THE BOARD OF INCOMPETENCE
To: The State Board of Equalization, Sacramento
On April 11, 2013 we sent in sales tax for the first quarter of $3,326. Sometime in May of 2013 we received a letter stating: We never received a payment, and now we owe a 10% penalty amount of $3675.23. We sent in this amount with a letter stating: We have always for over 60 years sent in on time all payments and should not have a penalty. No answer. We never put a stop payment on the original check as we suspected something phony as we never got the original letter back that had a return address in on the envelope. On our June bank statement it shows our original check of April, # 27951 for $3,326 had been cashed with no notice or anything from you. If you charge 10% for your mistake we are entitled to at the very least that same 10% for your goof. Or are we talking to the Gestapo?
* * *
To add some facts to the above letter: For some 67 years we have sent in sales taxes on time without exception. And like all other merchants we don't get paid for collecting this tax. When we found out on our bank statement that the original check had been cashed some three months later we called them up. They said, We have to fill out a request for payment in order to get our payment back and the 10% penalty. They cashed the original check and never notified us or said boo until we called them up. If we hadn't seen it cashed on our bank statement and call them on it, they would have gotten away with it. Why am I putting this in the newspaper? After all it only effects Rossi Hardware? Wrong! This can and probably will happen to everyone in some way from the government. No apology. No, We are sorry. And no one gets held accountable. Remember, no one is above the law, except the law.
Emil Rossi
Boonville
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LOS BUENOS MUCHACHOS
Editor and Fellow AVAers,
Wind knarled trees don't want to be at school. Iay, Dias mio! Oh my goodness the woods were God's first temple. And BA is the Chinese goddess of drought. Los buenos muchachos los Beatles and the honey bees. In 2013 one billion people do not have access to clean water and 50% of chronic human diseases are caused by waterborne pathogens. Einstein is ei twice. “Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.” “Life after death is the way it is before birth.” After the Chernobyl catastrophe thousands of children in the Ukraine developed thyroid cancer and died. Careful when you walk on eggs. “Don't go barking up at a tree you don't know where the branches are.” The Maori people of New Zealand call the Pacific Moana-Nui-o-Kiva, “the great ocean of the blue sky.” Auckland has the largest city Polynesian population on Earth. They named their islands Aotearoa, “the land of the long white cloud.” Fijians are cannibals. Most Hindus are 70 million sheep. Cut the trees and feel the breeze. Pierre Beaudoin of the Canadian company BRP has installed a train in China that goes 236 mph for 10 hours nonstop. Turkey vultures scare off attackers by throwing up. In the summer, gray whales eat 2400 pounds a food each day. The Eureka's deck is as long as a football field. Golden Gate National Recreation Area makes up the largest urban national park in the world. Save the trees and plant more please. Trees are the air we breathe. Let's respect this land that's our land.
Happy trails,
Diana Vance who loves nature in
Mendocino
PS. Three more cheers for the Fort Bragg maintenance crew who's given us the most beautiful street corners in California.
PPS. Where is the rain? Pudding Creek looks like a flattop cake with ugly yellow icing.
PPPS. It's more dignified to bow your head in prayer than to poke around in sheep's liver for clues for tomorrow.
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AV FIREFIGHTHERS TOY DRIVE
Hello Neighbors:
It’s that time — the AV Firefighters Association will be handing out toys at the Food Bank on December 17th. We need your help! Please drop off a toy(s) or a small donation at the firehouse in Boonville. We need gifts for both male/female ages 1-12 years old. Let’s make everyone’s Christmas a little brighter this year. All That Good Stuff will again be offering a 10% discount for gifts purchased there. Be sure to mention that the toys are for the Toy Drive to get your discount. They will also be available to help you pick out that special gift. If you’re looking for a place to make a local donation we’re sure the Food Bank would be very happy to receive some help.
Thanks, Judy Long and Sarah McCarter,
AV Volunteer Firefighters Association, Boonville
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THE SOOTHING WATERS OF DIRTY SOX
AVA,
I’d like to add a name and location to Bruce Patterson’s list of names in the October 23 AVA: Dirty Socks Spring in Southern Owens Valley and on the south side of the mostly dry Owens Lake. As one bathes in the therapeutic waters of the spring the logic of the name becomes apparent.
Harold Ericsson
Harbor City
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ONE FREAKIN PASSWORD
From: Webmaster
To: User
Subject: Fwd: New Password
Attempting to Set A New Password:
Website: Sorry that password has expired. You must register a new one.
User: Did anyone discover that password and hack my computer?
Website: No, but your password has expired. You must get a new one.
User: Why then do I need a new one as that one seems to be working pretty good?
Website: Well, you must get a new one as they automatically expire every 30 days.
User: Can I use the old one and just re-register it?
Website: No, you must get a new one.
User: I don't want a new one as that is one more thing for me to remember.
Website: Sorry, you must get a new one.
User: OK, roses.
Website: Sorry you must use more letters.
User: OK, pretty roses.
Website: No good, you must use at least one number.
User: OK, 1 pretty rose.
Website: Sorry, you cannot use blank spaces.
User: OK, 1prettyrose.
Website: Sorry, you must use additional letters.
User: OK, 1freakinprettyrose.
Website: Sorry, you must use at least one capital letter.
User: OK, 1FREAKINprettyrose.
Website: Sorry, you cannot use more than one capital letter in a row.
User: OK, 1Freakinprettyrose.
Website: Sorry, you cannot use that password as you must use additional letters.
User: OK, 1Freakinprettyroseshovedupyourbuttifyoudon'tgivemeaccessrightfreakinnow.
Website: Sorry, you cannot use that password as it is already being used.
Name Withheld
Ukiah
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FIREFIGHTER TOY DRIVE
Hello Neighbors:
It’s that time. The AV Firefighters Association will be handing out toys at the Food Bank on December 17th. We need your help! Please drop off a toy(s) or a small donation at the firehouse in Boonville. We need gifts for both male/female ages 1-12 years old. Let’s make everyone’s Christmas a little brighter this year. All That Good Stuff will again be offering a 10% discount for gifts purchased there. Be sure to mention that the toys are for the Toy Drive to get your discount. They will also be available to help you pick out that special gift. If you’re looking for a place to make a local donation we’re sure the Food Bank would be very happy to receive some help.
Thanks,
Judy Long & Sarah McCarter
AVVFFA, Boonville
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OUR MANAGEMENT, RIGHT OR WRONG
Editor,
As an enthusiastic listener to KZYX from its start so many years ago, I have been reading with great concern the two long Letters to the Editor regarding the station recently published in the Ukiah Daily Journal and AVA. Doug McKenty's sudden dismissal from his “open lines” call-in program came as a shock; his laid-back delivery and unflappably casual conversational tone with all manner of callers made for some very entertaining and informative radio listening.
John Sacowitz's Friday morning show, All About Money, is also great radio. His guests and subject matter bring to the station the very thing that his Letter to the Editor makes the case for; greater diversity of social and political viewpoints on our public airwaves. This is an inherently difficult proposition, as, historically, the station's founders, its donors, and probably the vast majority of its listeners tend to be of an alternative disposition. Otherwise, why would they have gone to all the trouble of creating and sustaining this listener supported public radio station, when there were other stations to listen to?
I am very concerned with the allegations made by Doug and John about what they apparently see as resistance to input by the station's general and programming manager. I would like to add my two cents on this matter, but first I would like to make a few general comments about KZYX, its place in the community, and its recent history. Having just completed another wonderfully successful pledge drive (over $94,000 raised, and more trickling in, with a pledge drive goal of $110,000), our station is clearly here for the long haul.
When general manager John Coate arrived, the station was tottering under the burden of a quarter million or so worth of debt racked up by previous (mis)management. It is only by virtue of the fact that we here in Mendocino County are blessed with an extraordinary number of talented, creative, energetic folks, willing to volunteer endless hours creating all kinds of delightful programming, convincing top-flight musical acts to come to our humble County and perform for fundraisers for the station, and all the other creative ways that we as an enthusiastic listening audience have worked together, that we have been able to gradually whittle down that mountain of debt to the trifling remainder that is left today.
Besides all of that community energy, though, one must give major kudos to John Coate for having the hardheaded business sense and discipline to make the cuts that were needed to bring station's expenditures into line with its income. Even though I hated to see programs that I loved get the axe (A Prairie Home Companion, Car Guys, etc.) it had to happen for the future of the station.
I am totally excited now about the possibilities that have now opened up for KZYX, with the money that once went to debt repayment now being available to pursue all kinds of great options for the future of our public radio station, which already adds immeasurably to the vitality of our cultural life here in beautiful Mendocino County; more reliable equipment, perhaps a Ukiah studio, bringing back some of those programs we’ve had to give up; all kinds of exciting options are now possible.
It is easy to armchair quarterback station management from a safe distance, far from all of the duties and responsibilities borne by the general and programming manager, as well as the board, but I suspect that, where any of the station's harshest critics to suddenly find themselves in any of those positions, beset by the numerous impassioned factions with their demands for the limited hours of each day, that they would probably perform similarly to the levelheaded folks we now have at the helm.
