- Promo Scam-a-Rama
- Dragonheart Hearing
- Little Dog
- AV Not-so-Unified
- Rain Forecast
- Pot Mafia
- Goats
- Any Gender
- Paint Bids
- Yesterday's Catch
- Mind Lost
- Cannibalistic Capitalists
- Corbyn Observations
- The Flick
- Egotistical Dimwit
- Levine Scholarships
- Tax Help
- Health Film
PROMO SCAM-A-RAMA
by Mark Scaramella
MENDOCINO COUNTY’S hydra-headed Promotional Alliance reports that they’re doing a great job and would promote the heck out of the county if they got more money.
THE AMORPHOUS GROUP of interchangeable wine business personnel, lodging owners, restaurateurs, artists (of the type unlikely to cut off their ears), and their well-paid staff is variously known as the Business Improvement District (BID), VisitMendocino, Tourism Bureau, Lodging Association, Arts Council, Wine Growers Association, Chamber of Commerce, and so on.
But how necessary are they? Tourism’s ebb and flow is tied to the general Northcoast economy; it tracks closely with sales tax revenues. When business is good generally in California, tourists flock here. When business is down, their flocks are smaller.
THERE’S no evidence that the county’s tax and bed tax-funded promotions bring people here, hence the constant hype from our professional promoters that without them the rest of the country would simply forget that there is a Mendocino County. The promotion pros must constantly try to convince a skeptical public and local elected officials that the heaps of public money shoveled their way is absolutely vital to the economic health of the county. A close look at what promo people actually do to promote tourism shows that most of the money pays their salaries, and what they promote is mostly one enterprise — the wine business.
LAST MONTH Ukiah Daily Journal reporter Ashley Tressel dutifully covered the Promotional Alliance’s latest self-promotion.
“The report shows the county for the 2014 fiscal year collected more than $4 million in transient occupancy taxes from only its unincorporated areas, up 8 percent from the year before and 23 percent from 2010.”
We don’t need a “report” for this number, it’s right in the County’s own budget. And the phrase “brought in by lodging busiesses” misrepresents how much most lodging owners hate collecting and reporting it.
“Other factors influence Mendocino County tourism as well, Roberts said, like low snow levels in the mountains driving traffic to the coast.”
Right, Roberts. In bad weather tourists stay home.
“[Roberts] said Ukiah did well last year, too; travelers know it is a pleasant place to stop while driving to and from the Bay Area.”
Only the Ukiah City Council and their lavishly-compensated senior staff could possibly call Ukiah “a pleasant place to stop.” Locals visit out of necessity, tourists do not make Ukiah a destination because it’s about as attractive and interesting as Merced or, closer to home, Willits.
“ ‘Aggressive promotion kept this remote area in the minds and hearts of visitors during the recession and contributed to a full recovery of the tourism industry with revenues now exceeding pre-recession highs,’ the BID reported.”
BOONVILLE is two hours from downtown San Francisco. Hopland is even closer. Fort Bragg, by far the most pleasant and attractive area of the county is three hours north of the Golden Gate Bridge. People come to Mendocino County for all kinds of reasons, none of which depend on promotion. In any case, our promoters pretty much restrict their promotion events to free wine on the false assumption that it’s wine that draws people here.
“In its report, the BID asked for a larger portion of the tax to go to promotion funding, so it can keep up its success.”
Of course they did. They always ask for more with no evidence that their vague efforts bring people here.
“ ‘It is the opinion of the BID Advisory Board that County-wide tourism promotion remains underfunded relative to surrounding counties and competing markets and that it will become increasingly difficult to remain competitive if revenue is not significantly increased in the not too distant future,’ the report states.”
The standard Mendo response. The people next door make more than us. How can we keep up our excellent work if the guy in Napa gets more than I do.
“Another report by Dean Runyan Associates for Visit California also shows record numbers for Mendocino County, in 2016. Visitor spending (accounting for lodging, restaurants, attractions, retail and travel expenses) last year totaled $386 million, reported to be an all-time high.”
Which had absolutely nothing to do with promotion. Take note of the key phrase: “for Visit California.” Mr. Runyon wouldn’t get his share of the promotional money if he didn’t report “success.” And tourist types have learned from hard experience that Napa and Sonoma counties are hellishly over-crowded. Mendocino County, except for the grotesquely transformed Mendocino “village” is relatively unhurried.
Here’s a simple graphic representation of how bed tax receipts are linked to the general economy as reflected in overall sales taxes, not to promotion spending.
From the County Budget going back to 2007:
Sales Tax Revenue (County’s 1% share):
(Each X represents approx. $100k over the base $3.0 million)
If anything, the Bed Tax revenue increases are actually trailing overall sales tax revenue increases in the latest years.
(Note: Also conveniently left out of the Promotional Alliance report of Bed Tax revenue increases is any mention of the County’s much more aggressive pursuit of the ever-more Bed Tax scofflaws, mostly on the Coast, using dedicated County staff tax collectors and fancy on-line software to catch off-the-books vacation rental landlords such as AirBNB members who try to avoid paying the Bed Tax. Factoring that in shows even more clearly that the county’s costly promotion isn’t even keeping up with sales tax increases.)
