Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017

• Rainy Week
• Shelter Harassment
• Olive/Rex Reunited
• Recommended Reading
• Nubile Harvest
• Laytonville Resistance
• Protest Ninjas
• Little Dog
• Ziggy Rescued
• Toxins First
• Dioxin Cleanup
• Quentin Quarantine
• Yesterday's Catch
• Musical Audition
• Vaccine Survey
• Consensus Crisis
• Single Sanders
• End Times
• Magnet School
• Business Loans

RAINFALL TOTALS for most of Mendocino on Friday, February 3 were between half an inch and an inch. Rain will continue off and (mostly) on through the end of next week with heavier amounts mid-week which the National Weather Service expects will raise the Navarro River to flood stage yet again.

ANONYMOUS CRITICS of the County's Animal Shelter continue to harass the Shelter with endless, and endlessly time-consuming requests for records that this handful of hysterics claim is evidence of mis-management. I think it's evident, and has been evident, that the Shelter does the best it can in impossible circumstances of a constant stream of unadoptable animals that the County's insane No Kill policy causes to pile up in cramped quarters. Visit the place and you will see for yourself fifty or so hopelessly violent pit bulls abandoned by their hopelessly irresponsible owners, i.e., love drug farmers. I think the County should stop honoring these endless requests for paperwork.

THE NEWEST Shelter info requests: all the kennel cards, which includes the intake information, visual intake assessment, the medical care, vaccinations, treatment requests, treatment evaluations (dog evaluation forms), Idexx Laboratories Results for any and all Tests and outcome (I.e. Date of death, date euthanized, date RTO, date of transfer) for all dogs/puppies that have entered the Ukiah Animal Shelter from November 1, 2016 to January 18th, 2017.

PLUS DEA drug logs showing all drugs used to euthanize animals at Mendocino County Animal Care Services (Ukiah Animal Shelter) from November 1, 2016 to January 18th, 2017. This log includes: the type of drug(s) used, the in-house number assigned to the bottle(s) from which the drugs were drawn, the name of the person administering the drug, the description (species, breed) of each animal euthanized, each animal’s identification number, the weight of the animal euthanized, the amount of each drug used, and the total amount of the drug remaining in each drug bottle after use.

The shelter keeps all records and info requested in the Public Record Act requests. The drug logs that are standard operating procedure have the requested info about the bottle number etc etc. although we thought all the DEA information was not to be given to the public. But that ended last year when the County was besieged by the detractors.

The shelter also has individual "kennel cards" for all animals that enter the place. Last year the staff had to update all the cards but by now they know the drill so their record keeping might be better. But they have to go through hundreds of pages in order to redact information for privacy concerns. I.e., If someone brought an animal in for euthanasia, their name and address etc. needs to be whited out.

All this info should be kept on a laptop database, which would make compiling it for these requests very easy. But that will not happen any time soon.

The procedure still takes a lot of time, as some poor schmuck who could be helping the animals has to redact and make copies of 400-500 pieces of paper. Then they get massed together for scanning to make the computerized files.

REX GRESSETT picked up his long time companion dog Olive from the County Animal Shelter in Ukiah on Friday. And MendocinoSportsPlus was there to film it for posterity, in chunks step by step. We can’t repost MSP mini-films and they will get pushed down MSP’s pile of postings in a matter of a day or so, so check it out before it’s too late at MendocinoSportsPlus’s facebook page.

SUFFICE IT TO SAY, Mr. Gressett was overwhelmed and overjoyed at all the support and assistance and generosity he got from people who read about Olive’s predicament in MSP and the AVA, including a subsidized trip to In-N-Out Burger for Olive’s first meal out of confinement.

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=mendocinosportsplus

RECOMMENDED READING

READS MORE LIKE a PhD thesis, but despite that, "What Soldiers Do — Sex and the American GI in World War Two France" by Mary Louise Roberts even managed to surprise me with its scholarly enumeration of the many crimes committed against Italian, French and Belgian civilians during the occupation. Many of the soldiers committing rape and murder went unpunished. Needless to say, however, black soldiers committing the crime of rape, or merely accused of it, were often executed. Seriously disillusioning book for people who believe the Steven Spielberg version of WW Two, but won't surprise many veterans of any war.

