Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Oct. 25, 2018

• Carl Collard
• Firebug Gensaw
• Quiz Night
• Toasting Binah
• Little Dog
• Ed Notes
• Lake Woe-be-not
• Hendy Quest
• Spiking Donovan
• Elder Rental
• Alonso Wanted
• Boonville Projects
• Midterms
• Gleaning Party
• Sunset
• Palace Hotel
• Open Mic
• Yesterday's Catch
• Haunted Distillery
• Immigrant Caravan
• Trump Flock
• Affordable Housing
• F&G Cancelled
• Planning Cancelled
• Voting Recommendations
• Broadband Meeting
• Traffic Congestion
• Randland
• Sox Fans
• Good Liberals
• Quotations
• Newer Deal
• Mendocino Mayhem

CARL LYNN COLLARD SR.

Carl Lynn Collard, Sr. was born May 24, 1923 to Raymond and Mabel Collard in Pleasant Hill, Illinois, and was one of eleven children. From his humble beginnings, Carl lived a life filled with hard work, commitment to his community, and a love of his family. As a young man, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC camp) in Quincy, Illinois, and this is when he met the love of his life Imogene Marie Franks. They were married on July 2, 1942 in San Francisco, California. Carl was a newlywed when he announced his commitment to serving our country, by joining the army.

During his service in World War II as Staff Sargent under General George S. Patton, Carl's first son, Carl Lynn Collard, Jr. was born. While fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, Carl was injured by a shrapnel shell explosion, and was honored with a purple heart. Thereafter, he came home to Imogene and his baby boy. From the time he landed back on American soil, he took to business and was very successful, running DeSoto Sedan Cab Company in San Francisco, California. He went on to own two Shell Gas Stations in Santa Rosa, California, which took him into retirement. One of his other greatest loves was spending time at his ranch in Boonville. You could find the entire family there most weekends, cooking, hiking, playing cards, and telling stories around the campfire.

He loved his bulldozer, making roads on his land, driving around in his CJ-5 jeep, and working on his ranch.

Carl and Imogene were fortunate to have four beautiful children: Carly Lynn Collard, Jr., Joyce Ann Collard, Brian Lance Collard, and Deborah Jean Collard. They were also blessed with 7 grandchildren, 6 great grandchildren, and the newest to their family, 2 great, great grandchildren. How lucky to have spent 76 years together and have the ability to be a part of this family they created. Carl Collard, Sr. was cherished by all who have known him, and so loved by his family and friends. We will never forget his infectious smile, his belly laughs, and his pure love of his family. We will miss you daddy and grandpa!

Funeral will be held grave side at 940 Low Gap Ukiah, CA. Thursday October 25th at 1:00PM, there will be a reception following at Jensen's truck stop.

SUSPECTED ARSONIST Randall Lee Gensaw entered two pleas Wednesday in Judge Cindee Mayfield’s court:

As to Count One, a violation of Penal Code 451c., starting a fire on the property of North Coast Rail Road: No contest.

Count Two, 11550, under the influence of a controlled substance (meth), was dismissed with a Harvey waiver, meaning the tweaker’s tweak may be considered at sentencing.

The plea was negotiated by our new Public Defender, Jeffery Aaron, his first case, and it came in a somewhat timely fashion, this arson deal, as the Office of the Public Defender just yesterday was the scene of a fire emergency, when the office filled with what was described as a white smoke, and had to be evacuated. Some people would call this “ironic” – others would prefer the more pedestrian term “coincidence” and yet even more folks (locally, at least) would go for the far-out Jungian coinage, “synchronicity.”

Public Defender Aaron said that it was only a heating/AC system that was smoking; no fire, none at all, and that the Fire Captain advised the old building had only two smoke detectors. Aaron hastened to add that County Maintenance personnel readily installed more smoke detectors, and made some facetious quips about only being on the job a month and “already burning the place up.”

Smokin'

The deal the Public Defender crafted with District Attorney David Eyster means Mr. Gensaw, who was discovered on October 9th by neighbors in the act of piling up combustibles including an oil can. He then set the fire, just about a year after the beginning of the most horrific fire season on record, and in the aftermath of this year’s huge fire. So the neighbors called 911 -- the Ukiah Valley Fire Department, and the Ukiah Police Department responded. Gensaw was subsequently taken into custody after being charged for tweaking and arson with the Special Allegation that he used an accelerant.

There will be no prison at the outset, and Gensaw will go on felony probation (he was already on two separate grants of misdemeanor probation) and serve 150 days in jail.

Mr. Gensaw kept on interrupting the proceeding to say he “didn’t light no fire” and “I was just cleaning up trash – why don’t you get some of these guys from the jail to go down there and clean that shit up?”

The deal included registering as an arsonist, and Gensaw didn’t much like that. “Does that mean I can’t go camping and light a campfire?”

Judge Mayfield said it wouldn’t be advisable, considering the circumstances.

Judgment and Sentencing was set for the morning of November 29th at nine o’clock.

BOONVILLE QUIZ TONIGHT. Yes, folks, we're on the eve of another night of fun, frivolity, and furrowed brows as the General Knowledge and Trivia Quiz takes place tomorrow (Oct 25th) at Lauren's Restaurant in Boonville - that's the 4th Thursday of the month... It all gets going at 7pm and I cannot imagine why you would not be there. I will be. Hope to see you, Cheers, Steve Sparks, QuizMaster

THE SUPERDELEGATE! LIVE!

Featured Speaker: Rachel Binah at Toastmasters

The local Toastmasters club, Coast Toasters, will feature Rachel Binah as their speaker at an Open House Toastmasters Meeting at the Redwood Coast Senior Center in Fort Bragg, at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, October 31st. The title of her presentation will be “How I Will Vote — General Election, Tuesday, November 6th.” We invite you to come hear Rachel’s choices, and rationale for her decisions. Then, it’s up to you to make your own choices and VOTE on November 6th. Although she will describe her choices for candidates and propositions, they are personal and in no way meant to reflect the views of the Toastmasters Club. Bring your voter information pamphlets so you can make some notes. We also encourage attendees to come in costume, especially if you have Halloween plans for after the meeting. If you're stumped for costume ideas, consider dressing as your favorite politician, living or dead.

Presentation Title: How I Will Vote — General Election, Tuesday, November 6th

Speaker: Rachel Binah

Date: Weds, October 31, 2018

Time: 5:30 - 6:30 PM

Location: Redwood Coast Senior Center Activity Room, 490 N Harold Street, Fort Bragg

Bring: Voter Information Pamphlet

Refreshments: will be served

COSTUMES ENCOURAGED!

Everyone is welcome!

