Mendocino County Today: Friday, June 10, 2016

• Uncounted Ballots
• Election Notes
• Revised EIR
• Edu-crises
• PGE Envelope
• Responsible Oligarchy
• Help Patches
• Blackbird Farm
• Groundbreakers
• Voting Difficulties
• Arson Politics
• Disenfranchising Tactics
• Bush Resignation
• Warrior Whitewash
• Parrish Clarifies
• Dear Chickenfeed
• Yesterday's Catch
• Lenin/Pirandello
• Don't Despair
• Porous Perimeter
• Tunnels Objections

OVER 16,000 BALLOTS LEFT TO BE COUNTED

June 7, 2016 Presidential Primary Election

Mendocino County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Susan M. Ranochak announced that as with any other election, there are ballots left to be processed as part of the official canvass. Mendocino County has 15,567 Vote By Mail ballots to process, and 958 Provisional ballots to review and process. Of the outstanding ballots left to count, the approximate breakdowns for the Supervisorial District are as follows: 1st Supervisorial District – 2,800 ballots; 2nd Supervisorial District – 2,615; 3rd Supervisorial District – 2,494 ballots; 4th Supervisorial District – 4,456 ballots (of which 1,582 are for the City of Fort Bragg) & 5th Supervisorial District – 4,160 ballots. Per State law, we have 30 days to complete the canvass. The Statement of Vote, which breaks down results by precinct, will be available at that time. If you have any additional questions, please call our office at (707) 234-6819.

(Elections Office Press Release, June 9, 2016)

SO, WHY DOES MENDO take so long to tally up the vote when, for example, Marin and San Francisco had the finals yesterday? Asking around, the consensus opinion is a shortage of personnel to do the counting of all the provisional ballots that come in on election day, which all need to be checked individually, Mendo being Mendo, Ms. Ranochak certainly knows consequences of a negative type are unlikely.

ELECTION NOTES:

AS OF THURSDAY late afternoon, 1,582 Fort Bragg votes remain uncounted. The County Clerk has managed to tally 462. No on Measure U is leading but with so many votes outstanding, the fat lady has not sung.

CALIFORNIA WENT FOR HILLARY by a wider margin than us Bern Feelers had hoped, and now commences the sixty-year-old whining from professional Democrats about how we all have to get behind an imperial, Wall Street war hawk because she is better than Trump. We'll be urged, nay implored, to vote for everything in Hillary that we're opposed to because Trump is worse, although he's likely to be better on the war and peace issues than Hillary, the grifter from wherever she claims to be from these days. Domestically, both of them will be disasters for Americans with annual incomes under a hundred thou, which is most Americans. Third Party here we come. This is the worst choice for president in the history of the country.

SUPERIOR COURT JUDGE: Keith Faulder handily beat back newcomer Patrick Pekin despite outstanding Coast votes. Pekin ran strong on the Mendocino Coast where he lives and campaigned hard everywhere, but a preponderance of voters understood that Faulder, with his many years of experience, is much more likely to make a sound judge than a guy without much experience, legal or life. Faulder's been around the block many times and he's still laughing — exactly the kind of guy you want sitting in judgment.

SUPERVISOR 1st District: Incumbent Carre Brown annihilated challenger Montana Podva. No surprise there. Mrs. Brown has her political blindspots, water policy being the largest one, but she's smart, personable and attentive to her constituents.

MEASURE U (Fort Bragg/Social Service zoning restriction): Lots of ballots still out for this one, but if the first reported margin holds U will lose, but not by enough that opponents — Fort Bragg City government and their friends and families — can claim they have anything like a mandate for their crazy conversion of the downtown landmark Old Coast Hotel to a highly dubious "homeless" program.

MEASURE V (Countywide, Standing Dead trees declared nuisance): Yes: 60%, No: 40%. We thought it would pass, toothless as it is, but the Mendocino Redwood Company ran the dumbest campaign for the money they spent (more than $250,000) that we can recall. MRC's public relations under Sandy Dean started out smart and sensitive to the neighbors. How the company's management got to their present LP-like intransigence and poor public relations is an ongoing mystery.

MEASURE W (Make Mendocino County a Charter County): Lost big. Poorly prepared, confusingly propounded, proponents too isolated from main stem Mendo.

