Mendocino County Today: Saturday, July 22, 2017

• College Reopening
• Grass Fire
• Azzi Clinic
• KZYX Oilers
• Library Tax
• Teen Lock-In
• Horse Manure
• Healthcare Solution
• Clancy Sigal
• Little Dog
• Headlines
• Homeless Committee
• Planning Fad
• HumCo Regs
• Yesterday's Catch
• Reach Clarification
• Common Culture
• Lonely Eccentrics
• Yasmin Programming
• Eel Data
• Population Growth
• Marco Radio
• OJ Parole
• TrumpShrieking
• Political Lunacy
• Green Peril

MENDO COLLEGE ACQUIRES FORT BRAGG CAMPUS

You're Invited!

Dear Colleagues,

Please join us in welcoming the coastal community to the Mendocino-Lake Community College District!

I invite all of you to join us at the ribbon cutting ceremony for our new Coast Center on Wednesday, August 9th at 6:00 p.m.

Please see the invitation below for more information.

Warmly,

Arturo Reyes, Superintendent-President, Mendocino College

* * *

LET'S CELEBRATE THE ARRIVAL OF OUR NEW COLLEGE--FINALLY!

August 9 at 6pm: Ribbon-cutting and reception celebrating the official arrival of Mendocino College to the Coast. The Mendocino College Board will meet here that day, so you will have an opportunity to thank the President and Board for bringing college-level learning to the Coast after College of the Redwoods announced they were shutting the campus down. Hope to see you there.

Norma

A LITTLE EXCITEMENT flamed up and quickly put out in Boonville about 2pm today when a fire burned less than an acre of grass at the high school. Sirens erupted, fire trucks raced through town, a spotter plane and a borate bomber hovered overhead as the combined forces of Anderson Valley Volunteers and CalFire efficiently squelched the blaze, which burned right up to the high school's array of solar panels. Cause? To this observer, a crushed section of cyclone fencing looked as if it had been struck by a vehicle, which may have ignited the fire, which burned northwest towards the Anderson Valley Health Center before firefighters stopped it at the community park separating the school grounds and the Health Center.

JENNIFER AZZI, the famous Stanford and Olympic gold medal basketball player has spent this week in Boonville presiding over a basketball clinic for male and female student athletes from around the county.

DRIVING UP INTO THE HILLS today, I snapped on KZYX, and darned if it wasn't Gordon Black stumbling through the liner notes on, in the memorable words of Beth Bosk, "dead white man's music," formerly called "classical." A station fanatic back to the days of its shifty founding father, Sean Donovan, Gordy was the sole valiant defender of the on-air mike from an invading horde back whenever it was. He's also a poet and all-round fog belt vivant, the last man known to wear a cravat before noon. Gordy's mellifluous basso-profundo sounded somewhat diminished, as if he were trying to keep his dentures from whistling while he read. We all get there, Gordy. You have my total sympathy. Lately, I've found myself hearing those final approaching footsteps, but as I whirl around to confront the Reaper all I've caught was a corner of his disappearing shroud, a glint of scythe. And then I thought about, of all people, a pair of audio stalkers who I can't recall ever thinking about even when they were active, so active they tag team-called KZYX whenever the mike was unguarded. The Duke and Duchess of Oil! Who were they? What was their particular obsession? Were they Peak Oilers? What happened to them? Gordy? Surely the royal couple is catalogued somewhere in your memory's archive. I asked Marco, but he'd already been banned by the time of the Duke and Duchess, and still heads up the roster of non-personed locals. "No," he said, “I've heard them mentioned — Ed and Nancy? Fred and Edith? Not a clue. I think that was from the years I paid zero attention to KZYX, except to listen to A Prairie Home Companion on my way to Juanita's house on Saturday night."

REMEMBER MEASURE A, the Library Special Transactions And Use Tax of 2011? According to the text of the measure:

Monies deposited into the fund, together with any interest that accrues thereon, shall be used exclusively for preserving the existing libraries; reversing the deterioration in services at the existing libraries, upgrading of facilities, services, and collections; and extending branch library services to the unserved and under-served areas of the County. The specific projects for which the revenues from the transactions and use tax may be expended are as follows:

1. Maintaining local public libraries;
2. Restoring Open Hours at existing branches throughout the County to the level of 2006-07;
3. Expanding library programs for children and young adults;
4. Expanding outreach programs for individuals who cannot easily come to a library;
5. Acquiring and replacing library equipment and library materials.
6. The revenues collected from this tax shall be used only to supplement existing expenditures for public libraries and shall not be used to supplant existing funding for the support of public libraries.”

* * *

IT’S OBVIOUS that the Mendocino Library has “expanded library programs for children and adults,” in their own mind at least, because we get several press releases about those programs every week. Although exactly how yoga, art, “adulting,” and many of the other “programs” are considered “library programs” escapes us. But what about the rest of the money? As far as we can tell, which is admittedly limited, we have not seen any evidence of much else. The text of the measure didn’t even mention the word books, much less computer access. We certainly don’t get press releases announcing new book inventory, new educational programs, new reading groups for adults, etc. It’s time for the Library Advisory Board or the Grand Jury to look into whether those new sales tax dollars are being spent in a manner that the Measure intended.

IN FACT, just today we got another Library press release which bears no relation to “library programs:”

With games & activities like Minute-to-Win-It, a Photo Scavenger Hunt, 3-D printing your own designs with the library’s new 3-D Printer, & a Sharpie Tie-Dye craft, fun & adventure are guaranteed. Pizza, snacks, refreshments & materials will be provided.

WHO’S IN CHARGE OVER THERE? WHO’S deciding to present these unimaginative recreational things which have nothing to do with the library or books or learning? If we’d wanted a recreational program sales tax we would have voted for it. As it is, for example, the Bookmobile that many rural residents depend on for library access is doing exactly the same thing with the same old (as in “old”) books that it did before the sales tax. We have a cold feeling that the new money has been siphoned off to pay salaries of the usual silly Ukiah lib-lab suspects.

NATIONWIDE TEEN LOCK-IN!