BEAR GANDALF ORION DRAGONHEART was scheduled for a preliminary hearing on a charge of 245(a.)1, assault with a deadly weapon, not a gun – and, well, with a name like that you would hardly expect him to use so pedestrian an instrument as a gun – but Mr. Dragonheart’s lawyer, Michael Shambrook asked for more time for his private investigator, Mike Hermann, to look into the matter more thoroughly, and the prelim was reset for June 29th in Department H.
Gandalf of course was the imposing wizard in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and Mr. Dragonheart bears a strong resemblance to the character played by Ian McKellen in the stupendously fabulous Peter Jackson movies of the same title as the widely read trilogy by Tolkien. Another spin off of Tolkien’s epic high-fantasy has been the Dungeons and Dragons game, of which there is a group of enthusiasts who meet regularly at Sword & Board, 225 North State Street – just across from the old Palace Hotel, in Ukiah.
I haven’t played the game in eons, but it involves role-playing, and alter-egos, and things like cloaking devices, magic spells, wizardry and derring-do. One chooses an identity, with a name like Gandalf, or Orion, or Bear, or Dragonheart – and it looks like in this case, a devotee of the popular board game has gone to the trouble to have his name legally changed to maintain the fantasy in everyday life at his – dare we guess? – pot pharm on Bell Springs Road, where the incident allegedly took place.
Private Investigator Mike Hermann is seeking witnesses, probably trimmigrants, and they can be hard to track down, and even harder coax into to voluntarily coming forward to testify, so another date was set for June 22nd, to advise the court on the progress of the investigation.
One more thing, coincidentally, occurred while Mr. Dragonheart was in court. One of the Spanish language interpreters, Mr. Timothy Baird, was seen with walking staff with a very elaborate carving at the top, and it looked awfully like the one the Gandalf character carried in the Peter Jackson movies – it had terrific magical powers – but Mr. Baird said he was having back problems, and only used the outlandish staff as a walking stick. Probably entirely unrelated. On the other hand, it could well have been some fabulous cloaking device at work… But, well, we’ll have to wait until the prelim to find out if this was the “deadly weapon, not a gun” referred to in the charges.
LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Got a pretty good moon out there tonight, a June watermelon moon. It'll be full Friday, and you should see the foxes that come out of the wild on this place. Cousins, we are, and it's always a fun time seeing them. Give me the country over the city any time.”
THE LATEST NEWS to emerge from Boonville's serial closed school board meetings — another one occurred Tuesday night as we go to press this week — is that three lucky elementary school teachers will be paid $1500 each to look after the place in the absence of suspended principal, Katherine Reddick. (School is out next week, but the fortuitous stipends could include summer session. Old timers, and not so old timers will recall the school days when there was one administrator at the high school, one at the elementary school and a school secretary at each site. Like Topsy, school admin has just growed although the number of students has remained fairly constant over the years.) Ms. Reddick has been placed on paid leave in the wake of an altercation between her and district superintendent, Michelle Hutchins.
MS. REDDICK had filed a police complaint alleging she was held against her will by Superintendent Hutchins in Ms. Hutchins' office. A deputy took the report over the phone, and that was where Ms. Reddick's complaint ended. If it was unfounded she should be charged with filing a false police report, but to simply ignore a complaint is not the way most police forces operate. Ms. R has retained an attorney, as has high school principal, Keri St. Jeor. The bilingual St. Jeor was sacked as high school principal but has been offered a position as Spanish teacher. Why he has been demoted is not known, and is unlikely to remain unknown as our super-secretive school district, seething beneath its bland exterior, turns to lawyers for even the most trivial matters.
AND NOW THIS: The school district office confirmed this morning that Jared Candelaria, 31, of Cloverdale has been offered a job as a teacher at the elementary school. Facebook is sizzling, as it perpetually is these days in the bucolic Anderson Valley, with complaints that Candelaria, then teaching at Yokayo Elementary in Ukiah, was arrested in February of 2016 by the Cloverdale Police for “felony possession and transportation of a controlled substance, specifically Oxycodone, a Schedule Two narcotic opioid pain medication.” But AV Unified, in the person of Leigh Krienenhop, said that Candelaria, although offered the position, Candelaria is still in the process of being checked out.
PRETTY CLEAR what happened here. The guy was sailing along to a new job with AV Not-So-Unified when Facebook ignited with his legal history, and now…..
COUPLA OBSERVATIONS: If Candelaria has, as they say, “paid his debt” to our drug-dependent society where marijuana is classified by the feds as more dangerous than the super-sedatives Candelaria was busted for, should he be doomed forever and forbidden employment in the work he has trained for and is qualified to do? If I still had children at AV Elementary, short of the guy nodding off at his desk, and so long as he was capable, I would be fine with Candelaria.
