Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Dec. 3, 2017

• Find Mario
• Basketball Scores
• Rafiki & Zoey
• Grange Dinner
• Alexy Missing
• Jarnail Acquitted
• Little Dog
• Erin Missing
• Ousting Trump
• Ukiah Drifters
• Changing Weedscape
• Toy Run
• Tech Insurgency
• Wildfire Lawsuits
• Yesterday's Catch
• Abandoned
• Puritanical
• Tax Bill
• Salmon Report
• Pathological Liar
• Wyoming
• Sports Media
• Bolshie Error
• Marco Radio

THE FORT BRAGG POLICE Department is requesting the public’s assistance with locating Mario Mejia. Mejia is wanted for questioning regarding an incident which took place earlier Saturday. If you have any information about Mejia’s current whereabouts please contact the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707) 964-0200.

REDWOOD CLASSIC, FRIDAY, Dec. 2, 2017

Cloverdale 72, Clear Lake 54.

Hoopa Valley 61, Laytonville 48.

Anderson Vlaley 57, Tule Lake 42.

Argonaut 64, Pinewood 50.

Branson 74, Clear Lake 32.

Stuart Hall 85, Fort Bragg 33.

(Ed note: It’s beginning to look like Branson v. Stuart Hall in the finals. But last year’s winner Cloverdale is still a serioius contender.)

PETS 'O THE WEEK

Rafiki is a bundle of fun! He’s a 3 month old, male kitten who is very affectionate. Rafiki is an active kitten who plays non-stop with his litter mates. If considering him for adoption, make sure you get plenty of toys for this guy! We still have a lot of young, adorable kittens available for adoption.  Even if you can't adopt, our kittens love company, so feel free to come spend time at the Shelter playing  with the cats and kittens.

Zoey came to the shelter with another dog during the fires, and now she's looking for a new home. She is a 6 year old, spayed female, mixed breed dog who weighs 87 pounds (and she needs to lose a few of those 87!). Zoey is a very sweet dog; she knows sit, and she'll roll over for belly rubs. She has lovely kennel manners and she's easy to leash up and walk. During her photo session, we were smitten with Zoey's sweet and calm manner--she was so loving. Zoey is a senior dog, and thus, she's eligible for our senior dog discount. We'd love to see this fire "orphan" find a warm, loving home. Zoey would be a great companion for an older person.

The Ukiah Animal Shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah; adoption hours are Tuesday - Saturday 10 am to 4:30 pm and Wednesday till 6:30 pm. To view photos and bios of our adoptable dogs and cats, please us visit online at www.mendoanimalshelter.com or visit the  shelter. Join us the 2nd  Saturday of every month for our "Empty the Shelter" pack walk and help us get every dog out for some exercise!  For more information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

HOLIDAY DINNER AT THE GRANGE

Sunday, December 10th starting at 5:30pm. The tradition continues.

The AV Grange and Foodshed invites you and family to the Holiday Community Potluck Dinner. The Grange and Foodshed provides the turkey, lamb, pork,  mashed potatoes and gravy. We buy as local as we can. We ask that you bring the "trimmings", salads, deserts, veggie options,bread, drinks, oh, and bring your own eating utensils and plates, that really helps.  Everyone pitches in put this shindig on. There is still time to sign up to help decorate, setup, work in the kitchen, set up and serve in the dining hall, and cleanup. Call or email Barbara Lewallen 895-2996, babs@mcn.org

It's one of the nicest ways for valley folk to get together. Wonderful to see the big hall full of our friends and neighbors. We may break out the piano and a ukelele or two may even show up!

EVERYONE WELCOME!

WHERE'S ALEXY?

Lake County Sheriff Issues 'Bolo'

Looking For 'At Risk' Female Missing Friday

The Lake County Sheriff issued the following press release Friday:

"On Friday, December 1st, 24-year-old Alexy Rei Jenkins was reported missing by her family to Lake County Sheriff's Office. Jenkin's family last spoke to her at 4:22 am on 12/01/17 via text message. The content of the text message was unusual in nature. Jenkins has not been heard of since.

