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Mendocino County Today: Saturday, June 24, 2017

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FORT BRAGG IS FED UP

The On Going Saga: The Impact of the Homeless Organization in the Central Business District of Fort Bragg. Not Pedestrian Friendly!!! When will this nonsense come to an end and sanity prevail in the City of Fort Bragg?

Recently the business community stepped forward to complain to 4 City Council Members anonymously about the nuisance created by the location of the homeless service organization in the Central Business District. Overwhelming evidence is submitted attesting to the Not Pedestrian Friendly Nuisance being created by the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center’s operation. Experiences are documented and photos are submitted as proof of the Nuisance. Due to past experiences the business owners state that they must remain anonymous to protect them from being harassed or threatened. They want the homeless to be helped in an appropriate location that does not create a Nuisance that impacts tourism negatively so that the whole community is served. The negative impact on businesses and residents is thoroughly documented and the 4 City Council Members who care move to address these issues in the Public Safety Committee. The zoning and nuisance ordinance need to be enforced.

A zoning violation is uncovered; the soup kitchen being run at the Hospitality House violates their non-conforming use permit. The permit only allows for them to feed the 24 residents of the Emergency Shelter. The city council members approach the organization and ask them to stop. The organizations attorney threatens to sue the City of Fort Bragg - the community that has helped them with millions of dollars in the last ten years. The nonprofit attorney’s stance is that they have been doing it for years and getting away with it so they should be allowed to continue and there is allegedly a law that supports this. The City Council Members are afraid of a law suit. The City Staff advises the nonprofit to go to the Planning Commission to get a variance for their use permit.

Nothing is done to enforce the city code, the intimidation tactic works and more time for the issue to die is put in place - a clever political tactic played out by the nonprofit and the City Manager that has been effective in the past.

No gratitude is expressed toward the community, No compassion is demonstrated for the small business owners, No responsibility is taken by the rich homeless nonprofit whose board does not live in Fort Bragg. In fact an article written by someone who lives outside of the city limits appears in the Advocate (historically aligned with the nonprofit) stating the homeless organization is not responsible for what happens on the streets. The causes of the problem are ignored - the location of their services, the lack of private security (which all the other service organizations have) and lack of competent management. It’s your problem community of Fort Bragg - you deal with it - this is communicated loud and clear.

The stance taken by the president of the board (Lynelle Johnson) is that the homeless organization is entitled to the free security that is provided by the people of Fort Bragg; the Police Department. The City Manager and the Police Chief support this stance and it is revealed that the city staff authorized payment for the security cameras that the organization has on the Old Coast Hotel. When the Mayor asked the organization to put security cameras in the alley behind the Hospitality House to help solve the vagrancy issues, the president of the organization refused. She responds with a tone of entitlement - they will get another grant from a special fund offered by the Fort Bragg Police Department to put additional cameras in. A fund that is apparently only available to this one nonprofit.

When the City Manager is asked how businesses and residents in the neighborhood can apply for these free security cameras she doesn’t have an answer. When the business community and residents contact the police department and ask how to apply for this security camera program they get no response or are told that the staff has no information about such a grant fund. It is a special fund created for this homeless organization that operates with millions of dollars of public money. Why?

Because the City Manager says so that’s why, its good politics to help the “homeless.” The City Manager ignores the fact that the budget of this “nonprofit” is significantly larger than the profits made by the small business people of Fort Bragg but they are entitled, the community is not. She ignores its impact on tourism. The president of the homeless organization’s board is clearly angry when asked and refuses to spend the 300 dollars to participate in making Fort Bragg a safer place for its residents. Why? Because they don’t have to, the City Manager and the Police Chief said so.

The organization comes up with a plan to help clean up the business district- they will feed people earlier in the day; put up no loitering signs and they will no longer provide services to the Emergency Weather Shelter clients who they blame for the problems. The community asks for goals and objectives, timelines to be set - what do you want to happen and how long do they have to implement this change?

This was never done - the homeless nonprofit remains unaccountable. The City Staff refuses to set any limits.In this process of uncovering the actual services being provided by the organization it is found that the Hospitality House soup kitchen regularly feeds people who are drunk and high on drugs. The Hospitality House that they like to promote as a safe haven for homeless families — women and children — is Not a clean and sober house. They house and feed people who are drunk and high- not a safe haven for women and children, just the opposite. Very few women and children are housed there and those that are are forced to eat breakfast and dinner with people, mostly men, who are drunk and high. One person who lived there and luckily found housing quickly believes that MCHC is a criminal operation that is destroying the community….a person who had NO substance abuse or mental health issues. It’s time to find out what is really going on here…

When you ask for the demographics and the numbers they never have them ready…someone needs to demand this information. The truth needs to come out. They have been getting away with telling lies that suit their funding long enough.

This is not an appropriate environment for children and as a result families and elders do not feel safe there and do not stay there or eat there, they are afraid to. Many men who have stayed there speak to the daily fights, daily police calls and how afraid they were when they had no place to go and had to stay there. What kind of shelter is this? One with no security on site and an untrained and under paid staff.

What are they doing with the money? It looks like they are building a real estate empire and paying large administrative salaries on the backs of the most vulnerable.

In fact the Hospitality House “managers” are grossly underpaid and recovering addicts themselves, many of them are still using with no place else to go and no recovery services available to them in the community. Some of the men staying there have been staying there on and off for ten years. What kind of an Emergency Shelter is this? A shelter that the seniors (there are 10 people over the age of 60 currently living in their cars in Fort Bragg) are afraid to go to and that does Not have room for people who are ill and are ready to be discharged from the hospital. In addition, this is a shelter that does not have adequate access for physically handicapped people - why? Because, according to the board president and Anna Shaw - they don’t have to. Clearly, they don’t want to.

This is what we have after investing millions of dollars? If you ask this board of directors about these issues their answer is “thank you for sharing” and their actions communicate this:

We can do whatever we want because we are a religious nonprofit and our “do gooder” intentions make us unaccountable to anyone in the community.

We have no responsibility for insuring the safety of our residents or the community.

We can hire who ever we want and pay whatever we want.

We provide the services we see fit to provide to whomever we want to.

In fact they regularly ban clients and former staff from their facilities for reasons that remain a secret. They hide under the “confidentiality” laws when they want to keep things secret. They ignore the confidentiality laws when it suits them.

They have no consistent rules or regulations that people must abide by, if they don’t like you then you are out…it’s as simple as that. Anna Shaw, a member of Narcotics Anonymous herself, runs the place like a dictator according to the many clients and staff that have testified to being kicked out and banned at public meetings. It is common knowledge that this holier than thou organization’s staff regularly refuses to feed, house and provide services to people that they simply don’t like.

This is behavior that is typical of recovering addicts and untrained staff and this is who works there. They don’t have the capacity to do the jobs they are being paid for. Why is the County of Mendocino paying for this? Why aren’t they accountable as other service organizations are? The community deserves a thorough investigation of the Hospitality Center that reveals the truth; we are tired of being lied to and manipulated.

Why does the Fort Bragg City Manager (salary $200,000 annually) support and protect this operation? What is in it for her? You have to wonder why she so rabidly fights to protect them when they are clearly located in the wrong part of town and provide marginal and inadequate services.

Why would the City Manager fight so hard to protect this organization and ignore the needs of the business community?

Why does she ignore and blatantly attempt to manipulate the concerns of her bosses, the 4 City Council Members committed to the well-being of the community?

Why does she white wash the complaints of the business community and write reports that misrepresent what the business owners report to her?

Why does she ignore the Nuisance Ordinance violations and the Zoning mandate that requires Pedestrian Friendly business in this neighborhood?

Why does she take a public safety issue and turn it into a forum for service providers to talk about the causes of homelessness rather than a forum for the business community and residents to talk about public safety?

Why is she providing free security and directing the Police Chief to cover up the problem?

Why does it look like she is positioning to give this homeless organization more public money?

What is in it for her?

What is her relationship with the Hospitality Center?

Why does she protect them as a mother bear protects her cubs?

It’s got to be more than just politics…..an investigation into this appears to be in order. What a waste of public money…

Signed,

The Real Residents and Business Owners of Fort Bragg

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ARE PEOPLE REALLY BEING HELPED BY THE NONPROFIT MCHC/MCHH?

by Judy Valadao

Is there a solution to the problems?

What action can be taken?

The Hospitality House, established 30 years ago by Fort Bragg residents Charles Griffith, Jenny Kreienhop and Alberta Wooden when they purchased and renovated the two story house at 237 N. McPherson St. in 1986 to provide shelter and meals to homeless people and help them find housing and jobs.

For the most part the House served those (mostly locals) who had fallen on hard times and simply needed a helping hand for a short while in order to get on their feet. A hand up, so to speak. The organization was respected and thought by most to be a good thing and a huge help in keeping families together and caring for those in temporary need. Families for the most part lived at the house long enough to get the help needed to move on and back into a productive life of being self supportive. These people lived at the house, ate at the house and slept at the house. Many were helped, it was an excellent program run by good honest people.