THE BERN won big over Clinton in Mendo, Lake, and HumCo but Trump, considering he was on the ballot unopposed, turned out a big vote. He has a good shot at beating Clinton in Mendo in November because lots of Bernie people who are so angry at the in-your-face corruption of the Democratic Party they will vote for Trump in the general election. Bernie could beat Trump, Hillary might not. (Only one Boonville person sports a Hillary bumpersticker, but she votes gender, not issues.)

SEXIST? Is it just us oinkers or do lots of women also wince when they hear Hilary's assaultive voice cackling out of the tv and radio? Really, when you can't even fake insincerity…

NORCAL went big for Bern, but from Sonoma County to Frisco, it was Hillary country.

SAN FRANCISCO, self-alleged national headquarters of everything politically progressive went for Hillary over Bernie by 18,000 votes!

A READER COMMENTS: "According to the Final Election Night Report on Mendocino County’s website, a paltry 14.3% of the registered voters in Fort Bragg bothered to vote either for or against Measure U. What does that say about the majority of residents of the city? Do they really not care either way?"

Dude, Mendo County is the slowest County in the state to get ALL the votes counted. Patience. It's not over.

BOONVILLE plays by the rules, no exception! A carpenter we know appeared at the Boonville poll after a long day's work wearing his Bernie shirt. "You can't come in here wearing a partisan statement," he was immediately informed. The guy went outside, turned his shirt inside out, walked back in and voted.

IMPORTANT meeting of the Fort Bragg City Council this coming Thursday (16 June) Town Hall, 6pm. The Council will consider the revised Environmental Impact Report for the destructive and definitely not needed "Central Coast Transfer Station Project, a $5 million boondoggle desired by Mike Sweeney, County trash czar. There's a perfectly functional existing trash transfer station at Pudding Creek.

HUGE UNHAPPINESS at both Point Arena Unified and Fort Bragg Unified. At the latter, Superintendent Charles Bush may get the heave-ho at the next school board meeting. At the former, popular teachers are being demised, students are striking.

FOUR TEACHERS were summarily dismissed earlier this year, mid-school year, by the Mendocino schools, receiving the cruel news at a public meeting of the school board. It apparently wasn't enough to suddenly fire the four, it was done in public.

MEANWHILE, in Point Arena, students staged a mass walkout earlier this week in support of fired teachers, a solid indication that the severed instructors were not only doing a good job but were highly regarded by their students.

PA SCIENCE TEACHER, Roger Little, had a gag order imposed on him by Arena's lockstep school board and administration. A gag order? No one around here that we talked to can remember that happening to any local school teacher, ever.

LITTLE, a PhD, teaches physics, chemistry and biology, and try replacing him, a guy with years of experience working in these fields in private industry. Advanced placement science instruction is hard to find in the Mendocino County schools, and for a school administration to alienate a man of Little's bona fides is simply one more indication that the Point Arena schools are run by people who either don't know what they're doing or don't care.

POINT ARENA, in a week of sneak knife attacks on faculty, also fired a popular art teacher, Whitney Badget. The ensuing student walkout was in support of both Little and Ms. Badget.

HAPPY VOTER COMMENTS: "Just before I went to vote I noticed my PGE (not always a friend) bill's envelope had: Dead Trees = Increased Wildfire Risk… printed on the back!"

SPECIAL APPEAL FROM SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS

by John Stauber

It’s been a hell of a journey, we’ve come a long way, and now we are on the verge of our biggest victory! The Democratic Party is about to nominate my opponent, Hillary Clinton, who represents everything we have campaigned against from the very beginning of this race.

I always said, this isn’t about Bernie Sanders, it is about the Revolution, the young people rising up and confronting Wall Street, confronting militarism, confronting an oligarchy that is killing us all with its climate change and low wage jobs and control of our democracy!

And that is why I am so excited that my new good friend Secretary Hillary (and I mean that as in Secretary of State, please, no more sexism charges hurled at me! I am tired of being Naderized!) has given me a special role. I am now the chair of #CitizensForResponsibleOligarchy. Yes, my friends and fellow revolutionaries, victory is at hand.

Hillary has assured me in a private conversation that will be leaked by some of my trusted advisors that indeed, she has seen the light. She thanked me for letting her off the hook on that damned email thing, and assured me that her good friend President Obama would never let her be harmed by such a trifling matter that we are all sick and tired of hearing about, so no indictments for her.