Jenkins is described as 5'7" tall, approximately 120 pounds, brown hair (sometimes colored blonde), with blue eyes. Jenkins has a tattoo on her right arm (not specified).

Jenkins is known to frequent the Clearlake, Lucerne, and Clearlake Oaks area. If you have any information or know the whereabouts of Jenkins please contact Lake County Sheriff's Office Central Dispatch at 707-263-2690."

BAHIA FOUND NOT GUILTY in Fort Bragg trial

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from its deliberations Thursday to acquit the charged defendant of both pending criminal charges.

Jarnail Jashawn Singh Bahia, age 23 of Fort Bragg, was found not guilty of battery with serious bodily injury and assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury, both felonies.

The prosecutor who presented the People's evidence to the jury was Deputy District Attorney Kevin Davenport. The investigating law enforcement agency was the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman presided over the two-day trial that was held in the Ten Mile division of the Superior Court in Fort Bragg.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “All these famous pervs! Well, I can assure all my fans that I may be a dog, but I'm not a dawg!”

WHERE’S ERIN?

Press release from Arcata Police Department:

On November 30th, 2017, Erin Elizabeth Henry, a Humboldt State University student, was reported missing to the Arcata Police Department.

Henry was last seen by a roommate in the 100 Blk of Samoa Blvd on 11/25/2017. She has not been seen or heard from since. Henry’s wallet, cell phone and car were located at her residence. Henry had recently suffered a broken ankle and is not able to walk without the aid of crutches or a knee scooter.

Henry’s disappearance is out of character, according to friends and family.

Henry is described as a 22-year-old white female, 5 foot 8 inches, thin build with blond hair and hazel eyes. Henry has a distinctive tattoo on her left forearm of a large red poppy flower with the inscription “Anna Rowland 1993-2016” written along the stem (photos are available on the APD Facebook page)

Anyone who has seen Erin Henry or has information as to her whereabouts is asked to call the APD.

ED NOTES

“Number one, you better get yourself right with God, and that means Jesus Christ. And number two, if they kill Trump or remove Trump when they’ve committed all these crimes, and done everything they say he’s done, when people see the economy turboing back, with real jobs and real money and real optimism to the average person and classic Americana being promoted and détente with Christian Russia and standing up to North Korea and securing our borders and just delivering at a dizzying level—it’s biblical—if we allow the evil people that hijack this country, the globalists, to remove Trump with all this fraud and if we buy into the hype and if we’re not strong and we don’t speak out, if these crazy globalists that don’t know how or when to give up are actually able to remove Trump—I’m gonna walk through the scenarios for that coming up, because they mean business, they said he’ll be gone by the end of December, remember our intel from high-level Congressional sources? Just a few months ago—this is it!”  — Alex Jones, Info Wars

TALK ABOUT an alternate universe! I've only seen a couple of clips of this guy, and each time he made me laugh with his breathless paranoia rattled off in a raspy, passionate voice. At one level he puts on a great comic show. But he isn't funny when you realize that millions of people get their opinions from him, including a gaggle of young guys here in the Anderson Valley. They even buy the junk Jones sells on his website, which includes viagra and vitamin pills and, of course, camo outfits. (There's a negative correlation between the camo buddies and real life military service — few of them have served. Trump himself took a phony medical out to avoid Vietnam. What was it, alleged bone spurs in his heels?) So far, the camo clowns don't have the caliber of leadership they'll need to kick off an effective civil war, if Alex Jones' fantasy should come to life. And should it come to it, they'd be quickly mopped up by the professional military, which is well paid enough to do what it's told. (Jeez, I'm getting sucked into Jones-think here!)

I'VE PREDICTED, and even bet a couple of people, that Trump will be outta there by Christmas, but not because the personnel at the government action levels of our oligarchy, known among paranoids as “the deep state,” are “globalists” or refuse to get right with God and His son — and note that Alex Jones draws the distinction for the camo buddies between the Big Guy and His kid — but because Trump is incompetent, and maybe clinically nuts. Myself, I think he's the logical product of the slob state we have going in this country, but I also think The Beast is up and running, and that Trump has only accelerated the inevitable crack-up.

IS TRUMP NUTS? I don't think so. I think he's merely a very limited guy who, because of the mentioned slob factors, found himself as Lead Slob. Ditto for George W. Bush, also a very limited guy but one who seems like an intellectual put alongside Trump. Nixon was much closer to certifiable than Trump appears to be, what with his heavy daily dose of prescription drugs with the nightly booze on top of his meds, the entire chemical stew making Nixon even more paranoid than he naturally was (cf “One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon” by Tim Weiner). Nixon was so far out of it in the final year of his reign that his inner circle simply worked around him, ignoring his crazier edicts and schemes. Trump's incoherence is more like early onset Alzheimers.

I THINK they, the established order, will invoke the 25th amendment, that Trump has totally wigged out and "for the good of the country....." blah, blah, blah.

AT SOUTHSIDE MARKET, Ukiah, last week I walked past a couple of fresh-faced street guys propped up against the sunny side wall with their shoes off like they'd just come out of jungle combat. They were very young and looked alike. "Yeah, we're brothers," one confirmed. "Got any spare change?" They had backpacks and the obligatory pit bull common among the traveling community. One kid had a terrible, still bloody wound to the side of his head. "I got hit by a truck," he explained. "Twenty stitches." They said they were from Washington state, that they'd come down to California for work of a type they didn't specify but hadn't found. I asked them what they were going to do. The one with the bloody head said, "We're just now talking about that. We don't know."

TRAVELERS THEN & NOW

by Paul Modic

When I see the travelers on the street today I think about how different it was when us hippies poured into Garberville in the early 70s alarming and annoying the rednecks with our casual airs and long hairs. We didn't have cell phones or dogs and after an hour or so in town buying a few supplies (in my case some granola and a chunk of cheddar cheese from Evergreen Natural Foods) we hitchhiked out to the creeks, rivers, and ocean beaches to camp out, drinking water directly from the mountainside, our mouths planted on the mossy spring. Energy was the word: We are Energy, Love is Energy, God is Energy. Energy. (I forget what the word was the next year, maybe sex, though no one ever said it, just did it.)

Back then the hills were wide open and the founding hippies who had arrived in the previous five years or so were welcoming. We hitchhiked on the twisting mountain roads through verdant forests, hanging on to the side of the pickup bed, our hair blowing crazily, a magical time. No one ever passed you by and when night fell whoever's rattly old 55 Chevy pickup you were in always took you home for some dinner and a floor or couch to crash on. We were young adventurers and for a Midwest boy of seventeen these California hippies were something else. (Today there's no room out there for the wayward unless she's very cute I guess, that universal story: shun the annoying males and let the ripe female buds blossom.)

The parents and families we had left, or run away from, were usually only mildly neurotic, lots of divorces, but generally stable—most of us knew we could always go home to mommy and daddy if things didn't work out on the road. The kids on the streets today, trying to escape lives of poverty and dysfunction descend from a variety of losers: drug-addicted ex-hippies, bikers in prison or heading there, mentally ill petty criminals and alcoholics, as well as refugees from suburban nightmares: latchkey kids with pill-poppin' mommas, workaholic daddies, and sneaking into the family spirits to get a head start on alcohol consumption, drug use and sex. They often have no idea who or where their parents are or if they are even alive anymore, no option to go home to mommy and daddy like we had. And so these lost souls suffer on the streets with their ubiquitous cigarets, an army of wet freezing victims in their trashed out hobo camps down by the river, finding their place in the shabby hierarchy and informal government that evolves in the lawless precincts where King Rat decides who can stay and who must go. (The Russian found floating in the river the other day was a very annoying guy who no one liked, problem solved.) When I see one of them on Main Street losing his shit and talking or screaming to himself I think, “Hell yes!” the homeless life would drive me crazy too.

Then you have the trimmigrants, those pampered peasants and smart phone zombies who care only about jobs and money as they hold up their pathetic signs at the Murrish Foods parking lot, often for weeks on the streets until their piercings become infected and their tattoos fade into a miasma of purple splotches. (“Grow a pair!” I tell a group of Basques dudes, as in a pair of tits—no one wants to hire guys.) The Spanish and Chilean's existence on every street corner, as well as the gringo farm crews of young stoners recruited from all over the US, was created by the greed of the corporate farms they helped enable, whose rampant takeover ruined the industry with oversupply, turning the hippie dream into extractive mining. The corporados flattened the mountains, sucked up the water, ruined the roads, destroyed the tranquility of the once peaceful and quiet country communities with nonstop generators and fans, and then decided to have their bright grow lights shining all over the hillsides and valleys at night, confusing the raccoons and civet cats. Money money money. Now here comes legalization and all county governments can think to do is create complicated and expensive regulations that only the big growers can afford, I guess it's easier to collect taxes on 500 mega-grows than 5000 little guys.

And to the sad old-timers with their rusty shovels, “Happy farming, suckers.”

MOTORCYCLE ENTHUSIASTS

18th Annual North Coast Toy Run, First Saturday in December (photo by Susie de Castro).

A READER WRITES: Our rights to privacy are very important. More so now than ever before our personal privacy is under attack everyday, in ways most people don't even know or understand. Even when people think they are protecting their privacy by removing location permissions from apps on their phone, and disabling geo tags or face id, there are other apps which store that data and routinely send that data off to companies and goverments. So even while one is under the impression that they are not allowing personal info to be stored or transmitted about them, it is. To me this is much worse, because it lends us a false sense of privacy. A DNA data base is just one step further. It could start out like you would want, but as with anything else it would soon be backdoored hacked etc. And that data could be used in very harmful ways. It isn't that people have things to hide, it is the way that people take advantage of harmless ideas and weaponize them later on. I am not a tinfoil hat everyone-is-watching-us type of person, I am just very aware of data and tracking collection that is going on today. Anyone who truly stays on top of software and networks knows. Back just a few years ago cell phones came with removeable storage, today they don’t offer one. Because folks were able to run apps that would distort the tracking info sent to companies off of them. It was widely known that if you did not want your phone to spy on you, you needed to remove the battery, not just turn it off. Try finding a new phone today that has a removable battery. Snowden revealed that goverments could listen to people in their homes through Samsung tvs. Really? Knowledge is power, and I think we do not need to give anymore power to companies or goverments over ourselves. DNA is not just a way to ID someone, it is in fact exactly what makes you who you are. There are companies researching dna-seeking viruses. Meaning that a virus can be used to injure the only specific dna code and all others would not contract it. Think about that. Genocide without armies? Just create a targeted virus. If you think this is far fetched, look at what is happening with gene thepary for cancer treatments. Please seriously think about the massive amounts of abuse and misuse data bases already have. And stop trying to take others rights away to make your desires or wants easier for you to get.

WILDFIRE SUITS BELONG IN SANTA ROSA, LAWYERS SAY

Legal papers filed Friday oppose moving PG&E suits to San Francisco.

CATCH OF THE DAY, December 2, 2017

LACY DAVID, Ukiah. Under influence, failure to appear.

SAMANTHA ESPANOLA-NORTON, Willits. Controlled substance, resisting.

JODI HODGES, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

KEEGAN KNIGHT, Willits. Controlled substance, transportation of controlled substance, offenses committed while on bail, assault weapon, short-barrelled shotgun, silencer, armed in commission of felony.

MALORIE LONG, Ukiah. Suspended license.

ARIANA NUNEZ, Ukiah. DUI.

DANIEL PIERCE JR., Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ANTHONY ROJAS, Ukiah. Controlled substance, smoking-injecting device, probation revocation.

AUSTIN SHEALOR, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

CHEYENNE SPECIEDAY, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, under influence, paraphernalia, personation of another.

MOTECUHZOMA VAUGHN, Ukiah. Smoking-injecting device, probation revocation.

THE GODS HAVE ABANDONED US

“…as kingdom succeeded kingdom, sacred myths were recycled, reedited, or combined with others. And the names of the winners in these myths were changed to match the names of the gods worshipped by the new regimes. This was only fitting, since the new regimes believed their gods had helped them conquer the old regimes.” (“The Cosmology of the Bible” by Edward T. Babinski.)

The Gods Have Abandoned Us
by José Ioskyn (translated by Louis S. Bedrock)

In the ships of our army

our brave soldiers bleed.

Our enemies have triumphed

and with them,

their horrible gods

in the shape of animals.

Is it that their gods are better?

Do they bring greater benefits in war?

Ours have abandoned us.

Our commander in chief

has thrown himself off a cliff.

I don’t even think about ever again seeing a seed

and being a farmer.

Leave that for fools:

It doesn’t compare with the taste of blood.

I must get used to it:

The gods have abandoned us

and we have to live with it.

(From Acerca de un imperio—About an Empire, by José Ioskyn)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I find this all rather U.S.-centric. What do I mean? The sentiments, reactions, or larger sense of moral outrage is about violence. Not sex.

The fact that a woman instinctively reacts negatively to an inadvertent touch says more about the prevailing violence and threat in the society than sexual interplay between the genders.

How do I know? I’ve lived in societies a little to the south of N. America. Although some of these places can have a greater form of some violence, the virtual sexual kind that permeates the subconscious of U.S. and Canadian females is not one of them.

In the U.S. or Canada if you wolf-whistle at a women you are instantly branded as a sexist pig and probably a rapist. Down there you get a “Gracious Senor”. Men are men and women are women. They respect and revel in the difference.

So I asked myself, what is the difference? Ah, in U.S./Canada women have some amped up fear of violence. Where did this come from? I can’t say exactly because, (we never had that “locker room talk” – get over the sterotype, it’s disgusting in its ignorance), we were always mindful to act like gentlemen. Sure, during high school inevitably there was a “hand gone too far”, but a firm “no” was sufficient.

Puritanism seems to have the same effect for reducing sexual violence as guns do for reducing murderous violence. Think about it…

SENATE REPUBLICANS PASS SWEEPING OVERHAUL OF US TAX CODE

by Lauren Gambino

Bill passed in early hours of Saturday will benefit big businesses and the wealthy, and give Donald Trump his first major legislative victory

Senate Republicans have passed the most sweeping overhaul of the US tax code in three decades, a significant step that moves Donald Trump closer to achieving the first major legislative victory of his presidency.

The Senate passed its tax plan in a 51-49 vote early on Saturday morning, with Vice-President Mike Pence presiding over the chamber and after a frantic rewrite. Bob Corker was the sole Republican to vote against the bill, which would bestow huge benefits on US corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

“We think this is a great day for the country,” the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said at a celebratory press conference.

On Saturday morning, Trump praised lawmakers and said he was looking forward to signing the bill before Christmas.

“It was a fantastic evening last night,” the president told reporters outside the White House before he left for New York. “We passed the largest tax cuts in the history of our country and many other things along with it."

“Now we go on to conference and something beautiful is going to come out of that mixer. People are going to be very, very happy. They’re going to get tremendous, tremendous tax cuts and tax relief, and that’s what this country needs.”

The vote marked a significant feat for Republicans, who suffered a series of embarrassing blows earlier this year by failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Trump and Republicans in Washington staked their political fortunes on the hope that tax reform would not suffer the same fate.

The House speaker, Paul Ryan, said: “For the first time since 1986, both the House and the Senate have passed a major overhaul of our nation’s tax code. Now we will move quickly to a conference committee so we can get a final bill to President Trump’s desk.”

The rush to pass the bill sparked outcry from Democrats, who said it would be impossible to fully digest the legislation before voting began. Lawmakers received the nearly 500-page bill, some of it handwritten, hours before they voted on a plan that will affect nearly every US business and taxpayer.

“I defy any member of the Senate to stand here, take an oath that they have read this and understand what in the world it means to businesses and families and individuals,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the minority whip from Illinois, holding up pages with notes scribbled in the margin.

In New York on Saturday, before a fundraising event at Cipriani restaurant on 42nd Street, Trump said: “We got no Democrat help and I think that’s going to cost them in the election because they voted against tax cuts. I don’t think politically it’s good to vote against tax cuts.”

After closing debate, the Senate began the tedious process of a vote-a-rama, in which senators can offer an endless series of amendments. At midnight, Pence arrived to break a tie on an amendment offered by Ted Cruz that allows parents to start savings accounts to fund tuition at private and religious K-12 schools known as 529 plans. The provision prevailed.

Democrats scored a small victory when four Republicans joined them to strike a provision that appeared tailored to benefit a single Christian college in Michigan with ties to family of the secretary of education, Betsy DeVos.

Not a single Democrat crossed the aisle to support the plan, which they attacked as a “scam” and a handout to corporations and the wealthy.

“I don’t think there is a person more bipartisan than I am,” said Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, lamenting his frustration with the partisan nature of the process. Earlier this week, he joined red-state Democrats to urge Republicans to work with them on tax reform.

“This, as I have seen it unfold tonight, it is not designed to have one Democrat on the bill,” he added.

The House passed its own tax legislation earlier this month. The two bills will now be reconciled, presenting further hurdles in the coming weeks.

Republicans have contended the $1.4tn package of cuts enclosed in their plan will in effect pay for themselves through growth. A series of independent projections found they would not.

The nonpartisan joint committee on taxation projected that the plan would add $1tn to the federal deficit over the next 10 years – even after factoring in the economic growth the bill is projected to generate. On Friday, the independent Tax Policy Center released similar findings, predicting that the Senate bill would add $1.2tn to the federal deficit over the next decade after accounting for increased economic growth.

McConnell parried, telling reporters: “I’m totally confident this is a revenue-neutral bill. I think this will be a revenue producer.”

Senate Republicans used a vehicle known as “budget reconciliation” to pass the tax plan using a simple-majority vote, leaving them room for only two defections. On Friday morning, three key holdouts had announced their support. Leadership nonetheless spent the night locked in negotiations.

Corker and Jeff Flake, of Arizona, had sought to extract an agreement that would scale back some of the tax cuts in the event growth projections were not met. On Thursday, they unexpectedly held court on the Senate floor, after learning that a mechanism they created to limit the impact on the national debt was not compliant with the Senate’s budget rules. The tense showdown led Republicans scrambling to find a way to offset the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Ultimately, the plans were rejected by Senate leadership, Cruz told reporters, after he and a number of others objected. “That proposal did not carry the day,” Cruz said. “Those $350bn in tax increases are not in the bill … and larding the bill up with new tax increases would have been going the wrong direction.”

Flake announced that he would support the bill, saying in a statement he had secured two priorities: the elimination of an $85bn “expensing budget gimmick” and a “firm commitment” that Congress would enact permanent protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

Corker said he would not support the plan, adding in a statement: “At the end of the day, I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that I believe, based on the information I currently have, could deepen the debt burden on future generations.”

Key to winning over Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Steve Daines of Montana was an agreement to expand tax cuts for millions of businesses known as “pass-through entities”.

Democrats remained united in their opposition, attacking the legislation as a giveaway to corporate America and the wealthy.

“In the waning hours, this bill is tilting further towards businesses and away from families,” said Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, in a floor speech on Friday. “Every time the choice is between corporations and families, the Republicans choose corporations.”

(Guardian of London)

EEL RIVER RECOVERY PUBLISHES 2016-2017 SALMON REPORT - POPULATION BOUNCING BACK

salmonrestoration.com/project/eel-river-recovery-project-tracks-2016-2017-fall-chinook-run/

Very weak start with fish unable to enter the lower river, then fish all over the place once rains begin and flow allows passage. However, the 2017-2018 run is only half over, since Chinook keep running in December and January, so this year is too early to call. "Funding for ERRP fall Chinook salmon assessment was provided by the Patagonia World Trout Fund and the Salmon Restoration Association in Fort Bragg."

A GOSSIP COLUMNIST'S GUIDE TO OUTWITTING TRUMP, “a narcissist beyond description”"He has two sports. Golf, and lying."

theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/01/trump-gossip-columnist-media-coverage-susan-mulcahy

WYOMING AUTUMN

(photo by Harvey Reading)

BE AWARE OF THE DARK SIDE OF SPORTS MEDIA

by Ralph Nader

The sports pages of major newspapers, such as the Washington Post, are thriving while other sections of newspapers such as business sections or book review pages struggle to survive.

That doesn’t mean that the sports pages allow the fans, the consumers, the taxpayers and many of the players have their say. Over the years, the sports sections have been neglecting the dark sides of organized sports as a deliberate practice, not as an oversight.

Ken Reed, author of several books, weekly columns, and the Sports Policy Director for our League of Fans, is arguably the leading contemporary essayist of sports at its best and at its worst. Ever hear of him? Probably not. His truth-telling rarely makes it onto radio, television and the sports pages or into the sports publications such as Sporting News, because he writes about the greed, the covered-up dangers, the exploitation of youngsters by greedy owners and coaches, and way in which sportsmanship is most often pushed to the sidelines—all issues that the sports industry works tirelessly to suppress and squelch.

Probably no segment of journalism makes censorship so central a part of its craft, and yet receives so little criticism for its failings; no segment of journalism so arrogantly continues to exclude vast regions of crucial reporting from its pages. In his new book, EGO vs. Soul in Sports: Essays on Sport at Its Best and Worst, Reed systematically tackles the most neglected and underreported territories of the athletic world.

And he knows what he’s talking about. He holds a doctorate in sport administration with an emphasis in sport policy. He has taught sports, played sports, worked in sports marketing, and he has a regular blog for the Huffington Post. But mostly, he can’t crack the sports media because he is onto too many serious topics affecting sports—from middle school to the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL—that the giant profiteering sports business doesn’t want to reach you, so as to preserve sports fantasies.

Reed summarizes the driving ethics of organized sports as “win-at-all-costs” (WAAC) and “profit-at-all-costs” (PAAC).  Reed writes about the hidden injury epidemics (early onto concussions and how to detect and minimize them); about sports participation for all (not just spectator sports); on the serious decline in physical education in elementary and high schools and how it is connected to the rise of obesity; on the harm of encouraging specialization at age 10 in sports; on athletes’ right to protest; on women athletes still being short changed under title IX; on Division One of the NCAA with its corruption, cheating and exploitation of student athletes; on the need for creating a National Sports Commission, as other western countries have done; on taxpayer and consumer rip-offs in the subsidized construction and operation of stadiums, arenas and ballparks; on the need for oversight that can lead to the benching of tyrannical coaches; on how television and aggressive advertising are not good for sports; on deliberate, brutal fighting in NHL games; on over-commercialization, and why its time “the fans ran the show”—to name a few of these engrossing essays in Reed’s book, EGO vs. Soul in Sports.

Year after year, Reed works relentlessly to sound the alarms and urge our society to get the best out of sports. He gives many examples of efforts that are sidelined by sports media reporters in favor of gratuitous slime and reporting on petty behaviors that they revel in sensationalizing—often without denouncing the roots of the behavior itself. Why should they be critics? Get fewer favors and freebies? Get fewer doors opened to the thrilling inner sanctums of the sports owners and high-dollar players?

Most sports pages have either no letters to the editor sections or they devote very little space to letters to the editor. Why should they allow letters that might expose their incompetence, their sacred cow managers, and players, their refusing to give the fans—the source of all their profits—consistent voices, beyond some selected ones calling into sports talk-radio shows with rapid-fire comments on that day’s teams, tactics and strategies. ESPN Radio, for example, needs to think about these exclusions.

Earlier this year I sent a letter to the former General Manager of the New York Yankees, and current Chief Baseball Officer for MLB, Joe Torre, detailing the incessant in-game advertisements (“this is a x company call to the bullpen,” “that’s a x company double play,” etc., breaking the spirit of the action). The letter was also sent to sports reporters and columnists, some of whom I notified in advance. Not a word came in response. Not a reply came from anyone to this longtime Yankees fan since the time of Joe Dimaggio.

People I know, who are inveterate fans, often get brushed aside with no responses to their well-thought-out emails, and they are screened out when trying to make calls to talk-radio hosts.

Some impartial observers of contemporary sports trends believe that self-destruction lies ahead for most high school football (concussions, etc.), for unpaid big-time college athletes, and for pushing the commercialistic envelope too far (staggering ticket prices and other extortions) in big-time sports.

We’ll see how much spectator fans will take before they demand that the tax dollars and priorities go toward neighborhood recreational athletic facilities so that sport becomes a pleasurable way of life for tens of millions of presently sedentary adults and youngsters.

If you’d like to read Ken Reed’s book, you can order a copy at Xlibris.com.

(Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!)

THE BOLSHEVIKS MAKE AN ERROR

It was clear that the system of divided responsibility between three equal members of the Secretariat, each disclaiming full responsibility, was inadequate to cope with the Secretariat's function of appointing "loyal" comrades to key positions and of selecting "loyal" delegates to Party Congresses. Lenin and his entourage therefore decided to reinforce the Secretariat in two ways---by establishing the office of General Secretary, with the other two members acting as his assistants rather than equal colleagues, and by selecting for the position of General Secretary the man most capable of strong-arm work, Joseph Stalin. Two of his most loyal henchmen, Molotov and Kuibyshev, were elected as his assistants.

— Leon Trotsky, STALIN: An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence

A KNYO CHINESE CHEESECAKE GIFT BASKET.

"Fall is the annual middle finger this country gives Native Americans."

Thanks to Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost, the recording of last night's  (2017-12-01) KNYO and KMEC Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is  available with a single click. Here: https://tinyurl.com/MOTA-KNYO-0256

Cynthia Frank of QED Press and Cypress House Press came in and read from  her own and John Fremont's work. Elly Cooney called and read her  Teenage Wasteland story. Scott Peterson, Alex Bosworth, Ezekiel  Krahlin all called to catch up and/or read their work. Even so, I read  almost all of what I brought to read, including Scott's Fort Bragg  Snake Pit, a few more chapters of John Passyka's autobiography, Mark  Scaramella's view of George Washington's expense account, Flynn  Washburne, Leah Finnegan, Rex Gressett, BB Grace, Molly Bee, Max Forseter, Valerie Tarico, et al., and after et al., another episode of Candy Matson, Girl Detective, so I didn’t get out until 5am, and then  there's the drive home and the computer housekeeping to do before I conk  out in my clothes. So that's why this update is way later than usual.  It's a pretty good show. Like those firehose fountains in front of a  casino, but for your brain, inside which you can build your own casino,  and win, for a change. And what happens there does not have to stay  there; you can email it to me and I'll read it on the very next Memo of  the Air.

IN OTHER NEWS, as usual at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find  a fresh batch of links to rainy-day activities and amusements, such as:

Love in space.

https://boingboing.net/2017/11/29/sci-fi-short-film-orbit-ev.html

Ba-LOOO-guz.

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2017/11/drone-footage-of-beluga-whales.html

A number of fun dances. Some large number; I didn't keep count.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCm0BBuZ8-U

Cute little Japanese tough guys and dolls.

https://tinyurl.com/JapaneseToughGuysAndDolls

And an impressive slightly tech-augmented though mostly traditional  magic routine. http://bitsandpieces.us/2017/11/agt-a-pretty-impressive-illusion/

Marco McClean
memo@mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com