Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Nov. 23, 2017

• Navarro Breached
• Willits News
• Weaving Badly
• Mental Oversight
• Missing Fellow
• Wild Outback
• Manchester Gossip
• Little Dog
• Quizzical Musing
• Martinez Wanted
• Debris Removal
• Tim Shea
• Yesterday's Catch
• Man Problem
• Senator Franken
• Sex Panic
• Red Currents
• Golden Days
• Morning After
• Light Festival
• Traffic Light
• PA Agenda
• Huge Oil

THE NAVARRO BREACHED late Tuesday night. 128 is open.

A WILLITS GUY comments on the demise of The Willits News:

"The Willits News situation is unfortunate for several reasons. The over a hundred year old publication was sold in the early 90’s by a local cabal of big shots who built it up just enough to off it to the highest bidder. Local offers were submitted but none were acceptable. So the paper sold to a nation wide corporate owner, Mead Publications. They eventually stripped it down and sold it again to Dean Singleton, a nationwide owner. It should be noted he owned the Coast papers, the UDJ and the Lake County pubs. Singleton got sick and Media News took over. They changed the name several times but in essence the players were and are the same.

Then several years ago two former Willits News employees bolted and started the Willits Weekly. Four years ago TWN’s Publisher retired, from there it was pretty much down hill… The new editor was law and order with little emphasis on local color, which by the way is the WW’s strength.

It seems to have a come down to the bottom-line, like everything ultimately does. They quietly gave notice, sold or gave away the furnishing, dumped the history and moved to Ukiah….

As a local I hope the WW is up to it, they have no office, I have no idea about who gets paid, and what their ultimate goal is. One of the owners is older, and the other is a silver spooner, something goes wrong and they could be gone too.

RIP The Willits News, just another empty, gutted building in Willits that was once a vibrant work place…”

A GUALALA WOMAN was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of driving under the influence and child endangerment after she crashed while exiting Highway 101 in Windsor with her two young children in the vehicle, CHP said.

Alexandra Hutcheson, 31, Gualala, was seen “weaving badly” in her Acura SUV while driving north on Highway 101 when she lost control on the Central Windsor exit around 4:20pm Tuesday and slammed into two vehicles stopped at the Old Redwood Highway intersection, according to the CHP. Her children, 2 and 7, were not injured and were taken to the Rohnert Park CHP office where their father picked them up.

Hutcheson was so drunk she was unable to perform a field sobriety test, but not so drunk that once in a patrol car she started kicking the windshield, computer and other items inside the cruiser, and the arresting officer had to pull over and request a patrol car with an interior divider to keep her confined en route to the Sonoma County Jail.

She was booked in Sonoma County Jail for felony child endangerment, misdemeanor DUI, obstructing an officer and violation of probation.

THE MENTAL HEALTH ADVISORY BOARD will see each supervisor appoint one person from his or her district to join the mental health pros on the advisory board. According to Supervisor McCowen, "We will have an agenda item 12/5 to discuss the appointment process. I think we will approve asking applicants to fill out the standard application form. It will then be up to each Supervisor to select a member who, if the Board approves, will be presented for formal appointment by the full Board."

A BETTER oversight committee might consist simply of a couple of retired accountants and one person who is an adherent of Dr. Peter Breggin. Mental Health spending in this county badly needs looking after, and mental health practices? Well, look who's out there on the streets.

GRANDFATHER HEADED FROM ARIZONA TO WASHINGTON STATE DISAPPEARS; BULLET RIDDLED CAR FOUND IN ZENIA

On Saturday, November 18, Keith Olsen was supposed to be at his granddaughter’s wedding in Washington. He never made it.

His worried family explained, “He was expected to arrive in the Seattle area no later than early evening of Wednesday, Nov. 15 to stay with his daughter on Vashon Island, WA before the wedding.” His family spoke to him on Monday, November 13 about 6 a.m. in the Sacramento area. He spoke to his daughter about 4 p.m. and said he was “on the 101.”

A rancher later said he saw Olsen’s red Camry on Zenia Lake Mt. Road on Monday, the 13th.

On Wednesday, his family reported him missing.

Olsen’s bullet riddled red 2011 Toyota Camry was located by law enforcement Saturday in the Zenia area of Trinity County at mile marker 18.5 on Zenia Lake Mountain Road. According to his family, “All of his belongings including his wallet, cell phone, cell phone charger, car keys and bags were found inside the vehicle.”

The family states, “The car battery was dead. The car was full of bullet holes but no blood or other signs of foul play – more as if someone had been using it for target practice.” Shooting abandoned vehicles is a common practice in the hills of western Trinity and eastern Humboldt.

The family are very worried and have arrived in Humboldt County to look for him and put up flyers. They report, “On Monday, Nov. 20, a search team for the Trinity County Sheriff’s Department searched the area [where the car was located] from dawn to dusk but didn’t find any sign of him…He is unsteady on his feet, and has several other medical issues, and couldn’t have walked very far from his car.”

According to a flyer they provided from the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office,

Mr. Olsen is described as white male, 5’11” tall, approximately 218 pounds, with grey hair and blue eyes. Mr. Olsen was driving a red 2011 Toyota Camry with an Arizona license plate number WCKCZ16 .

The family said, “We didn’t want him to drive but he is stubborn. The sheriffs department is attempting to get a search warrant for his phone in hopes of tracing its location over the past few days.”

