Mendocino County Today: Sunday, June 24, 2018

• Pawnee Fire
• $25 Million
• Salmon Catch
• CAMP Raids
• ATV Casualty
• Pets
• Motorcyclist Killed
• Parkland Forum
• Little Dog
• Ed Notes
• Yesterday's Catch
• Slimmer California
• Trump Hires
• Frantic Overacting
• U.S. Policy
• Community Newspapers
• Corporate News
• Salad University
• Library Event
• Dirty Energy
• Marco Radio

EVACUATIONS ORDERED AS PAWNEE FIRE GROWS IN EASTERN LAKE COUNTY

A wildfire that started Saturday evening in a rural area in eastern Lake County was reported to have grown to at least 1,000 acres early Sunday and to have burned at least a dozen homes after authorities issued mandatory and advisory evacuation orders for up to 3,000 residents living in the area.

pressdemocrat.com/news/8465864-181/evacuations-ordered-as-pawnee-fire

MENDO GIVES AWAY $25 MILLION ON THE CONSENT CALENDAR

by Mark Scaramella

You could tell that Supervisor Georgeanne Croskey was nervous about handing over some $25 million to Camille Schrader’s Redwood Quality Management Company. I mean really. Handing it over no questions asked? Handing it over for ill-defined and unaccountable mental health services rendered, or not rendered? That's a lot of money to fork over in one big gulp without even pro forma discussion.

Croskey deserves a bit of credit for at least pulling the $25 mil off the consent calendar where CEO Angelo put it hoping it’d be approved without comment along with the other routine items. Supervisor McCowen also seemed aware of the bad optics associated with that much money sailing on past unremarked.

Croskey: “I asked for these items to be pulled because, you know, we are approving significant amounts of money in contracts. I think that RQMC does a great job. I simply want to pull these so we can highlight what it is that we are approving and the amount we are approving so it doesn't look like we are just stamping the consent calendar and we have a little bit of awareness. I know we had a presentation previously regarding these contracts so I'm not necessarily concerned for further discussion unless it's here at the board. I simply want to pull that to highlight the significance of these contracts.”

Unfortunately, the “presentation” Supervisor Croskey refers to was a generic info-free mental health presentation last month where the Mental Health staff and Ms. Schrader provided page after page of generic service descriptions, made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims and no questions were asked by the supervisors.

https://www.theava.com/archives/82464#3

The particulars of the RQMC contract were not mentioned, no numbers were provided, no trends reviewed, no analysis of how the “clients” were handled, who got what services and who didn’t, no plans for the coming year for the $25 mil. Etc.

Supervisor/Board Chair Dan Hamburg went into Homer Simpson mode: “It is indeed a very large amount of money.”

Supervisor John McCowen: “I appreciate that Supervisor Croskey is pulling these items from the consent calendar. I do believe that approval of the new contracts going forward is consistent with previous Board direction. We have had a general presentation on mental health and the Board did at that time give direction in favor of renewing the contracts for various factors. They were discussed at that time…”

No they were not, unless you consider a non-specific word salad “discussion.”

McCowen: “…However, really with the magnitude of the contracts, to me these are not consent items. It limits the ability both of the board, the contractors and also the public to ask questions or dig a little deeper into the nuts and bolts of these contracts…”

That's right, supervisor. You're getting warmer.

McCowen: “…It creates a situation where they were on consent, we have the day planned out in terms of what items we have time to consider and an in-depth discussion of this would throw off the agenda and creates pressure to not raise questions…”

When you look at what that last Tuesday agenda actually contained you can see where the Board’s priorities are: They spent an hour giving out service pins, another half hour giving awards to the participants in “Leadership Mendocino,” a couple of hours refining some refinements of the failed pot permit program, another half hour on “supervisors reports” which could have been handled in a written report. There was no gol-darn time left for any discussion of the $25 million contracts.

McCowen: “…Maybe we need a policy that contracts that hit a certain threshold should not be on the regular calendar because we are criticized all the time that we have no idea what's going on and we don't know where we're spending the money and these items would be an opportunity for the contractor and staff to give a synopsis of here's where the money's going."

“Criticized all the time”?

McCowen: “…So I don't want to hold up the meeting today…”

Bring on the awards and chuckling photos.

McCowen: “…But in the future these contracts, to me they are not appropriate for consent, just given the amount. I think we could get a brief rundown maybe from the department because we do have the approval of the new contracts going forward and two of them are also augmenting the current fiscal year contracts and I believe that's based on the services that were actually provided and the way the system works is we have to provide the service and pay for the service and then seek reimbursement from the state…”

All of a sudden McCowen seemed to be asking a question, albeit having nothing to do with the contracts or services at hand.

