Off the Record (May 30, 2018)

SAY WHAT YOU WILL about Gavin Newsom, he's the only major candidate who not only seems to understand the magnitude of the homeless prob, but admits it's beyond the financial capabilities of local jurisdictions to "solve." The solution is state hospitals for the insane, the alcoholic and the drug addicted, and genuinely low cost housing for people who simply can't afford shelter. The present apparatus of entrenched "helping professionals" are and will be an obstacle to real solutions because they are invested in things as they are. As soon as there's even a hint of compulsion, the paid enablers start yowling objections, as if a person unable or unwilling to care for himself is a rational actor. The entire Mendocino County homeless effort only subsidizes street death.

FORT BRAGG CITY COUNCILMAN and Director of Medical Staff Services at Mendocino Coast District Hospital, Will Lee, writes:

As I mentioned at the City Council meeting May 14th, I decided to vote on the resolution supporting Measure C because of the possibility of lost services and lost jobs at the hospital. Those possibilities are “near and dear to my heart” as an elected City Council member. Also, as I said at the meeting, I would have recused myself if the Mayor was present to cast his vote. Since he was absent, and I did not legally have to recuse myself, I decided to vote and demonstrate the Council’s unanimous support for Measure C.

Just because Mr. Macdonald is against Measure C (of course, that is his right) does not mean that those who do support Measure C are all wrong and misinformed. Many of our friends and neighbors (Sheriff Allman, physicians and nurses, League of Women Voters…) AND the City of Fort Bragg, support this community-wide effort to support our hospital and the services offered there every day. This hospital has over 90,000 patient encounters per year (we know Mr. Macdonald chooses not to be one of those visits… attending and writing about Board and Committee meetings are not counted in those encounters), and we are all proud to be a part of our patients’ health care and their well-being. We will continue to care for our patients as we have since the “new” hospital opened in 1971. Stay well.

UNSOLVED - In mid-December 1978, Kerry Ann Graham, 15, and Francine Trimble, 14, disappeared in Forestville never to be seen again by friends and family. Skeletal remains that would ultimately be identified as theirs were located the following July, dumped off the side of a rural highway in Mendocino County. But it wasn't until 2015 that their identities were determined through DNA analysis. Eileen Goetz, a friend of El Molino high school students said the girls were going to hitchhike to a party in Santa Rosa. She said she didn't know who they were meeting up with but hitchhiking, especially in the small enclave of Forestville, was incredibly common. It was likely they were picked up by someone they knew. The case remains unsolved.

SOLVED - A quarter-century after her nude body was found in the brush alongside a rural Fort Bragg road, the death of 20-year-old Georgina Pacheco was finally solved. DNA analysis performed around 2013 implicated Pacheco's brother-in-law, Robert James Parks, then 27, a commercial fisherman who committed suicide, 1988, 10 years after Pacheco's death by tying himself to a boat in Southern California, then sinking it. Pacheco's body was found by a man walking his dog Sept. 10, 1988, 10 days after she disappeared. An orange and black nylon cord was tied around her neck with an intricate, fishing-type knot, she had blunt force injuries to her head and she had been raped.

A GIANTS FAN WRITES: "I don't know if I'm getting better at ignoring it, but it seems to me like all the electronic distractions and shenanigans at the ballpark were toned down. Not as obtrusive. I still dream of attending a day game with no electricity at all, but until then, at least paring back on the distractive nonsense is a step in the right direction. The next thing I would jettison is the personal song intros that we have to hear as each batter approaches the plate. Unless they are singing the song themselves, I don't want to hear it. The only one of those jingles I enjoyed hearing was Sergio Romo's mexi-ditty, but he's gone now, so I say toss 'em!"

I THINK the American Brain has been surreptitiously re-wired to feed on a constant audio-visual din. Pre-din you could hear the ballplayers, at least at the old ballparks. But remove the incessant distractions, contemporary people seem to go all twitchy. The din is even worse at pro basketball games. Trapped inside the Oakland Coliseum the decibel level is painful. It may have to do with the new fan. A lot of people at today's sporting events have no knowledge of the games being played. They can afford to go so they go, especially baseball. The game isn’t enough. They need noise, they need hoochie koochie girls, the need flashing lights and giant scoreboards. (Warriors fans seem to know a basketball from a pineapple, but at the baseball ballpark one is surrounded by people chatting on their cell phones or milling back and forth for constant food re-supply. (The ballpark churro is the perfect contempo negative food value item — a deep fried dough stick slathered with sugar.) I refuse to buy ballpark food, which I can’t afford anyway — and it's pretty good these days, but twelve bucks for a hotdog? No sir, Mr. Austerity contents himself with a homemade tuna sandwich, a hardboiled egg, carrot sticks, and an orange that I carry in. I'm surprised they still allow you to bring your own, but looking around me I've never seen people eating anything but the expensive stuff sold in the concessions. Mostly, though, I watch all sports at home with the sound off, but I’ll stop and watch a good high school ballgame for a couple of innings, enjoying the peace and quiet broken only by the sound of a bat on the ball and a shout or two from the players.

CRUISE SHIP pulled into Eureka's seldom visited port last week, inspiring the following comments and many others like it: (1) Only way this can be successful is if we drive the bums out of Humboldt. No more social services, no more free needles, no loitering, no more free food, no more Betty Chinn. Ramp up police presence and no more catch and release. (2) While the guests are out sightseeing, let’s load up all the street people from Eureka onto the ship. As stowaways they can travel off to the next port, in search of greener pastures?

THE LAST TIME I was in Eureka, which was three years ago, I got less of a street people hit then I get in Ukiah. I always enjoy Old Town Eureka, and the town generally. It's kinda Fort Bragg times ten. Street people didn't seem all that prevalent, but Garberville was another story. The whole town looked like that No Man's Land between the Ukiah Walmart and Jack in the Box, a kind of open air homeless camp, Thanatoids galore.

GRADING OUTGOING SUPES, a reader writes: “What if we were able to grade our Supervisors on their way out? That is, during the election when we are voting for their successor, we also got a chance to rate the outgoing supervisor, essentially grading them on their job performance. And say it was on a scale of one (poor) through ten (excellent), and then their pension would be funded at that percent. For example, if their average score came in at 5.3, then they would be entitled to 53 percent of the full pension. A merit-based pension.”

A GREAT IDEA. Get it on the ballot and it would pass unanimously, except for the Supervisors themselves. Grading the present crew, and to be charitable, I’d say they’ve earned maybe 30 percent of their pensions. Ms. Croskey, as an appointee who’s moving out of the area, presumably won’t get a pension. She certainly shouldn’t have been voting on anything given her temp status. Carre Brown has done an excellent job in protecting cheap water forever for her friends and neighbors in Potter Valley, but on everything else, and like her four colleagues, she’s a slave of the person she’s supposed to be supervising, CEO Angelo, as all of them steadily contribute to the muddle. (cf pot policy and the Measure B discussion) The present, and probably the future board, lacks a clarifying person, a person unintimidated by the present leadership and department heads, a person unwilling to simply sign off on indefensible spending. But it takes three votes to move the beast, and we don’t see it being moved.

WHEN I TUNED in the Supervisors last Tuesday, 18 people were watching local government in action. Hannah Nelson was informing the Supes that people are getting out of the marijuana business by the busload because they can't afford the cost and psychic toil imposed by the preposterous local rules. She didn't say anything about prices having fallen so fast and have become so low — in Boonville you can buy last year's dope for as little as $300 a pound — there's no incentive, legal or outlaw, to grow. The next speaker, a woman from Potter Valley, described how she'd suffered from an arbitrary gro decision by local authorities, and confirmed that "everyone around me is going broke."

A WILLITS READER assesses the Third District Supe's race: “Jeavons running stronger than Haschak? No, that I do not believe. Maybe on Facebook. I don’t know about Johnny – certainly there are Horger signs up around Willits. And so those concerned about Pinches’ health but who wouldn’t vote for a union rep endorsed by the Democratic Party and the Mendocino Women’s Political Coalition or a hippie chick who’s probably never even attended a Board of Supervisors meeting have another option besides Pinches.”

LOOKING at the 3rd District race from Boonville, we think only Horger, Pinches and Elizondo break from the herd in their grasp of Mendocino County issues, and Elizondo breaks so far from the herd she disappears entirely into the deep Eel River basin and will surface after the election somewhere east of I-5/ Lib frontrunner Haschak is all platitudes all the time. Ditto for Jeavons.

DURING A LATE AFTERNOON discussion of the Sheriff’s desired Mental Health Needs Assessment (which is going forward despite complaints from the Supes that the Sheriff’s committee hasn’t defined it very well), Sheriff Allman casually remarked, “There are media organizations in this county that are making fun of the needs assessment.”

SINCE THE MIGHTY AVA is the only media organization that regularly dares look askance at the throne, we assume the Sheriff was referring to us, but we're hardly alone. Fifth District Supes candidate Arthur Juhl, questions the need for a needs assessment and some members of the Sheriff’s Committee have wondered aloud what county staff could do in the way of a needs assessment before spending tens of thousands of dollars on a consultant. One would think they would know all about mental health needs since they spend more than $20 million a year allegedly meeting those needs.

WE NEVER “MADE FUN” of the needs assessment, we just think it’s 1) a waste of money, 2) further evidence that the County’s well-paid mental health staff doesn’t know what it's doing, and 3) just like Mr. Kemper’s prior report and recommendations, the County will end up ignoring some of whatever “needs” Kemper comes up with if Kemper’s suggestions require any actual management or accountability or can’t just be handed over to Ms. Schrader and Company’s privatized mental health business.

NOT THAT IT MATTERS at this point since the Needs Assessment is proceeding apace, objections notwithstanding. In fact, on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors seemed to want to expand the scope of the Needs Assessment from the initial “gap analysis” (?) to what kind of staffing would be required and how feasible it would be to finance the meeting of any given need. Which translates to more consultant money being wasted on something the County staff should be able to do themselves.

FREE OF CHARGE, a Needs Assessment for Measure B spending. Need: What to do with a growing population of crazy people in Mendocino County. In-home visits for the housed, re-tool Howard Hospital into a psych ward for those who require sequestration. Staff? Kindly people, who may or may not include the credentialed, but must include one large, strong person per shift capable of restraining the more berserker patients. (Jim Marmon might be available.) If Howard Hospital is unavailable due to neighborhood hysteria and obstruction from opportunistic elected Willits pols of the bandwagon-jumping type, the AVA offers its Boonville property on Highway 128. Long term lease negotiable.

WITH PHILIP ROTH'S passing the last giant of American lit has fallen. I can only think off hand of two contemporary fiction writers whose books I'd hustle out to buy — Paul Beatty and… I can't think of the other one. Political writers who also happen to be good writers consist of Matt Taibbi and… I can't think of the other one. The only vivid polemicist around is James Kunstler of Clusterfuck Nation. Movie reviewers? None of the caliber of the late Dwight Macdonald and Pauline Kael. As Gore Vidal put it re the creative arts generally these days, "Lack of talent is no longer enough."

HAMBURG GOES ROGUE: “Dear Steve…. I didn't support Hillary either (though Roderick did!) Roderick is the only candidate who will stand up to the Sheriff (he publicly opposed the Measure B boondoggle) and is the person who pried fire funding (Prop 172) out of the county (again over the Sheriff's objections). He runs a successful business and thinks like an entrepreneur, something that will serve the county well. I looked at 3 potential supervisors and picked the one I thought would do the best job. Huffman's endorsement of Skyhawk made me think of his endorsement of Clinton (when Mendocino County was overwhelmingly for Sanders). Williams is smart but unapproachable. Roderick has smarts and personality. He won't kowtow to anyone but neither will be attempt to blow the place up. So what did you think about my bucking the Mendocino Town establishment on setbacks for cannabis dispensaries? Lee already nailed me on that one! Even though you don't want me as a friend any more I will always remember and cherish your kind hospitality. Dan Hamburg, Supervisor, District 5, Mendocino. Ukiah”

ED NOTE: "Williams is smart but unapproachable"? Knowing Hamburg, lo these many years, I would suppose candidate Williams didn't kneel at this unclothed emperor's throne, Hamburg's vanity being a size larger than Mendocino County itself. Williams would certainly raise the collective IQ of our Supervisors by quantum factors, but to say he's unapproachable is simply untrue. To us here at the mighty ava, what's most encouraging about this 5th District election is that only one candidate of the five remains captive in The Garden of Idiocy, that oppressive nexus of Old Hippie and reactionary Democratic that has dominated the 5th since Ted Galletti. And even the one captive is a nice guy just too close to the flab wing of reigning flab-glab liberalism to be unable to see how oppressively self-serving it is.

NOTE TO CANDIATE WILLIAMS: Don’t over-think this stuff, kid. We think you’re getting lost in the policy weeds. Take low-cost housing, for instance. Everyone’s for it but other than candidate Pinches, no one has anything but platitudes to say about it. The County itself could buy, say, 200 trailers, place them on selected parcels of County-owned land, rent them to the homeless and the nearly homeless at a fair portion of the prospective tenant’s income, and most of the homeless or near homeless have incomes, however modest. This strategy could amortize itself over time and, if properly managed, even turn a profit over the long haul. And don’t tell us there’s no money for it. There is.

DON'T CRY FOR ME, FORT BRAGG. Mendocino County's port city has taken a pounding lately. First, an unemployed lawyer says he's going to sue the city because Hispanics are electorally unrepresented. The unemployed lawyer would of course deny he's angry for not having been hired as the city attorney and would also deny he is suing because he sees his suit as a quick hundred grand or so. This righteous attorney is white, as are his clandestine supporters who want to ride Mexicans into City Hall, a strategy that seems rather blatantly racist from here. With tiny Fort Bragg broken into electoral sections, the town's "liberals," most of them quite wealthy, will be able to dominate the city council as they disastrously have in the years prior to the recent reinstatement of Fort Bragg people who have have the town's best interests at heart.

WE THEN LEARN that the state's toxic's investigators are walking away from the toxic ponds at the old GP mill site after installing a permanent fence and warning signs around the site's wetlands. The Koch Brothers raise a glass.

AND JACK SILVER says he, too, is poised to sue Fort Bragg, but if Fort Bragg pays him off he'll go away. Fort Bragg has 60 days to cough up. Silver, as he has been doing for years now up and down the Northcoast, has found a technical violation of the Clean Water Act at Fort Bragg's wastewater treatment plant. As he has done in Fortuna, Ukiah, Ferndale and many other regional municipalities, Silver combs Water Quality files for violations — he's never found a deliberate one yet — threatens to sue, the towns pay him to avoid even more expensive litigation and Silver walks away with a quick $25,000 for the time he spent typing up his demand letter. He always sues municipalities because municipalities carry insurance with big deductibles. He hides behind a phony West Sonoma County environmental front whose board of directors consist of his relatives. He claims to devote a portion of his winning fees to environmental good. Evidence of these donations is, shall we say, scant. (Congressman Thompson promised to close the legal loophole via which Silver gets to sue.) These are links to some of the stories the ava has written about Silver's shakedowns:

https://www.theava.com/04/0505-otr-turdwatch.html

https://www.theava.com/archives/9988

https://www.theava.com/archives/23301/comment-page-1

LICENSE PLATE HOLDER spotted in San Rafael: "You don't believe in Jesus? You will on judgement Day." Odd, isn't it, how delighted the Jesus people seem at the thought of the rest of us stammering out our apologies at the Pearly Gates.

THE TWO SUPE'S races are too close to call. The 3rd District looks to us like Pinches, Haschak in a run-off with Horger and Jeavons coming on strong. The 5th? We think it's always been Williams and Roderick in a run-off, with Skyhawk a fairly strong third. The lib juggernaut that has elected 5th District supervisors for forty years is split between Williams and The Hawk, but The Hawk's affiliations — Billary Democrats, K-Cult Radio, the County's grasping non-profits — are propelling a preponderance of Coastlib to Williams, although Roderick, falsely dismissed by the more hysterical libs as a Trumpian, is picking up quite a few lib votes to go with support from Farm Bureau types and the Grape Combine. Mendo's little Deep State, the permanent County bureaucracy, most fears Pinches and Juhl, the only two candidates who see the obvious — major managerial dysfunction.

FIFTH DISTRICT SUPE’S CANDIDATE Arthur Juhl writes:

I just read the article that my fellow candidates for the 5th district have it all in the bag! I guess you, the voters do not want to change the way the county spends the budget. The fellows are all Nice guys, but do the Nice guys have the wherewithal to buck the present county system? If you want Nice guys you must give the CEO another raise as $310,000.00 is not enough to do all the work she does. Also drop plans for housing, homelessness and mental health. As no one understands the budget there will be no money for any project especially the Roads! But if you really want CHANGE you will vote for ME, Arthur E. Juhl. I understand the budget and will reduce the outrageous salaries that are paid to people who really do not know what the hell they are doing. And not waste money paying consultants for a job that county employees should be doing. And find out what happened to the funds set aside for our roads the past 20 or so years!

A crook was caught stealing a million dollars a few years ago, but how long has that been going on? That money was for our roads! And who knows more about mental health, having a Uncle messed up from WW1, and a son that I have been taking care of the last 20years? I put my hat in this race because of Measure B, but found the county really needs help getting the financial crisis understood by you, the people! In order to solve the problems of the county one has to know where the money comes from and where it is going! Without that type of knowledge, it is all Puff.

Arthur E. Juhl candidate for the 5th district Supervisor

MARK SCARAMELLA REPLIES: Nobody really cares, Mr. Juhl. I’ve been complaining about county mismanagement for literally decades with minimal effect, as is obvious to anyone like you who looks at it with a critical eye. I know that several supervisors and the CEO are aware of these complaints and modest suggestions for improvement — some of them even agree that improvement is necessary — yet nothing is done; they don’t even bring up the subject of routine monthly departmental status reporting. Nor does anyone in the public (until Mr. Juhl’s quixotic run) bring it up. The only conclusion one can draw is that nobody in official Mendo wants to know what’s going on. The Supervisors see their job as simply handing out or rubberstamping the handing out of our cash — what happens after that is irrelevant. Besides, if they knew what the departments were doing (or not doing) with our money, they’d have to do something to change it and they don’t want to — that would require conflict and work. Another lesser factor is the ridiculous deference the Supes pay to their own subordinates — as if it’s bad form to inquire or express doubt, much less complain about their operations. The only people who “understand the budget” are the ones who prepare it for largely self-serving and unaccountable reasons. This is probably why Mr. Juhl’s candidacy is trailing behind the candidates who prefer non-starter ideas to management complaints.

JAMES MARMON, Former Social Worker V for Family and Children's Services in Mendocino County. Public expression comment at Board of Supervisors Meeting, Tuesday, May 22, 2018: “I think it was about nine years ago I started hitting you guys with a bunch of emails about social workers acting under color of law by violating Mendocino County residents’ constitutional rights, primarily the 4th and 14th amendments. Today you guys are going to meet in closed session regarding one of such case. You are gonna find out that it's gonna cost you half a million dollars to defend the social workers who violated a Potter Valley family’s constitutional rights. I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. There could have been a lot more of these cases except for the fact that the County will throw $250,000 away for attorneys. But a poor mother and father who were on county aid have no way to defend these constitutional rights violations. They are never heard in our courts, they have to be heard in federal courts which are quite expensive. I would easily guess that there have been hundreds of people whose constitutional rights have been violated in this county. I tried to stop those nine years ago.”

AGREE TOTALLY with Art Juhl and my colleague, Spaghetti Scaramella, that Mendocino County isn't managed like anything in free enterprise. Anybody making over a hundred grand at, say, Apple, is always looking over his shoulder because he's expected to verifiably produce. And he or she has had to compete hard against legions of other cyber-wizards to get to the cubicle. Not saying GizmoLandia is a particularly desirable way to pass one's days, but watching Mendo's $80 thou plus medical-dental-pension Supervisors it does verify my father's oft-repeated dictum: "If you want steady, easy work, go to work for the government. It doesn't pay much but nobody ever gets fired; you've got life security." It's probably unfair, but a lot of the people — especially the Supervisors themselves — that you see rambling through content-free presentations at Supe's meetings, wouldn't make the kind of money and get the kind of job security they've got going in Mendocino County if they had to compete out in the jungles of capitalism. Which accounts for the embarrassing nuzzle-butting that goes on — live, too, right there on YouTube. These people live in fear! Of each other, of not being acceptable to the other drones. With the upper echelons of local government — all government, I'm sure — you're either on the bus or no parties in Deerwood, Rogina Heights, and white wine with the Congressman for you. I live for those moments that the untamed James Marmon lumbers up to the mike at Supe's meetings to lash the truth about the wholesale installment plan fraud that claims to be a mental health program. The Supes of course ignore Marmon, if they aren't outright rude to him, and you can almost hear them saying to themselves, "Do we really have to listen to this guy, us the good people, the people working so hard to make government work for ingrates like him?"

AMONG the candidates for the easy money Supervisor job, and I disagree here with the outspoken Juhl, I'd guess that both Williams and Roderick know exactly the magnitude of County management dysfunction, but it's politically dangerous for them to say so. The County blob, like the edu-blob, is large and powerful, at least in their voting because there are so many of them and you can be sure they'll vote for the person who they view as least threatening to them. And they vote. Which is why they definitely don't want people like Juhl and Pinches sitting in authority over them. How well government really serves the people it gets paid to serve is not its purpose anymore. Its purpose is itself. Probably hasn't been operated in the public interest since the Roosevelt Administration.

SHARON DOUBIAGO'S latest book is called “My Beard, Memoir Stories.” Like her poetry, Ms. Doubiago's poetic prose, cuts close to the bone, especially if your bones have six or so decades wear and tear. Her accounts of her father's last days, and her memories of him when she was a child, are tough reading for this old guy, tough but true. The non-literary sectors of the Mendo population know the Doubiago name from the world of sports via Dan Doubiago, a dominant high school athlete who went all the way into pro football. Mom's accounts of her son's athletic prowess are almost puzzled, as the beautiful hippie poet becomes mother of the great athlete in a kind of cosmic fluke. But this sports mom always managed a spectacular life of her own, and she's obviously not done yet. What is this, her 23rd book? "Anyone ever tell you?" a man called across the horseshoe, "you look just like Farah Fawcett?" The writer, I'm sure, has often had her good looks to overcome to get her art taken seriously, but in this moving, sometimes shockingly candid look back at her life, there's no doubting she's done it.

YUP, ORANGE MAN has done it. Spotted a bumpersticker in San Anselmo reading, "I Miss Nixon."

A NEW ONE on all of us crime watchers appeared in Friday's catch of day. A certain Mr. Fallis of Covelo was charged with misdemeanor hit and run with property damage, driving on a suspended license, shuriken, and probation revocation. I thought shuriken was a typo, that the Jail's booking desk had channeled a foreign language which, as it turned out, they had in a way. The term is Japanese for throwing stars which, in the right hands which are never the right hands in Mendocino County, are regarded as weapons. A lotta guys, having watched too many kung fu movies, carry these things around like they know how to use them, like they are highly trained, highly disciplined martial arts soldiers. Nunchuks are another little apparatus the kung fu fantasists imagine they can competently wield as they hit themselves in the head with them. The idea that this Fallis kid could even throw his shuriken accurately is highly doubtful. But if it's the thought that counts, this is the wrong guy having those thoughts, Book 'em, Dano.

STARBUCKS "THIRD PLACE" policy seems to have arisen out of the coffee chain's Philadelphia fiasco when the store manager called the police on two black guys who were waiting for another guy without buying anything. Starbucks has now gone full-on accommodating, permitting — nay, inviting — the homeless to hang out. We'll see how the Starbucks in Ukiah and Fort Bragg adjust to the national strategy. Third place, by the way, means the place you go to when you aren't at home or work. If you have no home and no work you can pass your idle hours at Starbucks.

ON THE SUBJECT of the homeless, if you can find a copy of Marc Ellis's "A Year at the Catholic Worker," it contains the most vivid accounts of living with the homeless I've seen. Of course Catholic Workers are not your 9-5 helping pros of the type we find doing good in Ukiah, no sir; they are round-the-clock roomies of the most difficult homeless people, so difficult they've been thrown out of the rest of New York City's homeless shelters. The Catholic Workers reject no one, and as a CW volunteer you might be punched in the face by one of your roommates for no reason at all other than he/she feels like doing it. The CWs endure what most of us would find intolerable without ever calling the police, and it's this intolerableness that makes actually doing something to get the homeless off the streets so difficult. There is as much variousness among the homeless as there is among any other group of marginal people, but the people described by Ellis are all way beyond the humanly acceptable, which is why only the state and federal governments have the resources to get them housed, which is why at present, homeless policy at all levels of government, is more of the same, as most of us wonder where the tipping point is.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED VIEWING, a Netflix documentary called, "Evil Genius." Remember the pizza delivery guy rigged up with a bomb to rob a bank? This film is the story of that guy, the unluckiest pizza deliveryman ever. The evil geniuses, plural, are certainly evil but geniuses? Watch and decide for yourself. I sat there riveted, often gasping, "What the hell?" You'll never forget this one.

IRV SUTLEY brings the sad news that, "Irvin Moore of Healdsburg died at age 74 on 24 May 2018 after a long illness. Many people in Sonoma County first met Irvin when he came up from his hometown of Berkley to attend Sonoma State College. Moore was involved both in student government and with many social justice issues. Prior to moving to Sonoma County, Irvin had been active in the Auto Row sit-ins in San Francisco and the student movements at UC Berkley. Moore was among those appointed to the first panel of the Sonoma County Human Rights Commission where he worked tirelessly to keep a focus on racial discrimination within the county.”

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

(1) I think Americans are the loneliest people on the planet. Life has become unreal and as a consequence not worth living. American fascism atomizes people through its architecture, city planning, schooling system, corporate infrastructure, social interactions, etc. The result is wide spread depression and the use of “medication” for such. Some communities in the US because of the strong family and communal traditions they brought with them to America have been able to somewhat resist this fascist predation. But they are islands in a raging fascist ocean and they will eventually be washed away. I see this already happened with the Jewish community in the US. Fascism is a dead end, I don’t care how big a smile corporate America and its propaganda organs put on it.

(2) My former high school here in suburban Los Angeles (which I attended in the late 1970s) underwent partial reconstruction this past year. Three one-story buildings which contained hallways and which were separated by pleasant gardens and sitting areas were razed and replaced with three 2-story brick structures that resemble CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). The stairwells which face the front of the campus are enclosed in tall, silver metal cages. Everything is crammed together. The front of the school looks like a factory. The students walk around like robot-children, wearing the same backpacks and staring at their cell phones once they hit the street. Tick tick tick. Will it be an Asian teen who snaps, or will it be a white kid? Not that that really matters. The student population is now 80% Chinese 2nd generation, so the odds are it will be an Asian teenager. The atmosphere seems totally gross (1979 lingo).