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Off the Record (July 31, 2019)

PAUL McCARTHY of the essential MendocinoSportsPlus asked, "Why do we get the distinct impression the 5th District Supervisor is doing the work of two Districts (the 5th plus the 4th District).” 

BECAUSE HE IS, and I'm sure frustrated citizens from other jurisdictions are calling on Williams for help with this and that because the others are, uh, unavailable. If not for Williams' effort, the preposterous assumption that Coast Hospital would have to somehow raise $30 mil to earthquake proof the premises would have remained the reigning assumption.

RE GJERDE, he seems to have been cryonically frozen in 1998 when he took on some truly dangerous forces, one of whom, the thuggish Dominic Affinito, slugged Gjerde in the lobby of the Fort Bragg City Hall. Always suspiciously tight with local authority, such as it was at the time, Affinito got off with probation and community service, which he never did. Even that wrist slap wouldn't have happened but for the election of DA Norm Vroman who brought charges against Affinito. Vroman's predecessor, Susan Massini, had filed simple misdemeanor charges against Affinito and didn’t prosecute Affinito, just as she had permitted the statute of limitations to run on the people responsible for the Fort Bragg Fires of 1987. And, as we've often pointed out, the famous "twenty boxes" of evidence Massini accumulated for the prosecution of the Fires case she never got around to prosecuting seem to have vanished when she left office. (It's Mendo, Jake.) The following archived piece describes not only the attack on Gjerde, I think it serves nicely as an example of HOW MENDOCINO COUNTY WORKS:


‘Use My Name and You’re Dead Meat’ 

by Bruce Anderson (March 7, 1999)

A grim-faced Dominic Affinito, flanked by a pair of attorneys from the Ukiah law offices of Jared Carter, appeared in Fort Bragg’s Ten Mile Court Tuesday morning to answer charges that he’d assaulted Fort Bragg councilman-elect Dan Gjerde the afternoon of November 12th, 1998. 

The preliminary hearing before Judge Joe Orr lasted until mid-afternoon. 

District Attorney Vroman is himself prosecuting Affinito to emphasize that the DA’s office no longer downplays crimes committed by well-placed Mendocino County citizens. 

Former District Attorney Susan Massini had charged the wealthy Fort Bragg developer with one count of misdemeanor battery for his attack on the slightly-built and mild-mannered Gjerde. Upon his upset election victory in November’s election, Vroman immediately charged Affinito with three felonies, all of them related to assault on an elected official.

Affinito’s attorney, John Behnke of Jared Carter’s Ukiah law firm [now a Superior Court judge], presented no witnesses for the defendant. Vroman introduced five, including Gjerde, whose testimony unanimously supported Gjerde’s account of the startling events occurring in the middle of Fort Bragg’s city hall on a work day.

Gjerde said he entered City Hall shortly after 1pm. “I saw Robert Affinito,” Dominic Affinito’s oldest son, “and I paused. I also saw a man standing next to Robert who had white hair. I saw it was Dominic Affinito. I walked past them on my way upstairs and I was hit from behind and pushed into a wall. My head hit the door of the Planning Department.”

Gjerde went on to testify that Affinito, as the developer pummeled him, shouted, “You motherfucker, you caused this. It’s your fault.”

Affinito was apparently upset that the Fort Bragg City Council, on the advice of their attorney, had decided not to allow Affinito to open his controversial North Cliff Motel, a structure erected in blatant disregard of state and local height limitations imposed on buildings along California’s coastline. The new City Council, with a three-person honest majority for reputable civic management, decided against Affinito. The previous Council was, with two exceptions, reflexively friendly to Affinito’s many Fort Bragg projects. 

If Affinito had gotten a green light from Fort Bragg for his one-story-too-tall hotel, the City of Fort Bragg would quickly find itself sued by the State of California. 

Unaccustomed to getting his way from the previous City Council majority, somehow blamed Gjerde for his own miscalculations.

A series of City Hall staffers verified that Affinito had shouted at Gjerde, as Gjerde reeled his way into an office to call the police, “Dan, you better not use my name! If you use my name, you’re going to get it!” And, “If you use my name, you’re going to be dead meat.”

Photos of Gjerde’s bruised back were introduced into evidence by prosecutor Vroman.

