Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016

• Andrew Dziki
• Yorkville Chopper
• Jessie Martin
• Where's Woodhouse
• AF Details
• DechterVision
• Wretched Excess
• BoonQuake
• Hare Creek
• Invincible Rodriguez
• 2-hour Parking
• Hillary Photo
• AVA Visitors
• Pygmy Station
• Logging Suspended
• Prop 61
• Housing Extortion
• Giant Meteor
• Renner Pleads
• Prop 51
• Mendocino Slim
• Zydeco Grange
• Yesterday's Catch
• Info Overload
• Astral Week
• Collision Course
• Water Decisions
• Plant Sale
• Entertainments
• Library Events
• Morning After

FAIR SUNDAY was marred by the death of a young motorcyclist on 128 near Navarro. He is identified as Andrew Robert “Drew” Dziki, 23, of Ukiah. The investigation of the accident, which occurred about 11am, is still underway.

MONDAY AFTERNOON a Yorkville resident asked us if we knew why a helicopter was flying low and slow around central Yorkville late Sunday night with all its search lights on.  We started asking around and heard one guess that police were looking for a missing person. Another guess had it that it was a medevac helicopter trying to find a safe place to land. KZYX reported that the helicopter was being used to search the area for survivors of a vehicle accident. That report seems to have confused a Santa Rosa disaster with a helicopter in Yorkville. Safe to say it was a medical flight, but we’re still looking for confirmation of what it was.

JESSIE ANN MARTIN Feb 26, 1931 - Sept 8, 2016

Jessie was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Bernice and Harold Baughman. She moved to Palo Alto with her family when she was 14. In the early 60s, she became deeply involved in the political turmoil of the era, worked on JFK's presidential campaign and became passionately committed to anti-war activities during the Vietnam War. She then married the love of her life, Garver "Marty" Martin. In 1980 they moved to Yorkville and bought a working ranch that they converted into a Christmas tree farm calling it the Happy Destiny Ranch. She was a devoted master quilter and a long-standing member of the Yorkville Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society, a group of women who sewed and shared together and raised money with their hand made quilts to start the Anderson Valley Fire Department. Jessie managed the Arts Building at the Boonville Fair for many years. She was an avid Giants and 49ers fan: attended games and had regular gatherings at her home to cheer the home teams to victory. With almost 46 years of sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous, Jessie lived a life of extreme gratitude, one dedicated to service in the program and the fellowship. Jessie passed away peacefully at home on the morning of September 8th surrounded by loving family and friends under the wonderful care of Phoenix Hospice Services. She was preceded in death by her sisters Mary Gladwin and Enid Fowle and by her sons Michael and Bruce Johnson. She is survived by her daughter Sharon Ball; her son Keith Johnson; her niece Marion Lovell; and her great niece Sandee Ferrara-Garcia. Pending arrangements for her memorial have been made at the First Presbyterian Church on the corner of Dora and Church Streets in Ukiah on October 22nd.

WHERE’S WOODHOUSE? No one is offering any substantive explanation, just vague references to a “personal family situation,” but the third district supervisor has not attended the last two meetings, and he hasn’t called in to explain his absences. If he doesn’t show up for tomorrow’s Supe’s meeting in Ukiah, Sheriff Allman better send out the search parties.

A READER WRITES: "Pebbles Trippet and the other authors of the letter comparing the Heritage Initiative (Measure AF) and the county sponsored Marijuana Tax (Measure AI) are at least one toke over the line. Pebs claims the Supes put the county Marijuana Tax on the ballot to defeat AF. But the county has been planning to tax marijuana for over a year. Pebs also claims the county marijuana tax will wipe out the Heritage Initiative (AF) in its entirety if it gets more votes. The fact is, if AI passes with more votes it will only invalidate the one small section of AF that includes a tax.

THE PROPONENTS OF AF are calling for a "yes" vote on AI, the county marijuana tax, and AJ the advisory measure that asks if voters want a majority of the proceeds from the tax to be spent on mental health, roads, marijuana eradication and fire and emergency medical services. I hope Pebs can explain why the Yes on AF committee would recommend a yes vote on AI if it knocks out AF. Another nasty surprise for Pebs is that the tax in Measure AF, if it is enacted, will be enforced by the infamous County Uniform Nuisance Abatement Ordinance 8.75 which labels any violation a nuisance, including the tax in AF. And the deadlines and noticing requirements are less stringent in AI because the Supes modified them in response to public comment.

PEBS ALSO MAKES FALSE COMPARISONS by claiming only AF will allow for marijuana appellations or regulation by the Ag Department. These and many more provisions are included in the county cultivation ordinance but are not part of AI which is only a tax on marijuana businesses. Finally, AF locks in the tax for 'medical marijuana' at 2.5% and 'recreational' at 5%. What do you want to bet that the growers will all claim it is medical? Isn't that how we got into the mess we are in now with everyone claiming they are growing medical marijuana as they suck the rivers dry? AI starts out at 2.5% for all marijuana and allows the Supes to increase it over time but only after a public hearing. In short, Pebs needs to step away from the bong until she can get her facts straight.

SWAMI CHAITANYA, another marijuana grower who stands to profit if the Heritage Initiative passes, is the perfect proof of your standard claim that here in Mendocino County you are whoever you say you are and history begins anew everyday. Like Pebs, who was Ms. Tulsa of 1956 in what must seem like another lifetime, Swami came to Mendocino County and reinvented himself. As the purveyor of the "Swami Select" brand of medical marijuana he no doubt plans to grow an acre of medicine if Measure AF (aka the Heritage Act) passes.

SWAMI DISPUTES the claim that the Heritage Initiative was written by and for marijuana growers but the facts seem pretty clear on this point. Tim Blake, the Laytonville area grower and dispensary owner who is one of the financial backers has been very open in acknowledging, even bragging that they paid a marijuana defense attorney $10,000 to write the Heritage Initiative. Somehow that payment does not show up in there campaign finance statements. The Heritage Initiative is 'grass roots' in the sense that it is being bankrolled by lots of underground cash."

SERIOUSLY, and no insult intended Swami Chaitanya of Laytonville, but neo-Hindu endorsements of American pot initiatives by Yankee converts are unlikely to have much success at the ballot box. And, not to be too much of an imperial boob about it, but I’ve always wondered why so many of my fellow citizens look to a country as screwed up as India for enlightenment, when all India has to offer is lessons in chaos, and who needs more of that? (Actually, they also have an excellent educational system, thanks to the British.)

LANDING ON HER FEET: Former head honcho at Mendo Public Radio, Lorraine Dechter, will be hosting a new television series for KIXE-TV, Redding.

DEPT OF WRETCHED EXCESS, a neighbor writes: “Somewhere around the middle of last month it was reported on the Philo grapevine that at Timothy and Michele Mullins' occasionally occupied home above their Balo Winery a huge "cesspool" was being installed with lots of re-bar and water pipes. It was not until the first week in August that the Building Dept. files were checked to find out what was going on. Turns out that on September 31 a permit was issued for an un-dimensioned swimming pool with a drawing that placed it in the same area as the reported "cesspool." A surreptitious evening inspection stepped off the pool at approximately 16 by 42 feet in size, 8 feet deep at one end. Now the grapevine is speculating that the water to fill it when completed will come from Indian Creek along with all the other appropriations that the Mullins' Balo wine industry makes. The pool will undoubtedly be therapeutic after the rare travails in Michele's $750,000 remodeled kitchen or the long road trips for Timothy in his multiple Lamborghinis.”