Even if there are only a couple of programs out of the weekly lineup that you enjoy enough to make a point of tuning in for, you should seriously consider, even though the fall fundraiser is over, checking out 'kzyx.org' and clicking the big red 'donate' button; I could go on for longer than I have space for about the excellent, moving, enlightening listening I enjoyed just during pledge drive week, but please ponder for a moment just how much our public radio station enriches our lives here in Mendo; it is truly one of the main contributors to our quality of life here that separates us from the vast cultural desert that stretches across most of the nation, from sea to shining sea, and thank your lucky stars to live here, as I do every day.
Sincerely,
John Arteaga
Ukiah
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HAMBURG RE-RECONSIDERED
Editor,
Your item on the “Hamburg Flip-Out Reconsidered” makes one valid point: staff was remiss for not following through on the direction given in 2006. But you ignore all the ways in which the attack on staff was both stupid and wrong. Most obvious was that none of the staff subjected to Hamburg’s tirade were employed by the County in 2006. Most of them were not hired until the last couple of years. Who to blame? Where was Colfax to follow through from 2006 to 2010 when he retired in disgrace? Where was Hamburg the last three years he has been in office, especially the last year as chair when he controls the agenda? Yes, he had his stack of documents that he said proved staff should have done something in 2006. But what he needed to do that day in Mendocino was convince two of his colleagues to do something about it today, in 2013. But he never even tried. After his motion to approve the Town Plan with the SCRA was voted down, he complained that this is what always happens to the Coast — we always get screwed by the inland supervisors, and that they should trust him as district supervisor to know what is best for Mendoicno. But the community is very divided on the SCRA issue which was made clear at the hearing. But Hamburg acted like “everyone” supported the SCRA just because the ten people in Mendocino who he talks to all supported it. Hamburg’s show of righteous indignation was misplaced and his failure to make any coherent argument for the SCRA is a sign of impotence. I guess you had to be in the room. But it was embarrassing to watch and when it was done it seemed all the air had been let out of the SCRA balloon.
Name Withheld
Mendocino
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DEAR SECRETARY FRACK
Editor,
Last Friday I joined 300+ people to welcome the Secretary of Interior to Point Arena supporting the inclusion of the Stornetta Ranch into the California Coastal National Monument.
Little time was left for public comment and many members of the public were finally allowed 15 seconds each.
My comments, which follow, were printed and given with an OPC decal:
Statement to The Honorable Secretary of the Interior and Honorable Representatives of The Mendocino Coast at Point Arena, Mendocino County
November 8, 2013
My name is Norman deVall, resident of the Coast for 50 years, and president of the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance. We wish to comment that your visit, the designation of the California Coastal National Monument, and the donation of the Stornetta Ranch are significant contributions to the protection of the Mendocino Coast. However, our work is not done.
Over the years we have urged the Bureau of Land Management, Coastal Commission and Conservancy, and our Board of Supervisors to protect this coast from nuclear power, off-shore oil and gas development, fracking, the sinking spent nuclear submarines in the Mendocino Escarpment, Naval war games and the hunting of whales.
Less than a quarter mile from here and only seven miles south of the San Andreas Fault, PG&E proposed a nuclear power plant. While they eventually sold the plant site to investors, they have retained the energy easement enabling them to run oil and gas pipelines over our coastal range of mountains to the pipelines.
We've opposed every proposed Off-Shore Lease Sale since the mid-1970's and supported the proposed expansion of the federal marine sanctuaries.
But we can't do it alone. HR 2231 threatens to open up the coast to off-shore oil and gas development. The Governor has signed AB 4 allowing fracking within the states three mile limit. We need state and federal energy policies requiring conservation rather than production and consumption.
In the 1970s we mounted the Whale War urging a boycott of Japanese products as they pursued hunting of California Grey Whales. The boycott was successful enough that the Japanese did not oppose the passage of HR 200. But the Navy is now pursuing war games off the coast.
We urge that the Bureau of Land Management, custodians of the National Monument, become engaged in the proposals for development on the coast and within the view shed of the Monument.
CalTrans has shown little consideration to maintain the visual attractiveness of the Monument from the sea, and we have been dependent upon the Coastal Commission to limit their proposed oversized deconstruction of the coast for highway improvements.
Working together we can protect one of the most beautiful coastlines in America; we thank you for being here and look forward to your return and being able to say "Well Done". This is not just our coast. For years we have referred to it as the "Kansas" coast, to be preserved and shared for all Americans.