Then Hillary said to me,

Bernie, I have seen the light! You and your cute young white boy followers have taught me so much! I get it now! #TPP – bad! Fracking which I love too – bad! Climate change? Well my billionaire buddy Tom Steyer already set me straight on that, and I was happy to see your pal Bill McKibben on our sweet little DNC Platform Committee.

But Bernie, we have a problem. And given your family history, I do not have to explain much! Trump = Hitler. It is that easy. That is why I need you to pull together all those #BernieOrBust, #VoteGreen, #FeelTheBern wackos, er – stalwarts!, and unite them in a grand army of the Republic to fight fascism by electing me! I want you to head #CitizensForResponsibleOligarchy and set our people free this November! Send the world a message loud and strong, we are united! It’s not just the radical Left you represent, or the neocon progressives whom I champion! It’s all of us!

David Koch! George Bush! Every mainstream corporate media hack! John Nichols! MoveOn! The Nation! The Wall Street Journal! Wall Street!

Bernie, together you and I have done it, we have united America and are on the verge of saving it! The fascist oligarch must be beaten! Long live the responsible oligarchs!”

So to the millions of you, and you know who you are, who have given me $27.37 cents over and over, and to the millions who have pounded doors and attended rallies, I say, welcome to the mountaintop! See you in Philly! On to victory in November and one hell of a corporate-sponsored celebration in DC in January!

Bernie Sanders, Chair, Citizens for Responsible Oligarchy

(John Stauber is an independent writer, activist and author. His books include Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, Mad Cow USA and Weapons of Mass Deception. In 1993 he founded the Center for Media and Democracy to exposed corporate, political and media propaganda campaigns. He retired from the Center in 2008. http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnstauber. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

GET PATCHES WALKING AGAIN

Hi there,

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https://www.generosity.com/animal-pet-fundraising/help-patches-walk-again--2

Thank you!

Monika Fuchs, Philo

BLACKBIRD FARM OPEN HOUSE…

(But like, let us know who you are first.)

On behalf of Blackbird Farm in Philo, we would like to invite you and a guest to our 2nd annual open house!

June 22, 2016 from 11am to 3pm. 18601 Van Zandt Resort Road, Philo.

There will be live music, delicious food, wine, garden tours, and a petting zoo!

This will be a great time for us to connect with our community members and for our neighbors to see all that Blackbird Farm has to offer! Please RSVP by June 17th 2016!

--Anzhela Chukhuryan, achukhuryan@pathwaysedu.org

WATER, WATER....

Newsflash Official Ground-Breaking Ceremony at the Summers Lane Reservoir

On June 3, 2016 the City officially broke ground for the Summers Lane Reservoir.

http://city.fortbragg.com/civicalerts.aspx?AID=361

BLOCKING VOTERS IN CA

by Greg Palast

How California Is Being Stolen from Sanders Right Now

[Los Angeles] It’s not some grand conspiracy, but it’s grand theft nonetheless. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ voters will lose their ballots, their rights, by the tens of thousands.

The steal is baked into the way California handles No Party Preference –”NPP” voters –what we know as “independents.”

There are a mind-blowing 4.2 million voters in California registered NPP – and they share a love for sunshine and Bernie Sanders. According to the reliable Golden State poll, among NPP voters, Sen. Sanders whoops Sec. Hillary Clinton by a stunning 40 percentage points.

On the other team, registered Democrats prefer Clinton by a HUGE 30 points. NPP’s can vote in the Democratic primary, so, the California primary comes down to a fight between D’s and NPP’s.

And there’s the rub. In some counties like Los Angeles, it’s not easy for an NPP to claim their right vote in the Democratic primary – and in other counties, nearly impossible.

Example: In Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, if you don’t say the magic words, “I want a Democratic crossover ballot,” you are automatically given a ballot without the presidential race. And ready for this, if an NPP voter asks the poll worker, “How do I get to vote in the Democratic party primary, they are instructed to say that, “NPP voters can’t get Democratic ballots.” They are ordered not to breathe a word that the voter can get a “crossover” ballot that includes the presidential race.

I’m not kidding. This is from the official Election Officer Training Manual page 49:

“A No Party Preference voter will need to request a crossover ballot from the Roster Index Officer. (Do not offer them a crossover ballot if they do not ask).”

They’re not kidding. Poll worker Jeff Lewis filed a description of the training in an official declaration to a federal court:

Someone raised their hand and asked a follow-up question: ‘So, what if someone gets a nonpartisan ballot, notices it doesn’t have the presidential candidates on it, and asks you where they are?’ The answer poll workers are instructed to give: ‘Sorry, NPP ballots don’t have presidential candidates on them.’ That’s correct: even when people ask questions of that nature, obviously intending to vote with a party.

