Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018

• Rain Likely
• Overlay Puzzle
• Kane Sentenced
• Nicholas Browning
• Little Dog
• Cow Restoration
• Yesterday's Catch
• Pipe-bombing Dems
• Elderhome Fundraiser
• Congressman Raskin
• Little Bird
• Improv Workshop
• Factually Challenged
• Be Kind
• Death Spiral
• Gerrymandered Knights
• Marco Radio
• Community Care
• Bombs Away
• Self Righteousness

MILD TEMPERATURES will continue today, with highs in the 60s along the coast to mid to upper 70s across most of the interior. Cooler conditions will then develop Sunday and persist into early next week as a cold front moves across the area. Rain will be likely with the front late this evening and into Sunday, with showers continuing over Del Norte and Humboldt counties through early Monday. Mild and dry conditions will redevelop over the area during mid to late next week. (National Weather Service)

LAST MARCH we wrote about the case of Chris Gurr who lives on the Boonville Road on the Ukiah side of the hill. According to press reports on August 10, of 2017 Fish & Wildlife raided his property where wardens had the 61-year old Gurr in cuffs standing for hours in the sun as they cut down about 60 of his marijuana plants. Gurr, a former Hewlett-Packard senior sales rep, said he had his paperwork in order or at least pending and showed it to the arresting officers. The Wardens took Gurr’s paperwork and plants and departed.

A FISH AND WILDLIFE SPOKESMAN later said the property was raided because they "suspected" a well was diverting water from a nearby creek, a common practice by grape growers, but a raidable offense for pot growers. Fish & Wildlife Department Lt. Chris Stoots said the agency’s Watershed Enforcement Program — tasked to investigate, enforce and remediate environmental damage from cannabis cultivation on private land — launched the investigation. Stoots said they had to act quickly and in force “when misdemeanors or felonies are committed in the presence of an officer. … The legal status of it or the political opinion of it has nothing to do with the burden people have to (protect) the environment and the fact that they’re obligated to follow environmental laws.”

IN MARCH a Notice of Claim against the County of Mendocino was filed by an SF marijuana legalization attorney outfit called Wykowski and Association for Chris Gurr and realtor Ann Marie Borges, at their address on Boonville Road outside Ukiah. Gurr claimed that “False or improper claims and statements made by Mendocino County Sheriff's Department employee Sue Anzilotti, her associates, and other currently unknown Mendocino County officers and employees which led to execution of search warrant identified as number [redacted] Superior Court of California, County of Mendocino, August 9, 2017 at 9:30 AM. This search resulted in a raid and seizure operations carried out by California Fish and wildlife agents and employees on August 10, 2017. The warrant was issued for the premises at the claimant address.”

GURR cited damages of “Unlawful seizure and/or destruction of entire, nearly mature crop of medicinal grade cannabis plants growing on the claimants’ property; damage to agricultural infrastructure and materials; cost of labor and materials to grow the plants; loss of reputation and standing in the Mendocino community; emotional distress.”

THE AMOUNT claimed is “in excess of $10,000.”

ACCORDING TO THE CLAIM, a Sheriff’s department employee named Sue Anzilotti was responsible for the Fish & Wildlife raid, and alleges that Mendocino County and its top officials are responsible. The March claim was routinely denied without comment by the Supervisors. We do not know whether a similar claim was made against Fish & Wildlife, but given the resources of Gurr and Ms. Borges, and the involvement of a pricey SF law firm, we assume that one was.

ACCORDING TO THEIR WEBSITE “Wykowski & Associates is one of the few firms in California that specializes in representing medical cannabis dispensaries and other related businesses.”

ALTHOUGH WE HAVE NOT SEEN THE LAWSUIT, the case is apparently proceeding, because last Thursday (October 18), Mr. Gurr and Ms. Borges appeared before the Planning Commission to complain about the “overlay zoning” process which they say has targeted them and their otherwise legal pot farm. In the process they mentioned their lawsuit.