Friday, July 28th 6pm- Midnight

Teens entering 8th-12th grades are welcome to attend our Teen Lock-In at the Library, an after-hours event to take place on National Teen Lock-In Day, July 28th from 6pm-midnight. Teens in libraries nationwide are participating in this event. With games & activities like Minute-to-Win-It, a Photo Scavenger Hunt, 3 -D printing your own designs with the library’s new 3-D Printer, & a Sharpie Tie-Dye craft, fun & adventure are guaranteed. Pizza, snacks, refreshments & materials will be provided. Registration and parent/guardian permission are required for teens to attend. This event can be counted toward Teen Summer Bingo. To obtain a permission slip or for more information please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us. Sponsored by the Friends of the Ukiah Valley Library.

ANDREW SCULLY CHECKS IN:

"A steaming stinking pile of horse manure"

Good morning Gentlemen:

The lovely words in the header of this email can be considered the official response, or an official response of the Mendocino Coast Parks and Recreation District board to the Mendocino County Grand Jury report on the MCRD operations.

Because those words are the exact words spoken by board vice-chair and presiding officer at the meeting last night Bob Bushansky when he described the grand jury report and his feelings about it. A real wordsmith, he.

In a brief conversation I had with Mark yesterday I confirmed​ that I was going to be covering this story. It was Mark's original reporting on the grand jury report on this entity that first alerted me to the issue.

And having attended this meeting last night I can assure you gentlemen I will be covering this story with a full article next week.

However I think the quote is worth running on the Mendo County today or some other aspect of the website so please advise on how I can provide details to get that up.

Thank you

Andrew Scully

WHY NOT?

Letter to the Editor,

Obamacare: Hated by Trumpery and the GOP who want to get rid of it by kicking thousands of poor people off the plan and giving the money saved to the 1% in the form of tax breaks.

What the majority says they want is “single payer.” So why not give it to them. Since we already have it? It’s called Medicare.

Why not lower the age for eligibility to 60 instead of 65? Thousands of people could now retire creating thousands of job openings for younger workers. Then every year lower the entry age a couple of years until everyone is covered.

While we’re at it, let’s make Medicare the medical coverage for all federal employees, including the president and congress.

Don Phillips, Manchester

CLANCY SIGAL has died. His best known book, "Going Away," was a must-read among politically active young people, circa mid-1960s. I read it a couple of times at least. It fascinated me as a kind of insider's guide to the old American left, then disappearing into the history books. I knew him slightly. He called me up once to say he'd just read his first AVA and how much he'd liked it. I was so astounded I almost dropped the phone. For me, it was the ultimate accolade. If the President called, I'd hang up, and now, on the edge of a full dotage, politically despairing division, if the entire American Left was massed in my driveway I'd head for the ballpark rather than listen to them or read their dreary prose. Sigal was alive right to the end. We wrote back and forth a few times, I often published his writing, and even on the off chance someone wanted to borrow my copy of "Going Away," I wouldn't let it out the door.

BEFORE "GOING AWAY" there was another road book, Kerouac's "On the Road." Where "Going Away" is the thinking person's road book, "On the Road," you could say, is the libertine's version. I read it in high school and recall being mildly beguiled by it as an alternative to the road before me, which held no promise that I could see beyond unending drudgery enlivened only by drunken tedium. These guys, these beatniks, seemed to have the right idea — bum around the country with never so much as a hint of desire for a white picket fence and 9-5 peonage. In 1957 the road hadn't yet been franchised out. It still beckoned, a great American variousness was still out there. Maybe it still is if you can get far enough off the interstates and the dreck and bad feeling engulfing the land since.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Skrag's a nervous wreck. ‘They still want to cut my nuts off?’ He asks me that every day. I told him I have his back, me being an intra-species solidarity kinda dawg. They gotta go through me, Skrag, and I'm tellin' ya it ain't happening.”

IF YOU SEE THE DARK IRONY in this headline from the Ukiah Daily Journal, congratulate yourself for being in touch with reality:

Huffman leads charge on climate — Strongly supports Gov. Brown's efforts against White House.

AND FROM THE PRESS DEMOCRAT,

Body of missing person found in parked car in Mendocino County.

Fire and Rescue woulda had a helluva time if that vehicle had been moving.

A READER WRITES:

I thought you should be made aware of the new Homeless Union forming, to demand better services from HH and HC. There is no mention of any wish for employment help however, even though I associate unions with workers. However this manifesto is all about how the Homeless Action Plan committee should be predominantly transients, instead of social service agencies.

I agree that the committee should NOT include the very agencies that have failed us here, dramatically, at great cost to taxpayers, and to the detriment of FB. However, I urge any Homeless Action Plan should be formulated by the taxpaying local public--residents, working and retired people, and business owners. This is the group that foots the bills, yet suffers loss of quality of life, public safety, and property values. I hope you will invite these folks to volunteer to work on such a plan.

I also feel that partisan politics are tainting the performance of the CC, and urge you to try to be less biased politically. I doubt that most residents of FB are liberal Democrats.

Btw--in case you wondered, I am a registered independent, thoroughly disgusted by both political parties, tho was registered as a democrat for decades.

Thanks

A GRANNY FLAT FOR EVERY UKIAH HOMEOWNER

by Philip Baldwin

Wednesday, August 2nd, Ukiah City Council will join “Yes, In My Back Yard,” approving a State inspired ordinance allowing a granny flat behind every existing Ukiah home.

Not only has the Council majority shown no resistance regarding this State takeover of local growth control, it has acted in concert and evident pleasure with the big government usurpation.

It’s a game of pretend. The new California law requiring this population growth and densification ordinance says it will create “affordable” rental housing. That is a lie. This ordinance increasing Ukiah’s population by 30% in existing neighborhoods fails to provide any affordable housing.

There is nothing in either the State second unit law or the corresponding local ordinance that requires any new construction to be “affordable.” Without rent control, the new “accessory dwelling units” (ADUs) will be priced at whatever the market will bear.

Yes, growth-at-all-cost proponents argue that housing prices depend on supply and demand. They dissemble, claiming this required population increase will stabilize or reduce Ukiah rents. But logic and history show this free market notion to be hogwash. New housing construction in L.A., Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, Orange counties has done nothing to inhibit exorbitant rents and sales pricing. It’s beyond debate. Advocates pushing this thirty percent population increase in our existing neighborhoods chant a refrain similar to 2002’s “WMD.” Now it’s “housing crisis” and their push for densification is promoted as compassion for those in need. This is codswallop. Anyone dedicating $30,000 to create an ADU is motivated not by empathy for the down and out but by a desire for greater personal income. Only way to garner that is to rent at the market rate which is - for half or more of renters - not affordable.

To top it off, neighbors will not be informed in advance when a Ukiahan seeks approval for a second unit no matter if it’s a second story above a garage on the lot line. And since all Ukiah homes are within a half mile of an MTA bus line, no off street parking will be required even if the unit is 1000 square feet. Of course, any American couple renting the new infill dwellings will have two cars. Our Council majority is fine requiring all these to be parked on our streets.

Is it too much to expect from our elected representatives spirited alarm and analysis of unintended consequences from this State requirement to increase population. Already Council acquiesces without a peep to State’s “Regional Housing Need Allocation” ordering Ukiah to grow by a fair share percentage of projected statewide population surge. Ukiah valley has a population holding capacity for water, air quality, natural habitat, safety, quality of life. Refusal to admit this guarantees housing spillover onto our greenbelting agricultural lands. Some now promoting infill behind everyone’s home fail to grasp that sprawl is inevitable after our existing neighborhoods become less livable due to the latest planning fad “Yes, In My Back Yard.” Some simply don’t care.

HERE'S HOW HUMCO IS DOING IT

From the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

The Sheriff’s office has fielded many questions over the past several months regarding how the changes in the law will effect enforcement of illegal marijuana cultivation in the county. Proposition 64, the adult recreational use of marijuana, allows any adult age 21 and older to grow 6 plants on their property, possess up to an ounce of marijuana, and possess up to 4 grams of concentrated cannabis. No persons can smoke marijuana in a vehicle or in a public place.

The State of California and the County of Humboldt have passed laws and ordinances to create a clear path to legitimacy for persons that choose to grow commercial marijuana. Since the passage of the Humboldt County Commercial Medical Marijuana Land Use Ordinance and the adult recreational use state law, we have seen exponential growth in the illegal production of marijuana in the County.

As the county permit process has shown, the motivation to become compliant with the law is limited with the cultivators. Out of the 12,000+ documented grow sites in the county, only 2,300+ permit applications were filed with the Planning Department. The 2,300 applicants are in various stages in the permit process. 43 growers and processors have received permits from the County. Over 800 permit applications are now complete for processing and are moving through the governmental approval process. Permit applications with the planning department that have been inactive for over 6 months will be deemed “Withdrawn” from the permit process. An application for a cultivation site that has been deemed “Withdrawn” will no longer be viewed as a lawful growing operation.

The Sheriff’s Office views all Humboldt County permitted growers as being licensed, lawful and legitimate Marijuana Cultivators in the County. A permitted grower will have the following documentation on site:

• County Conditional Use Permit/Special Permit or Zoning Clearance Certificate approved by the Planning Department.
• County Business License for marijuana.

Absent a valid permit, the Sheriff’s office will use the following criteria to determine if a subject is operating a lawful commercial marijuana grow site in the county. The grower shall have all of the documentation on site in order to prove the validity of their growing operation. The following is a list of documentation necessary to prove legitimacy.

• For sites which have not yet received County approval — Humboldt County Permit Application Filed- possession of a signed Affidavit “commercial cannabis activity” with a blue HC Planning Department stamp.
• Grower will have a documented site plan, cultivation/operations plan including detailed description of water source / storage, environmental protection, and storage of pesticides and other regulated products.
• Grower will have a Processing Plan to identify cultivation areas, cycles, and plant count.
• Distribution plan: MOU / Contracts / Agreements with licensed dispensaries for established product from grower.
• Grower (if applicable) will have a copy of their permit, license or registration from the State Water Resources Control Board division of water rights, Streambed Alteration Permit from DF&W, copy of any well permits, copy of a Cal-Fire approved timber conversation (if applicable).
• Valid Sellers Permit from the Board of Equalization and possess an Employers Identification Number.
• The commercial grower will have a federal and state identification number from the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the California Employment Development Department (EDD) and have documentation that they are paying all taxes as required by state and federal tax laws.

The Sheriff’s Office is firmly committed to investigate and enforce ALL of the California marijuana laws and hold the violators accountable. If a Marijuana cultivation site does not have a permit application in process and the cultivator fails to have the above listed documentation, enforcement action will be taken. Per the policy of the Sheriff’s office all the marijuana will be removed onsite and the suspects will be arrested.

A permitted grower cannot grow what they have not applied for. If a permitted cultivator is growing outside of their permit size but is otherwise lawful the investigation becomes a county Code Enforcement Unit (CEU) issue. CEU has the authority to investigate, issue fines, and issue destruction orders through the county. All cultivators who are in the permit process who are growing over their application limits could be subject to criminal prosecution and referred to the CEU for investigation.

The County board of supervisors approved the Sheriff’s request to hire two additional deputy sheriffs for marijuana enforcement. The Drug Enforcement Unit (DEU), Department of Fish and Wildlife, Cal Fire, State Water Resources, and County Code Enforcement will be teaming up to enforce both criminal and civil laws associated with illegal cultivation of marijuana. Since Marijuana is a 365 day operation, the DEU will be tasked with working illegal cultivation cases throughout the year.

Marijuana enforcement priorities are going to continue to be complaint driven. The DEU will be targeting the most egregious violators of the law. The following will be the priorities for Sheriff’s marijuana enforcement for the county:

1. Enforcing state marijuana laws on the non-county permitted growers.
2. Preventing the sale and distribution of marijuana to minors.
3. Enforcing State marijuana laws on the properties that are damaging the environment through the destruction of our forest, rivers, streams and wildlife.
4. Enforcing “Trespass Grows” on public or private land where the growing of marijuana has not been authorized by the landowner.
5. Prevent / investigate human trafficking associated with marijuana cultivation.
6. Enforce State firearms laws at illegal marijuana cultivation sites.
7. Preventing revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels.
8. Preventing the distribution of the marijuana cultivated in Humboldt County to areas outside the State of California.
9. Preventing Humboldt County authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover or a pretext for the trafficking of illegal drugs or other illegal activity.

If you have information regarding illegal marijuana cultivation or environmental damage from a marijuana growing operation, we ask you to contact one of the following phone numbers:

• Illegal Cultivation – Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Tip line: 707.268.2539
• Environmental Damage, water diversion, illegal grading associated with marijuana Cultivation - Fish and Wildlife Northern Region Eureka Field Office: 707-445-6493 or 888-334-2258
• Illegal water distribution, illegal water diversion, water contamination - State Water Board: 916-341-5272 or OECannabis@waterboards.ca.gov
• Illegal timber conversions - Cal Fire: 707-725-4413 Ask for Resource Management
• Illegal grading, unpermitted structures, growing more than permitted - Humboldt County Code Enforcement Unit: 707-476-2429
• Illegal dumping, Hazardous Materials, improper water storage, Sewage Humboldt County Environmental Health: 707-445-6215 or 1-800-963-9241
• For information on State Licensing, transportation, dispensaries, and distribution - The Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation http://bmmr.dca.ca.gov/, 800-952-5210 or bmmr@dca.ca.gov

William Honsal

Sheriff

CATCH OF THE DAY, July 21, 2017

DANIEL BROCKMAN, Willits. Domestic battery, damage to power lines.

ADRIAN BRUMLEY, Ukiah. Protective order violation.

BRADFORD HAITH, San Rafael/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

SACRAMENTO HERNANDEZ, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

SHAWN HORN, Willits. Failure to appear.

RICHARD OSTRANDER, Ukiah. DUI, probation revocation.

DARIC PARDO, Ukiah. Under influence.

TONY PAUL, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

BRANDON SCHIMKA, Ukiah. Resisting.

RONALD VALENTINE JR., Fort Bragg, Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

MICHAEL WEBBER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

ANDREA WRIGHT, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

REACH REACHES OUT

We want to address a small piece of misinformation that is being shared about our organization and our staffing model in particular. We value open and honest communication and want to clear the air of any confusion.

For 30 years, REACH has operated under a Flight Nurse/Flight Paramedic staffing model. This is not changing. The reasoning behind our model has always been that by combining experts in emergency/critical care services with those of an intensive care/hospital environment, patients benefit greatly. Both are subject-matter experts in their respective disciplines of emergency medicine and are highly trained in making quick decisions that contribute to the overall health and well-being of their patients.

Our teams have always operated under an advanced scope of practice and will continue to do so.

(REACH Air Medical Services, Facebook)

* * *

OLIVER SEELER COMMENTS ON MENDOCINOSPORTSPLUS:

I worked many, many incidents on the ground with both Reach and CalStar, as an EMT, firefighter, and Incident Commander, from the very first days they (and their predecessors) began operating on the coast until I retired in 2011. I saw many lives saved by the speed of initial ALS care delivery followed by super-rapid patient transport to a trauma center or other critical care facility.

Not once in all those years did I ever feel the slightest need to second guess or Monday-morning-quarterback anything whatsoever regarding either the superb medical side or the equally fine air operations side of these fantastic services. I have no reason to think that's changed.

I have no idea about what might have caused the "confusion" addressed above, but I can advise folks here on coast that having such services and the people who staff them available is a precious, invaluable and possibly somewhat fragile thing, that should be treated in the kindest and most respectful way possible.

I suggest that anyone with concerns or questions contact the agency directly, you'll talk with great people who will not let you go away confused.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

There are some people I can’t even TALK to because we lack a common culture to serve as a bridge for dialogue.

Im usually pretty good at finding the common social currency that allows me to have a relationship with another person instead of an “arrangement.”

But every once in a while I still hafta drop the hammer on some fool who refuses to do the same.

I had to face down some stupid woman's German Shepard the other day and explain to her that in this country, we train our fucking dogs NOT to threaten people in public spaces.

I said “this is the 2nd time your punk ass young Shepard bounded off the front porch and ran up on me like he was gonna attack me; THERE WILL NOT BE A 3RD TIME!

I felt bad for the dog because he’s young and nobody is training him. If he pulls that shit on the street, somebody is gonna dump on his ass.

“THE EXPERIENCES OF A MAN who lives alone and in silence are both vaguer and more penetrating than those of people in society; his thoughts are heavier, more odd, and touched always with melancholy. Images and observations which could easily be disposed of by a glance, a smile, an exchange of opinion, will occupy him unbearably, sink deep into the silence, become full of meaning, become life, adventure, emotion. Loneliness ripens the eccentric, the daringly and estrangingly beautiful, the poetic. But loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the illicit.”

Thomas Mann, Death In Venice

OL' YAZ ON AUDIO INPUT

Hello Radio Lovers:

I hope everyone can and will acknowledge that many of us in Mendocino County and beyond live without computers in our homes. That's right, Folks. We are NOT wired. Not one bit. Therefore, when it is said on KZYX/Z that "If you don't like the time slot of Democracy Now!, Ralph Nader, or whatever, you can listen to it on Jukebox or online." This is not an option for many of us. Probably tons of us in our rural area.

It is certainly not an option for me. I depend on my RADIO for REAL NEWS!

Which brings me to THE RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR: This fine, wonderful and informative program is on KZYX/Z on SATURDAYS at 5AM. For some reason, it seems that he station does not want people to know this, as they do no promotion for this very intelligent and educational program, which is a shame. (I mean none.) Since it was first on Sundays at 5am, then moved to Sundays at 4am (!), and now it is on EVERY SATURDAY AT 5AM, it seems to be the Best Kept Secret at our radio station! I know it is hard to wake up at 5am to hear it, but, hey. It's better than nothing, right? So one more time: YOU CAN HEAR THE RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR EVERY SATURDAY MORNING AT 5AM! It is a wonderful program and should be on a more listenable time slot!