If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Mr. Olsen please contact either the Yuma County Sheriff’s office at 926-783-4427 or the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office at (530) 623-2611.

Below is a Timeline of Events provided by the family:

Timeline:

Sunday, Nov. 12 or Monday, Nov. 13: He left his home in Yuma, AZ very early to drive to the Seattle area

Monday, Nov. 13: He spoke to his daughter, Kim, twice. At 6:30 a.m. he said he was near Sacramento at approximately 4:30 p.m. he said he was “on the 101” but no precise location provided. *

Monday, Nov. 13: His car was spotted parked on Zenia Lake Mountain Road but not reported.

Wednesday, Nov. 15: His family reported him missing after he failed to arrive and we had been unable to reach him since Monday afternoon. His cell phone had been going straight to voicemail the evening of Nov. 15, the Yuma County Sheriff’s Department put out a “Missing Person Bulletin” to all law enforcement agencies.

Thursday, Nov. 16: The Yuma County Sheriff’s Department issued a news release and posted it on its Facebook page.

Saturday, Nov. 18: His vehicle was towed from its location on Zenia Mountain Lake Road, which resulted in a match with the Missing Person Bulletin. This is the same day [as] the wedding of his granddaughter.

Sunday, Nov. 19 – His family learn to the location of his car and efforts began to mount a search team.

Monday, Nov. 20 – Trinity County sheriffs searchers scoured the area where are his car was found but no sign of him. Please help us get the word out. Contacts: Lieut. Chris Compton, Trinity County sheriffs department, 530-623-2611 Deputy Duarte, Yuma County Sheriff’s department, 928-783-4427 Thank you, Kris Olsen Daughter Seattle, WA

(Courtesy, Redheaded Black Belt / Kymkemp.com)

===============================

THE OLD GUY whose car was found shot up near Xenia remains missing. As you can see from Kym Kemp's story above from her invaluable website, kymkemp.com / Redheaded Blackbelt, the missing man had told relatives he was driving to Washington State from Yuma via Highway 101. How his vehicle wound up out there, not all that far from the grand junction of Trinity, Mendo and Humboldt counties is, at this time, a mystery. An outsider, let alone an old man in less than vigorous physical condition, would be unlikely to find his way to outlaw country.

UNTIL you drive around Mendocino County you can't understand how vast the county is. At least once a year I like to make a day trip from Boonville to Covelo, north on the Mina Road to Alderpoint, then west to Garberville, with stops at Kettenpom and, until it closed, the old store in Xenia. The Mina Road is a kind of alternate route for 101, which it parallels, and off which the dirt roads running in all directions could be your last mistake if you drive up or down one for a look around. Beautiful country, lots of bad hombres, and the women who love them (sic). People wanted by the law could hide out there unmolested the rest of their days. After the famous Covelo shootings of April, 1995 involving Bear Lincoln, and the deaths of deputy Bob Davis and Leonard 'Acorn' Peters, ignited by the earlier shooting death of Gene Britton, people close to Lincoln have told me that he eluded the massive police hunt for him on horseback, galloping out the Mina Road, and on into the maze of back roads where he was hidden by "hippies."

Farther back, and a little east of the Mina Road, George White, the nationally infamous "King of Round Valley," had his gunmen murder rival ranchers and random persons bold enough to be willing to testify against him for murdering his wife and attempting to murder another wife. A fascinating character called "Wylacki John" was White's chief gunsel.

A white man raised by Indians, Wylacki John was fluent in the regional dialects. And there was a black community in Covelo, circa 1870. One of White's thugs was a black cowboy. A drive out the Mina Road on a clear Fall day and this is the reverie that might accompany you.

IT'S STILL the rural custom in Humboldt and Trinity counties to vandalize vehicles left by the roadside more than a day or two. Used to happen around the Anderson Valley but the hipnecks — products of marriages, or no fault couplings between hippies and rednecks — who did it grew up, or at least got older and less energetic.

I HOPE the missing man emerges with a story to tell if he emerges to tell one, but that country tends to be unforgiving.

PURE GOSSIP re the recent shooting on the Manchester Road:

"Bernadette's home was invaded. Bernadette is an activist trying to get the Point Arena Airbase returned to the indians.

She's sponsored the acorn fest up at the Airbase the last two years. We (locals) think it may be eventually returned to the Indians, the way the Airforce is letting them use the space yearly. Gradual native take-back. Bernadette was home, but not hurt.

flickr.com/photos/coldwararchaeology/sets/72157629345634182/

Nicole Smith, the dead woman, was just staying over at sis Bernadette's, for the night. The niece, Star Brightman, a freshman in high school, lives with Bernadette now, because her folks are both dead. Grandma Linda lives across the road in her own home. Family name Smith - large Pomo family. They live on the Rancheria - not the Rez. Manchester side on Mountain View. They tried to come in through the window: Soto who was in the booking sheet of the AVA for November 15th, if you hit search on website. Ramon Soto. The other guy? They let Soto out of jail after his November 15th booking photo, to kill Nicole Smith.

They think Soto was after Bernadette and Nicole got it by mistake. Nicole shouldn't have been there.

They may have shot through the window and Star was asleep in a chair and they got her in the butt cheeks with a shotgun. She's home now and okay, except for the grief. Apparently, they all then ran to the front door inside and out… where the bastard Soto shot through the front door, hitting Nicole in the chest, killing her. Her ten year old son was there and he saw her get killed. Soto and the other guy then got in their truck (I'm just going by the noise it made when it took off like a bat outa hell!) and left for Ukiah! Truly, they drove all the way over Mountain View Road because they knew the cops wouldn't be there for another hour and no one to stop them on the Boonville end of Mountain View! He made it all the way to Ukiah where he was arrested.