What happened? Without most even realizing it the House turned into a crash pad (for lack of a better word). Anyone and everyone could walk in and sleep and eat with no intention of doing anything more. When their time runs out at the House they simply make camp somewhere close by so they won’t be late for breakfast or dinner. The meals that were once served to the clients (who were required to be clean and sober) at the house are now served to anyone who walks in off the street. They are now shared with drug and alcohol abusers. It was no longer a safe haven for those in the community down on their luck looking for a hand up. The House was transformed from a safe home for families and others of the community to get back on their feet into a homeless shelter that serves anyone off the street for as long as they wish. These are not people who are looking for work; they are not people who need a helping hand. They are people who live on the streets with no intention of doing anything else and they come daily to get free food and perhaps an occasional shower. So now, who is really being helped? No one, not even those who had high hopes of something better. When you get in line for the free food you sign in. It seems the more the merrier because that means more money from agencies in the county.

What is the solution to make the House a safe haven for those who are working hard trying to attain a wholesome productive life?

Perhaps turn back the clock and go back to housing and giving a helping hand to those temporarily down on their luck. Give them a safe place to live, eat and sleep in order to be the best that they can be. 24 people can reside at the House at a time. That is 24 that could actually be getting the help they need for a short time in order to get back on their feet. When someone moves on to a better life fill the space with new people hoping for the same results. A lot of people could be helped by doing this.

What actions would have to take place in order for this to happen?

Hire a qualified House Manager with credentials. Make the house a home where people are comfortable and feel safe. Make meals a family setting for those residing at the House. Do not cater to those walking in off the streets just for the freebies. Meals at the House should be only for those residing at the House.

For all others there is the Food Bank (who have stated they have plenty of everything). But we should always donate more to this worthwhile program. The Old Coast Hotel Café (owned by the Hospitality Center) will be opening its doors soon to provide low cost food to those in need, after all it is a nonprofit. So, no one should be going hungry. There are sack lunches at the Food Bank and lunch is served by at least one Church (perhaps more, I’m not certain about how many).

Perhaps some of these people will spend their money on food instead of alcohol or drugs. Perhaps it may make them feel better about themselves because they are now providing the very basics of life for themselves. Food.

I see this as being a win win idea.

The nuisance of the House goes away. The community backs the efforts of the House and many are helped.

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THE FOLLOWING NOTE wafted in out of cyber-space via Fort Bragg: "Some folks are not happy that Chief Lizarraga did not help ICE do a Fort Bragg Sweep when asked earlier this year. The Specific Item is first on the agenda after consent calendar. So it should be a little after 6pm Monday June 26th. 7.A Receive Report from Chief Lizarraga Regarding Decision to Decline Request by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigation Unit (HSI) for Police Department Assistance in "Gang Surge"

Operation 7A. 17-340 06262017 HSI Gang Surge Staff

https://cityfortbragg.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3086546&GUID=A35E0804-0B16-4D08-82EC-14DDAD46135E

Hope you can be there to support our chief."

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AS I UNDERSTAND the raid in Fort Bragg, it was aimed at criminals, not so-called illegals generally. There are people who should be deported, aren't there? And the gang punks arrested recently in Fort Bragg should be tossed outtahere, shouldn't they? Not that they'll have much trouble making their way back. A Boonville dope dealer was given the bounce six times, and six times was back within a month or two. I agree with the Chief's refusal to cooperate with ICE, an agency that ought to be compelled to do its own dirty work, and ICE has never been dirtier than it is at the present time.

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GRAVESIDE SERVICES for Ross Murray will be on Saturday, July 1st, Evergreen Cemetery, Boonville, 11am. Murray, a long-time resident of the Anderson Valley, died on June 15th at age 98.

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ONE WOULD THINK, even here in Amnesia County, that possession of child pornography would be considered a serious crime. But Curtis Andrew Muller, 32, of Ukiah, arrested last week for possessing and exchanging it with British degenerates, easily posted bail set at a mere $15,000.

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UKIAH is considering two medical marijuana dispensaries inside the city limits. Why two? Can Ukiah be home to so much suffering humanity that one dispensary isn't sufficient?

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PRIVATE PROPERTY OWNERS in the vicinity of Masonite Road are relieved that Mendocino Redwood Company is logging tan oak rather than hacking and squirting them to death with lethal chemicals. But before you rush out to buy MRC a trophy for environmental correctness, please be aware that they're probably logging the trees because the area is visible from Ukiah. Acres of upright dead trees would not present the visual this self-alleged green company prefers to show the public.

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A FORTHCOMING production by the Ukiah Players is called "Trailer Park Musical," impoverished white people being the last ethnic group in the country that can safely be made fun of.

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A JEHOVAH'S WITNESS came to my door one day with his apocalyptic lit. It was the same guy who refused to permit his high school-age daughter to intern with the ava on the grounds we would be a bad influence. Undoubtedly, dad, but beating a kid over the head with imminent global death all her youth would probably have acclimated her to anything she might read in the Boonville weekly or hear from the paper's alienated staffers.

WHAT WE couldn't help but notice in our interns was their lack of elementary composition skills. It's clear that the basics aren't being taught. These are all smart kids who only had to be corrected once, but nobody at school had done it. There was one exception — a private school kid. He already wrote better than a lot of professional writers, but he'd been instructed all along his educational way.

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WE SEND a load of papers every week to the Incarcerated Community. In all the years we've been doing it, never a word from a single one when he's back in the Free World. Not complaining. It's amusing, actually, but an indication that the average jail bird is just resting up for another go on the outs before, around age 50, he gets tired and retires from Outlaw World.

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LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I had a friend once named Larry Parson. Got famous as "The Blind Winemaker of Philo." Invented a braille wine label. I'll never forget what Lar said when I asked him why he didn't have a blind man's dog. "God damn, Little Dog. I got the cane, the dark glasses. Isn't that pathetic enough?"


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EXCERPTED FROM the "Some Noise" Podcast, June 23, 2017. Producer/Host: Najib Aminy.

http://thisissomenoise.com/ep-17

Najib Aminy: Mark Scaramella is a vocal opponent of the wine industry. In fact the Advertiser also has that reputation. To put it bluntly, it's a very polarizing newspaper. Whereas the credo for the New York Times is ‘All the news that's fit to print,’ and the Washington Post is about how democracy dies in darkness, the AVA, as it's known locally, ‘Hasta La Victoria Siempre,’ and, ‘Fanning the flames of discontent.’ Like grapevines in the valley, there is no shortage of discontent, at least in the Advertiser. Whether it is fact, fabricated, or hyperbole, it is part of the charm and character of the paper. But should you find yourself behind the crosshairs of the publisher and editor Bruce Anderson then it's hardly flattering and it's been known to flirt with being outright libelous. Sue me, Anderson will say, I don't have much money anyway. Go ahead.

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, NAJIB: Fabricated? Citations, please. And I've never said, "Go ahead and sue me." When I make an error of fact I correct it, or lend the person making the correction all the space he needs to do it. What I have said is that my critics claim they don't sue me because I don't have any money. Or my critics say they don't sue me because my wealthy nephew will pay my legal bills. The true reason people don't sue is they are incorrect, which a lawsuit would demonstrate to the world. It's annoying that this Naijib kid casually libels me by suggesting I fabricate stories. The problem with John Cesano, and lots of people, is they are unable to separate fact from opinion. They read an opinion they don't like such as "The wine industry is a chemically-dependent, heavy-industrial enterprise that does lots of damage to the environment," and someone like the blustery wine shill quoted below deliberately mistakes that opinion for "libel."

John Cesano: "I don't read it anymore. Because I don't want to get angry. I just pretend it doesn't exist and do my job. I so wish we could work with them. I wish that they were responsible.”

(BOO-HOO.)

Aminy: That’s John Cesano again, Executive Director of the Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association.

Cesano: "Sometimes it's jealousy based. Our wineries are diverse but they are visible. And a successful visible industry always will garner some jealousy among folks. They become a target. I think unfairly. I don't know if it's part of a larger cultural context but the world seems a little more angry today than it did yesterday.”

Aminy: I guess my question to you is what is the core of what's driving that?”

JESU CRISTO! Najib! You let this one slide without challenge? Were you so dazzled by the noted journalist that you take his word for it? Did you even read the paper before you began these interviews?

Cesano: “I have no idea. Conflict sells papers. I think it's that simple. And manufactured conflict works just as well as genuine conflict. It's easier to — I guess it's easier to write lies than to do actual reporting. The AVA, as liberal as it is, is no different than the worst hate-mongering, right-wing conservative media outlet, propaganda arm, The very thing they hate is the exact thing they are.”

Aminy: “Scaramella has been known to stay much closer to the facts, though there's no second-guessing on where he stands.” …

"EASIER to write lies than to than to do actual reporting."

IF YOU'RE going to libel me of lying you've got to cite the lie, and then we can all parse it together to see if it is or not. And this Aminy guy seconds Mr. Shill's own libel by seconding it when he says Scaramella stays closer to the facts, suggesting that I don't.

THIS IS SO ANNOYING I'm going to make it a point in taking it up directly with Cesano.