Which brings me to DEMOCRACY NOW! which they just disappeared from weekdays at 5am. I knew it would happen, since they made it compete with The Thom Hartman Show at 5am also. What a damn shame that our radio station puts its most potent, progressive, intelligent and radical programs on at 4am or 5am, due to their priority of having Three Hours of NPR every morning. (Yawn). My main beef with NPR is not WHAT they say, as much as what they LEAVE OUT. But, the folks who say that "Amy is too (whatever... fill in the blank) in the mornings", prefer to be lulled by The Fake Feel Good "News" of NPR. Yes, that is my opinion. As an Activist who is trying to change the s___and make a better world, I appreciate hearing AMY in the mornings, as I want my Truth and Reality as early as possible in the day. Yes, 5am is painful, but it was OK for me. I suggested that they put DN! on at 5am Live, Thom Hartman on at 6am (it is one day old anyway), and put The Takeaway on at 1pm. (ohmygod!). But! , of course, got no response for this suggestion. Why not have two hours of Real Truthful News in the early ams, and two hours of NPR (instead of 3) in the ams? Seems logical to me.

Peace & Justice, Y'all.

DJ Sister Yasmin

Call me at 884-4703 if you want to talk

EEL RIVER RECOVERY

The Eel River Recovery Project has conducted another year of monitoring of the Sacramento pikeminnow that is not native to the Eel River and threatens native fish. The population in the 12 mile index reach of the South Fork Eel showed a decline between 2016 and 2017 and ERRP will be collecting another year of trend data in 2018 and then beginning management in 2019 targeting removal of the largest adult pikeminnow, if permits from regulatory agencies can be obtained. Attached please find press release, full report and one of the three pictures embedded in the article. Two more will come in an immediately following email to make sure this one is not too large to transmit. Please call if you have questions.

Sincerely,

Patrick Higgins, Managing Director, Eel River Recovery Project
W 707 822-9428
C 707 223-7200
H 707 839-4987

THE MATH OF EXPONENTIAL POPULATION GROWTH escapes most of us most of the time. 4.5 billion to 7.5 billion souls within 1 generation. When 7.5 billion become 15 billion people it will be to late for current structures to support growth even with advanced weaponry and far off colonizations.

— Shahram Rahimi

IN SPACE NO-ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM

Last week a Russian student project put a mini cube-sat in orbit to unfold into a ten-foot-tall reflective tetrahedron and become one of the brightest objects in the night sky (except when it's fully in the shadow of Earth). Here's an article about it: http://newatlas.com/mayak-satellite-launched/50525/

And here's a link to a satellite tracking website, to the page concerned with Mayak. You can see where it is in real time moving over a map of the world. It's 600 miles up in a polar orbit with a period of 97 minutes, going more than 15,000 miles an hour. http://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=42830#results

(If that turns out to be only a temporary link within the site and doesn't work, go to http://n2yo.com and, once there, search for Mayak.)

IN OTHER NEWS, tonight I'll be doing my radio show by live remote from the scarred particleboard typing table next to the bed at Juanita's place, not from the KNYO storefront in Fort Bragg, so if you want to come in and play your musical instrument(s) or talk about your project, or whatever, make that Friday next week (July 28) when I'll be there.*

It's 325 N. Franklin (next to the Tip Top bar). Just waltz in any time after 9pm (Friday, next week), head for the lighted room at the back and get my attention.

(And if you ever write something you want read aloud on the air, email it to me any time during the week and I'll do that. The deadline is always around 5:30 or 6pm the night of the show. Tonight, for example. Plenty of time. No pressure.)

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio. Every Friday, 9pm to about 4am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg, including midnight to 3am 105.1fm KMEC-LP Ukiah. And also there and anywhere else via http://knyo.org or http://TuneIn.com *

(Or contact Bob Young <bobb@poetworld.net> and get your own regular airtime on KNYO, to do a show entirely of own devising, and never need to depend on me at all. Either way, it's easy and fun.)

Marco McClean

O.J.’S PAROLE: A FITTING END TO THE ‘FIFTH QUARTER’

by Dave Zirin

As expected, O.J. Simpson was granted parole on Thursday in Nevada, after serving nearly nine years of a 33-year sentence at the Lovelock Correctional Center. Barring any infractions over the next three months, he will be released in October. The parole hearing, simulcast on all the cable networks and ESPN, was nothing pretty, neither cinematic nor illustrative. Simpson made roundly mocked and altogether clueless statements, such as “I’ve led a conflict-free life” and “Nobody has ever accused me of pulling a weapon on anybody,” as if he was never involved in the murder trial of the century or had an acknowledged past as a domestic abuser. Yet this wasn’t a parole hearing that had anything to do with the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, and this is why the decision of the parole board, as much as it may rankle some, was correct and just.

Simpson has been in prison on charges of stealing his own merchandise, while someone with him pulled a gun. The person whom he robbed, a friend of Simpson’s, testified at the parole hearing that he would drive him home from prison.

What is still stunning, however, is that original sentence, officially for “kidnapping and armed robbery”: 33 years. Simpson received this 33-year sentence at age 61—basically a life sentence, 13 years to the day after Simpson received the “not guilty” verdict for the murders of Brown Simpson and Goldman. That number, 33, is a frightening reminder of the reach of the US justice system. It was a $33.5 million wrongful-death judgment that was handed to Simpson in California Civil Court for the 1994 murders. It was $33.5 million that O.J. said he had no ability—or intention—to pay as he left California for Florida, basically thumbing his nose at the decision.

While it has been denied by the Nevada courts, the 2008 sentence clearly looks like payback. As Simpson’s 1994 attorney Carl Douglas said in the documentary O.J.: Made in America, “That was the fifth quarter. They got back at O.J. for winning our case."