Oh, and Soto called the cops right after he did it, at 6am, and told them he was at the casino where they maybe could get him(?). Lame, the casino doesn't open til 9am. Then Ramon Soto took off in the other direction: Ukiah. Cops are so NOT CSI on the Coast, I doubt they could track location of his cell phone or were "on” it.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I could pig out on Thanksgiving — no offense intended my porcine bros — but it takes discipline to do my job, and discipline I got.”

QUIZ THURSDAY?

Valley folks...

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. However, I for one will hopefully not be eating and drinking too much during the day Thursday as my commitment to supporting the exercising of your brains is unending, and I shall endeavor to present the Quiz as always at Lauren's tomorrow evening. Now I realize the restaurant is closed, and there will be no staff to cook and serve any food and drink, and I've not worked out how I will get into the building in the first place as I don't have a key, but I will not let these minor distractions deter me from attempting to provide the Valley with its much needed mental stimulation.

Nevertheless, if you decide not to come because sitting in the dark in a cold room with no food or drink is not your ‘cup of tea,’ or if I am not there having been arrested for trying to break in, or because I do indeed end up eating and drinking too much at home, then I do hope to see you for the next Quiz, Thursday, December 14th.

Yours in delusion and hope,

Steve Sparks / The QuizMaster

WARRANT WEDNESDAY

Andrew Martinez is Wanted

*PC 459/460(B) Burglary Second Degree X5

*PC 1170.12 SA Strike Prior

*PC 667.5(B) SA Prison Prior X3

$165,000 Bail

Age: 28 years old

Last known town/city: Ukiah

If you recognize this individual or have information which could lead to their arrest, please contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office at (707) 463-4086.

DEBRIS REMOVAL UPDATE

In the coming weeks, property owners in the fire affected areas will begin to see multiple government agencies working together to remove debris and hazardous materials from burned properties.

As part of the multi-agency response to the fires, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the early stages of work to remove asbestos-contaminated debris at fire-damaged properties. EPA teams have started work in the area to develop a plan for removal operations that will likely begin next week. Asbestos removal can take anywhere from several hours to a few days depending on the size of the property.

Questions about the EPA’s asbestos removal activities can be directed to EPA Public Information Officer Rusty Harris-Bishop at harris-bishop.rusty@epa.gov or at (415) 694-8840.

As originally planned, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District (USACE) will be performing general debris cleanup for individuals in the affected area who have returned their Right of Entry (ROE) forms. USACE staff will clean all other debris except asbestos.

USACE has established a Debris Removal Information Line for property owners affected by the fire. The number for the USACE Debris Removal Information Line is (877) 875-7681 and will be staffed from 8:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. daily. Property owners can also contact USACE via email at USACESupportToMendocino@usace.army.mil.

(Mendocino County Press Release)

END OF WATCH for Retired Mendocino County Sheriff Tim Shea

It is with great sadness that the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office announces the recent death of retired Sheriff Tim Shea.

Sheriff Shea held the office of Mendocino County Sheriff from 1982 to 1990 and will be remembered for his leadership and dedication in serving the community.

(Mendocino Sheriff Press Release)

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 22, 2017

AUSTIN ANDERSON, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

JESSE CONNOLLY, Redwood Valley. Failure to appear.

ZEBULON COUTHREN, Willits. DUI, suspended license. (Frequent flyer.)

MICHAEL DONAHE SR., Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

JOSHUA FOX, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

PAUL HOGAN, Willits. Controlled substance, felon in possession of a firearm.

JACK MATHIS (repost from yesterday with pic), Ukiah. Possession of assault weapon.

PENNY MATHIS, Ukiah. Grand theft of money, labor or property.

DONNA MAYFIELD, Willits. Pot cultivation over six plants, pot possession for sale, possession of ammo by prohibited person, felon-addict in possession of firearm.

JORGE OLIVEROS, Sacramento/Ukiah. “Dealer/etc. not determine ownership,” controlled substance.

RYAN RAYA, Ukiah. Parole violation.

JEREMIAH SUSAN, Fort Bragg. Witness intimidation, protective order violation, probation revocation.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

What is going on with men? I certainly don’t know and I don’t think they do either. Men usually aren’t forthcoming with the reasons they do stupid, violent things. But I don’t think the absence of a father figure can explain the lethargy and anger men seem to be living with. My own experience with a father was a very unpleasant one. The nuclear family model is one that is rife with abuse and exploitation. A man’s home is his castle whether it’s 500 or 5,000 square feet. His needs reign supreme. In the recent past, husbands and fathers could beat and rape their wives and children and the authorities were hesitant to get involved. A man had a right to control his family in the way he saw fit. And if he got tired of it all, he just left. In several biographies I have read about people who have created and achieved, most of their fathers were either absent or violent. So just growing up with an adult male in the household does not always equal success.

So why are they behaving like spoiled toddlers and shooting up the place? Men are encouraged to be anything they want to be. It is even acceptable for them to be incompetent bums. In contrast, women are conditioned to strive for perfection (good mommy/wife, attain arbitrary beauty standards). Society puts no such expectations on men. They are not required to achieve. They are not expected to take care of themselves or others. They have a female slave that does the repetitive maintenance (wife, mother, girlfriend, housekeeper). I believe that it is this inertia that leaves them uninspired and bored.

I really don’t care about men or their problems. I just want them to stop beating us, shooting us and using us as sperm receptacles. When the economy dies and the energy depletes, I believe human societies will resemble Afghanistan. Life will go back to being brutal and short. There will be no art or study. Human activities will revolve around providing men with food and orgasms. Men will still be violent. Women will die in childbirth and be physically punished for any perceived disobedience. Currently, this is reality for most women. Standard operating procedure in the male culture of death and depravity.

AL FRANKEN has represented me as a Senator from Minnesota. He carries the reputation as one of the more liberal senators in the US. What this means is still pretty unclear. Just months ago Franken was one of three co-sponsors of the dangerous Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2017. This bill looked to increase US interventionist powers. Franken has always been an enemy of the world’s people, even when he wooed liberal appeal at home. In the current political climate imperialism and sexual harassment seem to be the only things we can count on.

— Nick Pemberton

THE GREAT AMERICAN SEX PANIC OF 2017

by William Kaufman

I confess to being troubled rather than elated by the daily rumble of idols falling to accusations of “sexual misconduct,” the morbid masscult fixation that conceals private titillation, knowing smirks, and sadistic lip-smacking behind a public mask of solemn reproof.

Weinstein and Trump and Roy Moore and Bill Clinton are vile pigs and creeps, no doubt; I have always detested the smug neoliberal performance-art strut of Al Franken and the careerist-toady journalism of Glenn Thrush and Charlie Rose, the latest dominoes to tumble amid the barrage of public accusations of “inappropriate” advances or touching.

But the boundary between cultural tolerance/intolerance blurs and shifts with each passing revelation, as the litany of sins, ancient or recent, cardinal or venal, snowballs into an avalanche of aggrieved, undifferentiated accusation—a stampeding herd of “Me-Tooists.” Successive waves of long-forgotten gropes and slurps now overwhelm the news channel chyrons, leaving us with the sense that no greater crime against humanity is possible than an unsolicited horndog lunge of the hand or tongue, some of them from twenty or thirty years past but divulged only in the past few weeks.

Let’s be honest—these “shocking” revelations about Franken—that he tried to tongue-kiss a woman one time in a rehearsal and mock-grabbed her somnolent breasts in a silly frat-house pose or that maybe his hand strayed too far toward a woman’s derriere as he obliged her with a photo at a state fair five years ago—would have elicited nothing more than a public yawn just a few weeks or months ago in the BW (Before Weinstein) era; in fact, these two women, seemingly unperturbed enough to leave these incidents unreported for five or six years, would likely not have thought to join the solemn procession of the violated on national TV if not for the stampede effect of each successive cri de coeur.

But is it an advance in collective ethical consciousness when the public reservoir of shock and indignation is so easily churned up and tapped out over erotic peccadillos? And here I must of course distinguish between outright rape—always a viscerally sickening crime against human dignity— or implied or explicit threats to a woman worker’s livelihood over sexual “favors” on the one hand, and on the other the impetuous volcanic eruptions of erotic passion that inevitably leave one or both partners discomfited or embarrassed or forlorn by unexpected or unwelcome overtures, tactile or verbal. As the left blogger Michael J. Smith points out, “Not all acts are equally grave—an off-color joke is not as bad as a grope, and a grope is not as bad as a rape.”

Then what interest of sanity or reason is served by this reckless lumping together of flicks of the tongue and forcible rapes into the single broad-brush term “sexual misconduct,” as though there is no important difference between an oafish pat or crude remark at an office party and a gang rape? This would be like applying the term “communist” alike to advocates of single payer healthcare and campaigners for one-party centralized control of the entire economy—oh wait, we have seen precisely that: during the McCarthy era. Now then … is all this beginning to have a familiar ring to it?

And not merely deeds but words have fallen under scrutiny: on Sunday Jeffrey Tambor joined the ranks of the accused, walking the plank by quitting his acclaimed Amazon series Transparent in the wake of two allegations of the use of “lewd” language in front of his assistant and a fellow actor. So the stain of ostracism has now spread from conduct to mere speech.

Alarmingly, the Pecksniffian word lewd has enjoyed a recent rehabilitation among the corporate-media “news” networks, cogs in giant infotainment conglomerates whose cash flow depends precisely on mass dissemination of HD depictions of explicit sexual “lewdness” and violence that their news departments then deplore when evidenced in real life. “Lewd” enjoyed a boomlet during the presidential campaign when the pro-Clinton newsies and talking-head strategists were professing daily bouts of horror at the revelations of the Donald’s coarse frat-boy talk on Access Hollywood. This seems to have been the first time this word had gained any traction since seventeenth-century Salem and Victorian England. This battalion of elite lewdness police are the same Ivy League graduates who in college probably considered Henry Miller a genius, not in spite of, but because of, his portrayal of raw lust in language that makes Trump’s private palaver or Tambor’s japes seem tepid and repressed by comparison. (It’s not impossible that some of these same people consider Quentin Tarantino, cinematic maestro of the vile obscenities of language and violence, a great auteur as well.) The whole spectacle is at once comical and nauseating.