“DEAD WAKE: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania” by Erik Larson. The German U-Boat sinking of the luxury liner drew a reluctant Woodrow Wilson and America behind him into World War One. Fascinating descriptions of life on both the doomed luxury liner and the U-Boat, told chronologically as the submarine hunts big kills off the Irish coast. (As a public service from Boonville's beloved weekly, next time someone asks why we got into WWI, explain it was to make sure our industrialists GOT PAID. American businesses fronted the belligerents millions in war materials. Best informal account can be found in Dos Passos's USA Trilogy.) And, as Helen Keller correctly noted at the time the war was for “J. P. Morgan & Co, and the capitalists who have invested their money in shrapnel plants, and others that turn out implements of murder who want to develop new markets for their hideous traffic.”

ANOTHER BOOK kinda hard to follow because it's not well organized, is "Truevine" by Beth Macy. It describes the true and truly depressing lives of two black albino brothers either kidnapped from their mother as children or sold by her out of desperation to a freak show operator. The freak impresario exhibits the boys as gibberish-speaking wild men for many years and as the talented musicians they grew up to be until they're finally re-united with their mother in the Truevine ghetto of Roanoke, Virginia. "Two brothers, a kidnapping, and a mother's quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South." And then some. But, as often happens in this country of unending variousness, a white Roanoke lawyer who admires the heroic tenacity of the boys' mother to find her stolen children, and wildly eccentric himself, and as interesting as the accounts of pre-War circuses and freak shows, this kindly man makes sure mom gets regular remittances from the crooks who have stolen custody of her boys. The entire saga would test the gifts of the best novelists, and I guarantee you'll read along gasping to yourself at events and practices unimaginable today.

WITH ALL THE INFLATED comparisons of Trump to Hitler, seekers after truth will want to read, "Hitler, Ascent 1889-1939" by Volker Ullrich, a scholarly but readable account of the man who nearly took fascism clear over the top to world dominance. Trump and Crew, fortunately for US and the world, aren't nearly as formidable, at least so far, as Hitler was, who, early on, used his oratorical and prose gifts to attract thousands of highly skilled thugs to form his political juggernaut. He was not a lightweight. Trump is a lightweight. Bannon, Trump's Rasputin, is less of a lightweight but I don't see Americans ever going over in the required mass numbers to anything like Hitler's highly organized ruthlessness. I think we're headed for a lot of disorder and probably a financial collapse, but not fascism. It's sooooooo not fun! And we're a soft, ruin-loving kind of people.

FINALLY, and I recommend this one as airplane reading — light entertainment unlike the usual heavy scholarly inquiry typical of AVA readers, but "Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport" by Saul David, is interesting in its meticulous account of how the Israelis, via a commando raid, rescued a planeload of highjacked civilians from Uganda where they were being held by a Palestinian faction supported by the monstrous Idi Amin. I zipped right through this one waiting in vain for even a paragraph describing Palestinian motives, but it was not to be. Palestinians are the most consistently vilified and deliberately misrepresented people in the world, and absolutely screwed by a succession of American administrations.

HASH OIL is not the way… "When I was young I was told they made hash by young naked woman running through fields of cannabis, and then having the resin gently shaved off their bodies and either water based or oil based, pressed into hash. Let’s get back to this, a lot of times the old ways are the best ways….no sexual perversion here, men typically are too Hairy too get optimum results."

LAYTONVILLE WOMEN PUSH BACK AGAINST TRUMP

Will fight for democracy, equality, social justice

by Jane Futcher

Twenty-five women and one man met Tuesday evening, Jan. 31, at the Laytonville Grange, vowing to resist President Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, Cabinet appointments and executive orders targeting the environment, immigrants, women, LGBT people, and racial and religious minorities.

Diane Schankin and Cheryl Hansen created the Women’s Action Group of Laytonville to show solidarity with the Jan. 21 Women’s March on Washington. Their event that day drew 70 supporters to Laytonville.

“I do not like feeling ashamed of my country,” Schankin said after Tuesday’s meeting. “I want to help young women become active and understand what women for centuries have fought for — what they now have and can dream of having or becoming. I want to help them understand they could lose it all in an instant.”

Everyone attending the Women’s Action Group meeting shared why they had come.

One woman, who said she is Jewish and lost family members in the Holocaust, admitted feeling anxious and vulnerable since Trump’s election.