THE USGS reported a 2.7 magnitude earthquake @ 7:38 pm Sunday night with an epicenter located three miles south of Boonville. The quake was a surface quake - 0.3 miles deep - and generated six responses from four zip codes of "feeling it."

There were three responses were from Boonville, one from Gualala (8 miles from the epicenter), one questionable response (to say the least) from Healdsburg (36 miles from the epicenter) and an outright liar from San Francisco (95 miles distant from the epicenter).

THE CITY OF FORT BRAGG held an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) scoping session Monday, September 19^th at Town Hall on the topic of yet another shopping center project near Hare Creek. The result was akin to a college football game between Alabama and Cal, about 48-3 against.

The EIR workshop was designed to gather public input concerning the slightly redesigned proposal put forth on behalf of the owners of the three (+) acre property immediately west of the intersection of Highways 1 and 20.

Two Fort Bragg City Council members, Lindy Peters and Mike Cimolino, were present throughout the two and a half hour meeting, though only Peters made public comment. He asked that the EIR place special emphasis on the following issues related to the project: 1. the potential aesthetic impact; 2. hydrology (water use); 3. the possibility for irreversible long term impacts; 4. and the related topic of overall cumulative impacts.

The proposed Hare Creek shopping center would be anchored by a Grocery Outlet store, approximately 15,000 square feet in size as well as two additional buildings sized at 10,000 and 4,500 square feet, for a total of 29,500 square feet of retail space. Associated developments would include an access road, a parking lot, loading zones, pedestrian improvements, rain water storage tanks, utility connections, drainage improvements, utilities, signage and landscaping. The project differs from a 2014 proposal, heard and denied in early 2015 by the Fort Bragg Planning Commission and City Council, in that the buildings are set twice as far back from the highway, grading of a grassy, man made hill would be minimized, and a road surrounding the project has been dropped.

The meeting was moderated both by Fort Bragg's Community Development Director Marie Jones and Florentina Craciun, an environmental planner employed by Michael Baker International, a firm (see their web site at mbakerintl.com) hired by the City of Fort Bragg to oversee the EIR process for this Hare Creek shopping center project. Craciun emphasized more than once that the fifty or more folks in attendance should refrain from either booing or clapping to avoid intimidation of others, and for the most part the audience complied, but she probably hadn't counted on Rex Gressett and Dave Gurney.

When Gressett stepped to the microphone for one of his three minutes of allotted comment (participants were allowed more or less unlimited turns at the microphone by the end of the evening's festivities), he promptly let out with a statement that the entire meeting was nothing more than illusory theater. Looking at the audience Mr. Gressett went on, “They (apparently city government) are not going to listen to any of you... If we want that property to be saved, we have to save it. Marie Jones ain't gonna do it. She works for the developers. She works for the people who want to desecrate our community.”

At this point Ms. Jones nearly shouted into her microphone, “Alright, Rex. That's enough. He cannot personally assassinate me... I'm done...”

Gressett asked, “What are you going to do, have me arrested?”

Though Ms. Jones appeared to beckon a young Fort Bragg Police Department officer from the back of the room the situation diffused, though not before Gressett asserted, “I say Marie Jones is behind this. I say, she is an absolute menace to the best interests of this community.”

Despite Mr. Gressett's claims about theater, it is too often he who puts on a show. On multiple occasions he has directly accused Jones and City Manager Linda Ruffing of being in cahoots with developers, yet he has to the best of this writer's knowledge never offered up any specific evidence to back up this claim beyond his raised voiced pontifications.

Rex Gressett is what one might call a colorful character, but his inherently contradictory stances on issues (on other, recent occasions he has stated his desire to allow local businesses to be free of all regulation) and passive aggressive public behavior (he wimpishly thanked the police officer for not arresting him then later came back to the public comment microphone with a promise, “To be nice this time.”) more often than not get in the way of civil discussion of the pros and cons of significant issues facing the city of Fort Bragg.

I enjoy Rex's personal brand of theater, but not to the point of accepting unfounded personal attacks as some sort of Gospel according to Saint Gressett. Though Ms. Jones's tone could have been gentler, how could any sane person blame her for finally saying, “Rex, that's enough.”

Mr. Gressett's antics and to a lesser degree the confrontational, not-able-to-take-yes-for-an-answer, style of David Gurney detracted from the tempered remarks of people like oceanographer Leslie Kashiwada. She spoke for a group called Citizens for Appropriate Coastal Land Use (CACLU), which includes educators, scientists, and small business owners. Interested readers can check out their Facebook site, where the group touts bullet points about the EIR process for the proposed Hare Creek shopping center, including:

1. The need to fully assess impacts on environmentally sensitive areas.

2. The project is not consistent with the City’s stated policies, plans, and goals in the Coastal General Plan.

3. It would bring about an increase in urban blight due to its impact on businesses in the central business district (CBD) and other shopping centers (already four vacancies each in the Boatyard Shopping Center and S. Franklin St strip mall, along with approx. fourteen vacancies in CBD).

4. It would bring more franchise businesses to Fort Bragg (already have twelve). The unincorporated areas of Mendocino County just renewed a moratorium on franchise businesses for one year – should Fort Bragg consider such a moratorium?

5. This area used to be a dairy farm. It was rezoned in 1995 to allow for this type of development, with the city hoping to increase its tax base. No consideration was given to the cumulative impact of development on Todd Point or on the gateway to the city.

6. The California Coastal Commission questions the legality of the proposed building site given the numerous requested Lot Line Adjustments over the years. Which LLAs have been approved (need a transparent trail of documentation) and is the current configuration approved?

Many other cogent questions/comments filled the nearly two hours of public input. Those interested in seeing and hearing them all should check out the invaluable Mendocino TV's website (mendocinotv.com) for an opportunity to view the meeting in its entirety. Despite the show put on at Town Hall, written comments by the public pull the greatest weight in this EIR process. Such comments can be directed to Marie Jones, the Community Development Director for the City of Fort Bragg. The comment period for the scoping session ends on September 30^th. After the EIR is made public (most likely in January, 2017, a further forty-five day comment period will ensue. Most likely ending around March 1, 2017).

The author's website is seemingly never ending at: malcolmmacdonaldoutlawford.com

BACK in April, young Bobby Kuny, then a senior at Anderson Valley High School, was forced to shoot a knife-wielding drunk named Lorenzo Rodriguez who’d threatened Bobby’s mother and Cathy Gowan in their home near Hendy Woods. As Lorenzo clouded up and was about to commence storming, Bobby herded the eight young children in the home to safety before confronting the raging Rodriguez whom Bobby soon shot point blank with an antique .22 pistol. Responding police immediately determined that Bobby Kuny had shot Rodriguez in defense of the two women. Rodriguez, who miraculously not only survived his several wounds, one of them to his head, but was on his feet and out of the hospital and back in Anderson Valley in two days was arrested on several mayhem-related charges. The apparently invincible Mr. R has since been sequestered at the County Jail where, poised to take a sweetheart deal that would get him time served and probation, jail house lawyers convinced Mr. R that he’s not only completely innocent of all wrongdoing but, you, Mr. R are the victim! Take your case to a jury! Which Lorenzo will do on Monday, the 26th of September. And get himself more jail time when the jury finds against him guilty after twenty minutes of deliberations.

THOSE official-looking government green on white “2 hour parking” signs you see all over Boonville are a hoot — a double hoot when one notes that they’re enforced (not) by the “Anderson Valley Traffic Commission.” Which does not exist, but is devised by the Anderson Valley Chamber of Commerce whose members lament that certain visitors camp out all day in front of local businesses.

A FRIEND reports: “Saturday afternoon at the Fair, I happened to be talking to four, young Mexican guys who are my neighbors in Philo. We were standing in front of the Democratic Party’s cardboard cutout of Hillary. The guy manning the booth jumps out with a camera and asks the Mexicans to stand still with Hillary for a picture, as if Hillary supports Mexican-Americans any more than Trump does. I was so disgusted I walked away before I knew whether or not my friends went for it.”

THANKS from the Boonville newspaper to all you readers who visited our open house over the weekend. If there’s a smarter, better looking, more charming group of people anywhere than AVA people, give me their names!

THE FIX IS IN. Mike Sweeney’s $5 million project has been in the works for years. A majority of the Fort Bragg City Council is already for it as is the entire Board of Supervisors. But Fort Bragg already has a perfectly serviceable transfer station at Pudding Creek. A new transfer station off Highway 20 would be redundant and environmentally destructive. And today, Monday, the Fort Bragg City Council was 3-2 in approval of the EIR placing the destructive and redundant monstrosity smack in the middle of the Pygmy Forest. All praise Lindy Peters and Mike Cimolino for voting not to approve. The Supervisors, predictably, were unanimous in approval.

JUDGE HALTS GUALALA RIVER LOGGING

A preliminary injunction suspended the disputed 330-acre project until a court hearing on merits of the case brought by two environmental groups.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/6091424-181/gualala-river-logging-project-suspended

PROP 61. This baby is funded by Big Pharma, and Big Pharma is spending a lot of money to get it passed. The drug manufacturers have gulled some Vets groups into supporting it, but nurses are opposed, as is SEIU. I find nurses absolutely reliable in a political sense, and SEIU at least more trustworthy than the drug companies. Vote NO on 61, and don't even try to decode the particulars because they're confusing and contradictory. If you think Big Pharma would actually get behind something good for people, go ahead and give it a thumbs up.

HOUSING EXTORTION

Dear Editor,

How has housing become so outrageously expensive? In the last 30 years, housing has gone up 300%, while income for the majority of people has gone up only 9%. [from YES! Magazine, Fall 2015]

For decades, the standard ratio of monthly housing cost to income was 25%, or one-fourth of your income. Now, because of the gross inflation of housing prices, the greedmeisters have decided it's ok to pay 33%, nearly a third of your income, on housing. Also for decades, banks would loan on only one income. "But that's not fair," some people said. "Together our incomes qualify for a mortgage." And so it came to pass that dual incomes can be counted. What did that do? It allowed sellers to raise their prices because then people could afford more...And what does that mean? It's now very difficult for the average family to live without both partners working. With both partners working, who has time to take care of the house and the property, let alone kids? We laughed about this in the late '70s when we heard "old people" talk about that as if it were bad! Now we're older, wiser and can see the detrimental effect this has had. Taking care of a house, the property and kids is actually more than a full time job. So either the kids, house and property suffer, or you need to make enough extra money to pay others to take care of those things for you... but nowadays most of us are unable to make that kind of money.

Real Estate website Redfin has concluded that 83% of California's homes and rentals are unaffordable on a teacher's salary. What happens to a community when the most vital workers cannot afford to live in it? And to add insult to injury, for years now real estate agents have been promoting "bidding wars" between prospective buyers, and even renters, forcing prices to climb even higher.

We are conditioned to accept this by realtors and others justifying over-inflated prices with comments like, "Well, if you want to live here, you may have to make compromises! Just be thankful this place is available at all — they could be renting only to vacationers." "The owners are making a sacrifice by providing housing for the community, even if they're asking more than people want to pay." "Other people are charging even more, you should be grateful!" "If you don't like the prices here, move to Arkansas!"

And so we get five and six different income earners all crammed into one small apartment. "You should be thankful you have a place at all— it could be like Tokyo, or NY, or LA, or SF — $1,800 a month for a BUNK in a house with 15 other people.

Yes, let's justify the ridiculously over-inflated rents and housing prices that affluent newcomers, landlords, real estate agents, house flippers, developers, speculators and "market forces" have created. Market forces are based on greed, on maximizing profit; Housing is a RIGHT not a privilege! But we have made it into a business- and according to Milton Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, "the only goal of business should be to maximize profits, regardless of the social and environmental costs."

It may be legal, but it is NOT moral. It is government-sanctioned extortion.

If you own property and want to rent it, consider not asking as much as you possibly can! Maybe consider renting on a sliding scale basis, asking for what you need, and what is fair, rather than the most you can get; rather than expecting someone else to pay for your vacation home for you...

Finally, I will say that not all realtors are greedmiesters. Some really do want to play fair. If you are looking for a home, I hope you will ask around until you find one.

Nancy MacLeod

Philo

RENNER PLEADS to Child Sexual Abuse

The Del Norte District Attorney’s Office announced today that Christopher James Renner (58) of Crescent City, pleaded guilty Monday morning to continuous sexual abuse upon a child under fourteen and admitted three special allegations for having substantial sexual conduct with the child, for use of force and that the statute of limitations for the crimes had not expired. Renner was set to go to trial by jury today.

The charges stem from a series of sexual acts that occurred in Renner’s home between 1997 and 1999 involving a juvenile male who was between five and seven years old at the time. Renner had engaged in substantial sexual conduct with the victim on three or more occasions spanning a minimum of three months. Renner had fondled the child’s genitals several times and on one occasion, Renner had forced the child’s hand onto his genitals. Renner had recurring access to the child during that period of time.

“Justice was served today in that Mr. Renner admitted to his crimes and the victim was fully vindicated,” said Del Norte District Attorney Dale P. Trigg who personally handled all aspects of the case for the prosecution. “This young man lived with these crimes for many years before coming forward to report what had happened to him. Now there is no question that what he said happened did in fact happen, said Trigg. “The young man showed a ton of courage to come forward and tell the truth. He was very pleased with the plea this morning and was relieved to avoid trial. Now, the healing can begin for this brave young man,” said Trigg.

Renner was arrested in Mendocino County on the charges on February 22, 2016 and released the next day after posting $250,000 bail. Upon entry of the plea, District Attorney requested that Renner be remanded into custody since Renner faces 85% of up to twelve years in state prison and is not eligible for probation. Although Trigg had previously secured Renner’s passport as a condition of his bail, Trigg argued that Renner is necessarily a flight risk given his mandatory state prison sentence. But the Honorable Philp Schafer denied that request and continued Renner on bail until sentencing on October 20, 2016. The District Attorney wishes to thank District Attorney Chief Investigator AC Field and former investigator Melanie Barry, the United States Marshall Service, Ukiah Police Department and Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Matthew Kendall for their work in this case. With the help of investigators Field and Barry, the United States Marshall Service assisted in tracking Renner as he was traveling and were able to alert Mendocino County authorities of his presence in Ukiah. He was arrested without incident by the Ukiah Police Department and the Del Norte DA’s Office was advised of the arrest. Sgt. Kendall was briefed on the status of the investigation by investigators Field and Barry who were five hours away at the time of Renner’s arrest. Sgt. Kendall interviewed Renner before he posted bail. “Through collaborative efforts and investigative acumen, my investigators and our friends in Mendocino County were able to gather evidence that substantially corroborated the victim’s allegations in a timely manner leading to today’s result. We were holding all of the cards in this case. Renner finally accepted that this morning when jurors started showing up,” said Trigg.