And it indeed looks as though huge swaths of the world’s art and literature, from Pindar to Botticelli to Shakespeare to Joyce to Updike, will soon fall to the axe of the lewdness police. Let’s say that a college English professor, in a unit on American Transcendentalism, assigns the Whitman poem “I Sing the Body Electric,” and reads the poem aloud to his students, including the following passage:

This is the female form,

A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,

It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,

I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,

Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,

Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable,

Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused,

Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,

Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice,

Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,

Undulating into the willing and yielding day,

Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

What if just one woman student were to wilt in distress at the sound of “quivering jelly of love” and then report the professor for imposing “lewd” and disturbing language on his students? Would he be hauled before the Ethics Committee? Stripped of tenure? Forced to resign? You find this preposterous? Then consider the following report from The Atlantic on the alarming trend of bowdlerizing the great canon of Western literature because of potentially offensive erotic content:

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking the writer’s fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. … A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses. … Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. … Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response.

For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.

And this virus of censorious American PC puritanism has leapt across the Atlantic to inhibit even the teaching of Shakespeare—yes, Shakespeare—at British universities, as reported just last month in the The Independent:

Academics have criticised “trigger warnings” after Cambridge University students were warned about “potentially distressing topics” in plays by Shakespeare. English literature undergraduates were apparently cautioned that a lecture focusing on Titus Andronicus and The Comedy of Errors would include “discussions of sexual violence” and “sexual assault.” According to The Telegraph, the trigger warnings were posted in the English Faculty’s “Notes on Lectures” document which is circulated to students at the university. Academics have expressed concern that colleges trying to protect young adults from certain issues may render them incapable of dealing with real life when they graduate. Supporters of trigger warnings say they serve to help students who may be upset if a text reminds them of a personal traumatic experience.

However, critics such as Mary Beard, a Professor of Classics at Cambridge, say allowing students to avoid learning about traumatic episodes of history and literature is “fundamentally dishonest.” Beard said previously: “We have to encourage students to be able to face that, even when they find they’re awkward and difficult for all kinds of good reasons.” David Crilly, artistic director at The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, said: “If a student of English Literature doesn’t know that Titus Andronicus contains scenes of violence they shouldn’t be on the course.”

But voices of sanity such as Beard’s and Crilly’s may be fighting a noble but lost cause against the PC cultural vigilantes, clamoring for the blood of the next prominent stumbler into errant sexual expression, in the lecture hall or office or rehearsal hall or bar. But if we may be allowed to descend from the High Courts of Sexual Inquisition to the land of the living—that is, the merely fallible, sex-tormented mortals who actually make up the human race—who hasn’t lived through anguished or comical moments, either as predator or prey or both at once, in the throes of the temporary madness of desire? And did such impulsive leaps of lust or passion strike anyone as a cause for ritual mass tongue-lashing and tongue-clucking and compulsive daily confessionals and public media crucifixions in the BW era, except perhaps among the most severe of anti-sex feminists like Andrea Dworkin, who considered every heterosexual act of intercourse to be a form of rape? Did anyone but reactionary blue-noses think about suppressing or avoiding the works of Henry Miller? Or D.H Lawrence? Or even Al Goldstein?

Yet now even Shakespeare finds himself on the PC Index. Among the sexual-politics contingents of early second-wave feminists, there were, to be sure, literary eviscerations and cultural firestorms, but nothing like the current pell-mell instant media arraignment for crimes against humanity warranting public investigations, tribunals, denunciations and career death sentences. It all smacks of the hellfire zeal of a religious persecution, a jarring devolution of establishment liberals into old-fashioned American sexual head hunters and cultural bluenoses in the tradition of their forebears in Salem and the fundamentalist South.

Betraying a fundamentally elitist impulse to manage and control, the PC inquisitors instinctively recoil from the unruly tempests of human sexuality—the source of desire, the driving torrent of all passion and pleasure, the wellspring of life itself—that at times deafens and blinds and exalts all of us. With the soul of an accountant and the temperament of the professional manager, the PC inquisitors seeks to confine the Dionysian chaos of Eros within the strictures of a bureaucratic handbook of procedure and etiquette, as though a sexual impulse or encounter were a banking transaction or a court proceeding. Thus do the neoliberal elites conduct this front in their incessant war on nature, including the unruly source of nature itself: behold the dismaying spectacle of these joyless, bloodless mortals doing futile battle with the god Eros. The vigilantes cannot win this battle, of course, but they can inflict needless damage on reputations, careers, on our entire cultural heritage in enforcing their groupthink compendium of trigger warnings, speech codes, and rules of order.

Something surpassingly strange is at work here—a wrong-headed authoritarian ire over the spasmodic misfires of the human comedy combined with some primal meltdown of a besieged and increasingly desperate ruling class and its longstanding winking sexual hypocrisies. It is a moral panic that is, ironically, immoral at its core: repressive and diversionary, an identity-politics orgy of misdirected moral energies that breeds a chilling conformity of word and deed and, in so doing, cripples the critical faculties and independence of spirit needed to challenge the status quo the PC monitors profess to abhor. In reality, their speech and conduct codes foster a spirit of regimentation rather than rebellion, thereby shoring up the power of the repressive elites that are leading the human race to social, economic, and ecological disaster.

