendly to Black correspondents — indeed, interviewing Muhammad was often their apprenticeship. With no other famous Black man were they likely to receive as much courtesy: Ali answered questions in full. He answered them to microphones for future radio programs and to microphones for reporters with tape recorders, he slowed up his speech for journalists taking notes, and was relaxed if one did not take a note. He was weaving a mighty bag of burlap large enough to cover the earth. When it was finished he would put the world in that bag and tote it on his shoulder.

So in the easy hours of the afternoon that followed his knockout in training by Roy Williams, he returned to his favorite scenario and described in detail how he would vanquish Foreman. “Just another gym workout,” he said. “The fight will be easy. This man does not want to take a head whipping like Frazier just to beat you. He's not as tough as Frazier. He's soft and spoiled.”

A young Black named Sam Clark working for BAN (Black Audio Network), which offered Black news to Black-oriented stations, now asked a good question.

“If you were to advise Foreman how to fight you, what would you tell him?”

“If I,” said Ali, “give the enemy some of my knowledge, then maybe he'll have sense to lay back and wait. Of course I will even convert that to my advantage. I'm versatile. All the same, the Mummy's best bet is to stand in the center of the ring and wait for me to come in.” With hardly a pause, he added, “Did you hear that death music he plays? He is a mummy. And,” said Ali chuckling, “I'm going to be the Mummy's Curse!”

Topics went by. He spoke of Africans learning the technology of the world. “Usually you feel safer if you see a white face flying a plane,” he said. “It just seems like a white man should fix the jet engine. Yet here they are all Black. That impressed me very much,” he said. Of course when he was most sincere, so could he mean it least. In a similar conversation with friends, he had winked and added, “I never believe the bullshit that the pilots is all Black. I keep looking for the secret closet where they hide the white man until the trouble starts.” He winked, as if this remark need have no more validity than the previous one.

“Are you going to try to hit Foreman's cut?” asked another Black reporter. “I'm going to hit around the cut,” answered Ali. “I'm going to beat him good,” he said out of the bottomless funds of his indignation, “and I want the credit for winning. I don't want to give it to the cut.” He made a point of saying, “After I win, they talk about me fighting for ten million dollars.”

“If they do, will you still retire?”

“I don't know. I'm going home with no more than $1.3 million. Half of the $5 million goes to the Government, then half a million for expenses and one-third to my manager. I'm left with $1.3 million. That ain't no money. You give me a hundred million today, I'll be broke tomorrow. We got a hospital we're working on, a Black hospital being built in Chicago, costs $50 million. My money goes into causes. If I win this fight, I'll be traveling everywhere.”

Now the separate conversations had come together into one and he talked with the same muscular love of rhetoric that a politician has when he is giving his campaign speech and knows it is a good one. So Ali was at last in full oration.

“If I win,” said Ali, “I'm going to be the Black Kissinger. It's full of glory, but it's tiresome. Every time I visit a place, I got to go by the schools, by the old folks home. I'm not just a fighter, I'm a world figure to these people” — it was as if he had to keep saying it the way Foreman had to hit a heavy bag, as if the sinews of his will would steel by the force of this oral conditioning. The question was forever growing. Was he still a kid from Louisville talking, talking, through the afternoon, and for all anyone knew through the night, talking through the ungovernable anxiety of a youth seized by history to enter the dynamos of history? Or was he in full process of becoming that most unique phenomenon, a twentieth century prophet, and so the anger and the fear of his voice was that he could not teach, could not convince, could not convince? Had any of the reporters made a face when he spoke of himself as the Black Kissinger? Now, as if to forestall derision, he clowned. “When you visit all these folks in all these strange lands, you got to eat. That's not so easy. In America they offer you a drink. A fighter can turn down a drink. Here, you got to eat. They're hurt if you don't eat. It's an honor to be loved by so many people, but it's hell, man.”

