Mendocino County Today: Monday, Sept. 19, 2016

• Hulbert Memorial
• Motorcycle Fatality
• Apple Bowl
• Spotlight Poachers
• Bus Stops
• Mendo Faces
• Fair Parade
• Hare Creek
• Mental Health
• Porn Prop
• Autumn Bears
• Yesterday's Catch
• Dog Gone
• False Equivalency
• AF Insights
• No on AF
• Locavore Discount
• Phil Tracy
• Rocket Man
• Exclusionary Duopoly
• Dakota Protest
• Civic Engagement
• KMEC Radio

JOHN H. HULBERT

September 22, 1936 — July 21, 2016

Per John’s request a simple celebration of his life will be at his home in Philo from 2-4pm on Thursday, September 22, 2016. Coffee, tea, punch, cake and cookies will be served. If anyone wants anything stronger to drink you are welcome to bring your own.

FAIR SUNDAY was marred by the death of a motorcyclist on 128 near Navarro.

FATALITY ON 128 SUNDAY MORNING, MSP REPORTING: The scanner & CHP Traffic "incident" page reported (10:59 am) a "Recreational vehicle vs. a motorcycle" accident in the eastbound lane near mile marker 10.77 on CA-128. The vehicles were not posing a road hazard. The scanner simply stated it was a "motorcycle down."

First responders are on their way (Anderson Valley Fire Department, ambulance & CalFire) as well as air ambulance CalStar 4.

A first responder on the scene informed dispatch @ 11:22 am,"the one patient is 11-44 (deceased). This is a Coroner's Case. Please dispatch the sheriff department."

The CHP page said (11:32 am) a tow truck would be needed for the motorcycle and a "Big Rig Tow" for the other vehicle that has a broken front wheel.

Skyway Towing had to pass on the tow due to the extended time it would take to respond, but Fort Bragg Towing informed dispatch (11:45 am) they "will handle both."

There is a question whether the motorcycle should be "taken into evidence" at 12:19 pm.

* * *

At 1:27 pm, a CHP unit reported the highway was open, but will need to shut it down when the vehicles are retrieved by the tow trucks. The tow truck was on the scene @ 2:29 pm.

At 2:33 pm, the eastbound lane of CA-128 was shut down while the tow truck hooked up the vehicle.

The roadway was open @ 2:54 pm.

(Courtesy, MendocinoSportsPlus)

FRIDAY NIGHT Anderson Valley’s Panthers beat the visiting Laytonville Warriors, 36 to 16 in the traditional Apple Bowl. After a close first half (the Panthers dropped several catchable, likely touchdown passes thrown by our all league quarterback, Tony Pardini Jr.) but the Panthers’ overall hard-hitting defense wore down the visitors, as Boonville pulled away in the second half for the win. The Panthers will face Laytonville again at 7:30 on the 23rd for a rematch.

A SHARP-EYED Yorkville resident called 911 after seeing flashlights on his rural property a couple of weeks ago. Responding Fish and Wildlife and Sheriff’s Department staff found only a large dead buck shot by spotlighting poachers. Law enforcement rightly suspected that the poachers would return for their trophy kill, and sure enough the next night the unsporting sportsmen came back for their ignobly taken deer and walked straight into the trap laid for them by deputies and Fish and Game wardens. The arrest team spotlighted a Rohnert Park father and son, and soon the poaching pair was booked into the Sonoma County Jail.

DEPUTY WALKER has cited two drivers for driving past a school bus with its lights on and stop signs out. The deputy had said that too many drivers were ignoring school buses stopped to disgorge their young cargo. One of the drivers arrested was hauling a visiting crew of Mexican grape harvesters. This driver didn’t speak much English, but flashing red lights on a school bus is virtually a universal directive to passing motorists to stop until children are safely off and away from the bus.

THE AVA’S PHOTO MONTAGE called “The Faces of Mendocino County” (awarded a blue ribbon, btw) was prominently displayed as visitors entered the Arts & Crafts building at the Fair this weekend. Groups of people pointed to people they know amid merry shouts of recognition. (Now it can be told! The display was the work of the talented Annie Kalantarian, a student at Mendocino High School. The tripod of lashed sticks on which the exhibit rested was hand-crafted by Annie’s father, Mike Kalantarian. The AVA merely supplied the photos.)

