Vote NO on Measure O

I still remember how much you disappointed me, Humboldt County, when you voted for Measure Z the first time around. What a ripoff that was! Schemy SoHum dope yuppies got their puppet, Estelle Fennell to craft a ballot measure that would sucker gullible NoHum liberals into voting to make Eureka, Arcata, Fortuna and McKinleyville retailers, not to mention Humboldt’s working poor, pay for forty new Sheriff’s Deputies to act as bouncers and security guards for the phony businesses in Garberville that launder their drug money. That diabolically sleazy maneuver took Chutzpah, but that’s how SoHum’s dope yuppies decided to flex their political muscle.

You fell for it hook line and sinker, Humboldt County. Do you feel safer? Are there less drugs on the street? Have they eradicated the homeless? No! We have more violent crime, more murder, and more drugs, and the housing crisis has only gotten worse since Measure Z passed, but now law enforcement has gotten hooked on this money that we never should have given them in the first place.

If I told you that the solution to your affordable housing crisis, drug epidemic and general social dysfunction was to recruit high-school seniors ranked near the middle of their class, give them firearms training, lots of weapons, bullet-proof body armor and a license to kill, and then send them out to look for trouble in your neighborhood, you’d say I was stupid and crazy, but when Estelle Fennell calls it a “public safety initiative” somehow it seems like a good idea to you. You’ve heard the old saying: “If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”? Well, what do you think every problem looks like if your only tool is a gun? Remember this the next time they tell you that more cops is the solution to anything.

I saw Sheriff Honsel and DA Flemming out begging you to vote for Measure O. They can’t tell you that they’ve accomplished anything with the millions of dollars that Measure Z dumped in their laps. All they can say is that they can’t live without it. What could they say? Could they say “Without Measure O we will be able to arrest, prosecute and convict even fewer of the murderers responsible for the many unsolved homicides in Humboldt County.” Is that even possible? As far as I remember, nothin’ from nothin’ still leaves nothin.’

In reality, This sales tax, Measure Z turned Measure O, was never about “public safety.” This little trip to OZ was a vicious and regressive tax scheme designed to make the poor pay for their own brutal oppression. If you recall, Measure Z was part of a strategic offensive conducted by the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors to drive poor people out of the county with a campaign of violence and harassment carried out by a small army of new cops. While encouraging voters to pass Measure Z, the Board of Supervisors also passed a number of cruel, draconian, and ultimately unconstitutional county ordinances designed to criminalize poverty.

One of these ordinances prohibits sleeping in Humboldt County unless you own a home here. Another prohibits people from asking for help. Measure Z was supposed to pay extra cops to enforce these stupid, cruel and unconstitutional county laws. Since then, these laws have proven unenforceable. Instead they have attracted expensive lawsuits that challenge their constitutionality, so now we pay cops not to enforce them, while we pay lawyers to defend them in court.

I think it’s funny that Measure Z, designed by pot farmers and business retailers in SoHum, to drive poor people out of Humboldt County, will now, as Measure O, just make Humboldt County a more expensive, and even less competitive place to buy and sell cannabis, or anything else for that matter. Now Measure O will make the pot farmers and retailers poor so they can see how much they like it. What goes around comes around, and it don’t get any more round than Measure O.

Bad people voted for Measure Z because they are bad people. We have more than our share of them here in Humboldt County, but too many good people voted for Measure Z because they were stupid and gullible and got hypnotized by the words “public safety.” In the spirit of civic responsibility and selfless generosity, they voted for Measure Z, which, much to their chagrin, then unleashed a wave of government sanctioned violence against the poor in Humboldt County. Don’t fall for that bullshit again! When politicians tell you that they are doing something because of “public safety,” you should know that they intend to screw you.

Politicians don’t give a fuck about “public safety.” “Public safety” is a fig leaf that politicians use to cover up something ugly. They passed Jim Crow laws for “public safety.” They made cannabis illegal for “public safety.” Mandatory minimum sentences and Rockefeller Drug Laws were all about “public safety,” and they always use “public safety” as the reason to violate your civil rights whenever you get mad enough about something to go out and protest. In political double-speak, “public safety” really means “police state.” A vote for Measure O is a vote for endless war against the poor, and endless subsidy for SoHum dope yuppies. It’s a vote for violence, oppression and economic apartheid, not to mention, the economic ruin of Humboldt County. You can’t afford to make the same mistake twice, Humboldt County. Please vote NO on Measure O.