So this is not just a moral panic—but a bizarre inversion of values in which Bill Clinton can murder 500,000 Iraqi children, throw millions of poor women and their children off welfare, and instigate the global rule of transnational corporations with NAFTA, but he is not impeached or stigmatized for any of those atrocities but rather for a workplace blowjob; in which Hillary Clinton can lead the charge for the destruction of Libya, reducing that country to primeval rubble, and is not only not fired or ostracized but is rewarded with the Democrats’ presidential nomination and lauded by corporate feminists as a champion of “inclusiveness”; in which Barack Obama pushed fraudulent health-care reform that leaves a barbaric 27 million people with zero coverage and millions more with crippling premiums and deductibles that render their “coverage” all but unusable, thus sentencing tens of thousands of people to death every year because they cannot afford timely medical care, and dropped 26,171 pounds of bombs in 2016 alone, and yet he is not only not reviled and abominated as a con artist but is worshipped as an icon of enlightened governance; in which the entire ruling elite and its associates in the corporate media are chronically underplaying—indeed, scarcely mentioning—the gravity of the climate change crisis, which would merely spell the end of the human species within a hundred years, yet no copycat 24/7 umbrage or five-alarm indignation on the part of anyone in those elite circles or their acolytes over this unprecedented planetary emergency.

Hence the long-buried, freshly unearthed ego bruises of the privileged identity-politics crowd eclipse mass murder and ecocide on the outrage meters of this country’s opinion shapers. The same solemn cohort—mostly white and middle-class, many of them ardent McResistance DNC partisans (or, in the case of Leean Tweeden, Franken’s tongue-kiss accuser, a movement conservative who twice voted for George W. Bush)—is so easily roused to near-apoplexy about a naughty lunge of the hand or tongue yet discreetly ignores or openly cheers on unparalleled crimes against humanity: endless debilitating wars against nameless enemies abroad, the toxic mercenary corruption and annihilation of democracy, staggering political/social inequality (the top one percent of the world’s population now owns half of the world’s wealth), and ecocide everywhere—committed and abetted with impunity by the PC brigades’ culture heroes like the Clintons and Obama and their cohorts in the media and the corporate/political elites.

So yes—prosecute the rapists and pedophiles and let them suffer in jail. But you will excuse me if I stand aside from the stampede of outrage about Al Franken’s wayward tongue or even Donald Trump’s juvenile frat-house boasts while the world teeters on the brink. The scale of values of this country’s liberal elites, and the issues that fuel and exhaust their capacity for outrage, border on moral dementia. Their vaunted “values” lead us not to virtue and to spiritual renewal, but to the nauseating sanctimony of the custodians of a charnel house—to the abyss.

(William Kaufman is a writer and editor who lives in New York City. He can be reached at kman484@earthlink.net.)

BASKETBALL IN THE GOLDEN STATE WITH LEGENDARY NBA SCRIBE JACK MCCALLUM

This week, we talk to Hall of Fame NBA journalist Jack McCallum about his new book Golden Days: West's Lakers, Steph's Warriors, and the California Dreamers Who Reinvented Basketball. McCallum details the influence Jerry West had on two golden eras of basketball in California and he tells you what teams have the best shot to dethrone the Warriors in the years to come.

We have some Choice Words about NFL Thanksgiving and their revealing choice to let the team in the nation's capital host the primetime game. This week demanded two Just Stand Up awards: Shout out to South Carolina women's basketball head coach, Dawn Staley and Marshawn Lynch make a statement in the same country that is synonymous with athlete-activists.

We'll take you on a trip to the White House for the Just Sit Your Ass Down award and read you a terrific letter from a listener about how we report on the #MeToo movement.

https://soundcloud.com/edgeofsports

FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS 2017

The 8th annual Festival of Lights begins this Friday, November 24 and runs each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (rain or shine) through December 17.

Take a stroll along the Gardens’ twinkling pathways lined with inventive displays. Warm up and wind down in a beautifully decorated tent complete with live music, local craft brews, and some of the best wine Mendocino County has to offer. The Holiday Sweets Cafe offers hot cocoa, spiced cider, and homemade goodies baked by members of Friends of the Gardens.

Adult tickets are $10 and children age 16 and under attend for free. Tickets for the Festival of Lights are available for purchase at The Garden Store or on our website (until noon Friday, Nov 24), www.gardenbythesea.org/fol.

Helpful Hints:

Get your tickets in advance for a more speedy entry. Tickets are available now at the Gardens’ gift shop, Harvest Market, Out of This World, and on the Gardens’ website (until noon Friday, Nov 24), www.gardenbythesea.org/fol.

New This Year - Take advantage of the Festival Shuttle and avoid the parking lot hustle and bustle. The parking shuttle will be available each night of the Festival of Lights. The shuttle will pick up from the Mendocino Community College parking lot at 1211 Del Mar Dr, Fort Bragg, CA 95437 beginning at 4:45 PM and take you directly to the Gardens' entrance. The last shuttle pick-up from the College parking lot will be at 6:45 PM.

Visit on S’mores Sunday and avoid the major crowds. ps. We are adding complimentary s'mores to the mix each Sunday!

Schedule:

• 11/24 Jim & Morning Nichols - Blues, jazz, and country
• 11/25 Francis Vanek Quartet - Jazz
• 11/26 Matt Westmorland - Bluegrass and honky-tonk
• 12/1 Chuck Tourtillott - Classic rock, country, folk, and blues .  *featuring Goldeneye Winery
• 12/2 Fort Bragg High School Choir . *featuring Foursight Wines
• 12/3 Business Casual - A cappella funk, folk, pop, soul, swing, and R&B
• 12/8 Dorian May Trio - Jazz . *featuring Navarro Vineyards & Winery
• 12/9 Shug-A-Pea - Eclectic contemporary . *featuring Fetzer Wines
• 12/10 Mendocino High School Choir
• 12/15 Pura Vida - Salsa (Cuban rumba, mambo, chachacha, cumbia, samba)
• 12/16 Aaron Ford - American roots music
• 12/17 The Groovinators - Blues, jazz, and swing

Live music nightly. *On select nights local wineries are pouring. Those evenings will still be a cash bar and craft brews by North Coast Brewing Company will still be available.