(Del Norte District Attorney’s Office press release)

THERE'S A BUNCHA bond-funded state initiatives on the November ballot, and right here we'll point out what we always point out at election time, which is that there is already so much bond indebtedness in this state that it will never be paid off. So what's a few billion more as major gifts of public funds to the people who buy state bonds guaranteed by state taxpayers? Not much, but at some point it will all go blooey! As will the national economy, but at this point what we've got is mini-Ponzi's operating inside the Big Ponzo of the national economy. When this baby blows it will all come down, bonds and all.

PROP 51: Should the state issue $9 billion in bonds for constructing or improving public schools? The construction industry wants to know, because if you vote yes they get to build a lot of structures in which learning allegedly takes place. Bear in mind, however, that the greatest teacher ever, besides the Nazarene carpenter of course, was Socrates, and he did his teaching under an olive tree.

$3 billion to build new schools

$3 billion to modernize existing schools

$2 billion to buy, build, and improve community colleges

$500 million for charter schools

$500 million for technical education facilities

Who’s Voting Yes on Prop 51?

Proponents of Prop 51 claim the state’s schools are deteriorating to the point of becoming unhealthy and unsafe for students; and that California’s last school bond initiated 10 years ago is now out of money. They also claim a current $2 billion backlog of improvement projects for seismic renovations, other safety concerns and technology needs.

Both the California Democratic and Republican parties, the California Chamber of Commerce, numerous school districts and state elected officials have endorsed this bill.

Who’s Voting No on Prop 51?

The opposition to Prop 51 describes describes its organization as a coalition of supporters of California taxpayers and educators opposed to sprawl and developer abuse. Their Facebook page posts links to more opposition from The Mercury News, East Bay Times, among others. Both articles cite Governor Jerry Brown who calls the referendum a “blunderbuss effort that promotes sprawl and squanders money that would be far better spent in low-income communities.”

The opponents also cite a need for better planning by local school districts, and for developers to foot their fair shares of the costs, noting that this initiative was bankrolled by the construction industry.

TWO VIEWS OF MENDOCINO SLIM, PUBLIC NUISANCE

ONE: Like you, I have never posted my feelings on the announce list until this disturbing situation came up. I too have realized that I change my whole routine to try to avoid Slim. His anger towards me and several of my friends has caused all of us, to cross the street, park around the block and change our direction, to avoid his remarks and anger, some of which he directs at his dog - jerking the leash and saying such things as "She's one of those", "Don't even look at her". What does Slim want? $$$$$$$$, alcohol and drugs. But this isn't about him it's about the dog(s) and should be about the rest of us who also live here. He is 86'd from most of the stores and businesses in Mendocino, there's talk of a restraining order and most recently the sheriff was called because he was smoking pot and drinking on school property during a sporting event. They were called because when asked to leave, he refused and stated he smoked and drank at that location all the time. This isn't gossip, it's a real problem.

* * *

TWO: I have been reading for days about Slim. I will not post on mcn announce, it is too much like gossip. From now on I will write to each person this message. Yes, I realize that some people have challenges. We all do actually. I met Slim about 9 years ago and I was very compassionate, kind and generous. His elderly dog had an operation, and I contributed $50 toward it. I would give he and his old dog rides to where ever they needed to go. I would even turn back on the Hwy to give them a ride. I would ask what they needed and go into the grocery store and buy it for them. Sometimes I bought the 'wrong' kind of whatever, and he was caustic, but no diapproval from me. I was very kind to him. For about 6 yrs. Slim asked me one day to go into Harvest and buy him cigarettes and beer. He had been 86'd from the store. I refused, as I am very opposed to cigarettes. I hate them. He offered to buy, and I said that he would have to get someone else to buy his cigs and beer. From that moment on, I became a sort of 'devil' to Slim. He would Hiss at me on the street, bare his teeth to me and shout across the street, "OH IT'S YOOOUUUUU!!!" I began to see that the only opportunity I had to dis-engage from Slim was to begin to act like I have never laid eyes on him before in my life. That has worked. Do I feel sad about the circumstance with him? YES. Is there anything I can do to correct his problem? NO. He told me in the past that he was not willing to go to any Social Service center for help. Thus the dog. I could be wrong, but the dog or cat is often times a comfort to the person in need and also a 'free' meal ticket.

ZYDECO IN PHILODECO! Mark St Mary is a Lake Charles, Louisiana transplant that rooted in the Sacramento Delta. He brought with him his love for Louisiana Cajun, Zydeco and blues and his accordions. Many years back in Isleton at the Cajun Festival, he was crowned the Delta Zydeco King. The audience recognized his special way with this snappy music. Zydeco means literally snap beans; referring to its snappy beat, accordion and fiddle frills. St. Mary should be good as he has played for over 40 years along with Queen Ida and many others and has made many recordings. Zydeco was made popular by the King of Zydeco, Clifton Chenier, who toured the world with his special Cajun/creole sound. Mark sings in Cajun French and English plus he really knows how to stir the pot and keep a party moving. He has a great band, guitarist, bass, drums and rub board, part of the distinctive Zydeco sound. Adding to this is the special magic of dance instructor and DJ Ted Sherod AKA Two Left Feet. Ted gets out front calling out the moves to the Zydeco Groove and teach Cajun Line dance and Zydeco two steps, stomps and more. Ted Sherod has a smooth Creole style from Louisiana or Texas. Learning a few new moves to apply adds to a special Dance Party. The Anderson Valley Grange is serving its community with an Oct. 1st Zydeco Dance Party at the Grange Hall at 9800 Hwy 128 between Boonville and Philo. The grange hall features a large 45 x 60 foot wooden floor. The Zydeco Dance Party is promoted by the Grange with the help of KZYX, Navarro Vineyard Winery and Roederer Estate Winery. They will be serving their wine, Anderson Valley Beer and great Cajun fair via Boon Dogs (Cajun Sausage and Jambalaya) plus snacks at the Grange kitchen and nonalcoholic drinks. The event cost $15 in advance at Ukiah Natural Foods, All that Good Stuff and Harvest Markets or www.brownpapertickets.com. The cost at the door is $20. As St Mary would say, “ Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler, (let the good times roll!)” The benefit will continue cultural events at the Grange Hal in Philo, and help KZYX maintain its’ great on-air presence. More information can be found at Zydeco Dance Party on facebook or by email at avgoverseer@saber.net or 707-895-3842. Zydeco Ted travels extensively to Texas/Louisiana; teaches basic Louisiana style Zydeco in New Orleans and has taught at numerous venues throughout Northern California as well as Isleton Cajun & Blues Festival, Simi Valley Cajun Festival, Long Beach and Gator By The Bay Festivals.

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 19, 2016

JASON ARDENYI, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JEREMY BEEBE, Ukiah. Drunk in public, resisting.

JEREMIAH DOUGLAS, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DANIELLA HOGAN, Fort Bragg. Vehicle theft, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

LANDON KERBOW, Haiku, Hawaii/Ukiah. DUI.

MIGUEL LOPEZ, Windsor/Ukiah. Drunk in public, resisting.