GURR: “I live at 1181 Boonville Road which is part of the Woody Glen discussion. We purchased our property in August of 2016, eleven acres zoned AG-40. We were welcomed by our neighbors with open arms. They told us we were the perfect people to buy this property. They invited us to their homes for parties and barbecues. We were given gifts and bottles of wine, Christmas carolers came to our house and sang Christmas songs. Our next-door neighbor even gave us a tour of his vegetable garden where he was growing 25 cannabis plants and told us he had been doing this for years. We thought we had found the perfect farm to develop with open-minded neighbors. On May 4 of 2017 we applied for a medical cannabis permit. To assure compliance, we hired cannabis attorneys and consultants and CPAs to make sure that we were doing everything correctly. Our proof of prior cultivation was approved on May 4, the day we applied to the Department of Agriculture. We were issued a certificate of compliance and we paid our $1450 to the tax collector's office. Then, as if a light switch had been flipped, the neighbors turned on us when they found out that we had applied for a medical cannabis permit. They began contacting their political friends and associates and conducting a smear campaign against us. They spoke at supervisors meetings assassinating our character and slandering us with the lies. They invited County supervisors and other government officials to their homes to solicit their support in stopping us from getting our permit. One of them even used her influence at the Sheriff's office where she works to send out official county e-mails to the department heads including the State Water Board, Fish and Wildlife, Department of Agriculture, Building and Planning, etc. 15 months later after investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a cannabis business we received a denial letter from the County stating that we had not met the proof of prior cultivation requirements which is the thing that you get the first day when you submit your application. How is this possible? How is this possible? We were notified 15 months later. We have been politically assassinated. Our civil rights have been violated and our 14th Amendment due process rights have been violated. Now at the request of the neighbors, the Board of Supervisors has decided that the opt-out zones are a good idea and should be considered. Interestingly enough, there are only two areas being considered for opt-out zones in the whole county. Approximately 87,000 people in the county and 2.4 million acres and our 11 acres coincidentally is now being targeted as one of them. Along with Deerwood. We are nothing like Deerwood. What a coincidence. What are the odds of that happening -- that our location would be picked? What are the odds of that happening for the average citizen without political friends and connections? We oppose the opt-out amendment for the following reasons: We were not allowed to participate in the subcommittee even though we were elected to be on the committee but mysteriously right before the committee started we were eliminated along with two other individuals who were against the opt-out. All the people on the subcommittee are anti-cannabis. So it's no wonder that 92% of the respondents said they were in favor of the opt-out zone. There was no fact checking done on their statements, no alternative views considered. So those recommendations should be challenged. Also, cannabis is being grown by our next-door neighbors. There is a history of cannabis being grown in the Woody Glen area. We meet all the requirements for cultivating marijuana or cannabis on the property at our location. Our property is in an agricultural area. It is zoned AG-40. The number one category of permits issued in Mendocino County are for agriculture. We are where we are supposed to be. We don't live in a subdivision. Woody Glen is a small private road. There is no homeowners association, no CC&Rs, no road association, no subdivision, no subdivision name. It’s agriculture. There is an established commercial venue on Woody Glen — the pumpkin patch. Hundreds and hundreds of cars can be there. We ask that you consider our situation and that you realize that it was not a fair playing field and we were not given an opportunity to speak out against this and neither were the other two individuals on the committee. Thank you.”

REALTOR ANN-MARIE BORGES, apparently Gurr’s land partner, approached the podium a few speakers later: “I hired real estate brokers and agents to find property for me in Mendocino County where I intended to rescue animals. I have nine animals, one of which may not make it through the day today. But I am here. The last time I was supposed to be here the River Fire started that afternoon and I had to choose to stay with my animals and turn on my irrigation. So when they said there was no opposition [to a proposed overlay zone prohibiting legal pot growing in the Woody Glen area], I did not appreciate being put in that position because I have responsibility to save who I represent. I helped open up the depot in Redwood Valley to make sure that hay and feed and support was provided to people during the Redwood Valley fire. We also invited members from Sonoma County to come up and get supplies that they needed. I asked for that and got that. I asked for an area to have a farm to table and a cut flower business and I started that immediately. I have been donating to Plowshares for two years. I have just started my cut flower business. I donate that to the senior centers and hospitals for people who don't receive those kind of things. I also hired consultants and attorneys to make sure that when the agents selected this property for me that I was in the right location. I decided to get my real estate license again. I started in 1990. My experience in this real estate transaction — I'm really concerned about how we could have bought a property that is zoned AG-40 when I was assured by the Ag department that I would be able to invest in the property. And yet now I am here. Unfortunately, I have had to hire Wykowski and Associates in San Francisco to explain how I got here. We have had to start a depositions. We have to bring people locally from the county who have brought me here. I have had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union and explain to them what happened to me. I have been in touch with the Bureau of Real Estate to explain to them what has happened to me how the real estate deal was handled and the lack of disclosure which was not provided to me. I have been contacted by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. They want to know how my property is being opted out [of the overlay zone]. They are interested in this process. They would like to take care of what they consider to be very serious dangers relating to alcohol which in Mendocino County if you attend a winery or go to a tasting room you'll notice that it feeds you right back onto Highway 101. I don't think that when I drive on 101 that I will expecting to see people who have been served alcohol by people who — I don't know if they are trained people in deciding if you are able to drive or not. That's my concern. That's what's dangerous. So I ask you to ask me for facts because I have been denied the opportunity to do that to members of the board and members of the departments even though I have asked several times.”

* * *

THE OVERLAY ZONING PROCESS which Mr. Gurr and Ms. Borges were complaining about has become impossible to decipher. We’re not sure what the hell they’re doing in this latest round of quasi-zoning.

Several pot growers on the Coast complained on Thursday that the sunset provision that will prohibit pot growing in the Coastal zone, indoor and outdoor, after 2020 is unfair and will force them to sell and move out of the County even though they’re apparently legal, have some number of employees who will be let go, and have spent a lot of money to get that way.

The overlay zones would allow “neighborhoods” however they’re defined, to vote on whether legal commercial pot growing is permitted, but the legalities are at best unclear.

LIKE US, Willits News reporter Curtis Driscoll had no idea what changes the Planning Commission was proposing on Thursday since the changes were buried in piles of cannabis-legalese-gobblydook, complete with overhead projections of confusing sections of county code showing what was changed, deleted or added, word by word, but with no overall sense of why the changes were being proposed.

In his report, Mr. Driscoll, like us, gave up, reporting simply that, “At the end of the meeting, the Planning Commission made recommendations to the board about changes to cannabis ordinances.”

THE IMPRESSION WE HAD, however, based on what recently retired and well-respected senior planner Mary Lynn Hunt said toward the end of the discussion (it was her last Planning Commission meeting), is that a use permit process would be better than an overlay zone, an opt-out zone, a combining district, a poll of residents, etc. Perhaps even the existing permitted and otherwise compliant pot growers on the coast who will be sunsetted out of existence, will be given an opportunity to apply for a one-off use permit to stay in business. The Planning Commission decided to consider the use permit process option at a later date. Whether it will help those legal growers on the coast who have been told to sell out and go away, remains open to question.

(Mark Scaramella)

SETTLER CASE SENTENCING

The first of those responsible for the marijuana robbery and the killing of Jeffery Quinn Settler in November 2016 in the hills northwest of Laytonville was sentenced Friday morning in the Mendocino County Superior Court.

Michael Andrew Kane, age 27, of Pleasantville, New York, was sentenced to 14 years in state prison. Kane was convicted by guilty plea of voluntary manslaughter by use of a hatchet, a felony, and robbery of an inhabited dwelling while acting in concert with others, also a felony.

The sentence imposed on this defendant today was the maximum allowed by law given the crimes for which he was convicted.

Because the two crimes are deemed violent under California law, any good or work time credits the defendant may attempt to earn in state prison in an effort, if any, to decrease his prison stay shall not exceed 15% of the overall sentence.

Grieving family members -- the victim's father, mother, sister, and brother -- traveled to Ukiah from Texas to watch and participate in the proceedings held this morning before Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke. The father, sister, and brother each addressed Judge Behnke individually and on behalf of the extended Settler family, and all delivered moving victim impact statements.

District Attorney David Eyster is the prosecutor handling this matter and who appeared this morning to represent the interests of the People of the State of California. While many law enforcement agencies -- both in California and across the country -- provided assistance to the successful prosecution of this defendant, the primary investigating agency was the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office.

The other six co-defendants will be brought to the Ukiah courthouse next Friday, November 2nd, at 9 o'clock in the morning for their respective sentencing hearings. These additional six defendants are all going to each receive a state prison sentence.

(Mendocino County District Attorney)

NICHOLAS GAWEN BROWNING

12/22/32 - 9/28/18

Nick was finally able to "go home" during the early morning hours of Friday, September 28th. He passed peacefully at home in Cleone after a long illness.

Nick was born in Pasadena and remained a lifelong Californian. He attended Midland School in Los Olivas, where he learned to love the early California homestead environment. He then attended Stanford University majoring in English and graduated in 1957 after also serving in the Navy between his sophomore and junior years. He married Linda Lovelace in 1959 and had a son, Michael, and a daughter, Sylvia. In 1971 he met and married his wife Valerie Arden in San Francisco. After their honeymoon in Mendocino and the drive back to Ukiah over the beautiful Comptche-Ukiah Road they decided to find a place in the hills of Mendocino County. And they did; it was an old homestead from 1870 called the Circle C Ranch and closely resembled Nick's old home at Midland. Nick and Valerie lived there for 29 years, off the grid, a never-ending adventure for two city folks.

Every autumn there was a Circle C Apple Day potluck where everyone was invited to pick, crush and press apples from the old Gravenstein orchard. Juice day became the party of the year. By 1999 the Circle C became too difficult to maintain and they moved to Cleone, formerly a small mill town north of Fort Bragg. They loved their location on the dunes of MacKerricher Park, where they and their beloved Samoyed Alia enjoyed walks on the dunes and 10 Mile Beach.

