Press "Enter" to skip to content

Off the Record (May 9, 2018)

AN EXTORTIONATE threat from a young, homegrown lawyer to balkanize Fort Bragg to achieve ethnic electoral balance, inspired a nice bit of well-deserved satire by the much read Facebook page called MendocinoSportsPlus. Predictably, the reading impaired sectors of the Appropriate Police denounced the satire as “homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, etc……”  Etc? (Like a catechism?) The upshot? Sensitivity training for Fort Bragg City Hall staff and the vilification of the town clerk for the crime of commenting “inappropriately” on the satire.

THIS ATTEMPT to shakedown Fort Bragg reminds me of that Jack Silver character out of a phony West Sonoma County environmental organization consisting of Silver and his immediate relatives. Silver has become a multi-millionaire by going around NorCal suing and threatening to sue municipalities for minor violations of the Clean Water Act, violations typically in the process of being remediated. Silver says, "Pay me and I won't sue.” The rare public entities who have resisted him have had to spend many thousands defending themselves, and many have chosen not to spend the money to do it, figuring it's cheaper to pay him off than going to court with the guy.

WILL FORT BRAGG reorganize their small town into electoral districts, which is preposterous to consider on the face of it given the town's size,  to avoid bogus litigation? I hope not, but FB has already allocated 8 thou to study the issue. Given the litigious tenor of the times, not to mention the many criminals with law degrees roaming the land, the FB City Council will probably roll over, and this Patterson kid will get himself a big pay day.

Roberts, Patterson

PATTERSON'S MOM, not so incidentally, is running for the FB City Council, or planning to run. It might help her candidacy to call off her kid's suit. A family shake down of the city doesn't seem like much in the way of a vote getter. In fact it seems downright inappropriate.

WHY NOT SIC Sonny Boy to sue Mendocino County or Ukiah or Willits or even Anderson Valley where there are many more non-English-speaking immigrants than there are proportionately in Fort Bragg with zero Hispanic representation on any of their public bodies. Anyway, so what? Can anyone cite so much as a single case of race-based persecution of any ethnic in Mendocino County over the past forty years?

YES, I CAN, but it only happened once, and that was in Ukiah what? thirty years ago ?when a pair of crumb bum city cops were caught rolling Mexican drunks. Who were the crooked cops caught by? Other cops.

MILLIONS OF AMERICANS hate media, especially the corporate sectors of the media, and a perfect example of why the media are hated was the recent White House Correspondent's Dinner.  First off, the White House correspondents are synonymous with "reporting" from the prone position, and are the last people who should be celebrating their own craven performances. Remember Helen Thomas? The old lady who would get up and ask real questions until she was falsely accused of anti-Semitism and forced out? In generations of White House correspondents she was the only one who consistently asked the tough questions.

SO, there they were, the whole lickspittle mob with an alleged comedian they'd paid somewhere north of twenty grand to insult Trump. But Trump wasn't there, and he's insult-proof anyway. His spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was there, so she got the ugliest ration of full-blast personal insults by proxy simply for doing her job most of us have ever seen, the same job many male spokesman-liars have done for many presidents long before Huckabee and Trump. So it's somehow okay to make fun of Huckabee's appearance, to compare her to the most awful character in The Handmaid’s Tale? (A novel few of the millionaire "journalists" will have read.)

A WILLITS READER sends along "Commercial Listings," an advertisement from the Willits Weekly, with a note saying, "80% of the town's new businesses fail within two years." Seems kinda high, but there's an awful lot of commercial space in Willits relative to the size of its small population.

BALLOT GUIDES arrived last week with no candidate statements from Democratic front-runners for governor Gavin Newsom, Antonio Villaraigosa and John Chiang. I think the reason is that none of the three wants to be bound by the fundraising limits demanded by conventional state election rules. These three are beneficiaries of huge amounts of money routed to them by private interests. Newsome gets bushels of cash from the Billery-Democratic Party machine, Chiang gets lots and lots from Asian business and social groups and Villaraigosa is backed by Mexican-American dough and this or that special interest, especially the Charter School lobby. You and me, brothers and sisters, as usual, don't have a candidate for Governor.

