Mendocino County Today: Monday, March 6, 2017

• Highway Fatality
• FB Dioxins
• Bugging Trump
• Suspect Nabbed
• Little Dog
• Virtue Signaling
• Police-sponsored Fighting
• Yesterday's Catch
• Amanda Knox
• Smoking Maddow
• CPR Class
• Tiny Trump
• Con Man
• Barack Obuggin
• Anodyne Journalism
• Absurdities/Atrocities
• Simple Things
• CIA Interview
• Wildlife Film

CHP COLLISION REPORT (21:06 3/5/2017)

Party #1 [Dennis James Kirwan, 52, of Little River] was driving a 2000 Ford pick-up that was towing a U-Haul trailer N/B [northbound] SR-1 south of Navarro Ridge Rd.  The roadway was covered with ice due to a hailstorm.  Party #1 entered a curve in the roadway and lost control of the pick-up/trailer as it slid in a westerly direction off the roadway.  The pick-up/trailer traveled down the west shoulder embankment and collided with a tree.  Party#1 sustained fatal injuries from the collision and was pronounced deceased at the scene.  Refer to Mendocino County Sheriff's Department for Coroner's report.  Drugs or alcohol are not considered to be a factor at this time. [Passenger Beth Kirwan, 49, was taken to Mendocino Coast District Hospital.]

GP MILL SITE COVER-UP GOES DEEPER

3/2/17 Phone call with DTSC Tom Lanphar, Kimi Klein, of Berkeley and Nathan Shumaker of Sacramento; Supervisor said she might be on the call a few days ago but was not.

Nathan helpfully informed me that a way to have my concerns taken into account was that I am able to vote for the FB city council. He also told me the City of FB will be “monitoring” the project and has a responsibility to monitor that the mitigations of the project are followed.

Toward the end of the call, Nathan finally mentioned they are working on an ”implementation plan” which they will have ready by the summer just before this toxics removal, scheduled for Aug. 15, 2017, to further specify the methodology by which they were going to require for the removal of the contaminated soils. I mentioned that EPA ordered agencies to consider all the materials (soils and sediments and effluents) which contain toxics such as dioxin are to be treated as contaminated materials in their entirety. There is no plan so far for how they are going to dry out the sediments and how they will deal with the effluent which will be contaminated with contaminated soil particles.

I stated there is no accountability in the plan they have now, there is conflict of interest in that the subcontractor, who is removing the soils, of the contractor Arcadis, in charge of the project, who will be also in charge of observing whatever mitigations they have concerning wind speed, cleaning trucks, monitoring dust, monitoring air, covering the soil piled up and left on the ground after excavation, etc. At the same time the sub contractor is trying to get the trucks out by noon to have them in Kettleman City in time, has daytime working hours constraints, has a project length time restraint, this takes place on a very windy site with very changeable winds, and this subcontractor is also responsible for monitoring and stopping the work when the conditions are present.

Meanwhile I looked up a few numbers:

• Adults in industrialized world carry 2,000-6,000 pico grams per kilograms of body weight (pg/kg/bw) or parts per trillion (ppt)
• Moderately exposed workers 3,000-13,000 pg/kg/bw or ppt
• Highly exposed workers 28,000-400,000 pg/kg/bw or ppt

The soils and sediments in Georgia Pacific Fort Bragg Mill Site burn area, riparian area and ponds have a high dioxin concentration of 2,728 pico grams. In parts per trillion it is 2,728 ppt.

EPA maximum daily adult exposure of dioxin is 0.7 pg/kg/bw or 0.7 ppt or about 40 pg per day and DTSC says dioxin levels in the soils and pond sediments left after “remediation” will be at least 40-50 pg or ppt depending on the location.

–Sue Miller, Fort Bragg

I BUGGED TRUMP TOWER: Dave Severn Confesses

I don't remember stealing any juice from PG&E, but I do remember sneaking into the Trump Tower in 2002 and installing an intricate, self-designed listening device.