BRADLEY NYSTROM, Garberville/Ukiah. Discharge of shotgun within 500 yards of a structure, suspended license.

NATALIA OWEN, San Francisco/Ukiah. False ID, false crime report, under influence.

MICHELLE PATIENT, Fort Bragg. Drunk in public, resisting, battery of peace officer, probation revocation.

JESS ROMO, Fort Bragg. DUI, evasion, unlawful display of registration, suspended license.

DANIEL SALAZAR JR., Ukiah. Drunk in public.

JD SCHMIDT, Laytonville. Loaded firearm in public.

JACKI SCOTT, Willits. Meth possession, tear gas, paraphernalia, mandatory supervision violation.

BRIAN STARNES, Atlanta/Ukiah. DUI.

ROY VO, Ukiah. Domestic assault.

CRUMB SAW IT COMING

THE WEEK THAT WAS

America’s Political Cat Scan

by Jeffrey St. Clair

This was one of those Astral Weeks when the entire body politic of America seemed to undergo a CAT scan, revealing a glimpse of just how fetid the inner-workings of the System have become.

First Hillary swooned, then her poll numbers collapsed, sending the Liberal Establishment into a collective freakout not seen since it became apparent that Shrub was going to win his second term over that hapless dolt John Kerry.

Speaking of Bush, joining in the Widespread Panic were two-thirds of W.’s Inner Circle (from the deplorable Paul Wolfowitz to the deplorable Hank Paulson), who have volunteered their deplorable services aboard the USS Clinton, only to see the ship listing severely to the starboard under the strain.

The Trump campaign, which to this point has given new meaning to Teflon, scarcely fared much better, as the Trump Foundation was revealed to operate as a kind of charitable Ponzi Scheme for the glorification of … Donald J. Trump.

Trump seems more and more like one of those deeply-inbred Egyptian Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom, whose sandy empire consisted largely of colossal monuments of themselves built under the lash by slave labor. Of course, these very qualities are greatly admired in post-industrial America. No wonder Imen-Ho-Trump is surging in the polls. All hail, Imen-Ho-Trump, Pharaoh of the Deplorables (half of them anyway.)

Then came the bombshells dropped by the hacker Guccifer 2.0: a trove of bitchy emails from Colin Powell that exposed the dark underbelly of the Beltway Set. Powell is one of the most self-righteous figures in Washington, a man who casts a mysterious allure over the Liberal Establishment, despite his plump resumé of fatal blunders, war crimes and pathological mendacity.

Powell slams everyone: former allies, friends and rivals. His e-epistles depict the Cheney claque as creepy idiots, Trump as a bigoted blowhard and Hillary as an untrustworthy Medea-like character, consumed by ambition and greed, who is perpetually undone by her own hubris.

The General’s must-read emails offer the most jaundiced portrait of the scabrous exploits of the DC Elite since the glorious days of stripper Fanne Foxe and Xaviera Hollander, the Happy Hooker, who went to Washington to “serve her country.”

This surreal week in American politics came to an end with Imen-Ho-Trump’s grudging admission that Obama was, in fact, born in Hawai’i. Trump refused to apologize for slandering the President, naturally, and blamed the origin of the myth on Hillary Clinton. The New York Times pronounced that Trump had “ended one lie by starting another.”

Yet there appears to be some truth in the allegation. Shortly after Trump’s surprise announcement, James Asher, the former DC Bureau Chief for McClatchey News, tweeted that “#SidBlumenthal, long-time #HRC buddy, told me in person #Obama born in #kenya.”

Hardly, surprising that Blumenthal’s fingerprints might be found on this ugly slander. Recall that the Clinton Circle also instigated the “Death Panel” meme about ObamaCare, which eventually killed the “public option.” The Clinton loyalists were hoping to cripple Obama before 2012 elections, thus clearing the deck for Hillary, then Sarah Palin picked up the theme and promptly ran it off the cliff…

Revel in the fun while it lasts.

Monday

+ August ties July for hottest month ever. “Overheated” HRC still says almost nothing on campaign trail (i.e., Wall Street and Hollywood fundraisers) about climate change.

+ Will Charlie Crist loan Hillary (“I’m melting! I’m melting!“) Clinton his secret podium fan for the first debate?

+ Joe Biden is in the bullpen warming up to relieve the ailing HRC. Biden’s four-years older, a serial plagiarist and with documented brain damage from aneurysms and two surgeries. You’d think with these kinds of problems afflicting the Dems that they would finally junk ObamaCare for a real health care program like single-payer.

+ Hillary and W., the parallels keep coming. It turns out the Bush administration has lost 22 million emails!

+ Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka continue to press for yet another investigation into 9/11. I admire them both, but I think this plays into the worst instincts of the Left, half of which continues to obsess over the JFK assassination and almost nothing else. So be it. But I hope the Greens also call for an investigation into the Sand Creek Massacre and the Tulsa “Race” Riots. Those might, in the end, prove more productive and edifying about the true character of the American Project …

+ I persist in my lonely belief that the only way to get beyond 9/11, which we desperately need to do as both a nation and a movement, is to get beyond 9/11. I don’t think there is a ‘secret truth’ to that day—those events were the consequences of 50-plus years of US imperialistic policy in the Middle East. We all should have known why we were attacked the very moment that first jet hit the World Trade Tower. And if we didn’t know that, Osama Bin Laden himself made it clear in his fatwahs. To ignore the evidence before us is to surrender to a dangerous delusion.

+ David Cameron is leaving Parliament and is now on the prowl in rural Britain. Hide your pigs!

+ MS-DNC’s Chris Hayes asks more softball questions than that Russian agent Larry King. Tonight he teed up a few for Joe Conason, a longtime Clinton courtier, who called the Clintons, America’s Most Transparent Couple! Hayes, naturally, didn’t press him on this, but smugly lapped it up, as he has been house-trained to do.

+ Hayes’s interview technique—which he did not learn from me (or the late great Jimmy Weinstein) when we were stablemates at In These Times— is to ask, answer and then annotate his own questions and answers until he’s finally interrupted by a commercial for a new drug to treat Restless Leg Syndrome, a condition nearly all of his interview “subjects” eventually acquire…

+ As Trump narrows the gap, liberals fret about white supremacists running the country. Hasn’t this been the case for the last 240 years?

+ The Clinton troops are on the defensive over Hillary’s description of Trump’s most rabid supporters as “a basket of deplorables.” In defense of Hillary’s Romney Moment, her flacks are citing a poll showing that 49 percent of Trump supporters hold the rancid view that blacks are more violent by nature than whites. Sounds definitive. But hold on a minute. That same poll discloses that many Clinton backers share the abominable view that blacks are inferior to whites with regard to certain personality traits. Nearly one-third of Clinton supporters described blacks as more “violent” and “criminal” than whites, and one-quarter described them as more “lazy” than whites. Now that’s deplorable!

+ I got my copy of the Mekons’ new record/video/book Existentialism this week. The music is raw, raucous, and as immediate as improvised jazz. The video captures the wild thrill of it all. The book, with its wonderful Creature Feature cover art by CounterPunch contributor Martin Billheimer, offers 12 writers each scribbling (essays, poems, stories) about one of the songs on the record. My own contribution is “The Cell Being Played,” a poem, of sorts, in the dissonant mode of Wittengstein. Thanks to the Welsh Artaud, Jon Langford, for inviting me to tag along on this grand adventure. (Existentialism is available from Bloodshot Records—but hurry they’ve only printed 1000 copies and my mother just bought 400 of them to finally see her son’s name in print on something she didn’t find utterly offensive—not yet anyway.)