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POLICE OUT WITH 'CAPTAIN FATHOM' AFTER HARASSMENT COMPLAINT

The scanner dispatched a Fort Bragg Police patrol unit @ 3:45 pm to Cypress Street looking for "Captain Fathom" after volunteers at the Windsong section of the Mendocino Coast District Hospital reported he had been harassing them. They wanted Police to advise him not to return.

He was wearing a baseball cap, red shirt & denim jeans.

Police caught up with him @ 3:48 pm.

Last time MSP talked to him (in March) he told us he had a terminal illness…

Laurel Kuvaia Hosford — Goodness, this terminal illness has lasted over 10 years. A wake was held @ Albion River Campground when we managed it! I'm glad he overcame it and hope he does again.

‪Yvette Mitchell — He's harmless… and actually very sweet. He's just loud. He's "ours" from Spring Grove in Albion. Please don't hurt him or engage with him. Just move along and everything will be fine.

(Courtesy MendocinoSportsPlus)

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WHO HAS FOOD BANK’S BLACK WAGON???

A musical from Boonville,

Not so amusing.

Not Starring Clint Eastwood. Or Julie Andrews.

Starring someone who could put their cape on and help us solve this mystery

ACT I The Black Wagon disappeared from the Food Bank just prior to the May distribution

ACT II Carelessness? Selfishness? Maliciousness?

ACT III Bring it back.

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NOTED, AND AGREED.

Dear Editor,

I assume I am not the only reader who enjoys the AVA in its proper paper format but is dismayed by the increasing use of combinations of numerals and symbols even less readable than the dreaded Press Democrat.

Wtf? Can’t/U/Fill/52papers/a/year/w/actual Prose? If you complain about the modern world, why the 75693/“items”/per/Off/the/Record/needing/2be/entered/into/a/computer?

Known in modern parlance as “links,” these are simply eyesores for those of us who read our beloved community paper on the porch or on the subway, without a cord.

Aaron Cometbus

New York City

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GRAND JURY RIPS PLANNING & BUILDING

Subject: Mendocino County 2016-17 Grand Jury Report: Planning & Building

The Mendocino County 2016-17 Grand Jury has released a final report concerning the county Planning and Building Department.

Summary

The Mendocino County 2016-17 Grand Jury finds that the Code Enforcement Division of the Mendocino County Planning and Building Services Department does not initiate investigations, but as a policy matter primarily responds to complaints. There is a continuing backlog of unresolved complaints that are over one year old. The reasons for these shortcomings are inertia, lack of adequate staffing, and lack of direction from the Board of Supervisors and Department management. Interviews revealed that it is “not a priority” to provide online access of data maintained in both departments. On November 3, 2015, the Board of Supervisors gave direction to apply County ordinances to County maintained buildings. To date, it is obvious that the condition of the buildings have not significantly improved. When interviewees were questioned by the Grand Jury, the condition of County maintained buildings was acknowledged as poor. With the potential enactment of new and revised cannabis ordinances, it is clear that the Department will have to hire additional staff. It is also clear that new procedures need to be developed and implemented. The Complete Grand Jury Report is attached to this email and may also be found at: http://mendocinocounty.org/grandjury

Katharine (Kathy) Wylie, M.S. Ed.,

Foreman, 2016-17 Mendocino County Grand Jury

GJ-P&B

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QUESTIONING FORMULA BUSINESS RESTRICTIONS

The Mendocino County 2016-17 Grand Jury has released a final report concerning Formula Business Restrictions.

Summary

A San Francisco Chronicle columnist recently declared: “It’s a cruel irony that many of the coastal California cities and counties that have imposed tight restrictions on new housing and development also are home to levels of poverty that don’t get enough attention. Such communities should be aggressively challenged. Their NIMBYism, rationalized as “preserving community character,” is actually making people poorer.” Both the City of Ukiah and the County of Mendocino have ordinances that restrict formula business development. Are formula business restrictions necessary or desirable, or are they simply a manifestation of nimbyism, which effectively discourages business and job growth? While the Mendocino County 2016-17 Grand Jury applauds community charm and mom-and-pop small business, we question if the restriction of formula businesses is appropriate in a County that suffers from an inability to fill professional employment positions, a lack of available housing, and too few jobs with benefits, not to mention a general dearth of retail shopping opportunity that is desirable to a youthful demographic. It is not as if these businesses are breaking down doors to open chains here. A County Supervisor stated to the Grand Jury that the County has been making a concerted effort to change the perception that this County is anti-business. However, that such restrictions have been enacted gives the appearance of a not-so-business friendly culture that the County can ill afford. The Complete Grand Jury Report is attached to this email and may also be found at: http://mendocinocounty.org/grandjury

Katharine (Kathy) Wylie, M.S. Ed.

Foreman, 2016-17 Mendocino County Grand Jury

GJ-Formula Business

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ELECTIONS REDUX

The Mendocino County 2016-17 Grand Jury has released a final report concerning the County Elections Process.

Summary

The Mendocino County voters can be relieved to know that every possible attempt is made to count their votes. Many manual procedures are in place because some voters fail to follow ballot instructions. The Registrar of Voters is determined to ensure accuracy and accountability for election results. Due to changes in voting procedure, 80% of voters are now obliged to vote by mail. As a result, the actual final tally is delayed for up to 30 days after an election. Both the public and elected officials find the delay unacceptable. Reporting intermediate vote counts could cost $5,000 each and any improvement in the speed of the final count will require new expenditures for equipment and additional temporary hires to count mail-in ballots before Election Day. For example, 21,700 mail-in ballots were available for counting prior to November 6, 2016 Election Day. While the Registrar had 10 days prior to Election Day to count them, approximately only 6,000 were counted by Election night. It is clear to the Grand Jury that election counting procedures need to change. This will either be forced on the County by public opinion or the implementation of State law. The Complete Grand Jury Report is attached to this email and may also be found at: http://mendocinocounty.org/grandjury

Katharine (Kathy) Wylie, M.S. Ed.

Foreman, 2016-17 Mendocino County Grand Jury

GJ-Elections

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SHAG RUG IN THE RIVER?

Dave Severn investigated:

"You must have gotten your report from an airplane view. I'm surprised it didn't report a green shag rug.

It is an historical fact that Anderson Creek suffers massive summer algae from nutrient run-off compliments of the invasive wine industry.

At the confluence of Anderson and Rancheria Creeks, where it opens up to more sun light, algae blooms are prolific. That is apparently what someone thought was a rug. I've attached photos to show the algae.

[1] Anderson Creek looking upstream just before Rancheria:

[2] Anderson Creek looking downstream with Rancheria in the background:

[3] Again, Rancheria flowing along in the back:

[4] Here's Rancheria with Anderson coming in from the left. The green you see is reflection from the trees:

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ALARM RAISED OVER FUTURE OF CALIFORNIA’S ABALONE FISHERY

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7119215-181/more-limits-foreseen-for-california

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COAST HOSPITAL NEEDS A HEARING AID

Editor,

When will they listen?

It was inspiring to watch the community’s enthusiastic support for the obstetrical service at our hospital. It was gut wrenching to watch the District Board remain brain dead in response. How many times must so many speakers so eloquently express the reasons why obstetrics is a critical service in a remote rural hospital only to watch the Board pass a resolution that in reality accomplishes nothing? A last minute modification of a straightforward motion by Board President Lund reduced the evening’s effort to ashes.

Who continues to put this matter on the agenda? Who continues to expend resources proving why they CAN’T save the department instead of making a decent effort to determine how they CAN save it. We live in a republic where we expect our elected representatives to respond to the desires of the electorate. When those representatives refuse to listen, there is a process to replace them. It should be abundantly clear that the only true solution is to RECALL those members of the Board who refuse to listen to our community. Until we have a Board dedicated to removing a feckless, incompetent administration and providing the needed services, no amount of taxes will solve the current problems. Until then it will be like giving another bottle of booze to an unreformed alcoholic and telling him to use it wisely.

Kathryn Rohr MD

Fort Bragg

ED NOTE: Before Dr. Kathryn Rohr was a woman he was board member Dr. William Rohr at Coast Hospital.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, June 23, 2017

CHRISTOPHER BINGHAM, Ukiah. Domestic battery, “arson: Offender registration upon discharge of parole,” trespass on railroad property, failure to appear. (No photo available.)

Escareno-Diaz, Golyer, Hoff, Holbrook

ROGELIO ESCARENO-DIAZ, Covelo. Convicted felon carrying loaded firearm, pot transport for sale, concealed weapon in vehicle.

PAUL GOLYER, Ukiah. Battery, criminal threats, probation revocation.

BENJAMIN HOFF, Ukiah. County parole violation.

DARIN HOLBROOK JR., San Francisco/Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

Nava-Garfia, Orellana, Sanchez, Schmidt

JOSE NAVA-GARFIA, Sonoma/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ELIZABETH ORELLANA, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, vandalism.

MIGUEL SANCHEZ SR., Talmage. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JD SCHMIDT, Laytonville. First degree robbery, criminal threats, brandishing, conspiracy.