Thank you,
Norman L. de Vall, President
Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance
Mendocino County Board of Supervisors - ret.
Elk
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HALLOWEEN IN UKIAH
Editor,
“Oh come on honey; let's go. In all of these years we've never gone.” My wife relented and off we went to Ukiah's Pumpkinfest for the very first time. We were lucky and found a parking spot on State Street across from Alex Thomas Park. Our excitement waned as we exited our car and were overwhelmed with the odor of burning marijuana. Then we were struck with the horrendous sound of numerous cars crashing and someone screaming in pain. But we soon realized it was really a live band with someone attempting to sing.
We chose to flee north on School Street with hopes that the distance would free us from the THC in the air and the alleged band. It partially worked, but the continual sound of crashing cars stayed with us. As we old folks worked our way north, we encountered beer guzzling moms and dads holding the hands of their little ones attempting to enjoy the many booths.
As we came upon one corner there was a drunken man yelling at his better half as she tried to shrink from our sight and the sight of others. As he spit out his profanities, he swung his beer bottle in the air as if directing an orchestra. Some of his beer came out of his bottle and rained down my wife's neck.
We hurried eastbound, weaving through the throng of tattooed and pierced members of the crowd in hopes of escaping this event. As we got to State Street and headed south, it was like a breath of fresh air. The zoo seemed to know its confines and stayed on School Street.
We knew we were close to our car because the burning weed and the crashing cars became ever more caustic to our senses. As we took refuge inside our car and I sped off northbound, my senses picked up one more assault — that was my wife's glare burning into the side of my head. It cost me an early supper at the Broiler, but she forgave me.
Robert Schuster
Redwood Valley
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SORRY MARV, TOO EXPENSIVE
Dear ABA staff:
Joseph Pulitzer's paper had of course many friends. When he said, “A newspaper has no friends,” what he meant to say was that the newspaper's friends should not impose on it.
I had imposed on you twice, asking you to sidetrack yourselves from your electronic work to cut out clippings of my letters to the editor and mail them to me. I plead guilty with extenuating circumstances.
1. I am a stranger to the electronic newspaper world. I am computer illiterate. We have tried in the simplest way, occupational therapy in psychiatric joints, and I just can't do it. So I just can't imagine what the AVA office is like now.
2. I forgot that my letters to the editor are just that and not staff work.
Now that the dust has settled: would you please send a sample copy of the new AVA to me so I can see the new format and get the zipcode?
Moishe 'Marvin' Garson
Reh. Akiva 14/18
ModiAin Illit 71919
Israel
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CAN IT BE REVERSED?
Dear Editor,
As the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination nears I wonder how our nation has fared since those idealistic times. On many fronts, like civil rights, women and gay rights and the environment, much has indeed been accomplished. However, on the economic front, America has gone backwards. The gap between the rich and average citizen has vastly widened, most paychecks and the middle class have shrunk, and young people have dimmer prospects than their parents. Pessimism and extremism grows since our economy and government no longer serve average Americans. How did this regression come about? The 1960s civil rights, anti-war, counter-culture, environmental, women's and gay movements scared the ruling class. It responded with the 1972 Powell Memo, which Bill Moyers labeled, “A Call-to-Arms for Corporations” to regain national dominance by funding an unprecedented propaganda campaign to win back Americans' allegiance to “free-market” capitalism. Corporate profits poured into conservative think tanks, PR firms, lobbyists and the mass media, all to convince citizens that government, taxes and unions were bad; unregulated capitalism, privatization and globalization were good. This corporate sell-job worked! Well-funded Rightwing groups, playing on people's ignorance and fears, have rolled back American progress. In JFK's day CEO salaries were 20 times average wages; today they are 200 times. Then the rich were taxed up to 91% of income; it's only 39% today. And many of the giant corporations pay no tax at all! The rich fund the Tea Party to wage a cultural war that obscures their class war. It's one they've been winning for the past 40 years, reversing the gains average Americans had made between 1930 and 1970. The fat cats will continue buying politicians, slanting the media and looting our economy until enough Americans ACT to reverse this disastrous trend.
Tom Wodetzki
Albion
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KENNEDY’S WITHDRAWAL PLANS
To the Editor of the New York Times:
In her essay on John F. Kennedy, Jill Abramson states: “The belief that he would have limited the American presence in Vietnam is rooted as much in the romance of ‘what might have been’ as in the documented record.”