The Hum Co Human Rights Commission’s Annual Report

I heard Daniel Mintz’s story about the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission’s annual report, on KMUD last night. In the story, we heard HRC Chairman Jim Glover tell us that they are listening to Southern Humboldt. Of course, he didn’t tell us what he heard from Southern Humboldt. He just said that they held a meeting down here, and that at least 30 people showed up for it. He didn’t give any indication as to why they had a special meeting down here, and why 30+ people in Southern Humboldt showed up to that HRC meeting on Superbowl Sunday.

He didn’t mention the epidemic of violence against poor and homeless people in Southern Humboldt. He didn’t talk about the people who were beaten with baseball bats on the streets of Garberville. He didn’t mention the gang of vigilantes who attacked homeless people on public land, claiming that they worked with the Sheriff’s Department. He didn’t mention any of the human rights abuses that people in Southern Humboldt complained to them about. In fact, he managed to get through the whole report without discussing any human rights violations anywhere in the county, but he wants us to know that the HRC is listening, and that they want to learn more.

In fact, Nezzie Wade was so enraged by how Jim Glover handled those original complaints from Southern Humboldt that she resigned from the HRC in disgust. A lot of people in Southern Humboldt were pissed about it too, and that’s why so many people turned out at the special HRC meeting on Superbowl Sunday. Many people feel that Jim Glover betrayed them, by taking those reports to 2^nd District Supervisor, Estelle Fennell, who in turn, informed the alleged perpetrators about them.

Nezzie Wade felt that Jim Glover betrayed the HRC by not forwarding those complaints to the HRC Secretary, thus preventing other commissioners from seeing them, discussing them or acting on them. Here’s how she put it in her resignation letter:

“It was in relationship to the message line calls and email communications retrieved by a commissioner acting as the courier for the commission, that I became extremely inflamed over the course of two consecutive meeting (October and November) in which the reports “>and communications sent to the commission describing instances of vigilante violence in Southern Humboldt reported to the commission via the phone line and email were not revealed to the commission in a way that allowed the grave situations described in these communications to be disclosed to the commission. A violation of privacy and confidentiality occurred when the commissioner acted upon the information in the communications without authority from the originators or the commission, by disclosing the names of complainants and their issues to parties outside of the commission thus compromising the investigation and the ethical standing of the commission in the community. A real travesty occurred when the actual situations of violence were minimized and reported in their entirety as “possible vigilante activity” rather than actual occurrences with the documentation. The standard forms for intake on the message line were never submitted to the secretary nor email declarations of the victims of vigilante violence as clarified when I requested copies of them from the secretary, received no response prior to the November meeting, and was informed by the secretary that the commission did not have them; thus, no one had access to the information except the commissioner acting as courier at that point, nearly two months beyond the initial reports. It was in this context that I stated my intention to resign which I am now acting upon.”

“>So much for listening.

“>Then, Supervisor Mike Wilson started praising the HRC for their transparency. What a sucker! Anyone who thinks the HRC is transparent should talk to Chris Weston. Chris Weston was an HRC Commissioner for about three months before Estelle Fennell removed him, via text message, less than two hours after he blew the whistle on Jim Glover. Chris believed, rightly or wrongly, that Jim Glover was putting together a back-room deal in violation of the Brown Act. Chris forwarded the questionable correspondence to County Council to ask for a legal opinion. County Council never replied to Chris’ email. Instead, Chris was removed from the commission. This is how Chris Weston described his experience working on the HRC with Jim Glover, in a letter he wrote to DA Maggie Flemming shortly after his dismissal this past April:

“>The HRC Chairman, Jim Glover, has continually put obstacles in my path. He repeatedly ignored my emails and texts. He repeatedly claimed he did not receive my emails, then sometimes miraculously found them later. He refused to confirm that he would agendize my topics and proposals for discussion and action, so I confirmed with Ana, Deputy Clerk of the BOS office that all commissioners are equal and their requests to agendize should be respected. When I mentioned this to Mr. Glover on April 19, during a return trip from a special HRC meeting in Willow Creek, he yelled, swore like a sailor, used the Almighty’s name in vain, and pounded the steering wheel.”

;”>Chris believes that he was removed from the HRC illegally, and in retaliation for blowing the whistle on Jim Glover’s back room deal. The HRC bylaws tell us that the commissioners serve “at the pleasure of the Board of Supervisors.” It does not say, “at the pleasure of the Supervisor who appointed them.” It seems that it should have required a vote of the full Board of Supervisors to remove a commissioner from the HRC, but that didn’t happen in Chris Weston’s case. Someone should look into why that didn’t happen, but everyone should realize that letting Supervisors appoint and dismiss HRC commissioners at will, makes the HRC more political and less principled.

“I talked to both Chris Weston and Nezzie Wade about their time on the HRC, and I’m sure that neither of them would describe the HRC as “transparent.” Here’s how Nezzie Wade describes the functioning of the HRC in her recommendations to the Board of Supervisors:

“Actions taken by the HRC have harmed its relationships with members of the Humboldt County community. The minimizing of vigilante violence in Southern Humboldt (and other complaints coming to the Commission) is not an isolated incident. The HRC has violated the rights of those it is intended to honor and serve through study or investigation and conciliation to alleviate tensions and conflict and by its recommendations to the BOS. The HRC has undermined the confidence and trust of the community.”
;”>And speaking of transparency:

;”There has been and continues to be a lack of transparency among Commissioners, and many issues are discussed (and strategies decided) behind the scenes in private conversations before the issues ever come to the table for the Commission to act upon… The recent incident in which the chair sequestered communications which did not come to the Commission table and in which he acted alone without Commission knowledge or direction has resulted in harm to residents of the county and this behavior needs appropriate reprimand or sanctioning.“

I’d have to agree.

“Finally, we should remember that, contrary to county guidelines, Jim Glover also serves on the Humboldt County Grand Jury. Not only does Jim Glover serve on both the HRC and the Hum Co Grand Jury, the primary civilian watchdog agencies of county government, he chairs them both. After watching Jim Glover’s weaselry on the HRC, I no longer believe anything the Grand Jury tells us either.

“I know that Supervisor Wilson wanted to thank these unpaid volunteers on the HRC for writing so much legislation for the Board of Supervisors, but here in SoHum, we’ll never trust them again. That’s what the HRC has accomplished in the past year. Excuse me for not congratulating them.

The County’s New Public Defender

Thadeus Greenson wrote a good piece in last week’s North Coast Journal about the skewed panel assembled to vet candidates hoping to replace Kevin Robinson, who retired recently, as County Public Defender. The panel consisted of the County’s three top law enforcement officers: District Attorney Maggie Flemming, Under-Sheriff, soon to be Acting Sheriff, William Honsel and Probation Chief, Bill Damiano, as well as two other county bureaucrats. Law enforcement officers clearly dominated the panel. Notably absent from the panel: retired Public Defender Kevin Robinson, or anyone with experience as a defense attorney.

Letting law enforcement officers choose the Public Defender is like letting a boxer decide who he wants to fight for the big-money title fight. Who would you rather fight, Mike Tyson, or Michael Moore?

The Public Defender is a sworn enemy of law enforcement. A good Public Defender knocks down a DA’s conviction rate. Maggie Flemming campaigned on her conviction rate, and will likely have to do so again.

A good Public Defender exposes lying cops, police corruption and abuse. Here’s an example of how a good defense attorney keeps cops honest. Recently, a murder suspect in a SoHum shooting, hired himself a pretty good lawyer. The lawyer discovered a discrepancy in the Sheriff’s Deputy’s report. Apparently the Deputy, Deputy Swithenbank, confiscated some pills from the suspect. The Deputy made no mention of the pills in his report, nor did he turn them in as evidence. Instead, the pills ended up in Deputy Swithenbank’s private locker.

Whether or not his client is guilty, this attorney’s good work uncovered a problem within our Sheriff’s department that we deserve to know about. It is the Public Defender’s job to make law enforcement look bad, so of course, law enforcement wants the weakest possible Public Defender, which is why they were the wrong people to recommend one.

Several people have now come forward to question, or outright condemn this whole process of allowing County law enforcement to pick the new Public Defender. To placate this controversy, 2^nd District Supervisor Estelle Fennell pointed out that, she, along with the rest of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, not the skewed panel, made the decision to hire the guy with the sketchy resume, who’s little experience in the field seems clouded by poor judgment and laziness. At least that’s the impression I get of our new Public Defender, David Marcus, from the dirt Thadeus Greenson was able to dig up on him.

The fact that the Board of Supervisors made the decision to hire Marcus does not make me, nor should it make you, feel any better about it. Clearly, the Board of Supervisors wants a weak Public Defender. The Board of Supervisors have demonstrated their contempt for justice, civil rights and human rights again and again. They’ve concocted new, unconstitutional, laws to criminalize poverty, and outlaw sleep, and they’ve made harassing the poor and homeless a top priority.