About our speaker:

Rachel Binah, environmentalist and community activist, former owner of bed & breakfast inns, was one of the organizers of the Mendocino coastal communities successful protest February 1988 in Fort Bragg, California in response to the Department of the Interior’s final hearing for “Lease Sale 91” which proposed offshore oil development along the Northern Coast of California. It is thought that as many as 5,000 people attended the federal hearing, with 1400 signing up in advance to testify. Rachel Binah is the Chair Emeritus of the California Democratic Party's Environmental Caucus and served as an elected Democratic National Committeewoman, representing California, from 1992 until 2016. Binah’s hand sewn paper constructions and collages are shown at Partners Gallery, 335 North Franklin Street in Fort Bragg, California. Looking forward to seeing you on Halloween.

Terri Larsen, Club President, Coast Toasters

http://7040.toastmastersclubs.org/

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I had the 5 last night. 5 was the first number in the winning Mega Mil. I'm closer every drawing! And Power Ball tonight!”

ED NOTES

A FRIEND describes Haschak vs. Pinches in the 3rd District Supe's race this way: "Haschak's running hard, and he's got a lot of the newbie dope growers convinced his 12-point pot program is more sensible than Pinches "back of a bar napkin."

THE MIGHTY AVA has always supported Pinches although we disagree with him on some things, especially the pay raises for the Supervisors and the County's top brass. Although Haschak is an earnest, capable-seeming person we're dismayed to see him line up with the entrenched Northcoast Democrat organization — Wood, McGuire, the local middle-of-the-road extremists, that whole gang a mirror of the retro-Demos we suffer at the national level — and we're always dubious of candidates from the public ed morass, where clarity and independence are as rare as a high school graduate who can write an error-free sentence. Haschak only got interested in County politics this election, while Pinches has always been devoted to, as he says, "Mendacina County." He won us forever years ago when, during a discussion of a very expensive computer communication system for the exclusive use of County bureaucrats, he said, "If they want to talk to each other they can walk down the hall to say whatever they have to say." And Pinches is the first Supervisor since the late Joe Scaramella to publicly raise the outrageously unfair Mendo-SoCo water arrangement that jobs Mendo out of annual millions. As Pinches pointed out, with zero support from his colleagues to even agendize the discussion, Sonoma makes annual millions from the diverted Eel water stored at Lake Mendocino which, according to the agreement made in the middle 1950s, Sonoma County owns most of. That original deal, opposed by the farsighted Scaramella, ought to be re-negotiated. But Pinches couldn't even get a second. If Haschak is elected, I hope he isn't another auto-yes vote for whatever the CEO plunks down in front of the Supes every two weeks. As it stands, McCowen is the only Supervisor who will say, "Wait a minute. I don't think we should do this." He, too, is typically out-voted, 4-1. We live in hope.

* * *

FROM A READER, a t-shirt seen in Cabo San Lucas: "Be happy. You're on the fun side of The Wall."

* * *

I'VE BEEN DENOUNCED as a "liar" three times this week, not that I'm unaccustomed to insult, but I often wish dueling hadn't been outlawed. In each of these three instances the "lie" was a difference of opinion, not a deliberate distortion of the facts by yours truly. Over the long years, I've never hesitated to correct an error, and I can't honestly remember pushing a straight-up lie on you, dear readers. I used to get "liar!" by the basketful from the Bari Cult when it became belatedly obvious to me that the party line on the Bari saga was that she'd been the victim of — pick your villain — loggers, the FBI, religious cranks, men. My end of the argument was a constant revision as new info arrived, but each mistaken fact or errant deduction based on what I thought I knew, was denounced as a "lie." The times have been over-heated for years now to where it's almost impossible to simply disagree without someone getting all het up.

* * *

AT LEAST TWO local celebrations of Orson Welles' great hoax "War of the Worlds" are coming up, one of them by Mendocino College on KZYX, the other out on the Coast somewhere. Can anyone even imagine a comparable prank today? (No.) Is the incidence of pure credulity any less today? (No.)

* * *

ON THE SUBJECT of delusions and hoaxes, the anti-vaxxer mental disorder, not quite prevalent in Mendo but spreading like polio pre-Salk, has now infected several prominent Republicans. Once confined to fringe idiots descended from the dumber dumb ass hippies, three Republicans running strong for governor in Oklahoma, Oregon, and Connecticut—are mooshy on requiring vaccinations for young children. “We shouldn’t be dumping a lot of drugs into kids for no reason,” one guy said. Another, "I believe the best practice is to vaccinate your children, but the government shouldn't be able to legally force you to do so.” The Oregon candidate, a doctor of all things, has said, "Parents should have the right to opt out of vaccinations for personal beliefs, for religious beliefs or even if they have strong alternative medical beliefs.”

LAKE WOE-BE-NOT! REPORT

http://lakeconews.com/index.php/news/58464-supervisors-approve-formation-of-lake-county-tourism-improvement-district

Lake County Supervisors yet again endorsed its long-standing “business as usual” position in stark disregard for the realities of three long years of catastrophic losses due to environmental conditions and decades of benign neglect of environmental management responsibilities, claiming its verity as the born-again reasoned response to Lake County’s monetary malaise.

Year after whining year, County officials support economic booster clubs and bland marketing schemes as a solution for attracting pocket change from passersby, while real economic opportunities available for environmental revitalization of despoiled public assets (the reservoir known as Clear Lake, national forests, federally managed lands, and natural resource protected areas) are dismissed as unnecessary or impossible to achieve.

For example, the City of Clearlake qualifies (in concept) for up to one million dollars for a year, potentially for more than one year, to rectify land use/abuse impacts on the Burns Valley Watershed* — for which long-established City stormwater management plans (last updated in 1994, with no implementation commitment and none accomplished) clearly identify bad practices in past development eras that must be corrected to comply with the State Water Resources Control Board’s “Water Quality Order” for restoration of Clear Lake under the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board’s adopted Sacramento River Basin Plan amendment of 2007.

Over 70 years of publicly-funded studies, reports, data collection, multi-agency regulatory legislation, and passively constructed local government “plans” support the radical redirection of public expenditures on collaborative services that treat our shared assets as critical resources, but what we get is “visioning” and “branding” and “economic conferences” instead of coherent — and honest — problem statements leading to successful grant acquisition from numerous federal and state (public) funding sources.

In sympathy for the “establishment" embodied in local government operations, cleaving to known if ineffective styles of maintaining the “home front” — ever evoking the 1950s as the image and symbol of American happiness (don’t forget, our elected officials endorsed the creation of a “happiness index” here a few years ago) — “core” services the public “demands” are apparently perceived as the white man’s burden on theirgeneral fund, including health and safety priorities that will be endangered if the public does not capitulate to Administration’s harangue.

Our Supervisors recently approved Administration-sponsored changes in public access hours at County offices to allow staff to catch up on voluminous paperwork involved in multiple government processes, not least of which is the bottleneck in our planning/permitting/inspection departments. See the 2017-2018 Lake County Grand Jury Reports (1) “Where’s My Permit?”; (2) “Chaos After the Fires” — insurance problems; (3) “Go Jump in the Lake” — about our just-legally useful Emergency Operations Plan (AVA readers may also be interested in “Wards of Lake County” — about outsourcing of juvenile hall services, first to Mendo and now to Tehama; what’s up with that?).

http://www.lakecountyca.gov/Assets/County+Site/Grand+Jury/Final+Reports/17-18final.pdf?method=1

To which Supervisor Rob Brown (District 5 - Kelseyville, Cobb) responded with a soliloquy** accusing the Grand Jury of frivolous waste of public monies and unwarranted attacks on “staff,” after denouncing the entire report as “garbage” (in the Record-Bee’s August 23 Editorial Board rebuke of the Supervisors failure to respond as required by law; postponed, evidently, until both written and oral choruses of multi-department condemnation could be orchestrated). Worse, the three Supervisors in attendance at this child-like performance simpered in agreement, undermining any claim to intellectual maturity or comprehension of the facts. South Park would have a field day on this side of the Cow.

It is, however, beginning to dawn on the public in Lake County that, while keeping the ship of state on an even keel, the internal bailing brigade is sweating bullets (ping! there goes another hole in the hull) and we haven’t even begun to deal with the aftermath of the 2018 firestorms impacts on Spring Valley, High Valley, Long Valley, Bartlett Mountain, Elk Mountain, South Cow Mountain, and their watersheds.

Not to be unsympathetic, either, with the small businesses that shuttered during their peak sales season, and the realization of possible promotion advantages in forming the new “district” (same carrot, same donkey), there is little to indicate that the “economic recovery” bandwagoneers grasp the benefits of active participation in civic community resource development. Bring on the “tag lines” and “mission statements,” fellas — yet another banal “new paradigm” for “re-imagining”*** Lake County is coming right up!

Betsy Cawn, Upper Lake

*

https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Integrated-Regional-Water-Management/Urban-Streams-Restoration-Program

**

http://www.lakecountyca.gov/Assets/County+Site/Grand+Jury/Final+Reports/17-18final.pdf?method=1

[Lake County Board of Supervisors, October 2, 2018, Item 8.3 - Consideration of Response to the 2017-18 Grand Jury Report]

***

http://www.lakecountyca.gov/Government/Directory/Administration/Visioning/Vision2028.htm [“Vision 2018”]

EXPLORE LITTLE HENDY GROVE with this selfguided treasure hunt (quest) for kids of all ages! The quest brochure may also be found at the bottom of the hendy woods community website: http://www.hendywoods.org/s/QuestFF.pdf

Anica Wiggle

HURRYIN' BILL & FRIENDS

On 10-21-2018 A Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputy attempted to conducted a traffic enforcement stop on 2002 blue BMW sedan on Highway 20 near the intersection of Marina Drive in Redwood Valley. The driver of the vehicle, later identified as Donovan Williams, fled eastbound on Highway 20 at a high rate of speed estimated between 80-100 MPH. Mendocino County Deputies pursued the vehicle into Lake County. Williams weaved in and out of traffic at high rates of speed, crossed over into oncoming lanes without due regard for anyone’s safety as he attempted to escape capture from pursuing deputies. Lake County Sheriff’s Deputies and California Highway Patrol Officers assisted in the pursuit which eventually ended on Red Hills Road near the intersection of Highway 20 in Lake County after the suspect vehicle was disabled by spike strips set up by the listed agencies. A high risk stop was conducted resulting in Williams, (front passenger) Amber Ricetti, and (rear passenger) Marvin Gibson exiting the vehicle.

Williams was arrested for an open charge of felony evading a peace officer, one Sonoma County felony arrest warrant for $60,000 bail and two misdemeanor warrants From Lake County (drugs) and Mendocino County (vehicle violation). Ricetti was arrested for violating her probation and obstructing or delaying a Police Officer. Gibson was arrested for one Mendocino County felony warrant for bail jumping and one Mendocino County misdemeanor warrant for probation violation. All three subjects were booked into the Mendocino County Jail.

FOR RENT IN BOONVILLE: 2 BR, 1 bath, senior-friendly duplex unit at AV Elder Home, Boonville. Tenant(s) must be 62 or older. Available mid to late Nov. $925/month. For application/info. contact: aveh@pacific.net (preferred) or 707/895-3889.

WARRANT WEDNESDAY!!

DANIEL JAMIE ALONSO is wanted for FORCIBLE RAPE and UNLAWFUL SEX WITH MINOR

Age: 36 years old

Height: 5' 4"

Weight: 140 lbs

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Brown

Last Seen in: Fort Bragg, CA

If you recognize this individual or have information which could lead to their arrest, please contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office at (707) 463-4086.

Notice of Preparation of a Draft Environmental Impact Report and Public Scoping Session for the Anderson Valley Community Services District Wastewater Collection, Treatment and Disposal Project and Drinking Water System Project

Date: October 10, 2018

To: State Clearinghouse, Mendocino County Clerk, Responsible Agencies, Trustee Agencies, Federal Agencies, and Interested Parties

Contact and where to submit comments:

Joy Andrews, General Manager
Anderson Valley Community Services District
P.O. Box 398
Boonville, CA 95415
(707) 895-2075
water.avcsd@gmail.com

NOP Public Comment Period: October 10, 2018, to November 9, 2018

Public Scoping Meeting:

November 1, 2018, 7:00 p.m.

Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Dining Hall
14400 Highway 128
Boonville, CA

Purpose of the Notice of Preparation

Consistent with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the Anderson Valley Community Services District (AVCSD) is the Lead Agency and is in the process of preparing a Draft Environmental Impact Report (Draft EIR) for the potential development of: 1) a wastewater collection, treatment and disposal system for portions of the Boonville community and 2) a community drinking water system for portions of the Boonville community. The proposed projects are located along Highway 128 in Anderson Valley, Mendocino County. Additional project information can be found at the following website: http://www.avcsd.org/watersewer.php.

An EIR is a public, informational document used in the planning and decision making process to assess a project’s potential environmental effects related to the planning, construction, and operation of a project. An EIR also identifies ways (mitigation measures) to reduce or avoid possible environmental impacts and discloses significant environmental impacts that cannot be avoided, growth-inducing impacts, and significant cumulative impacts of past, present and reasonably foreseeable future projects. An EIR must also identify a range of reasonable alternatives that meet the basic objective of the project and identify the environmentally superior alternative. The EIR for the project will be prepared in accordance with the provisions of the CEQA and the State CEQA Guidelines.