Cue Molgaard The Inevitable.

Anne Molgaard, Acting Director of Health and Human Services: “That is exactly right. In order to pull down the maximum amount [our emphasis] for the services rendered under federal and state laws we have to go back and occasionally make adjustments and the good news of that is, it means that more services were legally rendered to residents than we had initially anticipated. That's much better than leaving services and money so to speak on the table. But that's why they're all here. [I.e., to pull down the maximum amount.] I do realize that this is quite a consent calendar and this has to do with the fact that an edict came down from our former chair of the board of supervisors [i.e., Supervisor John McCowen] there will be no retroactive contracts. [As if.] So we have worked very hard. The actual number of contracts as you said in our budget report last week, or two weeks ago, the number of contracts is not increased, the fact that they are all being done in the month of June is what is different. I see that that is kind of overwhelming. But we can certainly come back and give more detail on anything that you would like.”

Thus commenced an even more irrelevant discussion of mental health services financing including an impossibly complicated “reversion plan” where maybe some money that’s not spent might go back to the state but maybe not because legislation is pending and lobbying is ongoing and Ms. Molgaard’s minions are hard at work getting as much of it as they can, but nobody really knows so they need a reversion plan in case some money reverts… But…

I gave up.

As the consent item discussion wound down, RQMC’s Camille Schrader thanked the board for the “trust” the Board put in her and her for-profit company’s “services.” Whatever they are.

Then Schrader added, “I frankly agree that these are huge contracts and they do need some discussion. In the last month we did a presentation on what those contracts are doing…”

There was no discussion. There was a garbled presentation of data free service categories, not what’s being done or not done for whom by whom.

“… and we have the data dashboard … and it actually shows the accountability…”

This chart from the March “data dashboard” (the latest I could find) is the closest the data dashboard gets to accountability:

So 50 people, 35 of them adults, were sent to outside-the-county psychiatric hospitals because they were a danger to themselves or gravely disabled (not because they were a danger to others).

RQMC is getting $25 million a year or about $2 million a month to do some assessments and process 50 people to outside facilities. You do the math. (But of course you can’t do the math because there’s not enough info. But $2 million a month would pay for several hundred people providing services, depending on how much Ms. Schrader pays her staff and herself. In fact, it looks like there are more people providing services than there are receiving services.)

Schrader: “So when you see those dollars and you have that data dashboard that is reported every month, you are seeing what services and to whom and what they cost…”

No you’re not. Not even close. It’s meaningless data and it’s certainly not clear what it costs except at the contract value level.

Schrader: “…and it is cumulative through the year…”

No it’s not, and even if it was, so what?

Schrader: “So it is a monthly accountability system.”

Oh please. The only thing that would constitute a “monthly accountability system” would be for the County to apply the accountability procedures recommended by highly regarded mental health consultant Lee Kemper, none of which have been implemented.

Kemper: “We recommend the County Executive direct BHRS/MH to prepare and present quarterly ‘Financial Summary Reports’ that provide summary financing, budgeting, expenditure, and service delivery information on all aspects of the Mental Health Delivery System – both ASOs and county delivered services. In the first of these reports, BHRS/MH should provide a description and outline of the overall structure of financing and budgeting for ASO delivered services and county-staff delivered services. Further, we recommend the County Executive direct BHRS/MH to make a recommendation on when an independent financial audit of both ASOs will be conducted and for which time periods.”

Absolutely nothing like that is in place, despite the $25 million recipient’s claims to the contrary.

Schrader: “And finally I want to say that 58% of that contract, or actually it's more like 40% or 45% of that contract goes direct to the provider agencies to provide services [which] is federal financial participation so those are dollars coming into our community for services for the population from the federal government that you are authorizing. So thank you very much for the honor of being able to serve our people.”

We expected someone to reply: “Oh no, thank you for taking our money!” But no.

So there you have it: Molgaard and Schrader confirm that they have achieved their real goal: Pull down the maximum amount of megabucks from the feds and pay their burgeoning staff to provide $25 million per year in mystery mental health services (not counting the County’s own 40-plus mental health administrators and coordinators). What Ms. Schrader specifically does with all that money is so unimportant that the supervisors can approve the contracts without discussion as it sails past on the consent calendar — even after they’ve belatedly pulled it “for discussion.”