SUNDAY’S FAIR PARADE was a disappointment to most observers. No floats to speak of and most of the entrants were undecorated pick-up trucks with local people in them, hardly worthy of special attention in a parade. The Mexican horseback riding contingent was its usual entertaining self, but they’re imports from Sonoma County who specialize in parades. And even they didn’t bother to dress up and only appeared in depleted numbers of less than a dozen. The popular and ubiquitous Sheriff Allman, probably on a first-name basis with most County residents, waved from a new Sheriff’s Department jeep, a silent argument against pot legalization as everyone, from the cops to the courts to the growers themselves make money from illegality. Legalize and here comes the Marlboro Man with his phactory pharms.

A LONG-TIME FAIR WATCHER COMMENTS on the sparse parade: “It’s the same story everywhere, the volunteers are getting old and the younger folks are not rushing forward to be involved — fewer families who feel they have a long term investment in the community and more pot growers out to make a quick buck. Not to say there aren't lots of pot growers who are fine people, but the experience of volunteer organizations all over the county is that fewer of them are interested in volunteering with the local fire department, coaching soccer or helping with the Fair or other civic events. No county supervisors in this year’s parade? Rumor has it that Fifth District supervisor Hamburg had other plans and the rest of the Supes, who usually show up, didn't want to upstage him.”

STOP HARE CREEK

Tomorrow from 6-8 PM at Town Hall in Fort Bragg, the City of Fort Bragg and consultants will present their plans for an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the extremely unpopular "Hare Creek Center" - that will destroy a large area of open space at the southern entrance to Fort Bragg, on the west side of Highway 1, at the Highway 20 intersection. You can learn more about this proposal, and voice your concerns about the environmental impacts of this unwise project, as well as suggest possible alternatives at this "scoping" meeting for the EIR. Be there if you care about the future of Fort Bragg, Mendocino College and the preservation of open space, and the prevention of a badly located strip mall that will ruin the southern entrance to the city. Tomorrow, Monday, Sept 19th, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Town Hall, 363 N. Main Street, Fort Bragg.

AS THE BOONVILLE NEWSPAPER has always argued, pornography itself should be banned. But now that the ritual humiliation of half the world's population is not only sanctioned but celebrated, and so pervasive it's available to children, and that fact is certainly one more sign that America's slide into the moral abyss will not be arrested any time soon, the degenerates who abase themselves in these films should probably be protected (sic) from themselves by being required to wear condoms. Vote YES, as you watch the daily increase in sex crimes everywhere in the world and wonder why such a relatively trivial issue as this one found its way onto a state ballot. Is the AVA saying pornography causes sexual violence? Yes. Can you prove it? No. But do the math. Millions of isolated men watching this stuff for hours at a time everywhere in the country is like arming a kindergarten class with loaded guns and telling them to go outside and play cops and robbers. (I don't think the analogy quite works but you get my drift, I assume.)

BEAR WATCH

A READER WRITES: Yes, there has been a bear in the Nichols Lane area of Little Lake for many years. This time of year the bears start chowing-down for their winter (in this area) semi-hibernation. Good to keep garbage tightly bagged in a freezer or shed and be sure to take it out just before pick-up (i.e. an hour before rather than the night before). Bungee cords are not much of a deterrent for a determined bear, and actually neither is a shed, as they can rip the doors off a car with ease, and one ripped two 4" solid wood doors off their hinges to get at a bag of dog food here once. They stay out of our houses because they're afraid of our scent. My neighbor uses a thick nylon strap with a ratchet lock on the end to wrap around his trash can and over the lid, and it appears to be too much trouble or too difficult for the bear to get into. It seems easier to move on to the next can than to rip one apart. Someone suggested pouring household ammonia over the can, but I've had no reports that it worked. Keep a pot and large metal spoon handy to bang on and scare them away if you hear or see a bear near your house -- they tend to stay away from places that have frightened them before. Feed pets inside and never leave food for them outside. They can smell pet food from half a mile away.

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 18, 2016

MICHAEL ALBERT, Concord/Ukiah. Annoy or molest children under 18.

THOMAS DUERNER, Willits. Appropriating someone else’s property, obtaining property by false pretenses, receiving stolen property, conspiracy.

JASMINE ELLIS, Ukiah. DUI-drugs.