(Courtesy, Nation of Change)

ANARCHISTS FOR DONALD TRUMP — Let the Empire Burn

The left-contrarian arsonist crowd is larger and wider-spread than the cubicled creatures in the Clinton campaign have accounted for.

The historic opportunity of the 2016 election is one which Bernie Sanders likely will not have the courage to embrace: The burning to ashes of the corporatist Clintonite neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party.

The scenario ideally plays out with Sanders contesting the nomination all the way to the convention and then running as a third party candidate, say on the Green Party ticket, siphoning away the base that Clinton needs to win. This will hand the election to Donald Trump, and force the Democratic establishment to realize it’s doomed unless it pivots sharply to the left.

The Clintons will disappear into the toilet where they’ve always deserved to be flushed. We can then look forward to 2020 after four years of Trump and — what? Who knows. He’s truly a wild card.

I went for Sanders in the primaries, even gave several hundred dollars to his campaign. But there’s no way I’ll pull the lever for Clinton, because I know what a Clinton presidency bodes. More of the same neoliberal plundering with a friendly Democratic smile to quiet the left.

It happened under Obama: the warfare state and Wall Street reigning supreme while we all sing kumbaya because a black man has stamped his imprimatur on an intolerable status quo. It will happen again under Hillary.

What’s needed now in American politics is consternation, confusion, dissension, disorder, chaos — and crisis, with possible resolution — and a Trump presidency is the best chance for this true progress. This is a politics of arson. I’d rather see the empire burn to the ground under Trump, opening up at least the possibility of radical change, than cruise on autopilot under Clinton.

I’m not alone here. Travelling across the country, I keep meeting people who voted for Sanders in the primaries but mutter under cover of night and a few drinks that they’ll vote for Trump in November. Friends out in the wildlands of the intermountain West, hard gun-toting anarchist redneck Amy Goodman progressives, say so. Big-city journalists, too. I suspect that the left-contrarian, anti-Hillary, pro-Trump arsonist crowd is larger and wider-spread than the cubicled creatures in the Clinton campaign have accounted for.

Trump arsonist-progressives are mostly embarrassed to go on the record. An editor of a major progressive website tells me in an email that if I outed him/her as a Trump supporter, “We’d probably lose the last funders that we have!!!”

That editor continued: “Absolutely, Trump by a mile. To the extent that voting for president matters at all, it is merely to give a certain secret pleasure to the voter in the privacy of the booth. I’ll get mine by casting a transgressionary ballot for the vile Trump, the greatest repudiation of the 25-year-long horrorshow of Clintonism I can imagine.”

A Bernie supporter in Idaho writes me, “With Trump it's a flip of the coin. Heads: his primary run was brilliant hyperbolic political theater that will mellow in the general, he's right on TPP, and less hawkish than Clinton internationally. Progressives gain ground in Congress (the more important body of government anyway) in the midterms, setting a foundation. Tails: he wasn’t acting and his presidency will summon a degree of economic uncertainty and social disorder that promises gasoline onto the flickering flames that is the nascent re-emergence of a grassroots radical left awakened with Occupy and given form in the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.”

Another Bernie man tells me, “Hillary is Wall Street’s candidate. They fear Trump. Enough for me.”

My old friend Vincent Nunes of Brooklyn doesn’t give a damn what people think, which is why I can quote him by name.

“The totally logical reason for voting for him,” says Nunes, “is that he’s never been a politician and he’s not tied directly into the power and the money structure of the political system. We know Hillary is a monster. We don’t know it about Trump.”

I disagree. At this point I like to think of the two presumptive big-party candidates as floozies flouncing on the stage. The one is painted, sweetened with perfumes, dressed in finery, and denies her involvement in the unseemly business. The other is at least an honest syphilitic, track-marked degenerate whose record on television and in his business dealings make plain his fealty to Mammon.

Both are monsters. But only one has a curriculum vitae as an agent of the state. Read Diana Johnstone’s Queen of Chaos about Hillary’s blood-soaked war-mongering career in the U.S. Senate and at the State Department. Or, for domestic policy, Andrew Levine at Counterpunch, who documents that the Clintons’ “lifelong project has been to make American politics as safe as can be for Big Business and High Finance.”

This is not to discount the importance that a woman for the first time in U.S. history is clinching the nomination of a major party for the office of the presidency. It would be wonderful and something to celebrate — if that woman was a decent human being. But Clinton is not. And how sexist would it be to cease judging her for her duplicity, avarice, and bloodthirst simply because she’s a woman?

Hillary’s successful candidacy only proves that women in the established system of power politics can be as vicious and corrupt as the men with whom they vie for control.

It may be that a Trump presidency, as Andrew Sullivan predicts in New York Magazine, will usher in the end of the democracy, the death of the republic, the rise of the hard totalitarian state. Given that we are already living in what Princeton political scientist Sheldon Wolin calls a soft or inverted totalitarian system, an illiberal democracy, the transformation feared by Sullivan will be welcome, clarifying, a fresh breath of honesty, in which the trappings are tossed aside and the ugly reality is revealed. Such a revelation, as the republic degenerates into tyranny, may inspire real resistance.

Or not. It’s the risk of the wild card. TRUMP! Let the fire burn how it will.

(Courtesy, the Daily Beast)

VOTING IN AMERICA

What surprised me most when I became a British citizen was that I wouldn’t have to queue to vote. Even for the last general election, when turnout in my constituency neared 60%, I walked straight into an empty booth. In the US, I would go to the polling station with friends so that we could chat while we waited, or bring some magazines. After my student days, I took it for granted that voting meant turning up late to work. I couldn’t go after work: the polls in the UK close at ten, but American polling stations close much earlier, in most states at 7 or 8 pm, in some as early as six. The usual rule is that all registered voters in line before the official closing time are allowed to vote, no matter how late it gets, so long as they don’t leave. In 2012, in some parts of Florida, people were still waiting to vote past one in the morning, after Mitt Romney had already conceded the election. A bipartisan commission found that more than five million Americans had waited more than an hour to vote that year. Just recently, in Maricopa County, Arizona, people waited more than five hours to vote in the primaries. More than three million people live in Maricopa – it includes Phoenix – but it had only sixty open polling stations, one for every 21,000 registered voters, and not nearly enough voting machines. But that’s hardly a record. In 2004, students in Gambier, Ohio queued for more than ten hours. In Cobb County, Georgia, in 2008 people waited 12 hours; a woman collapsed in the sun. In my hometown, Philadelphia, a man told the local news that it didn’t matter if voting for Obama took him all day: “We’ve waited hundreds of years for this: we can wait a little longer in line.”

But not all Americans do wait, or not every time. In 2004, more than 15,000 voters in Columbus, Ohio were defeated by the long queues: they showed up at their polling stations, but left before they could vote. Estimates of the total number of votes lost in 2012 because of long waits range from 500,000 to 700,000 – but it may have been many more than that. A study from Ohio State University, using data collected by the Orlando Sentinel, found that 200,000 registered voters in Florida alone might not have cast ballots because they thought it would take too long – to say nothing of the people who have given up voting entirely. (Why don’t they just vote by post? In the UK, anyone can submit a postal ballot, no reason required. In the US, rules on absentee voting vary from state to state: often, as in New York, you have to claim that you’ll be out of town to qualify, with few other exceptions. An unsympathetic boss wouldn’t be reason enough.)

Voters in urban districts with the most African American voters – the places most likely to go for the Democrats – overwhelmingly wait the longest. A New York Times/CBS News study found that 18% of Democrats reported that they had waited at least half an hour to vote in the 2012 election, compared with 9% of Republicans. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s campaign counsel have argued that this is hardly a coincidence in places where Republicans control the local boards that decide how many polling stations there ought to be, or in which neighborhoods they ought to go, or how much new voting equipment to buy. Some states have experimented with giving people more time to vote, and in 2012 more than 900,000 North Carolinians voted over two weeks. Although the state went Republican overall, 48% of the early voters went for the Democrats, 32% for the Republicans; 70% of African Americans voted early, compared with just half of whites. Since then, the state’s Republican lawmakers haven’t succeeded in cutting early voting entirely, but they’ve been able to shorten it by a week. Florida lawmakers say they’re just trying to cut their state’s early voting period to save money; the state’s former Republican chairman told the Palm Beach Post: “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates. It’s done for one reason and one reason only … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us’.”

Southern states no longer require their citizens to pay poll taxes or, if they’re black, to pass impossible “literacy” tests (sample question: name all 67 county judges in Alabama) – but there are other ways to keep certain people from voting. Republicans have been most in favor of requiring voters to present official photo ID (which Americans are least likely to have driver’s licences? African Americans who live in cities), and of disenfranchising anyone who’s ever been convicted of a crime. And they can make the people who can least afford to take time off work wait the longest to vote. All last summer, I worried: the majority of Americans might prefer a Democratic president to a Republican – but would they be willing to wait more than an hour to vote against nice-ish Marco Rubio? I worry a little less now.

— Deborah Friedell (Courtesy, the London Review of Books)

BREAKING NEWS: FORT BRAGG SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT BUSH TO RESIGN

MSP just received a copy of this email sent out @ 3:28 pm today (Wednesday) — in advance of tomorrow's 8:00 am FBUSD trustee meeting where School Superintendent Charles Bush's future was to be discussed.

It seems he will be leaving the district - as MSP indicated in a post earlier today. He was in attendance at the Fort Bragg Alternative High School graduation Wednesday night.

The school trustees recently received a a "Letter of no confidence" in the superintendent from 89% of the permanent certified employees in the school district who felt their jobs were in jeopardy.

More information as we receive it...

(Courtesy, MendocinoSportsPlus)

VARIOUS MEMBERS of my family have held season tickets to the Warriors all the way back to when the Warriors played at the Cow Palace. We've logged thousands of mostly happy hours at Niner's games beginning at Kezar Stadium. Giants? Ditto. The last Warriors game I saw in person, when tickets were still affordable, was the Rick Barry-Al Attles Warriors, just before the games became a kind all out assault on one's cognitive intake apparatus — terrible music played constantly at full volume; perpetual pelvic thrusts from a squadron of hoochie coochie girls; ten dollar hot dogs; that insane scoreboard looming overhead in anticipation of the next big earthquake; major freeway battles getting to the Coliseum to and from. The Niners are over for us, we still get to a lot of Giants games.

SO, WHEN my nephew was quoted in Leah Garchik's col on Wednesday, he was expressing a third generation family opinion, and an opinion we unanimously hold: "A longtime season ticket holder for the Golden State Warriors was dismayed by the playoff opener's pre-game video for fans. 'To get the Roaracle crowd inspired,' e-mailed RA, 'a montage of film clips began with the chest-pounding scene from The Wolf of Wall Street featuring criminals gleefully bonding over their greedy money scams. The clip then moved through mostly comedies, Will Ferrell-John C. Reilly NASCAR hijinx, but also included Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Meanwhile on the court, nine out of 10 of the players competing and sweating were people of color. Nothing from Selma, or Ali or 42 or Race. No funny men Kevin Hart, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, and no women. The montage may reflect a new audience, but it sure isn't a reflection of the loyalists."

WILL PARRISH WRITES:

In his letter regarding Measure V in Mendocino County Today, John Sackowicz wrote:

“Will Parrish, Ed Nieves, Dan Hamburg, and every other environmentalist who worked so hard to get Measure V passed. And thank you to the voters of Mendocino County who had the good common sense to vote "Yes" on Measure V."

I never worked on the Yes on V campaign. I have written lots of stories about Mendocino Redwood Company's activities and spoken about those activities at events, on the radio, etc., and in a fashion that seems to drive MRC officials up a wall, but Sakowicz appears confused about the nature of my work.

Will Parrish, Ukiah

EDMUNDSON DEFENDS HISTORICAL REVIEW BOARD

An Open Letter To Whoever Wrote This Initial Email About The MHRB's Denial Of St. Anthony's Sign:

Dear Chickenfeed,

Next time, have the guts/integrity to sign your name.

You have a lot to learn about so very many things regarding the Town of Mendocino and its people.

We have the MHRB to protect the historic integrity (there's that word again) of the Historic Dictrict of the Town, in which Saint Anthony's Church resides.

Their agent applied for a variance to the Zoning Code to allow a sign of non-conforming material to be approved.

As one MHRB member pointed out, and I'll paraphrase, If this were an initial permit we would deny it. No one in the hearing disagreed.

Saint Anthony's was not fined any penalty nor was it required to pay a double application fee for applying ex post facto for permission of a violation.

Grace.

Your excoriation of the members of the MHRB is housed in your ignorance. It is factually without any awareness or understanding of its role and responsibilities to the protection of the Town. Its individual members serve at the pleasure of the County Board of Supervisors and are required to meet basic criteria to qualify.

