Letters (Sep. 26, 2018)

• Thank You From The Lemons Family
• Vince On The Mend
• Haschak For Supervisor
• Now Wolf Tickets?
• Back To The Future
• Target The Coastal Commission
• Missed Opportunity
• Listen To Lyndon

THANK YOU FROM THE LEMONS FAMILY

Editor,

The Lemons Family would like to thank everyone who joined us in celebrating the life of June Lemons. We very much appreciated getting to spend time with friends and family as we remembered all of things we will miss about her.

We are extremely grateful to Marti, Marsha, Terri, and Tammy for their seemless handling of the kitchen and overall kindness. 

Special thanks to the Potlickers BBQ Crew for providing their expertise at the grill. The generosity of all those who attended and the many people who have offered their condolences since June’s passing have helped bring comfort to our family.

Sincerely,

The Lemons Family

Philo

VINCE ON THE MEND

Editor,

I would like to express my gratitude for the wonderful support and care offered to me during and since my recent nine-day stay in the hospital. It was really uplifting and I appreciate it very much. I am now back at home and improving a little more each day. I thank all the Valley folks whose thoughts and efforts helped so much.

Vince ‘Vinnie’ Ballew

Boonville

HASCHAK FOR SUPERVISOR

Letter to the editor

In support of John Haschak

A candidate who listens.

I liked John Haschak, but now I love him. 

Here’s why:

I host a radio show about cannabis, and I’m a former permitted cannabis cultivator who gave up last year when my little farm couldn’t jump through all the regulation hoops Mendocino County and the state created. There are lots of people like me in this county, and in Humboldt, too.

That’s why I was eager to attend an Aug. 23 town hall meeting in Humboldt called “Community in Crisis.” The standing-room-only crowd at the Mateel Community Center in Redway addressed what its organizers described as “the drastic and immediate economic decline to our county from the fees — and fines that have followed — with small cannabis farmers put out of business.”

Sound familiar? Have you driven through Willits lately? It’s a ghost town. The Bypass isn’t the only reason. The collapse of the local cannabis industry is the other culprit.

On impulse, I invited John Haschak to go with me to the town hall in Humboldt because a friend had told me the candidate was eager to learn more about cannabis issues. On short notice, John agreed, kindly offering to drive when I confessed that I was nervous about navigating Highway 101 back home from Humboldt in the dark. 

On the ride north, John told me about his 12-point position paper on cannabis cultivation, developed with input from many local cannabis farmers and residents. 

He shared three points from his platform during the public comment period at the Humboldt meeting:

• Create regional banking so cannabis businesses can conduct safe, non-cash transactions like every other business;
• Allow farmers to sell directly to customers through farmers’ markets; and,
• Encourage farm cooperatives that will help small permitted farms compete with industrial grows.

The audience applauded John, as cultivator after shared devastating stories of loss of income, property values and peace of mind wrought by falling cannabis prices, the costs of regulation, and Humboldt’s draconian cannabis abatement program. A number of speakers said they were underwater with their mortgages, businesses and bills.

On the drive home, John told me about some of his other cannabis proposals for Mendocino County:

• Eliminate the county’s costly Trace and Trace program, which duplicates the state’s program;
• Keep cannabis inspections focused on cultivation compliance not on building-code enforcement;
• Calculate fees and taxes based on cannabis that is sold not what is grown, and,
• Find a path toward transferability of licenses.

John is not a grower. Never has been. He’s a Willits primary school teacher. Like all good teachers, he researches issues he needs to know more about. Most importantly, he listens. He listened to me, and he’s listened to many of my friends in the cannabis community. 

I’m sure he’ll listen to you if you if you want to talk -- about cannabis or anything you care about. Chances are, John cares about that issue, too, and will work with you to help solve it, whether it involves the environment, a rubberized asphalt plant on Outlet Creek (no! no! no!), children and families, affordable housing, jobs, fair wages, tourism or education.

John Haschak made the long drive to Humboldt with me. I feel sure he’ll go the distance with you, too, whatever your challenge, concern or vision for Willits, Laytonville, Dos Rios, Covelo, Mendocino County or beyond.