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PROPAGATION WORKSHOP & PACK RAT YARD SALE TOMORROW! Saturday, June 24th from 10:00am to 1:00pm in the Gardens Meeting Room

Join MCBG Gardener and Master Gardener, Mario Abreu for a hands-on workshop and lecture on propagating local native plants, heathers, fuchsias, dahlias, and more. Learn basic techniques of seed collection and processing, cloning plants by cutting and division, and how to grow them for planting. BONUS! Each participant will construct their own mini greenhouse to grow plants provided in this workshop. Bring scissors, hand pruners, and lots of questions! Class size is limited; sign up by phoning in your payment at 707-964-4352 ext. 16 or reserve your spot in person at The Garden Store at MCBG.

15th Annual Pack Rat Yard Sale!

Saturday, July 8 8AM to 4PM (accepting donations July 3, 5, 6, and 7 from 9AM to 4PM) The Friends of the Gardens, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization is sponsoring the 15th Annual Pack Rat Sale at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. This annual fundraiser has earned its recognition as the “greatest garage sale on the coast” having raised over $165,000 in the 14 year history; 100% of the proceeds benefit the Gardens and enhance visitor experiences. Early arrivals have the best selection of items; those arriving later benefit from price reductions throughout the day. Community donations result in a huge inventory of all kinds of items, priced fairly and with quality service provided by the all-volunteer staff. Donations for the sale may be made at the Gardens daily from 9AM to 4PM on Monday July 3rd through Friday July 7th (but not on Tuesday, July 4th as we will be celebrating the holiday with family and friends). Earlier delivery and assistance may be arranged by calling the Pack Rat Sale message line at 707-964-4352 ext 17. Support the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens by donating and attending this fun event.

* * *

WIFI MAP & MEMO OF THE AIR

Subject: A question about a public wifi map, and an announcement about something else that won't surprise you because it's been regular as clockwork long enough for it to be legal to drink in all 50 states.

Max the Piano Player asked me, "Is there a list or map of Mendo Coast local public access WiFi, like Library, Moody's, MCDH, Town Hall, etc.?"

I had to tell him I don't know anything about that. The things I found by searching were either really not ready (one site listed public wifi only at one B&B for all of the coast from Albion through Fort Bragg) or they're the common phone apps that feel around where you are but don't give you a map of places that are established. So I'm asking the listserv. Somebody must know. I'd like to know too, because anywhere there's web access we can connect to the transmitter and broadcast live on KNYO.

Speaking of which, I'm doing my show by live remote from Juanita's apartment tomorrow (Friday) night, so if you were planning to stop by the KNYO storefront (325 N. Franklin, next to the Tip Top bar) and come in to play your musical instrument(s) or talk about your project, or whatever, make that next week (June 30). I'll be there then. (Or contact Bob Young <bobb@poetworld.net> and get your own convenient airtime for a show entirely of your own devising. It's easy and fun.)

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio! Friday nights 9pm to about 4am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg, including midnight to 3am 105.1 KMEC-LP Ukiah, and also via http://knyo.org or http://TuneIn.com. Or go to my weblog (see below) for recordings of previous weeks', months' and years' shows, as well as plenty of things to read and fiddle with and goggle at.

And the deadline to email me your own writing to be read on the air is still always 5:30 or 6 on the night of the show.

Marco McClean

memo@mcn.org

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

* * *

“HE DREAMED that he entered a vacant house with white walls and the sadness of being the first human being to enter the house disturbed him.

In the dream, he remembered that he had had the same dream the night before and on many nights in recent years, and he knew that the image had been erased from his memory when he awoke because that recurrent dream had the virtue of not being remembered except within the dream itself.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez

* * *

HMONG AMONG US:

Immigrants from Laos Join Marijuana Green Rush

by Jonah Raskin

On a summer day in June it was hot and dry almost everywhere in California. Nearly eight thousand miles away, it was hot and rainy across much of Laos, the landlocked nation in Southeast Asia that Americans learned about when the U.S. Air Force bombed it in the 1960s and 1970s. A 52-year-old Hmong immigrant from Laos who calls herself Tia, and who was working on a marijuana farm, rested in the sun. “Tia is my Hmong name,” she told me. “I haven’t taken an American name yet.” She’s not in a hurry to do so, not after living in the U.S. since 1976, when she was twelve years old and arrived with an older sister. Their parents came in 1980. Approximately one hundred thousand Hmong fled from their homeland at the end of the Vietnam War, which had spilled over into Laos in a big, bloody way. Most of the Hmong settled in California where they have found a place for themselves and preserved much of their culture and customs.

“The Hmong joined forces with the C.I.A. to fight the communists and when the communists won the war we feared for our lives,” Tia explained. “The C.I.A. helped us come here.” She added, “Hmong grow opium in the mountains of Laos. Now we grow marijuana in California.” Indeed, in Siskiyou and Trinity, Hmong have joined the wave of native Californians and immigrants from all over the world who are cultivating cannabis, the number one agricultural crop in the Golden State. No wonder it’s called “the Green Rush.”

Tia was a part-time hired hand on a large plantation where field workers drilled 981 holes with an auger, filled them with good soil, and then planted 981 baby marijuana trees that would grow to be eight to ten feet tall and yield three to four pounds. The harvested weed might sell for $1,000 a pound. Young, white men with shovels did the digging and the planting. They took regular breaks to smoke what they said was pure THC, but that didn’t seem to impede their work.

Tia and two other Hmong women didn't smoke any of the marijuana, though it was free to anyone who wanted it. “I don’t smoke anything, not any kind of cigarette or tobacco,” she said. “But I use marijuana as medicine. I put the leaves in hot water, make a tea, and then apply to my body; it’s good for aches and pains.”

The Hmong women were steady, reliable workers. No one, including Mr. T., the tall lank foreman—who walked around with a clipboard—told them what to do. Tia had worked on farms before, though not with marijuana. “It’s good to learn new things,” she said. “My kids don’t want to work hard. They’re lazy. They sit around and do nothing.”

Tia used a long-handled hoe to chop the hard, sunbaked soil and to make saucers around the plants. Then she added water with a hose. She illustrated the proper way to irrigate; gently and slowly. “We make it look nice,” she said. Indeed, she did. When she finished hoeing it looked like a work of art. “The way I do it, the water lasts longer,” she explained. “You don’t have to irrigate so often.”

The foreman was happy to have the Hmong as part of the team. “There’s a shortage of skilled labor,” he said. “Not everyone knows how to treat marijuana. These women know what they’re doing.”

The three Hmong women covered almost every inch of their bodies in colorful hats, shirts and pants for protection against the sun. They worked eight to twelve hours a day, sometimes until 12:30 a.m. when it was much cooler, though they had to use headlamps to see what they were doing. During the week-long planting, the white men—all of them native Californians in their thirties, many with wives and children—worked around the clock. By the end of the week they were exhausted. But the crop had to get into the field or there would be no crop at all. It was already late in the season, and the heat had stressed the plants and the people. In a way, the Hmong were lifesavers who arrived in the nick of time.

Tia was paid $15 an hour in cash and she was happy to have it. “We’re here to help friends,” she explained. “We heard about the work from a friend of a friend, and we came down from Sacramento.”

Tia and her friends pitched a tent where they slept at night; they cooked their meals on a portable gas stove. An electric cooker provided them with all the white rice they could eat. There was no shower, but there was a refrigerator, hot and cold running water and a portable toilet. Tia carried a three-legged stool around the field; when she was tired she took a breather.

Tia doesn’t want to return to the mountains of Laos. “It’s very poor country,” she said. “Not like here. Women grow rice and vegetables and men hunt in the jungle. Boys go into the army to be soldiers. Here, we have freedom.”

Still, she had complaints about her life in California. “I marry wrong man,” she told me. “I married 30 years. Husband not want me to leave the house or have a job, only stay home and cook and clean. He jealous all the time. I practically prisoner.” She walked away from that husband and remarried. Now, she seems to be happier with her second husband.

Tia didn’t have the promise of work later in the season, but she hoped to come back for the harvest in the fall. “I’m an old lady,” she said and smiled. “Not good for very much. But can work all day. I like to come back here to see the plants all big and grown up.” Her own children didn’t give her a great deal of satisfaction. But the 981 plants in the ground offered high hopes and the promise of rich rewards.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War. He shares story credit for the feature film, Homegrown.)

* * *

POINT ARENA CITY COUNCIL AGENDA

PAagenda6-27-17

* * *

WAY TO GO, JOSH

Joshua Mathias of Manchester (on the Mendocino Coast) Earns Degree at George Fox University

NEWBERG, ORE. (June 23, 2017) - Joshua Mathias of Manchester was among the more than 900 undergraduate, adult degree and graduate-level students who received diplomas in commencement ceremonies at George Fox University this spring. Mathias earned a bachelor of arts in entrepreneurship and marketing. All told, 458 students received bachelor's degrees after completing study in one of George Fox's 41 undergraduate bachelor's degree majors or its adult degree programs. Another 382 students earned graduate-level degrees from the university's masters, doctoral and educational specialist programs, and 63 students earned bachelor's degrees through the school's adult degree programs. The university hosted its main undergraduate commencement ceremony on Saturday, April 29. George Fox University is a Christian college classified by U.S. News & World Report as a first-tier regional university. More than 3,900 students attend classes on the university's campus in Newberg, Oregon.