Jerome Kohlberg — of Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts and the leveraged buyout debacle of the late 80s who back then owned the Toll House — told me over a beer at the Lodge following an anti-war rally in SF of this then little known megalomaniac of a guy, Donald Trump, and the hidden threat he posed for our future. This revelation came as Bob Norris was packing a few more beers than us, and a cue stick. Norris threatened to throttle anyone in the house over even the slightest slight against the US of A. Being full of vinegar in those days I soon hopped on a standby United flight to Washington DC to hand deliver to George W. Bush and Congress Anderson Valley’s pleas to disavow war. The train trip from DC to Manhattan and back to deploy my electronic wizardry went without hitch. It was easy to tap the Trump Tower electrical grid and implant a radio frequency oscillator that not only created the white noise that masked the intrusion but also provided the path by which to digitally (quite a new concept in those days) transmit the purloined intelligence. Imagine. Now 15 years later my knavery has at long last been discovered and is now being blamed on Barack Obama.

MAN ON THE RUN FOR 12 YEARS FROM MURDER CHARGES HID OUT IN MENDOCINO GROWING MARIJUANA

About 7 a.m. Wednesday near Redding, the FBI, Santa Rosa detectives, Shasta County SWAT and Sheriff’s deputies surrounded the home of Ricardo Puentes, Jr. The man was a suspect in a 2005 execution style slaying that occurred in a Santa Rosa apartment.

Allegedly Puentes had supported himself over his years on the run by growing marijuana in northern Mendocino near Leggett not far from the Humboldt County line.

According to the Press Democrat,

After daybreak, with the SWAT team surrounding the residence, sheriff’s officials called out to Puentes through an open window. Realizing he was surrounded Puentes picked up his baby boy and stood in a window, Ludtke said.

“He was refusing to come out. It was kind of a hostage situation for a little bit,” Ludtke said.

Negotiations lasted about 10 minutes before Puentes came out, handed the baby to an officer and was arrested.

Just recently, Puentes, his girlfriend, their infant son, and her two children moved near Redding from their rural home south of Leggett. In northern Mendocino, Puentes was known as Tony. But in 2005, Puentes is believed to have been a member of the Norteño street gang who killed 27-year-old Semere Girmai in what was believed to be dispute about drugs and territory.

According to the FBI,

On January 15, 2005, Puentes, Jr. and two other suspects allegedly knocked on the door of an apartment in Santa Rosa. When a female resident opened the door to allow the three suspects inside, Puentes, Jr. allegedly pulled out a handgun and began shooting. One victim was shot and killed and a second was wounded before the suspects fled.

Puentes disappeared. He is rumored to have made occasional trips back to Santa Rosa to visit family. He has been in northern Mendocino at least four years but possibly a great deal longer. He told one friend he had come to the area as a kid but that has not been confirmed.

(Courtesy, Redheaded Blackbelt / kymkemp.com)

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “It's getting comical around here. Lotsa wild talk about the garden this year, They even hauled in a mound of dirt. Prediction: They'll throw some sunflower seeds on it and call it a big success.”

HAVE YOU SEEN the new blue-orange-green yard signs popping up all over Ukiah’s precious west side? You simply must! They are the absolute latest in virtue signaling, you know.

“Virtue signaling” is a way to transmit, via code, that you are a wonderful, caring person. These yard signs pick up where “Be Multicultural” and “Diversity Now!” and “Tolerance” left off a while back. The signs (in various languages) all say “No Matter Where You’re From I’m Glad You’re My Neighbor.”

Oh sure you are.

Are you glad if it’s a hillbilly clan moving in from Appalachia? Still glad if it’s a bunch of Hell’s Angels from San Bernardino? Glad if it’s a parolee from Pelican Bay? We all know the answer, because we all know these signs are meant to transmit a different message altogether: “I’m a warm-hearted, deeply caring person who loves all of humanity, and I didn’t vote for Trump.”

How many of our oh-so-tolerant friends would assist a family of Iranian refugees by allowing them to live in their house temporarily while they searched for a suitable rental in the neighborhood?

— Tommy Wayne Kramer

(PHILO has one of these signs, too, on Ray's Road. Call it "The Invasion of the Fuzzy Warms.” No known antidote.)