DEBORAH LAWRENCE, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

ADRIAN MCWHINNEY, Ukiah. Drunk in public, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

ZACKARY MEADOWS, Oroville/Ukiah. Controlled substance.

JEFFERY JOAQUIN, Covelo. Dirk-dagger, drunk in public.

JOSEPH MORK, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DANNY RAY, Ukiah Drunk in public, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

GREGORY THOMPKINS, Fort Bragg. Unspecified offense.

ROBERT VERVILLE II, Ukiah. Probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

RAFAEL VILLALOBOS-SANCHEZ, Ukiah. Domestic assault, probation revocation.

LAUREN WILBURN, Willits. Appropriating someone else’s property, obtaining property by false pretenses, forgery, receiving stolen property, conspiracy, probation revocation.

DOWN BOY

Editor,

Doggonit, I prefer the beaches to be free from the slobbering, barking, yelping, drooling, “man’s best friend” Rover disturbing my moment of peace.

It’s bad enough that I have to contend with these beasts at the mall, in the cafes, at the parks, in the department store and at the auto mall! Or as I am returning to my car in a parking lot and I spill my hot coffee on my lap as some schmuck has left Fluffy in the back seat with the windows rolled up and they go crazy when someone gets near, hoping they are to be set free or protecting vehicle?

Maybe their subliminal realization that millions of “nondomesticated” animals are raised to be tortured throughout their lives and slaughtered to fulfill the desire of carnivores creates this need for “dog owner” loyalty and love for these “domesticated” creatures.

Or maybe it is the power and control that one can maintain?

“I love my animals better than my kids…” Yes, I have heard this statement on many occasions or some form of it.

Then there is the repulsiveness and disdain they feel when [they acquire] knowledge that other countries dine on a variety of animals considered by their standards as domestic, while diving into their New York Strip … and their obnoxious “Masters” that accompany them as their “fashion” statement where oftentimes “bigger seems to be better!?”

I.E., Two Great Danes at the patio at Marin Country Mart at a popular brewpub — as I take a sip from my lovely glass of 3 Flowers and dangle my left hand, I jumped three stories at the surprise licking that I received from one of these monsters and when I turned around and saw these two behemoths!

Why do they need to take these horses to a mall?! WTF?! Best in show? Keep them on your ranch or estate and out of my space! Take them to a farm or some “pet zoo” but please keep them away from the mall, the cafes, the department stores … not everyone is a “dog lover,” and if your pooch “likes me,” please keep him outta my crotch unless he is indeed a “service dog!”

Bow wow wow yippie yi yippy ye yo kie yay.

BTM, Novato

STOP WHINING ABOUT 'FALSE BALANCE'

Everyone wants to blame reporters for the rise of Donald Trump. How about the media consumer?

by Matt Taibbi

News media outlets are increasingly coming under fire for the sin of "false balance" or "false equivalency." The New York Times, one of the outlets most often accused of this offense, recently defined the term:

"The practice of journalists who, in their zeal to be fair, present each side of a debate as equally credible, even when the factual evidence is stacked heavily on one side."

The crime of The Times, according to some of its readers, has been its coverage of the Clinton email and Clinton Foundation stories. As one Times reader put it, "There's too much at stake in this election for the media to stoke the belief that Hillary's mistakes (which she has definitely made) are even close to par with Trump's."

When Times public editor Liz Spayd essentially told readers that her paper was just doing its job and that readers should just suck it up and deal, she was hit with a torrent of criticism.

A pack of pundits – one might call them the false-equivalency priesthood – lashed out through pieces like "Why the Media Is Botching the Election," "Media Should Stop Treating Trump and Clinton as Equals," "Does the New York Times Have a False Balance Problem?" and countless others.

It's getting ridiculous. Two quick thoughts:

1) The people complaining about "false balance" usually seem confident in having discovered the truth of things for themselves, despite the media's supposed incompetence. They're quite sure of whom to vote for and why. Their complaints are really about the impact that "false balance" coverage might have on other, lesser humans, with weaker minds than theirs. Which is not just snobbish, but laughably snobbish. So, shut up.

2) One of the main reasons the news media has been dumbed down over the years is because audiences have consistently rejected smart, responsible journalism in favor of clickbait stupidities like "Five Things You Didn't Know About John McCain's Penis" and "Woman Strips Naked in Front of Police Officers. You Won't Believe What Happened Next." The Bachelor and Toddlers and Tiaras crush Frontline. And people wonder why Donald Trump gets a lot of coverage?