* * *

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

From Humboldt County: “…standing in line at the hardware store today when a man walked up behind me and shouted “What do you think about illegal immigration?” I could tell the man wasn’t stable so I tried to give him a vague but polite response. Then, visibly agitated, he yells “Did you know that millions of illegal immigrants live in this country and they kill thousands of people every year? They could kill your neighbor, your family and friends. Are you okay with that?”

Trying to keep the crazy man from getting more agitated I give a simple “That’s not good.” He goes on to tell me about sanctuary cities and some nonsense that I don’t care to hear. Finally he says “Why don’t you wipe that fucking smirk off your face! I’m going to kick your ass!” As he pulled his jacket back like the old west gun fighters and shows me three large knives on his hip. At first I thought it was a gun. I yelled, "He has a knife, Call 911!” Of course no one does. I back out of the aisle and circle around to put the counter in between me and him while I scan the shelf for a weapon and describe what’s going on to the 911 operator. Finally, after several of the customers began to shout at him “We are witnesses”, he leaves. Crazy man, driving a 1998 Chevy Z71, drives over to the concrete stepping stones loads up several and peels out of the parking lot.

I believe that this nutcase came into the store with the intention of attacking someone. Law enforcement needs to get the store surveillance video and share pictures of this guy.”

* * *

* * *

DEMOCRATS IN THE DEAD ZONE

by Jeffrey St. Clair

This year the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to grow larger than ever. Oceanologists predict the lifeless expanse of water below the Mississippi River Delta will swell to an area bigger than the state of Vermont, an aquatic ecosystem despoiled by industrial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, oil leaks and the lethal effects of a warming climate.

But the desolate waters of the Gulf pale next to the electoral dead zone now confronting the Democratic Party, which seems to occupy about two-thirds of the geographical area of the Republic—a political landscape deadened by the Party’s remorseless commitment to neoliberal economics, imperial wars and open hostility toward the working class base which once served as its backbone.

The latest political zombie offered up as a vessel to freight the electoral asperations of the Democrats was a pious former congressional staffer called Jon Ossoff, whose name sounds like one of those creepy Svengali-like characters from a Tod Browning horror film of the 1930s. But the candidate wasn’t as scary as all that. In fact, Ossoff scared no one, which was both his campaign theme and his problem. One of his problems, anyway. Ossoff presented himself as an anodyne candidate, a nowhere man, a quiescent emissary for a return to civility in politics. He was the white Rodney King, who plaintively asked why we couldn’t all just get along? Of course, who really wants civility in politics, when you’re working two jobs, can’t pay the power bill, have a kid with asthma and just had your Ford Focus repossessed.

Ossoff proved much more popular outside the sixth congressional district of Georgia, than within it, which is only fitting for a candidate who didn’t even bother to reside in the district he was running to represent. Ossoff was an interloper, a carpetbagger, who refused to promote even the trickle-down benefits of a second Reconstruction for a South that has been ravaged by a 30-year-long exodus of good-paying jobs.

In an age crying out for a new kind of politics, Ossoff campaigned directly from the Clinton playbook (Hillary version), apparently hoodwinked into believing that absent Russian interventionism this stale platform was a winning strategy. His main opponent was Trump, not even Trumpism, which might offend some of the Republican voters he was targeting. In what became a kind of daily ritual on the campaign trail, Ossoff repeatedly scrubbed himself clean of any taint of populism or progressive inclinations. Ossoff denounced single-payer health care, kept himself at arm’s length from Bernie Sanders and never uttered even a minor critique of American imperialism. Think of him as a prettified Tim Kaine.

Ossoff dutifully punched one item after another on the checklist of neoliberalism. He wanted to end waste in government. He wanted to trim burdensome regulations stifling the old entrepreneurial spirit. He wanted to reduce the deficit and hectored struggling black families to demonstrate “personal responsibility” if they wanted to get their federal benefits. He pledged his loyalty to Israel, decried nasty dictators from Putin to Assad and vowed to eradicate the scourge of Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth.

He sedulously avoided any mention of radioactive subjects such as hunger, homelessness, drone warfare, the death penalty or police shootings. The fate of entitlement programs from Social Security to Medicaid was much too thorny for Ossoff to deal with on the campaign trail. Prosecuting Wall Street criminals somehow escaped his attention. He remained opaque on the subject of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Bernie Sanders himself questioned whether Ossoff could be considered a “progressive,” but that warning sign didn’t stop progressives across the country from flooding his campaign coffers with cash. By the end of the campaign, Ossoff had raised more than $24 million, six times the amount raised by his Republican opponent Karen Handel.

After Ossoff’s ignoble defeat, Margaret Kimberly, the fiery columnist for Black Agenda Report, quipped, “What did they expect? It was a reactionary district in Georgia.” Good point. But these are precisely the kinds of districts that the Clinton Democrats (who have yet to melt into a steaming pile of ectoplasm like most vanquished zombies) see as fertile terrain. The Georgia Sixth occupies the northern suburbs of Atlanta. It’s been solidly in Republican hands since the late 1970s, when Georgia’s segregationist Democrats had largely completed their migration into the Republican Party. For many years, the Georgia Sixth was the domain of the white-haired gnome Newt Gingrich. Later it passed into the hands of Dr. Tom Price, the errand boy of Big Pharma who views his obligations under the Hippocratic Oath with the same animosity that his ancestors once reserved for the Emancipation Proclamation. Price was reelected last November by a 23 percent margin over his Democratic challenger.

Demographically, the Georgia Sixth is populated by voters who are predominately white, suburban, middle-class and educated. In other words, it qualifies as the Democrats’ new field of dreams: cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac of houses which once proudly sprouted Romney signs from their immaculately manicured lawns. And living inside those pastel-colored split-levels and golf course condo units are thousands of housewives, quietly bristling at the misogyny of Donald Trump and his Republican enablers. These are Chuck Schumer’s women, the soft-Republican matrons he predicted would flock to non-threatening, well-groomed Democrats in the age of Trump. These were the thoughtful, silent female majority who would have yielded Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania to Hillary had not Putin monkey-wrenched the vote. In order to seal the deal, the DNC orchestrated conveys of UberBlack towncars to shuttle Hollywood celebrities around Dekalb and Fulton Counties proclaiming the virtues of Ossoff.

So how did it all go so terribly wrong? How did the new wonder boy of Democratic politics crash-and-burn, when he had the looks, the money and the analytics all working in his favor?

The answer is pretty simple. Most of the voters in the Georgia Sixth saw Ossoff as a manufactured candidate, a fraud, in a time when people are craving at least a hint of authenticity. Ossoff may have come by his timid neoliberalism honestly, but he struck many as a political cross-dresser. If you’re going to vote for a conservative, why not vote for the real thing?

The attack ad that really doomed Ossoff wasn’t the grotesque smear that ludicrously tried to link him to the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, but a relatively routine spot that predicted he’d become the political automaton of Nancy Pelosi. In a region that understands the relationship between master and slave, this ad rang true. Throughout the entire campaign, Ossoff had shown not the slightest impulse toward independence of thought or character. He was a creature of a party establishment which had long since auctioned off its soul to the same Wall Street predators that had looted the garment factories, fields and ports of the Southland as ruthlessly as General Sherman during his incendiary march to the sea.

There are Pyrrhic victories, where the cost of winning a battle is so great that you lose the war. The Ossoff campaign might be considered a Pyrrhic loss, where so many financial and psychic resources are invested into a relatively minor skirmish that the defeat dooms the course of the larger war, when ultimate victory was well within your grasp. The loss is compounded by the lessons the Democratic elites have drawn from the post-mortem. That Ossof’s campaign was too progressive for the region. That the Democrats need to turn away from populism and return to the corporate-friendly conservativism of the Bill Clinton years, with a little of the old Lester Maddox race-baiting thrown in where needed. Thinking like this all but ensures that the next made-for MSDNC centrist cipher will be even more feeble than Ossoff.

The real engineers of this debacle, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Tom Perez, shield themselves from any culpability. They did their part. They raised truckloads of money off of Ossoff – $24 million, a record for any congressional campaign. The long-held view from the DNC suites is that it’s fine to lose as long as you lose profitably. Those floods of cash keep the electoral-industrial complex fueled, regardless of its win-loss record. The four consecutive defeats in the special elections this spring had their programmatic upside. The tragic stories of those failed campaigns will help generate even more desperately worded fund-raising appeals from the DNC in the weeks and months to come, warning of the fascist schemes of the Trump Monster and his puppet master Vladimir Putin. Even Bernie Sanders has fallen for the scam, investing $100,000 last month from his Our Revolution account into the repositories of a party which views his political agenda (and its adherents) as an anathema. And thus the Democrats—left, right and center–sink deeper and deeper into an hypoxic doldrums of their own design.