Our current Board of Supervisors works for the greedy cadre of drug dealers and real estate moguls who financed their campaigns. Those people don’t care about justice either. They don’t even care about reality. All they care about is money, and in their world, looking poor is crime enough. These puppet-masters want the County to focus on projecting that appearance of bland, harmonious prosperity that investors find so appealing, and they don’t really care if cops rape homeless women or if the DA railroads innocent defendants just to enhance her statistics.

This decision is just the latest attack on the civil and human rights of Humboldt County’s most vulnerable. We must assume that the Board of Supervisors went looking for a weak Public Defender, since the Board of Supes passed over two experienced, well-qualified candidates from within our current Public Defender’s office, and instead opted for an undistinguished, out-of-state candidate with very little experience. This decision will likely demoralize the Public Defender’s office.

Becoming a Public Defender is probably the most noble thing an attorney can do with his education. The workload is overwhelming and the pay is low, by attorney’s standards. The people who choose to make their career in the Public Defender’s office, do it because they believe, passionately, in justice for all. The injustice of this decision will not be lost on them. It would not surprise me if many of the excellent defense attorneys now working in our Public Defender’s office, decided to look for other avenues to further their careers.

The Public Defender is the poor defendant’s only advocate against the entire law enforcement bureaucracy. A good Public Defender keeps cops honest and makes the DA do their job. A weak Public Defender denies justice to the whole community because they let cops cut corners, and let the DA railroad innocent poor people to pump up their stats. A weak Public Defender weakens civil rights and undermines public trust.

Once again, by intentionally choosing a weak Public Defender, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors has demonstrated the contempt for justice, human rights and civil rights that has darkened this County’s history for so long.

I Weigh-In on the Humboldt County DA Race

Everyone should already know that justice is a joke here in Humboldt County, so I thought a look at this year’s crop of District Attorney candidates might be good for a laugh. Personally, I’m just glad to see our current D. A. Paul Gallegos step down. Hand-picked, and financed by Humboldt County’s dope yuppies, Paul Gallegos seems like the kind of D. A. that organized crime would support.

Paul Gallegos always struck me as a showboat. Whenever I saw Paul Gallegos in the halls of the county courthouse, I expected to see a camera crew following him around. He always dressed “to the nines,” bearing this feckless expression that makes him look like they hired him to fill the suit. He looks more like a TV anchorman than a District Attorney. I have no idea whether he’s any good at his job, but I doubt that he is, because I don’t trust anyone who devotes that much energy to their appearance.

No, the County of Humboldt has never charged me with a crime, so I have no experience with the criminal justice system here, but I do enjoy a good civil lawsuit every once in a while. As a result, I spent a fair amount of time at the county courthouse in Eureka back when all of the current candidates haunted it’s hallowed halls. Lawyers do more of their work in the hallways of the courthouse, than they do in actual courtrooms, so I had the opportunity to watch them all, in action.

Visiting the county courthouse always reminds me of why I live in the country: florescent lights, tile floors, people who smell like dryer sheets, people who just smell, women wearing make-up and high-heels, men wearing dry-cleaned suits, cops, and an endless parade of humanity who go there to have their souls crushed. No one looks happy. No one looks healthy. No one looks like they want to be there. “This is what civilization is all about,” I remind myself, “an oppressive, artificial environment full of bad vibes.”

I pity the people who work in that environment, especially the clerks, secretaries, and court reporters, but also the commissioners, officers and department heads who work in all of the county offices, and even the lawyers, prosecutors, judges and County Supervisors. A lot of people would call those good, high-paying jobs, or at least relatively secure jobs with decent benefits, but go to the courthouse and look into their eyes. Do these people look happy to you? In the long run, how and where you spend your day matters a hell of a lot more than how much money you make, and security = death.

Good-looking people are few and far between at the courthouse. Interns and entry-level office help tend to look the best, but they go downhill fast in that environment. In that environment, the eyes grow hungry for a pleasing form, and anything less than grotesque will do. In the courthouse, Elan Firpo looks pretty good.

Anywhere else, she’s just another mom in a minivan, but if the D. A.’s race were a beauty contest, Elan Firpo would win, hands down.

Here in SoHum, Elan Firpo seems to be winning the yard sign vote, and the Firpo signs seem to occupy the same places that previously sported Gallegos signs. In an area so dependent on criminal activity, it seems that many people around here prefer an ornamental District Attorney.

Personally, I wouldn’t vote for an attractive D. A. Jobs don’t come any uglier than that of District Attorney. The D. A. deals with murderers, rapists, child molesters, wife beaters, and every other low-life sleaze-ball in the county, and needs to know every little detail of their grisly crimes. Being immersed like that, in the worst of the worst, takes it’s toll. A few years of that could turn Elle McFerson into Angela Merkle. No one wants to see that happen to a pretty face.