Nick was an avid tennis player in his younger days, winning many local tournaments. He loved to travel, was an innovative cook, amateur winemaker, writer, poet, art collector. He loved music, particularly classical, early jazz, 60's rock and blues. He played a mean boogie-woogie too! He acted in local theater in Ukiah for many years in many roles. He is best remembered as a benevolent Herr Drosselmeyer in Mendocino Ballet's Nutcracker.

In addition to his wife of 47 years, Valerie, and his children Mike (Marty) and Sylvia (Sedge Thomson), Nick leaves behind six grandchildren, Nick, Gracie, Jack, Peter, Sam, and Romilly, step-grandson Henry, brothers Victor and Peter Engel and their families, as well as many, many friends and his little Border Collie Skye. He loved you all.

Many thanks to our local Hospice, MCDH and the paramedics who always arrived promptly and treated Nick with respect and humor, Dr. Rochat, Dr. Harris, and Nick's many caregivers. We all managed to keep him home throughout his illness. Nick was a man with great presence, wit, and humor. He will forever be missed! Please open a bottle of good wine to toast Nick, then make a donation to your favorite charity in his name. He would like that. There will be a memorial celebration sometime in the future.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Powerball! Three quarters of a billion! Darn right I bought a ticket. Watch me build the biggest dog igloo in the history of dog igloos!”

WHERE WILL THE ORVs GO?

Editor,

I recently learned that Cow Mountain is closed until spring for restoring burned areas and bathrooms. CC camp is also closed. While I can understand the need for some restoration, I don’t understand why they need 6 months to do this? One of the highlights of the Ukiah area is the Cow Mountain recreation area and now motorcyle, ATV, and four-wheel vehicles have nowhere to go. For thousands of people, who have spent lots of money on off road vehicles, it leaves us with no local options and it opens the door for trespassing and damage of private lands. Please reconsider reopening Cow Mountain and CC Camp sooner than later.

Mike Zeman

Redwood Valley

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 26, 2018

FEDIL BARRALES, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license.

VICTORIA BLACK, Redwood Valley. DUI.

TINA CARRILLO, Hopland. Probation revocation.

GERARD CARTER, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JENNIFER CRAM, Ukiah. Criminal threats, probation revocation.

BOBBY GRAY, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

CLINT HARBOUR, Willits. Driving without license, probation revocation.

JARED LAMARR, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

DARRELL OWENS, Redwood Valley. Controlled substance, community supervision violation, false ID.

KENNETH PARTRIDGE, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

REBECCA RULKA, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JACOB SILVERMAN, San Bruno/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

DAVID WOOTEN, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

ARE THE DEMS SELF-PUNKING?

by James Kunstler

Applying Occam’s Razor (aka the law of logical parsimony) to the latest rash of attempted pipe-bombings against mostly Democratic Party associated targets, one would have to conclude that the most likely suspect is… Debbie Wasserman-Schultz! Isn’t that her return address on the packages? You say, Oh, but her name was misspelled. And your point is? The FBI has already determined that the packages were posted down in Florida, where DWS’s congressional district happens to be located! You say, Oh, but none of the bombs went off. And your point there? There is no evidence (so far) that DWS ever attended a science fair back in her high school days (drunk, stoned or otherwise), or submitted a project to one, let alone one involving pipe bombs.

But why would DWS mount such a vicious operation against her own political homeys? Well, remember who helped Hillary shove Bernie off-the-plank into the deep blue sea two years ago, when she was chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Apparently this woman can be induced to do just about anything. Just look at her latest Tweet (as of Friday morning): “Today, my staff and I will hug each other and our loved ones tightly, and tomorrow we will get back to work serving the people I was elected to represent.” How much “hugging” routinely goes on in that so-called “office” of hers, with its tiki-themed décor, wet bar, and murals depicting DWS in full body armor mounted on an alligator, hurling lightning bolts at a mob of white male cis-gendered zombies lurching through the swordgrass! Does it stop at hugging? Did the hugees agree to all this hugging? Or was it the sheer power-huggery of an alpha female using her position to control those around her? I confess, there’s a lot to unpack here.

Motive? Hey, there’s a midterm election on. (Have you noticed?) Someone is awfully anxious to make up for the blunders that jammed the Golden Golem of Greatness (the grossest white man ever seen on Planet Earth) into the White House. Desperation is too mild a word to describe the Democratic Party’s current collective state-of-mind. It resembles a condition called Latah Syndrome, described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) under the “Dissociative Disorder: Not Otherwise Specified” section as “a culture–bound syndrome inducing a hypersensitivity to sudden fright, often with echopraxia, echolalia, command obedience, and dissociative or trancelike behavior.” Sounds like the Dems to me. All those micro-aggressions add up!

