The Hamburg Campaign in the News
From Ukiah Blog (6/18/10) Reprinted from THE PRESS DEMOCRAT New breed of agri-curious entrepreneurs emphasizes ‘growing food responsibly’ As Mendocino County residents dash off to work during the morning rush hour, Paula Manolo and her boyfriend, Adam Gaska, are hard at work at an entirely different kind of office: A 4-acre plot on land near Ukiah. The biodynamic farm, situated on Heart Arrow Ranch (which is owned by Golden Vineyards), is among the fields the couple leases and tends as part of their business, Mendocino Organics. By September, the duo will be farming a total of 50 acres as their primary occupation. Manolo, 28, and Gaska, 31, are not alone. At a time when farm revenues are declining along with the national economy, a number of young and “agri-curious” Sonoma and Mendocino county residents are turning to farming as a viable profession. |
From theava.com (5/5/10) |
Point Arena celebrates Democracy Day April 25, 2020 marks the 10th Anniversary of the passing of the Point Arena Resolution on Corporate Personhood. The Point Arena City Council recently proclaimed April 25th to be "Democracy Day" and voted to co-sponsor a celebration on Friday, April 23rd at the Arena Theater. There will be a community potluck in the theater beginning at 5:30 followed by a free showing starting at 7pm of This Land is Your Land, a documentary about corporate personhood which was partially filmed in Point Arena and has several clips of the town and local folks commenting on corporate power. The film will be followed by a discussion on the issue of Corporate Personhood. On Saturday April 24th from 12-3pm, there will be an forum at the Coast Community Library with a deeper discussion on the implications of the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v FEC and of a proposed Amendment that will legally correct the Constitutional problem. Led by William Meyers, with democracy activists Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap and Meghan Murphy, organizers with Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, Dan Hamburg, director of Voice of the Environment and others. In 2000, Point Arena became the first municipality to pass a resolution rejecting the concept that corporations should be allowed to claim rights originally intended for human persons in the U.S. Constitution. This action inspired Berkeley, Arcata, and then other cities and towns to pass resolutions of their own. Eventually, towns began to pass binding ordinances. In 2006, Humboldt County passed Measure T which revoked corporate rights in the county. Measure T was later overturned, but many small municipalities are currently using these ordinances to protect water, prevent toxic sludge dumping, prohibit factory hog farms and promote local democracy. In 1886, the Supreme Court recognized corporations as "persons" under the 14th Amendment, which had been passed to give equal protection and due process to the newly freed slaves. Since that time, corporations have been handed almost all the rights of "natural (human) persons" including the First Amendment freedoms. In January of this year, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission banning as unconstitutional Congress’s restrictions on corporate campaign spending in elections. The trail of law supporting this ruling stems directly from the concept that corporations are persons with rights in the constitution. Contact: Jan Edwards 707-882-1818 janedwards@mcn.org Websites for more info: www.CaliforniaDemocracy.org (Click on Corporate Personhood for Point Arena Resolution and history of corporate personhood) www.thislandthemovie.com (For information on the documentary This Land is Your Land) www.MovetoAmend.org (To read about the amendment and its sponsors.) |
Anderson Valley Advertiser Click here to see this article on theAVA.com Farm To Farm by Spec MacQuayde With the winter rains soaking deeper, evaporating, and draining into the Navarro River, the ground is nearly perfect for digging post holes and setting the timbers. It amazes me how there can be standing water in the packed muck where the cows tread daily and you can still dig a clean post hole three feet deep right next to the puddles. Most of the fence posts we set these days come from a forest up Lambert Lane southwest of Boon ville. The second growth redwoods I cut a few years ago are just now losing their bark. They say if you take propane or some kind of lit gas and char the ends of the posts they will be reluctant to rot, but you need a generous torch to blacken the wood and accomplish the job. My twelve year-old son recently wound up with a small chainsaw via the Trading Time show on KZYX, and he was chomping at the bit several weeks ago to put it to use. So I said sure we could pull the old stock trailer out to the redwood forest and load it with posts and split rails. The trailer is almost 20 feet long and can lug a few tons of lumber. Unfortunately the trailer was hitched to the little John Deer 850, and it so happened that the battery on the 850 was dead as a confederate soldier. It was a tombstone. There was no spark. “Well, there must be a short or something. Let’s put the charger on, let it go for a couple days,” I said, not really wanting to harvest redwood posts and tim bers that day. I was reading a novel by some author whose name I can’t recall, but it was amusing enough to fend off the bullshit of another winter’s day. But it wasn’t me who had the new chainsaw. “No, Dad. We’re going to do this.” “Okay, let’s fire up the International [tractor] and chain it to the John Deere, pull the John Deere off the trailer, and hitch the International to it.” “Yeah.” So my son knew what you have to do to start the International. It’s a finicky British dude whose motor was built in Japan in 1980. We use a small propane canister, with my son forcing the heavy gas into the air intake while I crank the sluggish starter motor. We have to use propane; otherwise the poor battery winds around like a drunken punk band trying to tune up before the gig, when the gig is actu ally in another town, in another state. The International tractor started with no problem, but when I tried to shift into a forward gear it just kept grinding like I wasn’t pressing in the clutch. That’s funny, I thought, trying over and over again while my son fired up his chainsaw and reared back like a bucking bronco ready for the rodeo. He said he was just making sure it ran. “Shut it off!” I hollered, frustrated because something was awry with the trac tor — with BOTH tractors, all of a sudden. I thought it was weird that the clutch would go out bass ack wards, as they say, because really if a clutch goes out it’s usually easy to slip into gear, and the problem is it keeps slipping when you let out. I tried detaching the outside mechanisms on the pedal and increasing the distance of the rod, screwing it apart to no avail. “Good God,” I finally said. My son was agitated but there was nothing we could do. I dug up the operator’s manual and found nothing in the way of troubleshooting, though they did explain how to “split the tractor.” That involved all these hoists and complicated disconnections. “Not today,” I thought. “Maybe I should call Rainbow Ag, get a more informed opinion.” Rainbow Ag is the John Deere dealer in Ukiah. They have a parts and service department. They don’t deal in International tractors — now Case-Interna tional — but at least the guys in the parts department know what an International tractor IS. At least they know it is the color RED as opposed to John Deere GREEN. My son was hounding me to come up with some chainsaw activity while I tried to dial the digits for Rainbow Ag. Maybe that’s why I accidentally punched in the numbers for the KZYX studio. KZYX is our local radio station, as you must know. It was the same digits I’d dialed to call Trading Time where we’d found the chainsaw in the first place. The numbers must have been ingrained in my brain. 462-2404 is Rainbow Ag, whereas 895-2448 is KZYX’s studio. I guess the last four digits had a similar ring, or else I was just going nuts. “Hello, Caller,” said a friendly female voice. “Yeah, I’m looking for Parts,” I said. “You have a question for Dan?” “Is Dan in Parts?” “Dan Hamburg, running for 5th District Supervi sor.” “Oh, I thought this was Rainbow Ag.” “You have a question or comment?” “Yeah. So I have this International tractor that is like 30 years old, and when I last started it up and I tried to put it into gear the clutch wasn’t working. The gears just kept grinding. So I don’t think the clutch is going out, but there must be some mecha nism that is frozen or something.” “Dan?” “Yes, thank you. I can take this.” It was Dan Ham burg, for crying out loud. “Boy I hope the clutch isn’t messed up. I’d hate to think what a new one would cost, and I sure don’t want to split the tractor,” I further explained. “Well, caller, I’ve had a problem like this before. It’s fairly common in this climate, what with all the humidity in the winter. What you have is a frozen clutch, and what you need to do is start up the tractor, jam it into first gear, and the clutch plates will come apart when you press in on the pedal. It happens all the time.” “Thank you.” “Thank you, caller,” said the person who was run ning the show. Just for a second opinion, I actually dialed the num ber for Rainbow Ag, and described the problem to the fellow who was working in Parts. “You’re going to have to split the tractor,” he said. Since it was still early March, I talked to a few other folks who encouraged me to try Dan’s idea. I was in no hurry to split the tractor and pull the clutch out, especially since that would involve putting every thing back together with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker working with sledge hammers. So the other day I tried starting up the machine. After jam ming the tractor into first, the clutch plates must have split, and everything worked like a clock. I shifted into fourth low, first high, second high, and then reverse back in low. I put down the lever for the PTO. It worked. Hopefully this year I will not be splitting the tractor.