No doubt about it, the country is in a brutal spot right now. We are less than two months from the possibility of one of the dumbest people on the planet winning the White House. And it seems that all anyone's talked about this week, whether around the water cooler or on TV news, Twitter or Facebook, is the lung capacity of Hillary Clinton.

That sucks. But it's not all the media's fault. This is classic horse-race stuff, and if you're getting it, it's at least in part because you spent decades asking for it.

The campaign has devolved over time into an entertainment program, a degrading and vicious show where the contestants win the nuclear launch codes instead of a date with a millionaire.

Under the rules of this reality series which media consumers turn into a gigantic hit every four years, collapsing in front of a cell-phone camera at a 9/11 memorial service is more important than a dozen position papers.

It just is. You proved it when you clicked on that video of the episode last weekend and didn't read a compare-and-contrast piece on, for instance, the candidates' banking policies.

Trump himself is feeling the business end of that dynamic right now, having just reversed himself on the birther question in spectacular fashion. His "Yes, Obama was born in America, but Hillary started the birther controversy and I ended it" routine is dumb enough and full of enough lies to keep reporters busy for a good news cycle or so, until the next fiasco.

An important news story or 10 will likely die on the vine while the country obsesses over Trump's latest foot-in-mouth episode. That's the paradox with this candidate. Even the people who wish he didn't exist can't take their eyes off him. No amount of "contextualizing" or pointing out his flaws and deceptions can walk back his gravitational pull on audiences.

This is true of a lot of dumb things that take up space in the news pages, from Joe Arpaio to the Kardashians. One could argue that the users of the public's airwaves have a higher responsibility to properly inform the public that outweighs the need to chase ratings and give airtime to clown acts, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

Ask any reporter who's tried to make the news less stupid at any time over the past 40 years. Most of those people end up begging ProPublica for lunch money, while the horse-racers and celebrity-humpers get panel shows.

Ask reporters like Juan Carlos Frey, who struggled to get anyone to pay attention when he reported on mass graves of undocumented immigrants discovered along the border of Texas.

Such stories about the mass deaths of foreigners or minorities usually get less ink than acat stuck in a tree or a model who falls off a runway.

But lack of "balance" doesn't seem to bother too many people in that instance. It only seems to come up when the victim is a major political party with basically unlimited ability to buy its own publicity.

Media consumers voting with their eyeballs for ever-dumber political coverage creates the biggest imbalance in reality, but the "false equivalency" debate is mostly over a separate, more parochial issue of journalistic ethics.

The essence of that debate is whether or not it's appropriate to write negative things about Hillary Clinton when there's a possibility that Donald Trump might become president. Or, rather, we may say negative things about Clinton, but only if we always drape reporting in plenty of context about the worse-ness of Trump, or something.

There's not much to say about this debate apart from the fact that it's phony and absurd and that the people shrieking for "balance" are almost always at heart censors who are really concerned with keeping a view of the world with which they disagree out of the news.

There are two basic ideas of how the press is supposed to operate. One is that the system works best when reporters are free, independent and annoying, giving the public as much information as possible, so that people may sort things out for themselves.

The other is that information is inherently dangerous, and the public is too stupid to be trusted with too much of it. Throughout history there has always been a plurality of people who will believe this.

Whether it's keeping "Fuck the Police" off the airwaves or news of the collectivist famine out of Pravda, the idea is the same: People can't handle stuff.

The giveaway in this latest "false balance" debate is the language. There are people wailing about a "weaponized" media that just this once needs to be leashed a bit, given the circumstances. This is classic "information is dangerous" rhetoric.

There are even people in our business using this high-pressure situation to argue for less access and transparency, in the name of keeping future generations of politicians safe from the prying eyes of the public! Most reporters view their jobs as being basically the opposite of that.

In truth, the media landscape is massive and there's room to cover everything. It's worth noting that the exploration of Trump's iniquities and unfitness for office in the last year has been truly awesome, both in terms of raw volume and vehemence of tone.

Anyone who tries to argue that there's insufficiently vast documentation of Trump's insanity is either being willfully obtuse or not paying real attention to the news. Just follow this latest birther faceplant. The outrage is all out there, in huge quantities. It's just not having the predicted effect.

So media consumers are reduced to blaming the closeness of the race on a species they've practically made extinct with their choices over the years: investigative reporters.

The irony is, the Clinton Foundation thing is a rare example of an important story that is getting anything like the requisite attention. The nexus of elite connections that sits behind tales like Bill Clinton taking $1.5 million in speaking fees from a Swiss bank (and foundation donor) while that same bank is seeking relief from Hillary Clinton's State Department is exactly the kind of thing that requires the scrutiny of reporters.

This is particularly true since the charity is a new kind of structure, with seemingly new opportunities for conflicts, and an innovation that is likely to be replicated in the future by other politicians – perhaps even a future President Trump himself.

Such investigative reports on the mechanics of political influence are also exactly the sort of thing that media audiences routinely ignore, unless by some lucky accident they happen to be caught up in the horse-race drama of a Campaign Reality Show.

So if your complaint about these reports is, "Why now, at this crucial moment?" there's a very good answer. If these stories came out at any other time, you'd be blowing them off! And probably in favor of The Biggest Loser, or a show about people eating bugs for money. Which brings us back to the key point in all of this.

I'm as worried as anyone else about the possibility of Trump getting elected. But if it happens, it's not going to be because The New York Times allowed a few reporters to investigate the Clinton Foundation. It'll be because we're a nation of idiots, who vote the same way we choose channels: without thinking.

AF INSIGHTS

Editor,

Some Positive Insights on Measure AF.

The voters of Mendocino County have the opportunity to make their voices heard on the issue of cannabis regulation in the November election. For citizens to make a clear choice, some misconceptions need to be addressed.

It has been claimed that the Heritage Act was written by and for cultivators and there has been little community input. Opposition voices suggest that Measure AF only reflects the narrow interests of a few people, rather than the long, civic process to gather many points of view that actually took place.

Starting over two years ago many elements of the community came together to claim a seat at the table for the creation of laws and ordinances regulating the cannabis industry.

Numerous public meetings were held at the various Granges, at Harwood Hall, at Healing Harvest Farms and elsewhere in Boonville and on the Coast. These meetings included farmers, nursery owners, dispensary owners, edible, tincture and concentrate manufacturers, distributors and transporters as well as stakeholders from the general agricultural, wine, tourism, real estate communities, as well as the legal arena. These meetings were open to the public for anyone interested.

Within county and state government, there were many meetings with the Farm Bureau, various County Supervisors, as well as County Council, County CEO, the Sheriff, the Ag Commissioner, State Water Resource Board and State Water Discharge agents, Board of Equalization officers, and even the Black Tail Deer Association. Members of the pro-Measure AF community have written letters to the Board, to newspapers and appeared at public Board meetings. We have been interviewed on numerous radio and televisions programs and have established a presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other websites.

After years of work collecting feedback for the content of our Initiative, a team of people wrote the language, had it checked by legal experts, ran it by County Counsel, and then gathered over 4,000 signatures from citizens who want to vote on this issue. With a Yes on Measure AF, community involvement is guaranteed. The other option is to allow only four (4) Supervisors (one recused himself) to make the decision for us. Four people who seem to be against protecting the very industry which brings in more than half of Mendocino county’s annual revenue.

These same Supervisors have had since January 2015 to craft a comprehensive cannabis regulation ordinance. So far they have come up with the same old 9.31 program, only even more restrictive. This, while surrounding counties are increasing cultivation limits in their regions. In our county, however, new proposed ordinances, do not include any mention of the seven noncultivating categories of the cannabis industry identified by State Law.

The Board was presented with copies of the Heritage Act in April as part of our outreach for dialogue and as a blue print for going forward. They never responded. In American politics it is standard practice for an industry to work with legislative bodies, submitting legislative drafts, lobbying and making campaign contributions. Who better than industry experts to consult in writing regulation? What industry ever asks for regulation, as we are doing?

But let’s talk about what Measure AF will do.

It will bring all aspects of the cannabis industry into compliance with all the State designated

Types of cannabis enterprise.

Measure AF assigns each Type of activity to its appropriate Zone.

Measure AF defines cannabis cultivation as an Agricultural Crop, thus moving it out of the nuisance category in the county code. This means that cultivation will be confined to zones of the county where Row and Field Crops are currently permitted, subject to numerous inspections and restrictions. It will be predicated on first obtaining permits from various county agencies tasked with protecting the environment in state law. The old 9.31 law had no Zoning restrictions.

It assigns the county Agriculture Commission the authority to inspect farms, which is exactly what their job is, and what they are trained to do. This will free up the Sheriff’s Department to what it is best at, protecting public safety. Other agencies such as Planning and Building, and Health and Human Services will be inspecting manufacturing facilities, dispensaries, etc. In fact there will be many more state and county agencies monitoring the industry than the understaffed and overworked Sheriff’s Department.

Measure AF states that, once passed, the Act can be amended by the Board of Supervisors. It is not written in stone. Measure AF establishes a Cannabis Advisory Commission to assist the Board of Supervisors in further creating sensible, equitable cannabis policy for the county and in tracking the economic impact of the evolving cannabis industry.

Measure AF protects the small grower, the economic backbone of the county, with a Micro Business category that the state is also creating. State law declares that the number of one acre (208 feet x 208 feet) grow sites will be limited, with which the county permit process concurs.

Measure AF allows for fines, and an appeal process for anyone caught in a code violation, just like any other legal business activity. Measure AF restricts manufacturing with solvents to industrial areas, where it should be, and dispensaries are confined to commercial areas. This all makes common sense. State agencies are currently drafting specific regulations for these activities.

Measure AF establishes the same setbacks as state law, but these limits can be changed by a majority vote of the Board.

Measure AF creates a 2.5% tax on gross receipts from all types of cannabis enterprise.

Remember that before now, the cannabis industry has not been regulated at all. The way to protect the environment is to regulate the industry through the agencies already given that job.

Measure AF will do just that.

Respectfully,

Swami Chaitanya
Chairman, Mendocino Cannabis Policy Council
President, Mendocino Cannabis Industry Association
Laytonville

NO ON MEASURE AF

Mendocino County residents were among the first in the nation to discover what happens when you make marijuana growing easy and profitable. Everyone wants to grow it, anywhere, any time. Residents in this rural tip of the Emerald Triangle, many who thought growing a little medical marijuana here and there was no problem, soon learned that there can be big consequences to trying to do the reasonable thing. What we got was rampant growing in residential areas, horrible smells overwhelming neighborhoods, environmental disasters and increased property crimes. We have spent a lot of time and money trying to fix those problems. We repealed the local law that made marijuana growing virtually legal here. We instituted county regulations controlling the number of plants that can be grown and over how much space they can be grown. We have limited marijuana growing near schools and parks and other places where children congregate. We have sent volunteers and law enforcement out to disassemble marijuana gardens stealing water from and spewing used oil into our creeks and streams. Now voters are being asked to vote yes on a November ballot measure that will reverse all those efforts. Measure AF – which started out with the catchy name The Mendocino Heritage Act, as though it were saving your grandfather’s alfalfa farm – was written by marijuana growers to permanently ban any attempts by the public to regulate the local marijuana industry. Here’s what it does:

{} Allows marijuana growing in literally any county land use zone, including residential areas.

{} Allows marijuana growing within 30 feet of your property and within 100 feet of your house.

{} Allows marijuana growing in mobile homes parks with no setbacks.

{} Includes marijuana growing as a “right to farm” which would protect the growers from complaints about it’s impacts – including its malodorous smell.

{} Eliminates current growing buffer zones for churches, youth facilities and treatment centers and cuts the setback for schools and public parks to 600 feet from 1,000 feet.

{} Allows unlimited numbers of marijuana dispensaries in any commercial area without public comment or hearings.

{} Allows hash oil labs in any industrial zone, labs which use unstable butane and are a well-known fire hazard.

{} Limits total taxation of marijuana to 2.5 percent, overriding the county’s plan to tax at 10 percent.

{} It makes violations of environmental laws administrative rather than criminal, with fines of as little as $100. Growers get to continue whatever practices they have in place unless the county hires a hearing officer at approximately $1,000 per day.

{} Provides no enforcement of any of its provisions by law enforcement and little or no avenue short of a courtroom for neighbors or communities to stop unlimited planting or overuse or theft of resources.

