Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Sep. 11, 2018

• Fair Weekend
• Panthers Intercepted
• Commercial Encroachment
• Old Ukiah
• Complex Update
• KZYX Shuffle
• Little Dog
• Nutmeg
• Noyo Harbor
• Caltrans Meeting
• Groundskeeper Wanted
• Rainbow Ridge
• Hendy Woods
• Yesterday's Catch
• Gassy Assad
• Kool-Aid
• System Disconnect
• Good Reads
• Grammer Concert
• Hopeful Conversations
• Kiln Building
• Sweatshop Labor

THE 91ST MENDOCINO COUNTY FAIR AND APPLE SHOW will run from Friday, Sept. 14 through Sunday, Sept. 16 at the Fairgrounds in Boonville.

ukiahdailyjournal.com/lifestyle/20180906/91st-annual-mendocino-county-fair-and-apple-show-takes-place-sept-14-16

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THE BOONVILLE WEEKLY used to maintain a booth at the Fair before getting priced out, and we always enjoyed doing it as an opportunity to meet readers from all over the county and farther abroad. We paid $500 for a small space next door to MendoLib’s slick Democrat booth featuring big, glossy photos of major enemies of the people and faithfully staffed by credulous locals. On the other side of us were the Trumpers, consisting of exactly one Trumpet, the indefatigable Stan Anderson. We supplied our own booth, putting it up and taking it down at the bargain price of only five hundred bucks! Wow, what a deal! We sold enough t-shirts and books to almost offset the fee, but really couldn’t afford to do it again. Last year, however, we arranged to display the pig built by Lucas Studio from the famous, locally filmed Pig Hunt, and two successive years prior we exhibited Annie Kalantarian’s brilliant collages depicting local people. These presences proved quite popular, and definitely helped emphasize the local in a local event. I’m not saying we need (or want) a special invitation to appear, but what I am saying is it would definitely help boost attendance and create more local enthusiasm for the Fair if it was less of a generic event, and if the Fair Board, rather than just show up for occasional meetings, would put some real effort into the thing so we might get back to the memorable Fair weekends of yesteryear.

IN LIEU of a fair booth, people in town for this weekend’s event are of course welcome to stop by the ava bunker in central Boonville. We’ll be here all weekend.

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BOONVILLE FAIR SUNDAY COMMUNITY CHURCH SERVICE

September 16th 2018, 8:30 AM

Apple Hall Auditorium, next to the Fair Office

Pastor Dave Kooyers from Valley Bible Fellowship will present;

“What Is Man?”

“Made in whose image?”

Free admission/Everyone Welcome

Please come and worship with us, and then enjoy the fair for the rest of the day.

For additional information please feel free to call Pastor Dave Kooyers (707) 895-2325, or the Fair Office at (707) 895-3011, or visit their website at:

HOME

10:00 am Sheep Dog Trials, Finals - Rodeo Arena

2:00 pm CCPRA Rodeo Finals - Rodeo Arena

ROBERT PINOLI sends the sad news, tersely ringing down the curtain on legendary years of Anderson Valley football: “I am very sorry that Anderson Valley High School has to drop our football program for this year. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause your school, coaching staff and players. If you have any questions please call me at (707) 895-3496 ext. 517.” Robert Pinoli, Athletic Director, Anderson Valley High School. (More on this next week.)

COACH JOHN TOOHEY CLARIFIES: It is with a heavy heart, but without regret, that AV Football has decided not to continue on field competition for the remainder of the 2018 season. Participation numbers, age, inexperience, physical development, and injuries are all contributing factors to this decision. We were hit hard early by student transfers, leading to a falling out of participation from many upper classmen, a number of first time freshmen and sophomore players stepped up to fill the void. These young players, while enthusiastic, hard working and improving, are in far too vulnerable a position in a league with lopsided talent discrepencies. Asking these young men and women to compete in a competitive varsity setting has proved far too consequential for their health and safety. Although our games are forfeit, the team is in no way disbanding. AV Football will be transitioning, beginning immediately, to Panther Iron. We will be working diligently to transform these athletes into more durable, better conditioned versions of themselves. We will also be organizing team activities in the coming weeks. We look forward to continued community support as we develop and prepare for the future. If you have any questions, comments, or would like further details on why this decision was made, feel free to contact coach Toohey at coachjw2e@gmail.com

INTERESTING controversy rages at Rancho Navarro that pits residents opposed to the more flagrant, corporate-style marijuana operations complete with eyesore, year-round greenhouses that foul the Rancho’s wooded hillsides versus these absentee fly-by-nighters with no regard or respect for their neighbors. Rancho Navarro’s charter specifically excludes this kind of business but its operators have lawyers and think they have a legal leg to stand on. Here’s hoping for amputation.

UKIAH THEN & NOW, A DIALOGUE

HARVEY READING, commenting on old photos of Ukiah, kicked off by commenting, “Old Ukiah: Almost as dismal as new Ukiah.”

MARK SCARAMELLA: Oh no, new Ukiah is much more dismal. Have you been to new Ukiah lately? I remember driving through old Ukiah with my father on one of his famous (to us) creamery tours in the 50s on old 101. All those dusty old towns at least had some character, some individuality of a sort. We lived for several years in Willows and someone had shot the giant SHELL station neon sign way up above the town in huge neon yellow letters so that at night it said “Welcome to your neighborhood HELL station.” A true landmark. Ukiah wouldn’t tolerate anything like that nowadays.

READING: Last time I was there was probably 2000-01 for a work meeting. The area possessed no attraction for me then. I suppose I shouldn’t be so biased toward a place, but there you have it. While living south of Sonoma during the 70s, hearing all the tales of “organic” flower children alighting in Mendo (plus the firing of the Ag Commissioner for telling the truth that everyone outside Mendocino County already knew) completely turned me off concerning the place as a possible abode, something I have yet to overcome, nor at this stage, do I even plan to try. I quite fully expect to die here in the land of the broomstick cowboy … a whole state which contains only about 6 times as many people as Mendocino County, assuming I’ve calculated properly.

SCARAMELLA: My brother started coming to Ukiah (and other NorCal county seats) in the early 70s as a Welfare Administrative Hearing officer (hearing benefits appeals from applicants who were denied benefits by county eligibility staffers). He told me that he reversed more than 90% of the denials by county officials in the dozen or so rural counties which were on his beat because they simply didn’t follow the law. His impression of this area even back then was that Mendo was a “cow county” like all the rest of them, with penny-pinching nitpicking welfare officials who prided themselves on keeping a lid on benefits, meager as they have always been. But, again even back then, Mendo was different rhetorically, with lots of “liberal” talk about how “progressive” they were while beneath the rhetoric they were just like all the other “cow counties.” As John Pinches once said (I think) Mendo has a lot of “Pickup truck cowboys” who have never seen a cow or a horse. The thing that makes Ukiah so dismal now is the sickly sweet syrup of fake liberalism poured over the same dry pancakes — still a cow town in a cow county — but with more retirees, more wine, more pot and more pretense. The Supes meetings are good metaphors for this dismal state of affairs. Not once since the “flower children” moved in and produced this lib-lab overlay have these new arrivals proposed a single liberal thing, as they vote for the hack Democrats 2 to 1 year after year. We get KZYX, personal use pot initiatives, hippie shack building code exemptions, no spray on me and my body-temple, no clearcuts or gravel plants in my viewshed, no GMOs, and other essentially libertarian me-first and NIMBY proposals — but never do we see childcare vouchers, living wage for local contracts, local preference, sunshine and open government proposals, oversight over helping agencies, etc. which would benefit the general public. So your “land of the broomstick cowboy” doesn’t sound so different after all…

READING: No, Mark, it isn’t different at all, except for fewer trees, colder winters and lots of public land that some cow or sheep farmer or extractive corporation can’t force me leave … so far (not to mention people who have their headlights adjusted far too high … on purpose I suspect, perhaps thinking that illuminating the sky rather than the roadway is beneficial while driving at night). Public lands and small population are the ONLY things that attracted me here to the Midwest (they even have a town north of Casper named just that). The fear of martial law and overpopulation are what drove me from the state of my birth out West after 52 years. I would take slight issue with your brother’s assessment of cow counties. Calaveras County was kind of an exception in terms of its welfare department during my years there (1955-1968). It was headed in those years by a Miss Florence (Flossie) Deveggio, and she insisted on that formal form of address unless you knew her well. She was a strong believer in the rights of her clients and ensured that her staff did everything they could to provide services to them, including legal advice regarding the various welfare statutes. She was a strong woman who could back down the county supervisors, too, most of whom reflected the cow-(and sheep-)farmer mentality your brother described. My mom, a socialist cum New-Deal democrat, loved working for her. I shudder to think how things may be there now.

PS. I received this morning the following response from the Calaveras Enterprise in response to my request for the name of the Calaveras County Welfare Department Head in the 1960s:

“To: H READING

Subject: Re: Head of the County Welfare Department in the 60s

From John: “Evelyn Arthur was the head of that department at that time.”

The person referenced as John was the 8th-grade teacher I had mentioned in the earlier posts. The editor of the paper still has not heard back from a fellow who was a Calaveras County supervisor at the time. I am sure his answer will be the same as John’s.

My sister and I remembered the names of two co-workers, Violet C. and Deveggio. That sort of makes sense, because they were the people with whom our mom would have had more daily interaction, hence more mention in conversation with us kids.

I can find nothing on Arthur in a quick Internet Search.

So, it was Miss Arthur! Once I read it, I remembered it … Of course!

MENDOCINO COMPLEX UPDATE — SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

US Forest Service

Firefighters on the Ranch Fire are working to contain the last section of the fire, patrolling firelines and doing suppression repair. Containment remains at 98%, 410,000 acres. There are 672 miles of fireline that required suppression repair work. To date, crews have completed suppression repair work on 69 percent of the fireline. Fire suppression repair work consists of cutting hazard trees to ensure firefighters are working in safe areas, reducing dirt berms, spreading cut vegetation and building water bars to minimize soil erosion. Additional suppression repair needs are being discovered as crews continue to work around the perimeter of the fire.

Ukiah Fire Camp Move: Today both fire camps (Ukiah, and Stonyford) are being condensed into one Incident Command Post (ICP) at Stonyford, where the bulk of the suppression repair work remains. Relocating a fire camp involves numerous moving parts: all kinds of vehicles, crew buggies, tractor trailers containing shower and food preparation units, the wiring to connect each trailer with telephones, electricity, internet, a water source, place to camp and park trailers. The person responsible for making this move seamless is a qualified Logistics Chief. The logistics section can organize a small town, even if it’s temporary fire camp for 3,000 people and 300 vehicles.

Fire Closure Area: The Ranch Fire area is closed as described in Forest Order 08-18-15. The purpose of the closure is to provide for public safety, and for the firefighters who are engaged in fire suppression and repair efforts within the Ranch Fire closure area. The closure area applies to all public use, including hunting, the use of firearms and off-highway vehicles. The northern half of the forest is open for outdoor activities. Forest visitors can contact the ranger station nearest their destination for current information.