WELL, AS YOU CAN SEE, THERE'S SALMON OFFSHORE…

(via MendocinoSportsPlus)

GROWING PAINS

by Randall Sullivan

(The origins of opposition to CAMP in SoHum)

Ed Denson was still a relative newcomer to southern Humboldt. He had spent most of his adult life in the Bay Area, managing during the 60s the bands Country Joe and the Fish and Joy of Cooking. Later he ran a music school and eventually created Kicking Mule Records, a mail-order folk label much like one he and guitarist John Fahey had owned years earlier. In 1980, verging on middle-age, Denson got divorced and sold his house. That same year, the lease on his warehouse expired. "I realized there was nothing to keep me in San Francisco anymore," he said. "I had a mail-order business that I could run from anywhere in the world."

Denson and his wife to be drove up the coast looking at real estate. In Southern Humboldt they found "the most for the least": 30 acres of pine and redwood, a long house, a large barn and electricity, adjacent to a paved road, all for $110,000. Their plan was to lead a quiet life, but the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) was to convince Denson he would have to go a lot farther than 200 miles to find one.

"The helicopters flew over my ranch as many as 35 times a week during the summer of 1984," Benson remembered. "They would pass right above my house at treetop height. It brought my business to a stop. I had no illusions about the reality of the situation. I had been in the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in the early 60s. For the first time in 20 years, though, I felt like doing something, getting involved."

He called the Federal Aviation Administration first, Denson recalled. "The FAA told me, 'that’s AMP and we have no jurisdiction.' I said, 'Who does?' and they didn't know." Furious, Denson sat in his office making long-distance calls through an entire workday. The Sheriff's department in Eureka said they had no authority; CAMP was a state operation. In the late afternoon, Denson finally got through to CAMP headquarters in Sacramento. "They said the pilot was not a government employee. They said, ‘he's a contract worker and we really can't control what he does’."

But without the helicopters, explained CAMP Deputy Commander Bill Ruzzamenti in an interview with Humboldt historian Ray Raphael, "we just couldn't get the job done nearly as effectively. The helicopters have provided us with a sense of superiority that has in fact established a paranoia in the grower's minds and has kept us from getting involved in violence with the growers. It's not perceived as an equal situation where they might conceivably fight and win. When you come in with a helicopter, there's no way they're going to stop and fight; by and large they head for the hills."

So the aerial assaults continued through August into September. Denson lived in Alder Point, near what had formerly been the community's economic mainstream mainspring, the Louisiana-Pacific lumber mill. Only a few months earlier, the company had closed the mill and now CAMP was using the abandoned site as its central staging area. The neighbors whose homes had been entered described a pattern of petty harassment: water pipes cut, closets emptied, refrigerators unplugged so food would spoil… Denson remembered that a friend who worked as a professional musician said that during the search of his home CAMP officers had torn the front board off his fiddle -- "’looking for drugs,’ they said. We're talking about an irreplaceable antique, a beautiful instrument. I was incensed."

For his part, Ruzzamenti believed the residents of Southern Humboldt were aware of a deeply felt shift "back to conservative thinking," as he put it. During the late 70s a 15 year trend toward increased support for the legalization of marijuana had been reversed. Opinion polls show the people in the other direction ever since and by 1985 73% of adults in America were opposed to legalization said the Gallup organization.

"So what?" said Ed Denson. "I didn't care if people were against marijuana. It would be all right with me if 99% of Americans got so upset about marijuana they stopped buying it. What bothered me was that the government had apparently declared war on this area and the people who live here."

After the summer raids of 1984, Denson spent the entire winter brooding: "Nothing had gotten to me like this in a long time. I felt so powerless and violated. The older you get, the more you can let stuff go by. But then something comes along that you can't let go by, and it becomes very important. Very important."

Early in the spring of 1985, Denson heard that a group of people calling themselves the Citizen's Observation Group was planning to monitor the CAMP raids that summer. The first COG meeting turned out to be the biggest political event in Southern Humboldt history, standing room only at the Veterans Memorial Hall.

"Everyone wanted to know, what can we do?" Benson friend Dierdre Ryan (not her real name) remembered. "We didn't think anything. CAMP said we were all growers, but when the question was put, 'Who would vote for legalization?' Everybody in the room raised their hands. Big growers, you know, don't want marijuana legalized; it would take the profits out."

COG first decided to go to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, “but there was nothing there," according to Ryan. "Then we contacted the media. But they all write press releases for the government. Finally we decided to go out and collect our own evidence firsthand."

