Mendocino County Today: Friday, July 28, 2017

• Summer Days
• Saving Albion Bridge
• Grass Fire
• Elk Barbecue
• Solitude & Reflection
• Anticipated Litigation
• Big Willits Bust
• Airport Day
• Little Dog
• Yesterday's Catch
• Open Mic
• Chuck's Statement
• Survivor Whitehouse
• Kinzer on KMEC
• Whitehouse Employment
• Political Terrorism

HEATWAVE INTO AUGUST: Anderson Valley will see highs into the 90s for the next week or so accompanied by light winds, slightly cooler toward the deep end of the Valley. Ukiah, of course, will see highs near 100 or so for that same period. Fort Bragg will be lucky to break 70. Pretty much a normal summertime hot streak.

SAVING ALBION BRIDGE

* * *

Steve Heckeroth wrote:

I live on Navarro Ridge and  have been active in the Albion community for 47 years. My Dad Heinz Heckeroth retired as Deputy Director of Caltrans in 1988 and he has a home on the coast and has spent many hours studying the options for the Albion bridge.  He is convinced that there are only two options and that unless the community unites on upgrading the existing bridge for north bound use and building a new south bound bridge Caltrans will build a two way arched bridge and demolish the existing bridge.  I have attached what I think is the only option for saving the existing bridge that will satisfy Caltrans mandate for traffic, shoulder, bicycle and pedestrian lanes. There is no other alternative that will save the bridge. Please come to tomorrow’s meeting and support this alternative to replacement and removal.

SAVING ALBION RIVER BRIDGE

* * *

NOT A GOOD IDEA

Dear Steve (and neighbors):

I can’t put my support behind the “one new, one old” option that you put forth. It would visually clutter the beautiful scene that exists today at the mouth of the Albion River.  Public support succeeded in saving the Bixby Creek Bridge on Highway 1 in Big Sur, which is no wider than the current Albion River Bridge (and which is the only Highway 1 bridge on the Historic Register, at least until our bridge officially makes the list).  Caltrans spent in excess of $20 million to retrofit the Bixby Creek Bridge in the late 1990s. I believe that if the community ultimately decides that it wants the existing bridge to remain as it stands today, that the community should make every effort possible to convey that message to Caltrans and the many regulatory bodies that it needs to report to for this project.  $20 million would preserve the Albion River Bridge for many, many, many decades to come.  Take a look at the Bixby Creek Bridge and imagine a large box-girder bridge alongside it:

http://bit.ly/2vMoe5Y

That vista would be forever changed, and not for the better.  Please note that this is my personal opinion, and not that of the Albion Community Advisory Board (ACAB), of which I’m president. ACAB has yet to take an official position with regard to the bridge project, as we are waiting for additional information, including Dr. Asteneh’s report.  Although I hugely respect both you and your dad and your respective accomplishments, I will be personally be advocating for a no-build alternative: keeping and maintaining the existing bridge as the engineering treasure that it is. It happened in Big Sur, and it can happen here.  At the very least, we can and should try.

Respectfully,

Jim Heid, Mendocino

* * *

Steve Heckeroth replied:

With all due respect the Bixby Creek Bridge is exactly the same type of arched concrete structure that Caltrans is proposing to replace the Albion wooden bridge. Caltrans understands concrete structures and once they are up graded they require very little maintenance. Wooden bridges on the other hand require constant maintenance and no community organization is going to be able to afford this maintenance. The only way to save the bridge is to have Caltrans do the maintenance. The only way they will do the maintenance is if their mandate for traffic, shoulder, bicycle and pedestrian lanes are included Caltrans design for Albion Bridge.

If you want the Bixby bridge, Caltrans has already designed it.

* * *

Norman de Vall wrote:

May I suggest that the proponents wanting to save the historic Albion River Bridge take that position to MCOG, the Mendocino County Organization of Governments? MCOG replaces the STIP (State Transportation Improvement Program), is managed by Phil Dow, and is represented by County, City and agency governmental bodies. Winning their support would have to be given respect by CalTrans.  Without their support our position is much less.