An immigrant from Denmark confided that she had never been politically active since coming to the United States but feels so upset by the new president’s actions, including his ban on immigrants from selected nations, that she fears for American democracy as well as her own legal status. “I have a green card,” she said, “but now I wonder if he’ll take that away.”

Several attending said they believe Trump may be laying the ground for a dictatorial, even fascist takeover of American democracy by creating chaos, overwhelming voters with sudden changes, undermining the Constitution and appointing Cabinet members who may mismanage or even abolish the very agencies they are expected to lead. “We want to create unity, not division,” Hansen assured the group. “We want to fight back at all levels against Trump’s rhetoric of hate.”

Several women identifying themselves as lesbian said they feared a rollback in LGBT rights.

Those attending seemed energized by the gathering and said they were prepared to work at the county, state and national level to elect leaders who’ll stand up for women’s rights, protect the environment, and work for justice and equality for all.

The group’s first official action was to write Gov. Jerry Brown asking him to appoint former Willits Mayor and City Councilmember Holly Madrigal to Mendocino County’s vacant 3rd District Supervisor’s seat. “She is a woman, and this is a woman’s issue,” Hansen said. “I think she will protect the environment.”

The next Women’s Action Group meeting Thursday, Feb. 9 at 4 p.m. at the Laytonville Grange.

(Jane Futcher contributes regularly to Laytonville’s Mendocino Observer and the AVA.)

EYEWITNESS: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT BERKELEY THE OTHER NIGHT

Wondering what the heck happened in Berkeley U the other night? Here is a first hand explanation…Here's a post from a #Berkeley student who was at the protest and saw what happened:

I’m tired of seeing all this negative press about 'Berkeley students' including the President attacking us on twitter this morning. And I’ve had many friends reach out to ask what happened. So here are my thoughts if you care to read.

I was at the protests last night. The students had a great plan for a peaceful protest: a dance party was organized outside the student union with thousands of students to take attention away from Milo’s message. Student bands with tubas and trumpets were there to make noise and create a distraction, and many students had brought protest signs. But shortly into our planned protest, a large group of masked violent protesters dressed in all black carrying anarchist flags descended on our campus. They were highly organized and came with an agenda. Within minutes they had dismantled multiple layers of barricades and broke into the bottom floor of the building to set off the fire alarm and force Milo’s event to end.

After the event was cancelled we tried to peacefully march, as we do regularly in Berkeley. But these people began smashing ATMs and breaking windows. At one point, a person (likely a student) yelled out “Stop the violence!” and was immediately attacked and assaulted. That’s when I, and many other students, decided to leave. There were no cops to be seen, as they were all staked out at the student union waiting for backup. By the time a SWAT team arrived, they had already looted ATMs, broken into several banks and destroyed Starbucks.

The group is known as the “black bloc” and they are known to target large peaceful protests in order to create riots. In 2012 they usurped the peaceful Occupy Oakland protest to create violence and raid a supermarket. In 2014 they targeted the peaceful Eric Garner protests in Berkeley. This is what they do. They are known for creating violence and rioting, specifically targeting banks, national chain stores, and security cameras. And they came to Berkeley last night with a mission to do just that.

I’ve heard many remarks that “Berkeley students can’t handle free speech.” U.C. Berkeley was the birthplace of the free speech movement in the 1960s. We can handle free speech. We may use our own free speech rights to protest speech that we don’t agree with, but we don’t silence it. Since I’ve been here we’ve had many walkouts to protest controversial speakers. We have peaceful protests almost every day here, at least several per week. But you wouldn’t know it because they don’t make national news. The only thing that makes national news is a group of violent rioters descending on our campus to destroy our city.

If there’s anyone that has the right to be upset over what happened last night, it’s us – the students, and the residents of Berkeley. Our student union was vandalized. We can’t go to the ATM because they were all looted last night. We can’t go to Starbucks today because it was destroyed last night. Do you seriously think the students would destroy Starbucks? We love Starbucks. Unfortunately Milo attracts these issues wherever he goes. And it’s not always one-sided either. One of his supporters shot a student at University of Washington (and was subsequently released by police). And just the other week his event was similarly shut down at UC Davis due to violent protests.

Donnie is pretty critical of us but I’m not sure what he would have done differently if he were here. Obviously more security was needed, but hindsight is 20/20. The University had already gone out of its way to hire additional security and set up barriers. I don’t think they were anticipating such a large mob of rioters to show up (again, because Berkeley has a history of peaceful protests). But police made the call that they were outnumbered by the mob and that it wasn’t safe for the event to go on. If Donnie created an entire page of his website dedicated to respecting police, maybe he could respect their decision. But threatening our funding over events that were out of the students’ control is highly offensive.

