News

Ever on the lookout for new ways to stimulate the voracious intellect of its readership, the Tri-City Weekly has evidently hired a student of early 20th century European surrealism to compose absurdist tone poems for the front cover:

Q: What does it mean?

A: What does a chicken mean, you filthy bourgeois?

It is ON, says Grovie organizer Jeff Muskrat in an e-mail call to arms that came across our desk today. Muskrat says that trees are already being felled in preparation for the Richardson Grove project; he's forecasting direct action starting Memorial Day weekend.

!RICHARDSON GROVE ACTION ALERT! The environmentalists' last stand?

I'm forwarding this to assumably all unopposed to Richardson grove direct action, trainers, FOREST DEFENDERS etc. Please forward far and wide to likewise interested humans. Will post also on independent media THIS EVENING with location to be announced: (LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE IDEAS, EDITS, BUT THE URGENCY OF THE MATTER MAKES ME INCLINED TO POST IT ASAP)

THE ANCIENT REDWOODS IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY NEED YOUR HELP, AGAIN! (AND JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THAT ANCIENT TREES IN STATE PARKS WERE PROTECTED...)

FOR THOSE WHO ARE WAITING FOR THE "MAGIC MOMENT" TO JUMP INTO THE SAVE RICHARDSON GROVE CAMPAIGN(SRG), THE TIME IS RIGHT NOW! CALTRANS MAY BE CUTTING TREES AT RICHARDSON GROVE STATE PARK AS YOU READ THIS CALL TO ACTION.

ONLY YESTERDAY, CALTRANS FELL MULTIPLE 3-4 FOOT DIAMETER REDWOODS RIGHT NEXT TO THE 101 JUST SOUTH OF THE REDWOOD CURTAIN AT RICHARDSON GROVE STATE PARK NEAR LEGGETT! IT IS LIKELY THAT OUR REDWOOD CURTAIN IS NEXT!

DIRECT ACTION TRAINING IS COMING NOW TO THE REDWOOD CURTAIN. A GATHERING FOCUSED ON DEFENDING OUR STATE PARK FROM THE CALTRANS R.I.P(RICHARDSON GROVE "IMPROVEMENT" PROJECT) IS SET TO BEGIN MAY 28TH-30TH.

ALL ARE INVITED TO HELP ORGANIZE, CONDUCT TRAININGS, AND PARTICIPATE IN SOLIDARITY UNDER THE "EARTH FIRST!" PRINCIPLES OF NON-VIOLENCE, ANTI-OPPRESSION, AND NO COMPROMISE IN THE DEFENSE OF MOTHER EARTH!

THE POINT OF ACTION HAPPENS TO BE RIGHT ALONG REDWOOD HIGHWAY 101, PRIMARILY WITHIN RICHARDSON GROVE STATE PARK. MAPS OF THE PROJECT ARE AVAILABLE AT THE CALTRANS R.I.P. PROJECT PAGE.

DEFEND THE ANCIENT REDWOODS, MADRONES AND OAKS ALONG THE HIGHWAY FROM THIS ILLEGAL PROJECT! THE SRG(SAVE RICHARDSON GROVE) CAMPAIGN HAS SO MUCH SUPPORT FROM THE COMMUNITY, NO ONE HERE WANTS TO SEE THE DEMISE OF THE ANCIENT REDWOODS THAT ARE THE REDWOOD CURTAIN.

ALL THAT IS MISSING FROM THE CAMPAIGN IS YOU! YOUR UNIQUE IDEAS, EXPERIENCES, ENERGY, PARTICIPATION AND LOVE FOR TREES!

JOIN US IS SOLIDARITY TO DEFEND THE REDWOOD CURTAIN AT RICHARDSON GROVE STATE PARK. UP TO 87 TREES ARE SLATED TO BE CUT, ALONG WITH THE ROOTS OF THE ANCIENT REDWOODS THAT LINE THE HIGHWAY.

CALTRANS HAS JUST CANCELED THE MARBLED MURRELET SURVEYS THAT MAY HAVE PROTECTED THE PARK SECTION OF THE PROJECT AT LEAST UNTIL SEPTEMBER 15TH. CALTRANS MAY HAVE ALREADY BEGUN TREE REMOVAL ON PRIVATE ADJACENT PARK LANDS, AND NOW THAT THE SURVEYS HAVE BEEN CANCELED, ANYTHING GOES!