Roaming Charges

+ The GOP has just unveiled its Unplanned Parenthood Bill, but don’t expect any food stamps to help feed your surprise baby…

+ Amid the endless ironies of the heath care saga, let us never forget that ObamaCare originated out the rightwing Heritage Foundation and the savage caps on Medicaid slated in the GOP version of its TrumpCare bill were originally proposed in 1997 by Bill Clinton and greeted with wild acclaim on the editorial pages of the New York Times.

+ Since neither ObamaCare nor TrumpCare are really about HealthCare, the fate of the bill will be determined by how its true target, the insurance lobby, feels about it. Not so great it appears

+ You know the Democratic elites are running scared when the Washington Post runs this kind of three column headline for an editorial blasting Single-Payer…

+ The first sensible thing Emmanuel Macron has said: “Assad is no enemy of France.”

Pro-Assad observers correctly point out that Macron also said that he believes Assad is the “enemy of the Syrian” people and therefore has left the door open for toppling the Baathist regime. Perhaps. Yet, it’s clear that Assad is the enemy of a great many Syrian people, as Macron is an enemy of many French people and Trump an enemy of the majority of the American people. The question is whether Assad’s relationship to the Syria people is any business of the French people and it’s refreshing rhetoric, at the very least, to hear Macron recalibrate the long-held French position on regime change in Syria.

+ Bernie Sanders said that he “couldn’t remember an American president with more authoritarian tendencies than Trump.” Really, Bernie? It’s hard to get more authoritarian than Obama killing American citizens by drone without an indictment, trial or declaration of war. Trump’s authoritarianism comes with the office.

+ The cop in the Philando Castile case did nothing right, from the traffic stop itself to the shooting of an innocent man, even so the victim is being blamed for his own homicide.

+ So you’re black and you want to be a cop? In St. Louis this week, a black off-duty cop tried to help victims in car crash, is ordered to the ground by arriving police, is eventually recognized and allowed to stand, then is shot by police in what the department called a case of “friendly fire“….

+ In the span of a week, Team Trump shot down a Syrian fighter jet, buzzed a Russian passenger jet occupied by Russia’s defense minister Sergey Shoiju and shot down an Iranian drone over Syrian airspace. I guess we can be grateful it wasn’t a passenger jet filled with Iranian civilians ala Bush I (prompting Pappy to declare “I’ll never apologize for America!”), but it sure seems like Team Trump is attacking anyone but ISIS in Syria.

+ The New York Times has catalogued a “definitive list” of Trump’s lies since taking office. It’s an impressive resumé of whoppers, libels, calumnies and falsifications. Yet it remains impossible to evaluate just how GREAT this record of fabulation is unless we are able to compare it to a similar concordance of lies by Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, LBJ, JFK, Truman, FDR, Hoover, Harding, Wilson, Taft, TR, Andrew Johnson, Jackson, Monroe, Jefferson, Adams and some of the other All Star presidential prevaricators….

+ The US used the weapon to end all wars twice and has been at war ever since…

+ Fukushima: it’s what’s for dinner (and breakfast and brunch and power lunch and those Ivanka-endorsed champagne popsicles)…

+ Apparently, Putin’s moles at Langley are all sweet tooths

+ Thanks to Democratic Party incompetence and Trump, George W. Bush now has a 59% favorability rating.

+ What’s worse than Russian hacking? How about the GOP releasing on the internet personal data on nearly 200 million American voters?

+ This week Trump appointed DC-fixer Richard Hohlt to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. For the past few years, Hohlt has toiled as Saudi Arabia’s top lobbyist on Capitol Hill. Hohlt, a registered foreign agent, was paid $430,000 to provide his sage advice to the Saudi’s on “legislative and public affairs strategies.” Trump has drained the swamp and refilled it with oil sands…

+ Truckers are America’s newest debt slaves, working 16-hour days, sleeping in their cabs, paying for their own gas, truck repairs and health care, earning pennies on the hour, totally at the mercy of their vicious creditors…

+ While they are investigating the alleged terrorist incident in the Bishop Airport, the Joint Terrorism Task Force might also look into the terrorist acts of Gov. Rick Snyder toward the good people of Flint…

+ In the latest bit of self-dealing at the expense of the poor from President Slumlord, Trump is proposing to slash billions in funding from federal housing programs for the destitute and homeless, except for those subsidies that are paid directly to private landlords, including properties owned by Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner…

+ Trump could have saved himself a lot of grief by making Flynn his Secretary of Commerce, then all of the goofy general’s nefarious deals could have been written off to the ravenous demands of global capital.

+ The racist scumbag (XXL) Newt Gingrich compared the FBI investigation into Trump to “an Indian hunting party out looking for scalps.” Of course, it was the government who put out bounties for Indian scalps (25 cents a piece)

+ By the year 2100, more than 75% of the world’s population could face killer heat waves. Don’t despair. Just call 1-800-Rick-Perry Heating and Cooling.

+ It feels good to wake up in the morning and find yourself at the top of someone’s list

+ What Nigerians think of Trump….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXYDho66Jq4

+ From Barry Seal to Navy Seals, the CIA’s history of drug running endures…

+ White Brain Rot Syndrome is now an epidemic and has leaped the border infecting Canada

+ 25 children are killed by guns in America every week. If only their parents had armed them, surely most would still be living today…

+ The decline of rock music started with the death of the cowbell, now this

+ From Barry Seal to Navy Seals, the CIA’s history of drug running endures…

+ White Brain Rot Syndrome is now an epidemic and has leaped the border infecting Canada

+ 25 children are killed by guns in America every week. If only their parents had armed them, surely most would still be living today…

+ The decline of rock music started with the death of the cowbell, now this

+ Be vigilant against the Revolution from Within, dear parents, and report all Suspicious Texting to Jefferson B. Sessions.

(Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

* * *

SPAM ATTACK

I keep getting emails from "craigstehr@gmail.com"... and have complained to Google about it, but nothing gets done. Due to Google's own screwed up system, I am unable to get an account that I may log into, while somebody else is using my name and sending me all kinds of spam.  I want assistance in contacting Google, and demand that they close "CraigStehr@gmail.com" and then, if technologically possible, give me "CraigStehr@gmail.com". It's my name...how about if I use it? Thank you very much for your help with this. P.S. I don't want advice given to me on how to accomplish this myself... obviously, I've already utilized the available routes insofar as contacting google about this problem, as instructed by their administrative website. It didn't work!

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: CraigStehr@inbox.com

 

48 Comments

  1. james marmon June 24, 2017

    You can thank our President for the tan oak being logged off of Masonite Rd. Timber prices are sky high right now, even for hardwood.

    Trump administration imposes tariff on Canadian lumber

    “WASHINGTON, D.C. – In an attempt to level the playing field for American lumber companies, the Trump administration is imposing tariffs up to 24% on Canadian lumber shipped into the U.S.

    Commerce Secretary Wilber Ross said about 31.5% of hardwood and softwood in the U.S. is imported from Canada. He added a “twenty percent tariff on that is essentially a billion dollars a year.”

    https://kobi5.com/news/trump-administration-imposes-tariff-on-canadian-lumber-51568/

    • George Hollister June 24, 2017

      James, the tan oak being logged is likely going for the local firewood market, at a cost to MRC. How that fits with the bigger picture is distant. But the AVA comment, ” –Mendocino Redwood Company is logging tan oak rather than hacking and squirting them to death with lethal chemicals.” begs the question, lethal to what? Lethal to tan oak? Yea. That said, don’t drink what is being used to kill tan oak or you could get sick or die. And don’t drink anything liquid that is in your garage or under your sink, either, unless it is sealed and labeled as something for human consumption. Most liquids around the house when consumed can be lethal.

      • james marmon June 24, 2017

        Are you denying rising demand and timber prices in America since Trump?

        • George Hollister June 24, 2017

          You’re right, but tan oak is independent from that.

          • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

            It’s all tied together, George.

            • George Hollister June 24, 2017

              Yea, like you and me.

              • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

                As usual, you evade the issue in favor of peddling nonsense.

      • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

        Just more nonsensical rambling, George. You won’t be happy until there are no trees of any kind left at all.

        And what about the pacemaker battery replacement? You say one thing, Canada says something different. I believe Canada at this time.

        https://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_lide3.pdf

        • George Hollister June 24, 2017

          I know what I know.

          • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

            Brilliant, George. You slur a health-care system that Canadians are proud of, then, when you are presented evidence that disagrees with what you peddle, you clam up, like some kid who got caught stealing from his mama’s piggy bank. Typical right-wing behavior: just keep peddling lies, no matter what.

    • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

      I’ll pass on “thanking” the clown prince and the utter morons in congress for anything. They have no sense at all and are ruled by moneyed interests, the public interest be damned. What happens when what prime timber remains is gone? Only fools perceive a revival of the “good ol’ daze”.