He could not, however, stay away from his mission. “Nobody is ready to know what I'm up to,” he said. “People in America just find it hard to take a fighter seriously. They don't know that I'm using boxing for the sake of getting over certain points you couldn't get over without it. Being a fighter enables me to attain certain ends. I'm not doing this,” he muttered at last, “for the glory of fighting, but to change a lot of things.”

It was clear what he was saying. One had only to open to the possibility that Ali had a large mind rather than a repetitive mind and was ready for oncoming chaos, ready for the volcanic disruptions that would boil through the world in these approaching years of pollution, malfunction and economic disaster. Who knew what camps the world would yet see? Here was this tall pale Negro from Louisville, born to be some modern species of flunky to some bourbon-minted redolent white voice, and instead was living with a vision of himself as a world leader, president not of America, or even of a United Africa, but leader of half the Western world, leader doubtless of future Black and Arab republics. Had Muhammad Mobutu Napoleon Ali come for an instant face to face with the differences between Islam and Bantu?

On the shock of this recognition, that Ali's seriousness might as well be rooted in the molten iron of the earth, and his craziness not necessarily so crazy, Norman came near for a word. “I know what you're saying,” he said to Muhammad.

“I'm serious,” said Ali.

“Yes, I know you are.” He thought of Foreman's Herculean training and Ali's contempt. “You better win this fight,” he heard himself stating, “because if you don't, you are going to be a professor who gives lectures, that's all.”

“I'm going to win.”

“You might have to work like you never did before. Foreman has become a sophisticated fighter.”

“Yes,” said Ali, in a quiet voice, one line for one interviewer at last, “yes,” said Ali, “I know that.” He added with a wry small touch, “George is much improved.”

Talk went on. Endless people came and went. Ali ate while photographers photographed his open mouth. Not since Louis XV sat on his chaise-percee and delivered the royal stool to the royal pot to be instantly carried away by the royal chamberlain had a man been so observed. No other politician or leader of the world would leave himself so open to scrutiny.

What a limitless curiosity could Ali generate.

On the strength of his own curiosity about the qualities of Ali's condition, Norman asked if he could run with him tonight. Inquiring, he learned that Ali would be going to bed at nine and setting the alarm for three. Norman would have to be back at the villa then.

“You can't keep up with me,” said Ali.

“I don't intend to try. I just want to run a little.”

“Showup,” said Ali with a shrug.

RUNNING WITH MUHAMMAD ALI

by George Plimpton

Norman Mailer went out running with Muhammad Ali one morning, a few days before the fight with George Foreman in Zaire. He asked me to go with him, but I thought of the long ride to Ali’s training camp at N’Sele in the darkness, and thumping along for five miles or so in the wake of the challenger, and, besides, I had done that sort of thing before with Joe Frazier. So I begged off. I said I didn’t have any equipment to run in.

We came in very late from the gambling casinos in Kinshasa — around three in the morning — and Mailer was just coming through the lobby on his way out to his car. He had sneakers on, and long athletic socks rolled up over the legs of what was probably a track suit but of a woolly texture that made it look more like a union suit, so that as he came through the lobby Norman gave the appearance of a hotel guest forced to evacuate his room in his underwear because of fire: the impression was heightened by the fact that he was carrying a toilet kit.

That night he and I had dinner and he told me what had happened. He had kept up with Ali for a couple of miles into the country upriver from the compound at N’Sele, but then he had begun to tire, and finally he stopped, his chest heaving, and he watched Ali disappear into the night with his sparring partners. In the east, over the hills, the African night was beginning to give way to the first streaks of dawn, but it was still very dark. Suddenly, and seemingly so close that it made him start, came the reverberating roar of a lion, an unmistakable coughing, grunting sound that seemed to come from all sides — just as one had read it did in Hemingway or Ruark — and Norman turned and set out for the distant lights of N’Sele at a hasty clip. He told me he had been instantly provided with a substantial “second wind” and he found himself moving along much quicker than during his outbound trip. He reached N’Sele safely, jogging by the dark compounds, exhilarated not only by his escape but by the irresistible thought of how highly dramatic it would have been if he hadn’t made it.

I asked him what he was talking about, and he grinned shyly and began to admit that once he had got to the sanctuary of the compound he had been quite taken by the fancy of being finished off right there by the lion…all in all not a bad way to go, certainly a dramatic death right up there with the more memorable of the litterateurs’ — Saint-Exupéry’s or Shelley’s or Rupert Brooke’s — and the thought crossed his mind what an enviable last line for the biographical notes in the big dun-colored high-school anthologies: that Norman Mailer had been killed by an African lion near the banks of the Zaire in his fifty-first year.

Well, his fancy had all come to dross, he went on, because Muhammad Ali had returned from his run, his villa crowded with his people, and Norman had not been able to resist revealing the incident of the lion. It was greeted first with silence, everybody looking at him, and then the laughter started, first giggles, then hard thigh-slapping whoops, because they had all heard the lion, too, and heard him just about every morning, because that lion was behind bars in the presidential compound, a zoo lion — there weren’t any lions in the wild in West Africa anyway — and the thought of Mailer’s eyes staring into the darkness, and his legs pumping in his union-suit track clothes to get himself out of there (“Feets, do your stuff”) was so rich that Ali’s friend Bundini finally asked him to tell them about it all over again. “Nawmin, tell us ‘bout the big lion!”

From George Plimpton's 1977 New York Review of Books story, "The Last Laugh"

‘I JUST WANTED TO BE FREE’:

The Radical Reverberations of Muhammad Ali

by Dave Zirin

The reverberations. Not the rumbles, the reverberations. The death of Muhammad Ali will undoubtedly move people’s minds to his epic boxing matches against Joe Frazier and George Foreman, or there will be retrospectives about his epic “rumbles” against racism and war. But it’s the reverberations that we have to understand in order to see Muhammad Ali as what he remains: the most important athlete to ever live. It’s the reverberations that are our best defense against real-time efforts to pull out his political teeth and turn him into a harmless icon suitable for mass consumption.

When Dr. Martin Luther King came out against the war in Vietnam in 1967, he was criticized by the mainstream press and his own advisors who told him to not focus on “foreign” policy. But Dr. King forged ahead and to justify his new stand, said publicly, “Like Muhammad Ali puts it, we are all — black and brown and poor — victims of the same system of oppression.”

When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island, he said that Muhammad Ali gave him hope that the walls would some day come tumbling down.

When John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists on the medal stand in Mexico City, one of their demands was to “Restore Muhammad Ali’s title.” They called Ali “the warrior-saint of the Black Athlete’s Revolt.”

When Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) volunteers in Lowndes County, Alabama launched an independent political party in 1965, their new group was the first to use the symbol of a black panther. Beneath the jungle cat’s black silhouette was a slogan straight from the champ: “WE Are the Greatest.”

When Billie Jean King was aiming to win equal rights for women in sports, Muhammad Ali would say to her, “Billie Jean King! YOU ARE THE QUEEN!” She said that this made her feel brave in her own skin.

The question is why? Why was he able to create this kind of radical ripple throughout the culture and across the world?

What Muhammad Ali did — in a culture that worships sports and violence as well as a culture that idolizes black athletes while criminalizing black skin — was redefine what it meant to be tough and collectivize the very idea of courage. Through the Champ’s words on the streets and deeds in the ring, bravery was not only standing up to Sonny Liston. It was speaking truth to power, no matter the cost. He was a boxer whose very presence taught a simple and dangerous lesson fifty years ago: “real men” fight for peace and “real women” raise their voices and join the fray. Or as Bryant Gumbel said years ago, “Muhammad Ali refused to be afraid. And being that way, he gave other people courage.”

My favorite Ali line is not him saying, “I hospitalized a rock. I beat up a brick. I’m so bad I make medicine sick” or anything of the sort. It was when he was suspended from boxing for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War. He was attending a rally for fair housing in Louisville when he said, "Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years."

Damn. This is not only an assertion of black power, but a statement. It’s a statement of international solidarity: of oppressed people coming together in an act of collective resistance. It was a statement that connected wars abroad with attacks on the black, brown and poor at home, and it was said from the most hyper exalted platform our society offered at the time: the platform of being the Champ.

Please know that these views did not only earn him the hatred of the mainstream press and the right wing of this country. It also made him a target of liberals in the media as well as the mainstream civil rights movement, who did not like Ali for his membership in the Nation of Islam and opposition to what was Lyndon Johnson’s war.

But for an emerging movement that was demanding an end to racism by any means necessary and a very young, emerging anti-war struggle, he was a transformative figure. In the mid-1960s, the anti-war and anti-racist movements were on parallel tracks. Then you had the heavyweight champ. Or as poet Sonia Sanchez put it with aching beauty, “It’s hard now to relay the emotion of that time. This was still a time when hardly any well-known people were resisting the draft. It was a war that was disproportionately killing young Black brothers and here was this beautiful, funny poetical young man standing up and saying no! Imagine it for a moment! The heavyweight champion, a magical man, taking his fight out of the ring and into the arena of politics and standing firm. The message was sent.” We are still attempting to hear the full message that Muhammad Ali was attempting to relay: a message about the need to fight for peace.

Full articles can and should be written about his complexities: his fallout with Malcolm X, his depoliticization in the 1970s, the ways that warmongers attempted to use him like a prop as he suffered in failing health. But the most important part of his legacy is that time in the 1960s when he refused to be afraid. As he said years later, “Some people thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I did was wrong. But everything I did was according to my conscience. I wasn’t trying to be a leader. I just wanted to be free.”

Not the fight, the reverberations. They are still being felt by a new generation of people. They ensure that the Champ’s name will outlive us all.

Bill Russell said it best in 1967. “I’m not worried about Muhammad Ali. I’m worried about the rest of us.” That is more true than ever.

(
Dave Zirin is the author of Brazil’s Dance With the Devil. He can be reached at dave@edgeofsports.com.)

THE AARON BASSLER AFFAIR, another take on it with photographs:

https://story.californiasunday.com/aaron-bassler-fort-bragg-manhunt

THE MENDOCINO DEADWOOD COMPANY

To the Editor:

Mendocino Deadwood Company was founded because we want the profits from the forests. We like to kill trees.

We took immediate steps to start a governing company and thought up a really great name: Stewards of the Earth Council. Isn’t that terrific? Sounds like Middle Earth. We placed all our own people on that company’s board, so we could do whatever we want and still appear Green.

Then we set up a system of merit badges and began giving them to ourselves. These are really powerful, iconic and, hey, the forest products industry likes boys and Boy Scouting! Boy, do we! Every year we re-certify ourselves and give each other plenty of new badges and plaques and pat each other on the back, a lot. Fun!

Owners of Mendocino Deadwood, the Carps, also own a chain of clothing stores, so you can further help decimate your Community by shopping at either Cantaloupe Republic or The Void.

Our reckless process of intentionally killing and leaving dead standing trees is going to be a lot of fun someday — it will cause quite the inferno. And at this point, we are directly on top of residential Communities, so it will also be fun to see all the people running. It’s a risk we’re willing to take.

Communities haven’t always been happy with us, so we’ve conducted numerous studies that prove that dead trees simply do not burn. Really — we’ve put a propane-fueled flame right up against them. Nothing. Nada.

The Community concern has managed to put Measure V on the upcoming ballot in Mendocino. All it says, simply, is that we are responsible if something happens — something every six grader learns — and that’s why we are stomping our feet. Perhaps it’s also why it has almost universal appeal.

It is well-intentioned, very well-intentioned, and yet we are troubled. Why would the Community want reduced wildfire and increased safety for their lives, children, pets, homes, and their firefighters? It’s kind of annoying.

With such strong public support, we don’t quite know what to do — we’ve taken to publishing whiny and misleading propaganda, and we certainly hope we mailed you one too. (We were too busy crafting them to attend any public forum.)

Some people think forest companies like to cut down trees. Not us. We like to kill them and leave them standing — we wouldn’t want to inadvertently create jobs.

Please help keep us in business by voting no on Measure V.

Mendocino Deadwood Company

We care. About our badges.

(Please don’t contact us. Ever.)

–Scott Roat, Little River

HEROES OF THE COAST

This 52-minute documentary presents 50 years of the California coastal protection movement from direct sources--the individuals who worked successfully for passage of Prop. 20 in 1972. Prop. 20 created the California Coastal Commission, and was reauthorized by the legislature's passage of the Coastal Act in 1976, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The documentary also describes the process and achievements of the Coastal Commission.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6RPp7vhGQE

WORKING HANDS

Photographs of farm and recycling workers by David Bacon

Photographs of longshoremen by Frank Silva

Photocentral Gallery
1099 E Street, Hayward, CA
6/4 to 8/6/16
Mon 5-10, Tu & Th 10-1, Sat 12-3
Opening reception 6/4, 2-5

http://www.photocentral.org/shows.html

* * *

ON THE STREETS: UNDER THE TREES

Homelessness and the struggle for housing in urban and rural California

Photographs by David Bacon

Asian Resource Gallery
317 Ninth St at Harrison
Oakland, CA
May — June, 2016

* * *

In the 38th Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards David Bacon won first-place in the photo series category for his August 6, 2014 cover story for the East Bay Express, "Living on the Streets of Oakland," a photo essay that examined the situation of homeless people in the Bay Area's third largest city.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/living-on-the-streets-of-oakland/Content?oid=4037320

CATCH OF THE DAY, June 4, 2016

BASILIO ANGUANO, Ukiah. Controlled substance, commercial dumping, illegal camping, probation revocation.

JULIAN ARMAS, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

SKYLER BAILEY, Willits. Drunk in public.

RICHARD CAUCKWELL JR., Willits. Drunk in public, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

GINA CHARLES, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

JACOB CURNUTT, Middletown/Ukiah. DUI.

RICARDO GARCIA, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

BRANDON HAROLD, Fort Bragg. DUI.

RONALD LABERDIE, Ukiah. Ignition interlock override, suspended license, probation revocation.

CLINT LAMERE, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

AUGUST LINDECARNES, Willits. Probation revocation.

DANIEL LONG, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

KENNETH MCCARTY, Covelo. Domestic assault.

RICHARD NORTON, Willits. DUI, pot possession for sale.

JORDAN NUNEZ, Ukiah. DUI, no license, parole violation.

RUBEN SPAGGIARI, Willits. Failure to appear.

TASHINA TILLMAN, Willits. Trespassing, controlled substance, probation revocation.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

When I still lived in Amsterdam, and tight pants were the thing, it took 3 salespeople at the jeans store to help me get into the jeans.
 Two had to push my hips together while the 3rd struggled to close the zipper. 
At home I would have to lay flat on my back in order to zip up the pants myself.
 And sitting down meant I had to lean back and just drop myself in order to sit. And the pain!!!!
 Ah, those were the days...

NEW WEED TAX COMING, MAYBE! Local Legislator’s Bill Passes Assembly With Bipartisan Support

by Hank Sims

Nearly ten bucks an ounce on bud, almost three bucks an ounce on leaf, and a dollar and change for starts.

That’s what weed merchants will soon be tithing to Sacramento if the Senate follows the Assembly’s lead and passes Assemblymember Jim Wood’s cannabis tax bill (AB 2243). The projected revenue — all $80 million of it — will go to law enforcement and environmental restoration efforts.

From Assemblymember Jim Wood’s Office:

Assemblyman Jim Wood’s proposed excise tax, AB 2243, won a major victory last night passing the Assembly with 60 votes. Any new tax in California requires the support of 2/3 of each house (54 votes in the Assembly) necessitating support from both Democrats and Republicans.