A vote for John Haschak for 3rd District Supervisor of our county is a vote for all of us.

Jane Futcher

Longvale

NOW WOLF TICKETS?

Editor

Jeez, Philbrick. Now you’re putting out wolf tickets to any and all manly American “Libs” conspiring to persecute our Maximum Leader and end our Christian Way of Life? How old are you, anyway? Eighty? I knew you back before you shrank into a babbling old hayseed Scrooge, your mercenary soul shriveled up like a French Imperial prune. You still shadow boxing and still missing. Good God, man, don’t you know how silly a numbskull like yourself sounds in print when you’re tilting at the windmills flying in formation excreting subversive contrails above your “hainted” Outer-Comptche log cabin style Transylvanian castle keep complete with bazookas? 

A while back in these pages I asked you to please tell us nasty, reverse-racist, corrupt, treasonous and deranged “libs” even one reason why Jesus would bless a sleazeball like Trump and you ain’t even got the nerve to answer that. Wasn’t like I was asking you to put your ass where your mouth is, either. Nothing so rude. Just asking you to put your brain where your scribblings are was all. Thought everybody knew talk is cheap. Your political ideas ain’t shit unless you’re willing to logically defend them. 

So what’s wrong with you? That ancient scraggly barn cat of yours mistake your rattling tongue for a rat? Or is it the vampire bats randomly circling in your ancestral cavern that prevents you from getting your head screwed on straight? Or could be you’ve got the head and lungs of a St. Bernard Alpine Rescue Dog working double shifts and the ass of a whippet puppy confined to an apartment being ruled over by a couch-potato endlessly watching the daily reruns on Fox Unworldly News? 

In politics, as in poker, there comes a time to put up or shut up. And oh how I wish you’d shut up, Philbrick. Read a book, go fishing, go split kindling. Hell, why not get all adventurous and drive down to Cloverdale for dinner and a drink at McDonalds? 

Regarding why on earth our Esteemed Editor would allow this hate-mongering one trick pony to take up so much space in his now shrunk-by-a-third weekly, I’ve asked him and he ain’t saying. Not to me, anyway. Then again, most everybody likes a little suspense and, besides, we all enjoy putting some plausible deniability into our lives. Where would we be without the little white lies we tell ourselves and each other? 

Breaking news: just back from Washington State. I pick up the 8/29 issue of the AVA and, by golly, our Esteemed Editor has finally spilled the beans: Trumpkins, says he, more bettah than them wicked careerists in the Civil Service. I dare say it takes some brass balls to rush to the defense of the likes of Cap’n Manafort (check that Freudian slip of a handle) with his octopus legs leading to where all the Euro-Trashian mobs come together with their big, plump and beady-eyed American kissing cousins. You know, up there atop dah Trump Phallus or atop his son-in-law’s 666 I dare not whisper the unholy name. 

Whether it’s Field Marshall Putin or Generalissimo “Flacco” Trump, or them working together, anybody willing to follow those sleazeballs should think long and hard about where that road inevitably leads. I mean, would you like a dollop of Stalin to go with your steaming hot plate of plump little Mussolini? No, you’re good? Then I’m good, too.

I know not what path others may take…

Bruce Patterson

Prineville, Oregon

PS: It’s Thursday, 20/18 and that rancid creampuff Judge Cave-alot is about to maybe receive stolen property in the form of a permanent appointment to a job religious fanatics should never be allowed to Touch. How dare I slander that blow-dried pasty-faced His Honor? It’s because he recently called all birth control “forms of chemical abortions.” It’s because he has promised to end all abortions which would be a tyranny most foul inflicted upon most all women between the ages of 13 and 55. Earth to you blow-dried old white men having far more money than common sense or decency: when men can have babies then, and only then, they can tell any women about how to have, or not have, babies. Till then, fuck off. 

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Editor,

After reading the article about the proposal to alert people about an emergency via cellphones, etc., and how it seemed not totally effective, one idea, which is currently used in Hawaii, is to simply use sirens. That way everyone will be alerted to an emergency. I have a cellphone, but some people don’t, or they turn them off at night. High technology isn’t the solution to every situation or problem. Try a good old-fashioned and loud siren system.