      • George Hollister June 24, 2017

        Timber growth has exceeded cut for a long time, at least for the last 30 years. What has been sustained much longer, for the last 150 years, is the attitude that there is no future. But what was prime timber then, is not prime timber today. And there is nothing wrong with that. The wood products that are produced today, like plywood, have superior qualities to anything that was produced 150 years ago. Wood from cultivated, plantation trees is also of excellent quality. Mendocino County, and California are way behind the curve on this. We could start with pruning young trees. But we are a long way from even that. We are mostly stuck with a hunter gatherer mindset. It is a mindset that is hard to change. Give it time.

        What we have today is not perfect. In the current market, we are likely to see lesser quality lumber moving into the market. So beware. In 2010, shortly after the last housing collapse, the quality of the lumber and plywood available at the store was the best I have seen in my life. Very reasonably priced, too. I don’t think we will see that again.

        • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

          What, second, or third, or fourth growth? Dream on, little fantasy crazed “woodsman”. The wood offered for sale today, and for years, is mostly inferior, warped and useless, thanks to timber harvest practices of fascist dominionists like you. That’s why there’s so much use of that crap made from scraps glued together under pressure.

  2. Jim Updegraff June 24, 2017

    MLB: Mets 11 Giants 4 – a sorry, sorry game. Blach gave up 6 ER in the 3rd inning and 7 ER for the 3 innings he pitched. Giants bats were ineffective with 4 runs on 8 hits.. One more step towards a 100 loss season.
    A’s 3 White Sox 0. Cotton got the win with support from 4 relief pitchers – a shut out win. A couple of homers did the job for the A’s.

    • George Hollister June 24, 2017

      Sorry game? Boy, it sure was. Pathetic. On a brighter note, though; Mike Krukow is good.

      He is the best baseball color guy I have heard. But there are health issues and he won’t always be there. At some point it looks like he will have to retire. A few nights ago the Giants were playing someone, and likely losing, when the opponent was up with one out, with a runner on first when Mike said the situation set up a strike em out, throw em out double play. That is exactly what happened. To the casual observer, that was an amazingly good call.

      Mike Krukow is smart, talented, and a good guy. He does not demean players, even when their talents are lacking, though he often says things in indirect ways. When Hunter Pence first was with the Giants, Krukow’s comment on Pence’s batting style was, “There is nothing conventional about that swing.” Smart to say that, Pence has talent, even though at first glance you might not see it.

      Mike Krukow, your good. And thanks for being there.

      • Bruce Anderson June 24, 2017

        Krukow is awful. Too much of a homer, and he talks wayyyyyy too much. John Miller is often very funny, and far more articulate,

        Bay Area sports fans being the homers they are, and the Giants playing as awfully as they are, this is a great time to go to the ballpark. Ticket prices are like they were in the old Candlestick days, and major league baseball, win or lose, is wonderful, with guys making amazing plays.

        Speaking of sports, and just saying, looks to me like some obvious steroid cases on the NBA courts these days, LaBron being the most obvious.

    • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

      “Another stupid high school drop out like me”. You said it, ma’am, not me.

      Something to be proud of, eh? College isn’t worth it if all a person gives a damn about is making big gobs of money. That’s fairly easy, especially with a good inheritance or a little luck. There are other things far more important for a lot of us.

      • LouisBedrock June 24, 2017

        I don’t like Grace but was wrong to criticize her for dropping out of school.

        Many great artists and writers have been dropouts: Dylan Thomas, Joseph Conrad, and Jack London are but three examples.

        However, I am not impressed by grifters who get rich by schemes. Nor by people who are proud of their ignorance.

      • BB Grace June 24, 2017

        If you recall Mr. Reading, my quest was not for profit rather for prophet. Dropping out was the right thing for me to do because all I had going in Intermediate school, besides babysitting which afforded me the opportunity to move on, was setting AAU state track and swimming records. And I didn’t care about winning those either. I’d rather be surfing living life.

        I did get a GED mailed to me when I blew the whistle on a perv teacher. And I achieved an AA and a BFA at the University Southwestern Louisiana after starting in their remedial education classes. Also I worked three jobs to pay my way, never took less than 17 hours, taking 21 my final semester. And yes, I am listed on the National Dean’s list, thanks to copy editors I paid to help me with English, professors who appreciated my efforts of also being the Commuter Student Representative on Student Government Association, establishing a popular and profitable “cup campaign” for the Union Program Council, where I was on the Entertainment Committee (bringing Cheap Trick, and Jonny Van Zant to campus), and on the Speakers Committee (where I brought F. Lee Bailey to campus). And I didn’t do any of it for profit. I’ve always been a volunteer until I quit the Guest House, but I’ll find something worthy. I believe in volunteerism. Money doesn’t motivate me. Fantastic life experiences motivate me. Was the education worth it? For my self esteem being I am a Junior High School drop out facing the public school nazis like you and Mr. Bedrock. Other than that? NO!

        When the Coast was talking about alternative money, the Ron Paul rEVOLution was all over BitCoin, which began by get this, investing in by subscribing to online communities that uphold freedom of speech, so the idea of bitcoin could be promoted and explained, which MSM and their associates won’t do.

        • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

          Well, good on you. The why did you post what you did in the first place? If it was a quote from someone else, there was nothing to indicate that it was, hence my response to it.

          I agree, to a point, with Louis but have known far too many who were simply lazy and proud of their ignorance, to the extent of taking every opportunity to show it off, to have a great deal of sympathy for them. I have also known others who pretended to have “made it” all on their own, conveniently forgetting that mommy and daddy were extremely wealthy and financed them. I worked to pay for my college; it wasn’t something handed me on a silver platter.

          • LouisBedrock June 24, 2017

            Grace is an ignoramus.
            But she’s a self-made ignoramus.

            • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

              Praise Allah, may His blessing be upon her. May He protect and care for her, ever guiding her toward the pathway that leads to truth. George, on the other hand…

            • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

              In other words, you expect the rest of us automatically to be able to understand your special code? Perhaps through mental telepathy? I haven’t that talent. I just reads ’em as they’re written.

  3. Alice Chouteau June 24, 2017

    Thanks for running two excellent write ups about the homeless problems in Fort Bragg, and the failure of the HC/HH to fulfill their legal and moral obligations, while increasingly damaging the town. The City gov must launch a thorough investigation of how the CDBG funds were used, and enforce the nuisance clause. These facilities do not belong in town. The CC needs to regain their full powers from non-elected Staff. Ruffing has few if any friends left among the general public, so she sides with this group. But only a year ago, Jan 2016, she is quoted in the Advocate, stating that although the City had used staff emembers to obtain “tens of millions of dollars” for for organizations like HC, ” the safety net, the social services that help homeless people, that’s not the City’s responsibility.” Apparently she still believes this hogwash. We hope her contract will not be renewed.

    • james marmon June 24, 2017

      Alice, I agree with you 100% about the location of this facility and have since the start, but you can’t leave RQMC out of this conversation. If all those homeless are mentally ill, why hasn’t the Schraeders taken any of them off the streets? They have been in business there for 18 months now since Sonya Nesch, Sheriff ‘cry baby’ Allman and Bruce ‘the oracle’ Anderson ran Ortner out of town. RQMC was the big fix, remember?

      Answer this for me, did things get better after Ortner left?

      RQMC is billing for all those people.

      • BB Grace June 24, 2017

        ” why hasn’t the Schraeders taken any of them off the streets?”

        Because they are legal medical marijuana users.. There’s been several letters by a Richard who writes to the AVA saying he and others are being denied services for being medical marijuana users. I think those who are on drugs are not housed, which is why the housing first became an issue, like Stepping Up.. 23 Billion dollars and Mendocino has NO part, but exactly the opposite.. Stepping Up is closing jails for Mental Ill and Allman wants to tax the people who would flee if they could get their house/ business on market to build a jail for mentally ill.

        • james marmon June 24, 2017

          I doubt if there’s very many legal medical marijuana users out there, most of them smoke for recreation. Richard is an exception but he is not a mental health client so they can’t bill for him. He suffers from a traumatic brain injury. Richard is non-billable.

  4. Jim Updegraff June 24, 2017

    I don’t think Mike Krukow with his illness will be around too much longer. He will be very hard to replace.

  5. George Hollister June 24, 2017

    “WHAT WE couldn’t help but notice in our interns was their lack of elementary composition skills. It’s clear that the basics aren’t being taught. These are all smart kids who only had to be corrected once, but nobody at school had done it.”

    This is not new, just worse. When I was at Berkeley in the mid 1970s, my impression was that most students there could not write. It was the time of “creative writing” in high school. Now, it’s anything goes. Public schools appear more concerned with avoiding hurting feelings than teaching effective writing skills.

    The good part is people that want to learn to write can do this almost anytime. Less true with math.

    • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

      When teachers are forced to “teach to” standardized tests, all you can really expect of kids is that they know about multiple-choice tests, written by middle-class white people.