This Notice of Preparation (NOP) is a request for comments from the public and public agencies regarding the scope and content of the environmental information to be included in the project’s EIR. Public agencies are invited to submit comments that are germane to each agency’s statutory responsibilities relative to the proposed project.

Project Location

The project location includes a portion of the rural unincorporated community of Boonville in Anderson Valley, Mendocino County.

Public Scoping Session

In order to assist the public and public agencies in evaluating the project, a Scoping Session will be held on November 1, 2018, at 7:00 p.m. at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Dining Hall, 14400 Highway 128, Boonville. Staff from the AVCSD and AVCSD’s consultant will attend the session to receive public input, answer questions about the proposed project and provide available information. Information obtained in the scoping session will be used to further develop the scope and content of the EIR.

Public Comment Period for the NOP

The public comment period for the NOP will close at 5:00 p.m. on November 9, 2018. The public will also have the opportunity to comment on the Draft EIR after it is published and will receive a Notice of Availability once it is available. Please send written comments to Joy Andrews, General Manager, Anderson Valley Community Services District, P.O. Box 398, Boonville, CA 95415 or by email to water.avcsd@gmail.com. If you have any questions about this NOP, please contact Joy Andrews, (707) 895-2075.

Proposed Project

The project is intended to provide wastewater service to central Boonville to eliminate continued use of septic systems in that area and water service to provide safe drinking water to residents within the service areas. The full NOP and project description are available at: http://avcsd.org/docs/NOP.PDF or the Anderson Valley Community Services District office.

Potential Environmental Impacts

The potential for environmental impacts will need to be identified and evaluated before the proposed project or potential alternatives are approved. AVCSD has elected to proceed directly to preparing a Draft EIR and not prepare an initial study, as allowed by the CEQA Guidelines (14 CCR 15063).

The EIR for the project will provide a clear statement of the environmental impacts associated with the construction and operation of each project alternative considered by the decision makers, responsible and trustee agencies under CEQA, and the public. Specific areas of analysis will include: Aesthetics; Air Quality; Agriculture and Forest Resources; Biological Resources; Cultural and Paleontological Resources; Geology and Soils; Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Hazards and Hazardous Materials; Hydrology and Water Quality; Land Use and Planning; Noise; Population and Housing; Public Services/Utilities; Recreation; Tribal Cultural Resources and, Transportation/Traffic.

MAD DOG & TWEETY BIRD

To the Editor,

Saddle-up pardners, the "midterms" are comin'. Mad Dog Kavanaugh is still blazin' away with his six-guns. Tweety Bird Trump is sweepin' the streets with double-ought buckshot.

Tweety's latest victim is North Dakota Democratic Senator, Heidi Heitkamp, whose Czech heritage was ridiculed by Tweety Bird when he called her "Polkahauntus." Red meat to his base.

Are we ready for even more "Shock and Awe"? The BLUE WAVE is an ebbtide; the RED WAVE is a tsunami. You ain't seen nothin' yet!

Cheers, Don Morris, Ghost Town/Willits

GLEANING PARTY AT BLUE MEADOW FARM

It’s time to put the summer field to bed so we can plant cover crop, onions & garlic

Come to our annual Gleaning Party at Blue Meadow Farm

Saturday 10/27 9:00 am on…

Help pull out summer crops for compost and reap the bounty!

Tasty tomatoes & peppers, small eggplant, corn & squash, basil, pumpkins & flowers

Blue Meadow Farm, 3301 Holmes Ranch Rd, Philo 707-895-2071

(17.45 mile marker on Hwy 128)

NOYO BAY SUNSET

(Photo by Dick Whetstone)

ALBATROSS

To the Editor:

The Palace Hotel is, and has been a huge long-term downer. The Palace Hotel is a drain. Indeed, a societal leech. It sits in the center of town as the largest billboard saying that someone here (or someones) care nothing about Ukiah. It appears like the first picture on Google of a ghost town, a town in ruins. I am sorry, but Ukiah deserves better. My intention is to not point any fingers. There is quite enough blame to go around. But really, enough is enough. I just read in the UDJ, that it is still being shopped around, and there is some interest, and the fishing expedition goes on and on,…blablabla. I think that Ukiah and its local businesses have suffered enough because of this property.

Here is my suggestion. Sell it for one dollar. Yep, one dollar. Find a good accountant and try to find some legit way to absorb the loss. But, its sale would come with conditions. A guarantee. A guarantee that “X” amount of money would be put into the project of turning the worst thing in town into the best. And that the improvement “project” would be completed within a defined time frame. No extensions.

It would appear that certain people still insist on grasping for financial straws to sell a turd. I apologize for my language. This property stinks, and has stunk for far too long. Dump it. Turn it over to someone that really cares about Ukiah, as opposed to the opposite. Sure, the powers that be can continue to fish for a sucker. Good luck. The inevitable is being protracted, just like the owner did. This property is a blight. Just the earthquake remediation is valued at $6 million, and it is just not worth $6 million. Do the math. The Palace Hotel sits at the center of town. It can be a crowning symbol of successful progress, or it can stay as the symbol it is currently … the “Albatross of Ukiah”.

I think that Ukiah deserves better. Just my opinion.

Johnny Keyes

Ukiah

DEAD POETS

Nov. 1 First Thursday OPEN MIC Poetry

Hello poets and friends

The First Thursday OPEN MIC for November 1 will meet at Evergreen Methodist Church (360 N Corry St, Fort Bragg). Start time: 6:00 pm

Don't forget to come by the library's community room during that first week of November to see the Day of the Dead altars. At that time, you can also look at our Poetry Offerings upstairs.

The change of venue only applies to November.

Dan Hess, Branch Librarian

Fort Bragg Library

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 24, 2018

JOSHUA BENNETT, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

JESSICA BRUCE, Willits. Smuggling controlled substance or liquor into jail, conspiracy.

JEREMIAH ECKLE JR., Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, resisting.

ARLEN GONZALEZ, Alturas. Controlled substance, false ID.

BENJAMIN HOFF, Ukiah. Second degree burglary.

JESSICA HOFFMAN, Fort Bragg. Disobeying court order.

RHANDA JACK, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

CHRISTOPHER KOSKINEN, Willits. DUI, probation revocation.

WILLIAM OWENS, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

CECELIA REEVES, Ukiah. Petty theft, disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

AMBER RICETTI, Ukiah. Resisting, probation revocation.

ROGER SCHOENAHL, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

XOCHE WRIGHT, Ukiah. Under influence, fugitive from justice, probation revocation.