NOBODY CAN SAY there's an apathetic lack of interest in the 5th District Supe's race. I can't remember as many candidate's events as there are this election. And even up there in the outlaw regions of northeastern Mendo there have been several candidate nights. From here, the 5th District looks like a run-off between Roderick and Williams, with Chris Skyhawk running a strong third, Juhl a longshot, Rodier even a longer shot. But candidate Juhl, I’d say, has the best sense of the County’s managerial dysfunction: “My short comment for the day is why are we paying for a needs assessment for Measure B? We have a director that earns a lot of money so she should be able to know what is needed, or why pay her! We have to stop wasting money on issues that our county people should solve, or get qualified people that can! Accountability has been the issue in my campaign. If one does not pay attention the waste will continue until the county is really broke! “

IN THE THIRD DISTRICT, the Democratic Party-style lib-labs seem massed behind the blandly platitudinous Haschak with Pinches, as always, running strong across the political spectrum, right to left. Our Willits sources say that Mike Horger, a popular Pinches-like guy, and Shawna  Jeavons, a Willits school teacher, are running surprisingly strong. Our informant says he also thought Suzy Barsotti of Laytonville and Tony Tucker of Covelo have “presented well” at recent candidate’s events. Pinches may not be a shoo-in this time around.

SPEAKING OF ELECTIONS, when and wherever you see an endorsement from the Operating Engineers that endorsement is the work of Joe Not So Wildman. Ditto for an endorsement from Not So's employer, the SEIU. Joe jumped the gun this time around when he had the Operating Engineers endorsing Chris Skyhawk only to have the union's headquarters inform us they haven't endorsed anyone for Supervisor. "Endorse who? Where?" And if I were a line worker for the County of Mendocino I'd be real unhappy about paying dues for Wildman's representation, given the lowly wages paid me. Wildman is a professional Democrat. The Operating Engineers and SEIU (except for nurses) are an extension of the Billery wing of the Party, a party pretty much gone over to Bernie, leaving Wildman as a Smithsonian-quality liberal of the type that managed to get Trump elected.

WE HAVE NOT HEARD from Mendo’s consulting code enforcement officer, retired Ukiah cop Trent Taylor, in a while. When he last appeared before the Supervisors a few months ago he grudgingly agreed to help whoever the County picked as Pot Czar to “streamline” the pot permit process. So far we have not heard of a single specific improvement in the contorted process from either Taylor or newly hired Pot Czar Kelly Overton other than vague stuff like social media outreach and cutting edge management techniques like two lines at the permit application counter where there used to be one.

FLOW KANA, the mega-pot operation in Redwood Valley is not doing well. They've already tried to re-finance their expensive property purchased for big bucks from the Fetzer family, but they're short on product, much of which so far has come from growers in Southern Humboldt. Because Mendo’s pot rules are so costly and burdensome, many Mendo growers are either taking their chances in the black market or they’re stuck in permit limbo waiting for the County or one of the several state bureaucracies to finish processing their permit application. Flow Kana won’t take your pot unless you’re fully legal at the County and state level and enrolled in the even more burdensome track and trace system.

MENDOCINO COUNTY'S Most Interesting Man, Mike Sweeney, was recently spotted at the Westside Ukiah home of his girlfriend, retired Press Democrat reporter Glenda Anderson. Sweeney, retired from the County job he created for himself as Mendocino County's lushly compensated lead trash bureaucrat, is just back from a sojourn in New Zealand. He's also the architect of the proposed Taj Trash Transfer Station proposed for Highway 20, although Fort Bragg has a large-capacity transfer station owned by WMI on Pudding Creek.

THE FBI itself said in 1991 what everyone in and outside law enforcement knows — the men closest to an injured or murdered woman are always considered the primary suspects. But the FBI magically excluded ex-hubbykins Sweeney from the Bari Bombing suspect pool and, a few years later, declared their investigation of the bombing over "because no one will talk to us."

NOR DID THE FBI test the famous Lord's Avenger Letter, the Bari bomber's confession, for DNA. (Or they did test and sprinted away from the results.) We long ago concluded that Sweeney, the one and only suspect in the attempt on his ex-wife's life, was and is protected by the FBI because he probably worked with them as an informant for many years, all the way back to his college days with a campus Maoist group involved in multiple bombings, and at least one murder of a police officer. That's the only explanation for his unique exemption for the suspect pool in the car bombing of his ex.

IF SWEENEY wasn't affiliated with the FBI they would have arrested him years ago, especially considering they had in their possession the DNA evidence that could have led to the solving of the case. That confirming evidence now rests with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. It doesn't seem to have occurred to the Rose City daily that they are sitting on a major story. Back up a little: We assume the Lord's Avenger Letter is stuck away in the newspaper's archive. Given that Sweeney's girlfriend, Glenda Anderson, worked for the paper and had unquestioned access to the paper's archive…

BTW, SWEENEY'S primary in-County defender has always been Supervisor John McCowen, whose ramshackle building at 106 West Standley, Ukiah, once served as free office space for both Bari and Sweeney. We think that dreary space, still lent to recumbent "activists" as the Mendocino Environment Center, was leased to the FBI during the Redwood Summer period as the fed's listening post, much as the FBI set up phony activist offices in black ghettos in the 60's and 70's to monitor radicals.