For detailed Mendocino Complex information visit: inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6073/

A READER WRITES: "I have no direct knowledge of why KZYX made their much-ballyhooed recent programming 'changes.' But it’s always safe to bet that it had something to do with making things easier, simpler or better for the small crew of overpaid insiders who run the station and have never had anything to do with improving anything at the station or on the air. Let’s connect some dots. First, there’s the relatively new program director named Alice who a couple of months ago ran a sounder about needing volunteers (that’s right, volunteers) to cover the three NPR hours in the morning which had been covered to a large extent by Alice herself. Then, after nobody came forward, those sounders for volunteers stopped. Then Alice announced the big schedule changes (which are not changes at all, just slight shifting around of the same shows). Looking a little further at the ‘changes’ we see that the weekday morning music shows were moved so that they immediately follow the three NPR hours that Alice was having trouble finding volunteers for while Mr. Innskeeping and Ms. Hottenburger read a few soundbites about how bad things are in Somalia or Syria. By cleverly switching the weekday morning music shows Alice can get the music programmers to come in three hours earlier by telling them they have to if they want to keep their shows, which of course they do. I also see that Alice ends up with her own music show one day a week. I have no idea why Alice moved DemocracyBackThen to DemocracyLater, probably just as cover to make it look like the morning changes weren’t just for her. There is absolutely no change otherwise and pushing their (not-so) “public affairs” shows from 9am to 11am means even fewer people will listen to them. If KZYX wanted to improve listenership they’d put on shows about Mendocino County like occasional debates about interesting issues — Coast Hospital, Measure B, the County CEO/Supervisors, Ukiah or Fort Bragg City Council meetings, the Library/Museum controversy and many more. Or they could do an occasional live feed from a news event. Or if they were really bold (for them) they could find somebody to do a morning talk show. Maybe Alice could do it instead of more music. But that would require some work.

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MUSICAL CHAIRS

Editor:

Kudos to KZYX (KZIP) for its recent program shuffle: Rearranging the upper deck chairs on the Titanic. Still no more than ten minutes of “local” news. How about some live reportage as they slip beneath the waves?

Cheers.

Don Morris

Ghost Town/Willits (analogtweets.com)

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Skrag saunters by and says, ‘Fair time, Little Dog, and I can't wait to get me one of those corn dogs. Hope it isn't you on the stick!’ Do I react? Nope. I just Zen him out.”

NUTMEG’S FLEETING FAME

Dear Little Dog,

You may not be aware of this, but there was a time when I – not you! – was the most famous dog in Mendocino County, cosseted by everyone and two of the richest heiresses on the West Coast went to court over who would enjoy the perpetual bliss and sublime honor of my company… my glory days are gone now, my name forgotten, and I must concede your popularity has sunk mine in the cold shade of oblivion … but I Shih Tzu not, LD, there was a time, back in 2010, when the fame you’re basking in now all belonged to…

Your envious well-wisher,

Nutmeg

Ukiah

https://www.theava.com/archives/7887

PS. You’re so vain you probably think this is Hate Mail, but Envy is, if not the highest compliment, then right up there, isn’t it? Maybe a step below Praise, or a flight or two down from Acclaim, and in the basement compared to Adulation, but still, it’s something.

NOYO HARBOR in Fort Bragg

CALTRANS HOLDS HWY 1 SALMON CREEK BRIDGE REPLACEMENT MEETING TUESDAY IN ALBION

Join us at the Salmon Creek Bridge Public Scoping Meeting for updates on the proposed project and comment on the scope of content of technical studies being developed for the environmental document. The meeting will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 11 from 6-8 p.m. at the Albion Elementary School, 30400 Albion Ridge Road in Albion. If you can't attend this meeting, don't worry another meeting is planned for Thursday, Sept. 20, same time and location.

ANDERSON VALLEY BREWING CO. is currently looking for a Grounds Keeper. You must be dependable, reliable and willing to work out doors and in. Please apply at our front office Monday - Friday, 9 am - 4pm or send your resume to us at info@avbc.com.

SAVE RAINBOW RIDGE

To the Editor:

At a time when our original forests have almost entirely disappeared outside of a sprinkling of parks and preserves, it is shocking to learn of Humboldt Redwood’s plans to destroy some of the last unprotected virgin Douglas-fir ecosystems left anywhere. Cutting these down wipes out irreplaceable habitat for endangered plants and animals, releases carbon from exposed soils, and heats and dries the immediate area, setting the stage for more numerous and intense wildfires.

Rainbow Ridge, located about 30 miles south of Eureka, is home to over 1000 acres of unprotected and never-logged Douglas-fir forest and associated woods, grasslands and rare, pristine wildlife habitat. Despite decades of concern expressed by local citizens HRC remains undeterred and recently announced its intention to log the area.

HRC should switch to a willing-seller posture to allow Rainbow Ridge to be preserved at fair market value. And until that happens FSC should pull its certification, which only glorifies destructive and unnecessary practices.

Nicolette Ausschnitt

Yorkville

MARY PAT PALMER WITH RACHEL CARPENTER AT HENDY WOODS.

“Knew we wouldn't get to the city for the Climate Change March, so instead went to Hendy Woods and prayed.”

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 10, 2018

CRISTIAN CARRILLO-FRANCO, Ukiah. Embezzlement, burglary, petty theft, illegal entry.

LEOVIGILDO CRUZ-CRUZ, Ukiah. Under influence.

JOSHUA GUEVARA, Talmage. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

CONER JESSUP, Santa Ana/Ukiah. DUI.

JESUS LOPEZ-AVENDANO, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

BRUCE MCKEE, Redwood Valley. Probation revocation.

BRANDON MITCHELL, Laytonville. Domestic abuse, false imprisonment.

ASHLEE PAGE, Santa Cruz/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, burglary tools.

MICHAEL PELKEY, Kelseyville/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

SOPHIA PICENO, Talmage. Disobeying court order.

WILL RODGERS JR., Willits. Domestic battery.

DAMIAN SANCHEZ, Hopland. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury, causing great bodily injury in commission of felony, burglary.

STEVEN SIMS, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

DUSTIN WOOD, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

GILBERTO ZARCO, Ukiah. Embezzlement, burglary, petty theft.

THREE BAGGER

by James Kunstler

And so the Golden Golem of Greatness re-enters the hall of mirrors that Syria has become. The US intelligence “community” has informed the US Media that Syrian President Assad is planning a new gas attack on Idlib Province, where a ragtag army of US-backed “rebels” (ISIS, etc) remain holed up against Assad’s forces backed by Russian air support. Have we seen this movie before?

Is Mr. Assad truly that dumb? — since the last time a gas attack was alleged (and actually never proven), Mr. Trump averred that he would attack Syria. And what did he even mean by that? Send a barrel bomb down the Assad family chimney, or just blow up more stuff on the ground? And for what? To birth another failed state in the Middle East (just what the world needs), or perhaps start World War Three with Russia? (Ditto, with a cherry on top.)

Excuse me if I am skeptical about anything the US intel “community” dredges up these days in the way of breaking news. Branches of that sprawling vine are already infected with creeping rot. I speak, of course, of the upper echelons of the FBI especially and their counterparts in the CIA orbit (ex-Directors John Brennan, Michael Hayden, ex DNI James Clapper and their cronies still on-the-job). Just as there is loose talk about an Assad gas attack, there’s also a lot of loose talk around the Internet that a large number of US intel communitarians are about to be busted for their political misconduct around the 2016 election. I’ll believe that when I see it on Glenn Greenwald’s Twitter feed.

Anyway, the Assad gas attack story does raise the question whether the intel community is ginning up a gigantic and ugly distraction from its own inconvenient legal exposure. Mounting evidence shows an orchestrated campaign by them to meddle in the 2016 elections, and continue meddling afterward to thwart, discredit, delegitimize, and defame Mr. Trump, for the purpose of leaving him little room to act. To a considerable extent, the Golden Golem of Greatness has managed to act anyway. For instance, transforming the Supreme Court.

The likely confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh may be a last straw for the “Resistance.” It would certainly affect the adjudication of any new disputes that arise over relations between Mr. Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the weeks ahead. The Mueller investigation into 2016 election “collusion” between Russia and Trump looks more and more like a case of displacement-projection syndrome, since dumpster-loads of evidence now point to collusion between the Hillary campaign, the DNC, a cast of rogue spooks from the CIA, various FBI officers, and British Intelligence in a scheme that is now going to grand juries.

All that nasty business, starting with the news that a grand jury has been secretly grilling former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for weeks, suggests that events are about to unspool dramatically. The story has been coiling for months as fresh documents emerge and officials, such as the DOJ Inspector General, confirm what they mean. It remains to be seen whether the Web chatter about dozens of “sealed indictments” coming down is horse-shit. The baffling part is the role of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. I’m inclined to doubt that Mr. Trump’s regular vilifications of Sessions are a ruse, meant to mislead the media about the AG’s activities in these matters. But the DC Swamp is unnerved by Sessions’ extraordinary absence of presence on the scene. Has he actually been involved in any of this, or is he playing animal lotto on his desk?

There is a certain balance between the new hostilities in Syria — possible existential threat — and the anxious disquiet about a so-called “soft coup” against the chief executive. What really might turn over the whole groaning table of national tribulations will be the discovery that the Trump economic boom is fake. The current “boom” story rests on more than a trillion dollars of money-pumping enabled by tax cuts and racking up evermore debt. Mr. Trump was foolish to take “ownership” of it, and when reality re-enters the scene, the Resistance will finally have something real to hang him with.

Most unsettling about these trending events is that they appear on a path to converge this fall, along with the midterm elections. The public is already confused and angry enough. I’m worried that we can’t handle what’s coming.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

Helen Highwater, that’s a conundrum that’s built into the system we have now, in fact, a system that was put in place over much of the western world, which resulted in a disconnect between family income and the cost of living, You’re right of course, that if the objects people use in their everyday lives were to be made in the US, Americans wouldn’t be able to afford them.

But, it wasn’t always thus. At a time when these everyday objects were by-and-large USA-made, or made in the western world, a working-class wage was enough to support a family in a house with a car, a telephone, TV, radio, central heating, indoor plumbing. I know this because that’s how I grew up as did a multitude of others including many readers here in CFN world.

No more though, a working class wage can no longer support this life, a working class wage now carries a substantial risk of homelessness for a single person never mind one trying to support a family.

The issue, as I see it, isn’t only WHERE work is being done, it’s one of income distribution. You no doubt have heard that 50 years ago an average CEO made about 20 times what an average worker earned. Now it’s hundreds of time what an average worker earns.

Not only are objects made overseas, but these objects are STILL too expensive given the degraded state of the US economy and the ruinous financial state of the American family. That’s where the massive debt load of American households and American governments comes from, an inability to afford what was once easily pay-as-you-go.

The imbalances built into this system of overseas production can’t be overcome without a great deal of resistance from the Oligarch class that set it up to benefit themselves and the perfumed, self-admiring bi-coastal clerisy that enables their moneyed masters. As Steve Bannon said, the aim of the Trumpians is to relocate these supply chains to the USA, to somehow recreate the world as it was two or three generations ago.

I give it low odds that Trump will succeed, even in a small way. IMO, given that the interests of the Davos Class are at issue, and the fact that they buy and sell politicians like cattle, the financial and economic system won’t be re-formed, rather it’ll crash, maybe multiple times, because the system, as it is, is unworkable.

Something else will take its place, that much is inevitable, something without 12,000 mile delivery routes, and, given the resources and energy it takes to create something as complex as a robot, technology that is much more manual. At least that’s how I see it.

Remember when drills weren’t electrically driven but rather had a manual crank? My dad had a few of them. One of them is still kicking around. I think that world is where we’re headed.

HIGH CRIMES & HIGH HORSES

Editor,

Actually, you get an A grade all around. Your verifiable facts all check, responsiveness is good and your attitude swell. Most impressive indeed!

I just finished “BLACK 9/11: Money, Motive & Technology” by Mark Gaffney and “American Conspiricies” by Jessie Ventura. Dang! What you said plus. FBI agent Coleen Rowley who was the whistleblower, who revealed in an open letter to FBI Director Mueller how the bizarre obstructionism of various intel officials delayed FBI agents from searching Moussaoui's laptop. It held information that might have prevented the attacks had they been granted access.

Sibel Edmonds was an FBI translator who testified for three hours to the 9/11 Commission. In an interview she said that the US had kept up "intimate relations" with bin Laden all the way until that day of 9/11-using him sometimes for ops in central Asia.

Senator Bob Graham wrote a book that talked of the Saudi-hijacker ties and said, "The White House was directing the cover-up to protect the US relationship with Saudi Arabia." A thousand verifiable facts later, one concludes a massive epic swindle and cover-up that continues to this day.

Trump’s selling the Saudis billions of dollars of advanced weaponry ensures more of the same war crimes and shows he's a team player for the New World Dis-order, contrary to his insane discourse.

It's obvious we have an oligarchy, even wise ol' President Carter said so recently in an interview.

Swell Regards,

Rob Mahon

Covelo

P.S. Philbrick using Polly Klaas as a way demonize liberals shows that he's mentally ill or brain damaged. If Jerry needs to slap someone, he should start with himself. He talks tough, but he also fell off his high horse shooting at moles!

TRACY'S BACK!

Tracy Grammer in Mendocino, October 12

I am happy to be hosting Tracy Grammer again on Friday, October 12. Tracy loves to stop by for a concert in Mendocino when she tours out West. She is currently celebrating the release of LOW TIDE, her first album of original songs. Says Tracy, "... the road has curves we can't see at the outset of the journey. At some point along the path, writing songs became the most effective medicine for the pains and unresolved questions of my life. My eleventh album is the first one that really sounds like me." Co-produced with long-time touring partner Jim Henry, LOW TIDE was released January 19, 2018 on Grammer's own label, Tracy Grammer Music. This acoustic concert will be held at Matheson Performing Arts Center in partnership with Mendocino High School's Media Program. Doors open at 7pm, music starts at 7:30pm. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door (if available) and are available online at brownpapertickets.com/event/3597014

You can also send me an email or call Pattie at 937-1732 to pay by check or through PayPal.

IMAGINE

I hope these conversations can escape the pages of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and run free in the off-screen world. The election coming up is the most important in history. Until the next one and the one after that. This past weekend I was in a gathering of people, together to socialize, and never heard the word “Trump.” It was a nice break, but, really, I hope the talk in telephone conversations and textings and at the lunch counter and the bar and outside the church’s front door Sunday and in the classrooms, mention him a lot.

Look: This continent is drowning on one side and burning on the other. Fires and floods are always going to happen, but the severity, right now, is not God’s doing; it’s ours. The oceans are warmer, the air over them warmer because we burn coal. Here come the storms. I know people in Wilmington, North Carolina. This time tomorrow I may not. We burn oil in quantities you can’t picture in your mind. The smoke from these combustions is full of stuff that kills us, especially innocent carbon dioxide.

The forests are dried out from the relentless heat. The worst part of the fire season is now beginning in California, and our firefighting forces are worn out, the men, the women and the equipment. What on earth is going to happen? Fall has not yet begun.

Suppose we had progressive leadership. Suppose both our domestic choices and our international ones came from a smiley face instead of a snarling one. Suppose we looked at disagreements as matters to be worked out instead of fought over. Suppose business occupied itself with distributing the most and best of civilization’s wonders to the most people instead of profits to the fewest.

That latter is how it’s going now, and look where we are! In our present dirty, clouded, shook up and confused world, it’s barely possible to see what a clean, kind world might look like, but I submit to you it won’t come into view without progress, that is, without progressive thinking, decision-making, voting and acting. I hope these conversations can escape the pages of Facebook.

Meanwhile: Trump. When I watch him say he cannot imagine that anybody would be talking about impeachment—you only impeach a president who’s not doing a good job, and “we’re doing a great job,” I suppress my howl of outrage and disbelief and wonder what in hell he could possibly mean.

He means this: Two big factions in American life support him, his “base” and the One Percent. His base is made up of people who passionately believe in the First and Second Amendments: I have free speech, and I can own a gun.

True. I can speak or write what I want and guns are fun and occasionally useful. I once left a party at a neighbor’s house to go home and shoot my cat. The party was loud enough that maybe they wouldn’t hear the gunshot, and the cat was suffering. I left the party because I couldn’t stand it anymore. He was beyond noticing, but I handled him like he was a newborn, very fragile baby. I stroked and cooed to him and I put the gun muzzle right up to his brain. I once did the same for a raccoon who had got himself hit by a car, not mine, and couldn’t seem to die. Guns are occasionally useful.

As for free speech, I couldn’t live without it. I’m doing free speech right now, but the intention of the law was not to be an inducement for the uninformed to dominate the room with the Belief of the Day and other irrelevancies. “Informed,” said Jefferson, over and over, of the electorate democracy needs to work. Can you remember when Jay Leno interviewed passersby in the street and asked them softball questions about current events or American history? “Who is the Vice-President?” and “Who was America’s first President?”--questions like that. The ignorance of the people on big-city sidewalks was embarrassing.

Trump speaks to his base, who are people who are scared, often simpleminded, disenfranchised, overlooked and furious. His biggest cohort is angry white men, watching their birthright as privileged members of a white-dominated, male-dominated society erode as more and more brown people and women take their places. It’s not a high-IQ crowd, by and large, but I know there are people reading this who are smart as hell and like Donald. They believe passionately that the U.S. rewards hard work, and I want to turn it into a welfare state, a nanny state that takes care of worthless people at the expense of solid citizens and protects us even when we don’t ask for it.

They’re right. I supported seat-belt legislation however much us he-men resisted, and I support the stop-smoking initiatives that reduce our cancer and heart-and-lung diseases. Trump has assembled an administration that is dismantling business and finance regulation and safety-and-health laws as fast as it can. He is clowning in the spotlight. His hench-people are busy as beavers.

He has lowered taxes to a point that needed work is undone. The money that could refurbish our hardware and put fresh fighters on the fire lines goes to the military and the One Percent. (In crucial ways they are the same. Military contractors are among our richest citizens. Their employees are some of our best-paid.) These are the One Percent and the 1% wannabes. These are people Trump looks out for, the ignorant and the rich. These are the people who “think we're doing a great job,” and they are a powerful base.

IMAGINE if the taxes, the public wealth of America, went solely to useful, practical and humane purposes!

I hope these conversations can escape the pages of Facebook.

(Mitch Clogg)

MUDDING THE KILN

(Photos by Dick Whetstone)

NIKE’S BAD AIR

by Jeffrey St. Clair

Nike changes its brand more often than Madonna and more profitably. In the company’s latest transformation, Nike has risked–make that sought–the ire of Donald Trump and his drones by making Colin Kaepernick the face of its latest campaign under the inspiring slogan: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” Kaepernick’s brief presence in an otherwise sentimental ad triggered a tweet from Trump and a boycott by the Deplorables, who took to burning their overpriced footwear. It was precisely the response Nike wanted and sales of Nike products have surged over the last week. With social justice icon Kaepernick fronting the brand, no one will be thinking about Nike’s wretched labor practices inside its sweatshops in Honduras, Indonesia and Vietnam.

This is a proven formula for the company. When Nike was under intense public scrutiny in the 1990s, it recruited civil rights legend Andrew Young to whitewash the company’s record. The image changed, but the cruel conditions didn’t.

Now, with the company rocked by sexual harassment charges against some of its top executives, Nike’s betting that Kaepernick will refrain from speaking out against the dismal practices of his employer. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and LeBron James have all remained mute about the savage treatment of the workers who make the shoes and apparel that are sold under their image. So as a reminder who Nike really is under the patina of its pitchmen, we’re running this excerpt from my book Born Under a Bad Sky.

–JSC

* * *

The place is in Honduras, a so-called free-trade zone or maquiladora—little more than a ragged swath hacked out of the rainforest and ringed by a tall fence, tipped with razor-sharp wire. Inside a clump of factories produce cut-rate apparel for American companies. Armed guards, many of them veterans of the Honduran defense forces (accused by human right groups of assassinations, drug-running, and torture of political prisoners), patrol the borders.

Most of the workers here are young and upwards of 80 percent are female. The average age of the Honduran sweatshop laborer is about fifteen, though some may be as young as ten. Workdays may stretch to fourteen hours, six days a week, in oppressive heat. Laborers are allowed only two tightly monitored breaks for water and bathroom use. And many days the work doesn’t end at the factory. To meet production quotas, some workers lug their sewing home, where the entire family toils away late into the night.

Questions of health benefits, worker compensation, pensions and overtime pay simply have no relevance here. The issues facing workers inside these squalid factories are much more basic. It’s about day-to-day survival, enduring the wrath of abusive managers, working through illness, injury, and depression. And it’s about growing old very fast.

“It’s hard and painful work,” says Wendy Diaz, a sixteen-year-old Honduran girl who worked at the Global Fashions factory, making pants for sale at Wal-Mart under the “Kathie Lee Gifford” line. “I started work there at thirteen. The managers were cruel. They would yell at us all the time. They would lock the bathrooms all day long. When we got tired or talked to each other, they would beat us to keep us on schedule.” Diaz’s family couldn’t afford to let her stay in school past the fifth grade. So she worked sixty-five hours a week, every week of the year.

This dire situation is hardly confined to Latin American countries or the garment industry. “Sweatshops are absolutely not limited to apparel,” says Charles Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee in New York City. “Sporting goods, electronics, shoes, sneakers, agricultural products, coffee, bananas—you name it—it’s made under some pretty rough conditions—in factories in Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia.”

In Pakistan, children are often sold into servitude to factory owners where they are chained to looms for fifteen-hour days, making rugs and carpets for export to the United States; in Africa and Indonesia, male children, some only twelve years old, are sent into hazardous mines owned by American and Canadian firms to extract gold and silver that will be forged into rings and trinkets; in Colombia, children are forced into dangerous jobs making bricks or out into the coffee plantations to pick beans for Starbucks; in India, kids toil near blazing furnaces making glass bangles; in Siberia, American and Japanese timber companies are paying timber workers (one of the most dangerous professions) less than $1 an hour to log off the last wild forests in western Russia, home of the Siberian tiger. The Associated Press reported that there may be more than 200 million children working in overseas sweatshops producing goods for American consumers. This geography of shame is global, the dark underside of the new international economy.

In 1996, public concerns about overseas sweatshops prompted congressional hearings, lofty promises by apparel companies to more closely monitor their contractors and a presidential task force on the issue. In April 1997, following leafleting by the US/Guatemala Labor Education Campaign, Starbucks Coffee finally took action towards a pilot project that will implement a more humane code of conduct by coffee growers toward workers in Guatemala.

But so far there’s no sign of a wide-spread shift toward restraints on child labor, better pay or safer working conditions. One reason for this is that new international trade pacts, such as GATT and NAFTA, make it difficult to enact sanctions against countries that permit labor abuses. And another reason is the obvious one: these cheap labor pools are enormously profitable for American corporations.

The consequences of the new global trade reach far beyond the wretched conditions inside the factories themselves. Environmental degradation is a hidden externality of the shift in industrial production from developed countries to Latin America and Southeast Asia. The new plants consume enormous amounts of energy in areas where power supplies have been primitive in the past. To meet the increased demand, Indonesia and Mexico have begun constructing huge coal-fired power plants, posing a grave threat to air quality in places like Jakarta and Mexico City. Similarly, China is in the midst of building dozens of new coal-fired plants that will emit thousands of tons of greenhouse gases each year, a dangerous contribution to global warming trends. But China also has more monumental ambitions: the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam. The 800-foot tall dam is the largest construction project since the building of the pyramids. It will impound nearly 400 miles of the Yangtze River, destroy the habitat of more than two dozen rare and endangered species, and force the dislocation of nearly 3 million people, all in order to power an estimated 2,500 new factories in China’s southern provinces.

The attraction of Latin American and Southeast Asia for US companies, such as Sears, Gitano, and Eddie Bauer, is easy to understand: no pesky environmental standards to put up with, no worker safety codes, minuscule corporate taxes, and astoundingly cheap labor costs. In Haiti, for example, workers making the lucrative, movie-related clothing lines for Disney make no more than 28 cents an hour, or around $40 per month. Even in this impoverished country, that’s not enough to live on without making sacrifices. Some costs, such as rent (which can consume half of the monthly pay), cannot be reduced. So usually it comes down to eating less. As Bob Herbert, a columnist with the New York Times, observes, these companies “thrive on the empty stomachs and other hardships of young women overseas.”

Though largely unremarked on by the mainstream press and the American public, this situation has been building for more than a decade. During the mid-1970s, the US enjoyed a $3 billion trade surplus. Since 1976, however, America has suffered from a spiraling trade deficit, reaching $170 billion a year in 1987. US corporations that have shifted manufacturing operations overseas account for nearly 60 percent of this figure. The US Commerce Department reports that nearly 60 percent of the apparel sold in the United States in 1996 was imported, nearly twice the level of 1980. Most of these garments are made in sweatshops throughout the Third World, utilizing child labor.

Despite airy promises of tough standards on working conditions and environmental protection, international trade agreements passed in the early 1990s, such as NAFTA and GATT, have merely exacerbated the problem, according to Sarah Anderson, a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. US companies, such as General Electric, Louisiana Pacific, and Alcoa, have flocked to the Mexico to take advantage of the country’s meager environmental provisions. The toxic legacy of this migration is already showing up. Alcoa, which has been hit with some of the largest criminal fines for hazardous waste violations in US history, opened a plant in Ciudad Acuña in 1993. Within a year, a series of poisonous gas leaks sent 226 workers to the hospital. When workers at GE’s Ciudad Juárez plant talked to reporters about the deadly chemicals used at the factory, they were fired.

The figures on jobs lost in the US due to NAFTA are also sobering. Anderson points to a study from the University of Maryland that estimates that in 1994 alone more than 150,000 US jobs were lost as a result of Mexican imports—90,000 of those jobs in the apparel industry. The US Department of Labor estimates that America may lose another 759,000 manufacturing jobs by the year 2010.

“We find ourselves in a wage race with the rest of the world,” says Charles Kernaghan. “It’s a race to the bottom of the pay scale.” The real wages of American workers have declined about 8 percent since 1989. Forced to compete with overseas sweatshops, American garment workers have watched their pay decline by more than 12 percent. But this trend shows up most starkly in the pay of American farm-workers, which has fallen by more than 20 percent in the last two decades. In the broccoli fields of California’s Parajo Valley, workers are paid only $2.50 per box of broccoli picked, down from $3.70 in 1986. Meanwhile, truckloads of low-cost (and pesticide-laden) Mexican broccoli, strawberries, and other fruits and vegetables stream across the border every day.

This disaster for workers and the environment has been a bonanza for hundreds of multinational corporations. Take Nike, ostensibly an Oregon-based company that now controls 35 percent of the athletic shoe and apparel market. It began making shoes in Japan in 1967, where production costs were a quarter of that in the United States and Europe.

Rising labor costs prompted its production factories to move to South Korea in 1972. Donald Katz writes in Just Do It, a best-selling book about Nike, that the shoe plants were run by a combination “of terror and browbeating.” After Korean workers won labor rights in the mid-1980s, Nike picked up its bags and moved once again, this time to Indonesia and China. In the mid-1990s Nike began to shift operations to an even more pliant labor market: Vietnam.

In Vietnam, Nike employs more than 25,000 workers who produce nearly a million pairs of shoes each year. The conditions are grim. Thuyen Nguyen of Vietnam Labor Watch, a New York-based group, says that Nike workers are subject to intense verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. In one factory outside Ho Chi Minh City, nearly sixty female workers were forced to run laps around the factory as punishment for not wearing the proper shoes. A dozen of the women fainted in the oppressive heat and had to be hospitalized. In another instance, twelve female workers were viciously beaten on the head with a shoe by plant supervisors. As discipline for talking on the factory floor, workers have had their mouths sealed with duct tape. “Nike is clearly not controlling its contractors,” Thuyen said. “And the company has known that for a long time.”

There’s a simple reason companies like Nike have continued to turn a blind eye to these abuses: skyrocketing corporate profits. In Vietnam, it costs Nike only $1.50 to manufacture a pair of basketball shoes that can be sold for $150 in the US. The production costs are low largely because the average pay of a Nike worker in Vietnam is only $42 a month or about $500 a year. Compare this tiny sum to the $20 million a year Nike lavished on Michael Jordan to pitch its basketball shoes, shorts, and hats. Jordan’s salary amounts to nearly twice the annual payroll of the entire workforce of Nike contractors in Vietnam. The disparity with Nike CEO Phil Knight’s annual take is even more grotesque. Knight, who owns 100 million shares of Nike stock, pulls in roughly $80 million in dividend payments each fiscal quarter. At that pace, a Vietnamese worker would need to toil for nearly 4,000 years to equal Knight’s annual income.

None of this seemed to penetrate too deeply into the popular consciousness until the National Labor Committee revealed, in 1996, that talk-show hostess Kathie Lee Gifford’s Wal-Mart clothing line was manufactured by child laborers in Honduran work camps. Initially, Gifford denied the reports. Confronted with incontrovertible evidence, Gifford disclaimed any knowledge of the work camps. When it was later shown that some of her blouses had been assembled under sweatshop conditions at the Seo Fashions factory in New York City, Kathie Lee sent her husband, Frank, to hand out envelopes stuffed with $300 to underpaid laborers who had been making her clothing line. Wal-Mart later said it would reimburse the Giffords.

Shortly after Kathy Lee’s embarrassing news, appalled American consumers began asking serious questions about the conditions under which consumer goods were being made. With the attention of the press and the public finally aroused, President Clinton convened a special task force to develop global labor standards for the apparel industry. The presidential panel included companies such as Nike, Reebok, Patagonia, and Liz Claiborne; two labor unions (Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees—UNITE—and the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union); and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights.

The presidential panel agreed to establish a voluntary code of conduct on working conditions for overseas apparel factories used by American companies and provides for the monitoring of those factories to ensure compliance. Companies that meet standards established by the task force win the right to put a “No Sweat” label in their clothing, thereby assuring consumers that their merchandise is not made with sweatshop labor.

“The problem is that the labor and human rights groups ended up making most of the sacrifices,” says Ellen Braune of the National Labor Committee. “But these are only proposed rules, there’s still a chance to improve them with enough public pressure.” First, companies agreed to establish a maximum sixty-hour work week, unless employees volunteer for more. But many workers, who aren’t making even subsistence wages, will feel compelled to work as much time as they can physically endure. Others will often “volunteer” to do anything management wants because they’ll be fired if they don’t.

The panel rejected calls from human rights groups to adopt a “living wage policy” which would require contractors to pay at least subsistence wages. Instead, the agreement also calls for companies to voluntarily pay their workers the prevailing minimum wage. In many Asian countries the prevailing wage is as little as 20 cents per hour, which does not come close to subsistence levels. In Indonesia, for example, the minimum wage is $2.36 a day, while it takes $4 a day just to meet basic needs. And corporations can even get an exemption from that pathetic standard. Nike has already violated minimum wage standards in Indonesia, and Disney has done the same in Haiti.

Labor organizations lobbied fiercely for independent monitoring of the overseas factories by church and human rights groups, but business furiously fought off that proposal. In the end the crucial task of monitoring the agreement was left to US accounting firms paid by the apparel makers, such as Arthur Andersen, Peat Marwicks, and Coopers & Lybrand. American companies will be able to get away with paying overseas workers 20 cents per hour and be rewarded with the coveted “No Sweat” seal of approval as well. This outcome illustrates a huge drawback in the current trend toward labeling products as worker-and-environment friendly.

The reason companies like Nike pay people like Michael Jordan $20 million is that their profits depend more on the image of the company than the quality of their products. That’s why direct pressure on the corporations such as Nike, The Gap, and Disney may be the most effective consumer strategy of all. Disney, for example, could not long withstand a campaign that tells people that Mickey Mouse t-shirts are made by Haitian kids in oppressive sweatshops where they aren’t paid enough to eat. “If Americans knew what was going on down here, the yelling, the hitting, the abuse,” says Wendy Diaz, “I’m sure that they would help stop the maltreatment.”

(This is an excerpt from Jeffrey St. Clair’s new environmental history, Born Under a Bad Sky  — AK Press / CounterPunch Books. Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His new book is Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes From a Failed Revolution. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter  @JSCCounterPunch. Courtesy, Counterpunch.org)