Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, July 5, 2016

• Durant Warrior
• Gender Fluidity
• Ranochak Summons
• Geology Hike
• Drought Farming
• Online Progression
• PA Fireworks
• V Effects
• Abstemious Abe
• Yesterday's Catch
• Independence Declaration
• Brexit
• Bush Biography
• American Corruption
• Hillary Investigation
• My Truck
• Clinton WikiLeaks

KEVIN DURANT to the Warriors. We had a feeling the deal would be done, but it's awfully cruel, even by big time sports standards, to the guys who have to be let go to make room for him — Harrison Barnes, Bogut, Ezeli… The Warriors will now be invincible, the best team ever assembled.

A few of the popular tweets going around:

• Kevin Durant told Russell Westbrook he was going to the store for some milk and never came back.
• Kevin Durant and Steph Curry gonna start the most powerful youth church in church history.
• Kevin Durant joining Golden State doesn’t matter because Trump is going to be president and we’re all going to be dead by next year.

And this made up quote: “OK, I’m joining the Warriors, too.” — LeBron James

THE ESSENTIAL TOMMY WAYNE KRAMER writes in his must read Sunday column in the Ukiah Daily Journal, "I’ve been advised second and third graders in Ukiah schools are being taught knitting and crocheting. It’s clearly meant to help local teachers prod youngsters along in the evolution toward enhanced gender fluidity. Educators are giddy anytime they can sand away the differences between boys and girls; local parents might have different ideas. Dads, pay attention to how the schools are instructing kids, because next thing you know teachers will have your son designing a cocktail dress to wear to his sixth grade graduation. I’d like to suggest subjects to help little girls embrace their inner masculine side. How about all students attend “Introduction to Swordplay” classes, along with “Catapult Construction Basics” and “Firearms Safety for Beginners.”

WILL THE SUPERVISORS summon Ms. Ranochak to ask why it takes so long to count the Mendo vote?

"Well, ya see, it takes an awful lotta fingers and toes to count that high, and by the time you get all them people in one place sobered up, and them jumpin' all around and me with only a few gals to help do the tote, well, hell…"

Supervisor Woodhouse: "I want to commend you, Ms. Ranochak, on the fine job you do under these difficult conditions, especially in the computer age that makes counting to 20,000 so darn hard. You think it's difficult in Ukiah? Well you just try chasing everybody out of the bushes up in Laytonville. Where was I? O yes. Organic marijuana. I'm for it and I know my constituents, many of whom can't function without their medication every day…."

Supervisor Hamburg: "What's the subject again?"

Supervisor McCowen: "County policy 3855 mandates dual references to policies 4289 and 2126."

Supervisor Brown: "What's any of this have to do with free water forever for our struggling sons of the soil out in Potter Valley?"

Supervisor Gjerde: "Am I nuts or is this the way we do public business in this jive county?"

AV GEOLOGY HIKE near Blue Rock

On Sunday, July 10th from 9-1, Anderson Valley Land Trust will host an interpretive field hike on the Navarro River near the site of the 1995 Floodgate landslide and temporary dam. Geologist Julie Bawcom will discuss the landslide and the geologic history of the Navarro River. Julie is a licensed Engineering Geologist who worked for 28 years with the California Geological Survey in their Timber and Watershed Program in Mendocino County. She retired in 2014 and continues to teach geology classes part time for Mendocino College. The level of the walk is moderate. There is no fee for this event, but we request that you contact us to reserve a space at avlt@mcn.org or 707-895-3150. This event is made possible thanks to a grant from the Pearson Family Fund of the Community Foundation of Mendocino County. Thank you!

DROUGHT SAVVY Strategies for Farm and Garden: At Anderson Valley Community Farm Tim Ward, Amanda Bontecou, and Matthew Gammett are all farming, gardening and raising livestock with limited water. Come join AV Foodshed on July 10th for a farm tour and potluck where Tim, Amanda, and Matthew will show their farming, gardening, and ranching strategies to cope with the current drought and still produce food. The tour will begin at 5:00 p.m. at the entrance to AV Community Farm off Lambert Lane. After the tour will be a local food community potluck and an opportunity to discuss the presentations and share your techniques. Please bring a potluck dish, your place setting, and a beverage. No fee and please no pets. For more information call 895-2949 or email avfoodshed@gmail.com.

FROM THE AVA TO VAMPIRES IN 6 EASY STEPS,

Or: How to spend hours getting lost online:

A Reader Writes:

() July 4th article in the online AVA, THE FOURTH FROM THE OTHER SIDE

() Wikipedia--Declaration of Independence

() Signers of the Declaration of Independence---" A bill of particulars documenting the king's "repeated injuries and usurpations" of the Americans' rights and liberties."

() King George III---"By this time George's health was deteriorating. He had a mental illness, which was possibly a symptom of the genetic disease porphyria"

() Porphyria: Notable cases--King George III, Vlad III. One symptom: Photosensitivity

() Vlad III--Also known as VLAD DRACULA --may have started the notion that vampires were "allergic to sunlight." The connection of the name "Dracula" with vampirism was made by Bram Stoker around the 1890s. Since then, the character of 'Count Dracula' has recurred through vampire mythology and popular culture.

TOTALLY UNCONVINCING:

Why Point Arena is charging admission to street fair and fireworks

by Richard Shoemaker, Point Arena City Manager

The Point Arena Independence Weekend Celebration Committee has been meeting weekly for some time working on the event. Hours upon hours of volunteer time along with donated City staff time have gone into this effort. That will continue until the event is over.

A modest entry fee for the street fair, music and fireworks of $10 per adult, $5 for ages 12 to 17 and kids under 12 free, with a $25 maximum per family has been implemented because last year the city had to cover $5,500 of the event’s expenses not covered by sponsorships and gate donations.

That amount does not include the cost of City staff time spent planning, setting up, breaking down and cleaning up when it was over. Last year the City budget was in deficit even before the cost of the 4th event. We needed to eliminate that cost to the City.

Charging admission was discussed at two July 4 planning committee meetings. It was felt that having people standing around shaking cans at people for donations didn’t work well, especially for the can shakers.

Two other considerations were to drop the bands, the DJ and the sound system which would have saved $3,500. Or the other option was not to have the event at all. Those were not popular. So the admission fee was approved. We have also sent letters out to businesses to increase donations and sponsorships.

To alert folks who have not heard of the new entry fee, we will post signs at the entry to Port Road and elsewhere letting people know there is an admission charge.

Change is tough but the event needs to cover, at least, its hard costs. We will see how it goes. The Independence Weekend Celebration can’t survive without the financial support of the community.

In the end, people need to evaluate whether $10 per person for an afternoon and evening of entertainment, community gathering and fireworks is worth it. We are trying to give the community what it says it wants in the way of a celebration. If people decide the value of the event is not worth the cost, it could be cancelled in the future.

If this event means something to you, get involved and help defray costs any way you can. Volunteers are still needed to help with the event. If you’d like to help, get free admission and t-shirt, call City Hall at 707-882-2122 to sign up.

Mendocino County elections officials have verified passage of a June 7 ballot measure aimed at limiting the controversial practice of poisoning unwanted hardwood trees and leaving them to die in forests, a practice critics allege creates a serious fire danger.

Yet the consequences of the measure remain murky. When the last of the ballots were counted late last week, so-called Measure V had won with just over 62 percent of the vote, officials said. More ballots were counted after June 7 — 16,525 — than were counted on election night.

The biggest remaining question is the effect of Measure V on the primary target of the measure, Mendocino Redwood Co., and the company’s response.

“I have no idea” what’s next, said Mike Jani, the company’s president and chief forester. He said the company is still evaluating the potential effects of the new ordinance, which county officials said will go into effect 10 days after supervisors give their stamp of approval. The measure’s proponents believe the company, which spent more than $200,000 to battle the measure, will sue to stop the ordinance from taking effect.

Timber company officials won’t say.

It’s unclear how the ordinance may impact business because it doesn’t forbid using “hack-and-squirt” operations, so named because they involve making cuts in trees, then applying herbicides to the wounds. The ordinance makes it a nuisance to leave standing for more than 90 days any intentionally killed trees more than 16 feet tall. Landowners are liable if such operations cause damage to structures, water sources and telecommunication lines within 3,300 feet of the dead trees.

Those parameters “cover most of the footprint of the county,” said Ted Williams, chief of the Albion-Little River Fire Department, who was at the forefront of the ballot measure effort.

There is no enforcement mechanism in the ordinance. But it could have serious impact on forestland management, making it more costly for both corporate owners and small landowners, forestry officials say.

On average, the cost of thinning forests through hack-and-squirt while leaving the dead trees standing is about $250 per acre, said Greg Giusti, a forest advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension.

The cost of cutting and leaving them on the ground is about $750 an acre, while cutting and hauling them away is about $1,000 an acre. Mendocino Redwood Co. officials say hack-and-squirt operations are crucial to restoring its forests to their original, conifer dominated state. The tree compositions have been altered by decades of overcutting and poor management under prior ownerships, company officials said. They contend the practice of leaving dead trees in place does not increase fire risks significantly.

Williams and others disagree. He said he became alarmed by the massive number of dead trees standing in the forests in and around his district, and launched a campaign against the practice, which he and other critics contend has enhanced the likelihood of fires and increased the danger of fighting forest fires.

An estimated 1.5 million trees are being killed and left standing in Mendocino County forests each year, Williams has said. Mendocino Redwood Co. uses the practice extensively on the 228,852 acres it owns in Mendocino and Sonoma counties. Its affiliate, Humboldt Redwood Co., owns an additional 209,300 acres, where the method also is practiced.

Mendocino Redwood and forestry officials say it’s unclear how much of an impact the new ordinance will have on the company’s forest management practices because it doesn’t actually ban the practice of poisoning trees.

“It doesn’t say ‘thou shalt not,’” Giusti said.

And it doesn’t provide the county with staff to monitor forest practices for nuisances, which likely would require a professional forester, he said.

But Williams said the ordinance has a secret enforcement weapon: the certification process that deems products “green.” A large part of Mendocino Redwood’s sales are to Home Depot, a contract dependent on green certification, Williams said.

Last year, the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance renewed Mendocino Redwood’s certification despite protests from environmentalists who contended the use of hack-and-squirt in forest management should not be allowed. Rainforest Alliance officials said it’s an accepted forestry practice and breaks no laws. Williams said certifiers have told him that having an ordinance against the practice could interfere with the green certification.

The organization requires companies follow all local, state and federal laws, but the ordinance doesn’t actually prohibit hack-and-squirt, said Jamie Overton, forest certification coordinator for the Rainforest Alliance.

She said the organization will study the new ordinance — and the practice — when it re-evaluates the timber company’s certification later this summer. If the new ordinance does create an effective prohibition on leaving dead trees standing, it could have far-reaching effects on all forestland owners, not just Mendocino Redwood, Giusti said. The cost of cutting down all the unwanted trees could discourage proper forest management, he said.

“It forces people more toward a do-nothing option, which is not a good option,” he said. Among other things, it means more trees competing for limited water to the detriment of the overall forest’s health, Giusti said.

Landowners also might choose to fell the trees, and just leave them on the ground, which is more of a fire hazard than leaving them standing, he said.

“The wording is so vague, there won’t be any major change unless the courts get involved,” he said.

(Courtesy, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.)

HONEST—ABE LINCOLN DIDN'T SMOKE HEMP

by Fred Gardner

Abraham Lincoln said, according to many sources, including the Cannabis Card produced by Pebbles Trippet and drawn by Fred Sternkopf, "Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp and playing my Hohner harmonica." But no one ever provides a reference to when and where Honest Abe said or wrote the legendary line.