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Anderson Valley Advertiser - Off the Record THE 5TH DISTRICT supervisor’s race just got a lot more interesting with former supervisor Norman deVall of Elk taking out papers to run for his old seat. deVall’s former colleague on the board, Dan Hamburg, is also a candidate for the 5th District seat, now officially vacated by incumbent David Colfax. Also running is the former mayor of Ukiah, Jim Mastin, and Wendy Roberts of Mendocino. SO FAR, we see the race for the 5th as Hamburg’s to lose. He’ll run very strong with the people who first elected deVall. deVall himself has come into the race late, too late it seems to successfully woo his natural constituency from Hamburg who has about a year’s head start on the campaign. THE DEVALLIANS, as deVall’s core supporters came to be called, had ousted supervisor Ted Galletti by falsely portraying Galletti as a hippie basher — Mendolib was just emerging from its Big Naked Pile Phase — which he wasn’t, and by spreading rumors that Galletti planned huge upscale housing develoments on the Mendocino Coast, which he wasn’t. The sub-theme of the deVall-Galletti election was the moronic one of Hippies vs. Rednecks. As it turned out, the hippies were more numerous than anyone had dared supposed and Galletti, a very good supervisor in the Jim Eddie mode — sensible and fiscally conservative —was unseated. deVall as a supervisor wasn’t nearly as bad as his “liberal” successors Peterson and Colfax, but he was often out maneuvered by the forces of darkness. deVall also has a tendency to over-explain, losing his listeners after a sentence or two. He’s very much like Hamburg on the issues, as is candidate Mastin. BUT HAMBURG is a kind of uber-lib, a genuinely nice man who speaks in the soft, therapeutic tones of the Positive Thinker essential to political success among the fuzzy-warms dominant in the 5th. He’s very smart and articulate, a good politician in the best sense who, in these crumbling times, would be a civil, clear voice on a board of supervisors that presently lacks even elementary collegiality. Having been elected to Congress, where he bowed out after one term for reasons that remain vague, Hamburg, now registered Green, knows how to run a campaign and he has the money to run one. From our estranged perspective Hamburg’s bold separation from the utter corruption known as Democrats is almost reason enough to vote for him by itself. He drives the Tea Party types nuts, which is another plus. Possible negatives, though, include his devotion to herb and an odd association, which he says has ended, with Da Free John cult. CONSERVATIVES, since Galletti, haven’t been able to garner more than 40% of the vote in the oddly gerrymandered 5th, which now includes the bite of Ukiah where Hamburg and Mastin live, parts of Hopland, all of Anderson Valley and Comptche, Mendocino, and the pot plantation vastness running south from the purple hamlet of Elk to Gualala including, of course, the liberal bastion of Point Arena. It’s a huge district that takes about two hours to traverse Ukiah to Gualala. deVall and Mastin will fight for Hamburg’s leftovers from a basic liberal demographic consisting of KZYX people, the pot brigades, liberal trust funders, and self-identified environmentalists. WE THINK WENDY ROBERTS is Hamburg’s real competition in this one, the stealth candidate. She’s smart, reasonably articulate and, her fuzzy rhetoric aside, the first conservative candidate to run for the seat since Gentleman George Hollister of Comptche. Ms. Roberts sat on the Grand Jury that rightly blasted Colfax and 4th District supervisor Smith — Fort Bragg and environs are going on 20 years with no representation at the County level — for chiseling on their travel reimbursements, and she talks a lot about shoring up tourism and hands off the wine industry, which makes her one for three in our estimation, but three for three with lots of people. BUT LOCAL ELECTIONS are patty-cake affairs. The candidates will get a few lob ball questions from the softy-wofty local media, Val Muchowski will hold a written-questions-only candidate’s night or two, and that’ll be it. The real campaigning, as always, will be sub rosa. NOSTALGIC for the days when words had precise meaning? Me too. We’ll hear “progressive” thrown out there a lot this election as applied to people who are barely liberals on their best days. In San Francisco ‘progressive’ maintains at least a residual relationship to political reality, but not in Mendo where self-styled progressives hold down all the public jobs from the schools to the courts and even maintain their own radio station. But actual policy ranges from incompetent to retro, not that you’d know it from the rhetoric.
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March 1, 2020 |