"The Fort By Me"

MENDOCINO COUNTY’S MOST HEAVILY (ILL) GOVERNED TOWN

Point Arena City Council

Mayor Scott Ignacio ~ Vice Mayor Barbara Burkey ~ Richey Wasserman ~ Jonathan Torrez ~ Anna Dobbins

Agenda - November 28, 2017

REGULAR SESSION - 6:00 p.m.

City Hall - 451 School St.

I. Call To Order & Roll Call

II. Reading – Mayor Ignacio

III. Approval Of Agenda

IV. Mayor’s Reports/Announcements

1. Council Reports
2. City-Related Travel Reports
3. Council Committee & Commission Reports
4. Privilege Of The Floor (Public Comment Period)

VII. Consent Calendar

1. A) Treasurer’s Report
2. B) Approval of City Council Minutes
3. Regular Council Meeting October 24, 2017

VIII. Public Hearings - Public Hearings are generally scheduled for a time certain of 6:00 P.M. or soon thereafter, unless noticed otherwise. All items listed under this section are for discussion and possible action.

1. A) Public Hearing on Submission of a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Application for a Planning & Technical Assistance Grant (PTAG)

Recommended Action:

1. Consider approving the submission of the Planning & Technical Assistance Grant application for funding to do a feasibility study for a Senior Center facility as part of the renovation of the Veteran’s Hall or as a separate facility.
2. Approve resolution 2017-20 supporting the application.
3. Direct staff and the Ad Hoc committee to work with the Coastal Seniors to develop an MOU for the execution of the grant if it is awarded.
4. B) Public Hearing on an Ordinance Regulating and Licensing Cannabis Businesses and Cannabis Cultivation in Point Arena Public Hearing on an Ordinance “Regulating Marijuana Cultivation, Processing, Testing, Delivery, and Marijuana Dispensaries in the City of Point Arena”

Recommended Action:

1. Introduce by title only and waive reading of the Ordinance.
2. Discuss an ordinance to Regulate Cannabis Cultivation and License Cannabis Businesses.
3. Open the public hearing and take public comment
4. Approve or amend the ordinance
5. Set a final public hearing date for the regular City Council Meeting on December 19, 2017 for adoption of City Ordinance 232.
6. Reports/Action Items – all items in this Agenda section are for discussion and possible action.
7. A) Naming the Park at Arena Cove

Recommendation:

1. Review results of informal poll.
2. Choose a name or further direct Staff.
3. B) City of Point Arena 2018 Master Calendar

Recommendation:

1. Discuss and approve proposed City of Point Arena Master Calendar
2. C) Measure AC TOT Allocation and Projects Discussion

Recommendation:

1. Discuss the “Advisory Measure AD “and how the council will determine the use of “Measure AC” funds
2. Consider an Ad Hoc Committee
3. D) Discussion of the Use and Management of the Community Garden

Recommendation

1. Receive Report
2. Appoint and Ad Hoc Committee address Community Garden Policies
3. E) Discussion of State Regulations Requiring a Security Guard at All Dispensaries

Recommendation:

1. Discuss Issue and Direct Staff
2. City Manager/City Attorney Reports

• Recology Transition
• BLM Contract
• Cannabis Tax Report
• Local Transportation Fund

1. Future Agenda Items

• Regular City Council Meeting December 19th
• Public Hearing on an Ordinance Regulating and Licensing Cannabis Businesses and Cannabis Cultivation in Point Arena.
• Resolution establishing Cannabis Business Licensing Fees

XII Closed Session – Conference with Labor Negotiators (§54957.6)

XIII. Adjournment

BIG OIL SPENT MORE ON CA LOBBYING IN FIRST 6 MONTHS OF 2017 THAN IN ALL OF 2016

by Dan Bacher

The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and other publications have touted Governor Jerry Brown and other state officials as the “resistance” to Donald Trump’s pro-oil industry policies in recent articles, but the reality on the ground is much different.

In fact, the oil industry in the single largest corporate lobby in Sacramento — and dominates spending on lobbying every legislative session. Every bill opposed by the oil industry with the exception of one has failed to pass out of the Legislature over the past three years, due to the gusher of Big Oil lobbying money.

The oil industry spent more on lobbying in California, $16,360,618, in the first six months of 2017 than was spent by the industry in all of 2016, $16.0 million.

This translates to an average of $2.7 million per month – $90,000 per day – since Jan. 1, 2017, according to a report compiled and written by William Barrett of the Lung Association in California. Over the past ten years, oil lobbying in California has topped $150 million.

Chevron ranks #1 among all lobbyist spenders in the current session with $7.1 million spent in first six months of 2017, compared to $3 million total in 2016.

Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), normally the largest spender of all lobbying organizations, was the 2nd overall spender in the first two quarters of 2017 with $3.9 million spent.

Furthermore, oil money ranked #1-3 among all California lobbyist spending from January through June 2017, with Chevron spending $7,130,322, WSPA $3,916,353 and Tesoro $2,452,913.