The group held a "benefit boogie" in Briceland to raise money, gave each member training in "nonviolent tactics," and began holding regular Wednesday meetings at which they discussed matters such as the philosophical implications of tying pink and yellow ribbons around video camera microphones so troopers would not mistake them for a weapon.

Denson became unofficial team leader for the Alder Point area, following the drug raiders with driver, Frank Cierkiorka, who saw political action two decades earlier during a SNCC voter registration drive in Mississippi. The group saturated Southern Humboldt with its "See CAMP, Call COG" leaflets, and “the response was tremendous," said Denson. "When the first convoy came over the hill toward Alder Point, I got seven calls before they reached the mill. I heard when they left town, when they made the top of the hill on every mile of the way."

Going in after the Raiders, the first thing you usually saw was "the women and children coming out of wherever CAMP was hitting," Denson said. CAMP set up roadblocks that stopped most of the COG teams far from the scene of a raid, but sometimes the watchdogs got as close as the helicopter landing zone. At Honeydew, a COG team that approached the site of a raid became their own evidence after they were surrounded by 10 uniformed men with drawn guns, body searched, photographed and threatened with arrest if they failed to provide ID.

In September of 1985, almost a year after Judge Aguilar's injunction; COG introduced evidence that CAMP was violating it. After arguments from both sides, Aguilar agreed with the people of Southern Humboldt that it would be necessary to appoint a court monitor to accompany CAMP on its future forays into the countryside. Minutes after the judge read his order, Bill Ruzzamenti told reporters that CAMP just might not come back to Humboldt County in 1986. "There's too much bureaucracy," he said.

"I guess that means us," said a smiling Ed Denson.

The anger that had set him off the year before was mostly spent. What was left behind was a bemused but cautious scorn for "the other side." After an entire summer in pursuit of CAMP, the emblematic event remained the raid on Rancho Sequoia. Following phone reports that morning, Denson and the Alder Point team were unable to locate CAMP but found the Rancho’s residents huddled behind a gate. Just up the road the COG car stopped when someone spotted a document tied with a red ribbon and wedged into a fence. It was a photocopy of an aerial photograph of the area which showed two rows of dots in a clearing surrounded by trees. Denson assumed the dots were marijuana plants. Attached to the photocopy was a "substantiating statement" filed by a CAMP officer who said that he had heard there were four "red eye missiles" (heatseeking rockets used in Vietnam) in the area. "We investigated," Denson recalled, "and it turned out that the CAMP guy had been hanging out undercover in one of the bars here where he heard several people talking about Red Eyes. It was the name of the local softball team."

(California Magazine, 1986)

JEFFREY ALAN POLSON, 51, of Laytonville, died late Friday afternoon when he drove an ATV up a steep embankment and it rolled over on him. His two passengers, his son, Jeremiah Polson, 26, and Joseph Bertolucci, 30, were able to jump clear of the vehicle and were uninjured. The fatal accident occurred in deep Spy Rock, northeast of Laytonville.

UKIAH SHELTER PETS OF THE WEEK

Adele is a wonderful dog--sweet and friendly. She LOVES playing with tennis balls--she passed up the squeaky stuffies in the play yard toy box and dove right in for the tennis ball. She'll drop the ball at your feet, and wait anxiously for you to continue the game. But when you want to stop, she can take a time out. Adele has lots of energy, and might be a great dog for someone who likes to jog, and/or a great family dog. Adele knows sit and down and (sometimes) stay. Adele was easy to leash up, but she does pull on leash, so she will need basic doggie training, which we think she will love. Adele has a lovely, soft and smooth coat, with beautiful kohl-rimmed eyes. Adele is 2 years old and a svelte 66 pounds. P.S. Adele is a Play Yard ROCK STAR!

The Shelter is full of kitten cuteness!! Pictured here is Hazelnut -- a 3 month old, spayed female, lilac point Siamese mix.  Hazelnut is looking for a home with lots of nooks and crannies to explore and plenty of toys! She really enjoys all the attention  she gets from the many Shelter visitors but she can't wait to be adopted and go home with her new family.

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

MOTORCYCLIST DIES IN COAST CRASH

On June 22, 2018, at 1035 hours, a 2013 Kawasaki ZG1400 motorcycle was being operated by Robert Bradley Knowles, 67 from SeaTac Washington, southbound on Highway 1 north of mile post marker 103.02 in an unincorporated area of Mendocino County. For reasons still under investigation, the Kawasaki traveled off the east road edge, down the tree and vegetation covered embankment, and collided with a tree. Knowles was transported by air ambulance to Mercy Medical Center in Redding where he was pronounced deceased at 1:33pm.

This collision remains under investigation by the California Highway Patrol- Garberville Office.

The California Highway Patrol was assisted at the scene by Leggett Cal-Fire, Leggett Volunteer Fire Department, City Ambulance of Eureka, Westport Fire Department.

(California Highway Patrol press release)

CHUCK DUNBAR WRITES: "Regarding Rixanne Wehren’s several letters written in recent weeks opposing the proposed OHV park off Hwy 20: I appreciate that Rixanne is a member of the local Sierra Club and agree with her well-stated points about why this proposal should not become a reality. I also oppose this idea, and I believe there are far better uses for this neglected land than to have off highway motorized vehicles further degrading it. The MCRPD is a taxpayer supported organization, and taxpayers deserve a real voice in this decision. I hope that many citizens will come to the meeting this Thursday, the 28th at Cotton Auditorium, to voice their concerns. The meeting is set for 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. This is a big deal, and if folks don’t come forward to protest this proposal, a small contingent of special interest supporters will try to make it happen."

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I'll say this about all the Rastafarians in town this weekend; they're a heckuva lot friendlier than some creatures I could name. One love! Jah!”

ED NOTES

CATCH AND RELEASE. Why? There isn't room in the jail. Which can be read 'jails,' plural, because county jails everywhere in the state are operating on a catch and release basis, and not only because of Prop 64 decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs, but because the rising tide of miscreants at all levels of seriousness means only people looking at serious felonies are locked up.

TAKE THE CASE of the old boy pictured below. Mr. Tucker, age 70, no fixed address and adrift on the Mendocino Coast. Earlier in the week he was arrested at the Mobil station just south of Fort Bragg. The charge was theft and assault. Apparently, Mr. T walked out of the station without paying for something and either hit or threatened to hit the clerk who confronted him. Tucker's bail was set at the felony level of $75,000. He was in jail overnight and soon made his way back to Fort Bragg.

TUCKER had previously been arrested in Fort Bragg for trespassing, which usually means he was squatting on private property until the owner and other people in the neighborhood complained. Tucker, apparently a drinking man, hadn't been discrete about where he relieved himself. He'd also been involved in a disturbance outside the Fort Bragg Senior Center involving another homeless guy. Mr. T. is popping up often enough in public view to almost get himself frequent flier status. He's plenty old enough to collect social security which, of course, wouldn't be enough to cover rent and his cost of living even if he weren't given to drink and unruly behavior. Whether or not Tucker has relatives in Fort Bragg or has an association with the town, isn't known, at least by us.  Tucker, then, is a kind of roving, low intensity nuisance, a periodic responsibility of law enforcement, the kind of homeless guy who, 80 years ago, would have been court-ordered into the County Farm at Bush and Low Gap, Ukiah, and the kind of guy 80 years later serves as a funding unit for one or more public agencies and non-profits but remains out of doors deep into his golden years.

* * *

HALF-BAKED OPINIONS. Sure, I've got 'em, and by the bushel, too. You asked for it.

(1) The border with Mexico. Since the Monroe Doctrine, early 19th century, we've had our way with the Southern Hemisphere, installing and supporting murdering, thieving governments who've ransacked their countries. And we wonder after nearly two centuries of these kleptocracies their victims are massing at our border?

(2) The cover story in the current Atlantic Monthly: "Your Child Says She's Trans. She Wants Hormone Therapy. She's 13." I'd say, Her Parents Are Probably Sex-Obsessed Neurotics Who Should Lose Custody Of Her.

(3) The two races for Mendo supervisor boil down, for me, to which candidates realize that our local government isn't functioning as it should be functioning.

(4) I often see a large woman kinda jogging past the ava's Boonville bunker. I don't know her, and I'm hardly qualified to comment, but I want to tell her that exercise is something you have to look forward to, and that she can get the same training effect if she simply walked at a brisk pace and enjoy herself while she keeps herself healthy.

CATCH OF THE DAY, June 23, 2018

MICHAEL BOONE, Ukiah. Resisting, probation revocation.

JORDAN BRIGHT, Calpella. Failure to appear.

JOEY BRITT, Merced/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation.

JOSE CORNEJO-OLVERA, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, false personation of another (using someone else’s ID).

ASHLEY DARLINGTON, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

SHAUNA GATLIN, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

RICHARD LITTLEMOON, Talmage. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MOLLY MCCLOUD, Fort Bragg. Shoplifting.

WILLIAM RYAN, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JACOB SANDERSON, Laytonville. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

SHAWN SPILLER, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, controlled substance, under influence, probation revocation.

EDUUARDO TORALES-LOPEZ, Philo. DUI.

SLIMMING DOWN

Editor:

California, according to some, having grown too big for its political britches, must now be split into three new states. Yet, however bold and marvelous the concept, the normal mind churns and revolts at the specter of three costly new state capitols, populated by three times the bureaucrats fervidly busy shoving out three times the California-style baloney that one Sacramento exudes.

I humbly propose a simple and sane solution to a too-big California: cede “excess” territory to the surrounding states. Oregon would gratefully welcome Cascadia, the lands to the north of Redding. Nevada would enjoin the Sierras down to the edge of the Central Valley’s plain, while Arizona would embrace the counties south of the Tehachapi. That would leave a more svelte California, which would still be an economic powerhouse and beguiling tourist magnet, with an unsullied Sonoma remaining the Disneyland of alcohol and cannabis.

Still, if this downsizing of the state isn’t good enough for the carve-California crowd, we could nobly surrender the deflated remains of our great state into the graceful hula hands of the otherwise innocent and wise Hawaiians.

Fred Crichton

Kenwood

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #1

It’s better, whatever was or wasn’t the case under previous presidents, if children of illegal immigrants can stay with or near their parents before being deported.

It likely wasn’t the kids idea to think the US offered a better life, so it seems harsh that they should suffer the most. They’re children.

There is a lot of overacting both from Trump’s tweets and the opposition. It’s all too frantic.

Perhaps if US TV programmes and films seen overseas (or over-dessert) depicted a little more life ‘as it is’ for the majority in the states, rather than glamour of the rich and famous, then it wouldn’t be such an attractive dream.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #2

NAFTA and U.S. Drug policy have caused people from Mexico and Central America to come to the U.S. NAFTA, significantly put in place by U.S. Agri-business megacorporate interests drove small Mexican corn farmers out of business, because they obviously could not compete with U.S. tax-subsidized corn. Little wonder that they have come to the U.S. to avoid starvation of their families. U.S. drug policy, significantly driven by the law enforcement-prison complex keeps U.S. narcotics profits high, making narcotics production in Mexico and Central American extremely lucrative, and leading to terrible violence in those areas. People threatened by that violence flee to the U.S. Seen from these perspectives, U.S. deportation of undocumented people is plainly immoral, since U.S. policies have caused the problem. NAFTA and U.S. Drug policy have caused people from Mexico and Central America to come to the U.S.

NEWSPAPERS NOT DEAD

Reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated

economist.com/news/united-states/21744876-reports-their-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated-small-town-american-newspapers-are

SALAD ANYONE?

Expanded salad university Sunday July 15

There is an expanded Salad University class at Floodgate Farm which may be of interest, on Sunday July 15th from 12:45-4:30 PM.

Learn about our 40 ingredients salad mix, thistle drink, and wild chips and more. Bill and Jaye share their experiences of learning from the plants and using them, their health giving properties, and more. Tips for propagating and growing many cultivated greens, herbs and flowers. Brief overviews of permaculture methods such as berms, swale, sheet mulching and plant guilds while we walk through our garden and orchard. Class finishes with a potluck and good conversation.

Taught by Bill Taylor; Farmer, Salad University Instructor, Pianist, Composer and Jaye Alison Moscariello: Painter, Farmer, S.U. Instructor, Self-Taught Raw Foods Chef

Cost $30. Per person

To register, signup at the Floodgate Farm farmers market table or call (707) 272-1688  We’ll meet at West Rd Exit 557 off US 101, across from bus stop at 12:45 pm on Sunday July 15th, 2018 and caravan or carpool at 12:55 sharp up to Floodgate Farm on Heart Mountain in Redwood Valley. www.floodgatefarm.com

LIBRARY EVENT: LOBA Reading Series featuring Marci Vogel! (Open Mic follows)

Saturday, June 30th 3 pm

Join us for a reading with Marci Vogel, visiting post-doc scholar/instructor from the University of Southern California & author of At the Border of Wilshire & Nobody, winner of the inaugural Howling Bird Press Poetry Prize. Open mic follows. Teens & adults are invited to share poems or fiction in any form or style.

Marci Vogel is the author of At the Border of Wilshire & Nobody, winner of the inaugural Howling Bird Press Poetry Prize, and Death and Other Holidays, winner of the inaugural Miami Book Fair/de Groot Prize for the Novella. Her poetry, prose, translations, and cross-genre inventions appear in Jacket2, VIDA, Seneca Review and FIELD, among a good number of other publications. A life-long Californian and first-generation college student, she earned her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California, where she currently teaches poetry as a Postdoctoral Scholar Teaching Fellow. Her work has been honored with a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, a Hillary Gravendyk Memorial Scholarship from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and a fellowship from the Fondation Ténot. You can find her this summer at the Napa Valley Writers' Conference and as a poet-in-residence at North Street Collective, where she is working on a new manuscript, arboreal vernacular > a translation of trees.

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

A feminist epic by Diane di Prima, LOBA is a visionary epic quest for the reintegration of the feminine, hailed by many as the great female counterpart to Allen Ginsberg's Howl when the first half appeared in 1978. Loba, "she-wolf" in Spanish explores the wilderness at the heart of experience, through the archetype of the wolf goddess, elemental symbol of complete self-acceptance.

CALIFORNIA SENATE COMMITTEE PASSES REGIONAL GRID BILL THAT WOULD KEEP STATE DEPENDENT ON DIRTY ENERGY

by Dan Bacher

In the latest example of how California’s reputation as a “green leader” and “the Resistance” to President Trump is greatly overrated, the State Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee on June 19 passed a bill that would dismantle the California Independent System Operator and replace it with a western regional electricity market under the control of the Trump administration’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Although opposed by a wide array of conservation, environmental justice and community groups, the committee passed Assembly Bill 813 by six votes to one. It now heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Assembly Member Chris Holden introduced AB 813 on February 15, 2017. Assembly Members Patterson and Quirk coauthored the bill in the Assembly, while Senators Stern and Wieckowski coauthored AB 813 in the Senate.

Proponents of the bill include the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund and the California Chamber of Commerce, who favor a “market approach” to energy policies.

Lauren Navarro, Senior Policy Manager for California Clean Energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, claimed “an integrated Western energy grid can help California meet existing and future clean energy goals by creating a broader footprint in which California utilities could easily trade electricity with their counterparts in other western states with high levels of renewables.”

Bill opponents, including Food and Water Watch, Consumer Watchdog, the California Environmental Justice Alliance and Sierra Club California, charge that a regional grid will undermine renewable energy and green jobs in California and open up the state to market manipulation and speculation similar to the Enron energy scandal that plagued the state in the early 2000s under recalled Governor Gray Davis.

You can read the Legislative Analysis, including the list of groups supporting and opposing the bill, here: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/...

“AB 813 would give the Trump Administration the ability to determine California’s energy future and keep us hooked on dirty coal and gas imports,” said Adam Scow, California Director of Food & Water Watch.

In condemning the vote for AB 813, Liza Tucker, consumer advocate for Consumer Watchdog, said the legislation would turn California into “a giant Western power trading casino” that puts ratepayers and the environment at risk.

“This is a giant giveaway to billionaire investors, energy traders, and former allies of Enron that brought us market manipulation, rolling blackouts, and a $40 billion tab two decades ago that we are still paying for,” said Tucker. “The legislation is a scheme that will leave the market open to trading manipulation that will raise electricity rates and undermine California’s control of carbon emissions by empowering appointees of President Donald Trump to overturn California laws.”

Tucker said California leaders are being pressured by former allies of Enron, including Ralph Cavanagh of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who promoted deregulation two decades ago as a way supposedly to increase energy efficiency, lower costs, and promote renewable energy.

However, a new Consumer Watchdog report reveals that “precisely the opposite happened, and is likely to happen again if the legislation passes,” according to Tucker.

The report documents how Cavanagh, the chief backer of the Western trading scheme now and of deregulation in the late 1990s, vouched for Enron, claiming, “Can you trust Enron? On stewardship issues and public benefit issues…the answer is yes.”  

Read the report, Betting Against The House: How California’s Leaders Could Gamble Away Our Energy Future On A Western Power Trading Casino, at  https://consumerwatchdog.org/sites/default/files/2018-06/BettingAgainstTheHouse.pdf

In addition to Enron allies like Cavanaugh, the legislation is supported by Governor Jerry Brown, who received $9.8 million from oil and gas corporations and utilities, and many of his former and current appointees.

“If passed, the legislation would hand control of the energy trading system from California’s Independent System Operator to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC),” Tucker stated. “Coal-heavy states joining a new regional transmission organization could sue California over its clean energy laws. The state could see its laws invalidated in court or preempted by FERC. Californians could wind up subsidizing coal power and expensive transmission lines originating in other states.”

Nevertheless, a majority of the committee voted to pass the bill out of the committee, including some committee members unhappy with the bill, including Senator Robert Hertzberg.

“Hertzberg warned that if the legislation did not address his concerns, as a member of the Judiciary Committee where the legislation heads next, he would ‘advocate and lobby against it,’” she pointed out.

“This legislation is not fixable,” emphasized Tucker. “There is nothing to fix. This is a scam to take away California’s energy independence and hand the system over to profiteering billionaires and energy traders. Lawmakers who fail to stop this measure, do so at their own peril.”

Then two days after the Committee vote, Tucker’s group provided new information to the Legislature warning that AB 813 will not only open the state to trading manipulation, but “permanently hobble California when it comes to prosecuting Enron-style manipulation in the future.”

This attempt to prevent lawsuits against the regional grid scheme reminds one of the current rider to a spending bill by Representative Ken Calvert to block judicial review of Governor Jerry Brown’s legacy project, the Delta Tunnels. You can read about Calvert’s rider here: fishsniffer.com/...

“Californians recovered hundreds of millions of dollars from energy manipulators like Enron, Duke, NRG, Williams and others only because of civil lawsuits and resulting settlements filed on their behalf,” Jamie Court, President of Consumer Watchdog, wrote in a letter to the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Hanna Beth Jackson, where AB 813 will be heard on Tuesday, June 26.

“Conversations with one of the lead attorney in these cases, former City Attorney and private plaintiff lawyer Mike Aguirre, reveals that the scheme envisioned by AB 813 would prevent such lawsuits over electricity manipulation in the future.”

Court noted that the cases depended on cooperation with the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), an ally in proving the manipulation and providing evidence. The cases were filed in state court alleging unfair competition and other unfair business practices.

This opportunity by the public to sue over energy manipulation would be prevented by the implementation of AB 813, the letter documented:

“Under AB 813, CAISO would cease to exist and be replaced with a Western Regional Transmission Operator appointed by unspecified corporate interests in unspecified states. Governance would be dominated by trading industry representatives, rather than California officials vetted by the Senate and appointed by California’s Governor to serve the interests of our state. Consumers would lose a vital ally with no consumer protections in place at the new regional operator. 

“…The new multi-state organization would represent the industry, not California consumers, and disputes over energy manipulation or environmental protection would be under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

“FERC would be empowered to invalidate California laws once we participate in a multi-state energy trading system, rather than our current mostly-California-only system…Mr. Aguirre explains that the Western market and FERC could also preempt the very state laws that Californians sued under to recoup their losses during the energy manipulation schemed associated with deregulation at the turn of the century.

“In other words, common law causes of action and state statutes against unfair competition are as likely to be invalidated as other environmental and consumer statutes – leaving Californians at risk of not having a legal remedy under the next manipulation scheme. They would face FERC preemption.”

For the letter, see here: www.consumerwatchdog.org/…

Action Alert: AB 813 gives President Donald Trump a say in CA's energy policy - and his administration wants to fully reopen Aliso Canyon, the site of the largest natural gas blowout in U.S. history, according to Adam Scow of Food and Water Watch.

State Senators Henry Stern and Bob Hertzberg voted YES on AB 813. Scow is urging everybody concerned about the the future of energy and the environment in California to call Stern and Hertzberg:  and tell them to VOTE NO on AB 813 in the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 26.
Stern - (916) 651-4027
Hertzberg - (916) 651-4018

You can also sign this Food and Water Watch petition to the California Legislature to stop this plan to enrich energy companies at the expense of people and the environment: secure.foodandwaterwatch.org/...

LOS QUEREMOS.

“How do you know what they don’t want you to know isn’t just what they want you to think?”

The recording of last night's (2018-06-22) KNYO Fort Bragg and KMEC Ukiah Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is available by one or two clicks, depending on whether you want to listen to it now or download it and keep it for later and, speaking of which, it's right here: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0286

And here are a few not necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items that I set aside for you while gathering the show together, found mostly thanks to the fine websites listed at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

Border policy. “It’s not cages, it’s just chainlink fencing.”
https://tinyurl.com/JustChainlinkFencing

Also, “Where are the girls, the baby girls?” DHS chief: “Dunno. I'll look into that. Next.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsG5QZFQIO0

Honeymoon hotels in the Poconos.
https://flashbak.com/love-in-the-poconos-postcards-from-the-honeymoon-capital-of-the-world-401499/

Summer: spaceships, buildings, fairies, art deco movie sets, actresses, cars.
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2018/06/drb-visual-caffeine-6.html

And an Irish girl sunbathing.
https://imgur.com/gallery/fPUUf

Marco McClean
memo@mcn.org