+ Paranoid States of America: A report from the Cato Institutecalculates that The chance of being killed in a terrorist attack committed by a foreigner is about 1 in 3.6 million per year, while the chance of an American dying in a terrorist attack by an ‘illegal’ immigrant is 1 in 10.9 billion! Be afraid, very afraid!

Tuesday

+ The Democrats were gushing this morning with the buoyant news of rising incomes. But is your’s rising? Not likely, especially if you are a member of the working poor or a child. Most incomes in working America have remained stagnant over the past 10 years, with the vast majority of the increase being captured by the top 10 percent.Childhood poverty rates, especially for black children, under the Obama “Recovery” are still higher than they were in the last years of the Bush administration.

+ When it comes to training mass murderers, the School of the Americas has nothing on Harvard University. The latest evidence comes from a report that Big Sugar hired Harvard scientists and professors in 1965 to discredit the links between sugar and heart disease. How many have died as a consequence of this kind of twisted science? 500,000? A million? More?

+ The best news to come out of the Hillary overheating-dehydration-pneumonia drama is that she apparently infected Charles Schumerwith her “bug.” Her aim is true!

+ You just knew it was coming. It was inevitable that some Democrat would blame Hillary’s illness on the Russians. It sure didn’t take long. This morning, Bennet Omalu, the pathologist who first raised the warnings about traumatic brain injury in NFL players, offered his informed opinion that HRC was probably poisoned by Trump or Putin. Imagine the possibilities for the new Clinton Special Edition of the board game Clue: Was it Putin in the Lincoln Bedroom with a dose of Polonium? Or Trump at The Plaza with a toxic puff of Melania’s Eau de Toilette?

+ Trump continues to blame IRS audit for the failure to release his tax returns, though Mini-Donald later spills the beans that releasing “a 12,000-page tax return that would create… financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from his main message..” (That is 12,000 pages of exploited loopholes and few charitable contributions resulting in little taxes actually paid.) The press is too lazy and shiftless to ask that Trump release previous returns from 2012, 2002, 1992, or any other decade.

+ Adm. James Woolsey, one of the craziest intelligence officials since Bobby Ray Inman, announced he was joining Trump’s foreign policy team. This means that Bubba’s CIA man is all in with the Donald and Bush’s CIA men are backing Hillary. Less than a dime’s worth of difference?

+ On MSDNC tonight Rachel Maddow announced a “YUGE” exposé: she claimed to debunk Gary Johnson’s proclamation that he would be on all 50 state ballots. According to Maddow’s IN-DEPTH investigation, in Rhode Island Johnson may, just possibly, be 79 signatures shy of the required 1000 (with a few days to go). God forbid she fact check the HRC campaign with such rigor.

+ Maddow & MSDNC’s current fixation on Johnson is all geared at keeping a real antiwar candidate out of the debates to expose Hillary and Trump’s hawkishness. If Stein was polling at 10% they’d be savaging her.

+ In the end, Maddow’s “yuge exposé” turned out to be another big dud. The Rhode Island Secretary of State confirmed that the Johnson campaign had indeed submitted the required number of signatures to appear on the ballot in November.

+ Here’s the logic of the American police state in action: a West Virginia police officer named Stephen Mader was fired for failing to shoot a black man holding an unloaded gun.

+ In West Virginia, you get fired when you don’t kill unarmed black men. In New York City, you get rewarded when you DO. Consider the case of NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, the cop who choked Eric Garner to death in 2014. In the two years since Garner’s death, Pantaleo’s salary and overtime pay has jumped from $99,915 in 2014 to $119,996 in 2016, even though Pantaleo has been on “modified duty” since the killing. Brutality pays.

Wednesday

+ Cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to date? $4.79 trillion. Interest payments on the cost of those wars by 2053? $7.3 trillion. (See new study “US Budgetary Costs of Wars through 2016: $4.79 Trillion and Counting Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security” by Brown University economist Neta C. Crawford.)

+ With all of the brutality going against Native protesters in North Dakota at the hands of oil company mercenaries, the New York Timeschooses to splash a story across its homepage this morning on North Dakota’s…”most grueling” mountain bike trail!

+ Making my way through the rich vein of Colin Powell’s emails and stopped in my tracks at this one on Hillary and Bill: “I’d prefer not to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect. A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home (according to NYP).” NYP:New York Post.

+ If Bubba gets caught up in another “bimbo dicking eruption” before election day, HRC will probably rush right to the Today Show studio to pronounce that it’s all part of “a vast Russian conspiracy.” A Russian sleeper agent? In Bill’s case, perhaps an entire sleeper cell.

+ With Hillary bedridden, the deplorable Tim Kaine is being pushed forth to say something, though what it is isn’t exactly clear. He has a way of speaking which makes him look like a living version of his own bobblehead doll.

+ Tim Kaine’s chief personality trait is the complete absence of a personality.

+ If the DNC emails had been hacked and released by the Principality of Monaco, DNC flacks would still be saying with a Jedi flick-of-the-wrist: “These are not the emails you are looking for!”

+ Now comes news that the RNC severs have also been breached. Who will the RNC blame: Putin? Fidel? Gary “Off-the-Weed” Johnson?

+ First Dilma, now the indictment of Lula. The purge of Brazil advances. Step-by-step, the Empire is moving to reclaim its grip on the Global South.

+ The email hacks by Wikileaks, DC Leaks and Guccifer 2.0 reveal the impotence of investigative journalism. A real press would have exposed these scandals months and years ago. It goes beyond impotence and incompetence, of course. The deplorable Big Media is in collusion with elite power.

+ I was flipping through Theodor Adorno tonight before turning out the lights and found that the Frankfort savant had, with unerring prescience, already explained why Trump and Clinton won’t be releasing their complete medical records: “Very evil people cannot really be imagined dying.”

+ Adorno’s admonition reminds me of the one-percenters in William Gibson’s Neuromancer, circling the ruined Earth eternally in their custom-made satellites, every bodily function jacked into some cyber-circuitry, still obsessing over the minutiae of their financial portfolios.Elon Musk, phone home!

Thursday

+ I awoke on a chilly Oregon morning and greedily read more installments of Colin Powell’s email and was struck by one where he lambasts arch neocon and Hillary Clinton supporter Paul Wolfowitz as “a fucking liar.” This is rich coming from the deplorable Powell, a man who participated in the coverup of the My Lai massacre and told at least 17 distinct lies at the UN on Iraq’s non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. Takes one to know one, eh, Colin?

+ In one of Powell’s more frank emails, he says that “Israel has 200 nukes pointed at Iran.” I assume the IDF saved at least one nuke to targeting the coordinates of Jeremy Corbyn.

+ My friend Lawrence Libby told me that Powell was so secretly glad that these emails had been released that he might have hacked himself! But, Lawrence, isn’t the more likely culprit, in this scenario, Alma Powell? She is, after all, an audiologist!

+ Leave it to the New York Times to headline a story about the investigation of savage abuse of Muslims recruits in the Marine Corps as “an inquiry into hazing.” In fact, Marine drill instructors called the recruits “terrorists,” beat, hounded and harassed one to the point that he committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a barracks. Another Muslim recruit was stuffed into an industrial clothes dryer, where he was severely burned. One deplorable Marine defended the abuse by saying enduring this torture “is what becoming a Marine is all about.” Let me rephrase that: “Racist sadism is what becoming a Marine is all about.” semper fi, boys.