O'Shaughnessy's asked Sidney Blumenthal, who has just published volume one of a projected four-volume biography of Lincoln, if he came across the hemp/harmonica line in his research. "Apocryphal," Blumenthal replied. He elaborated:

Lincoln was unusually abstemious and devoid of personal vices such as drinking and smoking. Stephen A. Douglas in 1854 baited Lincoln at a meeting by offering him some whiskey, knowing Lincoln didn't touch the stuff. (Douglas died of complications wrought by alcoholism.) Lincoln's friend, Joe Gillespie, who served with him as a state representative, told William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, in the oral history Herndon conducted after Lincoln's death: “He was a remarkably temperate man; eschewing every indulgence not so much as it seemed to me, from principle as from a want of appetites. I never heard him declaim against the use of tobacco or other stimulants although he never indulged in them.” No contemporary has a different recollection. For Lincoln's views of temperance, see my book; he got himself in trouble attacking hellfire preachers.

In a follow-up email Blumenthal steered us to a letter in Lincoln's collected works, noting "Here's the closest you'll ever get to Lincoln & hemp:"

Hon: W. B. Preston Lexington, Ky.

Secretary of the Navy. Novr. 5. 1849

Dear Sir: Being here in Kentucky on private business, [2] I have learned that the name of Dr. John T. Parker [3] is before you as an applicant for the Hemp Agency of the State. I understand that his name has been presented in accordance with the wish of the hemp-growers, rather than his own. I personally know him to be a gentleman of high character, of excellent general information, and, withal, an experienced hemp grower himself. I disclaim all right of interference as to the offices out of my own state; still I suppose there is no impr[opr]iety in my stating the facts as above; and I will venture to add that I shall be much gratified, if Dr. Parker shall receive the appointment. Your Obt. Servt. A. LINCOLN—-

[2] Lincoln's business was the lawsuit Todd v. Wickliffe.

[3] An uncle of Mary Todd Lincoln.

Sorry, Pebbles. Sorry, Fred. Sorry, Mr. Hohner. Blumenthal also sent this info:

You will find hemp in Moby Dick, and the reference is an allusion to Henry Clay. Clay's major business was hemp, used of course to make rope. (Clay inherited the hemp business from his wife's father.) Lincoln had a complicated relationship with Clay, his "beau ideal," who he did not support in 1840 and 1848 for the Whig presidential nomination, and was disillusioned when he met him personally, though his eulogy is praiseworthy but of interest for Lincoln's emphasis on Clay's antislavery sentiments.

Here's a conference held at Clay's Ashland estate at Lexington, Kentucky, just a few weeks ago:

http://www.kyhempsters.com/blank

(Fred Gardner will be performing topical and off-topical ballads at the Cannabis Country Fair at the Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville on Friday, July 8, late afternoon. Thanks. "A boy's got to hustle," said T.C.)

CATCH OF THE DAY, July 4, 2016

SALVADOR ALVARADO, Pot possession for sale, pot sales.

ROBERT BERG, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

SONO CARRIGG, Ukiah. Loitering, vandalism.

TIMOTHY DAVIS JR., Covelo. Suspended license.

MARILYN FELLDIN, Antelope/Ukiah. DUI.

PATRICK HANOVER, Covelo. DUI-drugs, probation revocation.

MARK HUGHES, Riverside/Ukiah. Pot sales.

ALEXANDRIA KRAFT, Sacramento/Ukiah. Controlled substance, possession of meth for sale, solicitation of prostitution, probation revocation.

ROBERT MORALES, Ukiah. Battery on peace officer, resisting.

MICHELLE REICHARDT, Ukiah. DUI.

SESARIO RIOS IV, Ukiah. Domestic battery, county parole violation.

JOSUHA ROBERTS, Mesa, Arizona/Redwood Valley. Drunk in public.

CLINTON SALLEE, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

JONATHON THOMPSON JR., Fort Bragg. Concentrated cannabis, drunk in public.

CHRISTOPHER TURNER, Santa Rosa/Redwood Valley. Controlled substance.

IT’S TIME FOR A SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION

by Jill Stein

On July 4, politicians declare their love for the American Revolution and democracy, while doing their best to oppose both at home and abroad.

The 2016 Presidential election provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to win independence from the rule of the 1%. The two 1% nominees — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — are the two most disliked politicians in US history. And those who plan to vote for them don’t support their agenda — they just want to vote against the other candidate. Voting against your fears is not what democracy is about.

A movement for democracy and justice is sweeping the planet — from Occupy Wall Street to anti-austerity uprisings and the Black Lives Matter movement. People are rising up to halt the neoliberal assault, calling for an America and a world that works for all of us. While this movement is winning important victories — notably for living wages and against fossil fuel infrastructure — the economic elite have only tightened their grip. People are realizing that if we want to fix the rigged economy, the rigged racial injustice system, the rigged energy system and more, we must also fix the rigged political system.

The toxic 2016 Presidential election is yet another manifestation of the desperate need for deep change. Many have flocked to the banner of socialism and equality raised by the Sanders campaign, while conservative voters have rejected the illusions peddled by Republican elites.

The groundswell for Donald Trump was created by the economic misery of NAFTA and Wall Street deregulation — policies promoted by both Clintons. Neoliberal Clintonism caused the rise of Trump. Another Clinton presidency will only make things worse. The Democratic electoral strategy of promoting the lesser evil merely paves the way to the greater evil.

The extreme concentration of wealth in the top 1% undermines democracy, as economic power translates into political power. Both main parties have colluded over the last four decades to transfer wealth to their super-rich donors, while ensuring that no meaningful reforms take place to our electoral system. The U.S. leads the industrial nations in income inequality because our electoral system is the least democratic among those countries that profess to be democratic.

The first American revolution of course failed to create democracy. While it ended our status as a colony of Britain, it reserved voting power to the privileged few, mainly white male property owners. It created powerful institutions such as the US Senate, Supreme Court and the electoral college to protect against the “rule of the mob.” And the founders’ fear about the dangers of a standing army were discarded after WWII, leading to the creation of the most powerful war machine the planet has ever seen, accumulating an increasing share of the nation’s political power and resources.

The US electoral system of winner-take-all leads to the domination by two parties, one center-right and the other far-right. Hillary is the advocate for the billionaire club, and Donald is a member of it. The two establishment parties keep opposition candidates off the ballot and out of the debates, while the corporate media keeps them out of the press. No other democracy offers voters such limited choices on Election Day.

We need to overhaul our electoral system — public campaign finance reform, proportional representation, ranked choice voting — and stop voter suppression by enforcing the guaranteed right to vote. We need to override the Supreme Court’s lunacy that gives corporations and the rich the right to buy elections.

It is long past time to extend the concept of democracy to our economy. The economic dictatorship of the wealth-owning class needs to be replaced with an economic democracy where the people making up the economy decide how the economy works. This must include options for community and worker ownership, where the wage scales, disposition of profits and decisions about technology and environmental impact are made by the people who have to live with those decisions.

The clock is ticking — on the next Wall Street collapse, the climate meltdown, the expanding wars, the slide towards fascism, nuclear confrontation and more. This is the time to stand up with the courage of our convictions, while we still can. Forget the lesser evil. Fight for the greater good — like our lives depend on it, because they do. The corporate parties will not fix this for us. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

On this Independence Day, it is time to declare our independence from the oligarchy of the super-rich and their bought and paid for political representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties. The oligarchs have two parties. It’s time we had one of our own.

IF GEORGE W. BUSH eventually gets a more sympathetic hearing by history, as he hopes, it will not start with Jean Edward Smith’s new book.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/books/review-bush-a-biography-as-scathing-indictment.html

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The Clintons may be world-champion influence peddlers, but it’s increasingly hard to see why anyone cares. Corruption is a way of life in America. In the Teapot Dome scandal, one guy got convicted of accepting a bribe that no one was ever convicted for offering. Now it’s reached the point where the Supreme Court openly shrugs its shoulders at a governor who sold out the public trust for a ride in a Ferrari. Show me things going the other direction for once, then I’ll act surprised. The good part of what’s been going on, at least since Trump drank the other Republican candidates’ milkshake, is that the stakes are getting more out in the open every day: in addition to right versus left, it’s now clearly elites (including the center-left) versus everyone else.

OUT, OUT DAMNED EMAIL!

by James Kunstler

The mighty Shakespeare in his direst night sweats could not have conjured up the Clinton family in all their sharp angles and dark corners, but we can try to reconstruct the scene last week on Loretta Lynch’s plane out on the Phoenix airport tarmac. Former president Bill steps aboard:

Loretta: What the fuck are you doing here?

Bill: I just had to tell you what Charlotte did last week.

Loretta: Who the fuck is Charlotte?

Bill: Our grand-kid. She’s turning into a good little earner.

Loretta: We can’t meet like this. We’re about to depose your wife.

Bill: Charlotte gave a speech to the whole Citibank C-suite.

Loretta: I don’t give a fuck. Get off my plane right now!

Bill: Well, I don’t know if ‘speech’ is the right word. She gurgles nice.

Loretta: I guess you didn’t hear me.

Bill: She pulled in fifty grand for that. Of course it was a hundred percent remitted to the foundation. Well, bye now. (Exits plane).

I have a theory about the Clinton family dynamic. Bill does not want Hillary to win because he doesn’t want to live in the White House again. For sure he does not want to live with The Flying Reptile, but he especially doesn’t want to be on display in that fishbowl where folks pretty much can see what you’re up to 24/7. For one thing, “The Energizer” can’t discreetly come and go. But he certainly doesn’t want to concern himself as “First Husband” or “First Gentleman” (title TBD) with deciding which fabric to choose in replacing the East Room draperies. So Bill decided to fix things for sure with that innocent visit to the US Attorney General’s airplane to talk about grand-kids.

It seems to be working. If there was any question that Loretta Lynch could just sit on her hands about Hillary’s email investigation through the November election, it went up in a vapor last week. It also left the FBI director on the hot seat because now he will have to either cough up a referral to Justice Department prosecutors, or he’ll have some ‘splainin to do in the heat of a presidential election campaign. If you thought Watergate was a ripe peach, this one is beginning to look like a stinking durian (Durio zibethinus).

Both The New York Times and the WashPo are spinning the Hillary email scandal as being about security protocols, which is to say they are deliberately putting too fine a point on the matter as a ruse to deflect from the deeper issue: namely, did Hillary as Secretary of State use her office to shovel money from sources in foreign lands into her family foundation? It sure looks that way if you match the contributions from foreign lands to the arms sale deals she approved as part of her official duties. In any case, whatever connection there might be between those arms deals and the foundation revenue, is there not under any circumstances some obvious conflict of interest (and legal liability) about a secretary of state doing personal business with foreign governments?

This matter is swelling like an abscess ready to burst just as the Hon (?) Debbie Wasserman Schultz whacks the gavel to open the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Bernie’s troops will be ready to rock and roll both inside and outside the convention, with perhaps some diversionary skirmishes by the Black Lives Matter cadres. Throw in another “Lone Wolf” massacre, say, at a cheese-steak stand and you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye.

Note that this convergence of bad karma will take place against the background of deteriorating events on the banking scene. The European banks in particular are melting away to nothing while European Union officials wringing their hands in prayer. You can bet it’s going to affect all the global banks, daisy-chained as they are in counterparty obligations. Somewhere in a dark subterranean chamber, the magma of financial derivatives is getting ready to blow.

Happy Independence Day everybody! Who needs space aliens when we’ve got Hillary and Trump?

PS. This week marks the official publication date of The Harrows of Spring, the fourth and final installment of the World Made By Hand series of novels about the post-petroleum American Future. I’ll be making some bookstore appearances this week and next around the area where I live. Here’s the schedule. All events are at 7 p.m.

• Thursday July 7 — The Book House, Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, New York
• Friday July 8 — Battenkill Books, Cambridge, New York
• Saturday July 9 — Northshire Books, Manchester, Vermont
• Saturday July 16 — Northshire Books, Saratoga Springs, New York

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page!)

JULIAN ASSANGE ON HILLARY’S EMAILS and what her presidency would be like:

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/14/wikileaks_will_release_new_clinton_emails_to_add_to_incriminating_evidence_julian_assange_says_in_big_year_ahead/