RICHARDSON GROVE HAS BEEN LABELED BY THE PRO-PROJECT LOCAL MEDIA AS "THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS' LAST STAND". IF THAT IS TRUE, YOU BETTER BE THERE ON MAY 28TH...

CONTACT [email protected] for info and how to get involved.

The tentative date, the evening of friday the 28th for setup, the 29th(JFK's B-day) and 30th of May...or sooner if possible, but I'm not sure if we can get it out there(fliers, press, organizing) any sooner than two weeks from today. Weekends would be best for trainers, I assume. We can't wait any longer. I'm running with the 28th thru the 30th. Those who feel the urgency will be there regardless of commitments.

Please let me know if there are any major conflicts with schedules, but I feel that this is important enough for most people to drop everything because tree cutting is imminent.

I will begin composing a training agenda if that pleases the group.

Much thanks!

Jeff

U.S. Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina held a town hall meeting this afternoon inside a cavernous warehouse at Arcata's O & M Industries. Addressing the crowd of 50 or so locals -- which included Eureka Mayor/County Supervisor candidate Virginia Bass, County Planning Commissioner Dennis Mayo and County Supervisor candidate Ryan Sundberg (who said he'd just learned who Fiorina is this morning) -- the former Hewlett-Packard CEO sought to woo conservative voters.

Armed with the Sarah Palin stamp of approval, Fiorina went straight after incumbent Barbara Boxer, calling her "a powerful, punitive, dangerous senator who supports every left wing cause there is in this state." But she added that after fighting off cancer last year, "Barbara Boxer doesn't scare me one bit."

Hammering away on the subject of job creation, Fiorina said that government has become too intrusive, too expensive, and that it's destroying jobs. Citing an unnamed poll in which Californians allegedly didn't include global warming in their top 10 list of concerns, the candidate suggested, "Maybe offshore drilling actually would be a good idea... ."

And she was flabbergasted by environmental protections: "The Endangered Species Act prohibits [pause for impact] prohibits the consideration of economic or social impact when assessing a species. Now how crazy is that?"

After mocking concerns over the spotted owl and the delta smelt, Fiorina apologized -- though for what was unclear. "I am sorry; I want to be a good steward of the planet, but families are more important than fish; they're more important than owls... ."

She also characterized Arizona's recent passage of racist, probably unconstitutional immigration policies as "the poor people of Arizona doing what they feel they need to do to protect their citizens."

In burnishing her conservative credentials, Fiorina -- who has thus far invested $3.6 million of her own money into her campaign -- made even more dubious claims. For example, she declared that the stimulus bill (aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) has "done nothing to create jobs." In fact, recipients of stimulus funds have reported nearly 700,000 new jobs -- more than 10 percent of them in California.

Regarding education she said, "If you look at California, what you'll find out is that we spend, in total, more money on education than 75 percent of the states in our nation. And yet our results are 48th or 49th, demonstrating that more money is not always the answer."

California's "total" spending on education hardly seems relevant considering we are far and away the most populous state in the country. When you break the spending down to per-student levels, we're about smack-dab in the middle. And so are our results.

Curiously, Fiorina made no mention of what is perhaps the most serious threat to the future of Californians: demon sheep.

Technical mishaps, a hotchpotch of topics, plenty o' calls/questions from the listeners and a few heated moments. That was tonight's NCJ/KHUM Fourth District Supervisor debate. Check it out.

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate will appear at O&M industries, of all places.

U.S. Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina to Host Town Hall in Eureka Area

ARCATA, CA – U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina will tomorrow host a town hall with employees, small-business owners and other community members at O & M Industries in the Eureka area to discuss a range of issues, including job creation and economic growth.

• WHO: U.S. Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina
• WHAT: Town Hall
• WHEN: Friday, May 14, 2010
• WHERE: O & M Industries, 5901 Ericson Way, Arcata, CA 95521-9239

During the event, Carly will give brief opening remarks, then take questions from the attendees. Following the forum, she will hold a brief media availability with press in attendance. CREDENTIALED MEDIA ONLY.

