AS PREVIOUSLY REPORTED, The County Of Mendocino (and Auditor Controller Meredith Ford acting in her official capacity), is being sued by the cities of Ukiah, Fort Bragg and Willits. All counties in California charge a Property Tax Administration Fee (PTAF) for collecting the property tax owed to cities and special districts. In 2004, the State Legislature, as part of it annual budget flim flam, adopted two programs called “the Triple Flip” and the “VLF Swap” which had the unintended consequence of putting cities and counties at odds with each other.
THE TRIPLE FLIP, in a series of moves that would make a riverboat gambler blush, diverted local sales tax dollars to pay bonds that were issued to pay off the state’s structural deficit; re-directed school property tax revenue from the Education Revenue Augmentation Fund (ERAF) back to cities and counties to make up for the loss of local sales tax; and made up for the loss to schools of ERAF funds by backfilling from the state General Fund. The VLF Swap reduced Vehicle License Fee (VLF) revenue to cities and counties and once again the state redirected property tax revenue from ERAF back to the cities and counties.
THE NET RESULT was that the cities (and counties) were receiving considerably more revenue from property tax than previously, although much of the increase was in lieu of local sales tax and VLF. The state also said the counties could not charge additional PTAF for the first two years of implementing the new programs. Starting in 2006-07 most counties began charging additional PTAF based on guidelines issued by the State Auditor’s Association. Because the funds diverted from ERAF were from property tax, the guidelines treated them like property tax and charged PTAF accordingly. A group of cities sued L.A. County alleging they were being overcharged. Cities and counties around the state agreed to hold off on additional legislation until the L.A. case was resolved. The trial court sided with the county, but the appellate court ruled that the counties had been miscalculating the PTAF. In November the State Supreme Court agreed that the cities had been overcharged.
CITIES & COUNTIES around the state are negotiating agreements to refund the amounts overcharged, but despite its reputation for love and peace, things are seldom so simple here in Mendoland. In addition to the law suit, the city councils of Fort Bragg and Ukiah have also written public letters to the County Board of Supervisors complaining that for years they have had to fight off state attempts to take “their” money and now the County is doing the same thing. So nine years ago the State Legislature engaged in its usual budgetary sleight of hand and now the cities and counties are left squabbling over the crumbs. The cities say in their lawsuit that they had to sue because the county was not coming to terms, but reliable sources say that discussions were already underway. In fact, the AVA has learned that the City of Willits has already reached a compromise settlement with the county. The item was considered in closed session by the County at a special meeting on Monday but no action was reported out of closed session.
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DANIEL HAMBURG v. MENDOCINO COUNTY was also a subject of the special meeting closed session, but again, no action was reported to have been taken. Hamburg is sueing the County for alleged violations of his “fundamental rights of Liberty, Property, Safety, Happiness and Privacy, Due Process of Law; Equal Protection of Law; and Civil Rights.” Hamburg is seeking an order from the Court directing Mendocino County to issue a burial certificate and death certificate for his disceased wife, Carrie, and is also seeking in excess of $10,000 in legal fees as of June 10, the date of the filing. Most people agree that state law needs to be updated to free our dead from the greed based strictures imposed by the death industry, but it is unseemly for a sitting supervisor, and chair of the board, no less, to be suing the county he represents. Oddly enough, Hamburg’s own lawsuit cites two examples (Jay Baker in Gualala and the Tebbuts family in Anderson Valley) where petitions were filed with the local Superior Court requesting the right to private burial. Both petitions were granted the same day they were filed. Speculation is that Hamburg is getting bad legal advice since the case would be over if he had simply filed a petition with the court instead of suing the County. And if the local judges, notoriously shy of getting embroiled in local controversy, pass the buck, Hamburg can rely on his old pal, visiting Judge Kossow, to sign off on the petition
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I KNOW ETHNIC identifications can be sensitive, but either this guy is an extremely disoriented Mexican or he’s an extremely disoriented Arab. But Mr. Ghafarisaravi says he’s Hispanic, and he oughtta know.