I’m not saying that a woman couldn’t handle the D. A. position, or that Elan Firpo is not qualified for the job; I’m saying that no one should take the job of D. A. unless they’re already ugly, and have proven that they know how to handle it.

I don’t remember what Maggie Fleming looks like, but with over 120 jury trials under her belt, I can imagine. Maggie Fleming also gets points with me for her writing. Of the three candidates who managed to get a blurb in my sample ballot, Maggie Fleming did the best job of writing hers.

I don’t think well of people who can’t write. I figure that if you can’t write well, you probably don’t think very well either. I imagine that writing skills, knowing how to convey information clearly, articulately, and gracefully, helps greatly when presenting a case before the jury, and I’ll bet Maggie Fleming does a great job of that.

I’ve seen a few of Maggie Fleming’s signs, mostly on property belonging to “old money,” the ranchers, descendents of the original settlers, and the people who made Roger Rodoni an unbeatable force for so many years. Although these days, I feel nostalgic for our old cowboy County Supervisor, I still don’t trust the political machine that got him elected.

I’m suspicious of Allan Dollison for other reasons. I don’t know why, but every time I see Allan Dollison, he reminds me of someone involved in the JFK assassination. I don’t know whether he looks like someone in the Zapruder Film, someone on the Warren Commission or maybe one of the actors in the Oliver Stone movie, but he always reminds me of the assassination of President John F Kennedy. I know that President Kennedy was long dead before Allan Dollison was even born, but I still don’t trust him.

Allan Dollison is proud to have served in the Iraq War. No one should be proud to have served in the Iraq War. I realize that people take pride in serving their country, and that the military builds certain skills, but the Iraq War was the biggest crime against humanity of the 21st Century, at least so far. Participating in it is nothing to be proud of. Allan Dollison promises to shake up the D. A.’s office, but I just can’t get behind an admitted war criminal with connections to the JFK assassination.

Which brings me to the fourth, final, and my personal favorite candidate for District Attorney, based on my personal experience at the courthouse, Arnie Klein. If you think of the 2nd floor of the county courthouse as a coral reef ecosystem: lawyers are dolphins, their clients are tuna, and the court reporters, clerks, and secretaries are angelfish. In this scenario, the judges would be large groupers, each ensconced in their own little cave, while the cops are barracudas constantly circling the scene. The criminal defendants, on the other hand, are just chum. If you imagine the Humboldt County courthouse that way, Arnie Klein was the big shark.

In reality, the courthouse is nothing like a coral reef ecosystem. There’s nothing natural about a courthouse, and nothing about it nourishes life. Quite the contrary. The courthouse is a place of dispute, violation, and punishment, and it consumes the lives of those who inhabit it.

You can immediately see what working at the courthouse has done to Armie Klein’s face. The guy has more wrinkles than a relief map of the King Range.  Arnie Klein doesn’t just look like he’s been to hell and back, he looks like that’s his daily commute. That’s what a District Attorney should look like.

I understand that Arnie Klein has been sick. That doesn’t surprise me a bit. If he gets the D. A. job, I bet it will kill him. That’s OK. Arnie Klein probably wishes he were dead already, and his family has got to be sick of looking at him.

From watching Arnie Klein in action, it became clear to me that he loved his job, and was very good at it, despite the toll it took on him. Arnie clearly belongs at the courthouse. When he dies, they should stuff him and mount him on a pedestal in the hallway on the second floor.

I can’t tell you about Arnie’s writing ability, because he failed to get a blurb in my sample ballot. I had to look for his ad in Savage Henry to make sure I spelled his name correctly. Apparently, Arnie believes he can win the D. A.’s race solely on the strength of his popularity with illiterates. That might seem like a bold strategy, but not that many people in Humboldt County read, and those that do, tend to ask embarrassing questions, so it’s best to ignore them anyway.

After hearing him on Ed Denson’s KMUD radio show, I worry that Arnie Klein has more personality and charisma than the entire Board of Supervisors put together. He might be able to rally enough public support to pressure the supervisors to pump up his budget, at the expense of social programs for the poor. Social programs, even the few that remain, do far more to protect the property owning public than any amount of money spent on new Deputy D. A.s. I’m sure Arnie doesn’t see it that way, but don’t forget, Arnie is a shark, and all he sees is chum.

Well, chum, that’s my take on the 2014 Humboldt County District Attorney’s race.