It’s incredibly unfortunate what happened last night. But I wouldn’t be so quick to blame the students of Berkeley, who tried to organize a peaceful protest.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “They just told me that my new pal Ziggy who was looking for a home has ‘gone to rescue.’ He's outta da shelter and into a warm, safe place. Didn't take too long! I’m glad I could help!”

GET THE TOXINS OUT FIRST (COASTAL TRAIL, FORT BRAGG)

To our Fort Bragg City Councilmen:

We would like to go on record as opposing the rush to complete the two sections of Coastal Trail. The clean up of toxins should be addressed before beginning construction on it. To make a decision based on a grant deadline seems extremely unwise.

Community Development Director Jones has demonstrated an alarming lack of attention and understanding of the Coastal Trail previously. Her surprising ignorance of the Coastal Conservancy's covenants for the trail, lead her to encourage a resident to invest in a Segway business to utilize it, even though it clearly states that motorized vehicles are not permitted there. The biz owner had every right to sue the City that gave her a business license and encouraged a rightly banned activity. Fortunately, she did not.

Then there is the serious blunder with the so-called 'stairs'. These were obviously more a ladder than stairs, unsafe for public access. The excuse given is that the number of visitors was underestimated, but it only takes one injury for an expensive lawsuit against the City. Now they are to be replaced at great expense to the taxpayers, after injuries and at least one lawsuit.

The City is trying to promote its public image as 'Bee Friendly', and environmentally conscientious now. Completing the trail, with likely ugly fencing on both sides to keep people safe from toxins while remediation is done after the fact, seems all wrong. We urge you to resist pressure to support rushing completion of the trail for one grant. Consequences could be vastly expensive, and harm our future as a tourist destination.

Alice and Douglas Chouteau, Fort Bragg

TO TOM LANPHAR at the State Department of Toxic Substance Control (dtsc.org):

Tom Lanphar is in charge of public input for the project to remove dioxin contaminated soil from the Fort Bragg Mill Site.)

To:

Tom.Lanphar@dtsc.ca.gov

Hello Tom,

I live in Fort Bragg and am very concerned about the report outlining the removal of the soils contaminated with dioxin. The report says that tires and trucks, etc. will be cleaned of soil debris before they leave the site to drive to Hwy 20 and beyond. Dioxin is highly toxic and dangerous to public health. Even amounts as small as a few parts per billion are extremely dangerous to living organisms including people. No additional exposure of dioxin above our existing body loads are acceptable. Therefore if it is to be removed from where it is now, extreme care must be taken to make sure NO dioxin escapes into the local environment.

How can we be sure no soil containing dioxin will be dropped or blown or dripped into the environment from the exterior of the trucks? With so many truck trips per day and the intensity of the operation and the severe time constraints, how you are going to prove this will not happen?

In addition, the wind speed requirements listed which are supposed to prevent broadcast of dioxin containing soil particles on and off site will absolutely allow soil particles to become wind-borne. The site is right next to the ocean where it is almost always windy and gust speeds can change rapidly. Twenty five MPH is very capable of lifting soil particles and blowing them around on and off site. How can we be sure no soils will be released into the environment? Who is in charge of making sure the winds are measured accurately and that work will immediately stop when it gets windy and that no soil particles will be released into the environment?

There no detail about this "cleaning of the trucks" and there is no mention of methods of evaluation to check if there is total removal of soil debris on the exterior of the trucks. Who will be responsible for checking that there will be absolutely no soil attached to the trucks or tires which could be released?

Please get back to me about this.

Thank you,

Susan Miller, PO Box 564, Mendocino, CA 95460

‘TALES FROM THE CAVE’

Hello readers,

The following is a true story currently developing in San Quentin, the prison where your sons, boyfriends, husbands get sent to for reception and processing.

First, may I relate the worst fear the prisoner has: it's to come to prison and while confined catch some deadly disease that turns a "hiccup" into a "crash landing"!

That's what Orson Welles would call this alien experience.

One day all is well, a normal day in the kennel: Tiers number 1-5, 50 cells each.