Affinito’s lawyer, John Behnke, seemingly resigned to the obvious fact that his volatile client will be fortunate to avoid a stay behind bars, calmly cross-examined Gjerde with questions whose answers confirmed Gjerde’s account of the attack on him. 

Gjerde, along with three other reform-minded candidates for the Fort Bragg City Council, had been critical of City Hall’s obvious bending of the rules for a few Fort Bragg developers and contractors. Gjerde hadn’t been any more critical of Affinito’s flagrantly illegal North Cliff than any number of Fort Bragg residents. The election results, which overwhelmingly returned the vote for reform of City Hall, in large measure represented a repudiation of Affinito and the favoritism clearly extended certain Fort Bragg business interests by councilmen Melo, Olbrantz, Peters, and Huber. Huber and Olbrantz were replaced by Gjerde and Michelle White, whose election was the largest reform vote in Fort Bragg’s history. Reform candidate Vince Benedetti was also elected, replacing Darrell Galli who had chosen not to run for re-election. Galli had been an independent voice on the council, and independent of Affinito.

At the end of Affinito’s preliminary hearing, Judge Orr bound Affinito over for arraignment June 1st on one charge of making terrorist threats, one misdemeanor charge of dissuading a witness (Gjerde), and one charge of misdemeanor battery on a public official. The judge said the injuries sustained by Gjerde during Affinito’s prolonged attack on him were not serious enough to warrant felony assault charges. The judge’s peculiar logic suggested that a victim must suffer much more severe injury to warrant felony prosecution. 

DA Vroman seemed pleased that he’d been able to make at least one felony stick, but conceded it was unlikely that Affinito would do any jail time. Vroman predicted that the 63-year-old Affinito, who has never been convicted of a crime although he has been involved in litigation of various kinds much of his adult life, would “plead out” on the charges resulting, Vroman hopes, in his being placed on felony probation.

If Affinito decides to take his non-existent case to a jury, he faces two-to-three years in state prison on the felony threat charge, and up to a year in the County Jail on each of the two misdemeanor charges. In addition to the charges he faces in the Gjerde episode, Affinito is suing Fort Bragg for the City’s refusal to allow him to open the North Cliff, and he is being sued by the State of California for deliberately building his ocean view motel overlooking the mouth of the Noyo River one story taller than is permitted by the Coastal Act.


IT'S STILL mildly surprising to us 5th District voters to have a soundly capable, truly responsive supervisor after a quarter century of incompetents and crazy boys occupying the chair. Better yet, and unlike his colleagues, Williams isn't afraid to challenge management or seems to fear being on the losing end of a vote, as he was Tuesday during the discussion of the Schraeders $19-annual-million-dollar tax-funded, privatized mental health contract. Williams rightly thinks there should be an alternative, that the odd arrangement with the Schraeders amounts to a monopoly. Which it is. Williams said he'd like to see alternatives rather than the all-or-nothing deal his colleagues voted to approve last week. 

SO WOULD WE like to see alternatives. What if the presented figure next year is $30 million or $25 or $10? Had to laugh when Mrs. Schraeder bluntly, essentially challenged, "You want it back? Take it." She's right. The county is in a take it or leave it situation. There being no alternative, the county takes the Schraeders. Their privatized predecessor, Mr. Ortner of Yuba City, took the money and provided virtually no services. The Schraeders at least shuffle the mentally disturbed to this or that alleged therapeutic setting and, the cops say, they're a lot faster to evaluate the mentally ill brought to hospital emergency rooms than Ortner's staff was. The point, though, is the arrangement with the Schraeders is implausibly loosey-goosey, $19 mil is a lot of money for our lightly populated jurisdiction even if our entire population was mentally ill, but we have no idea of what we're getting for our money, and no idea at all how effective the services rendered are.

IT SEEMS CLEAR that Maureen Mulheren will challenge incumbent Ukiah-area supervisor McCowen in the next election. Ms. M spoke twice at last week’s meeting of the Supervisors, and why bother if you're not a candidate? You might as well go out into your backyard and have a talk with your peach tree because whatever you're saying will be ignored by at least 3 of the 5 people's tribunes. Mulheren's prob, at least what it looks like from Boonville, is Ukiah. We're not talking a Swiss watch level of civic functioning, are we? The town's a mess every which way, with a government twice the size of what a town of a mere 16,000 should require. And Ms. M is mayor! For example, I just noticed that Ukiah employs an "assistant city attorney." We already know that the city manager, the wildly overpaid Sage Sangiacomo, also has an assistant. Which is what happens when irresponsible people get elected to oversee government. Ms. M. can't plausibly run on her record given the state of our county seat. McCowen has one thing going for him — he spends much of his off-time picking up after the Ukiah Valley's homeless, many of whom are hopelessly nuts, drug-addicted or alcoholic. But it's a relatively small population of walking wounded, and why are they out there if millions are being spent to house them, to make them more or less functional again?

WE ARE OCCASIONALLY BEMUSED by Supervisor Haschak — a long time elementary school teacher from Willits — and his painfully earnest attempts at being what he thinks a Supervisor should be. For example, during Haschak’s “Supervisors Report” on Tuesday he said he’d been to some County Supervisor training in Sacramento last week and that he learned how to conduct an efficient meeting (and not likely to ever be a priority in Mendo) and “negotiations” which presumably has something to do with labor relations which the Board keeps its hands off, and “resiliency in dealing with disasters” and “media relations.” (We have not yet seen a press release from Supervisor Haschack, so maybe now one will be forthcoming!) Haschack said that the training was “very useful” and “a valuable asset to my professional growth.”

ATTENTION, HASCHAK. You’re “professional growth” is no kinda priority and of zero pertinence to your constituents. Being a supervisor is now a “career path”? How about a class on “When to Pound the Gavel” Or, “Responding to Constituents — Best Practices: Why a sincere sounding ‘Thank you’ is the preferred response.”

THE SUPES SPENT ABOUT HALF AN HOUR discussing how they plan to respond to the Grand Jury’s June report entitled “Who Runs Mendocino County?” on Tuesday. CEO Angelo submitted her own report which we are in the process of reviewing. Supervisors Williams and Haschak were in favor of hashing their response out in open session, but Supervisor McCowen preferred the old way of having each supervisor send a draft response to County Counsel to combine into one big “We’re Working On It.” In the end the Supes set up another “ad hoc” committee of Haschak and McCowen to work with County Counsel to assemble their response and then bring back some kind of final draft to the board for final discussion in September. 

MSNBC "analyst" Mimi Rocah, a former assistant U.S attorney for the Southern District of New York and, I would say an obvious nut case, launched a personal critique of Sanders during a segment with host David Gura, saying that Bernie makes her “skin crawl” and that he’s not a “pro-woman” candidate. “Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl,” Rocah began when the Bern's name came up, “I can’t even identify for you what exactly it is. But I see him as sort of a not pro-woman candidate. So, having the two of them there (the debate with Warren) —like, I don’t understand young women who support him. And I’m hoping having him next to her will help highlight that.”

THE TRUMP administration is proposing new rules that would cut food-assistance benefits from about 3 million people. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said the cost-cutting move would limit access to food stamps for households with savings and other assets. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said the new rules for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) would end automatic eligibility for people who were already receiving federal and state assistance. “This proposal will save money and preserve the integrity of the program,” Perdue said. “SNAP should be a temporary safety net.” Acting Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps claimed the proposal would result in annual savings of $2.5 billion and stop less needy individuals from qualifying for benefits.

THAT'S RIGHT, DON. Why confine cruelty to the children incarcerated at the border? Why not starve thousands of American kids, too? How many times does it have to be pointed out that the food stamp program benefits farmers by buying surplus crops and feeds people who need food?

A CALLER was curious about the placement of charging stations north of Laytonville, soooooo… I asked the man who would know, Jim Shields of the doggedly excellent Mendocino County Observer: "I have no idea," Jim began, "other than Tesla contacted the property owner, Erik Larson, who also owns the rest of the property the charging station is on, the Boomer's Bar Building Complex, where by the way the Water District office is also located, and they came to an agreement, the details of which I have no knowledge. I personally support the business because it snags some wayfarers off Hwy 101 and they spend money in the nearby commercial establishments. It's the type of biz I think is good for Laytonville because it fits with our, i.e., Water District, plans to diversify our largely mono-stream economy." 

SPEAKING of the North County's mono-stream economy, residents of Spy Rock Road are real unhappy about the raids on their neighborhoods last week. A resident complained to me, "They landed on my place without permission and left without so much as a thank you, and I'm not in the marijuana business." Apparently, this guy's property was used as a staging area for the raids on his neighbors, and not exactly the best way to maintain neighborly relations.

OLD GUY SOLIDARITY keeps me from being too hard on Robert Mueller's appearance before the House Committee On Get Trump, and leave it to the Democrats to make Trump look like a victim. Mueller is clearly past it. He barely remembered his own report, and when he could he said he couldn't possibly comment. He's the oldest 74-year-old I've seen lately.

WATCHING the hearings in between other duties, I suddenly heard a voice that actually seemed smart and on-task. It belonged to a Republican! And he made the obvious point that the Hillary Campaign and the DNC had initiated all this Russian nuttiness in the first place. Trump didn't expect to be president, and gawd knows we didn't either. So he was doing deals with the Rooskies right up until he found himself sputtering incoherently in the White House. But after he was elected, other than a few kind words for his soul bro, Putin, there were no more deals with "the Kremlin," a nice Cold War touch resurrected for the hearing by the idiot Democrats. The long and short of it is the Democrats still can't believe Ms. My Turn was defeated by… pick a pejorative. And having nothing else to do beyond satisfying their paymasters, the Democrats endlessly beat the Trump drum.

THE PULL QUOTES READ: "Warren Buffett notes that unemployment remains its lowest since 1969, yet interest rates and inflation are not rising … The U.S. government also continues to spend more money than it takes in taxes … Buffett doesn't believe such conditions are sustainable for the long term."

ONLY A PERSON wealthy enough not to do his own shopping could say that inflation is not rising.

YOU’RE A MENDO OLD TIMER IF YOU:

Ate a mammoth breakfast at Garibaldo’s in Willits.

Spent a least an hour in the Mendocino County jail as either inmate of visitor

Ate at the old Wharf in Point Arena.

Had at least one drink at Dick’s Place, Mendocino.

Have walked through Hendy and Montgomery Woods.

Have made at least one appearance at a Board of Supervisors meeting to complain about something.

Have served on your local school board.

Remember the drunk tree (and the drunks beneath) at the Navarro Store.

Remember Ted Galletti.

Remember Charles Peterson.

Listened to Ellie's radio show out of Fort Bragg.

Remember Ed Kowas.

Driven the Mina Road to Alderpoint.

Remember Lou Delsol

Remember when the County Jail was on top of the County Courthouse..

Remember Randy Foster.

Remember Richard Kossow.

Remember Diane Zucker.

Remember Charmian.

Remember when Woody was Navarro postmaster.

Bought land from Fernhoff at Rancho Navarro. (Knew Fernhoff was a crook at first glance.)

Got a loan from the First National Bank, Boonville.

Played softball at the Boonville Fairgrounds.

Played basketball against one of Brad Shear's teams.

Know who Turbo is.

Bought pastry at the City Bakery, Ukiah.

Appeared before either O'Brien or Broaddus in Superior Court.

Remember Petaluma as Egg Capitol of the World.

Listened to one of Leo Marcott’s jokes at the old Yorkville Cafe.

Visited Gualala before Sea Ranch was built.

You’re an old old timer if you had a drink at the Last Resort in Philo, watched a semi-pro baseball game in Fort Bragg, know who Pop Marshall was, saw logs shipped out of Noyo. 

BACK TO THE FUTURE. Those big pot raids in the North County over the past two weeks are certain to help pot prices. Local growers tell me they expect $1500 a pound this season, a huge rebound from the rock bottom prices of last year. We used to joke that pot raids functioned as a price support program, with the cops taking off enough grows to keep prices lucratively attractive to farmers. Legalization having failed in Mendocino County because of its ludicrous complications, lots of growers are choosing to stay illegal.

THE ME TOO MOVEMENT was long overdue, but one guy brought down didn't really have it coming. Jane Mayer, in the current New Yorker, makes it clearer than clear that Franken's accuser was an implausible person to do the accusing, that the real dirty work was done by the rightwing nexus that pounces whenever they can harm a Democrat. I hasten, nay sprint, to deny I was or am a Democrat or Franken fan, but fair is fair and he wasn't treated fairly and was non-personed within a few days. No surprise that the Democrat "leadership" didn't hesitate to throw the guy under the Limbaugh-Hannity bus.