SECOND OBSERVATION: Whatever other virtues and uses they might have, lawyers are not helpful to the educational process. Call me Pollyanna, but given the givens of what we know about the administrative turmoil in our school district, why not back up a year? Why not do a rewind? Everyone stays in place — Mr. St. Jeor as principal at the high school, Dr. Reddick as principal at AV Elementary. Call this past school year The Year of Steep and Dangerous Learning Curves. At this point, bringing in new people again for next school year risks the same unhappiness that characterized this year.
RAIN, RAIN
Light rain is forecast for Wednesday and Thursday of this week, less than an inch is expected.
Yorkville precipitation for the entire month of May was 0.12 inches (Boonville boasted 0.13 inches). Yorkville monthly totals this rainy season:
10.36" October 2016 6.76" November 2016 9.92" December 2016 24.92" January 2017 21.64" February 2017 6.60" March 2017 6.16" April 2017 0.12" May 2017
(Mike Kalantarian)
LOOKING BACK over some of the recently issued Mendo pot regs as summarized a few weeks ago by Ukiah Daily Journal reporter Ashley Tressel, we found several individual rules that on their face are just plain unenforceable, and absurd even by Mendo standards. Ms. Tressel quotes Supervisor John McCowen: “Anyone growing medical marijuana for sale without a permit will face greatly increased odds of code enforcement and abatement.”
THE MAFIA couldn't have said it better. Pay us or here come Hoyle and Hendry.
IT ALSO begs the question, What if you’re growing with a permit but not complying with its terms? And just to be sure there’s plenty of wiggle room for pot growers with permits which nicely buttress the County’s General Fund, Tressel adds that “the county employees that have been tasked with enforcement are said to be flexible and will work amicably with cultivators who want to abide by the rules.”
MAFIA AGAIN. You don't have the money this week, we'll see you next week. We promise we will be — what’s that word? — oh, yeah, we’ll be amicable.
TAKE THIS RULE: “Maximum of 100 feet of pot canopy per patient.” We all know how carefully regulated “patients”are, and hell yes, the county will be out there with a tape measure. "Yo! Stoner Dude. Yer ten feet long here."
OR THIS ONE: Cultivation is not allowed “at all” within 1,000 feet of a youth-oriented facility (school, church, etc.). O yes, the protection of our virginal youth, most of whom… Well, no need to get all wound up here. But really, the county will be out there, this time with their extra-long tape measures? “All distances are measured from the nearest point of the fence (outside) or the nearest exterior wall (inside) to the nearest boundary line of a youth-oriented facility or the nearest exterior wall of a residence. Applicants may seek reductions when they receive their permits.”
HAR DE HAR. Very funny, Mendo. (But the laffs just keep on coming!)
“ANY CULTIVATION activity should not produce an odor that causes as little as an annoyance or exceed the county’s noise level standards (as in running a generator). Enforcement for this issue is complaint-based and will be carried out by the Cannabis Compliance Unit.”
EXCUSE US, but if the county refused to enforce its noise ordinance when the whine industry had its wind machines going every night for a month, they're unlikely to enforce nasal assaults or pot noise.
“ALL PROSPECTIVE MEMBERS must sign a written membership application and cannot sell to non-members or possess more cannabis than meets the needs of their patients.”
DUDE, got yer membership card?
“THE AGRICULTURAL COMMISSIONER must complete an on-site inspection before a permit can be issued and at least one per year after that, giving at least 24 hours notice.”
NONE OF THIS will ever happen. It’s pure fantasy. Only the mega-grows, the corporados, will be signing up. They have the money to pay someone to sift through this preposterous bullshit of a process and pretend to comply. Now and again, someone will be cited for the sake of appearances, and one or another low hanging fruit (no homophobia intended) will play Let’s Make A Deal with DA Eyster and, for a small-ish fee, will trade his gro-felony for a misdemeanor.
WE SUGGEST this procedural simplification: Send out the pot squad, aka County of Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Team, in all their special forces-like gear, to knock on doors. “We know you’re growing weed here. You have to pay us. We offer a sliding scale; big grows twenty grand, little ones five. If you fork over, we’ll go away and leave you alone until next year. If you don’t, we will back in one hour, guns drawn, to kick in your door and scream at you to get down on the floor. If you have a pit bull he or she will be summarily executed.”
FORT BRAGG GOATS
RESTROOM PROTOCOLS, DeYoung Museum, San Francisco, the signs over the bathrooms read, “Any Gender.” It was hilarious to watch three senior Chinese women the other day try to puzzle out which room they were supposed to use, and they were still trying to figure it out when we walked on.
CORRECT ME if I'm wrong here, but didn't we learn in human biology class that you're either one sex or the other, and there are only two of them? Some confused individual may feel like he or she would rather be the opposite sex, but shouldn't he or she use the restroom assigned to him or her at birth regardless of his or her adult costume?
LOOKED INTO a complaint that the Fort Bragg City Hall paint job rendered by outta town contractors did not follow paint protocols or go out to bid. My ace investigator looked through the state statutes, called the air control board and went down to town hall to read the pertinent parts of the inland development code etc etc. There were 11 bids for the job the lowest one got it at 37k, and got the contract for painting the guest house as well.
CATCH OF THE DAY, June 5, 2017
KENNETH ADDOR, Talmage. Drunk in public.
CASSIDY BAKER, Fort Bragg. DUI-drugs&alcohol, suspended license.
MICHAEL GLASS, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
CANDICE HAWKINS, Covelo. DUI, drug addict driving a vehicle.
JAMES HERRIOT JR., Albion. Battery, resisting.
JASON KULL, Palm Harbor, Florida/Ukiah. Probation revocation.
ASHLEY LENHART, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.
JESUS MACIAS, Ukiah. DUI.
BRIAN MARTINAZZI, Willits. DUI with blood-alcohol over 0.15, child endangerment.
ORLANDO MUNOZ, Ukiah. Domestic battery, drunk in public, resisting, probation revocation.
NAVA PALOMAR, Burglary, trespassing, stalking, court order violation, resisting.
BRISA RICHARDSON, San Francisco/Ukiah. Disobeying a court order.
GIMME SHELTER
by James Kunstler
“Have you all lost your mind?” Vladimir Putin replied to one of Megyn Kelly’s thrusts about alleged Russian perfidy toward the US in the gala interview that debuted her new Sunday Night star-chamber on CNN. Old Vlad put his finger on something there. His view of the late goings-on in America is like that of the proverbial detached Martian observer of strange Earthly doings, rattling his antennae and clicking his mouth-parts in mirth.
To which retort, by the way, one would have to answer, ”Yes, absolutely.” The toils of slow economic collapse, accompanied by the ceaseless effort by various arms of the Deep State to spin “the narrative” around the voting public’s collective head, has driven the polity insane. And this, of course, is on view in the bedlam that US politics has become, Trump and all. I’m waiting for The New York Times to run the three-column headline that says "Russia Racist, Misogynist, and Islamophobic" to finally bring together the programmed paranoia of NeoCon / DemProg alliance with the esprit de corp of the new collegiate Red Guard.
Mr. Putin does not have to lift a finger to detonate the groaning garbage barge of US domestic affairs. It’s already ignited and is faring toward a very peculiar species of civil war. You can be sure that the NeoCon / DemProg axis is determined to get rid of Trump at all costs. Impeachment requires some sort of high crime or misdeamenor. So far, going on a year, they haven’t come up with any evidence that the Golden Golem of Greatness acted as a Russian agent in some fashion, and that itself has got to be a little suspicious, considering the thousands of clerks in the spinning mills of those legendary seventeen Intel outfits the government runs. How could they fail to come up with a video of the Donald and Vladimir swatting each other playfully with birch switches in a Moscow banya? Five TV sitcom writers could surely come up with an angle — as long as it was a plausible entertainment.
In the meantime, Trump prevails, the mad bull elephant of the Republican herd, majestically swinging his trunk against everything breakable in the political china shop while trumpeting “Covfefe! Covfefe!” Last week it was the Paris Climate Accords. The op-ed writers in the usual places bounced off the walls of their virtual rubber room in response. Paul Krugman had to be dragged down to hydrotherapy at the NYT after he set his hair on fire. And Rachel Maddow practically popped a carotid artery in her muscular neck from all that shrieking.
I’m a bit more sanguine about the US withdrawal. To me, the Paris Accords were just another feel-good PR stunt enabling politicians to pretend that they could control forces that are already way out-of-hand, an international vanity project of ass-covering. The coming economic collapse will depress global industrial activity whether anybody likes it or not, and despite anyone’s pretense of good intentions — and then we will have a range of much more practical problems of everyday life to contend with.
Of course, Trump cannot possibly see it that way, given his wish to bring back the America of humming factories and happy workers seeing the USA in their Chevrolets and all that. That fantasy will eventually fade as the inability to get anything done in Washington becomes manifest and obvious. When the “basket of deplorables” sees their hopes dribble away, they will start in with serious mischief of their own, without Trump having to prompt them. Then it will be a quixotic battle between them and the BLM / SJW proxies that the higher-up chickenshits of DemProgdom have so carefully groomed as their vanguard. There will be blood.
Yes, Mr. P, America has lost its mind. The whole thing has turned into some kind of nonstop Kardashian tranny monster truck shit-show of manufactured melodrama and lost causes, inducing a kind of global nausea that may ultimately prove more fatal than the rising surface temperature and melting icecaps. Russia, to its credit, and whatever else you think about it, has some regard for its own survival. Our country prefers the excitement of self-destruction.
(Support Kunstler’s writing by visting his Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler)
DID TRUMP'S CLIMATE DISAVOWAL JUST KILL CAPITALISM?
https://www.juancole.com/2017/06/climate-disavowal-capitalism.html
JEREMY CORBYN WAS RIGHT
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/06/corbyn-2003-today-170601104432516.html
PREVIEW SPECIAL FOR ANNIE BAKER'S THE FLICK!
An incredible offer! A $8.50 ticket to a preview performance of the regional premiere of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play at the Mendocino Theatre Company! To take advantage of this deal, purchase your adult ticket to the June 8th or June 9th preview of THE FLICK *online <http://mendocinotheatre.tix.com/>*and enter the code "FLICK" on the checkout page.
For online purchases only. Valid through June 7th at midnight.
Find out more about THE FLICK on our website, http://mendocinotheatre.org/the-flick-by-annie-baker/
Questions? Please phone our box office, 707-937-4477.
ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Trump has no dedication to anything — certainly not the desperate voters who turned to him for lack of any other candidate who even pretended to notice their pain. (We all know what the Dems did to Bernie.) All Trump has is an ego, and an idiot-savant talent for getting it stroked. That’s it. That’s all he brings to the table. Not all of the elites suffer from Trump derangement syndrome, and the longer he stays in office, the better they’ll get at manipulating him to get what they want.
As the man with his finger on the nuclear button, Trump with his lack of self-control is a threat to the entire planet. But in terms of the elites, he’s really only a threat to the power structures of the big two parties, because he has exposed their fecklessness and complete lack of principle. If you want a real threat, imagine someone who had Trump’s way with the media who wasn’t also a shambling dimwit, and who really knew how to formulate and execute a political program (since Trump’s campaign was really just a branding exercise that spun out of control).
YOUTH PROJECT RECOGNITION OF THE JIM LEVINE LEGACY SCHOLARSHIP
Mendocino County Youth Project and Mendocino Family and Youth Services have chosen the 2016 Jim Levine Legacy Scholarship Award winners. The 2016 Jim Levine Legacy Scholarship awardees are: Natlaie Lopez of Willits Charter, Shayleena Britton of Round Valley High, Riquetta Soria of Fort Bragg high, Kalea Hoomalu-Stout of Ukiah High, Madison Hensley of Ukiah high and Maria Yepez of Ukiah high. Each graduating senior receives a $500 scholarship, to be paid directly to the university, college or trade school the student enters in the Fall of 2017, to be used for fees, books, and other school items.
The annual scholarship program, keeps the spirit that Mr. Levine brought to the Youth Project by selecting the ideal applicant who; has overcome personal difficulties, reached out to help others, is graduated in June 2017, and is focused on building a future and a career through education and or advanced technical training. The Scholarship Committee considered carefully the attributes and essays of the many high school applicants from different schools around Mendocino County. While it was felt all applicants were worthy of recognition, the committee members expressed their admiration for the hard work and dedication the award winners and their references shared in the applications.
If you are interested in making a tax deductible donation to the Jim Levine Legacy Scholarship please contact MCYP at 707-463-4915 or email reception@mcyp.org
VOLUNTEER INCOME TAX ASSISTANCE: A STRATEGY TO REDUCE POVERTY
by Jennifer O’Donnell
Ukiah, CA – Poverty alleviation is one of the five priorities for improving health in Mendocino County. Poverty has a profoundly negative impact on health. Nearly 30% of the county’s children live below the federal poverty level, compared to 23% in California, and 57% are eligible for free lunch. Twenty percent (20%) of county residents live in poverty, compared to 15% in the state. Seniors, a growing segment of the population, are also at risk. Too many local jobs don’t pay enough to cover basic expenses, and individuals and families are struggling to make ends meet.
One of the strategies of the Poverty Action Team is to help expand access to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) by encouraging residents to utilize United Way's Earn It! Keep It! Save It! (EKS) free tax preparation services and properly claim the EITC and other tax credits.
The EITC is proven to be one of the most effective tools to help individuals and families climb out of poverty, but many people are unware that it is available to them.
This past tax season, the United Way led the Earn It! Keep It! Save It! (EKS) coalition which includes North Coast Opportunities, Mendocino College, Mendo Lake Credit Union, the ARC Family Resource Center, Nuestra Allianza, and Redwood Coast Seniors. They helped nearly 800 individuals and families in Mendocino County file their taxes for free and brought back over $1 million dollars in refunds to our local economy.
This included dollars from the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. Thousands more dollars were brought back this year thanks to a new California Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC). At tax sites, families and individuals with combined household incomes of $54,000 or less, receive free tax help from IRS certified tax preparers who are familiar with the latest tax credits available to low-to-moderate income households.
Some of these tax credits, including the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credits and the Child Tax Credit, potentially add up to refunds of $9,000 or more. The average EKS client’s federal refund at North Coast Opportunities was $1,849 and at Nuestra Allianza was $2,417. This extra money makes a real difference to families, particularly when they’re struggling to make ends meet. Both credits help many families take a step up the economic ladder with often the biggest one-time financial infusion they will see all year – an opportunity to save, pay down debt, open a college savings account, or start an emergency fund.
If you are interested in participating in the Poverty Action Team, please contact Patrice Mascolo at Healthy Mendocino, 467-3228 or healthymendocino@ncoinc.org. To learn more about United Way's Earn It! Keep It! Save It! or the Earned Income Tax Credit, please visit www.unitedwaywinecountry.org.
Jennifer O'Donnell is the Vice President of Community Benefit at United Way of the Wine Country. Jennifer oversees all of United Way’s programs and investments in the community. Jennifer has over twenty years experience working in non-profit advocacy, communication, education and program management. Prior to her work with United Way, Jennifer coordinated the national Safe School Ambassadors bullying prevention program for the non-profit organization, Community Matters.
For information on Healthy Mendocino or to schedule a presentation, please contact Patrice Mascolo, Healthy Mendocino Coordinator, at 707-467-3228 or healthymendocino@ncoinc.org.
WHAT THE HEALTH?
What The Health Showing This Wednesday 6 PM at Safe Passage
We are showing the film What The Health at Safe Passage Family Resource Center at 208 Dana Street this Wednesday at 6-8 PM. $5 suggested donation but all are welcome. Before the showing of the video Artist Richard Weiss will be sharing how he halted heart disease with a plant-based diet, and Maria Teresa Alvarez and Petra Schulte will briefly talk about Dr. Esselstyn's Heart Disease Reversal Program, which they attended last Friday in Cleveland, Ohio. At 8 PM the movie will be followed by a brief discussion about using diet to reverse heart disease. For more info please call Petra at 937-4704 or email her at petra@wholeplantfoods.info What the Health is the groundbreaking follow-up film from the creators of the award-winning documentary Cowspiracy. The film exposes the collusion and corruption in government and big business that is costing us trillions of healthcare dollars, and keeping us sick. What The Health is a surprising, and at times hilarious, investigative documentary that will be an eye-opener for everyone concerned about our nation’s health and how big business influences it.
http://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/
GOT IT? NO VIDEO LINKS IN COMMENTS BLOG, OR FACE FIRING SQUAD McEWEN. However, a vigorous literary description and hints where to find a film online may be okay, if deemed relevant to discussion, by Mr. Veto Power aka Captain Bruce, under maritime law with judicial discretion.
In that case, Eric, I would refer you to the Youtube video of the sword fight scene in Liam Neeson’s Rob Roy movie… just so you can see how I’d deal with a prancing little pedant like your own sweet self.
In case you missed the relevance, Eric, lemme unpack the video for you:
Notice how many times Rob Roy gets inoculated, whereas the flippant know-it-all, Lord Montrose’s nephew (a role just perfect for a fop like you, Eric), never even gets scratched, until the end, when it turns out he is not immune to the blade and dies of a lethal dose.
Now, doesn’t that make you want to change your tiresome stance on vaccines?
Note, too, how after being vaccinated several times, Rob Roy no longer worries about infection and grabs the blade at his throat (only a gasconading jackass like yourself would have risked such impudence) without the slightest fear of a cut hand, and serves the silly ass out by clapping a stopper over his capers.
There’s a lesson to be gleaned here, Eric: Keep cutting your impudent capers and, soon or late, somebody will surely serve you out.
But why offer advice to a fellow too silly to take a warning?
If I’m not mistaken you’ve come a cropper several times on this page already — will you ever learn?
I can’t seem to get any answer.
Perhaps Mr. Sunsweat has taken his anti-inoculation campaign down to the dog pound, a place more beset by autism patients and their precocious theories than even county mental health.
A pity, he won’t respond…
I was especially keen to hear his condemnation, derision and dismissal of the theory that autism is caused from liberals coaching their kids to laugh at puns they physiologically cannot comprehend until adolescence, when the corpus collosum joins the left and right hemispheres… hullo… Eric, are you there?
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/game-changer-study-finds-100-year-old-drug-reverses-symptoms-of-autism/
http://www.anandaapothecary.com/articles/antiviral-essential-oils.html
Aye, Sir Solomon. So you, like, get it that the mother knows best, ?
Are you howling in the wind, and slaying paper dragons for joy, McEwen. It’s not even the full moon yet. For the downsized croppers, there are a few herb species or essential oil extracts, to purchase or to grow on city size back lots, perhaps to reject Big Pharma vaccine risks and questionable benefits. Avoidance of getting sick, may help prevent personal decision bad judgement calls that could run afoul of the law, and might steer you clear of capture in the mirthful proposition of McEwen’s sticky bailiwick. XXX. Many of the abstracts on Pub Med, the database of the National Institute of Health for peer-reviewed journal articles, describe essential oils’ activity as an excellent preventative measure (see http://www.pubmed.gov): Use before exposure can lessen the potential of infection. This is the case for any type of virus, be it our ‘regular’ flu season in the U.S., or where one might be exposed to an uncommonly high infected population… The pH and electrical resistance in the ‘host’ (infected) cells and tissues can be altered in such a way as to be unfavorable to virus replication. Further, research has shown that many of these oils raise chemical markers in the body which indicate positive stimulation of the immune system. Essential oils may provide a dual-protective effect: by increasing the strength and efficiency of our immune response AND by limiting the ability of viruses to replicate. (.anandaapothecary.com/articles/antiviral-essential-oils.html)
Is this science on which you base your opposition to inoculating dogs?
“People who recite their dreams are one of the horrors of the breakfast table” — Max Beerbohm said, and I would only add a similar species of somnambulient zombies have now commandeered the internet where they post sentimental vignettes of nostalgic nonsense to make the mice weep with shame…!
As near as I can tell it is HIS paper. The videos slow down loading of the pages on which they appear, even for those of us who have no intention of viewing them. They also cause the page to “jump around” a lot until the final space allocation is made for the picture of the video. A link to a video loads quickly and allows those interested in viewing the video to see it if they want to see it.
re: “When the “basket of deplorables” sees their hopes dribble away…There will be blood.” Knustler
When the Ron Paul rEVOLution began. MeetUp played a big role in helping organize what we called “Tea parties”, where we got together and made “Join the Ron Paul rEVOLution” banners and made videos of our parties and plastering places with our banners and “Who is Ron Paul?” signs. It was allot of fun. Then Hannity (MSM) stole our Tea Party meme and it became a faction on the GOP floor fighting for a voice within the GOP for gun rights led by folks who didn’t like Ron Paul. When I met Ron Paul I didn’t expect him to say, “Thank you for inviting me to your rEVOLution”. That twist gave me plenty of food for thought.
The rEVOLution was not televised. It was censored which motivated a thriving online community that became known as “basket of delporables”, which stuck because it was the only truth HRC ever said about how she really feels about wee the censored people. By my experience, there has never been freedom of speech, just organized propaganda… today, the paid players are within antifa and alt-right YouTube stars making vids for cable TV.
I know very few people who voted for Trump. Most voted against HRC. What was interesting for those of us who have lived through censorship, starting with Nader’s campaigns, we were censored then too, was Trumps hints or clues, tweets directed at us, I’ll sum up as Trump used his connection with MSM to watch us. WE were censored, but the folks like Trump knew all about us. MSM was going out of it’s mind in it’s attempts to keep us censored and contain Trump’s messages to us. He’s for us. He knows that Pepe is not a racist white supremist symbol, but a meme that brought comic relief mocking our experiences. I read that this week Harvard rescinded their letter of acceptance to 10 incoming freshman for what we call, “shit posting” on some pretty stupid sites created by Harvard. That will teach the Kekistani! Not. MSM doesn’t want to understand, only control.
Economic collapse: Every homeless person is experiencing economic collapse, which no matter what the MSM says, when it happens to you, it might as well be the entire world. One meme through the rEVOlution has been prepping for the economic collapse. There was some very influential folks that got people to buy sacks of rice to prep and you couldn’t tell the people buying all that rice a decade ago that it was a waste of money and space. Prepping has come a long way commercially triggering fears. “The collapse is coming! The collapse is coming!.. Alex Jones has been become a millionaire selling that. I don’t know. Maybe Kunstler is looking to get a spot with Alex Jones?
Re: “…a pleasant place to stop…”
Agree. I didn’t mind Ukiah so much when it had the Sizzler, one of the relatively few locations of that chain which had a truly fine salad bar. Then it closed, but was quickly reopened under a new name, with a salad bar very similar to the old one. That resurrection didn’t last long, which surprised me, since the place was generally packed when I was in town. After that, I shuddered whenever my work required overnighters in Ukiah. Fortunately for me, my work never placed me in Willits, except for one overnighter, which was just awful, and resulted from my having gotten off to late start on my way to Arcata. Except for the environmental damage, I would have welcomed the bypass of Willits, but by the time it was constructed, it didn’t matter to me.
Re: CORRECT ME if I’m wrong here
You are. Rest of comment same as what I wrote yesterday, wordy as it was.
Re: “Trump has no dedication to anything”
Well, of course not. No semi-rational person would have thought he did. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and acted publicly like an idiot from the 70s to the present. Thing is, that Clinton woman was no better, but here in the land o’ exceptionals we simply cannot vote rationally and choose a third-party candidate, no matter how well that candidate may represent our own best interests.
Trump is as close as the USA will ever get in a “third party” candidate. He was not vetted in the GOP, he is not a Neocon, which the Never Trumpers are part of that swamp Trump is draining, as any third party candidate would want to drain.
The establishment hates Trump as much as they hated Nader, as for Greens, Nader never was a Green, they are worse than Democrats as useful idiots which Stein proved once again by campaigning harder for HRC’s recount than she did for you or anyone who thought a Stein vote was a vote of conscience. David Cobb blew that, and there’s not a Nader supporter that worked with Nader that will ever support Cobb or anyone associated with that globalist pimp.
Well Harvey, she has a certain point (if you overlook the fact that even a hippo* is a pachyderm, and as loath to drain a swamp as any elephant would be)… Still, awaiting your response with tingling anticipation…!
*Trump is a different species than an elephant (in the Republican sense).
I try to leave certain responses to Louis. His make me laugh.
Well, here I go, since Louis seems indisposed.
I agree that the Greens have a long way to go before the Working Class will take them seriously, since their main appeal is to yuppies. As long as that remains their reality, they will continue to be little more than than they are now. And, I was disgusted with Stein’s support of the recount, since what counts is the electoral vote in our nondemocratic election system, where money controls everything, at all levels of government.
Nevertheless, I think Stein would have been better by far than “either” of the essentially identical selections from the two right wing parties. The Greens do have an excellent platform, but, as stated earlier, they must broaden their appeal. That does NOT mean that I will ever vote for either of the right-wing major parties again, nor have I since I made the mistake of voting for Gore Vidal’s distant cousin in 2000. In fact, the only reason I continue to be a registered voter is to participate in local elections, which are partisan here in WY, right down to the county level (county commissars, clerk, treasurer, sheriff, etc.).
The useful idiots as you put it are those who sell their very beings to the wealthy to achieve high office, where, once the office is obtained, they can do little that is not to the liking of our wealthy real rulers. The rest is simply window dressing, and ego boosting. Once their well-compensated servitude in high office ends, they are rewarded with lucrative book or movies deals, the lecture circuit to peddle lies about their own greatness and independence, or high-paying, often sinecure positions with wealthy employers, not to mention the money “donated” to their foundations or “libraries”. Of course, such people have extremely big egos, or they wouldn’t run in the first place. Those egos are satisfied as well, by a lot lying to themselves, I’m sure.
C’est la vie it seems.
Harvey,
Thank you for your kind words.
Not indisposed: Cultural-anthropologist Grace’s first comment explained everything with such lucidity I felt that any further comment would be superfluous.
I can forgive a public school teacher for taking the abominable liberty of casting aspersions on some of the scholars who, er, uh, grace this page.
After an extended career in that (to me) hellhole, holding your tongue for fear of offending all those darling little hellions — well, lemme put it to you straight: I don’t need Parson Weems to show me how to write a Third Grade essay on the usual theme, What A School Teacher Means To Me — a mere newspaper reporter, I say, who owes his career in journalism to good teachers, and his life as a hack to bad luck.
Superb rejoinder.
Your first paragraph concedes the point; your second regroups; the third resumes the battle, the good fight.
And I daresay, you accomplished all these difficulties without resorting to insults, which Bedrock can’t seem to restrain himself from when it comes to confronting Our Ms. Grace.
Well worth the wait, and what a delight to come home to from a disappointing afternoon at the courthouse.
True. Difficult to resist when one confronts such stupidity and profound ignorance.
Grace’s first comment would be an excellent question on an advanced ESL exam or high school grammar test.
“Find, explain, and correct the grammatical and syntactic errors in this passage. Underline and explain all non-sequiturs.”
I counted 13 errors and 10 non-sequiturs.
Time fa little baseball: Sunday there was no report because that is the Lord’s day and Monday because I was working in my mini-orchard in the backyard – have 20 dwarf citrus and fruit trees which I keep topped off at 10 feet. I was mainly shaping my citrus trees (you do not prune citrus trees you shape them). I have an 8 foot ladder which makes it easy to keep all my trees to 10 feet. I get good yields on all my trees. For instance, on my blackjack fig we get over 200 figs a year which we slice and dry.
Now to baseball: Giants actually won a game Giants 7 Brewers 2 and surprise of surprises the winning pitcher Samardzija went 7 innings and gave up only 1 ER. His record is now 2-7.
As for the A’s they beat Toronto 5-3 with Healy hitting 2 HRS and driving in all 5 runs.
Yes, all well and good, but aren’t the Brewers an amateur softball team, like the MCSO’s team, the Weed-Wackers?
Years ago and several lifes ago when I was a bank examiner we use to come to Ukiah to examine the Savings Bank which was owned by the Mannings Because I am a polite person I will withhold any comments. One thing I did notice the restaurants refused to serve Native Americans.
We also examined the Bank of Willits which was controlled by the Mannings. It was run by some old geezer who had been in Willits for a hundred years. We usually stayed in Ukiah.
In those days there was an independent bank in Covelo and we would drive over from Willits. Then someone built a 3 room motel in Covelo and since only 2 of us did the examination we had a place to stay. A friendly deputy sheriff directed to which bar and restaurant to go for booze and food. An interesting sidebar, because of my last name staff folks asked me if I was related to Jacob Updegraff who was buried there. My answer was no and yes. I didn’t know of him but all the Updegraffs are related. We descend from a family who were the original settlers of Germantown, PA.
JACOB’S LADDER..?
Those readers who enjoyed my last summer’s reading list will be ready to hear this June’s, July’s and August’s.
More colloquially know as Bruce’s Pillow Books, marketed under the trademark,along w/ McEwen’s Mind Cushions, Conscience Couches, and our latest model, Orthopedic Sweethearts…
1. Crossing Mandlebaum Gate, by Kai Bird
2. The Hare With Amber Eyes, by Edmund De Waal
3. Ouentin Durwood, by Walter Scott
Readers who perused last year’s picks will gain insights, if they’ve already read Rin Tin Tin (ties in w/ Scott), Luncheon of the Boating Party (ties in w/ The Hare W/ Amber etc.) And trusty Quinn will tie in with your faith in humanity through extremities of circumstances, which I suspect we’ll all be needing this long hot summer….
See last year’s Top 3 on my Twitter Acct.
You’ll recognize me by the Fred Sternkopf caricature.
(Don’t laugh…)
Anyhow, last summer it was all women; now it’s all, like, male.