Assemblyman Wood said, “I have worked from day one to ensure our rural communities have the resources we need to prevent, and cleanup the environmental catastrophe currently underway in our forests and watersheds. This excise tax was part of AB 243 last year and was ultimately pulled at the last minute; this victory today is a huge step forward.”

AB 2243 would levy a $9.25 per ounce tax on cannabis flowers, a $2.75 per ounce tax on cannabis leaves and a $1.25 tax on immature cannabis plants from nurseries. The tiered approach is modeled after the way alcohol is taxed based on the potency of the product, and is designed to ensure funding goes to the most impacted communities.

“AB 2243 imposes a reasonable tax on the production and distribution of commercial cannabis and will focus revenue on the communities, forests, and rivers,” said Hezekiah Allen, Executive Director of the California Growers Association. “This legislation is an important step to take to ensure immediate relief is available for the watersheds and communities that need help now.”

AB 2243 is projected to raise nearly $80 million annually. These funds will be distributed as follows:

30% to fund the Watershed Enforcement Team

30% for local law enforcement

30% for environmental cleanup on public and private lands

8% to restart state funding of the Williamson Act

2% to fund inter-agency regional enforcement coordinators within the Department of Justice

“Last year the Legislature took important steps to create a regulatory and licensing structure for medical marijuana,” said Paul A. Smith, Senior Legislative Advocate with the Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC). “AB 2243 fleshes out the Legislature’s work by providing the financial resources to preserve the integrity of the regulatory structure, with a special emphasis on addressing the environmental impacts associated with marijuana cultivation. RCRC applauds the Assembly for recognizing the impacts that cultivation inflicts upon rural California.”

Eureka Police Chief Andrew Mills said, “As Chief of a city greatly impacted by cannabis, I appreciate Assemblyman Wood moving this bill forward to get those communities hit hardest by illegal cannabis cultivation the help we need.”

AB 2243 will now go to the Senate to be heard next in Senate Rules Committee.

THOUGH OTHERS MAY WELL GO UNDER, you can count on the Clintons to always profit from their plunder.
— Jeffrey St. Clair

LILO

Beautiful little Lilo is a sweet girl, though a bit shy and timid, but she warms up once she knows you. Because she is shy around other cats, she would probably do best being an "only cat". If you have room in your heart and home for dear little Lilo please stop by the shelter and meet her today!

MINK

Mink is a very energetic dog who loves walks and needs lots of daily exercise! She must have an active family or guardian who is willing to ensure that she gets lots of physical activity as well as lots of love. She is friendly but should have a meet and greet with any other dogs you have in the home, before adopting her to make sure their personalities will work well together. Mink will be a loyal and loving best friend and bring lots of laughter and energy to her forever home. Mink is 52 pounds and about 2 years old.

THE UKIAH SHELTER is currently having THREE special adoption events. June 1-18: Our Senior Dogs (6+ years old) Event is a chance for you to name your own adoption fee. Our June Special Event is for all dogs 1 year and older: all service fees (spay/neuter, vaccinations, etc) will be waived, and the adoption fee will be only $60. Our Cat Adoption Special runs June 4-25: Adopt one cat at full fee, and your second cat's adoption fee will be waived! (For both dog sales, Mendocino County residents pay a $25 license fee.) Call the shelter Adoption Coordinator to find out more about our special events, our dogs and cats of the day, and volunteer, sponsor and foster opportunities. The shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah. Check out and bookmark our webpage: mendoanimalshelter.com And please visit the shelter's official Facebook page for lots of information, cat and dog updates and shelter events: Mendocino County Animal Shelter

IRV SUTLEY OF THE PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY NOTES:

All minor parties in California suffer decline in registration for June 7th primary. All of California's "minor" or "third parties" suffer decline in registration. It's not just the Bernie Sanders campaign but the effects of Proposition 14's restrictive, anti-choice Top Two which have left alternate parties without many candidates to build with in legislative and congressional races.