The next thing we know there are medical personnel circulating, going from cell to cell asking if we feel this or are experiencing that. To make matters worse they are wearing masks and gloves. And we are not.

Supervising officials arrived in a very new supervisory location accompanied by "big brass" corrections officer officials. People were running left and right. It sounded like a flight landing zone for helicopters outside (which may be the San Francisco Bay, but at this point hysteria has set in.) Then people start disappearing. Deadlocks are being applied to certain cells. One of those is mine!

I have a wife and family (children) to look forward to seeing — hopefully — in a matter of hours. That sentence has now turned into a question. Medical staff start appearing at our cell — now my cell because my cellmate has "disappeared" — asking if I've been coughing, or feeling sick. Taking my pulse with a handheld device, checking my temperature with a laser. "No contact."

I ask what's going on, "What do I have?" They merely walk away whispering something about "the flu."

I'm over 50 years old and sad to say I've been here and done this several times and I've never seen such a look of fear in the guard's eyes — that is, the level of concern I thought was being demonstrated by medical personnel.

All over people were sneezing and coughing as days went by. Someone mentioned that the prison is quarantined. It's slammed shut!

Meanwhile life goes on in. My cellmate returned from the hole. I guess that's the new hospital here! And now we are slammed, padlocked in our cells, meals being served with absolutely no contact with a single other person besides our tier officer who is sympathetic, but most follow the rules.

We still have no idea what we were (are?) suspected of having, or whether we have it. But we are nonetheless locked down with no yard time, no medical appointments, no nothing. Worst of all, no explanation! I wonder if they will shoot us at dawn or smuggle our carcasses to the incinerators just next door?

James “Goonie” Williams

San Quentin

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 3, 2017

ASHLEY ESPINOSA, Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, protective order violation.

BOBBY GRAY, Philo. Under influence.

JOSE LOPEZ, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

JAMES MALLO, Willits. Failure to register.

PATRICIA MOORE, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ROXANNA OLIVER, Covelo. Suspended license.

JOHN PALACIOS, Ukiah. Smuggling drugs/booze into jail, probation revocation.

MINDY PRATT, Ukiah. Possession of meth, sale of meth, suspended license.

AUDITIONS for Gloriana's 100 Years of Broadway!

Celebrate the history of Broadway and our great heritage of musical theater in this marvelous showcase of over 100 years of Broadway. Featuring songs from Les Miserables, Show Boat, Gypsy, Wicked, Next to Normal, West Side Story, Phantom of the Opera and more! Directed by Patrick Gomes, music direction by Kevin Green. Auditions will be held Friday, February 3rd and Saturday, February 4th from 5:00 - 7:00 at Eagles Hall Theatre in Fort Bragg. This is a concert/revue-style show, with limited dialogue. Please prepare any song for your audition. Sign up here: http://www.gloriana.org/audition-form

Rehearsals will be on Mondays and Thursdays.

Performances run April 20, 21, 22, 23, 28, 29, 30.

Please direct all questions to info@gloriana.org

BAD NEWS FOR ANTI-VAX CRANKS

Poll: Most Americans back vaccines

by Lena H. Sun

Washington Post

The criticism of vaccines voiced by President Donald Trump and some other public figures is at odds with the attitudes of most Americans, who overwhelmingly support requiring public school children to be vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Thursday.

Overall, 82 percent of Americans support requiring students in public schools to be vaccinated for those three diseases. In addition, the survey found, their perceptions of the benefits of that combination vaccine are strongly positive, with about 88 percent saying the benefits outweigh any risks. About 73 percent of Americans see high preventive health benefits, and 66 percent say there is a low risk of side effects.

Trump met with vaccine skeptics during his campaign and since his election, including the discredited British ex-physician Andrew Wakefield — who attended one of the presidential inaugural balls. Wakefield launched the modern anti-vaccine movement after publishing a study, now discredited, that connected autism to the MMR vaccine.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Not only has society lost its consensus – its tacit agreement of what constitutes normalcy – but I’ve lost my ‘personal consensus’ as well; I don’t know what I believe or who I can align myself with. At the few parties and gatherings I attend, I’m afraid to air my views. This is new for me; I’m usually the hail-fellow-well-met blowhard instigating all sorts of controversial ballyhoo. Now, however, I’m not even certain of what my views are! A liberal Democrat who voted from his gut for Donald Trump is as a leper – even unto himself. I know I’m not alone, but the others are likely as repressed as I. I’m an old man and I’ve been thru a lot…but this time it’s different.

SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS SAYS HE'S FOR SINGLE PAYER.

Then why hasn't he introduced a single payer bill in the Senate? Please take a moment today, give Senator Sanders a call and ask him why. (DC office: (202) 224-5141. Burlington, Vermont office (802) 862-0697.)

Senator Sanders will debate Senator Ted Cruz on CNN on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 9 pm.

Call Senator Sanders and ask him to introduce the gold standard of single payer bills — HR 676 (currently with 56 co-sponsors in the House) — into the Senate. Let us know what he says.

See our most recent story — Nader Urges Sanders to Introduce Senate Single Payer Bill Before Debating Cruz on CNN — here: http://www.singlepayeraction.org/2017/02/03/nader-urges-sanders-to-introduce-senate-single-payer-bill-before-debating-cruz-on-cnn/

Onward to Single Payer

Single Payer Action

THE PURPOSE OF DECADENCE & THE PLEASURES OF COERCION

by James Kunstler

I guess you’ve noticed by now that the center didn’t hold. Instead of a secure platform for political premises like tradition, precedent, rationality, and cultural norms, you see a fiery maw of sheer emotion between the camps of the so-called Left and the so-called Right.

I say so-called because the campus Left and the Trump Right have escaped the categorical corrals they formerly occupied. And they may have left their customary official parties stranded and dying too. It may be fatuous to say whether that is a good or bad thing; it just is, for the moment. They are two halves of a polity so broken and so far apart that it is also hard to see how they might ever come back together into a consensus about how a society might operate successfully.

Not having a consensus — some substantial overlap between circles of perspective — it’s not surprising that America can’t construct a coherent view of what is happening, or make a plan for what to do about it. Mainly what’s happening is the running down of fossil fuel based techno-industrial economies, and the main symptom is falling standards of living, with fading prospects for future happiness and security.

As I’ve said before, our economic picture is basically untenable due to the falling energy-return-on-investment of the crucial oil supply (shout-out to Steve St. Angelo). At the high point of 1920s oil production the ratio was around 100-1. The shale oil “miracle” is good for about 5-1. The aggregate of all oil these days is under 30-1. Below that number, you’ve got to shed some activities in our complex economy (or they just get too expensive to support) — things like high-paying labor jobs, medical care, tourism, college, commuting, heating 2500 square foot homes…). Oddly the way it’s actually working out is that America is simply shedding its whole middle class and all its accustomed habits and luxuries. At least that’s how it adds up in effect. Naturally, that produces a lot of bad feeling.

President Trump is unlikely to be able to fix that essential problem, unless he can pilot the whole political-economy into a glide-path leading toward neo-medievalism — what I call the World Made By Hand. Trump’s call for restoring the factory economy of 1962 is a low-percentage prospect. Instead, he’ll be saddled with the collateral damage caused by the dishonest effort of his recent predecessors to borrow from the future to pay for the way we live now — that is, racking up debt. This mighty debt-load, never before seen in history, and the accounting fraud that enables it, has helped produce all kinds of distortions, perversities, and fragilities in our money system (finance and banking) which can easily slip into collapse if a crucial prop fails here or there, and that is exactly what I think will happen under Trump. It will not be his fault, but he’ll get blamed for it. And when it happens, he won’t be able to give his attention to anything but that.

In the meantime, society shows all the symptoms of this literal economic disease in the political and cultural fissures of the day. The political Right failed in its role as prudent conservator of values, resources, and practical custom; the political Left has taken refuge in sentimental fantasy, using the semantic ploys of the graduate school seminars to pretend that reality is whatever they wish it to be. Uncomfortable with the age-old tensions of sexuality? Then pretend that you can opt out of the dynamics of biology by declaring yourself “non-binary,” a term with a pleasing science-y flavor. Tensions gone? Not really. You’ve only made them worse as, for instance, expressed in “non-binary” suicide rates. The perversities of transsexual triumphalism are related directly to the falsehoods of Federal Reserve trans-monetarist triumphalism, and all parties are subject to the matrix of racketeering that has taken the place of plain dealing in goods, money, and ideas in this society — especially ideas grounded in reality.