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“SHORTLY before noon Monday, a trench on the Holmes Ranch near Philo caved in, injuring a man. No details yet.” That was all we had yesterday. Further investigation reveals the site as the Duckhorn vineyard pond under construction in the hills due east of Floodgate near Navarro. A workman was standing on the lip of a trench when it gave way, burying him. A man working nearby saw what had happened and quickly managed to pull away enough earth for the buried man to breathe as equipment operators also on site began extracting the victim, a process later described by one witness as “a textbook trench rescue.” The rescued worker, still not identified, and may be from the out-of-area construction firm doing the work, never lost consciousness. Although he seems to have suffered an injury to his leg, the man is expected to fully recover, if one ever fully recovers from being buried alive.
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PETE’S SOLAR (aka Advance Power Inc. of Calpella) has made Boonville an offer Boonville (and Mendocino County) would be nuts to refuse. He has offered to install, free, a solarized power system at the County Fairgrounds. Needless to say, solarized power would save our financially precarious Mendocino County Fair a very large amount on its monthly power bill. We’ve passed this enormously generous offer on to Fair Manager Jim Brown and to Morgan Baynham of the Fair Board. Also known as Advance Power, Pete’s is based on deep North State Street, Ukiah, Mendocino County’s oldest and, in our opinion, most reliable solar power company.
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ANDERSON VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL, a look back. As a victim of American public schools my knowledge of the world is hazy at best. In algebra class I learned the sacred geometries of chalking the baseball foul lines and putting hash marks on the football field. In physics and chemistry some arcane bit of knowledge was surely gleaned from the astute Steve McKay, if only by genial osmosis. At some critical moment in life, like trying to pay for gas by the liter in a Swedish town taken over by ruffians and Burning Man casualties, perhaps Steve’s good natured patience will manifest, and I will be slightly and not completely confused. A fond memory from Steve’s class was the day when a hand-written love letter from a popular 9th grade girl to her female teacher/mentor/choreographer/lover was discovered on the floor. Surrendering to our desperate pleas for transparency and pre-Homeland Security eavesdropping, Steve read the first page like the narrator from Masterpiece Theater. The missive was the standard adolescent “I can’t live without you. Your lips are like plums that should stay in the icebox to chill. When you stand in front of the chalkboard sometimes I dream that I am the eraser, and also that I am a magic kind of chalk that lasts forever plus some more, a pink chunk of literary combustion that leaves poetic symbols that scream without raising its voice: I am a Panther, but my claws are tender hooks of scratch-worship designed to make you purr. And also for ripping the young throats of any losers who disapprove of God’s merciful rope as it binds my wrists and ankles to the pommel horse hidden behind the stage curtains in the gym. The ball gag is a caring touch. To feel your tenured mouth on my triple flip dismount is to know the techniques of the great East German gymnasts, in the days before gender testing and when the more respected coaches had handle-bar mustaches and synthetic trousers that made a hopeless romantic dream of the day when the curtain separating our Cold War love would turn from cold iron to tight but soft lycra.” Steve blushed and put the letter away, though not without a chorus of boos and blushing croaks from titillated scholars. Another unforgettable moment in science class was the afternoon when two lunatics in full camo and armed with crossbows walked into the classroom. It was like Robin Hood meets Mall Cops. They had a neighborly question for Steve: could they use the high school lab to build explosives? Specifically, they needed dynamite to blow up stumps from a field they were clearing, though the true motive was likely something like taking out the Little River Inn or derailing the Skunk Train (which jumped the tracks years ago). Consulting his teachers’ union manual, Steve replied honestly: school property was for clandestine love affairs and making bongs, not weapons of mass destruction. The two archers were named Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, who would become two of California’s most loathsome (yet industrious) serial killers. Lake’s girlfriend at the time went by the name of Cricket, and managed the Philo Pottery Inn and was also a teacher’s aide. I don’t know if such visits are standard for other schools, but A.V. High in those days was anything but typical. In fact, you could call it an MK-ULTRA mind experiment designed to test the effects of rampant adult selfishness, serial killers, cherry lip gloss, Miller Lite, and the music of Hall and Oates on theoretically impressionable minds.
BESIDES Lake and Ng’s request for an independent study demolitions course, an even bigger mass murder named Jim Jones taught 4th grade in Boonville several years before my sentence began. But more lively were a couple of fun-loving Australian moonies, bleach-blond brothers who kept their socks full of grape bubble gum. The moonies were tough little bastards, as opposed to the Macintosh twins, who were tough giant bastards. The Aussies were about five feet tall and 105 pounds. Clayton and Richard Macintosh were about 6’4”, 250 as freshmen (and much larger now). One recess I watched in awe as the moonies ambushed one of the Macintoshes: one leaped onto the victim’s back and put the robust American into a platypus chokehold, while his brother fired out at the backs of Macintosh’s knees. Even with the element of surprise, Macintosh didn’t go down, managing to list and sway like a tall redwood feeling the first bite of a Pardini chainsaw. The Aussies threw everything they had, but it wasn’t enough, and nonchalantly took their beating. Gradually a teacher put down her burrito and coffee and restored order. Apparently it was a dispute over bubble gum. The Aussies felt unfairly taxed by Macintosh’s daily demands for a free piece. Or maybe they just did what Aussies do and sent the message: Down Under, matey. Get bloody used to it. (Next week: Bud Sloan, and why UK roundabouts are the devil’s spawn.) (—Z)
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MARK BAKER ASKS AMERICANS FOR HELP
Michigan levies $700,000 in fines against a small farmer and veteran for raising healthy hogs
After serving his country for 20 years in the military and ten years as a farmer, Mark Baker is “at the end of his rope” and is asking Americans for help.
Baker’s Green Acres is an idyllic, bio-diverse, sustainable farm in Marion, Michigan. Baker, his wife and his six children raise pastured poultry, grass-fed beef, goats and dairy, and a heritage breed of hogs called Mangalitsa.
In December of 2011, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources informed Baker that his hogs were an “invasive species of wild boar” that needed to be exterminated in order to protect wildlife and other farms.
The agency said he had until April of 2012 to destroy all of his pigs or else it would destroy them for him. Baker refused and filed a lawsuit asking for relief.
He was hoping to get his case heard that spring, but the state attorney general – who is acting as a prosecutor on DNR’s behalf – has been successful in stalling the trial until late this summer.
Fortunately the agency did not follow through on its promise to shoot Baker’s pigs. Unfortunately, it decided to levy $700,000 in fines against him last week for “harboring” them on his property.
That’s $10,000 per hog or per “violation” of the state’s Invasive Species Order.
As of Food Riot Radio’s interview with him last week, Baker had 67 hogs. The state was unaware when it issued the fine that he recently “put down” four hogs because he couldn’t afford to feed them.
Starving them out
When the state tried to get Baker’s trial pushed back to 2014, Baker wrote a letter to the judge saying he’d be out of business and homeless by then. His current trial date of August 27 has been a stretch for him.
He’s been feeding the hogs, without being allowed to sell their meat, for a year and a half now, which he says is extremely difficult because “these pigs eat a lot everyday.”
Normally at this time of year he’d be breeding the pigs in order to have more to sell, but he can’t now, because it would just make “more mouths to feed.”
Add $140,000 spent in legal fees so far to his lack of pork sales, and Baker says his family is on a very tight ship right now.
“My boys are butchering pigs today so we can get them in the freezer, and so they’re not out on the field, where they’ve got to have food,” Baker said. “The nature of pigs is if they see green grass on the other side of fence and they have nothing to eat on their side of the fence, they’re going to figure out a way to get through. We can’t allow a bunch of pigs to get out and get in our garden because that’s our food.”
Baker’s resorted to “scrounging” scrap food for them at local restaurants, but says they’re not getting what they need nutritionally.
“I’m not being fair to the animals…” he paused, voice cracking, “… but I didn’t think it would take this long.”
Had Baker known he’d have to wait a year and a half for a court hearing, he might’ve just killed the hogs in the beginning.
“But what I’m up against now is, if I kill all these pigs, number one, I’m doing what they wanted me to do, and number two, I’d lose my standing in court because I don’t have the animals.”’
Why the state’s stalling
Baker believes the reason the state has tried so hard to stall his hearing is because it doesn’t have a good defense for what it’s doing to him.
Baker argues that DNR wrote an intentionally ambiguous description of “feral” pigs in its Invasive Species Order, so it could use the law against any hog farmer it wanted to shut down.
“They’re saying any pig with a curly tail or a straight tail is an illegal pig … any pig with floppy ears or erect ears is an illegal pig,” he said. “I think they’re going to have a rough time with that testimony in court. That’s why they don’t want the case to move forward. They want to starve us out.”
“Basically they’re saying any type of pig outside of these confinement-style operations is illegal to have,” added Radio Host Brad “the Butcher” Jordan. “If you have a pig outside, you can’t have it.”
“Exactly,” Baker said.
Baker seeks to prove in court that it is “Big Ag” – especially the Michigan Pork Producers Association – that initiated the law classifying all non-CAFO pigs as a “feral” invasive species.
He believes big agribusiness sees the growing popularity of heritage-breed meat and poultry as a threat to their factory-farming model, and will stop at no end to eliminate the competition.
“If they can issue a declaratory ruling that says anything with a straight tail or curly tail is an illegal pig, and neither the governor, the legislature or the courts say ‘hey wait a minute,’ then what’s to stop them from issuing a declaratory ruling that says any cow that is brown is feral and must be disposed of, or any chicken that is not raised in a hen house is a feral chicken?”
“Industrial agriculture wants all the market share,” he added. “They want all the small farmers off the land, and they want to own the entire food production model.”
Baker asks for “ammunition”
“They’re putting me out on the street and they’re not blinking an eye about it,” Baker said. “I need American people to get fired up about this. And I need wealthy Americans to come alongside us and join our legal team, so we can start going after them [DNR officials] individually and putting them out on the street.”
Baker said there is much more at stake than his farm. “Our little pig thing is a microcosm of what’s going on nationally.” If we let Big Ag win, he said, it will be a grim future for our children and grandchildren. “We’re all in this together.”
“There are plenty of us [farmers] that are fighters, perpetual warriors, but we don’t have ammunition to put this fight on. So we’re looking to other Americans and saying please give us some ammunition, and that’s money, U.S. dollars. You can pray for me and pat me on the back and that’s great, but if I can’t pay lawyers to do their job, it doesn’t happen. And I’m at the end of my rope right now, and I need help. There it is – I need help.”
Please check out the Baker’s Green Acres website, watch the video of him and his family asking for help, donate to the cause, and don’t forget to “like” Food Riot Radio on Facebook.
(Brad Jordan hosts a podcast called Food Riot Radio where this article first appeared. He and his co-host Sara Burrows work to expose how a collusion between government, big agriculture, big pharma and big food has determined what ends up on our plates and offer ideas for how to fight back.)
(Courtesy, Activistpost.com)
Workers picket outside the ballpark.
Giants fans applaud when they see the workers sitting in.
Police warn the workers they’ll be arrested.
And then they arrest them.
UNITE HERE Local 2 President Mike Casey is taken to be booked.
Guards march through downtown San Francisco past the buildings where they work.
Police get ready to arrest demonstrators in the intersection at rush hour.
Guards cheer while their friends get arrested.
At Google guards demand more hours and treatment with respect.
They question why Google doesn’t take seriously its own slogan, “Don’t be evil.”
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Nick Halvorsen, 11; Michael Donahe, 11; Charles Hensley, 9; Stacey Moddrelle, 9
Mainly, Adlai, I am troubled by the cynical immorality of my country. I do not think it can survive on this basis and unless some kind of catastrophe strikes us, we are lost. But by our very attitudes we are drawing catastrophe to ourselves. What we have beaten in nature, we cannot conquer in ourselves.
RECOMMENDED READING: “Spy Rock Memories” by Larry Livermore. The Mendocino County literary oeuvre is pretty thin, although there are lots of good writers in our beloved mother county. This book helps make up the deficit, and is the best thing I’ve read on the general subject of Back To The Land in that fraught decade — 1970-80 when the city had become so violent that thousands of people fled north where they bought logged over land in remote areas up and down the Northcoast and settled in, not knowing what hard work it is to carve out a homestead where there’s no developed water, let alone a power grid. Livermore was not your generic back-to-the-lander. A gifted writer, he describes in vivid detail his struggles to establishment himself in the infamous outlaw stronghold of deep Spy Rock, the wild outback northeast of Laytonville, establish himself on both the land and with his neighbors. While still a newcomer in a place where suspicion came with the primary occupation — marijuana production — Livermore began producing the pioneering zine, The Lookout, which instantly made him persona non grata with both his mountain neighbors — as pot growers they didn’t like the attention — and the residents of Laytonville, who didn’t like Livermore’s descriptions of their town as an unpromising collection of ramshackle buildings strewn haphazardly along 101 with a lot of ramshackle personalities to go with the architecture. Then he became famous, and then he became rich and famous. I knew Livermore was famous when a Boonville kid asked me if I knew Livermore. “Yup, known him for a long time. We’re good friends. He writes for my paper when the spirit moves him.” The kid looked at me with renewed respect. I had to tell him twice before he believed me. By that time Livermore had formed or managed a bunch of famous bands, including Green Day, which made him and them gadzillions. His pioneering zine, The Lookout, was nationally distributed. I have to admit that I still haven’t heard any of the music apart from an a-rhythmic ditty Livermore gave me many years ago called “Fuck You and Die,” to which, try as I might, I’ve never quite been able to dance to. But apart from his fascinating accounts of establishing his home above the snow line on Spy Rock, including some harrowing trips home by snowshoe, I found Livermore’s stories about how his zine grew and the genesis of his life as a music entrepreneur absolutely fascinating.
MS. CAMPBELL, even as she plowed phonetically on through the joke roster, remained oblivious that she and the station had been pranked. They thought they had a scoop and, as it turned out, they did after a fashion.
JUST LAST SATURDAY afternoon, I was walking on California between 7th and 8th when a leashed, medium-size dog, maybe a forty pounder, leaped out from behind his inattentive owner at a passing Hispanic woman. She just kept going, probably thinking to herself, “One more bummer here in Gringolandia,” as the trendo-groove-o dog owner said, “Gee, he’s never done that before.” I’d like to see a law banning big dogs from The City. Period. It’s not fair to the dog to keep him cooped up in an apartment. Your little yappers, while annoying, are at least apartment-manageable. And you shouldn’t be allowed to own a dog at all if you have to hire someone to walk it. (A trendo-groove-o is a young guy with a little pork pie hat, stovepipe jeans, a t-shirt with a corporate logo, a tattoo of a cartoon character. They’re coming in the windows!)
FUKUSHIMA NEVER AGAIN will play Monday July 22nd, 7pm, at The Saturday Afternoon Club, 107 S. Oak St, Ukiah. There will be light refreshmsnts, snow cones and a cooling system provided to beat the heat. A question and answer session will follow. Find out what can be done to break the media blackout. Sponsored by Fukushima Response Mendocino, The Mendocino Environmental Center, Yemaya Seaweed Co. and The Service and Justice Committee of The Ukiah United Methodist Church. Donations accepted. Contact Charlie Vaughan 707-367-2194
In a Monday, May 6, 2013, file photo Robin and Scott Spivey walk past the wreckage of their Tudor-style dream home they had to abandon when the ground gave way causing it to drop 10 feet below the street in Lakeport, Calif. The homeowners of the sinking Northern California subdivision have filed claims against the county, alleging a leaking county water system is to blame. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli)
THE MAGAZINE has issued this entirely reasonable statement: “The fact that
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our
readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the
complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a
tragedy like this happens.”
I MAKE these cynical remarks from first hand experience observing the SF
federal courts in drug cases involving Mendo people and the case of my
friend, Pol Brennan, an Irish nationalist. (And random other high profile
events and personalities over the years.) The judges were… well, let
me put it this way: if these people are all that stand
between US and a straight-up police state, get ready for a police state.
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JUDGE DENISE LIND, who’s presiding over the Bradley Manning leak-trial, did not dismiss the “Aiding the Enemy” charge against Bradley Manning, stating that the Army did present evidence that Manning should have known, based on his training, that the enemy would be able to access the information he released to Wikileaks. She also stated that evidence was presented that Manning did know that the enemy could use the SIGACTS (mapping of incidents in a region) he leaked in the same manner that the Army uses them. Judge Lind read into the record the evidence that she determined met the elements for the charge. If the judge gives weight to that evidence when she enters her final verdict at the conclusion of the case, it does not look good for Manning or Press Freedom in America. The result would be chilling for whistleblowers or anyone that publishes information on the internet that could be used by the “enemy.” Manning has already pleaded guilty to illegal use of information that he had the right to access. The chilling issue here is that with no contact with the enemy, Manning could served life in prison without the possibility for parole. Bradley Manning did not give the information to an enemy of the United States, he gave it to the media. Even if you don’t believe Wikileaks is the media, Judge Lind asked the Army on two occasions the following: If the documents were released to The New York Times and not Wikileaks would you still have brought the same charges? The Army’s response on both occasions was “Yes Ma’am.” So precedent that would be set here with a guilty verdict is that providing information to any media organization can result in a conviction for aiding the enemy. Where is the line? How often have we all crossed it? (— Scott Galindez, co-founder of Truthout, now Political Director of Reader Supported News.)
IT WOULD TAKE an estimated $600 million to get a train running again through the Eel River Canyon to Eureka. That money is unlikely to be forthcoming short of revolution or as a public works project under an FDR-like president; “dreams” of a Eureka-Marin railroad are pure fantasy — cynicism if it’s Democrats doing the dreaming. The Hauser-Stogner-Democrat Axis insists it’s doable. Their jobs depend on saying that.
WHAT seems odd to me about the ongoing rail fantasies, at least those linking any part of Humboldt County with the SF Bay Area, is that nobody except the Democrats putting them out there believe them, and they don’t really believe them, I’d assume, other than as a funding source for a few of them and their friends.
THE SAN JOSE Mercury News reported Saturday that Giants officials are fed up with the seagulls. The gulls are showing up in increasing numbers, especially in the last innings of night games. Hundreds sometimes land on the field during play. They also bomb fans and make clean-up after the thousands of departed human slobs even more difficult. It’s uncanny how they know when a game is winding down, circling the ballpark in such numbers its kind of eerie, like a scene out of the famous Hitchcock movie filmed at Bodega Bay. But there are more and more of them, and they’re showing up earlier and earlier. Maybe the Giants should give away pellet guns along with the bobbleheads.
THE LAST FEARLESS REPORTER
DRAMATIC EARLY LOGGING PHOTOS
A series of photos recently released from the Humboldt State University Library capture early 20th century lumberjacks working among the redwoods in Humboldt County. The photos are part of the Ericson Collection, a series of pictures from northwest California from the 1880s through the 1920s by Swedish photographer A.W. Ericson.
Most of these pictures are from the 1915-era displaying the work of loggers in once densely forested northern California— about 20% of the state’s total forested area. Humboldt County now has nearly 1,500,000 acres in public and private forests, including the Redwood National and State Parks. The enormity of the tree trunks are highlighted by the workmen who are dwarfed by the trees’ sheer size.
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Cockburn, a frequent visitor to Boonville, was the last of the political writers who was also a very good writer, much better than Christopher Hitchens to whom he was often compared and, unlike Hitchens, a true enemy of empire to the end. There aren’t many writers I go out of my way to read. (None, at the moment.) Today, it’s all term-paper prose. Cockburn often complained to me about what bad writers many of his CounterPunch contributers were, and how much time he had to spend doing basic editing of their stuff. Cockburn was always a writer I’d read the instant I got it, a writer I always looked forward to. His prose was alive. He was alive, what used to be called an “all-outer.” He was robbed of another decade or so, but in the seven he lived he probably packed in more than ten people. Cockburn combined information with a lively and even elegant prose. And not just on politics; he was lively and interesting on a whole range of subjects. What you won’t read in all the reviews of this book is how Cockburn, the last ten years or so of his life, was non-personed by much of the left, especially the lock-step sectors at places like KPFA. The Nation cut him back as it went all the way over to a spine-free Clinton-Obama-ism. And so on, as left media disappeared faster than the left itself. He was often scathing about the personalities of the talk show left, the people who’ve become rich “speaking truth to power,” in the fatuous phrase of the self-aggrandizing. Cockburn was the real thing, a lion of opposition all his days. The would-be little Lenins hated him, and he mopped the floor with mainstream media figures on those occasions he was permitted to go head-to-head with one of them. He was intransigent, never gave one inch all his days. This book conveys him perfectly.
A READER WRITES: Caltrans, Caltrans, Caltrans… Damn near disaster Friday on 101. (Remember the Rosewarne Concretions? Well, we never found out what they are because Caltrans doesn’t have the bucks to do the study. Their priority is “safety”; they’d need to get a grant or something to do science for science’s sake.)
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The kiddo has been reading for a while now so the lower sign brought a pretty sad emotional reaction that I will not describe further because I don’t need to. We followed the north trail to an edge in the path where the soft sandstone is in a quick erosion process. I had him stay on the north side of me so he did not surf down the face on an overhang.
Two protesters—a man, Travis Jochimsen, and a woman known as Blue Heron—slipped past the California Highway Patrol early this morning and locked down to machines used to drain land in Mendocino County They are trying to bring attention to the Willits Bypass which they believe is environmentally harmful. A credentialed photographer with the Willits News, Steve Eberhart, has been arrested this morning at the scene of the lockdown.
Rick Shreve, an activist against the Willits Bypass, reports that as of 10 A.M. the protesters are still locked down. He says the protesters are “trying to stop the draining of the wetlands…They are continuing to stop work on the Bypass.”
Steve Eberhard, a longtime freelance photographer for the Willits News, was arrested early Tuesday as he approached the area where some protesters had chained themselves to construction equipment and others stood nearby. None of the protesters had been arrested, but as soon as Eberhard showed up he was cuffed and led away, his camera equipment taken from him.
(Note: don’t try this.) Another way of describing quantitative easing would be that it is as if, when you look up your bank balance online, you had the additional ability to add to it just by typing numbers on your keyboard. Ordinary people can’t do this, obviously, but governments can; they can use this newly created magic money to buy back their own debt. That’s what quantitative easing is. — John Lanchester
Good Morning. Here’s a team picture from last night’s playoff games. We won third place and had a fun season. Thank you for your sponsorship; our team appreciates being able to play every summer, thanks to your donation. Pictured from left to right: Jenna Walker, Aimee Summit-Yates, Ruby Peña, Ana Carrillo, Rebekah Toohey, Yadira Mendoza, Mimi Mendoza, Amanda Hiatt, Kayla Garcia, Tiffany Gibson, Marika Martinez. Jeremy Yates and Jamie Silva are our base coaches. (Not pictured: Maia Leon-Guerrero)
People in Washington DC are by far the most dishonest in America, according to a new study, while their cousins in Hawaii and Alabama are basically saints. Beverage company Honest Tea went to every US state earlier this month and set up 61 unmanned kiosks offering tea for $1. Tea drinkers were instructed to place their buck in a box nearby. But only eight in 10 beverage guzzlers in the nation’s capital paid for their tea, while the other 20% of people skipped out on the minimal amount. The other states where you should hold on to your purse were West Virginia where only 85% of participants paid for their tea, followed by Texas and Kentucky at 87%. In comparison, everyone in Hawaii and Alabama paid up without exception. Indiana and Maine followed closely behind, with some 99% proving to be honest, according to the company’s fifth annual test. This year, however, was the first year every state has been represented. Unlike the city that shares its name, Washington state seemed to honor it’s Founding Father’s sentiment, scoring 96% — considerably higher than the national average of 92%. ‘Even though my bicycle was stolen the same day as our DC experiment, it’s reassuring to know that 92% of Americans will do the right thing even when it seems no one is watching,’ Honest Tea co-founder Seth Goldman said. New York ranked in the middle of the pack at 91%, which was better than people expected. California tied with New Jersey, with a score of 96%. The results also determined which sex was more honest than the other and women slightly edged out men with a score of 95% compared to 91%.
THE SORDID ALLEGATIONS briefly included rape charges against one Eric Edgar, 45, but were soon dropped. Edgar had been held on bail of a million dollars.
IT’S SO RIDICULOUSLY COMPLEX that
the County then has to insert separate fig-leaf “annual financial reviews”
of both the Promotional Alliance and the Lodging Association (who are all
the same people), and a “full audit” if any of these palsy-walsys “note” any “irregularity” in their own operations.
VISIT MENDOCINO COUNTY (also more of the same people) will also get its own “annual financial audit.”
THE LODGING ASSOCIATION takes in $325k from local restaurants,
tasting rooms and B&Bs from their BID, then mixes in a few more hundred thou from the “North Coast Tourism Council,” the “Mendocino Winegrowers Inc. Sublease,” and “other income” totaling just over $1 mil. They then do pretty much the same (no)thing, plus
“cooperate” with the Mendocino Wine Grape and Wine Commission to do more
of the same (no)thing.
BY THE TIME ALL THESE top heavy agencies which have somehow inserted their hustling selves into this “promotional” mumbo-jumbo, and the auditors and bookkeepers all get their cut, how much money will be left to bribe wine and food writers to come up to Mendo to eat and drink for free at Mendo’s fine dining establishments? (John? John Bonné? Time for your annual Mendo freebie-weebies.)
THEREFORE, expect the Board of Supervisors to rubberstamp the $325k on Tuesday with minimal discussion.