      The U.S. education systems, public and private, never were all that great to begin with–wishful thinking among some aside–hence our consistent low standing in education in comparison with other developed countries, which was as true before the sixties as after them. The main functions, outside of “teaching to the test” are to coerce kids into obeying authority without question, “work ethics” to ensure they become properly obeisant to bosses, bell systems to ensure promptness in obeying authority, and national creation myths along with myths of “our greatness” in place of history, often taught by semi-literate sports coaches who know nothing of the subject. Squeezed in are some pretty good math and science classes, but the time devoted to these is limited, given that doing well on “the test” (to ensure funding) and regimentation are the priorities laid down by school administrations. It’s no wonder that kids are bored in the classroom and “misbehave”, ensuring that they will be put on drugs to keep them quiet, and “manageable”, all the hooey in the DSM aside.

      Those who do well on the standardized tests, and can afford it, are then sent on to higher education institutions, where most of what they learned at primary and secondary levels is erased and replaced with information that more closely approximates the truth. For the others, it’s the work place, should they be fortunate enough to find a slot, and a life lived in ignorance, except for those who, for whatever reason(s) choose to educate themselves, sometimes with good results, but very often not. Their formal education has come to an end.

      There is little time for teachers to give instruction in composition and development of writing skills, since, as stated previously, the valuable time of the teachers is limited and teaching with the “goal” of scoring high on the standardized tests is the highest priority handed them by dimwit administrators, on order of the powers that be in any particular school district. Yet, who does society blame? Teachers, naturally. That’s what we’re “taught” by the nooze media, a bad drug that has most of us hooked.

      And George, private schools are NO BETTER, so take your charter schools and stuff them where the sun don’t shine.

      • Harvey Reading June 24, 2017

        By the way George, when you were “at Berkeley in the mid 70s” were you there as a student, or as a visitor?

      • Bruce McEwen June 24, 2017

        C’mon, Harv. You’ve been in California schools — in your day the envy of the nation — enough to know, it’s a laid-back daycare. However, should you show some of that rare initiative George Hollister W. Bush calls Freedom (I think you and I would identify it as rebellion), then the teachers dote on you like a nestegg…

        But if you don’t give a damn, I’ll send you to the nurse for Ritalin, (damn brat!)”

        “Yet who does the society blame?”

        Teacher teacher teacher!

        Pupils? Students? Scholars?

        A lot of ’em don’t want to hear it. They drop out, find their own way. Do they come back to haunt you? Is that why you reject ’em?

        • Harvey Reading June 25, 2017

          I graduated from high school in ’68, in rural Calaveras County. It was hardly a “laid-back daycare” situation. It was more like an authoritarian, “do not show any initiative, sit back and listen to what I say situation”. No doting. And no nurse.

          I disagree with your assessment of Hollister. His is not initiative nor is it rebellion, but is reaction and a desire to return to a nonexistent past, a “past” where he alone calls the shots for everyone else.

          The entire time I was in elementary and high schools, classes were overcrowded and schools were underfunded. The unified-district high school (one of a total of two high schools in the county) wasn’t even accredited by UC until a couple or three years before I entered as a freshman. Envy of the nation? Maybe a few of the schools in wealthy suburban and urban areas fit that description then. Even then, though, we knew that the country as a whole was far behind the rest of the developed world in primary and secondary educational accomplishments.

          The drugs became common years after I had graduated, as years of underfunding and neglect continued, and in many cases worsened, the overcrowding. That was fortunate for me, because I would surely have been put on drugs for my elementary school behavior (rebellion as you put it), and why I am opposed to their use and will remain so as long as I retain a certain level of sentience.

          Not sure to whom you are referring in your last paragraph, so will pass on commenting on it.

  6. james marmon June 24, 2017

    One of my favorite memories

    (1977)

    Logging “virgin redwoods trees” out behind the little red school house at James Creek. Danny Kuny and his dad Fritz from Booneville were our choppers. My dad and I had to split a lot of the butt cuts just to get them loaded onto trucks. That was the end of an era.

    • George Hollister June 24, 2017

      It was the end of that era, but not the end of the era of wood being a valuable raw material.

      • Bruce McEwen June 24, 2017

        Craig Stehr will be glad to hear that there’s no need for concern, I’m sure. He’s been meditating so strenuously to stop ecological devastation that he was in danger of a double hernia.

  7. ERMA June 24, 2017

    Here’s an idea for Craig Stehr, whose AVA submissions I prize: start a new Google e-mail account with the name RealCraigStehr@gmail.com.

  8. Scott Peterson June 24, 2017

    Re: COAST HOSPITAL NEEDS A HEARING AID

    I’ve been following a string of irregularities at MCDH over the last 3-4 years, and have tried my level best to report them here and elsewhere. Nothing makes sense unless you consider the possibility that MCDH is being slow-walked into closure. That outcome is so politically toxic, that nobody wants to own it. So they engage in bipolar behavior, i.e., talking about making it better, yet acting to make it worse.

    The elephant in the room is a lack of funding, and everybody knows it. Normal wear-and-tear now runs $2 million+ a year, and that figure is climbing. The so-called Hospital Foundation runs a once-a-year bender that’s never grossed more than a million dollars. Two-thirds of that money is somehow expensed. Nice work if you can get it. That’s not the Foundation’s fault — it’s the Hospital’s fault for not charging them $2 million a year for the endorsement. That’s not possible because the trustees of both organizations are hopelessly intertwined.

    Closing MCDH isn’t really the problem to me, but the pace sure is. Two studies by Harvard & Stanford from 2011 and 2013 showed that Critical Access Hospitals are dangerous places to be admitted. The ‘excess’ mortality rate for COPD patients is 10 per 1,000 for the _average_ CAH. MCDH is below average, so God knows how many ‘excess’ people have died here already, and how many more will die before it’s finally closed.

    I spoke with a former MCDH trustee about this recently. They weren’t aware of either study, and showed no interest in them. Instead, they appeared to be obsessed with the loss of employment over a hospital closure. Suggesting to me that more employment is a fair trade for ‘excess’ deaths for those in charge there today. But the public needs to be told just that so they can make ‘informed consent’ before being admitted. Sweeping it under the rug just amplifies the problem.

    Sincerely,

    Scott M. Peterson
    Mendocino

  9. Scott Peterson June 24, 2017

    Re: FORT BRAGG IS FED UP

    Fort Bragg residents should petition the Mendocino County Grand Jury to investigate Fort Bragg City funding to the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center, particularly the gifting of the Old Coast Hotel property to a Political Action Committee run by wealthy Mendocino Republicans who serve nobody but themselves:

    https://tinyurl.com/y9fnb58o

    Sincerely,

    Scott M. Peterson
    Mendocino

  10. Bruce McEwen June 24, 2017

    As to the comments by Some Noise, I think this blogger suffers from dyslexia, and we can detect a clue if we check the definition of noisome:

    Something noisome is disgusting, offensive, or harmful, often in its smell. Noisome does not come from “noise,” but from the Middle English word noysome, which has the same meaning as noisome. The noy of noisome means “annoyance,”

    Having ascertained a gloss of the term in its antitheses, let us proceed to the theories presented in our Some Noise bloger’s thesis: That the wine industry has a legitimate complaint in that they have been libeled by the local newspaper.

    Consider the evidence:

    A long-accepted truism in Northern California, is that the wine industry — ah! is that too harsh a term? Lemme rephrase–: that winegrowers (is that better?), are somehow princely entities, at the zenith of the local ascendancy scale, and therefore above reproach.

    This ersatz Truth hath been on the tongues of flatterers for so long — and I speak here of the Press Democrat, expressly, though I don’t wish to exclude or slight all those slavish sycophants who perpetuate this regional propaganda in more subtle ways — without delving into the subsidiary legions of ass-kissers, who reinforce the notion.

    It’s been going on so long that the winegrowers have come to believe their flatterers, which is to say their own propaganda, to the point that even the slightest criticism comes off as — well, let’s face it, and call it what these holier-than-thou mortals call, not blasphemy, for that would suggest religion, but the modern equivalent: Libel.

    As Epictetus points out: “Whenever religion and treasure are not the same, religion will be sacrificed.”

    In such a secular society as Anderson Valley, you may well wonder why I would mention religion. And if you did I would refer you back to the fact that science actually is our religion; and hence, to the sophistry, dissembling, and well, the blatant goddamned impudence of denying that their profits are detrimental to the local environment (Which, under the tenants of Holy Science = God.) is it not blasphemy?

    Gaia, as She is more commonly called hereabouts, will no doubt punish these heretics. What drives their lordships to quibble with the lowly fourth estate, is the fear that some of our “libels” will be used against them in that final judgment — not the Valley of Jehosephat — but in a court of law.

    • Marco McClean June 24, 2017

      I remember my grandfather used to say when he read or heard about something he didn’t like: “The hell with /that/ noise.”

  11. Jim Updegraff June 24, 2017

    George Fox University is an Evangelical Quaker college that has had quite an up roar over its LGBT policies, Shake up of the Board-newspaper and radio discussions – students suspended or expelled.

  12. Jim Updegraff June 24, 2017

    I agree with the comments about links.

  13. Jim Updegraff June 24, 2017

    When I get a chance I will discuss the difference between Territorial Zionists and Spiritual Zionists on the Palestine question.

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