What to do about it then? How about starting with a perp-walk? Pry DWS’s cold, clammy hands off her laptop (the one that replaced the Macbook from 2016 that somehow got trashed during the Hillary server inquiry) and frog-march the gal into the FBI’s HQ at 2030 SW 145th Ave, in the Miramar suburb of Miami. She’ll be positively ululating to the feds about how Hillary put her up to this pipe-bomb caper, and even furnished the plans for constructing the devices, (and promised her a complimentary hour in the Chappaqua broom closet with hubbie WJC).

I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of this in just a few days, certainly before the polls open on November 6. (MSNBC’s Chuck Todd speculated on-the-air that the Russians did it, which is impossible, of course, because Russian bombs actually blow up.) The dastardly plot may well backfire against those mighty surfers of the Blue Wave, though, leaving them prostrate and gasping in a toxic Red Tide. I kind of hope so. The prospect of a Democrat-run three-ring-circus of House committee inquisitions preoccupying the nation’s limited attention for years-to-come has already got me gagging on my Earl Gray tea. Maxine Waters! Adam Schiff! Nancy Pelosi! All joining hands in an epic Chinese Fire Drill as the American political system gurgles down the great cloaca of history’s failed projects.

Next up: the colorful caravan of asylum seekers from Central America marches through Mexico for its showdown at the US border. US troops are on their way. Who engineered that potential fiasco? Can’t we find out? You really have to wonder if the gang behind this prank is the same one behind the pipe bomb stunt. If so, I know who I’m going to nominate for this year’s Darwin Award.

Postscript: A whack-job Floridian MAGA fanboy, one Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, arrested Friday morning in the case. He was assisted in his bomb-making venture by one Wile E. Coyote, of Hauchuca City, AZ. Mr. Coyote has not yet been apprehended.

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

ELDERHOME INVITE

CONGRESSMAN JAMIE RASKIN — “VOTE FOR A RAISE, EXPOSE THE GOP, WIN THE ELECTIONS”

by Ralph Nader

Decades ago, prominent political analyst Kevin Phillips said that the Republicans go for the jugular while the Democrats go for the capillaries. Today’s national Democratic Party makes Phillips observation seem overly generous.

With the polls tightening for November’s Congressional elections and Trump’s weak approval rating inching up to 47%, there is a sense of déjà vu. Why should we be surprised? Look at the sorry list of national Democratic derelictions: they utterly failed to landslide the Republicans in the 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 elections for Congressional supremacy. Worse, the Republicans landslided the Democrats taking most state legislatures, governors and all three branches of the Federal government.

The current Republican Party is the worst in history. It is filled with cruel, vicious, corrupt Wall Street toadies, war-mongering wasters, and promoters of immunity and tax escapes for big corporations and the super-wealthy. In return for big campaign donations. The Republicans are very willing to imperil the health, safety, and economic well-being of consumers, workers, and patients.

Let’s start with the frozen federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour. Some 30 million workers are making beyond that wage but still less than workers made in 1968, adjusted for inflation. Many of them say they are not voting because they feel disempowered. Well, why don’t the Democrats launch a national campaign urging workers to vote and get a long-overdue raise denied to them by corporate political power? Together with the AFL-CIO, the Democrats can bring this simple demand for justice, beyond formal resolutions, front and centerbefore November 7.

For months I have urged Congressional Democrats to publicize a list of the most dangerous and cruel votes of the Congressional Republicans. The Democrats, for some unknown reason, have declined to do so. The Democratic National Committee, with their many occupied cubicles calling for donations, has not responded to my repeated year-long inquiries.

Support for raising the federal minimum wage is overwhelming with both liberal and conservative support among the voters. The Republicans are firmly set against any such raise; many of them want to get rid of the minimum wage law altogether. Why aren’t the national Democrats going beyond lip service and making this a really big election year issue?

Indeed, most people still ask “What does the Democratic Party stand for, other than Obamacare?” Some candidates running for Congress – mostly the insurgent Democrats who won their primaries – are talking up some of the many overdue justice reforms. However, only the Democratic leaders, and their allies, in Washington, D.C., with their hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign cash can make these causes nationally driven reforms.

Finally, one Congressman stepped up. No longer willing to wait, Cong. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a constitutional law professor, put out a list of “20 Outrageous Things the GOP House Majority Did in My First Term.” (See the list at jamieraskin.com). By highlighting and declaring why the House GOP is so crazily anti-people, the Democrats can define what they stand for.

Raskin’s list starts with the obvious. The House Republicans voted to get rid of health insurance coverage for 30 million Americans and subjected many more to the insurance companies’ deadly fine print (eg. deductibles, exclusions, waivers, pre-existing conditions etc.).

The House GOP voted to weaken law and order efforts against Wall Street’s crimes and recklessness, putting trillions of dollars in worker pensions and mutual funds at risk. Prominent specialists are now warning of another financial collapse from the greed of the speculators.

On Raskin’s list are those massive tax escapes given to the richest 1% and corporations, adding more than $1 trillion to the national deficit and leading Republicans, such as Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to demand cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The Democrats attacked the Trump tax legislation – pushed cowardly through without public hearings, but they have not offered their own tax reform plan that would make the big boys pay their fair share. Those monies could be used to repair and upgrade our infrastructure and create good jobs that are not exportable. Where is the alternative Democratic tax plan?

The Republican Party’s votes against women rights and children’s well-being have become part of the GOP’s ruthless DNA – denying food, health care, housing, and energy assistance. Why aren’t the Democrats labeling the Republicans as the cruel and vicious big corporate toadies that they are? The message would be especially powerful in candidate debates.

Other House Republican votes on the list undermine workers’ rights to overtime pay for overtime work without loopholes, and all Americans right to their day in court with a trial by jury for their wrongful injuries and property damage.

For the GOP and their corporate paymasters, America is all about corporations uber alles. That’s why they push through Congress the nominations of big corporate judges such as Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. The GOP cannot resist favoring more corporate pollution, especially for the mining industry, and giving the banks license to escape reporting requirements about their predatory and discriminatory lending practices.

Raskin’s 20^th outrageous vote is a composite of what the House Republicans refused to do: “The GOP did nothing to address the nation’s infrastructure needs, pass the Dream Act, reduce gun violence, address climate change… increase the minimum wage, address the soaring price of prescription drugs, lower the cost of health care, strengthen voting rights and curb the power of foreign and corporate wealth in our elections, or challenge the outrageous corruption of this administration. “

Instead the Republicans are busy doing various things to suppress the vote in state after state. Where are the National Democrats to stop the rapacity and statism of the corporatist Republicans whom authentic conservatives also find repulsive?

Democrats have less than two weeks to show what the Republican Party is doing against the people and, by that message, show the people what the Democratic Party is determined to do for the people.

The Democratic Party has been told all the above for years. It is late but not too late to save the purported “blue wave” from becoming a blue trickle this November. Losing in 2018 will further open the gates to the Trumpsters’ greedy wrecking crew driving America into an authoritarian pit, if not worse.

Don’t think it can’t happen here again, visit jamieraskin.com for starters.

(Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!)

HIT & RUN THEATER IMPROV WORKSHOP SHOW — November 1 at Community Center

Dear Mendonesians!

On Thursday, November 1 at the Community Center of Mendocino (998 School St.) at 7pm Hit & Run Theater presents its “Workshop Show”! featuring Hit & Run improv workshop students, with support from Hit & Run players. Come see Janet Atherton, Pamela Allen, Kate Moffett Polacci, Steve Jahelka, Mark Marco, and Lorry LePaule, along with Hit & Run regulars Jill Jahelka, Ken Krauss, Kathy O’Grady, Christine Samas, Dan Sullivan, Steve Weingarten, and me (Doug Nunn) for a lovely little one hour show. The doors open at 6:45 and our Workshop Show starts at 7pm. We are asking for a $5 donation — tix available at the door — and promise some good laughs leading up to our regular shows on Friday & Saturday, November 16 & 17.  Come support future improvisers on November 1 at the Community Center!

Doug Nunn and Hit & Run Theater

<dnunn@mcn.org>

FAKE NEWS IS OLD NEWS, JUST QUICKER

by Dalton Delan

Westport, Conn. — When the "alternative facts" out of Washington get wearying, I imagine myself back in one of Walt Disney's animated masterpieces, his 1940 version of Carlo Collodi's 1883 tale of Pinocchio, whose nose grew longer every time he told a lie. Our factually challenged era puts me in mind of a song from the musical "All That Jazz," Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager's "Everything Old Is New Again." We think "fake news" is new, but it's a disturbingly durable franchise.

Certainly it is a plague of our digital decade. According to a study this year out of MIT, "false stories spread significantly more than did true ones." Surmises one of the study's authors, "Perhaps the novelty of false stories attracts human attention and encourages sharing, conveying status on sharers who seem more ‘in the know’." This seems quite intuitive, and reminds me of Norman Rockwell's wonderful Saturday Evening Post cover from March 6, 1948, "The Gossips," in which a succession of pairs of his Arlington, Vt. neighbors turn from one to another to pass along good gossip until it reaches in the end the very person who started the chain, doubtless in now unrecognizable form.

In a Twitterverse, the outsize reverberation of half-truth or worse has resulted in what Abby Ohlheiser in The Washington Post describes as "a free-for-all, where everyone's trying to talk at once. Because of that, there's a tendency to mistake the informational avalanche as representative." Indeed, although a Pew Research Center poll this year revealed less than one-quarter of Americans tweeting, the news media reports on Twitter as if it defines us all. Oh, for the days of the silent majority!