+ Any mention of economic inequality has disappeared from the Clinton and Trump campaigns. Why? Let us consult Guy Debord: “The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.”

+ Like lemmings to a cliff, so are the Democrats to corporate power. Splat!

+ Tyree King was 13-years old when he was gunned down and killed by Ohio police. The cops said they shot the black teenager because they thought he was armed and fleeing the scene of a robbery. King was carrying an air pistol in his waistband. You can’t say the police haven’t learned from the slaying of Tamir Rice. They’ve clearly learned the deplorable lesson they can kill toy-carrying black teens with impunity.

+ Since the murder of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, American police have killed at least 2,195 people, as tallied by Fatal Encounters. Cartographer Soo Oh plotted each of these killings on an interactive map for Vox. The sobering map gives new meaning to Red States.

+ Clara Jeffery is the snobbish co-editor of the faux-left magazine Mother Jones. This morning Ms. Jeffery broke out in a cold sweat when she read a New York Times story reporting that younger voters just weren’t all that into Hillary. In fact, the story noted that the third party campaigns of Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were drawing their most fervent support from twenty-something voters, with a full 26 percent saying they were planning to vote for the Libertarian ticket and another 10 percent to vote for the Greens. This wholesome news prompted Jeffery to have a Twitterfit. “I have never hated millennials more,” Jeffery sniffed. Jeffery should be thanked for exposing what most of the decrepit liberal establishment really thinks about American youth and any kind of independent thinker who doesn’t march in goose-steps for HRC.

After seeing this outrageous outburst, some asked whatever happened to Mother Jones? They were cool once, weren’t they? Perhaps, a long, a long time ago, in a Republic far, far away, before they canned Michael Moore as editor for publishing a pro-Palestinian piece and then refusing to run the deplorable Paul Berman’s attack on the Sandinistas, which prompted MoJo columnist Alexander Cockburn to resign in protest.

Moore sued Mother Jones for wrongful termination. I don’t know the terms of the settlement, but Moore used some of the proceeds to finance his film “Roger and Me” and launch a much more influential, if increasingly exasperating, career as film-maker and roving progressive pundit.

+ Two Bay Area High Schoolers, one a Native American, got their grades lowered for honorably refusing to stand and recite Red Scare era Pledge of Allegiance. The school administrators are too ignorant of American history to know that many of the “pilgrim” settlers to the colonies—Anabaptists & Quakers, in particular—were fleeing just this kind of persecution by Church of England and the British Crown, and refused to take any kind of Oath or Pledge on moral principle, often enduring brutal torments for their valorous stance. (See my old essay on John Lilburne: “Intolerable Opinions in the Age of Secret Tribunals.”) The administrators are also ignorant of the Constitution. This kind of retaliatory punishment for the free exercise of basic 1st Amendment rights has been prohibited since a 1943 Supreme Court decision involving the Jehovah Witnesses.

+ Our first Muslim president, who has killed more Muslims than ISIS has, just handed Israel its largest aid package ever: $38 billion. The eye-popping tranche of money was award after Netanyahu gave a speech so vile that it was denounced as fascistic by even hardcore Israeli apologists. The subsidy will enable Israel to begin doing to the West Bank what it has done to Gaza: divide, cage and destroy whatever it does not what to hand over to settlers or loot for itself. I wonder: was the check delivered with a personalized note? “Dear Bibi, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours…Love, Barack.”

+ The AFL-CIO has just betrayed Native Americans, pipeline protesters, climate change activists and 28 million water consumers by reiterating its support for the Dakota Access Pipeline. In a press statement, Richard Trumka, president of the rapidly crumbling mega-union, alleges that the pipeline is “part of a comprehensive energy policy that creates jobs, makes the United States more competitive and addresses the threat of climate change. Pipelines are less costly, more reliable and less energy intensive than other forms of transporting fuels, and pipeline construction and maintenance provides quality jobs to tens of thousands of skilled workers.” Now that’s deplorable!

+ Here’s your chance to do something that is NOT deplorable: donate to the Sacred Stone Camp Legal Defense Fund.

More Stupid Than Nature Made Them

Bertrand Russell: “Our ‘great democracies’ still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”

(Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence (with JoAnn Wypijewski and Kevin Alexander Gray). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.)

SLOWLY, THEN ALL AT ONCE

by James Kunstler

The staggering incoherence of the election campaign only mirrors the shocking incapacity of the American public, from top to bottom, to process the tendings of our time. The chief tending is permanent worldwide economic contraction. Having hit the resource wall, especially of affordable oil, the global techno-industrial economy has sucked a valve in its engine.

For sure there are ways for human beings to inhabit this planet, perhaps in a civilized mode, but not at the gigantic scale of the current economic regime. The fate of this order has nothing to do with our wishes or preferences. It’s going down whether we like it or not because it was such a violent anomaly in world history and the salient question is: how do we manage our journey to a new disposition of things? Neither Trump nor Clinton show that they have a clue about the situation.

The quandary I describe is often labeled the end of growth. The semantic impact of this phrase tends to paralyze even well-educated minds, most particularly the eminent econ professors, the Yale lawyers-turned-politicos, the Wall Street Journal editors, the corporate poobahs of the “C-Suites,” the hedge fund maverick-geniuses, and the bureaucratic errand boys (and girls) of Washington. In the absence of this “growth,” as defined by the employment and productivity statistics extruded like poisoned bratwursts from the sausage grinders of government agencies, this elite can see only the yawning abyss. The poverty of imagination among our elites is really something to behold.

As is usually the case with troubled, over-ripe societies, these elites have begun to resort to magic to prop up failing living arrangements. This is why the Federal Reserve, once an obscure institution deep in the background of normal life, has come downstage front and center, holding the rest of us literally spellbound with its incantations against the intractable ravages of debt deflation. (For a brilliant gloss on this phenomenon, read Ben Hunt’s essay “Magical thinking” at the Epsilon Theory website.)

One way out of this quandary would be to substitute the word “activity” for “growth.” A society of human beings can choose different activities that would produce different effects than the techno-industrial model of behavior. They can organize ten-acre farms instead of cell phone game app companies. They can do physical labor instead of watching television. They can build compact walkable towns instead of suburban wastelands (probably even out of the salvaged detritus of those wastelands). They can put on plays, concerts, sing-alongs, and puppet shows instead of Super Bowl halftime shows and Internet porn videos. They can make things of quality by hand instead of stamping out a million things guaranteed to fall apart next week. None of these alt-activities would be classifiable as “growth” in the current mode. In fact, they are consistent with the reality of contraction. And they could produce a workable and satisfying living arrangement.

The rackets and swindles unleashed in our futile quest to keep up appearances have disabled the financial operating system that the regime depends on. It’s all an illusion sustained by accounting fraud to conceal promises that won’t be kept. All the mighty efforts of central bank authorities to borrow “wealth” from the future in the form of “money” — to “paper over” the absence of growth — will not conceal the impossibility of paying that borrowed money back. The future’s revenge for these empty promises will be the disclosure that the supposed wealth is not really there — especially as represented in currencies, stock shares, bonds, and other ephemeral “instruments” designed to be storage vehicles for wealth. The stocks are not worth what they pretend. The bonds will never be paid off. The currencies will not store value. How did this happen? Slowly, then all at once.

We’re on a collision course with these stark realities. They are coinciding with the sickening vectors of national politics in a great wave of latent consequences built up by the sheer inertia of the scale at which we have been doing things. Trump, convinced of his own brilliance, knows nothing, and wears his incoherence like a medal of honor. Clinton literally personifies the horror of these coiled consequences waiting to spring — and the pretense that everything will continue to be okay with her in the White House (not). When these two gargoyle combatants meet in the debate arena a week from now, you will hear nothing about the journey we’re on to a different way of life.

But there is a clear synergy between the mismanagement of our money and the mismanagement of our politics. They have the ability to amplify each other’s disorders. The awful vibe from this depraved election might be enough to bring down markets and banks. The markets and banks are unstable enough to affect the election.

In history, elites commonly fail spectacularly. Ask yourself: how could these two ancient institutions, the Democratic and Republican parties, cough up such human hairballs? And having done so, do they deserve to continue to exist? And if they go up in a vapor, along with the public’s incomes and savings, what happens next?

Enter the generals.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page! https://www.patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler.)

DAMS, DEAD FISH, TUNNELS & INDIANS

by Dan Bacher

Sacramento, CA September 20, 2016 – In the midst of a 300-mile trek and prayer journey to bring salmon back to the McCloud River, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and their allies converge on the State Capitol to demand a change in California’s water policy.

With plans to build new Dams and expand existing ones, and proposing to build two forty-foot Tunnels to divert more water out of the Delta, the stakes could not be higher for all of Californian. Fish species are on the verge of extinction. Disadvantaged Communities, subsistence fishermen, and small family farmers could see their water and way of life disappear altogether. And, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, who suffered over 90% loss of their traditional homeland, sacred sites, and cultural gathering sites along the Sacramento, McCloud and Pit Rivers when Shasta Dam was built, will again suffer the brunt of this destructive water policy.

The Winnemem Wintu and their allies have embarked on a 300-mile prayer journey from Sogorea Te (Glen Cove, Vallejo) to the historical spawning grounds of the winter-run salmon on the McCloud River. This journey is a walk/run/boat/bike and horseback ride to bring attention to the plight of all the runs of salmon in California, and the water management practices that have brought some of those runs to the edge of extinction. It is a prayer to let Californians know that the water they enjoy has come to them at the cost of others and the threat of death and extinction to species necessary for a healthy California.

Chief Caleen Sisk of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe says, “We consider Shasta Dam a weapon of mass destruction. It has already taken our homes, sacred sites, burial sites, and stopped the salmon from returning to their historical spawning grounds. If these tunnels are built, Governor Brown’s so called ‘California WaterFix’, they will not only cause more death and destruction to the already endangered salmon, but they will encourage and motivate plans to enlarge Shasta Dam. An enlarged Shasta Dam will flood what remaining sacred sites, and cultural sites that we still use today.”

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director for Restore the Delta states, “Restore the Delta stands today with the Winnemem Wintu calling on Governor Brown to abandon a failed water plan for California. The era of unlimited water resource development is over. As we revealed last week in the state's own economic analysis, the only way to make the Delta tunnels pencil out in terms of water delivery is to take even more water from the Delta -- which will finish off its fisheries, its entire ecosystem. And to make matters worse, the government expects you and me to pay for this destruction with our taxes.”

Trent Orr, a lawyer for Earthjustice, which represents the Winnemem Wintu in various legal fights to protect and restore salmon, said: “The Sacramento River's salmon runs are an emblem of wild California and its mountain-born rivers. The Winnemem Wintu Tribe has long fought to save these fish, which are central to their culture, and to restore health to the waters they need to thrive. But it has been an uphill battle. Much of the Tribe's homeland was drowned by Shasta Dam, and the salmon's access to the cold, clean spawning grounds above the dam, to which they had returned for eons, was blocked. Plans to raise the dam and to pump even more fresh water out of the Sacramento River via the governor's proposed giant tunnels could doom the salmon, already perilously close to extinction. The dam raise would also drown much of what's left of the Tribe's homeland. Earthjustice is proud to have represented the Tribe in many of its legal battles to save and restore the salmon. On behalf of the Tribe and its allies, we will continue to fight for the day when wild salmon again spawn in the headwaters of the Sacramento.”

In written testimony submitted to the State Water Resources Control Board, for the ongoing hearings regarding the Bureau of Reclamation’s and the Department of Water Resource’s water diversion change petition regarding the California WaterFix, Winnemem Wintu Governmental Liaison Gary Mulcahy asks.“Drowned cultures, dead and extinct fish, broken promises, stolen lands, environmental destruction, water grabs, and years and years of litigation – is it truly worth it?

Press Conference: West Steps of State Capitol – Tues, Sept. 20^th, 2016 10:30 – 12:00

Speakers: Chief Caleen Sisk, Winnemem Wintu Tribe; Trent Orr, Earthjustice; Barbara Barrigan-Parilla, Restore the Delta; Eric Wesselman, Friends of the River.

For more information on the 300-mile journey: Contact: Gary Mulcahy

www.run4salmon.org 916-214-8493

gary@ranchriver.com

For more information on the Winnemem Wintu:

www.winnememwintu.us

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I was reminded of how we entertained ourselves as children in the early 1950’s in Ohio.

Sure, there was a few minutes of “Howdy Doody” in the morning, but after that, one of our favorite activities was to put on plays for the neighborhood. (I was the writer/director, of course).

Having each child go home and collect their mom’s and dad’s old shoes, jewelry, clothes etc. so we could “play grown-ups” was fun!!!

Selling tickets to the play was fun! Going to get ice cream cones with our profits was fun!

There were lots of “Little Rascals” running around the streets of America in the 1950’s prior to the age of the Internet.

And I believe we boomers are now happier people for having lived childhoods creating, dreaming, communicating, learning and loving.

I pity my grandchildren as they sit and “watch” anything on TV or their parents iPhones.

UPCOMING EVENTS AT THE UKIAH LIBRARY.

www.mendolibrary.org

THE MORNING AFTER

Editor,

Beyond the pale…

Please know that I have just left Kabuki Spa in San Francisco's Japan Town. The effort to expel the last of Wednesday night's wild evening of dancing and firewater in North Beach was difficult. A totally uncomfortable 110 degree sauna was followed by short very hot steam room visits, and at last a couple of cold plunges before the traditional hot tub finish. Right now, the body is relaxed and the mind is calm and light. Between steam room visits, sat in the rest area and downed a cold bottle of RAW featuring turmeric, ginger, and oil of tangerine plus much more, and after that an Odwalla Superfood (with the complex green ingredients). Later, sat outside of the spa for awhile on a stone bench, enjoying the cool evening breeze. I will never tear up the town like that again! All of the uncertainty, the ton of networking emails sent since July which produced nothing in activist-flattened America during this depressing presidential election season, the haunt of the unknown, the weird worries about aging and death and so on and so forth, everything magnified and distorted in the mental house of mirrors, and then finally clarity came through once more, as today I purchased a one way airplane ticket to Honolulu, leaving behind the mainland struggles early Monday afternoon, 26th of September. Will celebrate my 67th birthday on Wednesday the 28th by doing nothing at all. Open to spirit fully...that's our way! Yes? Happy!! ;-)))))

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: CraigStehr@inbox.com