{} Vastly increases the allowable stands of marijuana plants. A grower can have 5,000 square feet of marijuana growing on a one-acre site. And it expands to as much as 43,560 square feet of marijuana plants on a 21-acre parcel. All of these are reasons a number of civic organizations have already taken a stand urging No on AF. They include the Mendocino County Fire Chief’s Association, the Peregrine Audubon Society, the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, Brooktrails Township and the Mendocino County Blacktail Association. More will undoubtedly join them as the details of this measure are made clear. The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors has already begun adjusting local regulations to allow a more expansive commercial climate for local growers but it’s not enough for the growers. Mendocino County residents have long been patient with and reasonable about the marijuana industry in our midst. It would be a grave mistake to allow the industry to dictate to the rest of us how they are regulated and taxed. Vote no on Measure AF.

(KC Meadows, Ukiah Daily Journal)

PHIL TRACY

Phil Tracy, a journalist whose 1977 expose of the Peoples Temple led Jim Jones and his followers to flee San Francisco for South America, died Thursday of complications from lung cancer. He was 74.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Phil-Tracy-journalist-who-helped-chase-Jim-Jones-9230434.php

STUNTMAN EDDIE BRAUN SUCCESSFULLY JUMPS SNAKE RIVER CANYON in Tribute to Evel Knievel. (Knievel famously failed to jump the canyon in 1974.)

http://time.com/4498132/eddie-braun-snake-river-canyon-even-knievel/?xid=emailshare

I WAS NOT A ‘SPOILER’ in 2000.

Jill Stein doesn’t deserve that insulting label, either.

by Ralph Nader

In his Aug. 24 Washington Post op-ed, “2016’s Ralph Nader?,” Dana Milbank accused Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein of making “more likely the singular threat of a President Trump.” He echoed legions of Democratic Party partisans who never think it is time for a progressive third-party presidential candidate to run because the Republican candidates are always worse. They use politically bigoted words such as “spoiler,” reserved for treating third-party candidates like second-class citizens. Many otherwise-tolerant reporters, columnists and editorial writers are quite okay with smaller candidates being obstructed in many ways, from ballot access to the debates.

Such discrimination counters a candidate’s civil liberties. Everyone has an equal right to run for public office. What kind of twisted logic insists that smaller-party competitors should forfeit their First Amendment rights to speak, petition and assemble freely? Dissent and resistance that attract voters historically have improved politics and achieved justice in our country.

Aren’t liberals pleased that earlier third parties — ballot access was easier in the past — and their voters rejected Mr. Milbank’s kind of advice? In 1840, the Liberty Party first opposed slavery. Later, new parties fought the exclusion of women from voting, asserted the rights of farmers and industrial labor and initiated calls for Social Security, unemployment compensation, minimum wages, health care for all and electoral reforms. They first put on the table most of the positive improvements from government.

Shamefully, the decaying Democratic Party works to block millions of voters from having a choice of progressive third-party candidates. No country in the Western world places more obstacles to third-party and independent candidates getting on the ballot than the United States. Democrats and Republicans built this exclusionary duopoly. As a result, major redirections and reforms, often supported by a popular majority, are excluded from electoral arenas. Without a competitive democracy, our political system cannot attract better candidates. A political monoculture with safe, gerrymandered incumbents serving myopic commercial interests is systematically undemocratic. It helps explain why the Democratic Party has been unable to defend this country from the worst Republican Party in history at the congressional and state levels.

Mr. Milbank justified his “don’t run, drop out” screed by referencing my campaign in 2000 as costing Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore the presidency. Were the Greens responsible for the absurd electoral college that threw an election? Mr. Gore won the popular vote handily. More than 300,000 registered Democratic voters in Florida voted for Republican nominee George W. Bush. Then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s administration unlawfully purged thousands of Democratic voters from the state’s rolls, and Palm Beach County used deceptive butterfly ballots. The Florida Supreme Court’s mandated recount was blocked by a narrow conservative majority on the Supreme Court that then selected Mr. Bush as president. Why blame the Greens for these and other sine qua nons — absent any one of which Mr. Bush would have been denied the presidency?