Mary Wright

Santa Rosa

TARGET THE COASTAL COMMISSION

Editor,

I was shocked and extremely disappointed to read that the California Coastal Commission is apparently going to pay the fines and legal costs for Steve Kinsey and the other convicted Coastal Commission members.

In Kinsey’s case, he was convicted of 140 violations. Yes, you read that right: 140 violations.

The Coastal Commission’s decision to pay these costs is a blatant future protection and precedent should any future members decide to ignore rules and fail to properly carry out their responsibilities. This is a gross abuse of taxpayers’ funds and a betrayal of the public trust and the future integrity of the Coastal Commission.

The individual actions of California Coastal Commission members should be completely and fully their personal responsibilities. They failed, probably purposefully, to handle important communications with developers in the proper manner.

A lawsuit should be filed against the California Coastal Commission to send the proper message: if you fail to maintain your trust to the public you should personally pay for this breach and failure to follow the rules. If you are not going to faithfully execute your duties as a California Coastal commissioner, you should not take the job.

Al Dugan

Novato

MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Editor,

In all the discussion of accusations and denials, perhaps there could have been a different way of dealing with the suitability of Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. If he had simply said: "I don't remember this incident, I don't know if it happened. It is possible, because we did drink a lot in high school. If it is true, and I did this, then I sincerely apologize to Dr. Ford for the distress it caused her. I would not in any way as an adult condone such behavior by anyone, even my teenage self."

Had Kavanaugh made any such statement he would have established his own honesty, decency and maturity, and this whole thing would be over. He did not choose that route, but has persisted in an unequivocal denial of any of it being true. So he is now in the position of the cover up being worse than the act. Now he has to convince us all that his denial is not just a knee-jerk, disdainful, smug response to some woman giving him a hard time, but has been made with utmost truth and sincerity and the event could not possibly have happened. Sad.

Julie Rufo

Oakland

LISTEN TO LYNDON

Editor,

Eric Holder, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and many others are dirty rotten corrupt anti-American liberal liars and no good so-and-so's. At the least. Hillary and Obama make me sick. They are rotten. Obama is an anti-American radical Muslim to begin with. Hillary Clinton should be deported. She is crazy. And stinking Obama? Look at who he associated with before he was president. All of them are anti-American, anti-whatever anything. Those are all your buddies, Robert Mahon. I'm sorry I insulted you but you deserve it.

Why is Dianne Feinstein screwing around trying to disrupt Judge Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court? She's queen of the stinking Democrats, that's why. How low can they stoop? It's almost embarrassing to think that they are human beings like the rest of us.

Even ESPN on Monday night football has become part of the no good liberals. They ran a commercial with three soldiers standing there and guess who was standing with them? And he's not even in office anymore! Barack Obama! That's how liberal ESPN is, showing Obama commercials three years after he's out of office.

The mayor of Oakland is trying to get rid of ICE. They should triple ICE! Al Gore, John Kerry, Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Soros and many others have been trying to undermine the United States for quite awhile.

The White House, where all the lawmakers are, is a beehive. The Liberals are doing their dirty work. All major cities are beehives for drugs and crime and corruption and anti-Americanism and much more. All colleges are beehives for defaming the Constitution, free speech, anti-Americanism and anti-religion, anti-everything thanks to liberal professors trying to take over and we don't need it.

President Trump should put together a task force of the toughest best trained Marines and go to every crime ridden city and clean them up so decent people can live in peace. 1000 should do the job divided up into platoons of 100. The mayors of these cities should be ashamed to show their faces. The corruption is unbelievable. The homelessness, the poverty, the slums, the drug dealing, gangs, MS-13 and the rotten antifa cowards. In 1969, Lyndon Baines Johnson gave a speech that was the way it should be. In every sense of the word. In that speech he hit the nail on the head. If you want to hear that speech go online and listen to it. It might do all you liberals some good, but I doubt it.

God bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche