The Humboldt Herald

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permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 10:43 PM 0 comments

Internet browsing this week offered deplorable commentary on police officers. Eric Kirk blogged about cops who abuse authority based on their own agenda and the San Francisco Chronicle reports a sergeant with the SFPD was arrested with a 14 year-old prostitute. Meanwhile a deputy sheriff in Hayward was in court to defend against charges that he stole $1000 from an 84 year-old dead woman.

Now the LA Times reports that police officer Bobby Cutts Jr. has been arrested for the murder of a woman 9 months pregnant. Cutts is believed to be the father of the child. He'll be arraigned on two counts of murder.

Law breakers, to use a mild term, come in all sizes, shapes and uniforms.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 9:48 PM 12 comments

In his Times-Standard column yesterday, David Cobb railed against national immigration sweeps that stormed into Fortuna last week, stranding children and removing bread winners from families who need them. “The reality is that the overwhelming majority of Americans are immigrants, or the direct descendants of immigrants,” he wrote.

Another weekly columnist, Leo Sears, wasted no time responding in today’s paper by poo-pooing the notion that the US is a nation of immigrants by insisting we are a “nation of laws.”

Sears is only partially right. We are a nation of selectively enforced laws, with the biggest lawbreakers often being those empowered to keep us in line. Just ask CIA Director Michael Hayden who announced yesterday that hundreds of pages detailing illegal CIA activity will be declassified. The documents will shed light on decades of domestic spying, kidnapping, and assassination attempts. Perhaps we should reverently stand to read these shameful pages -- placing hands over hearts -- while learning about government surveillance of journalists, infiltration of leftist groups, and covert experiments on civilians, including the use of drugs.

Not surprisingly, the CIA refers to these tactics as “the family jewels.” Apparently, it takes balls to be a sanctioned, well-paid criminal. Stephen Colbert would be proud.

Hayden says the documents “provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency.” However, a quick glance at news over the last few years shows these activities by the US government continue with vigor.

George W. Bush is widely reported to have called the Constitution “just a goddamn piece of paper.” His administration behaves as such, trampling long-celebrated rights provided by the founding fathers.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 5:13 PM 30 comments

Talking with Hank Sims on KHUM’s Humboldt Review last eve, Rodoni reacted to Hanson’s enthusiastic defense of the war on marijuana, which Hanson equated to “the war on rape.”

“You don’t find Mr. Hanson jumping up and down, running around trying to bust drug houses,” Rodoni said. “That’s not very much fun. But it is kind of fun to get in a helicopter and go ripping around acting like Rambo.”

Rodoni supports legalization and said alcohol and cigarettes kill more people than marijuana. In fact, the war on marijuana has killed more people than marijuana itself, he said.

While acknowledging the affects legalization would have on the economy, Rodoni said “equilibrium” would happen in another form. He pointed to the market for Humboldt grass-fed beef and goat cheese.

Sims sounded convinced.

“You wanna light one up and go outside,” asked Rodoni.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 1:57 PM 34 comments

Cops clashed with timber workers 72 years ago today at the Holmes-Eureka mill, site of the current Bayshore Mall.

A lumber strike had ensued for five weeks and culminated with the deaths of striking workers shot by police gunfire on June 21, 1935.

Before the strike, timber workers toiled 10-hour days, 6-days a week for 35¢ an hour. Union organizers traveled the Pacific Northwest to win reasonable work hours and better pay.

Eureka was a different ballgame in 1935 but one thing was the same. There were two newspapers – the Humboldt Times and the Humboldt Standard – both of which published front page editorials against the strike. According to The Great Lumber Strike of Humboldt County 1935 by Frank Onstine, “there was little actual violence (before the morning of June 21, 1935, but) the press was eager to convince the public that Eureka was on the verge of anarchy.”

Indeed, strikebreakers were escorted to work and city officials threatened to call the National Guard. Bosses pressured workers to sign “loyalty oaths” to the companies that employed them, and the newspapers published the oaths.

On the morning of June 21, 1935, strikers gathered at the Holmes-Eureka mill. It might have been like any other strike until the police chief rode his car into the crowd while shooting his gun at the ground yelling "who's going to stop me." Someone inside the chief's car shot tear gas at the picketers knocking a woman to the ground striking fear that she’d been hit by a shotgun.

Thinking the cops had killed a picketer, strikers charged the cops with a “hail of rocks,” causing police to unleash gunfire. Patrolman Harry Albee emptied his pistol through the windshield, but didn’t know how to work the submachine gun stashed in the trunk. He employed the help of a non-striking worker, Ernest Watkins, “a young Holmes-Eureka employee [who] proceeded to open fire.” The gun jammed within a few rounds, ending the worker-on-worker shooting.

Three strikers died on scene while others succumbed to their wounds in the following days and weeks.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers.

Multiple trials in Superior Court failed to convict strikers of any wrongdoing despite false evidence paraded about by the cops and the Humboldt Standard. No charges were filed in the deaths of the workers, according to a September 3, 1995 Times-Standard article.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 8:23 PM 20 comments

IF there’s one lawyer whose name local authorities loathe to see in the upper left corner of a specially delivered document, it’s Dennis Cunningham's.

In recent memory, Humboldt County Supervisors ate some serious crow after paying $1.5 million for recklessly pursuing the 7 years-long “Pepper Spray case” against Cunningham’s activist clients. Before that, Cunningham secured a $4.4 Million jury award in the case against the FBI and Oakland Police on behalf of the late Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney.

But the stench of official stubbornness is set to burn both nostrils as the City of Eureka and the Village of Ferndale seem bent on litigation to defend bad cop behavior. There is high probability that both will lose.

Cunningham’s office already filed a wrongful death suit based on the Eureka Police shooting of Cheri Moore.

Now Ferndale appears willing to face the famed attorney after rejecting a civil claim in the case of Sean Marsh, who was wrongly arrested by a village cop afflicted with an Eric Cartman complex.

Some things are indefensible, as the jury in the Marsh case found within minutes of deliberation. But a “not guilty” verdict doesn’t always resolve a situation. Marsh lost his job because of the legal charade against him. Cheri Moore lost her life.

The decision-makers in these two situations would be wise to think carefully before moving to bang briefcases in a courtroom against Dennis Cunningham. Unless, of course, they're sitting on a pile of money they’re willing to lose to Cunningham’s war chest.
_____________

Image sources: here and here.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 10:02 AM 68 comments

Some Humboldt County residents complain that lack of local jobs causes their children to move elsewhere, rather than live down the street happily ever after, like every other family in America.

The answer? Big-Box malls! Unless you’re a girl.

A jury awarded a fired Wal-Mart pharmacist $2 Million for getting canned after she requested the same pay as her male counterparts. But screwing workers is a Wal-Mart tradition.

Yep, Wal-Mart’ll be the glue that holds our kin together!

But at least our underpaid offspring will be in good company. They can stand in line with full-time county workers – who are also on public assistance.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 11:42 PM 18 comments

Blame Dean Singleton. He runs his newspapers like sweatshops. Anybody who has worked at the Times-Standard or who knows somebody who works or who has worked at the Times-Standard understands what I'm saying here.

I went to J-school 20 years ago at San Jose State. Many of my classmates, the best and the brightest, went to the Mercury News, SF Chronicle, or the Contra Costa Times. The Merc and Co Co Times were owned by Knight-Ridder, one of the top companies to work for in the profession. The Chronicle was owned by the de Young family back then. I haven't been in touch with them for years, but I can imagine their dismay when Hearst Corp. bought the Chron in 2000 and their absolute horror when Singleton bought the Merc and Co Co Times.

These are bad times indeed for newspaper journalists in Northern California. Singleton owns most of the daily newspapers in the Bay Area.

Working at the Times-Standard is awful. The newsroom is a dark cavern with stained grungy carpet and NO windows. There are windows...on the other side of the building, which Singleton leases to the county.

Apply for a newsroom job at the Times-Standard and they will try to low-ball you when it comes time to negotiate a salary. Then they expect you to handle a work load that it is probably double the average large-market daily. They will spend nothing to improve the work environment or boost morale, which is the lowest of any newspaper I have worked at, and I have worked at several. They recently cut the newsroom morale fund, all $50 a month of it.

A couple of years ago the heater in the newsroom stopped working. As a matter of fact the heater vents would start blowing cold air. Nobody could figure out how to stop it. They would not spend the money to repair it. The newsroom staff would wear coats or have blankets wrapped around them. The night shift had the opposite problem. When they would fire up the press at night, the newsroom would go from bone-chilling cold to unbearably hot in a space of about 30 minutes. This went on for months.

In 20 years of working in Journalism, my worst experience was the local Dean Singleton newspaper. I worked there for 18 months until I couldn't stand it any longer. I quit without having a job...so did another reporter, a very good one. It took me about a week to find a job that paid an hourly rate nearly double what I was earning at the Times-Standard. People who have left the Times-Standard newsroom recently, and there have been several, like to say they got out...and they got out at the right time because as bad as it is now it looks like it's going to get worse.

You can walk in to one of the local personnel services and find an unskilled job that pays more than the Times-Standard pays journalists who have years and years of experience.

That is why I have been so quick to defend friends who still work in the newsroom...Faulk, Driscoll, Durant, et. al. ...when they are criticized on the blogs. I know the pressure they are under to produce on a daily basis and the horrid work environment they must do it in.

And that is why the Media Maven really irks me. She has her cush job on the state payroll with all the bennies, and she writes these asinine critics of working journalists who slave their days away in Dean Singleton's news dungeon while living paycheck to paycheck.

So the next time one of you anons feel the urge to take a cheap shot at Faulk, Driscoll, Durant, etc., please understand what they are enduring already.

*************

Image source.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 10:05 AM 40 comments

Public comments were peppered with praise for council members Polly Endert and Larry Glass for their participation in an advisory committee that reached an agreement for lower bed count at the Christian-based recovery facility Teen Challenge.

Council member Chris Kerrigan advocated a maximum of 10 residents for the first year, rather than the negotiated limit of 24. But Glass said a 10-bed limit was the city's starting point in the negotiations. Teen Challenge originally sought a 50-bed facility.

Teen Challenge got the green light 3-1, Kerrigan dissenting.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 10:46 PM 20 comments

Last month the Chronicle reported major lay-offs. Now the San Jose Mercury News says 17% of its workforce will be shown the door. Once again the blame is on the internet.

The Mercury News is owned by MediaNews Group, which also owns the Times-Standard.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 9:31 PM 9 comments

As you may know, there’s a Senate Bill moving through the legislative process that would widen highway 101 at Richardson Grove to allow Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA) trucks to haul live cattle South from Humboldt for slaughter. The widening might require the removal of old-growth redwoods.

While there have been some interesting ideas that would preclude cutting the trees, such as installing traffic lights at either end to allow nighttime one-way traffic to accommodate the trucks, there is perhaps a local solution -- a Humboldt County slaughter house.

Why ship cattle south when processing and packaging could happen here, creating jobs and high-quality local products? And for the motivated entrepreneur, money from the Headwaters Fund could be accessed to start the business. The Fund is currently accepting applications.

The slaughter house could also service Del Norte, though adjustments to the highway may still be required at Big Lagoon.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 10:04 AM 34 comments

Crescent City’s newspaper The Daily Triplicate reports on a new book about Humboldt County history. Jean Pfaelzer is the author of Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans. Pfaelzer spoke Saturday at North Town Books in Arcata.

From the Triplicate:

Eureka's tale, she found, repeated itself in cities and towns along the West Coast from Seattle to Crescent City to San Diego and east into Wyoming, Nevada and Idaho.

"I realized I was sitting on a story of ethnic cleansing in the U.S.," Pfaelzer said. "It was systematic. It was deliberate. It was all over the place."

[...]

After being forced from their Eureka homes, Chinese people filed the first lawsuit in America for reparations. They organized a militia in Amador and a vegetable strike in Truckee in response to evacuation attempts. Chinese workers on the railroad line won the right to keep their own cooks who boiled water for tea and saved their health as diseases spread among whites.

[...]

Eureka's roundup in 1885 followed the death of a city councilman, caught in the crossfire of a shoot-out in Chinatown. A local crowd wanted to kill all of the city's Chinese residents and burn down Chinatown. Leaders settled on immediately driving them out by loading them onto boats for San Francisco.

When they arrived, the Chinese sued Eureka for racism.

"It is an instance of formidable resistence," Pfaelzer said of the action that also sought damages for their lost wages, fishing vessels, crops and horses. "They sue for being the objects of mob violence, the intangible hatred that has come down on them and forced them out of Eureka."

[...]

Pfaelzer wants the issue and her book to focus more attention on current immigration problems.

She pointed to communities in the U.S. that have forced out Latino residents, through rental laws and other means. She also noted the recent raids on immigrants in the Eureka area.

"It is happening again," Pfaelzer said.

She compared rules that called on the Chinese to carry photo IDs to possible future requirements for U.S. citizens to carry passports. Chinese residents at the time refused.

[...]

"Many communities are just now beginning to deal with what happened to the first Chinese Americans," Pfaelzer said.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 5:24 PM 39 comments

Roger Rodoni revs for re-election by bringing pot to the table. Well, the discussion of legalized pot, anyway. But Roger risks revolting 2^nd District voters because everyone knows a corner-store pack of Marlboro Spliffs would cause cannabis prices to bottom out.

Meanwhile on the opinion page, the Times-Standard­ gets misty over “compassion” used to round up immigrants in Fortuna and ship them over the border forthwith. While the T-S did a great job covering the surprise raids this week, today’s sugarcoating burns the swallow pipe. After reporting that children were left without one or both parents the editors now say they “hope” the reports aren’t true.

In other news, the Eureka Reporter published an authorless news item bemoaning California getting out-logged by our neighbors to the North. Oregon and Washington, we learn, are cutting more timber than our fair state. Maybe with enough lobbying we can have clear-cuts right up to the highway, just like Oregon! Gee, that would be swell, Wally.

But for some real “troubling questions” head to this opinion piece by a Willow Creek resident worried about the uncomfortable number of recent mountain lion sightings. The big cats have been helping themselves to domestic pets in “long-established” neighborhoods, prompting the writer to ponder hunting season on the predators. Perhaps the mountain lions are way ahead on this issue. After suffering decades of invasion in their long-established territory, the native felines appear to have concluded that thinning intruding populations is an appropriate action. Some among us would obviously agree.

permalink I posted by Heraldo Riviera @ 9:44 AM 9 comments