HAUNTED MOSS BEACH DISTILLERY

A distillery and restaurant that has for years served as a jovial eating establishment might not be the first place that one would consider to be a haunted place, but perched high on a cliff, overlooking the coast of Half Moon Bay in San Mateo, California, just a 30 minute drive outside of San Francisco, is the Moss Beach Distillery, a place perhaps even more well known for its haunting than its beer and food.

mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/10/a-mysterious-haunting-at-the-moss-beach-distillery/

A CONVENIENT CARAVAN: CUI BONO?

by Thomas Knapp

In an October 23 editorial, Investor’s Business Daily claims that “[t]he ‘caravan’ of illegal immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras now making its way to the U.S. border is no accident. The timing, planning and financing of this tragic parade has but one intent: to disrupt and influence our midterm elections.”

An interesting assertion, but the piece doesn’t offer answers to any of the questions implied other than to blame Democrats for all things evil.

Who planned the caravan? IBD names a group that supposedly planned a previous one.

Who timed the caravan? No answer from IBD.

Who’s financing the caravan? IBD: “If only our friends in the mainstream media would do their jobs and find out.”

A conspiracy theory isn’t much fun when the theorists can’t be bothered to put meat on its bones in the form of factual claims that might possibly be verified or proven false.

Since IBD couldn’t be bothered to do the heavy lifting, I guess I’ll have to. I’ll work with a standard wrench from the conspiracy theory toolbox: Cui bono? That’s Latin for “who benefits?”

If the migrant caravan indeed “has but one intent: to disrupt and influence our midterm elections,” what individual, group, or political party benefits from that disruption/influence? IBD’s complaints about Democrats come apart at the seams as soon as cui bono is invoked.

If the caravan disrupts or influences the 2018 US midterm elections, it does so entirely and exclusively to the benefit of the Republican Party.

The caravan is a perfectly timed hobgoblin for demagogues like Donald Trump (and the editors of IBD) to shake in the air like a witch doctor’s fetish for maximum “Scare Our Base to the Polls” purposes.

As a conscript in the service of conspiracy theory, albeit one with better skills than whoever volunteered to embarrass IBD, I’d have to attribute the caravan’s planning, timing, and financing, on cui bono grounds, to the Republican National Committee (or one of its subordinate committees) and/or to one or more of Donald Trump’s three 2020 campaign committees.

Do I believe that? It’s certainly tempting. But I’m more of an Occam’s Razor guy than a cui bono guy. Occam’s Razor says we should go with the theory that requires the least speculation.

Individual immigrants pay as much as $10,000 to “coyotes” to guide them across the US border — if they can make it through the narco-terrorist-infested wilds of Central America first. Most of the immigrants in question are poor. Getting together as a “caravan” is cheaper and traveling in a large group is presumably safer than risking it alone or in single family units.

You may have “caravaned” to a distant city for a concert or convention yourself. Four people to a car is cheaper than one. Four cars means that if one breaks down, the trip doesn’t come to a sudden end. And you probably organized it just like these immigrants probably organized it: By word of mouth.

Sorry to wreck your fun conspiracy theory, IBD. Better luck next time.

(Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org.)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

People are flocking to Trump like the Germans flocked to Hitler at the Nuremburg rallies. He said it bravely and boldly before thousands upon thousands at the Texas rally, and before millions across the nation. “I am a nationalist he declared!” Millions of knees buckled on the Left. The faint hearted passed out and had to be revived. A great moment awaits the Golden Gladiator of Gotham, as the growing caravan ambulates like some giant millipede towards America. The moment of Truth is near. Nothing less than the fate of the nation hangs on that moment.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Editor:

Back in 1983, I could build a house for $40 per square foot. Now it costs me upwards of $200 per square foot to build. Back in 1983, average American income was around $20,885 a year; now it’s around $50,500. Wages have gone up 2½ times, while building costs has gone up five times. This doesn’t make affordable housing a likely scenario.

I suggest that the government consider helping to subsidize the cost of building materials to help make building costs more affordable. They could directly subsidize the manufacturer or the supplier, and then the manufacturer/supplier could discount the building material costs to the contractor/home owner.

Carl Merner

Santa Rosa

OH NO!

November 13, 2018 Fish & Game Commission Mtg: CANCELLED

The Tuesday, November 13, 2018 Fish & Game Commission meeting has been cancelled. Please see the attached cancellation notice and feel free to post and share. The 2019 meeting calendar has been set with final locations to be confirmed:

• January 8, 2019, 6:00 pm in Willits
• March 12, 2019, 6:00pm in Ukiah
• May 14, 2019, 6:00pm in/near Fort Bragg
• July 9, 2019, 6:00pm in Willits
• September 10, 2019, 6:00pm in Ukiah
• November 11, 2019, 6:00pm in/near Fort Bragg

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact the Fish and Game Commission.

Thank you,

Elizabeth Salomone
Fish and Game Commission Secretary
860 North Bush St, Ukiah, CA 95482
www.co.mendocino.ca.us/dfg/
707-234-6094

NOT AGAIN?

Dear Interested Parties,

Planning Commission meeting Cancellation notice for November 1, 2018, is posted on the department website at: mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff with any questions.

Victoria Davis, Commission Services Supervisor, 707-234-6664

COMPLETE VOTING RECOMMENDATIONS

Hello.

Since I'm a long-time local progressive voter who studies the issues, lots of folks ask me for voting advice. Here below are my ballot recommendations. I hope it’s helpful to you and if so that you pass it on to others who might appreciate it.

Governor: Gavin Newsom

Lieutenant Governor: Ed Hernandez

Secretary of State: Alex Padilla

State Controller: Betty Yee

State Treasurer: Fiona Ma

Attorney General: Xavier Becerra

Insurance Commissioner: Ricardo Lara

State Board of Equalization: Malia Cohen

US Senator: Kevin De Leon

US Representative: Jared Huffman

State Senator: Mike McGuire

State Assemblyman: Jim Wood

Judicial:

Carol Corrigan No

Leondra Kruger Yes

James Humes Yes

Sandra Margulies Yes

James Richman No

Marla Miller No

Peter Siggins No

Jon Streeter Yes

Alison Tucher Yes

Barbara Jones Yes

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Thurmond

Mendo-Lake Community College: Robert Pinoli

5th District County Supervisor: Ted Williams

Mendo Coast Healthcare Dist Directors:

John Redding

Jade Tipett

Jessica Grinberg

Karen Arnold

Propositions: 1 Yes, 2 Yes, 3 No, 4 Yes, 5 No, 6 No, 7 Yes, 8 Yes, 9 removed from ballot, 10 Yes, 11 No, 12 Yes

For Fort Bragg residents:

City Council:

Tess Albion-Smith

Mary Rose Kaczorowski

Lindy Peters

Measure H: Yes

(Tom Wodetzki, Albion)

BROADBAND ALLIANCE of Mendocino County Public Outreach Meeting - Friday November, 2nd 10:00 am - 12:00

At the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, 204 S Oak St, Ukiah, CA 95482

Call in Number: 641-715-3341 Access code: 108 1131#

http://www.mendocinobroadband.org/

CAUSES FOR CONGESTION

Editor,

“Traffic schooling” in the PD a couple of days ago does not mention two related, very significant, causes of increased traffic congestion in our city: construction and bike lanes. Bike lanes are taking away lanes previously available to cars, often making one lane in place of two.

The decisions creating this cause of traffic congestion are typically made by relatively young and healthy idealists who expect all of us will suddenly get on a bicycle. This option is not available to the handicapped, seniors, people with jobs out of town, or parents of small children.

The construction boom should be good for us, except it causes street and lane closures and the projects seem to pop up with no planning and seem to be endless. Neither of these factors is mentioned as part of the referenced. That makes me wonder how much the study was truly interested in the objective truth and is instead meant as a weapon to use against Uber and Lyft, two companies introducing highly successful and creative business models.

Paul Wildes

San Francisco

AYN RAND GIVES ATHEISM A BAD NAME

Overrated: Ayn Rand

by Michael Mosbacher

(Illustration by Michael Daley)

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid likes to read the trial scene from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead twice a year — something he has done since discovering the book as a teenager. It could be worse — his other youthful cultural interests were Star Trek and the film Wall Street, although Javid’s reading of the latter was rather different from that of its director, Oliver Stone. To Javid, Gordon Gekko was an untarnished hero.

Falling under the spell of Rand’s mid-20th-century American novel is not unusual, at least not in the United States. In his classic 1987 account of how academia has come to fail us, The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom recorded how he liked to ask his first-year students which books had really mattered to them. He was hoping they might mention works by Austen or Dickens, as he himself might have done at their age. Instead, Bloom noted that one student might say the Bible — and university would anyway drum that interest out of them — and that “there is always a girl who mentions Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, a book, although hardly literature, which, with its sub-Nietzschean assertiveness, excites somewhat eccentric youngsters to a new way of life”.

Whilst its attractions are hardly limited to girls — I have come across many more males who have been besotted by Rand and all things Randian — The Fountainhead has great appeal to the misfit teenager. The book tells the story of the perfect man, Howard Roark, and the almost perfect woman, Dominique Francon — or at least very close to perfection once she has learnt from Roark that one does not need to appease life’s second-raters. Roark is a genius of a modernist architect: poured concrete and lack of adornment are the markers of his style — Roger Scruton and David Watkin would not approve.

Our hero has never managed to fit in. Everywhere he goes he has been hated, because second-raters and second-handers, Rand’s favorite terms of abuse, cannot bear his greatness. To quote from her other canonical novel, Atlas Shrugged: “Do you know the hallmark of a second-rater? It’s resentment of another man’s achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone’s work prove greater than their own — they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top.”

If you used to be a loser kid, from reading The Fountainhead you learn that it is your brilliance, and others’ resentment of it, which caused you not to fit in. Roark’s antagonist, the perfidious egalitarian Elsworth Toohey who becomes the leading newspaper columnist and cultural arbiter of his age, was the most popular boy at school, a sure sign of perfidy in Randland and perhaps in the real world too.

While both authors would have hated the comparison, the appeal of The Fountainhead to the teenage mind is similar to that of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The second-rater of one is the phony of the other.

It is unfair in most cases to judge a novelist’s morals by the actions of their creations, but this is not the case with Rand. She regarded realism in literature as a grave crime and states that Roark is the prototype of human perfection.

This makes some of his moral choices rather peculiar. He is a rapist, although — this being Randland — the victim, Francon, then realizes that being ravished by Roark is her profoundest desire. Rand’s views on sexual attraction were extremely dotty. She believed what attracted rational people to each other was admiration for the other person’s reason, which the extremely rational could instantly detect across a crowded room. (“It was her reason I was gawping at…”)

It is not usually regarded as a morally acceptable form of architectural criticism to blow up a half-completed public housing project. Roark’s motivations for doing this are often misrepresented when left-wingers attack Rand.

Roark does not dynamite the building because he disapproves of public housing, although he does, but for much madder motives. A hugely successful second-rater by the name of Peter Keating has been commissioned to build a housing project, but he cannot do it on budget to the specifications. He knows the only man who can is Roark, who agrees to design the building but wants no acknowledgement or payment. His price is that not a single detail of his design may be changed.

Keating loses the battle to perfectly preserve Roark’s design, so Roark believes the only rational response is to blow the thing up. Rand is not a champion of modesty.

She did not write a substantive book on objectivism — what she modestly called her worldview. Her non-fiction works such as Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness are collected lectures, essays from her newsletter and other ephemera. The Fountainhead is quite a good read (the same cannot be said of Atlas Shrugged), but it is not a book for grown-ups. Rand’s sub-Nietzschean philosophy has been taken too seriously by many people who should know better.

(Standpoint.co.uk)

“The ony thing worse than a Boston fan is a Los Angeles Boston fan.”

WHY “GOOD LIBERALS” WON’T SAVE THE CLIMATE

by Scott Parkin

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

—Martin Luther King Jr.

We’ve known for a long time not to believe the false rhetoric of “good liberals” like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Jerry Brown. In rare moments, we’re able to draw a stark contrast between them telling us that they “feel our pain” and the harsh reality their policies have on our communities.

Last month, in downtown San Francisco, California Gov. Jerry Brown attempted define his legacy of “real climate leadership” with the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS). With GCAS, Brown provided an opportunity for governors, mayors, corporate lobbyists and the environmental non-profit industrial complex to network, hobnob and announce major initiatives for climate action. The ultimate goal was to contrast the climate initiatives of “good liberals,” like Brown, to the climate denial politics of the Trump White House. The CEOs of SalesForce, Kaiser and Unilever, as well as AFL-CIO president Richard Trumpka celebrities like actor Harrison Ford and musician Dave Matthews, and of course, Al Gore showed up to promote a business friendly climate agenda to the world.

Technology and profit driven solutions were the planet-saving theme of the week. Crowds of adoring greens, many the staff of the nation’s liberal environmental non-profit complex, cheered when Brown announced that California would put its own satellite to monitor climate change into the atmosphere. Financial firms committed to fund climate action to the tune of $32 billion. Cities committed to go carbon neutral by 2045. Companies committed to rapidly shift to renewable energy. Billionaire and former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined Brown in denouncing Trump for pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords. As noted by many observers, it, in fact, was a boring trade show where governments and corporations showed up to market their ideas and products.

“Stand with Communities, Not Corporations”

Outside the summit things got much more interesting. All week, frontline, Indigenous and grassroots activists had a massive presence outside a number of official GCAS events. It began over the weekend with a 30,000 person march that weaved through the streets of San Francisco culminating in a giant art project that painted dozens of street murals at the city’s Civic Center area. It continued Monday morning with a confrontational action at the Governor’s Task Force on Forests and Climate (GCF) meeting as the body met to further schemes such as reduced emissions from deforestation and land use (REDD+). On Wednesday, local campaign “No Coal in Oakland,” fighting to stop a proposed coal campaign at the Port of Oakland, picketed outside the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment meeting that included the Bank of Montreal, a prominent funder of the proposal.

The biggest action of the week, “Stand with Communities, Not Corporations,” culminated on the first official day of the summit outside its entrances at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco. The action was led by local Bay Area Indigenous group Idle No More SF Bay, a coalition of environmental justice, Indigenous groups and grassroots organizers called “It Takes Roots,” and a California focused anti-extraction campaign targeting Gov. Brown aptly named “Brown’s Last Chance.” It drew over a thousand people that featured a mass march, rally and speakers from impacted communities.

But, when delegates began to arrive for the summit, the rally shifted into a series of highly disruptive rolling blockades at most of the entrances into the summit. The blockades delayed delegates for hours from getting into the summit. Inside GCAS, leaders from It Takes Roots successfully disrupted Bloomberg’s speech by storming the stage and chanting “The Air is Not for Sale!” until being escorted out by police. Bloomberg responded by calling community and Indigenous protestors no better than those wanting to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. The action successfully garnished major coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters, and The Guardian. Furthermore, the action sent a loud and clear message to Brown, Bloomberg, GCAS and their delegates that communities and social movements have legitimate differences with their approach to climate solutions, the fossil fuel sector and carbon markets.

A matter of life and mass death and destruction

The clock is ticking and the science is not just a hoax, its actual science. The most recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC) has said that we must drastically reduce emissions in the next twelve years to avoid climate catastrophe. The past four years (2014-2017) have been the hottest years on record. Last summer and fall were devastating as Hurricanes Harvey and Maria ravaged the Gulf Coast, the Caribbean and, in particular, Puerto Rico. In the same time, wildfires ravaged the western states with unprecedented destruction in Oregon and California. In 2018, the Mendocino Complex wildfire was the largest ever recorded in California history.

Additionally, the impacts of both fossil fuel extraction, processing and climate change harm those most affected by poverty, racism, colonialism and historic marginalization. In California, a recent studyby the Center for Biological Diversity found that three-quarters of oil and gas permits approved by Jerry Brown’s administration are in low income and communities of color. During Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico, a long time U.S. colony, suffered catastrophic damage, over 5,000 died, saw its economy and employment rates plummet and has yet to have 100% of its vital infrastructure returned (i.e. not everyone has had their lights turned back on.).

Meanwhile, the implications of privatization policies of both Republicans and Democrats over the past 40 years stymied real relief efforts to storm and fire damaged regions.

With friends like these….

The failure to solve climate change and protect impacted communities remains an issue of political will.

The opposition to solving climate change is funded by Exxon & the Koch Brothers and is carried out by the Trump Administration. We know their role in this horror show, but the climate neo-liberals in the Democratic Party are equally culpable as things continue to worsen. In fact, attacks on communities, eco-systems and the climate were spinning out of control long before Donald Trump moved into the White House. The pro-market politics of “good liberal” politicians too frequently view corporations as allies in the fight against climate change. They publicly applaud companies for creating “carbon principles” and hiring Chief Environmental Officers. They enter into public partnerships with massive polluters. They create market based systems, like “cap and trade,” to seemingly regulate emissions, but instead subsidize industry.

Last summer, when Gov. Brown signed the bill extending California’s “cap and trade program” (AB398), he assured that the most high-profile piece of the state’s fight against climate change would persist for at least another decade. To guarantee the bill’s passage, a paragraph was added providing maximum compensation to companies for the “extra cost of doing business” in a state with the nation’s toughest emissions standards. The Bill made Brown and the State Assembly look eco-friendly, meanwhile guaranteeing what will likely result in benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the Big Oil and Big Agriculture. Meanwhile, the primary purchaser of California carbon trading credits is the oil industry.

Over the past eight years, Brown has continued to support Big Oil and Gas operations in his state, with lenient regulation, permitting and supporting oil and gas extraction, infrastructure development and refining capacity. Communities in places like Kern County, CA are devastated by these practices. Other Democratic legislators and governors along the west coast have followed suit with similar policies, or at least attempts at them, despite People Power continuing to shut down fossil fuel export facilities in the Pacific Northwest, fighting Arctic drilling and challenging Wall Street financing of the oil and coal sectors.

With collective action, we are dangerous.

But amidst all the fanfare, the “good liberals” provided a moment that allowed social movements fighting for a just and stable climate to contrast the rhetoric and the impact these policies and investments have on communities living near extraction and refining zones (i.e. the frontlines). It is clear that our political leaders aren’t going to save us. Instead, it is organizing that will shift the dominant paradigms.

Every day, communities fight a “doomsday economy” of fossil fuel extraction, climate chaos and austerity economics brought to you by the Donald Trumps and Jerry Browns of the world. In British Columbia, Indigenous-led water protectors have fought the Trans Mountain pipeline turning the tables on the pipeline agenda of Canada’s liberal leadership. In Appalachia, local landowner-led tree-sits and blockades have obstructed and disrupted the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline across the Appalachian Trail for months. On a daily basis across the continent, bankers are confronted over their careless and ceaseless investment in fossil fuels and other environmental destruction.

In the bayous of Louisiana, the fight against Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and its Bayou Bridge Pipeline has seriously escalated. After months of disruption of work along the pipeline route, the state of Louisiana, local police and the company’s private security force has responded with harsh legal and physical reprisals against water protectors. This week, in Dallas, TX, the Stop ETP campaign, led by fierce local and Indigenous women resisting a number of pipelines around the country, literally shut down the company’s shareholder meeting causing its CEO Kelcy Warren to flee the building.

Back in California, while there haven’t been clear cut victories ending cap and trade or regulating fracking out of existence, the discourse around the “good liberal” Jerry Brown and his “real climate leadership” has been altered. People Power continues to mobilize in the streets, regulatory commissions and the ballot box. The “good liberal” narrative of market solutions to climate change has been tarnished. Fracking bans are spreading county by county in California, over 200 locally elected leaders signed letters calling on an end to oil and gas extraction in the state and local fights against new infrastructure are escalating.

We may live in dark times, but anti-establishment movements that have broken with liberal elites continue to shine a light through it. Now is the time, for our communities and movements to continue escalating in the streets, the corporate offices and, if need be, to the front doors of the “good liberals.”

(Scott Parkin is a climate organizer working with Rising Tide North America. You can follow him on Twitter at @sparki1969. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

MY FATHER was the best man I have ever known, too intrinsically good to get ahead in the soulless scramble for a living that a man must cope with if he would survive in our anarchical capitalist system.

— Jack London

* * *

IT WOULD SERVE this man London right to have the working class get control of things. He would have to call out the militia to collect his royalties.

— Mark Twain

THE TRANSFER OF AMERICAN WEALTH from the poor to the rich has been going on for several decades. The basic facts are all too familiar: executive salaries and corporate profits soaring, union membership and power plummeting, real wages stagnant or declining for decades for the poorer 40% of our people. And those losing ground feel increasingly precarious and angry. Sadly, despite Barack Obama’s personal decency, there was no interruption of this pattern under him. During his first term, in the first half of which the Democrats also controlled both houses of Congress, none of the major figures who caused the 2008 financial crisis were punished, no big banks were broken up, and 95% of income gains went to the country's wealthiest 1%. Also painfully clear is the way Hillary Clinton's tone deaf campaign and her coziness with Goldman Sachs and Clinton foundation donors held forth no alternative vision to ever greater inequality. "Hillary couldn't see the forest for the trees,” writes Ben Fountain, author of Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion and Revoltion,” "due to the elemental fact that she was one of the trees." She was the culmination of 35 years of policies that made the Democratic Party become "not so much the champion of the working and middle classes but the party that made things worse a little more slowly than the Republicans."

Fountain quotes Justice Louis Brandeis: "We must make our choice. We may have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Fountain goes back to someone else who felt the same way despite being a man of considerable wealth himself, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The most glowing pages in Beautiful Country Burn Again are about what FDR tried to do with the New Deal which Fountain believes transformed life in this country more than anything since the Emancipation Proclamation: "The roads, waterways, bridges, sewers and water mains, courthouses, libraries and power grids."

He gives a particularly searing portrait of life on the vast majority of American farms in the early 1930s which had no electricity to light the house, no power for a refrigerator to keep food from spoiling in the summer heat, no potable water from the well and much more: that we're alive and well today, walking and talking and in some cases making a career out of bashing the government, it's because great grandpa didn't die from cholera or typhoid back in the day." Fountain might have added something else: the New Deal years were completely free of racial dog whistles from the White House, relatively free of race riots, and the number of lynchings dropped precipitously. For once, Americans were largely focused on something other than race. But imagine if a Trump like figure had been president during the crisis of the Depression.

The New Deal is a far from perfect model. It didn't significantly rein in corporate power, southern Democrats amended important programs to exclude blacks, and it didn't put most of the unemployed back to work -- unfortunately that required World War II. But it showed a government trying on all burners to help those suffering the most, create jobs, enlarge the rights of labor, extend Social Security and other parts of a safety net and build public works that could benefit everyone. Until we have something like that again, the tens of millions of Americans who continue to fall behind economically will be looking for someone to blame -- and demagogues will be only too happy to conjure up the traditional devil of race and tribe. No new Roosevelt is yet on the horizon and we are now stuck with the first American president in history endorsed by leaders of the Ku Klux Klan.

Adam Hochschild

MENDOCINO MAYHEM, CHAPTER 2

by Mack Scott (Bruce McEwen)

Last week we left our heroes in their shot-down CH-53 working on repairs and trying to save the life of their pilot, Warrant Officer Mack Orton, in a burnt out region with a spring-fed creek, in Mendocino County. The whole country had meanwhile gone to hell, what with a financial meltdown, collapsed infrastructure, blown bridges, cell towers, and starving hordes roaming the countryside, scavenging for food. On top of all that, the prisons had all emptied out and gangs of hardened killers were at large raping and pillaging – especially on very grim party of escapees from the maximum security prison at Pelican Bay, on their way to Humboldt and Mendocino counties to take over the organic farms, both food and pot farms, some of the few sustainable places left in the country where people were surviving.

The Pelican Bay Boys had armed themselves by knocking out rural police departments along the way and had attained all the military surplus arms and equipment given to police during the years from 2010 to 2015, and these bad boys had some very fearsome equipment in the form of armored Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and full auto M-16 A2s, Light Anti-Tank Weapons, (LAAWs) and (SAWs) Squad Automatic Weapons, not to mention crates and crates of ammo, hand grenades and M79 grenade launchers.

Sabrina, our heroine, CEO of the largest conglomerate of pot farms in Southern Humboldt and Northern Mendocino (SoHum & NorMen), a corporation called Mother Mirth First! – they were also well armed, albeit with inferior weapons bought on the black market, such as AK-47 rifles, commercial AR-15 assault rifles, old-fashioned Chi-Com grenade launchers, and an assortment of civilian hunting and sporting rifles for big game, shotguns for home protection and-or fowling, self-defense handguns, and what have you in the form of compound bows, black powder muskets, things like that – hardly a match for the well-armed thugs from Pelican Bay.

Over the course of a week, the campsite was looking as neat and tidy as any scoutmaster could wish. One dome tent had been set up as a dispensary, with the wounded pilot laid out on a folding cot; and another set up as a morgue, some distance off, containing the body of co-pilot Ensign Andrews who had been KIA’d (killed in action). Crew Chief Crosby was working with Sgt. Ryan on repairs; they had spliced the torn hydrologic line, and removed the damaged rotor, but the rotor opposite would have to be taken down and stowed away as a spare in order to maintain equilibrium before they got airborne again, and they were working on that project currently. L/Cpl. Dick Early and Seaman First Class Andy Schofield were both on guard duty.

In order to cover the perimeter thoroughly, the sentries walked in circles, completely around the area, Early going clockwise, Schofield going counter-clockwise, passing each other twice in each circuit, thereby keeping a check on each other. It was not an ideal arrangement, but the best they could manage with such a lack of personnel. Also, the forest fire had cleared off the forest to such an extent that they had a clear field of vision all the way to the top or either ridge, and a long distance both up and down the canyon they were camped in. At night, everyone returned to the camp, and took it in turns standing two-hour shifts at “fire watch.”

L/Cpl Early had in fact captured a couple of hippie-types who had stumbled across his guard post and the crew learned from them the information that the Pelican Bay escapees were in convoy from Crescent City, raping and pillaging all along the way. The captives were from the Mother Mirth First Co-operative, and apologized for shooting down the chopper in the first place, but golly it was only in self-defense, and no harm intended. These prisoners were set to work grave digging, for the man they’d killed; as well as digging latrine trenches, and other hard labor.

Log on next week to find out how Sgt. Ryan finally meets Sabrina and convinces his fellow troopers to help defend the MMF! Co-op from the ravages of the Pelican Bay Boys, if only they can get the great big beautiful Sikorsky airborne and hose down the Pelican Bay convoy with armor-piercing rounds and Sidewinder rockets…