Societies may not exactly be organisms with intentions, but they move in a particular direction because they are emergent phenomena. That is, they are self-organizing according to the circumstances and forces they are subject to at a certain time and place in history. Decadence is specifically the decay of social and cultural boundaries, a process that is manifestly accelerating now. Both sides of the political spectrum are acting out this dynamic, with the vacuum in the middle sucking vitality out of each side. The Left has become a kind of pagan religion of sacred victims and victimhood, collecting sacred injuries and martyrs. Its dark secret, though, is that these sacred things are only straw-dogs and wicker-men. The real animating motive for the Left these days is simply the pleasure of coercion, of exercising the power to punish their adversaries and watch them suffer.

The Trump Right also enjoys the writhings and sufferings of its adversaries, squashed bug style, as it goes forth in the quixotic battle to bring back 1962 at all costs. Both the Left and the right show not a little sadism in their methods. In the background of these histrionics, the great groaning machine of Modernity lurches toward collapse — not the end-of-the-world as many foolishly imagine, but the end of a phase of history when things that used to work, don’t. At a certain point, we’ll have to try other ways of being with each other on this planet, and then for a while things will come together again.

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

EAGLE PEAK MIDDLE SCHOOL BECOMES STEM MAGNET SCHOOL

Invites 4th and 5th Grade Students throughout Ukiah to Enroll Now—

Eagle Peak Middle School has opened enrollment to local fourth and fifth grade students across the Ukiah Valley who are interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Beginning with the 2017-18 school year, Eagle Peak will be a STEM magnet school, focused on engaging students with hands-on activities that prepare them for high school, college, and employment in high-demand and high-paying careers.

Principal Dan Stearns encourages interested families to attend upcoming informational meetings:

• February 7 - Informational Meeting at Frank Zeek Elementary (6 pm)
• February 9 - Informational Meeting at Yokayo Elementary (6 pm)
• March 21 - Open House at Eagle Peak (6 pm)

Eagle Peak currently enrolls 455 students and Stearns expects an initial increase of approximately 40 students with the magnet designation beginning in 2017-18. He said, “Eagle Peak staff have already enthusiastically begun preparing for the launch of their STEM school, including converting the existing computer lab into an engineering Maker Space. They are also planning student projects with robotics, electronics, computer coding and programming, 3-D art design, and music technology — just to name a few.”

The school will adopt block scheduling to allow more time for teachers to integrate magnet themes across core classes like language arts, social studies, science, and math; and the school will reorganize elective classes so students will have the opportunity to develop interests in a wide range of STEM fields. Students will also benefit from field trips to colleges and businesses with an emphasis on STEM subjects. Even if students are not currently in the Eagle Peak attendance area, limited bussing will be available from various parts of Ukiah.

“We’re currently accepting enrollment for students interested in attending fifth, sixth and eighth grade next year at Eagle Peak. We’re already pretty full for next year’s seventh grade class,” Stearns said. For more information, contact him at (707) 472-5250 or dstearns@uusd.net.

FREE MONEY

EDFC Awarded Funding To Support Microentrepreneurs

February 3, 2017 Ukiah, CA - The USDA Rural Development just awarded the Economic Development & Financing Corporation (“EDFC”) $500,000 in funding under the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program (RMAP).

The Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program was created under the 2008 Farm Bill and reauthorized through the 2014 Farm Bill.

Under RMAP, USDA will provide a $500,000 loan to EDFC, which will then make microloans for business start-up or development to eligible microentrepreneurs defined as very small businesses with 10 or fewer employees, in Lake and Mendocino Counties. The maximum amount of loans under this program will be $50,000. Coupled with a previous 2014 award, it brings EDFC’s total RMAP loan funds to $1,000,000. The 2014 funds were deployed in 2 years for a total of 13 loans ranging from $8,000 to $50,000.

In addition, the program award also includes Technical Assistance Grant funds to provide business skills training and development support for potential and current RMAP loan clients. EDFC works with the West Company - Mendocino’s Small Business Development Center and Community Development Services in Lake County to provide technical assistance for the program.

EDFC is a non-profit 501(c)(3) Community Development Financial Institution formed in 1995 with the mission of “Connecting money and ideas with entrepreneurs to create sustainable prosperity in Lake and Mendocino Counties”

For more information please contact:

Diann Simmons diann@edfc.org

205 N. Bush St. Room 252 Ukiah CA 95482 707.234.5705 www.edfc.org Follow EDFC on Facebook