RE THE NEW YORKER. For years now I've assumed about one in three issues is really good. If the reader is lucky, one issue will be chock full of good stuff. (The ava, ahem, is consistently readable, I'd say, bringing all my objectivity to that eval.) Besides the Mayer piece on Franken's martyrdom, the July 29th edition contains "The Assassin Next Door — an L.A. Childhood and James Earl Ray," a tenuous but interesting memory by a guy who grew up in the same neighborhood as Ray, a transient criminal from his teen years on. Also, for Melville people, a fascinating history called, "Ahab at Home," an account of the author's odd personal life. Ditto for "The hard life and glorious work of Natalia Ginzburg" by Joan Acocella. The down pages? An unreadable short story by Salman Rushdie — I find all his fiction unreadable, but he recently managed an interesting account for The New Yorker of his life in hiding from the Grand Ayatollah's fatwa. Skipping past Rushdie's fiction, there's the worst poem I've read since I read a John Ashbury in The New Yorker. I defy anybody within reading distance to defend Jorie Graham's "Prayer Found Under Floorboard." (Shoulda left it there, Jorie.)

EVEN A NORMALLY sagacious ava reader recently described Ms. Cortez and her three insurgent Democrat allies as "radical left." Back when words still had meaning, "far left" were the Bolsheviks. A determined little fellow named Lenin added a new wrinkle to Marxism which, boiled down, was himself and his adherents as the vanguard of the revolution who would run the country on behalf of working people, working people being too goddam dumb and irresponsible to run things themselves. But what happened was the vanguardists were simply another ruling class, driving around in limos and enjoying the houses and summer houses of the aristocrats they'd murdered, banished and replaced.

THE VANGUARDISTS also murdered the Mensheviks (liberals), who comprised the Russian liberal-left. The Mensheviks believed people would peacefully opt for socialism in a mixed capitalist-social welfare context if given the choice. So, class, we have "far left" with the Bolsheviks wherein the state owns everything right down to the neighborhood barbershop, and the lib-left with the Mensheviks who create a mixed capitalist-social welfare state and nobody gets killed making it. 

OUR CAPITALIST COUNTRY basically consists of four political groupings: The far right, more accurately called fascists anywhere else, and which always includes most of the Big Money, as it did with Hitler, as it does with Trump, although in the US some of it is liberal, at least until it's threatened. Second, you have country club Republicans of the small business type who are mildly liberal on social issues so long as they're left alone to make money; they go with the fascists in the crunch; third, there are the lib-labs of the type who think Democrats will make things better but are so comfortable inside the bubble themselves they are clinically delusional. Locally, the lib-labs are people who think our reps — Huffman, McGuire, Wood — are "progressive." Finally, there is the lib-left, no farther left than Bernie and Liz and the four young women who the Trumpers and Fox News consider the "far left." Much of the Northcoast electorate is lib-lab-ish but to the left of Pelosi-Huffman wing of the Democratic Party. Bottom line: we're absolutely politically screwed at the state and national level, and maybe a third of the way down the road to fascism.

THERE is no “far left” in America. It died in 1955 along with the old Moscow-oriented Communist Party USA. There were a few dwarf Lenins around in the 1960s but they generated even less enthusiasm than the Moonies and the Manson Family, and a hell of a lot less enthusiasm than sex, drugs and rock and roll. Bernie, Liz and the four young women constantly vilified by the hard right, and Pelosi-Huffman "liberals,” are no more threatening than Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. They are liberal reformers, not revolutionaries.

LEAD STORY in all the outside media over the weekend is about two kids from my high school alma mater, Tamalpais High School, in Mill Valley. One of these two yobbos apparently stabbed an Italian policeman to death. How a couple of 18-year-old dope heads could get to Italy in the first place is a sign of the Marin times these days. A trip like that was inconceivable in my day. All the stories about the awful event cite the school's student body as privileged young people from privileged homes in the privileged community of Mill Valley. And all the stories imply, "Look at these rich punks murdering a young Italian policeman. Let's see their money get them out of this one." Well, it's complicated. But there are over-indulged young people everywhere, even in Boonville, but especially in the wealthy enclaves. In my time, the Tam High student body did indeed have a fairly large sector of rich kids, but they were more than offset by the children of working parents. (My mother was a nurse, my father worked at whatever he could find.) Unlike any other high school in Marin at the time, Tam High School also boasted a large number of black students from Marin City, the sons and daughters of World War Two shipyard workers.  (Black people could not own or rent anywhere in Marin except Marin City until the late 1960s.) And there wasn't the kind of money around then that there is now, and dope wasn't even on the social horizon. There wasn't even much drinking, at least in my relatively chaste circle of friends, which derived from team sports and included no wealthy kids whose preferred competition was swimming because, I guess, they enjoyed swimming pools at home. Some time in the late 1950s, the school district was gerrymandered to create a brand new all white high school in Larkspur called Redwood High School, which drew students from the truly posh communities of Ross, Belvedere, Kentfield, Tiburon, Corte Madera, and Larkspur. Corte Madera and Larkspur were still not particularly posh in the 1950s but headed in that direction, while Ross, Belvedere, and Kentfield were home to serious money then and now. Only from the middle seventies on did Marin become synonymous with money, most of which was new and had settled in Marin as the economy boomed for the more nebulous professions of finance and lawyering. But just like anywhere else, Marin people are up early and on the road for employment, albeit at higher wages than, say, residents of Mendocino County. These days, of course, and as we all know, people struggle to find affordable shelter even in Ukiah and Boonville, and rich cities like San Francisco are overwhelmed by the walking wounded and the homeless, and even Marin has plenty of both, and Marin also has the Canal area of San Rafael where immigrant families crowd into laughably over-priced and ill-maintained apartment buildings built on Bay fill certain to liquefy in the Big One.

TARENTINO DOES HOLLYWOOD & THE MANSON MURDERS

“A faded television actor and his stunt double strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry during the final years of Hollywood's Golden Age in 1969 Los Angeles.”

The reviews on line – and I’ve read about a hundred, by now—all trash Quentin Tarentino’s new movie about the Manson murders — “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” — as a frightfully tedious irony. To be sure (TBS) all these peckerwood critics long ago labeled Tarantino as a hopeless ironist, much like the British novelist (whom I suspect he admires) Ian McEwan, so nobody takes Quentin seriously, even when he brings in Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt 

Leo has to play a ham, a gunslinger in a 1960s version of a dashing cowboy, a forgettable fellow, a cliché of a name, and not very effectually disguised as a B-movie stage prop. His stunt-double, equally forgettable, played by Bradley P, tells him, tells Leo, during one of Leo’s recurring moments of doubt, a moment of self-abusive critique, usually brought on by the Al Pacino character, a career counselor/producer, the beloved director of these horse-operas our leading man stars in, and as such a pertinent question arises as to his worth as an actor, and it turns into a qualm quieted with Brad’s lovingly delivered, ‘My God, man, Leonardo himself couldn’t have possibly done it any better!” 

Admiral Lord Nelson could not have tied a bowline any better either! 

The movie is stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, a Christmas goose, a soused hog with jokes like this and anybody who has seen it once, on a critic’s press card, or even twice, like as if they saw some trailers first – even then, you’d miss more than half the clever jokes; in point of fact, on a third viewing -- I should think you’d have to see it twenty times at least, at the very least, to get half of Quentin’s jokes; nor yet the spin such fellows as Bradley P. and Leo Di Capp would put on ‘em! 

If you see it, in other words, you’ll become addicted! 

(Bruce McEwen)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

Just off the phone with my sister who lives in Amador County, California…in the foothills above Stockton. She told me she received a letter from Pacific Gas and Electric notifying her, and all residents of her area, that they are now subject to black outs… regional power cuts that will occur at PG&E’s discretion, and that can last up to two weeks, and might come unannounced. The black outs will be triggered by some metric involving of high winds and hot temperatures, to be determined by, I suppose, company engineers. The purpose, of course, is to protect the company from liability when their transmission lines fail and start brush fires.

They further suggest that there could be as many as…15 black out incidents, each lasting from days to weeks, during California’s wildfire season…from May through December.

Entire regions…no lights, no water, no traffic control, no hospitals on land line, no gas pumps working. The company suggests that essential services, as well as private citizens, invest in generators or other alternative forms of energy.

PG&E is, of course, bankrupt…this is, apparently, the solution to their deteriorating infrastructure. Oh yeah…and there are going to be significant rate hikes….

Third World solutions for First World issues….

One Comment

  1. Lazarus August 1, 2019

    “YOU’RE A MENDO OLD TIMER IF YOU:”

    You ate at the “Ptomaine Palace” in Willits, aka “The Chuck/Yuck Wagon.

    Remember Richard Peterson…

    As always,
    Laz

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