FIRST TIME I've seen Berkeley cops stand back and let people fight. Yesterday's opposing forces — about a hundred Trumpians vs. a couple hundred of the Bay Area's recreational rioters — was preceded by the Berkeley Police Department's "expressed concern that opposition groups might have a disproportionate reaction to what appears to be a small, loosely organized event."

TRANSLATION: The Trump people are going to be attacked.

ANY TRUMP RALLY anywhere west of I-5 will summon the far more violent Black Bloc or, as news media call them, "anarchists."

FROM WHAT I could see on the television news, the anarchists were the aggressors. The Trump people looked like an odd collection of visibly retarded white guys, bellowing Rotarians leavened by nicely dressed Asian ladies who may have wandered accidentally into the fighting. At least one Asian woman was slugged by a Hero of the Left.

THE TRUMPIANS took a beating, and how the cops could just stand there as downed Trumpets were getting kicked in their errant heads was simply disgusting.

THERE WERE a few Trumpers who looked like they at least had a theoretical grasp of self-defense, but the anti's clearly turned out with some experienced tough guys.

ALL IT'S GOING to take for serious trouble to kick off an American version of civil war is for people to start showing up with guns. The country is irretrievably divided, I'd say, and this police-sponsored fight in Berkeley Saturday is only the first of many, much larger battles.

FORTUNATELY, Mendolib isn't much for street fighting, and if they were, Mendo's Trumpers, at least the ones I know, would pound the piss out of them. Berkeley won't happen here.

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 5, 2015

JAMES BRAY JR. Fort Bragg, Drunk in public, probation revocation.

ALICIA LOOKS, Albion. Probation revocation.

CHRISTOPHER OROZCO, Cloverdale/Ukiah. Domestic assault, failure to appear.

JAMES SHERWOOD, Mendocino. Domestic assault, protective order violation.

DANNY RAY, Mendo’s mellow-est drunk: Drunk in public, probation revocation. (Frequent Flyer)

RECOMMENDED VIEWING, this truly excellent documentary as rightly also recommended here by Rolling Stone:

'Amanda Knox': 7 WTF Moments From New Doc

Netflix's new documentary uncovers everything from diary revelations to prosecutor's questionable approach to the case

by Rachel Brodsky

On the morning of November 2nd, 2007, 21-year-old British exchange student Meredith Kercher was found dead on the floor in the house she had been sharing with three other women in Perugia, Italy. Kercher's throat had been slit; she was lying in a pool of blood and covered with a duvet. One of her roommates, 20-year-old Seattle native and fellow study-abroad student Amanda Knox, notified the authorities after allegedly arriving home from sleeping at her new boyfriend's house. She'd discovered the front door open, blood on the bathroom floor, and unknown feces in the toilet. (Kercher's other two roommates, both Italian, were away at the time, and Kercher was not responding to knocks on her locked bedroom door.)

As the next few days played out, Italian authorities would become more and more convinced that Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, had somehow been involved in Kercher's murder. Their assumptions had to do with Knox's unusual behavior, which authorities deemed too unsavory for a girl mourning her roommate's untimely death: They didn't like the way she and Sollecito kissed while the police investigated the hilltop house, and they thought it was strange that Knox did cartwheels and stretching exercises in the police station. Their suspicions – which local and international media unabashedly played up – eventually led to Knox's and Sollecito's arrest, trial, and imprisonment, all of which is captured in the new Netflix documentary, Amanda Knox.

Filmed over the course of five years and directed and produced by Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn, Amanda Knox does not so much set out to prove or disprove Knox's innocence as it does point out the ways the case itself became unfairly sensationalized by a scoop-hungry media and a witch-hunting prosecution. Comprising interviews with Knox and Sollecito, plus prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, former Daily Mail journalist Nick Pisa and a smattering of others, the documentary goes the distance to illustrate how the media and Italian law enforcement fed into each other to create a bizarre — and very likely false — story behind Kercher's murder (a "sex game gone wrong," they decided at the time). Here, seven WTF-worthy moments in Netflix's Amanda Knox.

Knox describes being physically abused while questioned by the Italian police


If you read Knox's 2015 memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, then you may already be familiar with how the now-29-year-old was initially questioned by the Perugian police. Knox details the interrogation once again in the documentary, noting how investigators were unsatisfied with her account that she'd been at Sollecito's house the night of Kercher's murder. They were convinced that a text message to Knox's boss, Patrick Lumumba, containing the American slang "See you later," meant that she had made an actual appointment to see him later that night. Which, as they thought, didn't line up with her alibi. "At a certain point, a police officer slapped me behind the head and was like 'Remember!' and slapped me again," Knox says into the camera.

After hours of no food, no sleep, no bathroom breaks and more intense interrogation, Knox claims she broke down and began to question her own memory of that night, leading her to falsely accuse Lumumba, who owned an area bar called Le Chic.

'Daily Mail' journalist Nick Pisa likens the thrill of getting a front-page story to having sex

"A murder always gets people going. Bit of intrigue, big of mystery, a whodunit…What more do you want in a story?" says Pisa with a shrug and a grin. He describes being the first journalist to get details of Kercher's autopsy, which revealed little cuts and "nicks" from a knife to her neck, "almost as if someone had been taunting or torturing her." That's when the prosecution and police, he said, began to call the crime a "sex game gone wrong," which he immediately wrote up and "managed to get out to the British press before anyone else."

"To see your name on the front page with a great story that everyone's talking about… it's just like this fantastic buzz," he says. "It's like having sex or something."

Newspapers used innocent photos of Knox and Sollecito to make them appear more sinister

In his interviews, Pisa also describes the way journalists at the time would search the Internet for any extra information they could find about Knox and Sollecito. Not only did they dig up Knox's MySpace nickname "Foxy Knoxy" and spin it to make her appear sex-obsessed and dangerous, but they also found a photo of Knox jokingly posing with a machine gun and one of Sollecito dressed up like a mummy holding a meat cleaver. Both photos, obviously placed out of context, would appear side by side in newspapers, making them look like a couple of young kids who found murder to be humorous.

Pisa refuses to say how the contents of Knox's diary was leaked to the press while she was in prison


That's how the public learned that Knox had been told she had HIV (she didn't) in order to get a list of every man she'd ever had sex with (just seven). "But how did the press get a hold of her diary?" asks a disembodied voice to Pisa, who tells the story. He smiles and apologetically says that a good journalist never reveals a source.

Mignini doesn't seem to understand how police questioning works

The prosecutor recounts asking Knox why she originally pointed the finger at Lumumba while being questioned by police. In her response, which you can hear in the film, she tells Mignini that she had been kept at the station for long hours in the company of police who demanded she "tell the truth." She was so stressed, exhausted and hysterical that she began to bend to their will and agree that Lumumba had somehow been involved in Meredith's death. But the prosecutor doesn’t appear to understand the nuance of the situation – he just assumes that Knox is a person who keeps "going between dream and reality" and "has a very unusual way of reasoning."

What's more, when the clear lack of DNA evidence exonerates Knox and Sollecito, Mignini won't hear of it. "I have to remind you that her behavior was completely inexplicable. Totally irrational." To Mignini, that and the fact that Knox was "a very uninhibited girl" appears to be enough to convict them.

Journalists devoted less time to covering Rudy Guede's case because he wasn't as interesting


Throughout Knox and Sollecito's trials, an area man named Rudy Guede was found to have been in Kercher's room the night of her murder. Guede was later convicted of murder and sexual assault and sentenced to 30 years in prison. (An appeal later reduced that to 16 years.) Pisa, in his interview, admits to covering Knox's case much more extensively than Rudy's, simply because "there was no interest in him."

Mignini describes how he enjoyed his "prophet"-like status in Perugia

"Normally, people say that 'Nobody is a prophet in his own country,'" says the prosecutor to the camera, in a particularly icky moment. "But that's not what I experienced." After Knox and Sollecito's 2009 guilty verdict and sentencing, Mignini describes being regularly approached by strangers, who would ask to shake his hand. "They would congratulate me. It gives me satisfaction."

Maybe Mignini legitimately loves his country and his city of Perugia, and loves the idea of keeping his beloved hometown out of danger. But based on what we see and hear in the documentary, the man clearly got boost of confidence from putting away a young girl who, at the end of the day, he just didn't like the look of. Did the media and prosecution twist an innocent girl's life into salacious story for their own benefit? You decide.

(RollingStone.com)

THE SMOKING GUN

Editor:

In the summer of 1972, I was inside LA’s regional HQ of the McGovern Presidential Campaign when I heard cheering coming from the director’s office downstairs. Curious, I peeked in and saw on the TV how “the Plumbers” that had recently burglarized the Democratic Party’s National HQ at Watergate had just been connected to Nixon’s inner circle and, presumably, to Nixon himself. “The smoking Gun,” it was, and people were cheering because they figured Nixon was toast.

But, in the mass media, the story “sank beneath the radar” for months and Nixon and his crew—the butchers of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam—won reelection by promising “Peace with Honor.”  When, over two years later, the appropriate authorities finally verified that the smoking gun was indeed smoking and that Nixon was in fact the triggerman and he got escorted to the door (and pardoned and, ala the magic of The One True Eternal Party, “rehabilitated” into an American Patriot), his regime’s saturation bombings across all of Indochina had proven beyond all reasonable doubt that peace was indeed at hand for the helpless Indochinese.

The other day Trump’s “smoking gun” was revealed on the Rachel Maddow Show. Her info was based on an article in the New Yorker (?) and none of the other media has picked up on as yet, which stinks because it’s the real deal maker: Trump earns $100 million laundering Russian mob money in a cash real estate transaction in Palm Beach, Florida. Go to rachelmaddow.com and view the 2/27/17 show. An outstanding, Bible-thick espionage novel reduced to a charming 20 minute monologue. You won’t be disappointed.

Bruce Patterson

Prineville, Oregon

PS: Regarding all this talk about the tyranny of “political correctness.” Here’s an outstanding example: “While slavery was in many ways a harsh and cruel system, it did allow Africans to make contact with Christianity and Civilization.”

FIRST AID AND CPR CLASSES IN GUALALA MARCH 11

Coast Life Support District will offer a free class in first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Saturday, March 11, from 9 a.m. to approximately 4  p.m. in Gualala at the Bill Platt Training Center, 38901 Ocean Dr., Gualala.  Students may take first aid, CPR, or both. The first aid portion covers skills such as how to treat bleeding, sprains, broken bones, shock and other first aid emergencies. The CPR portion covers adult CPR and AED use, including optional hands-only CPR. Arrive by 12:45 p.m. to attend CPR session only.  Class instruction is free. There is a $20 administrative charge for an optional AHA Heartsaver certification card for First Aid or CPR/AED (or $40 for both), valid for two years. To reserve space in the class, send email to cpr@clsd.ca.gov or call 707-884-1829 x31. Either class will be cancelled if fewer than four students preregister by noon the Thursday before the class.

A READER WRITES:

The Donald Trump era is going to bring a relentless, almost pitiless barrage of corruption, controversy and jaw-dropping surreality. It's going to be a deluge, a 24/7 gangbang of incompetence and scandal that's so massive that it at all times threatens to overwhelm anyone trying to keep track of it. There's an argument to make that that's by design -- because Trump knows that if malfeasance is constant and omnipresent, it'll be impossible for anyone to grab on to any one scandal for any length of time to the point where it will do real damage to the administration. We'll simply become inured to the madness and he'll get away with all of it.  But really it's the way Trump lies, the kind of stunning gaslighting he does at will, the sheer audacity of his willingness to simply disregard the obvious, easily provable truth that's right there in front of everyone's eyes, expecting everyone to not notice he's blatantly lying his ass off. Look at a story that's so shockingly unbelievable that it's still difficult to process: In the early 90s, Trump used to pose as his own PR guy and talk on the phone to journalists about how "Donald Trump" was dating all the hottest women. He did this assuming they wouldn't know that they were, in fact, talking to Donald Trump, rather than "John Miller," the name Trump gave his fake PR guy. The Washington Post published actual recordings of the calls and it's so obviously Trump on the phone with these reporters that it's tough for a sane person to imagine Trump thinking he could get away with it. But here's the best part: When he was confronted about the revelation on NBC's Today Show, do you think he copped to it, seconds after all of America heard his unmistakable voice on tape? Of course not. "It was not me on the phone. And it doesn't sound like me on the phone, I will tell you that, and it was not me on the phone." That's the answer he gave to Savannah Guthrie. He lied. He lied when the truth was undeniable, or would have been to, again, someone who wasn't completely insane.