IF POLICE can round up that murderous Citrus Heights psycho after 50 years looking for him, why can't a much simpler case like the Bari Bombing, with confirming DNA available in Santa Rosa (presumably), not to mention whatever's stashed at FBI headquarters, why can't we at last know Who Bombed Judi Bari?

REMEMBER that Ukiah guy arrested for molesting an infant? The guy whose wife (or girlfriend) said her nanny cam caught him in the act? So, what happened? If he was found not guilty of the charges we oughta know about it, especially given this is just about the most abhorrent crime a man can be charged with.

DA SPOKESMAN, Mike Geniella, brings us up to date: “Records show that Boughton is San Quentin bound. He entered no contest pleas on Dec. 22 to two felony counts of lewd or lascivious conduct with a child. He was sentenced March 6 to five years in state prison by Judge Ann Moorman. Boughton was ordered to stand trial following a preliminary hearing in November. The prosecutor was Deputy DA Elizabeth Norman.”

MENDO’S HELPING PROS at Health & Human Services have received a $2 million five-year grant for “Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, Specifically for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.”  Now that they have the additional $2 million we are confident that Mendo’s many substance abuse walking wounded will finally get the help they need.  Oops! The money’s for “administration,” and they’ve had the dough for six months already and they’re only now getting around to setting up the budget unit for it. Look for the two mil to be handed over to Redwood Quality Management Services where it will become invisible to the general public.

COSTCO, UKIAH, is scheduled to open on July 12th. Meanwhile, Ghilotti Construction out of San Rafael and Santa Rosa, is furiously revamping the Highway 101 off and on ramps and other roads along Big Box Row necessary to accommodate the anticipated mobs of shoppers.

THIS LEGAL NAME CHANGE AD appears in the May 4th edition of the Independent Coast Observer: "Petitioner Pamela Renee Markham for change of name to Pamela Renee Heston." Married at the time to a Lake County lawyer who has since been elevated to the Lake County Superior Court, Mrs. Markham was working as Mendocino County's chief probation officer when she began a torrid office romance, so torrid it was apparently consummated on her office desk during work hours. These in-house boffs apparently upset workplace functioning. There were complaints, and an absurdly lengthy and costly legal process commenced overseen, kind of, by the Superior Court until, finally, Mrs. Markham was fired.

OVERHEARD at PeeWee baseball (5-6 year olds): "Coach, can I go home. I'm not having any fun." All the little guys want to wear the catcher's gear, which they call "armor." Must be the Star Wars influence.

ENCOUNTERS. I'm in the checkout line at Sprout's, a San Rafael market specializing in fresh produce. My cart contains a package of licorice. (I'm a three sticks a day man.) A voice from behind me says, "Licorice isn't good for you." I think for a minute on how to reply to this busybody. I turn to see a mildly obese woman of 70 or so, a person whose visual presents the very picture of unfitness. "Not if you eat the whole package at one time," I say, assuming she won't laugh. Sure enough, she says, "That's even worse."

SITTING IN MY CAR in front of Safeway while my wife re-supplies us with more negative food value items, a street person pulling a medium-size dog on a rope approaches. Her Giant's cap is pulled so far down over her head she has to peer up at me, and I'm seated. I assume I'm in the presence of a tweaker. She's maybe 50, maybe 20. Hard to tell with drug people. "Can you help me with some food for my dog?" she asks. As I pull a dollar from my pocket, an emaciated claw simultaneously reaches through my window and snatches the bill. She grabbed the money so fast I'm a little startled. "Dog food is expensive, sir. Can you spare maybe another dollar?" I'm tapped out today, I tell her, which I am, having already been hit up by two other mendicants. Marin has a reputation as an island of privilege, but the legions of the lost are plentiful enough here, too. She walks off. "Thank you," I say to her back, as I wonder how it went so terribly wrong with her that she is the way she is.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

What is impossible to deny is the astonishing intellectual collapse which has been in train for at least the last fifty-five or sixty years. It has either got markedly worse in the last few years or I am just more sensitive to it. This is affecting what used to be called thinking people and includes, obviously, academia, the media and most of those on social media. I suppose earlier collapses had their intellectual counterpart. It is a psychological condition involving a huge ‘meta-fantasy’ which we can call political correctness within which an array of different but connected mass fantasies are playing out. There is a permanent level of public hysteria, which blows up into full-blown insanity at regular intervals, damaging all institutions including justice. These fantasies can be easily demonstrated but it is very difficult to persuade people to look at the evidence, of which there are mountains.

One Comment

  1. Paul McCarthy May 9, 2018

    The Facebook satire site is the “The Mendocino Bacon” not Mendocinosportsplus…

Leave a Reply to Paul McCarthy Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

-