The unstable gravity of today's factoid universe is epitomized by grandiosity and carelessness, as Evan Osnos, writing in The New Yorker, describes all that Mark Zuckerberg has wrought with Facebook, Zuckerberg's Frankenstein: "Between speech and truth, he chose speech. Between speed and perfection, he chose speed. Between scale and safety, he chose scale." Once upon a time, it was called propaganda.

George Orwell opined in 1943, in his essay "Looking Back On the Spanish War," that "History stopped in 1936 — the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world." It was a terrible time in which Hitler could deploy Josef Goebbels to such a degree of inciteful untruth that Goebbels was referred to as "Mahatma Propagandhi," and Leni Riefenstahl could propagate her brand of celluloid lies in "Triumph of the Will." To the east, Stalinist Russia took its run for the gold as most Orwellian.

Traveling in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge show trials, French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Celine — no angel himself given the persistence of anti-Semitism throughout his works — told off his Russian hosts with customarily frank vulgarity: "You have the nerve to dress up a turd and call it a caramel."

Others fell for the saccharine blandishments of Stalin, most appallingly Pulitzer Prize-winning Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty of The New York Times. At the time of the Ukrainian famine, when peasants were chewing on tree bark, grass and worms, and even resorting to cannibalism, Duranty was suborned by Stalin into reporting this masterwork of doublespeak: "There is no actual starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." Paging the Saudis.

In our post-truth age, it is easy to forget the fabulous history of governmental and media manipulation of the truth as we swoon in the neologism of "fake news." We would like to proclaim these truths to be self-evident that it all began this morning. While any history of the 20th century shows this not to be the case, there is little doubt that digital social media have gone the masters of old one better. A Buzzfeed analysis of the top 20 "fake news" stories during the 2016 election reveals that these viral untruths got more engagement on Facebook than the top 20 stories from 19 major media outlets. In other words, in Celine fashion, excremental lies floated to the electoral surface.

In the face of such a maelstrom of mendacity, in which Rudy Giuliani became a meme by stunning Chuck Todd with "Truth isn't truth," the former mayor wasn't as absurd as he appeared, since he echoed the Rashomonic trope that there is no one version of events universally accepted. After all, the Bible tells us that humans were cut from whole cloth some few thousand years ago, while Charles Darwin offered an evolutionary explanation. Paul Simon, who just finished his farewell tour last month, has a wonderful way of summing it up, "One man's ceiling is another man's floor."

In the war between perspective and proof, let's give the last word to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who defined the slippery slope: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."

(Dalton Delan has won Emmy, Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards for his work as a television producer. The Berkshire Eagle)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

It’s even worse in Death Spiral states like NY.

We have far more people living off taxes than tax payers. Not only welfare recipients, but state, and local government workers. 40% of New Yorkers support the other 60%. State government is huge, and the wages and benefits are killing us.

Most people I know work for government in upstate NY. I argue with my brother in-law who thinks he pays a lot for insurance as a state employee.

He pays $100 per month, I pay $1500.

When I tell him that state employees pay no taxes, he gets irate. If the NYS Retirement fund takes a hit from a down market, they will raise taxes to ensure he doesn’t suffer a loss. If the market tanks my retirement, I am screwed. The fact is, if you work for government, 100% of your income comes from people who don’t work for government.

As I tell him, he doesn’t pay taxes, he is taxes. As more non-government employees continue to leave the state, it puts a huge burden on those remaining.

I live in a coastal town where the City Commissioner makes nearly half a million a year.

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio tonight live from Fort Bragg on KNYO-LP and KMEC-LP Ukiah.

Tonight, Friday, 26th of October, 9pm to 5am, there's Memo of the Air, live from the KNYO performance space at 325 N. Franklin, next door to the Tip Top bar. Appear, entre vous, zombie-shuffle to the clean, well-lighted space at the back, and you can show-and-tell and/or perform your [ahem] act, or talk about your project, or loudly on-mic eat any brains you've thought to bring with you, or read your own work, or whatever.

If you'd rather stay home touching up your costume and participate anyway, the deadline to email your writing to be read on the air tonight is 6pm or so. Also the number in the Fort Bragg studio is 707 962-3022, so you can read your own work with your own voice right there on the phone in real time. If there will be swears, please wait until 10pm for that, because otherwise it agitates the weasels, as you well know.

Speaking of which, I'm likely to play the recording of Mervin Gilbert's WAR OF THE WORLDS at the start of the show, so listen for a bit, and if that's what going on then maybe wait till after 10 to come in or call anyway. In case adhering to a general theme matters to you, tonight's show's theme is definitely ZOMBIES! Zombie woof, do the zombie, so on and so forth.

I have it on good authority that former senatorial candidate Mitch Clogg will be calling even later than that to apply his rich baritone vocal fry to some zombie-related explicitly erotic material. Zombie erotica! Though, technically, the correct spelling is zombi.

Okay, that's it. And tell your friends about Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio: Every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg, and 105.1fm KMEC-LP Ukiah. Also there and anywhere else via http://knyo.org

Some bonus tracks, for while you wait: Sword swallowers and shrunken heads.

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/johnny-fox-and-his-freakatorium/

Bride of Resistor.

https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2018/10/bride-of-resistor.html

And Donald Trump in Gaslight.

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/24/donald-trump-in-gaslight.html/

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org,

https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

COMMUNITY CARE AGING SERVICES INVITE YOUR CALL

If any of the following sounds like a thought or question you have had recently, maybe a call to Community Care is in order. "I'm 64 and have Medi-Cal, but I hear that there are insurance changes I need to plan for when I turn 65." Or, "What services can I tap into to help my parent remain independent at home?" Or, "I'm no longer young myself and am feeling alone in my care for my spouse with memory loss." These are daily conversations at Community Care's Senior Information & Assistance Program, which fields calls and emails from Lake and Mendocino Counties' older adults, their family members, neighbors, and service providers. The program responds to inquirer questions by suggesting referrals based on the individual's specific situation.

One of the programs that the older adult might be eligible for is Community Care's Multipurpose Senior Services Program (MSSP). A caller to Senior Information & Assistance would learn about the eligibility for this program (65 or older, Medi-Cal eligible with no share-of-cost, and living in the geographic service area) and then would be referred to the program for possible enrollment. MSSP provides care management services to individuals who prefer to remain at home but who are living with frailty or chronic illness that puts them at risk for having to move to a long-term care residence. Corinne Jones recently joined Community Care as MSSP's Program Manager to oversee the work of its busy social worker and nurse teams currently helping more than 200 residents of Lake and Mendocino Counties to remain at home. Ms. Jones holds a Masters in Gerontology from USC and a work history including years at AT&T and volunteer advocacy in programs including HICAP, and adult service "Villages". She interned at the Washington D. C. Office on Aging where she worked to implement the waiver program similar to MSSP. While a research assistant at USC, she did extensive research on the aging-in-place concept as well as issues in older adult homelessness. She looks forward to expanding MSSP and states they are accepting new referrals to program.

Whether it is a Community Care program or one of the many other services provided by community partners and agencies, helping individuals 60-plus better understand and connect to available resources, and then following-up with them to see if the connections were made, are the heart of the Senior Information & Assistance Program's work and success. Funded through the Area Agency on Aging of Lake & Mendocino Counties, the program is available Monday through Friday by calling (707) 468-5132 or (800) 510-2020. Visit www.CommunityCare707.com to learn more.

I TOLD YOU

Editor,

I heard about the bombs. I was surprised that it happened. I told you people it would happen. Keep up the anti-Americanism and sooner or later it will bite you in the ass. The things I read about me and president Trump make me sick. You are just a bunch of jealous anti-American bastards. Antifa sucks. And so do the people who love them. The people who think they are right are rotten, and that is my answer to all you liberals, especially Rob Mahon of Covelo and Ashley Jones of Alameda -- get a grip you people. You are making 100% of the conservatives in this country sick. If you liberals keep disrespecting our president, the Constitution, the flag, open borders, sanctuary cities, no respect for law enforcement, trying to ruin the Constitution, no respect for the military and a lot of other rotten things you people do, there is going to be more trouble. The American people are fed up with your anti-American ways. And you, Rob Mahon are the worst one yet. And you Betsy Cawn, you need to clean your mouth out. Judge Kavanaugh is one of the finest men in the country and all the rest of the stuff you said is pure, unadulterated bullshit. If all you people really think and believe what you say then you are a bunch of sorry bastards. Antifa are a bunch of sick anti-American cowards, but they might be heroes do you Rob Mahon.

Elect John Pinches.

Congratulations to South Dakota for killing a rotten criminal that killed one of our guys. I'm proud of them for doing it. It's not like California and the other states that actually treat people who kill people like heroes and put them in jail for maybe life where they live or high on the hog and better than most citizens do. And we pay for it. We pay for everything. We pay for our local level in California and we pay for it in our other taxes that go to the government. It's sorry. It's sad. People who kill officers of the law and other people should be killed in a month. Please, people out there, vote for John Cox. We don't need Gavin Newsom as a governor. We need John Cox. People are fed up with liberal governors like Jerry Brown by now.

God bless Donald Trump and the conservative people

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

WE ARE BECOMING a society fueled by self-righteousness. We are becoming a society addicted to anger for its own sake. I see it in my mail; I see it on my television.

— Jon Carroll