As Jeffrey Toobin, CNN legal analyst and author of The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, which formed the basis of the FX series The People v. O.J. Simpson, said:

“I continue to believe that the Nevada case is bogus, and it’s the perfect irony of the Simpson case that he was acquitted of the crime that he was guilty of and he was convicted of a crime he’s innocent of…. I really think his 33-year sentence was absurdly long. It was entirely payback for the murder he was acquitted of. It’s not the way the legal system is supposed to work.”

Toobin, to put it mildly, is no fan of Simpson. He is also right that this is not the way the system is supposed to work, and it’s maddening to consider the idea that a Nevada judge would be rendering a prison judgment as “payback” for a California civil judgment. Even if you care nothing about O.J. Simpson or want him to rot behind bars until his dying day, this, from a civil-liberties perspective, is an abomination. In addition, a retired corrections official at Lovelock Prison, where he has been incarcerated, was quoted in USA Today calling O.J. Simpson’s prison term “a cruise ship with barbed wire” and claiming that “there’s plenty for him to do at that prison and he’s always happy.’’

This is a garbage statement. But it speaks to why we need to be vigilant in our criticisms of the nation’s sprawling prison system, especially in a Trump era, where Jeff Sessions—if he is still attorney general by the time this publishes—aims to revive and nationalize every discredited tough-on-crime, war-on-drugs, private prison, New Jim Crow provision from the past 40 years. The O.J. Simpson drama has been many things to many people, but its longest lasting—and furthest reaching—effect has been the valorization of our system of highly racialized mass incarceration. When the US justice system is allowed to demonize, it’s not only demons who are caught in its web. The parole board decision was a reminder that in the Trump/Sessions era, we don’t have to be governed by mindless vengeance. I don’t care what O.J. does next and am not particularly interested in finding out. But I do know that “payback sentences” should be fought because it won’t be the O.J.s, with all of their reach, fame and money, who will pay the price.

THE MEDIA'S WAR ON TRUMP is destined to fail. Why can't it see that?

by Thomas Frank

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/21/media-war-trump-destined-fail

MEOW

by James Kunstler

For all his blunders and stumbles in his first half-year as President (cough cough), Donald Trump seems to have more lives than Schrödinger’s Cat. Or maybe it just seems that way. Or maybe he isn’t really there at all (like the news these days). Maybe Trump only represents one comic probability in an infinite number of universes of probability, both comic and tragic. I begin to understand why the folks in Hollywood are having a whack attack over the chief executive: you can’t storyboard this bitch; it’s like leaving The Three Stooges on their own in a sound stage to re-make Gone With the Wind.

But then, you begin to wonder: is Russia really there, or is it, too, just another figment of possibility? Don’t try to figure that out by reading the oracular observations of The Washington Post. These days Russia seems to be at once everywhere and nowhere, like the Devil north of Boston in 1693.

For example, this fellow Jeff Sessions. Have you noticed that his name rhymes with Russians? Hmmmm. And wasn’t he caught chatting with the Russian Ambassador at the very same convocation of Republicans that picked notorious colluder Donald Trump to stand for President? That’s enough of your damn evidence right there!

Yes, things are passing strange in the world’s greatest democracy these days. To me, seeing the thing through an historical lens, it’s looking more and more like the Salem Witch Frenzy meets the French Revolution with a spin of quantum confusion on top. Right now we’re in the first phase, sheer political lunacy. Beliefs have become ungrounded from the facts of life. The guy whom fate or a prankish deity put in the White House doesn’t even fit the template of the world’s most infamous heads-of-state. I’m sorry to dredge up old Adolf, but really, Hitler himself seemed to have a much firmer idea about what he was doing than Trump does.

The ObamaCare reform fiasco looks like a tipping point toward a strain of toxic political paralysis that might literally kill the government as we’ve known it. Over the many months of debate, congress never even got around to raising the salient issue: that the 18-or-so-percent of the economy “health care” represents consists largely of outright racketeering. Well, they sure blew that one. The major parties are disintegrating before our eyes, despite the seeming sense of decorum that senators present on TV. The public may seem to be mentally on vacation, snoozing on the beach in the midsummer doldrums, but something vicious is in the wind offshore.

I’d actually go further now than the “soft coup d’état” scenario that has Trump run over by the 25^thamendment. It will happen, of course, but it will not satisfy anybody. Mike Pence will prove to be as ineffectual and unpopular as Trump, and he will be drowning in financial and fiscal problems, and he will get no help from the legislature in resolving any of it, and before too long there may be a general in the White House — or attempting to run things from someplace else, if he can. The whole nauseating spectacle will be attended by violent popular revolt of region against region and tribe against tribe in a great civil explosion of long-suppressed angst.

Too many nasty forces are vectoring in on the scene to overthrow the dream state America has been languishing in. Most of them involve money (or “money”) and the questions of how can we possibly keep paying for the way we live in this country, and who exactly has been fobbing off with the former wealth of every rusted and busted community in the land? It’s going to start in the stock and bond markets and it will be soon.

And then the US Treasury will destroy the dollar trying (again) to save the banks. And the bank accounts will be frozen. And the loans will stop being paid. And the SNAP cards are going to stop working, and pretty soon the just-in-time deliveries to the supermarkets, and the resupply to the gas stations, and there won’t be much that Mike Pence can do about it. He’ll be shoved aside and the military will have to try to restore order in the land. When they do, it will not be the same land we sang about back in the fifth grade. Up in a cloud somewhere over Ohio, maybe, Schrödinger’s Cat will be gazing down on us, grinning.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page)

RED STATE, BLUE STATE; GREEN STATE; DEEP STATE

by Jeffrey St. Clair

Given all the commotion over the past week or so, some of it right here on CounterPunch, you’d think that Caitlin Johnstone was the reincarnation of Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens made his fateful pact with the neocons of the Bush administration. Johnstone is now offering a tentative hand of solidarity to white nationalists. Johnstone has her clique of admirers, but she’s not yet in Hitchens’ class, either as a writer or a professional heretic.

I suppose many of you are too young to remember the Iraq War, but let’s recall that back in those hazy days of yore the neocons packed cruise missiles in their pockets, while the white nationalists (those who weren’t moonlighting as members of your local police department) were goose-stepping around with flaming torches, when they could afford the matches. Hitchens, who retains a curious band of Lefty loyalists to this day, was invited to the Bush White House several times to help plot bombing targets in Iraq; Caitlin hasn’t helped burn down a single black church, as far as I’m aware.

On Thursday, we ran a long, hyper-ventilating piece by Patrick Walker that proved to be less a defense of Johnstone than a rather fusillade of inchoate invective about CounterPunch. Fine. We publish these types of rants by Walker and his tiny cohort of Bernie or Busters every few months just to air out the inbox and eradicate the black mold. He’s known in the office here as HR Huff-n-Puff. Amid the fumes of Walker’s torpid verbiage, he didn’t even have the courage to address the topic at hand: Johnstone’s call for the Left to find common ground with the Alt-Right-Delete. I can’t help thinking that Johnstone deserved a little better from her champion.

Let me start by confessing that I’m not a huge fan of Johnstone’s writing. In surveying her greatest hits over the last few months, I came away with the sense that Johnstone is basically riding a one-trope pony, with that trope being the malign nature of the Deep State. Who knew the CIA was so evil? (Of course, many big time columnists, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman, come to mind, have yet to master even a single trope worth reading, so Johnstone’s already far outpacing those tired geldings.) For the conspiratorial Left, the Deep Staters seem to have eclipsed the 9/11 Truthers as the heralds of a new political Theory-0f-Everything. This is a welcome shift of emphasis as far as I’m concerned. Who really needs to read yet another belabored story on the demolition of WTC 7?

For many decades now, the American Left, what there is of it, has been in search of a comforting explanation for its rapidly eroding fortunes. It seems inexplicable to many that the Left could have become so politically impotent in an era of permanent wars and raging inequality. Rather than engage in rigorous self-inspection of its leaders, strategies and tactics, the Left has tended to point to malevolent outside forces as the agents of its demise, from the CIA’s domestic black ops to the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Of course, there are many blood trails left by both of these agencies across the American political landscape, from the infiltration of the anti-war movement and SDS to the assassinations of black radicals and the decimation of the American Indian Movement. The Feds didn’t even try very hard to wipe up the trace evidence of their complicity in these crimes of the state.

I first encountered the phrase “Deep State” in the writings of the Canadian Peter Dale Scott (a fellow Eng. Lit major), though the predicate of the theory far predates Scott’s relatively docile explorations of the dark forces manipulating the secret management of the Empire. The origin myth of leftwing Deep State theory is, of course, the assassination of JFK, an act of internal regime change by a CIA hit-team orchestrated by Allen Dulles in retaliation for the president’s alleged plan to break-up the agency and yank US troops out of Vietnam. From that moment on, according Deep State theorizers, the secret government was firmly in control and no political transgressions against its agenda would be tolerated. As an omnipotent force, the existence of a Deep State satisfies the Left’s desire to rationalize its own sense of perennial powerlessness.

Of course, I remain an unrepentant Magic Bullet man, fully persuaded that Lee Harvey Oswald, as an ardent devotee of the Cuban Revolution, had a more personal motive to kill the anti-communist Kennedy (the first neoliberal) than did fussy old Allen Dulles. With a couple miraculous shots from his Carcano Rifle, Oswald demonstrated that regime change could be a two-way street.

The far right has cultivated it’s own Deep State theory, which dates back at least to the paranoid fever-dreams of the John Birchers, who are now enjoying something of a resurgence. For reactionary nationalists, the Deep State is a globalist contagion that has infiltrated institutions as varied as the Commie-penetrated State Department, the “liberal” CIA, the Federal Reserve, the United Nations and, of course, the National Park Service. For the right, the control room of the Deep State is occupied by bankers (Rothschilds), internationalists (Soros), multi-culturalists (Cornel West) and tree huggers (Jane Goodall) intent on eradicating the white Protestant values that made the Republic what it was during it’s glorious apogee in the Andy Jackson administration.

It took the election of Trump to achieve the potential “intersectionality” of these two disparate branches of Deep State Theory. Here at last was a JFK-like figure of the nationalist right, a man who was ready to smash NATO to pieces, revoke global trade pacts, retreat from interventionist wars, make nice with the Russians and chase all the little Hitlers out of the CIA. Then it all began unravel under the weight of RussiaGate©, a faux-scandal concocted by the Deep State to serve as a slo-motion coup d’etat. The tragedy of Trump makes for compelling reading, including dozens of articles probing similar veins that have appeared here on CounterPunch.

This is a fertile time for political polemicists and Johnstone’s popularity on the left side of the spectrum confirms my long-held view that many web-based readers like to wake up in the morning by having their core beliefs reconfirmed with a single click of the mouse. They crave the same basic menu of stories each day, written by the same writers at increasingly higher decibel levels. We can see the evidence by looking at the Google analytics for stories on CounterPunch. The louder the volume, the higher the hits.

As a writer of polemics, you seek to provoke, irritate and push right to the edge (and sometimes off-the-cliff) of permissible discourse. I’ve never called for a politician to die before, as Johnstone did recently in her column on John McCain, but I’ve come close. Alex and I even predicted McCain’s imminent death from cancer in a column…9 years ago. (Almost all of our political predications proved wrong, including Alex’s initial assessment of Rick Perry in 2011 as being a man of “presidential material.”)

Still you have to write without fear or apologies. Not too long before Cockburn died, I asked him if he regretted anything he’d written (secretly hoping that he would retract his climate change denialism). “Regret? Jeffrey!! Never regret!!” He paused. “Well, I suppose if I hadn’t been over my deadline I might have rephrased that sentence about Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. But once it’s out there you have to stand by it, man.” That sentence about Afghanistan was this one, “I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it’s Afghanistan.” The man had a way with words.

I even have a trace of sympathy for Johnstone’s call to engage with the far right on issues where there might exist a sliver of common ground on which we could stand and fight the same enemy. I’ve walked in those shoes and have been roundly condemned for such heresies. As Johnstone was coming under fire, I flashed back to a June morning in 1995.

The phone rang at 5 am. It was Cockburn, of course, an hour ahead of his normal call.

“Wake up, Jeffrey. You’ve been libeled!”

“I’ve been what?”

“It’s spelled: L-I-B-E-L-E-D…Libeled by some little punk at the New Yorker.”

“Which little punk? Not that Elizabeth Drew, I hope, she’s too boring to commit libel.”

“Perish the thought. A sniveling twit named Kelly. Michael Kelly.”

“What did he write?”

“Something about you consorting with terrorists, I think.”

“Have you read it?” Knowing Alex would rather get a root canal (his greatest phobia) than subscribe to the New Yorker.

“Are you kidding? Brother Andrew told me.” Andrew Cockburn would know. He reads everything. “He’ll fax to me. I’ll fax to you. Stand by your machine.”

That’s the way things worked in the days before Alex was enticed to abandon his Underwood for a Tangerine-Colored-Streamlined-Baby-i-Mac.

As I waited for Cockburn’s fax to rattle through the machine, I felt a little swell of excitement at making the hollowed pages of The New Yorker, like Steve Martin’s character in “The Jerk,” when he gets his hands on the new phonebook and finds his name in it.

My initial giddiness dissipated as the fax machine began to spit out Kelly’s eleven-page long hit piece titled “The Road to Paranoia,” which was itself a paranoid screed warning neoliberal America of the coming alliance between the radical left and the radical right. Buried in the avalanche of Kelly’s turgid prose, my cameo proved almost as fleeting as the appearance of poor Osric in “Hamlet.” I was accused of colluding with the enemy by giving a speech (later reproduced in the Earth First! Journal) at a gathering of the rightwing Wise Use Movement in Reno, where I viciously attacked the mainstream environmental movement for its political timidity. My crime, according to Kelly, was in promoting a seditious brand of “fusion politics.” If only it had taken root.

Over the ensuing years, similar slurs would come hurtling our way from other guardians of liberal respectability. During Clinton’s war on Serbia, Cockburn and I spoke at several rallies sponsored by the feisty libertarians at AntiWar.com, who were among the few courageous souls to oppose that ignoble enterprise. Even the freshly-elected socialist Bernie Sanders backed the bombing of the socialist city of Belgrade, a failure of nerve which prompted a few of his more honorable staffers to resign in protest. For this treachery, we were both denounced as genocide-denying tools of the isolationist menace.

When CounterPunch went online in 1999, we compounded our thought crimes by publishing some of the verboten voices of the anti-imperialist movement, from Ron Paul to “Werther,” Paul Craig Roberts to the civil libertarian James Bovard, whose appearances on our homepage elicited howls of outrage from the likes of Eric Alterman and Katha Pollitt. Naturally, we basked in the glow of their opprobrium.

Perhaps it’s just the writer in me, but from where I sit the real villain of this imbroglio isn’t the verbal provocateur Caitlin Johnstone, but David Cobb, the Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of the Green Party, who has been one of the most zealous promoters of Johnstone’s incendiary writings. What’s rich fodder for a political columnist can prove lethal for a political movement, especially a movement as bruised, battered and pale as the Greens. Can the Greens really afford to get any whiter than they already are?

Since his mysterious emergence as a leader of the Greens in 2004, Cobb has steadily squandered the political base that Ralph Nader helped build. Whether this was through incompetence or intent is unclear, but Cobb’s decision to make the Green Party a safe space for Democrats was a fatal miscalculation from which the party has never really recovered. The hapless John Kerry, running as a war-monger, lost to Bush in any event, so the compromises of 2004 proved fruitless, except, perhaps, to the progressive donor class, who could now feel as if they could ease their consciences by occasionally throwing some money at the Greens without risking any political blowback.

In 2016, however, the prospects for the Green Party suddenly seemed brighter than at anytime since 2000, largely because of the inspired choice of Ajamu Baraka as Jill Stein’s running mate. Despite the involvement of many veterans from Jesse Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition” campaigns of the 1980s, the Green Party had never really gained traction with blacks and Hispanics. Baraka’s presence on the ticket offered a real promise of expanding the Green Party’s base for the first time since Nader’s run. This wasn’t so much because Baraka is black, but because he was able to articulate a theory of political engagement that spoke directly to the experience of black and brown Americans.

Then David Cobb was brought on as campaign manager and almost immediately the wheels began to fall off. By election day, the Green ticket, which only a few weeks earlier held such promise, now seemed like a stealth campaign. In an election featuring two of the most unpopular candidates in history, the Greens could only manage a microscopic 1.1 percent of the popular vote, 3 million fewer votes than the dysfunctional Libertarian duo of Gary Johnson and Bill Weld. Cobb’s response to this humiliation at the polls wasn’t to resign, but to almost immediately pursue, along with Jill Stein, recounts in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, recounts which could only serve to benefit Hillary Clinton. Millions of dollars poured in from frantic Democrats in a desperate, and doomed, attempt to overturn the results of the election. The motives behind this curious affair have never been clearly ascertained, but once again Cobb demonstrated to the progressive funding machine that the Green Party presented no real threat to the political hegemony of the Democrats.

Now, Cobb seems intent on promoting a green-brown alliance, along the lines sketched by Caitlin Johnstone, as a means of reanimating a political movement that he, more than any other single figure, has helped to emasculate from the inside-out. This is a quest for fools gold at best, something more sinister at worst.

Environmentalists have been down this road before and it didn’t end well. In the 1990s, the Sierra Club was infiltrated by a vicious band of Malthusians, who scapegoated immigrants as a primary cause of environmental degradation. This shameful episode debased the Sierra Club and elevated the profile of the xenophobes, giving them a legitimate national platform for the first time and a political foothold that eventually metastasized into the virulent forces fueling the Trump campaign.

At an operational level, white nationalists already dominate the political agenda of the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties. The Greens invite them under the frayed flaps of their tent at their own peril.

(Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes From a Failed Revolution. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JSCCounterPunch. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org.)