Mr. Gore, who bore the brunt of a political coup from Tallahassee to the Supreme Court, has not scapegoated the Green Party. Scapegoating, besides debilitating its practitioners, has a grotesque and vindictive tail, harassing lawful competitors while ignoring self-renewal and external reforms. Ms. Stein will not abandon the Green Party’s resistance to Wall Street’s disastrous attack on our economy, the bipartisan expansion of the war-making empire and the bipartisan backing for bloated military and corporate welfare budgets that starve monies for public works and services. She opposes both parties, indentured to the craven demands of monied interests. Let’s stop the chronic censorious whining and work to secure fair, competitive elections for all candidates.

AT THE DAKOTA PROTEST (Photograph by Daniella Zalcman)

ON THE EVE OF WORLD PEACE DAY, Tuesday, Sept. 20, at 7 p.m., Dharma Realm Buddhist University will be hosting “Civic Engagement for Humanity: Lessons from Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement Applied to Modern Times” at the new Sudhana Center located in downtown Ukiah at 225 S. Hope St. in the Meditation Hall.

Two veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, Carol Ruth Silver and Marion Kwan, will speak about their experiences as young women organizing and participating in the Civil Rights Movement.

They will be sharing lessons learned first through participation in the movement around how to organize and leverage transformation through civic engagement within local communities and at a broader scale.

The public is invited to this free event hosted by Dharma Realm Buddhist University.

Carol Ruth Silver was one of the first two white women to be jailed in the Freedom Rides, an experience that sparked a career in law and politics, fighting for the rights of others. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1960, where she first became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, Silver went to work as a clerk at the United Nations.

Before entering law school, she chose to travel south as a Freedom Rider. Arrested with her five companions in Jackson, Miss., she spent 40 days in jail, later publishing her diary from that time as “Freedom Rider Diary: Smuggled Notes from Parchman Prison” in 2014.

Marion Kwan is a Bay Area veteran of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965 and 1966, she was a civil rights worker in Hattiesburg, MS with the Delta Ministry.

After the Civil Rights Movement, she returned to San Francisco as a Head Start teacher in Chinatown; and later a youth program director for the Chinatown YWCA. For most of her working career, she was a counselor at the City College of San Francisco with a focus on low-income and first generation college students before retiring.

(The Ukiah Daily Journal)

JAMES BRADLEY ON KMEC RADIO

John Sakowicz and Sid Cooperrider interview author and military scholar, James Bradley, at 1 pm, Pacific Time, on Monday, September 19, at KMEC Radio 105.1 FM, in Ukiah, CA. We'll talk about North Korea's recent nuclear bomb tests, and the hypocrisy of America's own nuclear weapons program.

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KMEC Radio: Our broadcast is heard in Ukiah, CA. We also stream live from the web at www.kmecradio.org. We archive our shows which are also available as podcasts.

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James Bradley

Bradley is author of several bestsellers including "Flyboys," "Flags of Our Fathers", and "The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia".

See:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bradley_(author)

Bradley just wrote the piece “Whose Nukes to Worry About?” which is published at CounterPunch and states: “North Korea carried out its fifth nuclear test on Friday, September 9. President Obama has condemned the action while the Pentagon called it a ‘serious provocation.’

“Every year America pays its vassal-state South Korea huge sums of U.S. taxpayer money to mount 300,000-man-strong military ‘games’ that threaten North Korea. North Koreans view images that never seem to make it to U.S. kitchen tables: hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. armaments swarming in from the sea, hundreds of tanks and thousands of troops — their turrets and rifles pointed north — and nuclear-capable U.S. warplanes screaming overhead.

“But when a young dictator straight out of central casting responds to U.S. threats with an underground test on North Korea’s founding day, it’s the #1 story on the front page of the New York Times.

“Let’s connect some dots. Washington and their note takers in the American press constantly tell us that crazies in Pyongyang and Tehran are nuclear threats. The misplaced, but easily sold, fears of the ‘North Korean missile threat’ and the ‘Iran missile threat’ allows the Pentagon to install ‘defensive’ missile systems in South Korea and the Ukraine which are actually offensive systems targeting Beijing and Moscow.

“We need to look beyond the simplistic, race-based cartoon-like scaremongering to see that far more reality-based and frightening is the nuclear threat posed by the United States.

“President Obama — the Nobel Prize winner who pledged to lead a nuclear-free world — has committed over $1 trillion dollars to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal. Almost unreported by the press, we have been spending a bundle to make nukes ‘usable,’ by miniaturizing them. And to top it off, Obama has approved a ‘first use’ option for the U.S.”