About Carly

While she is perhaps best known as the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (HP), what is not as well known is Carly worked her way through undergraduate and graduate school. A self-made woman, she started her business career as a secretary and went on to become the first, and to date, the only woman to lead a Fortune 20 company. For more information about Carly and her campaign visit www.carlyforca.com

In gas prices, that is. According to the San Francisco Business Times, which gets its stats from AAA:

Tracy has the cheapest gas in Northern California at $3.05 a gallon. Eureka's price of $3.29 is not only the highest in California, it's the highest in the lower 48 states. Wailuku, Hawaii, beats Eureka with an average price of $3.93 per gallon.

Apparently, whilst the rest of the nation enjoys an unseasonable dip in gas prices, we're maintaining our high standard of choice-gas guzzling.

So it's a darned good thing tomorrow's Eureka Bike To Work Day.

Damn these times. We just got word from McKinleyville Middle School's Fine Arts teacher, Ken Weiderman, that the art program -- and his position -- will likely be cut because of what he calls "unprecedented funding cuts (thanks to the state's financial mess)."

The Music program might also be cut, he said.

And so, said Weiderman, who's the only certified art teacher in the district, an upcoming art show by his students may very well be the last. (The school's band will perform at the show, as well.) There'll be displays of ceramics, drawings and paintings. But the coolest work might be the "House Project," in which pairs of students each built a "city block reflecting their own personalities and interests."

Says Weiderman:

What can we look forward to when school no longer offers a creative outlet that many students crave? How are we preparing the leaders of tomorrow to design creative solutions to problems that haven't even surfaced yet?

View the work and discuss those questions at the show: 6 to 8 pm on May 21 at the McKinleyville Shopping Center, in the shop space next to Plaza Design.

And now, according to a detailed press packet, the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District enters the third, and final, phase of the water resources planning process that it's calling "Stay With the Flow," but which is otherwise known, in the local parlance, as "Holy Crap, We Can't Let the Waterbaggers Get Our Mad."

Just kidding -- that actually could be a perfectly acceptable option, in some people's opinion.

Anyway, the District's been engaging citizens and stakeholders for months to come up with options for dealing with those 60 million gallons a day of untreated Mad River water for which the District's got the rights to but, alas, no longer the customers since the last of the two pulp mills went kaput. (Yes, we know, it could still reopen.) This is a big deal: If the District can't find a new, beneficial use for the water, by state law it could lose the rights to it to someone else, and, the rest of the District's water customers would see rate hikes of 100 to 200 percent. (For more on that, see the NCJ's story Cup Runneth Over and of course the District's Web site.

In this final phase, there will be three meetings where you, me and everybody will get to argue and nod over the options the District winnowed from public input. They fall broadly into four categories: use the water within the district's boundaries, transfer the water for use outside the District, generate energy with it, and use it for in-stream flows.

"Create a lake in Blue Lake for recreation and fishing purposes" falls into the use-it-within-the-district category, of course.

The meetings, from 6-8:30 p.m., are June 1 at Azalea Hall in McKinleyville, June 3 at the D Street Neighborhood Center in Arcata, and June 15 at the Wharfinger Building in Eureka.

No freaking joke -- the Eureka Inn is going to have a semi-stealth grand opening tomorrow. The Journal just spoke with owner Libo Zhu, who was answering phones at the desk when we called. Zhu said that the company didn't wish to make a splash because they're just starting with a few rooms at first. (Zhu also said that the opening is happening tomorrow, not Wednesday, as the link above would indicate.)

This is a historic goddamned day. It's been almost six years since the grand old Inn, perhaps the second-most historically significant building in Eureka, shuttered its doors amid all kinds of weird financial scandal.

Welcome back, Eureka Inn! Congratulations, Libo Zhu!

UPDATE: On-the-scene report from Richard Stenger of the Humboldt County Convention & Visitors Bureau, who was as shocked as everyone by the news:

The Eureka Inn is going to have a modest reopening of 50 rooms while they renovate and upgrade the other 50. It will be sort of kitschy and retro, but not 100 percent luxurious yet -- that is, the rooms are in clean but not luxury shape. But the price will be quite a draw: $64 and up. Priced equivalent to a mid-level hotel it will be a good value, and fun for those wanting a bit of history with their room.

 

UPDATE 2: The T-S is saying that the first rooms will be let next week, not today. Open for reservations as of now, though!

Google News thinks that every single article in Alexander Cockburn's radical Counterpunch newsletter is written by former Maxxam general counsel Jared Carter: