Letters (Sep. 12, 2018)

• Why There’s A Housing Crisis
• Gender Bending
• VA Healthcare, Shining Example
• The Whole Bloody Mess
• We Were Duped?
• Cannabis Wars
• The End Times, A Screenplay
• A Clean Sweep With A Big Broom
• High Crimes & High Horses
• Musical Chairs
• The Boss

WHY THERE’S A HOUSING CRISIS

Editor,

The County’s much discussed and often lamented housing crisis is largely caused by local government’s inability to adapt to changes that are going on in Mendocino County. The housing element, adopted by the Board of Supervisors in 2015, was intended to address the chronic shortages of affordable housing in the county and to provide a roadmap for how more housing could be built.

Unfortunately, this 300+ page document conflicts in many ways with the County’s general plan and coastal element which lays out the zoning for all unincorporated areas of the county. 

In practice, what happens when a landowner approaches the County Planning Department about constructing any amount of housing over two residences on inland parcels and one on coastal parcels is that they will be told that this is not allowable under current zoning. These limits are imposed regardless of parcel size. The effect of this policy is that much housing which would be constructed by the private sector to house family and friends is denied immediately. Only a large developer or well-funded individual would think of attempting a zoning change. The inability of the planning staff to decide on a case-by-case basis to allow higher density development is a major obstacle to providing enough housing in our county.

The historical economic activities of farming, fishing and timber have been marginalized to the point where less than 5% of the current population earns their livings from these sectors. These good paying jobs have been replaced by low-paying service work. We now have a population that cannot afford to buy a single family residence (SFR) on its own parcel with well and septic and yet most of the County is zoned for exactly this type of development. In fact, a landowner can easily build themselves, if they can afford it, a 5000 square foot single-family residence, but would be precluded from building four 1200-square-foot SFRs to houses themselves, their parents, and their children on the same parcel, thus making it much more difficult to build affordable housing than large homes. This is true even on large parcels of 10 acres or more. 

The county government's inability to adjust the zoning laws to help address the economic hardships faced by the citizens is making it very difficult for families to house themselves.

The last issue we need to address when looking at how county policy hinders the creation of affordable housing is taxation. Specifically, the disproportionate way that raw land versus improvements are taxed. Currently, large landowners, much of it corporate, enjoy very low taxes on their timber and agricultural holdings while a resident on a small parcel will pay higher taxes each year as they improve their property. Every time a resident builds an addition or new structure their property will be reassessed and their yearly tax bill goes up. This is in stark contrast to the large timber and wine corporations whose absentee owners collect profits year after year from their vast holdings and pay very low taxes per acre. The county needs to consider not taxing improvements. Simply reassess each time a parcel is sold and leave the tax the same for as long as the parcel stays within the same ownership. The large corporate land holdings need to be taxed at a higher rate to make up the shortfall caused by this break given to those building homes.

In short, the Board of Supervisors needs to stop bemoaning the lack of affordable housing and instead direct the Planning Department to immediately loosen the zoning laws to allow for higher density development. This will encourage the construction of more moderately sized SFR's which can be bought or rented at affordable prices. This coupled with a break on the taxation of improvements would make it much easier for residents to house themselves.

Ishvi Aum

Albion

GENDER BENDING

Editor,

Now that we have established that you guys (I assume that all on the editorial board identify as masculine gender) lack the collective cojones to answer, to yourselves, me or your readers, an Animal Husbandry 101 question, I advise you to take good care of your livers, which you will need to produce the copious amounts of gall required to opine on the gender of other human beings.

Milan Hopkins, MD

Upper Lake

ED REPLY: Is the question, doc, how many genders? I'll take a stab at that one: two? Which isn't to deny or judge the neo-gender movement wherein, I understand, there are quite a number of variations — men with vaginas, women with penises (peni?). I'm reminded of a disturbing experience from my early youth, pre-pube when I paid a quarter to see what was advertised on the carnival tent as a "half man, half woman." At age 12 I shouldn't have been admitted, but in them days kids weren't cosetted. So, there I am surrounded by panting adult degenerates when this bedraggled creature comes out and, hiking its skirts, revealed what I recall as a penis-looking piece of flesh drooping over what I supposed, never having seen one, a vagina. There was no one I dared share this odd experience with, although I was tempted to write it up for What I Did On My Summer Vacation when I got back to school. If I had… Well, 1950 was not the infinitely elastic country America has since become. 

VA HEALTHCARE, SHINING EXAMPLE

Editor,

I'm a Purple Heart Vietnam vet of the US Marine Corps, wounded up on Mudders Ridge near the DMZ. You don't want to know. But because of that I have all free medical benefits through the Veterans Administration at Mather Field in Rancho Cordova outside of Sacramento.

You have heard the horror stories of our national VA facilities and VA treatment, but I'm here to tell you about my experience.

I ride my bike to the light rail station behind the Sacramento Bee on 21st and Q. Today is my appointment with dermatology for a minor touchup. The clinic has mailed and called to remind me of my appointment and to always thank me for my service.

The light rail ride is always a public transportation refresher. This line out to Folsom stops at the social service offices on 29th Street, Social Security offices along Folsom Boulevard and Mather Field for the VA hospital. Quite a weary crowd, riders with bags of cans and riders you know have not paid, most times there’s space for myself and my bike.

The hospital is about a 15 minute bike ride from the light rail with an overpass over the ever streaming Highway 50, the one bicycle above the hurtling traffic somewhat frightening.

To Mather Field (in case you don't know — where World War I planes were assembled with wood from the Sierras) is a military base gone to commercial/industrial park — literally swords into plowshares. It is clean, and ever expanding both physically and with additional services such as the VA.

Dermatology is in a trailer-like building. No bike rack so I lock up to their railing. Check in and sit, a room full of broken and healing vets, Vietnam mostly. I'm next, treated with much respect, young woman doc to service my sun-blotched Scottish flesh, painless.

Won't even have to stop at the pharmacy — they will mail me my prescription and renew it by phone.

In a few weeks I will have an appointment with my general practitioner for a six month checkup. Sort of what socialized medicine would look like.

Knock on wood, I'm in good shape and in good hands from the mental health ward to another colonoscopy, to the emergency room, to a good enough cafeteria to, Why don't we use an enormous chunk of our enormous military budget to ensure that the quality of VA health care for all present and future veterans is a shining example of what our country is capable of. All the rhetoric that puts our "veterans first" needs deeds, less words.

William J. Hughes

Sacramento

THE WHOLE BLOODY MESS

Editor,

Life— We should have known all along that the grand experiment in Democracy would not last, could not last, had to be subverted from within and without. But, there we are, looking stunned and lost. What to do? Nothing, really. Who are we to stand against Mammon? The whole bloody mess here has made me retreat to reading Tacitus, Caesar’s Commentaries, even further back to Thucidydes. The whole panoply of mens’ stupidities is mind blowing, and never ceases. Our so-call free market policies are having the effect of re-enslaving vast swaths of the human landscape. Oh, that is not to say they put people actually in chains, or round them up in concentration camps and labor camps (but they do, actually). The Free Marketeers have learned that they don’t have to house and feed a vast labor force to enrich themselves. No, they do it by proxy now—allowing permanent underemployment, poverty level wages, and don’t have to maintain an infrastructure upon which classic slavery relied. Throw in blood sports as a diversion and enough social welfare to keep the lid on and you have a formula for true and enduring autocracy-kleptocracy-megalomania. Down through the levels of Dante’s Purgatorio we go. 

Sounds pretty glum, doesn’t it? And this from one who does not actually suffer from the material consequences of this mess. We live quietly on our ridge, free from material want. Our one concern is to see that our sons continue to thrive. Hell, in my condition, I’m not even fit to hoist a sign and march. God only knows what my blood pressure would be if we had TV here. So, like so many of my kind, I’ll carp and yet have precious little ability to do a damn thing about any of it. I can’t even pour a nice glass of Rye—verboten for patients. 

Yes, they allow me to use THC. I have used it only once in 3 weeks to help with sleep. Maybe tonight I’ll take some chocolate infused with cannabinoids and forget the whole mess. Since we have our deer to worry about daily now—this is their hunger time---we can’t even think of having a dog. At least a dog would look up at me and commiserate upon the day’s political events and nudge me with a wet nose to say it will be all right. 

Franklin Graham

Navarro

WE WERE DUPED?

Editor, 

Regarding Els Cooperrider’s call for enforcement of the Nuisance Laws from Measure A on MRC for their poisoned standing dead tanoak last week: Stupid laws enacted by an ill informed (duped) public should not be enforced.

Ward Hanes

Boonville

CANNABIS WARS

Letter to the Editor,

I moved to Laytonville in 1981, and believe it or not, at that time I knew nothing of the nascent underground industry that the Emerald Triangle would soon become famous for. (Silly me, I moved here for the breathtaking natural beauty of the north coast.) Over my 37 years here, I have witnessed “marijuana” go from a total legal prohibition to legal in California for medical use in 1996 to legal in California for adult recreational use in 2016. While cannabis is now legal in California to use and grow, it is still legally prohibited by the Federal government.

Transitioning from a complete black market to a quasi white market has been a devastating blow to small legacy cannabis farmers here in the Triangle. The reason for this is that small farmers are getting squeezed on both ends: as the pot market is flooded with cheap weed from large legal grow operations that can afford to pay all the consulting fees, permit fees, costs of compliance and taxes that it takes to grow legally, the price of cannabis has dropped so low that small farmers can’t earn a decent living, let alone afford the cost of going legal. Large corporate ag is killing the cottage industry. That’s how capitalism is designed to work.

While Prop. 64 legalized cannabis for adult recreational use everywhere in the state of California, it also gave each county Board of Supervisors tremendous discretion over in county regulation of cannabis cultivation, as long as the local regulations stay within state mandated guidelines.

Here in Mendocino County where small cannabis farmers have been the backbone of our local economy for nearly 40 years, you might expect our Board of Supervisors to be working overtime to help these farmers hang on to their livelihoods and heritage, but sadly, that has not been the case. Led by the sanctimonious John McCowen, our Board has sought to extract its pound of flesh from small cannabis farmers for having grown the devil’s weed illegally for so many years.

Instead of regulating cannabis like every other agricultural crop in the state that is neither taxed nor has to comply with onerous documentation requirements and permits, our Board of Supervisors has seen fit to strangle small cannabis farmers in a tangle of red tape, fees and taxes that only the largest grow operations can possibly comply with.

One thing our Board did get right, (even if only out of spite), was to set a maximum size limit for cannabis gardens of 10,000 square feet for growing plants to maturity (for reference: 10,000 square feet is a little less than one quarter acre or about one-fifth of a football field), and no individual or DBA can get permits to grow more than that. This maximum grow limit should keep large commercial grows out of Mendocino County, but it will not stop other counties in the state from permitting multi-acre cannabis factory farms. To help local small cannabis farmers compete against these large mega-grows, our Board of Supervisors should make it easy for local farmers to join together in co-ops so they can combine their resources for more efficient production, processing and distribution.

As with all commercial agricultural operations in California, cannabis farmers must comply with state environmental regulations regarding water use and timber and rangeland management. 

For some small cannabis farmers who grow out in the hills by diverting water directly from streams during the late summer and fall months, this means either you invest in water storage or you get out of the pot growing business altogether. This may sound draconian to small farmers in this situation, but honestly, all I can say to you folks is that you should have invested in water storage years ago when times were good in the pot market. It’s not like you weren’t advised to do so.

There is a lot of flack coming from certain quarters in Mendocino County that the only way to make the legal cannabis market work is for county law enforcement to bust small cannabis farmers who remain out of compliance with the new regulations. To me, if the object is to enable small cannabis farmers to stay in business and contribute to our local economy, then this punitive approach to cannabis regulation is shooting ourselves in the foot. Why should the county spend any law enforcement time or money enforcing poorly drafted regulations that shouldn’t exist in the first place? Black market cannabis sales still bring in millions of dollars to our county that supports local storefront businesses and non-profits and provides jobs for many county residents. If non-compliant cannabis farmers stay within the maximum size limit and are not negatively impacting the environment, then county law enforcement should hold their fire.

Humboldt County, our sister Emerald Triangle county to the north, has declared all out war on non-compliant small cannabis farmers. Their Board of Supervisors directed their Department of Building and Planning to issue abatement notices to any land owner who has an unpermitted greenhouse on their property as identified from satellite imagery. The landowner has ten days to abate this “nuisance” or be fined $10,000 a day until the greenhouse and its contents are removed. Though there are many questions over the legality of this building code enforcement program, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors has clearly decided to throw small legacy cannabis farmers under the bus in favor of large scale corporate factory farms.

As long as cannabis prohibition remains in effect at the Federal level, there will be a black market for Emerald Triangle premium quality bud in other states where cannabis is still illegal to use or grow. And as long as this black market exists, small non-compliant legacy cannabis farmers here in the Triangle will grow cannabis to satisfy that demand. Law enforcement will not determine the fate of small legacy cannabis farmers in the Emerald Triangle; that shall be determined by the inscrutable laws of economics.

Jon Spitz

Laytonville

THE END TIMES, A SCREENPLAY

Editor,

The spirit of Mussolini has alas come through Donald Trump. He has inherited manic depression with a strong top of egomania. Trump appears like the Big Brother in Orwell's 1984, however, his erratic and arrogant actions resemble El Duce. All news and reporting not to Trump’s liking are "fake." El Duce had his dictatorship, his own newspaper and Ezra Pound. Millions followed and cheered.

They both appear as actors and salesmen and are good for business. Many are amused by their "greatness" of vision and rashness of their actions. Now enters ace reporter Bob Woodward with his recent book, Fear, concerning Trump, chaos and terror — revealed. Climate change has warmed up Mother Earth. The polar ice cap has broken. Huge fires, earthquakes, powerful storms, floods, endless wars. If these are not the final days they are a great dress rehearsal.

Captain Fathom

Albion

A CLEAN SWEEP WITH A BIG BROOM

Editor,

We need to clean up America. Get rid of gangs and drug dealers and predators who attack young children. Our cities are full of gangs. Oakland, San Francisco, Fresno, Modesto, Stockton -- it doesn't matter — towns with over 1000 people have gangs around somewhere. It's spreading into rural areas. Any town of any size has gangs. Boonville has gangs. Ukiah, Willits, Fort Bragg. ICE should be 20 times bigger. We need martial law in Chicago to clean out that miserable stinking hole of his town. Local law enforcement needs to do more, they don't do much. They do too many things besides fighting crime. County sheriffs cannot do it all. They need help. Every town needs help. We need a military task force to clean out our cities and areas plagued with crime. Get rid of liberal judges and liberal courts. Cleanup death row. Save millions of dollars. Execute them now. That's what there are there for. Why are we paying for feeding them? Millions and millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on them so they can have a good time on death row. They see their girlfriends and prostitutes whenever they want to. They have money. They get money that are counties and local governments should get that could be used to hire a task force to clean up our towns. Especially California where Governor Moonbeam Jerry Brown wastes our money every day! Operation clean sweep all over the United States. Our Attorney General, Mr. Sessions, with President Trump's permission, should create a task force out of the military, with Marines or Army guys or whatever, trained guys, maybe a thousand of them out of our 3,000,000-man army. This task force should go from city to city and clean up the crime! I mean clean up the crime! Every city! We would all be better off!

God bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

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! 

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)

THE BOSS

To the Editor:

A few weeks ago as reported in the AVA, Mental Health Consultant Lee Kemper summarized his recently completed $40k indictment of the County’s badly broken mental health “continuum” for the Measure B Advisory Committee meeting in Ukiah: 

Kemper flatly declared, “There are two continuums of care for mental health and for substance abuse disorders. Both of them are incomplete."

Allow me to comment.

In the absence of real care, perhaps HHSA management and mental health contractor/manager Camille Schrader would like to know what really happens to our county’s “dually diagnosed” patients — those who are both seriously mentally ill people and who are also addicts or alcoholics. 

They get incarcerated in the county jail.

They get jailed in solitary confinement in the Administrative-Segregation (Ad-Seg) Unit for 23 1/2 hours a day. 

Then they get loaded up on Seroquel or Zyprexa, so they can sleep in a deep coma for most of those 23 1/2 hours.

“Seroquel and Zyprexa are the drugs of choice among the mentally ill and substance abusers behind bars,” said researchers at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law in 2011.

“An atypical antipsychotic with potent sedative and anxiolytic properties, Seroquel, is, along with Zyprexa, one of only two agents in its class to have a ‘street value',” said Dr. Amanda Pearce Roper and Dr. Leonard Mulbry Jr., from the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston. 

“In any given institution where Seroquel is available, there will be hundreds of guys trying to get it,” Dr. Mulbry said in an interview. 

And jailers are happy to have it prescribed. Why? Because Seroquel and Zyprexa make troublesome inmates “compliant” — they sleep in a deep coma for most of those 23 1/2 hours they’re locked down alone and miserable in their tiny cells.

Inmates loaded up on Seroquel or Zyprexa don’t have to get a higher level of care (too expensive), don’t need constant suicide watch (too labor-intensive), and don’t get written up on disciplinary charges for assaults on other inmates or staff (too dangerous).

Seroquel and Zyprexa are the perfect solution. 

I’m sure HHSA’s Chief Operations Office, Ann Molgaard, and the Schrader Gang agree. It’s a good business decision for them. 

Here’s how their thinking goes: 1.) Incarcerate your clients. 2.) Reclassify them as inmates. 3.) Make them Sheriff Allman’s problem. 4.) Load them up on powerful anti-psychotics and make them compliant. 5.) Pocket most of the many millions of dollars the county has budgeted for caring for our seriously mentally ill. 6.) Retire.

How do I know?

I worked for four years as a corrections deputy in the County Jail’s Ad-Seg Unit.

And I was a grand juror for three terms.

If elected as the 1st District County Supervisor next year, I’ll work with my friend, presumptive 3rd District Supervisor, Johnny Pinches, to fire the bums, and rebuild from scratch our county’s broken mental health system. 

The first to get fired should be County CEO Carmel Angelo. 

As the county’s head honcho — the Board of Supervisors work for Angelo, not the other way around — the county’s mental health crisis should be laid right at Angelo’s feet. 

But Angelo never takes blame. Never. That's what subordinates are for.

Angelo threw her former HHSA Director, Stacey Cryer, and former Mendocino County Mental Health Director, Tom Pinizzotto, under the bus to protect her own job. Also HHSA Assistant Director Brian Lowery got thrown under the bus.

She disappeared Cryer, Pinizzotto, and Lowery. All of them. Without a trace.

Disappeared! Has anyone heard anything from any of them? 

Anything?

It’s why they call Angelo the “Tony Soprano of Mendocino County”. 

Angelo is not just the boss. She is "The Boss".

Nothing will change at county mental health until Angelo goes. Maybe she can take her big county pension and buy into the Ortner Management Group.

John Sakowicz

Ukiah