So, Chickenfeed, put your name on your missives; study your Town Plan, Zoning Code and Historic Preservation Guidelines. Otherwise, shut the flower up.

My name is Lee Edmundson.

You may phone me at 937-4369.

CATCH OF THE DAY, June 9, 2016

JAMES AVANTS, Albion. County parole violation.

JOHN CHRISTMAS, Fort Bragg. Resisting.

DANIEL DELOSSANTOS, Talmage. Court order violation. (Frequent flyer.)

ALISIA JOAQUIN, Covelo. Probation revocation.

JEROME MCMURPHY, Ukiah. Parole violation.

SHERRI NEELEY, Ukiah. Loitering, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

JUSTIN PEACOCK, Ukiah. Drunk in public, probation revocation.

RUSTY RAMSING, Willits. Probation revocation.

TARA SHEPARD, Willits. Reckless driving, controlled substance, under influence, failure to appear.

BRIANA SMITH-BEARDEN, Ukiah. Domestic assault.

SUNTHORN TONKANYA, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

MEMORIAL PARK

A few years ago the mayor of Porto Empedocle, the Sicilian town where Pirandello was born, was under pressure to put up a monument honoring the great playwright. But there was no money. During a trip to a “twinned” town somewhere in the Ukraine, the mayor noticed that many statues had been discarded on the ground; they represented a man with a bald head and slanted eyes, peculiarly similar to Pirandello's. So he asked whether he could buy one. “As many as you please,” was the answer: there was nothing to pay. The mayor couldn't believe his luck. Thus, after a few adjustments here and there, Lenin's stone face became Pirandello's. And so far as I know there he now stands, on the main square of a town which not long ago voted 92% for Berlusconi.

— Gaia Servadio

FOR THOSE AROUND THE NATION who have become politically involved for the first time by working or even just voting for Bernie Sanders, the fact of Hillary Clinton’s arrogant certainty that she would win the Democratic nomination and that Sanders never had a chance might be too much to take. Indeed, one might be already thinking that the whole campaign was a waste of time and, consequently, so are politics in general. Or, one might be saying to themselves, “fuck this, we can’t ever change anything so why bother." As for some older folks, who worked or voted for Sanders just like they might have voted for Kucinich, or Jesse Jackson or George McGovern, they might be saying — I can’t believe I fell for this game again. Although the desire to go back to being cynical or depressed might be strong, don’t. Why not? Because this campaign has made one thing clear: a substantial number of Americans are interested in redistributing wealth and making government work for the 99 percent. This simple fact means that we must not despair. Instead we must go beyond the paradigm, think outside the box of bourgeois electoral politics and determine how to make the social change we desire take place. How can we redistribute wealth and guarantee homes, education, health care and an income for all? How can we end the rule of Wall Street and the Pentagon over our lives and the lives of people around the world? How can we dismantle neoliberal capitalism and put human needs before any profits? How — and this is the fundamental question — can we prevent the planet from becoming uninhabitable?

— Ron Jacobs

POROUS PERIMETER

For future reference, here's a couple notes I ran across recently (sorry I can't recall the source) about ww2 attacks on N. America by Japanese forces: I - 17 Japanese submarine under Commander Kozo Nishino...surfaced off the coast of California, February 13, 1942, and fired thirteen shells into an oil tank farm at Goleta. I - 25 Japanese submarine that launched a special aircraft on September 9, and September 29, 1942, to bomb the forests of Oregon. The pilot was Nobuo Fujita, the only person ever to bomb the U.S. [until lately]. The I - 25 was commanded by Meiji Tagami and while en route back to Japan, he sank the Russian submarine L - 16 northwest of Seattle on October 11, 1942. The I - 25 was sunk in the vicinity of Espiritu Santo in August, 1943, while under the command of Lieutenant Commander Masaur Kobiga.

(Rick Weddle)

CONSERVATION GROUPS ASK FOR MORE TIME TO FILE OBJECTIONS TO DELTA TUNNELS PLAN

by Dan Bacher

Following the submission of documents on May 31 by the state and federal governments pleading their case for the Delta Tunnels plan, environmental and fishing groups and San Joaquin County asked the State Water Resources Control Board for more time for them to file their objections to the documents.

Three separate request letters were filed, including one by AquAlliance, California Sportfishing Alliance and other groups; the second by the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) and the Institute for Fishery Resources (IFR); and the third by San Joaquin County and Mokelumne River WPA.

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) and Bureau of Reclamation last Thursday submitted their testimony and evidence as required for upcoming public Water Board hearings regarding their request to add three new points of diversion on the Sacramento River for the California WaterFix. That’s the new name for the plan to build two tunnels under the Delta to export water to agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California water agencies.

The AquaAlliance, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Environmental Water Caucus, Friends of the River, Planning and Conservation League, Restore the Delta and Sierra Club California requested a 27-day extension of time for all protestants in the Hearing on the California Waterfix Change Petition to file and serve any written procedural/evidentiary objections concerning petitioners’ case in chief. (mavensnotebook.com/...)

If granted, this request would change the present time and date for receipt of any written procedural/evidentiary objections from 12:00 noon, June 15, 2016 to 12:00 noon, July 12, 2016.

“Since the State Water Board gave notice of the petition on October 30, 2015, petitioners have made changes in documents including modeling that they have claimed to be relying on and have sought and been granted continuances in starting the Hearing totaling 90 days so far,” the groups argued. “The Hearing does not commence until July 26, 2016. Granting the extension we request will ensure the filing and service of objections a full two weeks before the start of the Hearing.

“That is ample time for petitioners to learn what the objections are and yet allows protestants a reasonable period of time to attempt to read and evaluate the May 31 submissions and the new modeling analysis for the purpose of identifying and writing appropriate objections. In court proceedings, parties do not learn of opposing parties’ objections until the witness is actually testifying,” they explained.

The County of San Joaquin, San Joaquin County Flood Control and Water Conservation District and Mokelumne River Water and Power Authority also requested a 27-day extension of time to file and serve any written objections concerning the petitioners’ cases. (mavensnotebook.com/...)

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and Institute for Fisheries Resources requested 61-day extension. The groups argue, “This extension is necessitated by the sheer volume (5,159 pages of documents, 186 MB of video and audio files, and 19.3 GB of modeling files) and arcane and confusing nature of petitioners' evidentiary submissions.” (mavensnotebook.com/...)

Meanwhile, the Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation sent a letter to the Water Board objecting to any further extension of time, claiming it is ‘unwarranted.”

“Very little of what has been submitted by Petitioners as part of their case-in-chief, whether in their concise testimony (133 pages total for 8 lead witnesses) or in their submitted exhibits, represents ‘new’information. Rather, much of the information contained in Petitioners' case-in-chief, including submitted exhibits, is public information previously available to all protestants,” the agencies wrote.

DRW and Reclamation also wrote, “Because the majority of information provided with Petitioners' case-in-chief has been available to protestants long before the submission of testimony and exhibits on May 31, 2016, the current hearing schedule provides ample opportunity for protestants to file written procedural/evidentiary objections by the current deadline of June 15, 2016.”

The State Water Board has indicated they will issue a decision on the extension requests some time this week.

In a statement issued on June 1, DWR claimed it will present evidence to show that the proposed change in points of diversion “will neither initiate a new water right nor injure any other legal user of water.”

Restore the Delta, a coalition opposed to the project, described the testimony as “largely a rehash of unsubstantiated claims about the Delta Tunnels project that have not been proven, despite more than 40,000 pages of environmental review that the US Environmental Protection Agency has declared is still inadequate (a failing grade.)”

California WaterFix will only hasten extinction of Delta smelt, salmon

Governor Jerry Brown is promoting his California WaterFix at a catastrophic time for salmon and Delta fish populations. In this spring’s California Department of Fish and Wildlife smelt survey released last week, the numbers of the endangered fish, once the most abundant fish in the estuary, have plummeted to a new low.

“There’s nothing between them and extinction, as far as I can tell,” Peter Moyle, a UC Davis biologist, professor and author who has studied Delta smelt and other Delta fish species for nearly four decades, told the Sacramento Bee: www.sacbee.com/…

”We are entering uncharted waters with the delta smelt now because populations have never been so low,” Dr. Moyle told me this March. "My guess is that populations are so small now that random events, such as predation by a swarm of silversides on eggs and larvae in an isolated spawning event, can keep driving the population down." (www.indybay.org/...)

Yet the Delta Tunnels plan will only hasten the extinction of Delta smelt, along with longfin smelt, winter-run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, green sturgeon and other fish species, according to Delta advocates and scientific experts. The California Water Fix will also imperil the salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.

For more information, go to: redgreenandblue.org/...