The record shows that on Oct. 2 and 5, 1963, President Kennedy issued a formal decision to withdraw American forces from Vietnam. I documented this ten years ago in Boston Review and Salon, and in 2007 in The New York Review of Books.
The relevant documents include records of the Secretary of Defense conference in Honolulu in May 1963; tapes and transcripts of the decision meetings in the White House; and a memorandum from Gen. Maxwell Taylor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Oct. 4, 1963, which states: “All planning will be directed towards preparing RVN forces for the withdrawal of all US special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965.”
James K. Galbraith, Austin, Texas,
Professor of government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
University of Texas at Austin
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ESCAPE OF THE GENOMES
Editor,
A couple comments regarding toxic issues. That GMO (genetically modified organism) issue continues to be serious. Last years study in Europe noted that both round up ready food sprayed and not sprayed caused all sorts of cancerous tumors in lab animals. Yet most disturbing is the fact that the viralized transferred genes are escaping in the guts of consumers and entering the genomes of the friendly bacteria that make our guts function and provide us with immune support. That translates to our gut bacteria providing round up ready and BT proteins repetitively. Not a happy idea.
The food quality is reportedly dropped as well as many nutrients decrease. A Mexico judge noted the crucial importance of Mexican corn diversity, put the ca-bash on the GMO corn with a firm, “No more in Mexico.” My gal noted that Mary Jane's Farm Journal (Dec-Jan 2013) noted that Potatoes are a heavily sprayed crop on many levels and that only one company seems to be producing organic potato chips. If you want to avoid a real soup of bad chemicals, buy organic when it comes to potatoes.
Last I was re-listening to an interview I did on Toxic Free Future with Dr. Devra Davis, who wrote the crucial book “Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What The Industry Has Done to Hide it and How To Protect Your Family” Dr. Davis is a world class epidemologist who has taken this issue to Senate hearings and convenes with researchers throughout the world. I will make this CD available soon, but the book is an important gift to any heavy wireless user. Her comments during the show were poignant. She noted that active phones on your body can cause serious reproductive issues and create cancer precursor conditions. In a pocket that is too close to testes, the cellular RF has been shown to damage and slow down sperm, plus eventually cause testicular cancer.
In a shirt pocket it can impact the heart, thicken blood, raise blood pressure, and acidify water or blood (facilitating cancer.) I would think it would be a bad idea for sensitive breasts. Paste on your head it can cause parotid gland and auditory tumors, glial and meningeal (within the membrane of the brain and spinal tissue) tumors plus shut down the very important blood brain barrier which keeps minor body toxics and other toxins we absorb out of the central nervous system. “Distance,” as she said is your friend. Use a tethered device or speakerphone and keep it off your body especially when communicating as it is most locally active then or get a special pouch to shield your body from it. Studies are showing that fetuses exposed to wireless have smaller brains, so she warned pregnant mothers to be careful and never to give any wireless to a baby. As silly as that may sound, some fools are creating Baby apps with white noise to help them sleep. Dumb! Israel has a law requiring a tethered ear piece with each phone and France won't allow businesses to sell to a child under 12 or create phones that attract children’s interest. Israel has had a huge increase in parotid or salivary gland tumors, previously not present, reported by dentist.
Gotta say guys Tin hat land had to do with superstitious conjecture by ignorant folks. Your brush stroke at KZYX is a bit broad. The response here is about peer reviewed independent science. In the DNA damage by wireless alone there at least a dozen or more supportive papers. I have previous mentioned three duplicate studies that show double strand damage by low level RF. That's a serious breech of a crucial genetic structure that not only keeps our genes in order but also directs daily function. I studied Molecular biology at UCSD, worked in a nuclear medicine lab, studied with a behavioral scientist at Scripps Oceanographic, who was working with electric fields around blind Amazonian ells. The latter was my introduction to Faraday cages and the subtle effects of fields on organisms. Sharks and Rays can detect sand camouflaged bottom fish via emf detectors that spot neuronal action. Hardly conjecture.
Cancers can take as long as 40 years to develop, and the heavy usage associated with phones makes Cell phones bad news if the consumer is not careful. Many oncologists keep their phones off or in airport mode in brief cases or purses. You can check out Davis's website www.ehtrust.org (Environmental Health Trust.)
The key here is to be careful with your cellular devices. By all means do not sleep near them. Your body and brain needs a rest in the super saturated land of layer and layer of wireless devices. Your bedroom may be your sole low RF place. If it is not then you will develop sleep disorders as a first symptom.
Pay attention because the impacts are very serious. With attention you can use this technology safely.
Greg Krouse
Philo
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