VEGETATION FIRE REPORTED IN BOONVILLE 12:48 PM

The scanner said (12:48 pm) the Anderson Valley Fire Department, CalFire ground, air (chopper & fixed-wing) and inmate assets were dispatched to the area of 22201 Mountain View road (across from Redwood Ridge Road) for the report of a vegetation Fire.

It's being referred to as the "Mountain Incident."

CalFire Air Attack #110 said (1:07 pm) they were above the fire, "It appears to be an eighth to a half of an acre in the grass, looks to be extinguished by citizens on site."

At 1:30 pm, a first responder said the fire was contained but there would be two-hours of "mop up" needed.

(MendocinoSportsPlus)

DAVID LILKER COMMENTS: "Nice bit of writing by Mr. Bedrock on some of the unavoidable aspects of a long life. I am reminded of the saying by Blaise Pascal, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

I myself have two elder siblings. My brother, who retired in his early fifties, moved away from friends and family and physically isolated himself in Northern Idaho. He suffered a nervous breakdown almost immediately. He is now slowly expanding his social world beyond the confines of his house. My older sister lives in a town of about 500 souls in Southern Montana. She and her husband know damn near everyone in town, and have richer social lives than almost anyone I know.

Retirement is still a few years off for myself, and I hope to achieve a balance between my strong desire to stay home to read and listen to music, against the desire to maintain a healthy social life near the end of my days. That, and reasonably good health is about all I could ask for."

MR. BEDROCK'S fine essay is reprinted below for those of you who missed it the first time around, or might be curious about what we're going on about here tonight, but Bedrock's piece, combined with  Mr. Lilker's thoughtful response to it, got me rummaging around in my memory's rag bag.

THIS NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE requires much time alone, but it also, of course, propels me, Argus-like, almost daily into the life of the Anderson Valley, and more generally into the life of Mendocino County, the two pieces of geography and the people I'm most interested in.

THERE are plenty of isolates here in the Anderson Valley, which is not so much a valley as a series of mild hills bisected by twenty miles of highway, but those of us who live here consider it one place, one "community," insofar as community exists anywhere anymore. One true isolate I know is a guy who registered as a conscientious objector to avoid killing anyone in Vietnam but wound up there as a medic with the Marine Corps, and saw more heavy combat than most Marines. Ever since that grim experience, he's been the very portrait of embitterment. Way back he had a girlfriend, but she soon left, and he's been alone since 1972. His immediate neighbors know he's there, and I know he's there, but there are people who've lived here for fifty years who have never heard of him, and then they'll tell me about someone still alive they say thirty or forty years ago but never again. People withdraw for all kinds of reasons, and who can blame them?

THE ANDERSON VALLEY has always been a transient sort of place, but a place that has always attracted people who just want to be left alone. It's big enough for a thousand more internal exiles. Until about the middle 1970s, land near and far from the pavement was cheap, and people who preferred their own company could do it in a beautiful place with an ideal climate and with minimal contact with their fellow citizens.

PRIOR TO WORLD WAR TWO, the people who lived here had always lived here, four even five generations of them. A few of the old families are still in place, but the Anderson Valley of today, like the rest of the country, is a very different "community," a far more fluid place, a place where there are lots of single people, and a large number of single people in the 30-70 demographic means a large population of lonely people, doesn't it, just like you find in any city or suburb.

AN OLDER SINGLE WOMAN told me once that she'd always felt "a darkness" in the Anderson Valley. I said maybe that's because so many world class maniacs had drifted through here in the time of Do Your Own Thing-ism — Jim Jones; Manson; Leonard Lake; Kenneth Parnell; the Moonies, although the Moonies apparently aren't homicidal loons and, since they've become rich with their own national newspaper, they're as respectable as any other group of crackpots who pay their bills. The older single woman said the darkness she felt was something deeper than the infamous criminals who've touched down in the Anderson Valley, she described what she felt as "a kind of spiritual heaviness." I said the vibe I most often get is low farce mixed with bursts of terrible tragedy, but I understood, I think, what she meant; the fancy word for it is “atomization,” or isolation from everyone and everything else.