EYE ON SACRAMENTO CALLS ON STEINBERG TO FULLY DISCLOSE DETAILS OF RELATIONSHIP WITH MWD

by Dan Bacher

Eye on Sacramento (EOS), a group championing the adoption of “meaningful transparency and ethics reform” in the City of Sacramento, on Thursday called on Mayoral Candidate Darrell Steinberg, the former Senate President Pro Tem, to “fully disclose” the details of his contractual relationship with the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) of Southern California.

The Sacramento Bee first exposed the contractual relationship in an article published online on May 31 after obtaining a copy of the controversial contract. Steinberg’s law firm, Greenberg Traurig, has been collecting $10,000 per month from MWD for Steinberg’s services since July of last year. (www.sacbee.com/...)

The politically powerful Metropolitan Water District has played a key leadership role in promoting Governor Jerry Brown's plan to build the massive Delta Tunnels, designed to export Northern California water to agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California water agencies.

Local County and City governments oppose the Delta plan, along with a broad coalition of fishermen, environmentalists, Indian Tribes and family farmers, because of the enormous environmental damage it would inflict on fisheries and the ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas.

MWD was also a key backer of the controversial water bond/water policy package that Governor Arnold Scharzenegger and Steinberg pushed through the Legislature in November 2009 , as well as Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 1 Water Bond that was approved by the voters in November 2014.

In the contract, Steinberg is tasked “to provide strategic advice on approach, outreach and messaging for matters related to Metropolitan’s public policy to ensure effective communications with stakeholders in Northern California.”

Two of Steinberg's key duties are to “assist in the development of strategy and outreach plan for a multi purpose project in the Yolo Bypass” and to “identify and pursue outreach opportunities with elected officials in Delta counties to build relationships for advancing common ground.”

The contract, at Steinberg’s request, states, “Consultant will not engage or advocate on matters specifically related to new Delta conveyance,” the term often used by state and federal officials to describe the Delta Tunnels/California WaterFix plan.

The contract between MWD and the Greenberg Traurig law firm involving Mr. Steinberg’s consulting services to MWD may be viewed on the EOS website via this link.

Steinberg said he entered into the Metropolitan Water District contract last summer before choosing to enter the mayor's race and said he will end his full-time position with MWD when the contract expires at the end of June.

In a written statement from his campaign, Steinberg said, “As I’ve made clear from the day I announced, if I’m fortunate enough to be elected mayor, my full-time energy and attention will be focused on doing that job to the best of my abilities for the people of Sacramento, and I will relinquish my full-time role with my current employer.”

“I get innuendo,” Steinberg told the Bee. “As long as the work is consistent with my values and the interests of my city, I don’t see a problem. (www.sacbee.com/...)

In a press release, Craig Powell, President of Eye on Sacramento, disagreed with Steinberg's claim that his work for MWD is consistent with the city's interests.

“Sacramentans learned for the first time yesterday from a Sacramento Bee story that Darrell Steinberg, while actively seeking the support of Sacramento voters for his mayoral bid, has been covertly providing strategic consulting services to the politically powerful Southern California-based Metropolitan Water District (MWD) whose interests are very much at odds with the interests of the City of Sacramento and its residents on just about every major water issue facing our region,” said Powell.

“We are troubled that Sacramento voters who have already voted via absentee ballot (now fully half of all Sacramento voters) did so without the knowledge that one mayoral candidate was effectively on the payroll of the MWD. While nothing can be done at this late date to cure that significant informational failure, there are some immediate steps that Mr. Steinberg can and should take to fully explain the nature and extent of his relationship with MWD for the benefit of voters who will be casting their ballots on Election Day,” Powell stated.

The group compiled a list of questions they believe Steinberg should answer. These include:

• When did he and MWD first begin discussing a consulting arrangement?
• How much of his time over the past year has he devoted to providing “strategic advice” to MWD as called for in the contract?
• Has he been maintaining time records of his services?
• Will he publicly disclose such records?
• Has he provided any “deliverables” to MWD, such as reports and other documentation?
• Will he and MWD now disclose such documents?
• What public officials in our region did he meet with in the service of MWD’s goal of building relationships with North State stakeholders?
• Will he and MWD voluntarily release copies of their e-mail communications with one another, without the need for submitting formal public records requests?

Powell noted that Steinberg was providing “consulting services” for MWD, not legal services that would have been protected from public disclosure under the attorney/client privilege.

”The voters of Sacramento deserve to know if Mr. Steinberg, in providing consulting services to MWD while campaigning for Sacramento mayor, has been acting appropriately, ethically and loyally as both a Sacramento resident and an aspirant to the mayor’s office or has he acted in a manner that is at odds with the long-term best interests of Sacramento and its residents,” he stated.

“By promptly and fully disclosing these matters to the Sacramento public, Mr. Steinberg will go a long way towards allaying legitimate public concern over the role he is playing with MWD. If Mr. Steinberg fails to provide such disclosures, we would encourage the Sacramento County Civil Grand Jury to consider initiating an investigation into Mr. Steinberg’s relationship with MWD to uncover the facts. One way or the other, Sacramento voters deserve to know the facts and implications of Mr. Steinberg’s dealings with MWD,” Powell concluded.

Steinberg is running against the current Sacramento Vice Mayor, Angelique Ashby, in the current mayoral election.

Ashby told the Board of Directors of ECOS, the Environmental Council of Sacramento, at a recent meeting that she completely opposes the Delta Tunnels plan. At the same meeting, Steinberg didn’t discuss his position on the Delta Tunnels plan.

According to the Bee, Steinberg said in 2013 he was “not ready to sign off on any particular-size tunnel, but I think the idea that we both have to restore the ecosystem of the Delta and at the same time provide water reliability conveyance for the entire state by going around the Delta is true, and accepted. And I accept it, and I’m ready to work with the governor to figure out the details.”

Delta advocates believe it is crucial that Steinberg take a definitive stand against the tunnels.

"It's really important for any mayor of ‘River City’ to be committed to protecting our river,” said Osha Meserve, a Sacramento lawyer representing local environmental and farming interests on Delta matters. “Steinberg's waffling on this issue indicates he has not yet made that committment and he should.”

COUNTY LIBRARY EVENTS:

http://us11.campaign-archive2.com/?u=3696d38b68efac10f9e33fa9a&id=9653e0c866&e=a3c5eb703b

IT’S HOTTER THAN HOOKER IN HEATER, and hotter than Heater in Hellmouth.

“I just sat there sharpening my bayonet and looking at his feet. I wanted to activate his mind. After awhile he says, ‘Welp, this ain’t workin’ out,’ and he got himself up and he made it all the way back. He’s too big to carry, you see. I couldn’t get him there. I just had to activate his mind.” –Lobo*

The recording last night's (2016-06-03) KNYO and KMEC Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is available to download and keep and skip around in via http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com A weatherbeaten, gravel-voiced man who calls himself Lobo tapped at the door and wanted to tell a story on the radio, so that happened, and at first it was a little hard to understand what he was driving at, but his narrative structure had a certain Firesign-Theater-like pleasantly disturbing off-kilter majesty to it. Stuart Cohen dropped by and played a few songs, and he was hardly out of the chair, picking up to leave, when Elly Cooney called to read her story about the passing of Michael McCowen, maybe the last genuine pasha, or Pasha, whichever is used. I think Lobo showed up around an hour and ten minutes in.

Also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find links to an assortment of not necessarily radio-useful things to see and do and learn about, such as:

Flying Saucer Rock and Roll. (Short film set in Ireland in the 1950s.)

("Golly, Johnny, it looks like all the kids are deaf in one ear from the pressure wave from the blast!")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbNtGVnSn7E

We have nothing to sphere but spheres themselves.

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/04/the-betz-mystery-sphere-alien-artifact-or-doomsday-device/

And artistic peril.

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/walter_molinos_lush_illustrations_of_people_in_peril

— Marco McClean
memo@mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com