Ed note: Trump is nuts and the logical work product of this culture.

PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW 'BOTH SIDES' JOURNALISM WILL HELP US NOW

The response to Trumpism is not a lobotomy.

by Charles Pierce

The good people at Poynter have some advice for journalos in dealing with the New Improved Tone. Most of this advice is really terrible.

That feeling you get, when you hear the president and his staff repeatedly take a hostile tone with the press? That's probably how Trump supporters feel when they see journalists responding to his rhetoric with tacit or even overt helpings of snark. There's no doubt that the president's tenor last night slightly reduced the sense of alarm raised by many of his critics. After all, it's a lot easier to listen to his ideas when he isn't throwing shade on everyone from Australia to Sweden.

Sweden? Isn't that the crime-ridden dystopian hellspout where Stockholm is located, along with its famous Syndrome?

The change in tone was the overall theme of this morning's coverage. The Washington Post noted the president's "muscular but measured tone." The New York Times said Trump "appeared restrained and serious." At the top of the hour on "Morning Edition, the anchor took note of the president's "more optimistic tone."

Yeah, those assessments were really stupid and make me wonder if the people writing them actually listened to that pack of lies. Judging that speech on the basis of performance is massive journalistic malpractice. And, if NPR really thought the speech had any kind of an "optimistic tone" at all, then Morning Edition is two tote bags short of a spring fundraiser.

Rather than just noting the miraculous effect Trump has on the national mood when he stays on script, newsrooms need to consider their own impact on a skeptical audience. Sticking to solid, attitude-free reporting is the equivalent of staying on script for journalists.

Prefrontal lobotomies available with every subscription to our newsletter!

So, how can news organizations do that?

Do tell.

Avoid snark.

Bite me.

Watch the references to Trump's physical appearance and the quirks of his speech.

One of the "quirks of his speech" is that he lies like most people breathe. Is there a strategy you have for handling this?

Leave late-night comedy to the comedians. Posting clips from SNL and The Onion gives readers an excuse to doubt your fairness.

Tough. "Fairness" and "objectivity" or whatever other nostrum you're peddling from the Ye Olde Both Sides Apothecary Shoppe are not the same thing.

Don't be the story. When Trump criticizes the media, don't bite. The reverse is true as well. When he's not criticizing journalists, you still have an obligation to scrutinize what he says and does.

Yes, because history has shown us that, if we don't stick up for ourselves, the people will rally to our defense. As to the second part, if we do it well, we're going to run into problems with the first part.

Take a look at your sources to make sure they're ideologically diverse.

Experts divided on shape of earth.

Check your copy with colleagues who may hold different political opinions.

No. Let them write their own stuff.

Look through your feedback on social media. What criticisms do people on the left and the right have of your work?

OMIGOD! Three Romanian teenagers pretending to be Iowa suburbanites think I've been unfair. Help me, Poynter. You're my only hope.

Is it fair? Examine the overall opinions that your editorial department, columnists and invited guest writers are offering up. When taken as a whole, what does it say about your newsroom's pledge to be fair or bipartisan?

Again, "fair" and "bipartisan" are not synonymous. Not even close. It is fair to say that the president* lies like he breathes because he lies like he breathes. It is not "bipartisan" to say so, nor should it ever be.

Above all, remember: Just like President Trump, every word you say — or write — is scrutinized by a skeptical audience.

Many of whom get their news from charlatans on the radio and from Fox & Friends. I should care about this why, exactly?

Let us apply the Poynter test to this latest story from The Huffington Post, wherein we discover that that elements of the executive branch doing business out of the White House are actively working to rig the rest of administration.

Pending positions on the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Election Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are among those at stake. And President Donald Trump, according to these sources, is looking to rescind both Republican-backed nominees as well as Democratic ones. By statute, these five- and six-member commissions can have no more than three members from the majority party. For six-member commissions, that assures bipartisan cooperation ― or, as has happened at the FEC, utter gridlock. The narrow majority on five-member commissions requires a commission to govern closer to the center. A chair who loses just one vote from his or her own party loses everything…

But Democratic sources on the Hill worry that the Trump administration has conceived of a way to get around these norms. Although it can't stack commissions with more Republicans, it can replace Democrats with registered Independents who are ideologically conservative. One counsel to a Senate Democrat said the administration "may actually be able to do this legally."

This is a massive centralization of executive power that (likely) will be used to cripple the regulatory power of the agencies in question. This is exactly what Steve Bannon meant by the deconstruction of the administrative state. People will be hurt by this. The republic will be hurt by this. And Poynter is going to have to forgive me if I don't check with the folks at Breitbart when I write this, but sheer vandalism is not governing. To cover it as though it were is to fold up the First Amendment and use it for a paper airplane.

(Esquire.com)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY:

Republicans and Democrats alike are influenced more by the people who contribute to their campaigns than the people who vote for them.

There are 4 very simple things we can do to fix our country.

1) term limits;
2) reverse (by decision or by amendment) the Citizens United case;
3) reform campaign contributions and spending laws by placing limits on individual and corporate contributions and limit PAC spending;
4) meaningful healthcare reform (not insurance reform) that includes medicare and medicaid cost controls and billing transparency.

Beyond that, we need fiscal and monetary reform to create stable pricing and value, and we need currency rules that rewards savers.

JOIN JOHN SAKOWICZ AND SID COOPERRIDER at KMEC Radio 105.1 FM, on Monday, March, 6, at 1 pm, Pacific Time, with guest, Melvin Goodman. We'll discuss Goodman's new book, "Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider's Account of the Politics of Intelligence".

Melvin A. Goodman served as a senior analyst and Division Chief at the CIA from 1966 to 1990. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Harper's, and many others. He is author of six books on US intelligence and international security.

We stream live from the web at www.kmecradio.org

WILDLIFE FILM FEST FEATURES SCIENTIST IN ACTION

The International Wildlife Film Festival’s post-festival tour continues Friday, March 10, with “Islands of Creation,” a film that explores the Solomon Islands and the origin of species. Festival screenings take place at the Ukiah Civic Center, 300 Seminary Avenue. Doors will open at 6:15 with live music featuring folk singers Steve Hahm and Sid Bishop. Films will begin at 7 p.m.

Winning the “Best Newcomer” award at the prestigious IWFF, “Islands of Creation” (53 min.) takes viewers to the jungles of a remote archipelago in the South Pacific where a biologist is attempting to do something Charles Darwin and Ernst Mayr never accomplished: catch evolution in the act of creating new species. Albert Uy, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Miami, is on the verge of an amazing discovery in the Solomon Islands, but there’s a threat looming on the horizon. The islands’ resources are being exploited, putting all local wildlife at risk. It’s a race against time to gather the evidence necessary to prove the existence of a new species before it’s lost forever.

Short films by West Coast filmmaker Flora Skivington will also be screened.  Flora’s films explore the power of places to influence and inspire people and have been shown at film festivals, art galleries and public venues in the U.S. and Europe.

Proceeds from the film festival will benefit the Redwood Valley Outdoor Education Project. The RVOEP is a special program of the Ukiah Unified School District that provides outdoor environmental education programs to over 2,000 students each year on a 45-acre woodland in Redwood Valley.

Tickets are available at Mendocino Book Company or at the door for a $10 suggested donation for adults and $5 for children. Films are appropriate for older children.

For more information about the RVOEP and a full schedule of films and music, visit the RVOEP website at http://rvoep.org. For further inquires contact Maureen Taylor, RVOEP Education Coordinator, at 707-489-0227.