LIKE MR. LILKER, I spend a lot of time alone with a book. Lying down and reading a book is the only thing I'm really good at. Mr. L reads and listens to music. I used to listen to a lot of "dead white man's music," as the inimitable Beth Bosk memorably described Beethoven and the boys, but I haven't deliberately listened to any kind of music for years. I watched a Madonna half-time show years ago that left me in mild shock. "People pay their way in to watch and listen to this person?" I'm down to books and four periodicals for entertainment mingled with a few movies and maybe a Netflix or HBO series. All of a sudden, TV is good again.

EXCEPT for a near death, sepsis-induced interlude five years ago, and bad knees, I'm still mobile at age 78 via long walks up and down hills and sets of twenty-five push-ups a few times a day when I rise from my sedentary tasks.  If the barricades went up tomorrow to overthrow the One Percent and their government I'm in good enough shape to haul myself up front for it, but that's an extremely romantic view of the slow slide into chaos that is far more likely.

MR. BEDROCK'S mention of Kenneth Rexroth is one more reminder of how far this culture has slipped. Rexroth was a polymath carelessly remembered these days, if he's remembered at all, as a kind of guru to the seminal Frisco beatniks. He used to write a regular column for the SF Examiner in the 1950's into the 1960's. He wrote about everything from Chinese lit to the execution of the Rosenbergs. These days, newspaper columnists seldom stray from received opinion, and a whole lot of them write pure fluff. When Rexroth was in his prime there was still enough knowledge, enough curiosity among every day people to make his writing attractive to a large newspaper readership.

"WE THOUGHT the years would last forever. They are all gone now, the days we thought would not come for us are here." That's from a Rexroth poem, as cited by Mr. B, but those days have arrived for this newspaper. This week we go permanently to 8-pages. Like the large-circulation papers the internet has overtaken us. We've always depended on stand sales and subscriptions to pay the printer and the post office. Newsstands have mostly disappeared, as have paper-paper readers. (We've just learned that Village Spirits, the liquor store in Mendocino, and our only outlet in that town, a reliable outlet for years, has gone out of business. Corners of the Mouth, the "liberal" market in the village, has always refused to sell the ava, apparently on the grounds of repeat deviationism from, I dunno, some kind of party line never quite articulated. Corners has no prob with the chain papers owned by hedge funds, but Spiritual Stalinists have always dogged our efforts.)

OUR OLDER READERS still prefer paper newspapers, our younger readers, assuming we have some, now get all their information via cyber-space and television comedians. On-line is where the bulk of the ava will now be found at www.theava.com. The paper-paper will be a stripped-down version of the on-line paper. Old subscribers can, if they want, get both for the price of a paper-paper subscription. We'll focus on in-Mendo matters, with the longer pieces on random subjects that many of our readers enjoy found on-line. Onward!

* * *

LAST ONE STANDING

by Louis Bedrock

“We thought the years would last forever,

They are all gone now, the days

We thought would not come for us are here.”

(— Kenneth Rexroth)

“Taciturn, silent, numb to the new breath of vitality that shook the house, Colonel Aureliano Buendía barely understood that the secret of a decent old age is nothing more than an honest pact with solitude.”

(— Gabriel García Márquez)

* * *

A few years ago, I went to see a movie with my friend Stefan about singer and songwriter, Phil Ochs. The name of the movie was There But for Fortune. The film was playing at the IFC theater in New York. When we entered the mini theater, we found that the entire audience was made up of people our age—seniors between 60 and 80 — and that contrary to sociological norms regarding human spacing, they were huddled together in one area. We joined them.

As we went to sit among our compañeros, Stefan said,

—This is nice. Does anyone have a guitar?

—A guitar, hell —someone responded—: Does anyone have a joint?

Everyone laughed.

—We’re a vanishing species —someone commented.

—I just don’t want to be the last one standing —said Stefan.

…

Nor do I; however every day it seems more likely. I used to have to turn off the telephone while I was writing so I wouldn’t be disturbed. I no longer bother to do so. Death and other forms of attrition has drastically reduced my circle of friends and loved ones. In the last five years, I’ve lost my mother, my sister, my favorite aunt, my favorite cousin, and five of my oldest and dearest friends. Some friends are busy caring for their children’s children. My closest living friend in Spain is raising a young daughter after having gone through a divorce.

Some people have moved far away to different time zones that make communication by phone very complicated. Some have just stopped calling or responding to e-mails. There are entire days when I don’t talk to anyone. This used to be very uncommon. Indeed, the secret of a decent old age seems to be “nothing more than an honest pact with solitude.”

…

I have a couple of friends who are much older than me. One is in his late eighties, the other in his mid eighties. They tell me that everything just gets worst—from the loss of friends and loved ones to the difficulty of doing things for oneself—like merely getting out of bed in the morning.

When I asked Bob, the younger of the two, whether he ever got tired of life, he answered, no, he didn’t. He wanted to see what happened next. I also want to see what happens next. I want to see how much longer I can ride a bike, walk two or three miles, or write a coherent essay or translation, or even read a challenging book. How much longer I can deal with the solitude that’s closing in on me.

There are a lot of things I don’t want to see: mass starvation, brutal wars, gratuitous cruelty, and bovine stupidity: however, these things are already here and seem to be getting worse. As the Kinks sang,

“I don't feel safe in this world no more

I don't want to die in a nuclear war

I want to sail away to a distant shore

And make like an Apeman.”

Me too. I wonder if Apemen can cobble “an honest pact with solitude.”

MIGHT BE A HOT ONE

Katherine Reddick, the dismissed principal at Anderson Valley Elementary, has said she would demand an open public hearing which would compel the Superintendent and the AV School Board to reveal the reasons for Ms. Reddick's termination. All public school employees have the legal right to a public hearing. Most, of course, prefer to shuffle off silently. Ms. Reddick seems much more combative than the run of the mill school administrator. Tuesday night's meeting could be a hot one. (To psychically prepare, we recommend The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.)

* * *

AV Unified Board meeting agenda, Tuesday, August 1, 2017.

6:35 P.M - Closed Session- Discussion/Action

• Conference with Legal Counsel- Anticipated Litigation • Significant Exposure to Litigation 54956.9(d)(2) Number of Potential Cases: One (1)
• Public Employee Discipline/Dismissal/Release (Gov. Code 54957)
• Public Employee Appointment/Public Employment Title: Superintendent
• Conference With Labor Negotiations (Gov. Code 54957.8) Agency Representative: Richard Browning Employee Organization: CSEA
• Public Employee Appointment

7pm: Report out of closed session

• Public comment
• Consideration and Possible Action to Approve Public Employee Appointment (consent)
• High School math teacher Steven Huf, High School Varsity Soccer Coach Adrian Maldonado, Special Ed Instructional assistant Monica Alvarez.
• (Open) Hearing Regarding Dismissal of Public Employee
• Consideration and Possible Action on Addendum to Employment Agreement regarding Superintendent

Modulars/Open Space for Physical education

• Superintendent report
• Future business
• Continuation of closed session if necessary.

MARIJUANA ERADICATION OPERATION AT SHERWOOD VALLEY RANCHERIA

On 07-25-2017 the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office conducted a marijuana investigation/eradication operation on the Sherwood Valley Rancheria (22000 block of East Side Road in Willits, California) at the request of the Sherwood Valley Tribal Counsel.  The operation lead by the County of Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Team (COMMET) resulted in the following seizures:

2,421 marijuana plants eradicated

611 pounds of processed hanging marijuana

95 pounds of processed marijuana

Less than a half of gram of cocaine

8 firearms

6 arrests

Arrested:

Rudolph Esquivel, 55 year-old male from Willits. Violation of parole

Dennis Hoaglin, 59 year-old male from Willits. Felon with firearm

Gary Robinson, 65 year-old male from Willits. Cultivation of marijuana by sex offender

Robin Phillips, 59 year-old male from Willits. Cultivation of marijuana by sex offender, PC felon with firearm, armed during felony

Patrick Welsh, 42 year-old male from Willits. Resist/delay peace officer

Gregorio Martinez Guzman, 40 year-old male from Santa Rosa. Possession of cocaine

The County of Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Team (COMMET) were assisted by personnel from the California Highway Patrol, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Cal Fire and the Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force.

BOONVILLE AIRPORT DAY & Potluck Dinner

Saturday August 12, 2017

Festivites begin at Noon. Potluck Dinner at 5pm. Please bring your favorite Potluck dish. Drinks provided!

No RSVP necessary. For additional info contact Cindy or Kirk at Corner of Estate Drive & Airport Road, at the Boonville Airport. (707) 895-2949

Join us for a fun day at the Boonville Airport

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “My fame spreads. A nice lady from Ukiah stopped by the bunker to take my picture and present me with some special treats. I was gonna introduce her to Skrag but the dude was rolling around in the dirt of the planter box and generally looking unpresentable. People always talk about how neat and clean cats are. Not Skrag. He's a gas house grub like you've never seen. I think he might be a hippie!”

CATCH OF THE DAY, July 27, 2017

ERIKA CASTILLO-NUNEZ, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

MICHAEL COLEMAN, Willits. Probation revocation.

GREGORY CUADRA II, Ukiah. County parole violation.

IVAN DOMINGUEZ, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance transportation.

AMANDA DUMAN, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JESSICA FLOWERS, Oakland/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ROBERT FULLER, Fort Bragg. County parole violation.

KYLE GILLESPIE, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DONALD HARRISON, St. Helena/Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DANIEL MEINECKE, Leggett. First degree burglary, vandalism.

DANIEL NICHOLAS, Ukiah. Concealed dirk-dagger, failure to appear.

TYLOR ODELL, Fort Bragg. Vandalism, probation revocation.

JAMES RENICK JR., Redwood Valley. Community supervistion violation.

MICHAEL SANTOS, Nice/Redwood Valley. Receiving stolen property, conspiracy, probation revocation.

ASHLEY SMITH, Laytonville. Domestic battery.

STEVEN SULLIVAN, Redway/Ukiah. Probation revocation. (Photo not available.)

SHARON COLEMAN READS at LOBA this Saturday at Ukiah Library - 3pm

Join us for a reading with Berkeley-based poet Sharon Coleman! A writer for Poetry Flash, Sharon will be visiting the Ukiah Library to read from her recent books, Half Circle and Paris Blinks. Open mic follows. Teens & adults are invited to share poems in any form or style.  A feminist epic by Diane di Prima, LOBA is a visionary epic quest for the reintegration of the feminine, hailed by many as the great female counterpart to Allen Ginsberg's Howl when the first half appeared in 1978. Loba, "she-wolf" in Spanish explores the wilderness at the heart of experience, through the archetype of the wolf goddess, elemental symbol of complete self-acceptance.   Sharon Coleman's a fifth-generation Northern Californian with a penchant for languages and their entangled word roots. She writes for Poetry Flash, co-curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and co-directs the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She the author of a chapbook of poetry, Half Circle, and a book of micro-fiction, Paris Blinks, that came out from Paper Press in 2016.

Light refreshments will be served. For more information please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The clueless elites are blissfully clueless about a lot of things, a large number of which were enunciated by James Kunstler in this week’s commentary.

But don’t just take Jim’s word for it. For independent confirmation look at Chuck’s [Schumer] floundering missive in the pages of the exalted New York Times. So Chuck and his cohorts finally clued into the abundantly obvious. A wee bit late, no?

Superior education is what these people use to pull rank on the Deplorables. So Hillary got a degree at Wellesley College. Oh, and Yale. And Robbie Mook, Columbia. And John Podesta, Knox and Georgetown U. And Bill, Georgetown and Oxford!

So what the fuck for? All that waste of time and money.

And Chuck, my goodness me, scores a perfect 1600 on his SAT and then goes on to Harvard College. Not bad eh? Know what? His education would have been better had he just gone into his dad’s extermination business.

All these self-admiring intellectuals and self-proclaimed “progressives”, with all these expensive diplomas that trumpet their superiority, missed out, fucked up totally. Matter of fact, they’ve been fucking up and losing for years now.

Chuck sez in that column “we failed to communicate our values to show that we were on the side of the working people, not the special interests.” Makes me laugh. No Chuck, there was no mis-communication and no mis-understanding. You deplored and disdained American workers and you were on the side of the special interests and you communicated those values, in word and deed, just fine.

KMEC’S HEROES & PATRIOTS

Latest YouTube Video Update, Stephen Kinzer, author, journalist on Heroes and Patriots, KMEC Radio, Mendocino Environmental Center

Heroes and Patriots is a program about national security, intelligence and foreign policy.  The show is streamed live each Monday, 1 p.m., P.S.T. on www.kmecradio.org.  Like us on Facebook and YouTube at *Heroes and Patriots, KMEC Radio, Mendocino Environmental Center.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=heroes+and+patriots%2C+kmec+radio%2C+mendocino+environmental+center

CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR ACCUSES OPPONENTS OF BIG OIL'S CAP-AND-TRADE BILL OF 'POLITICAL TERRORISM'

by Dan Bacher

At Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay with the San Francisco skyline right behind him on July 25, Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 398 by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella), controversial legislation that extends California’s cap-and-trade program for another ten years until 2030.

“California is leading the world in dealing with a principal existential threat that humanity faces,” said Governor Brown at the signing ceremony. “We are a nation-state in a globalizing world and we’re having an impact and you’re here witnessing one of the key milestones in turning around this carbonized world into a decarbonized, sustainable future.”

Brown signed the legislation on Treasure Island because it was the same location where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 32 (the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006) that authorized the state’s cap-and-trade program more than a decade ago.

Schwarzenegger also spoke at the signing ceremony, along with  Senate President pro Tempore Kevin De León, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia and others.

Over 65 environmental justice, consumer and conservation groups strongly opposed the legislation that was based largely on a Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) wish list. Julia May, senior scientist at Communities for a Better Environment, summed up the many problems with AB 398:

“The Cap & Trade extension was written by the oil industry, is even worse than the current failed program, includes preemptions from local action, gives away so many free credits we will never meet climate goals, and allows oil refineries to expand indefinitely with no program for Just Transition to clean energy that is so desperately needed in environmental justice communities.”

May said cap-and-trade prevents local air quality agencies from establishing rules limiting greenhouse gases..

Brown, not known for handling criticism of his stances and policies well, accused opponents of the legislation from both the left and right of “political terrorism” in interviews on public radio stations.

In an interview last week with CapRadio's Ben Adler, Brown defended Republican Assembly Minority Leader Chad Mayes after he joined with Democrats on the cap-and-trade vote, incurring criticism from Republicans. In that interview, Brown  characterized those criticizing the legislation as wanting to bring the “political terrorism” of Washington to California.

Then on July 25, Brown criticized AB 398 critics of practicing “forms of political terrorism that are conspiring to undermine the American system of governance” in an interview with David Greene of NPR (National Public Radio) http://bit.ly/2eLu3g6 . Below is the relevant excerpt from the transcript:

BROWN: Yeah. We listened to a variety of opinions from a variety of points of view. And some of the folk on the left said, oh, you can't talk to oil companies. Are you talking to the Chamber of Commerce? Are you talking to the Farm Bureau? That's just horrible.

And then on the other side, The Wall Street Journal and some of the Republican activists said, you're a Republican. You can't vote for something that a Democrat would support. Well, both of those, in my view, are forms of political terrorism that are conspiring to undermine the American system of governance. 

Critics of  AB 398 were appalled by Brown characterizing their opposition as “political terrorism.”

RL Miller of Climate Hawks Vote said in a tweet after reading and hearing the NPR story: “@JerryBrownGov labels me political terrorist because I say#capandtrade extension shdn't start w/ Big Oil wish list n.pr/2v5BXYq.”  

In a brief phone interview, she commented, “ I was shocked that the Governor would go out of his way to accuse those who care most about climate change of ‘political terrorism’ just because we said the bill took its talking points from Chevron.”

Climate Hawks Vote also issued a statement in response to the “political terrorism" charge:

“We are shocked and saddened by Gov. Jerry Brown’s labeling as ‘political terrorism ‘ the opposition by over 65 environmental justice, climate, and progressive groups to AB 398, which extended California’s cap and trade law through compromises with the oil industry. We at Climate Hawks Vote came into documented proof that his proposals had their genesis in a Western States Petroleum Association wish list. Accordingly, over 11,000 Climate Hawks Vote members signed a petition to ask him to stop acting as Chevron’s stenographer on important policy questions such as offsets, regulatory overrides, and allowance giveaways. 

We are not political terrorists. We are people who agree with him that climate change, caused by oil companies and other fossil fuel interests, is an existential threat to organized human existence. We simply don’t agree with his solution: letting those same oil companies write California’s climate laws. Having shepherded the passage of his compromised bill, Brown could have elected to turn the page; instead, he’s lashing out at the climate movement for demanding a political approach sufficient to the severity of the climate crisis. We proudly stand with the climate justice movement of California in fighting for climate legislation that respects scientific necessity and the health and welfare of poor, black, and brown people in our state – and we expect to be fighting for visionary bills like California’s SB 100, to move California to a 100% renewable electricity standard by 2045. 

And in an era in which Donald Trump casually tosses around the label of ‘terrorism’ and demands that his political opponents be locked up, it’s sad to see Gov. Brown descending to this level of discourse. "  

The harm to human health and the environment resulting from AB 398 will impact people of color and low income communities the most. Michelle Chan, the vice president of programs at Friends of the Earth U.S., said 3,000 people will die prematurely because of the passage of the Big Oil-written bill.

“This is institutional racism: when a bipartisan legislature pushes through public policies like AB 398 that look at the ‘big picture’ and ‘mean well,’ but really just perpetuate patterns of inequality and discrimination,” she said in her alternet.org article: img.alternet.org/...

When it comes to criticism of his environmental policies, Brown appears to have a very thin skin. In May 2015 at a speech before the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA), Brown said opponents of the Delta Tunnels project, renamed the California Water Fix,  should just "shut up."  More information: kvcrnews.org/...

Governor Jerry Brown frequently poses as the “resistance to Trump” and vows that he will “defend science” against the Trump administration, but the Brown administration on July 22 revealed the hollowness of that vow as it approved flawed environmental documents that clear the path for the construction of the Delta Tunnels.

The Brown administration has also teamed up with the Trump administration to allow Big Oil to pollute aquifers in three major California oil fields in Kern County.

In spite of California's reputation as a "green leader, Big Oil is the largest corporate lobby in the state and exerts enormous influence over the Governor's Office, Legislature and regulatory agencies.

For more information on the big money behind AB 398, read: “Businesses Spent Millions Lobbying Before California’s Cap-and-Trade Vote” - ow.ly/RPuQ30dXM56

Background: California oil lobby tops spending in 2015-16 session with $36.1 million 

As usual, the California Oil Lobby was the biggest spender in the 2015-16 legislative session, spending an amazing $36.1 million as of December 31, 2016.

The spending amounts to $1.5 million per month — nearly $50,000 per day — over the last two years. The $36.1 million surpassed the $34 million spent in the prior session, according to an American Lung Association report.

The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) was the top overall oil industry spender during the 2015-16 session, spending $18.7 million. As is normally the case, WSPA ranked #1 among all lobbying spenders this session

Chevron, the second overall oil industry spender, spent $7 million in the 2015-16 session. It spent $3 million in 2016, sixth among all lobbyists in the current session.

In the seventh quarter alone, WSPA dumped $2.6 million into lobbying legislators and state officials while billionaire Tom Steyer's Next Generation Climate Action spent an unprecedented $7.3 million, almost 3 times the oil industry group’s expenses.

The spending by Steyer’s group helped propel the passage of Senate Bill 32, legislation that reduces greenhouse gas level to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, in spite of strong opposition by the oil industry.

Since the 2007-08 Session, the oil industry has spent $133 million in lobbying in California.

WSPA and Big Oil use their money and power in 5 ways: through (1) lobbying; (2) campaign spending; (3) getting appointed to positions on and influencing regulatory panels; (4) creating Astroturf groups: and (5) working in collaboration with media.

To read the complete report, go to: http://www.lung