“Of the $16.4 million spent this session, Chevron, WSPA, Tesoro and Valero collectively disbursed $8.8 million to the ‘Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy (CARE) Coalition,’” the report noted. “Of that $8.8 million, the CARE Coalition spent approximately $1.3 million as of June 30, 2017 on climate policy lobbying according to the most recent disclosure data.”

To read the full report, go to: www.lung.org/...

The gusher of oil money to influence California officials continued from July through September. The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), the most powerful corporate lobbying group in Sacramento, spent $2,290,408.89 in the third quarter of the 2017-2018 Legislative Session to promote Big Oil’s agenda in California, topping all over organizations in lobbying expenses and regaining it’s position from Chevron.

Chevron dished out the second largest amount of any organization in the third quarter, with $1.1 million spent last quarter.

The third biggest spender during the third quarter was the California State Council of Service Employees with $870,675 spent, while the fourth largest was the California Chamber of Commerce with $769,919 in lobbying expenses.

WSPA and Chevron used their millions to push through Governor Jerry Brown’s cap and trade legislation, AB 398, a bill that was based on a WSPA and Chevron “wish list,” and to defeat SB 188, legislation to block new oil drilling off the California coast.

Governor Brown and legislators celebrated the passage of AB 398 as a “historic climate victory,” while over 65 environmental justice, conservation and public interest organizations slammed the bill because of the devastating impact they said it will have on front line communities, the people of California and our air and water.

Adam Scow, California Director of Food & Water Watch, revealed that the controversial bill gives loopholes and tax breaks to corporate polluters that could actually result in more, not less, emissions.

“The bill, heavily influenced by the oil and gas industry, makes California’s flawed cap-and-trade system worse by allowing excessive allowances to pollute and preventing local regulation of greenhouse gases,” said Scow. “The climate crisis demands that the State regulate and reduce pollution quickly, but this bill gives polluters loopholes and tax breaks that could result in increased emissions. California’s cap-and-trade system cannot be considered a model for any state or nation that takes the climate crisis seriously.”

WSPA and Chevron also used the money to defeat Senate Bill 188, a bill authored by Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) to prohibit new pipelines or other infrastructure needed to support new federal oil and gas development.

Jointly authored by Senate Leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), SB 188 would protect the California coast by “prohibiting the State Lands Commission from approving any new leases for pipelines, piers, wharves, or other infrastructure needed to support new federal oil and gas development in the three mile area off the coast that is controlled by the state.”

Senator Jackson introduced SB 188 in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order opening the door to expanded offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters off the California coast. The defeat of SB 188 is a big victory for the oil industry and the Trump administration — and proves the hollowness of California’s highly touted image as the nation’s “green leader,” as constantly promoted by mainstream media and state officials.

Ironically, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, who led the oil industry effort to defeat the bill to protect the coast from offshore oil drilling, chaired the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called marine protected areas in Southern California. She also served on the MLPA task forces to create “marine protected areas” on the Central Coast, North Central Coast and North Coast.

The “marine protected areas” created under Reheis-Boyd’s helm fail to protect the ocean from offshore oil drilling, fracking, pollution, military testing and all human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering. Yet MLPA advocates cynically promoted the questionable process to create “marine protected areas” under the oil lobbyist leadership as “open, transparent and inclusive.”

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

While Brown portrays himself as a "climate leader," he has in fact been one of the biggest advocates of Big Oil’s agenda in the Governor’s Office in recent decades. Brown received over $9.8 million in contributions from oil, gas and utility companies, often within days of winning big political favors, according to Consumer Watchdog's "Brown's Dirty Hands" report released in August 2016.

“The timing of energy industry donations around important legislation and key pro-industry amendments, as well as key regulatory decisions in which Brown personally intervened, raises troubling questions about whether quid pro quos are routine for this administration,” said consumer advocate Liza Tucker, report author. “While Brown paints himself as a foe of fossil fuels, his Administration promoted reckless oil drilling, burning dirty natural gas to make electricity, and used old hands from industry and government, placed in key regulatory positions, to protect the fossil fuel-reliant energy industry.”

The report claims that twenty-six energy companies including the state’s three major investor-owned utilities, Occidental, Chevron, and NRG—all with business before the state—donated $9.8 million to Jerry Brown’s campaigns, causes, and initiatives, and to the California Democratic Party since he ran for Governor. You can download the report here: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/dirtyhands

Background: Big Oil spent $36.1 million lobbying in 2015-16 session

The California Oil Lobby was the biggest spender in the 2015-16 legislative session, spending an amazing $36.1 million on lobbying over the two-year period. Based on the oil industry lobbying over the past two quarters, it looks like the industry may set a new spending record this session.

Big Oil spending last session amounted to $1.5 million per month — nearly $50,000 per day. The $36.1 million surpassed the $34 million spent in the prior session, according to an American Lung Association report. To read the complete report, go to: www.lung.org/… 

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 last session. In the seventh quarter alone, WSPA dumped $2.6 million into lobbying legislators and state officials.

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

The only bill opposed by the oil industry that made it out of the legislature to be signed by Governor Jerry Brown was Senate Bill 32, legislation that reduces greenhouse gas level to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The reason for the bill’s passage was because billionaire Tom Steyer’s Next Generation Climate Action spent $7.3 million lobbying for the bill in the seventh quarter of the session.

Since the 2007-08 Session, the oil industry has spent over $150 million in lobbying in California when you include the figures for the first two quarters of 2017. 

For more information, go to www.dailykos.com/…