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Law-Breaking Logging Giant Bankrolls Recall Campaign of Prosecutor
Ralph on the recall.
From the failed savings and loan bailout racket to the stately giant redwood trees of Humboldt County, California, the story of the predator corporation Maxxam -- Pacific Lumber someday may make a movie on corporate arrogance and abuse. The storyline has taken a bizarre twist today, some years after Maxxam bought out a family-owned lumber company and accelerated, to great opposition, the cutting of these ancient trees.
It seems that a newly elected county district attorney, Paul Gallegos, is irritating the lumber giant for bringing a suit charging Pacific Lumber with filing a false timber harvest plan in order to obtain a global logging permit for their property. The company, he charges, had information about the environmental impact of their logging proposal that they were legally obliged to give to the Californian authorities but did not.
Richard Wilson of the California Department of Forestry publically declared that if he knew about this withholding of material information at the time he signed off on the permit, he would have rejected the permit application.
The owners of Pacific Lumber decided to rid themselves of this prosecution for fraud by starting a recall of the elected Paul Gallegos. So they backed a commercial signature gathering firm which is charging $8 a signature to place this recall on the ballot. It is remarkable what this artificial legal entity, called a corporation, can get away with. Imagine a real person charged with fraud trying to recall the prosecutor.
Well, Pacific Lumber, using fear tactics of mass layoffs, may not get away with this camouflaged campaign charging the D.A. with being soft on crime, when he is prosecuting corporate crime. Mr. Gallegos says the polls show he is ahead by 60 to 40. Why so close? The signature gatherers and the propaganda campaign are deceiving people that the petition is about anti-rape legislation or to repeal vehicle license faxes. Over 90% of the money for this recall campaign comes from Pacific Lumber.
The local newspaper -- the Times-Standard -- is not supporting Gallegos who wryly notes that Pacific Lumber is a big advertiser and a full page ad costs about $3000. Known for playing hardball, Pacific Lumber is scaring its hundreds of workers into complaining about the lawsuit and its impact on their jobs. Of course if the workers owned the company, they would realize that a genuine sustainable yield would keep their jobs for a much longer time for themselves and their children.
The recall election is on March 2, 2004. The question in the minds of many in the County is whether the judge will decide this long overdue case before or after that date. Mr. Gallegos is demanding restitution at a level of $230 million for the value of those logged trees and the resultant environmental damage that would not have occurred had the company told the necessary truth to the state forestry officials.
In an interview with the Corporate Crime Reporter, Gallegos said that this is not a "liberal versus conservative issue." It is about "who owns local government. Historically, the feeling has been that it has been owned by a select few. We stand for the idea that it belongs to the people in this community."
He added that Humboldt was a "remote, historically isolated community." So much so that Pacific Lumber owns one town -- Scotia -- down to every house and the shopping center, he said.
Company towns are not new in our country. They range from the paper mill towns of Maine to the copper-mine towns of Montana and Arizona to the textile company dominated towns in North and South Carolina.
But Pacific Lumber, as a corporate defendant, is pushing the envelope by trying to recall its prosecutor.
It seems that a newly elected county district attorney, Paul Gallegos, is irritating the lumber giant for bringing a suit charging Pacific Lumber with filing a false timber harvest plan in order to obtain a global logging permit for their property. The company, he charges, had information about the environmental impact of their logging proposal that they were legally obliged to give to the Californian authorities but did not.
Richard Wilson of the California Department of Forestry publically declared that if he knew about this withholding of material information at the time he signed off on the permit, he would have rejected the permit application.
The owners of Pacific Lumber decided to rid themselves of this prosecution for fraud by starting a recall of the elected Paul Gallegos. So they backed a commercial signature gathering firm which is charging $8 a signature to place this recall on the ballot. It is remarkable what this artificial legal entity, called a corporation, can get away with. Imagine a real person charged with fraud trying to recall the prosecutor.
Well, Pacific Lumber, using fear tactics of mass layoffs, may not get away with this camouflaged campaign charging the D.A. with being soft on crime, when he is prosecuting corporate crime. Mr. Gallegos says the polls show he is ahead by 60 to 40. Why so close? The signature gatherers and the propaganda campaign are deceiving people that the petition is about anti-rape legislation or to repeal vehicle license faxes. Over 90% of the money for this recall campaign comes from Pacific Lumber.
The local newspaper -- the Times-Standard -- is not supporting Gallegos who wryly notes that Pacific Lumber is a big advertiser and a full page ad costs about $3000. Known for playing hardball, Pacific Lumber is scaring its hundreds of workers into complaining about the lawsuit and its impact on their jobs. Of course if the workers owned the company, they would realize that a genuine sustainable yield would keep their jobs for a much longer time for themselves and their children.
The recall election is on March 2, 2004. The question in the minds of many in the County is whether the judge will decide this long overdue case before or after that date. Mr. Gallegos is demanding restitution at a level of $230 million for the value of those logged trees and the resultant environmental damage that would not have occurred had the company told the necessary truth to the state forestry officials.
In an interview with the Corporate Crime Reporter, Gallegos said that this is not a "liberal versus conservative issue." It is about "who owns local government. Historically, the feeling has been that it has been owned by a select few. We stand for the idea that it belongs to the people in this community."
He added that Humboldt was a "remote, historically isolated community." So much so that Pacific Lumber owns one town -- Scotia -- down to every house and the shopping center, he said.
Company towns are not new in our country. They range from the paper mill towns of Maine to the copper-mine towns of Montana and Arizona to the textile company dominated towns in North and South Carolina.
But Pacific Lumber, as a corporate defendant, is pushing the envelope by trying to recall its prosecutor.
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Another onesided view of the recall that focuses soley on Palco and the lawsuit. Blah Blah Blah! Why no mention of the fact that although Palco is the major financial contributer to the recal, they diid not innitiate it and they do not have enough employees to have gotten it on the ballot. That required enough concerned citizens to sign the petitions. Citizens who have lost faith in Mr. Gallegos and want a DA who will not plea bargain away our safety. Who will stop acting like the public defender and begin acting as the Prosecutor.
No mention of the controversial prosecutions or lack of prosecution by Mr. Gallegos on several high profile cases? No mention that regardless of the recall the lawsuit will still be decided in the courts.
?
If this is Mr. Nader's full report it is lacking his usual depth and very disapointing. If it is not his entire report then please post the rest.
No mention of the controversial prosecutions or lack of prosecution by Mr. Gallegos on several high profile cases? No mention that regardless of the recall the lawsuit will still be decided in the courts.
?
If this is Mr. Nader's full report it is lacking his usual depth and very disapointing. If it is not his entire report then please post the rest.
The recall certainly IS just about Pacific Lumber! The "soft-on-crime" stuff is nothing but a pretext and smokescreen to hide the real deal. PL had their timber business stooges initiate the recall and PL tried to pretend they weren't behind it. But PL Prez. Manne wrote in a letter to employees last October that PL was backing the recall financially because DA Gallegos sued them for fraud.
Official campaign records show that PL has directly contributed 93% of the funds backing the recall, including about $40,000 to pay for fraudulent recall petition signature gathering. The out-of-town professional petition circulators were paid up to $8 per signature, and many of them deceived folks into thinking they were signing petitions against rape or against the car registration tax. Without PL's money there would not have been enough signatures and there would be no recall election. Many of the people who knowingly signed the recall petition did so because they were fooled by PL's false propaganda campaign aganst the DA.
PL's Manne put out a media statement saying PL wants the fraud case resolved in court. You say the case will continue regardless who wins the election. You obviously know nothing about litigation. It's a long, sustained struggle. If you don't fight hard you lose, even if you're right. If Gallegos is recalled and either PL's favored DA replacement candidate Gloria Albin-Sheets or Dep. DA Worth Dikeman wins, they would very likely fire Asst. DA Tim Stoen, the bulldog litigator who filed the suit and who is actually in charge of it. Even if the replacement DA made a show of following through on the suit, he or she would be up against PL's multimillion-dollar legal team, and the case wouldn't last long despite its merits.
The "soft-on-crime" ploy doesn't cut it. Gallegos has a better record so far than his twenty-year predecessor Terry Farmer, whom he beat fair and square in the election. The recall grumbling started immediately after the fraud suit vs PL was announced, when Gallegos had been in office less than three months. All the talk was about the PL suit, not about Gallegos' record prosecuting street crime.
The pro-recall crew pretends that Gallegos is soft on crime, but what really has their undies in a bunch is that he's TOUGH on crime, including corporate crime. Not just crime in the streets, but crime in the suites, too.
Maxxam/PL CEO Charles Hurwitz is a career corporate criminal who has ripped off more than $1 billion in value from the citizens, timber workers and forest resources of Humboldt County, not to mention the stock and bond holders of Pacific Lumber/Maxxam. Jail Hurwitz! http://www.jailhurwitz.com
Official campaign records show that PL has directly contributed 93% of the funds backing the recall, including about $40,000 to pay for fraudulent recall petition signature gathering. The out-of-town professional petition circulators were paid up to $8 per signature, and many of them deceived folks into thinking they were signing petitions against rape or against the car registration tax. Without PL's money there would not have been enough signatures and there would be no recall election. Many of the people who knowingly signed the recall petition did so because they were fooled by PL's false propaganda campaign aganst the DA.
PL's Manne put out a media statement saying PL wants the fraud case resolved in court. You say the case will continue regardless who wins the election. You obviously know nothing about litigation. It's a long, sustained struggle. If you don't fight hard you lose, even if you're right. If Gallegos is recalled and either PL's favored DA replacement candidate Gloria Albin-Sheets or Dep. DA Worth Dikeman wins, they would very likely fire Asst. DA Tim Stoen, the bulldog litigator who filed the suit and who is actually in charge of it. Even if the replacement DA made a show of following through on the suit, he or she would be up against PL's multimillion-dollar legal team, and the case wouldn't last long despite its merits.
The "soft-on-crime" ploy doesn't cut it. Gallegos has a better record so far than his twenty-year predecessor Terry Farmer, whom he beat fair and square in the election. The recall grumbling started immediately after the fraud suit vs PL was announced, when Gallegos had been in office less than three months. All the talk was about the PL suit, not about Gallegos' record prosecuting street crime.
The pro-recall crew pretends that Gallegos is soft on crime, but what really has their undies in a bunch is that he's TOUGH on crime, including corporate crime. Not just crime in the streets, but crime in the suites, too.
Maxxam/PL CEO Charles Hurwitz is a career corporate criminal who has ripped off more than $1 billion in value from the citizens, timber workers and forest resources of Humboldt County, not to mention the stock and bond holders of Pacific Lumber/Maxxam. Jail Hurwitz! http://www.jailhurwitz.com
The Arcata Eye (weekly newspaper of Arcata CA)
Week of 2/16/04
Editorial: The Pacific Lumber County
The suggestion that Humboldt and other rural counties are regarded as colonial possessions by distant industrialists who find their resources attractive is not new.
It may have sounded like just more extremist rhetoric the first time you heard it. That’s surely Humboldt’s most abundant renewable resource these days, welling up from the deepening political chasm dividing the county, arriving daily over the airwaves and even in glossy form in the mail.
What’s the justification for the claim that we live in the equivalent of a Third World state? Try this:
A resource extraction company controlled, say, from Texas, is challenged by a young new government official. The company is accustomed to paying fines for its shabby practices as the cost of doing business, but this time the financial and political consequences are orders of magnitude higher.
The company reacts with an immediate, broad-spectrum assault on the public representative.
First, public process is turned against itself with an expensive, sloppy petition drive based on misrepresentations and fear tactics. Complaints to the government disappear down a bureaucratic black hole. The company succeeds in engineering a referendum on the official’s continued tenure.
Next, since price is no object and principle no consideration, the official is painted as a bad, bad person - ineffectual, an ally of violent criminals and an enemy of prosperity.
Can one business - one man, really - buy control of a rural California county with these tactics?
If Humboldt County’s District Attorney is recalled, his replacement will know that he or she too serves only at the pleasure of the Pacific Lumber Company, parent company Maxxam Corporation, directed by Mr. Charles Hurwitz.
Other local elected officials will get the message, too: county supervisors, the sheriff - even judges will work under the glare of Maxxam/PL’s scrutiny. Want to stay in office? Don’t impede this company’s will.
But next time, it might not be Maxxam. What if Calpine makes the business decision that spending a couple hundred thousand in the right places might earn it millions? What if marijuana growers organize and pool their collective economic might?
And what would you think of ambitious opportunists who jump through the hole the moneyed interests tear open in the democratic process?
"The recall is here," reasons Worth Dikeman. True. So are junk faxes, Internet scams and nose rings. That doesn’t mean we have to participate in them. Dikeman’s joining forces with this commercial attack on local government amounts to an agreement to serve at the pleasure of anyone with enough money to turn the political system inside out.
Most disappointing is local law enforcement buying in to this escapade, especially the formerly non-political officers of the Arcata Police Department. The police have every right to have a say in who’s DA. But along with that goes a responsibility to help fend off the wholesale commercial corruption of the electoral process and recommend a "no" vote on the recall.
What’s surprising is, despite all the money, how sloppily this recall has been manufactured. Eight-dollar-a-name hirelings cynically invoking harrowing images of sexual assault to gain signatures. Unattended petitions. Last-minute, apparently panicked infusions of cash. Duplicitous, contradictory statements.
If this is how Maxxam/PL behaves in public, what do they do in the woods, where no one sees them? Probably the kind of thing that’s gotten the company cited, fined and suspended so many times for violations of forestry regulations.
Last week, PL’s spokesperson was quoted in the Times-Standard as saying, "When people hear ‘PL’ they think of the battles we’ve gone through and a time when we weren’t as environmentally aware." In other words, during Redwood Summer and beyond, when PL was assuring us it was the true custodian of the environment, it was actually lacking in environmental awareness. But now, as it spends tens of thousands of dollars to get rid of an elected official, we are supposed to accept its assurances.
That could be a challenge. "This is exactly why we want a trial in court instead of trial by press release by Paul Gallegos and Tim Stoen," the company said in a press release responding to an embarrassing revelation from a former state forestry official.
But Friday, just after reporting that environmental awareness is something new for PL, the company acknowledged that its demurrer - an attempt to throw out the county’s fraud lawsuit against the company before any trial - still stands.
So that stuff about wanting a trial in court isn’t the case after all. But Dunn and company President Robert Manne only implement the will of Mr. Hurwitz, who wishes to extend that control to county government. Manne even managed to write an entire column on the matter for Sunday’s Times-Standard, mentioning numerous organizations involved - even the Beatles - but never the words "Maxxam" or "Hurwitz." Maybe it’s forbidden.
PL’s intimidation of what’s supposed to be an independent judiciary might already be taking place. It was last July - yes, of 2003 - that Judge Christopher Wilson heard arguments regarding PL’s demurrer motion. A decision was due in November, but months later, has never been made. Is the judge waiting for the outcome of the March 2 recall election to find out what kind of decision he has to render in order to remain on the bench?
Give Judge Wilson the encouragement he needs to make an objective decision. Tell Worth Dikeman to wait for a real election, not a purchased one, to realize his ambitions. Let Hurwitz/Maxxam/PL know that the public won’t be swayed by demagoguery. And show the world that Humboldt County is not Pacific Lumber/Maxxam/Hurwitz’s banana republic.
Vote no on the recall.
To read this editorial from the Arcata Eye website go to:
http://www.arcataeye.com/opinion04/040216opinion01.shtml
Week of 2/16/04
Editorial: The Pacific Lumber County
The suggestion that Humboldt and other rural counties are regarded as colonial possessions by distant industrialists who find their resources attractive is not new.
It may have sounded like just more extremist rhetoric the first time you heard it. That’s surely Humboldt’s most abundant renewable resource these days, welling up from the deepening political chasm dividing the county, arriving daily over the airwaves and even in glossy form in the mail.
What’s the justification for the claim that we live in the equivalent of a Third World state? Try this:
A resource extraction company controlled, say, from Texas, is challenged by a young new government official. The company is accustomed to paying fines for its shabby practices as the cost of doing business, but this time the financial and political consequences are orders of magnitude higher.
The company reacts with an immediate, broad-spectrum assault on the public representative.
First, public process is turned against itself with an expensive, sloppy petition drive based on misrepresentations and fear tactics. Complaints to the government disappear down a bureaucratic black hole. The company succeeds in engineering a referendum on the official’s continued tenure.
Next, since price is no object and principle no consideration, the official is painted as a bad, bad person - ineffectual, an ally of violent criminals and an enemy of prosperity.
Can one business - one man, really - buy control of a rural California county with these tactics?
If Humboldt County’s District Attorney is recalled, his replacement will know that he or she too serves only at the pleasure of the Pacific Lumber Company, parent company Maxxam Corporation, directed by Mr. Charles Hurwitz.
Other local elected officials will get the message, too: county supervisors, the sheriff - even judges will work under the glare of Maxxam/PL’s scrutiny. Want to stay in office? Don’t impede this company’s will.
But next time, it might not be Maxxam. What if Calpine makes the business decision that spending a couple hundred thousand in the right places might earn it millions? What if marijuana growers organize and pool their collective economic might?
And what would you think of ambitious opportunists who jump through the hole the moneyed interests tear open in the democratic process?
"The recall is here," reasons Worth Dikeman. True. So are junk faxes, Internet scams and nose rings. That doesn’t mean we have to participate in them. Dikeman’s joining forces with this commercial attack on local government amounts to an agreement to serve at the pleasure of anyone with enough money to turn the political system inside out.
Most disappointing is local law enforcement buying in to this escapade, especially the formerly non-political officers of the Arcata Police Department. The police have every right to have a say in who’s DA. But along with that goes a responsibility to help fend off the wholesale commercial corruption of the electoral process and recommend a "no" vote on the recall.
What’s surprising is, despite all the money, how sloppily this recall has been manufactured. Eight-dollar-a-name hirelings cynically invoking harrowing images of sexual assault to gain signatures. Unattended petitions. Last-minute, apparently panicked infusions of cash. Duplicitous, contradictory statements.
If this is how Maxxam/PL behaves in public, what do they do in the woods, where no one sees them? Probably the kind of thing that’s gotten the company cited, fined and suspended so many times for violations of forestry regulations.
Last week, PL’s spokesperson was quoted in the Times-Standard as saying, "When people hear ‘PL’ they think of the battles we’ve gone through and a time when we weren’t as environmentally aware." In other words, during Redwood Summer and beyond, when PL was assuring us it was the true custodian of the environment, it was actually lacking in environmental awareness. But now, as it spends tens of thousands of dollars to get rid of an elected official, we are supposed to accept its assurances.
That could be a challenge. "This is exactly why we want a trial in court instead of trial by press release by Paul Gallegos and Tim Stoen," the company said in a press release responding to an embarrassing revelation from a former state forestry official.
But Friday, just after reporting that environmental awareness is something new for PL, the company acknowledged that its demurrer - an attempt to throw out the county’s fraud lawsuit against the company before any trial - still stands.
So that stuff about wanting a trial in court isn’t the case after all. But Dunn and company President Robert Manne only implement the will of Mr. Hurwitz, who wishes to extend that control to county government. Manne even managed to write an entire column on the matter for Sunday’s Times-Standard, mentioning numerous organizations involved - even the Beatles - but never the words "Maxxam" or "Hurwitz." Maybe it’s forbidden.
PL’s intimidation of what’s supposed to be an independent judiciary might already be taking place. It was last July - yes, of 2003 - that Judge Christopher Wilson heard arguments regarding PL’s demurrer motion. A decision was due in November, but months later, has never been made. Is the judge waiting for the outcome of the March 2 recall election to find out what kind of decision he has to render in order to remain on the bench?
Give Judge Wilson the encouragement he needs to make an objective decision. Tell Worth Dikeman to wait for a real election, not a purchased one, to realize his ambitions. Let Hurwitz/Maxxam/PL know that the public won’t be swayed by demagoguery. And show the world that Humboldt County is not Pacific Lumber/Maxxam/Hurwitz’s banana republic.
Vote no on the recall.
To read this editorial from the Arcata Eye website go to:
http://www.arcataeye.com/opinion04/040216opinion01.shtml
For more information:
http://www.arcataeye.com/
"What if marijuana growers organize and pool their collective economic might? "
They did organize. Thats how we got the D.A. with a hidden agenda.
They did organize. Thats how we got the D.A. with a hidden agenda.
Why does anyone listen to Nader anymore? The guy has more money and has done more dirty tricks insider trading then PALCO and ENRON combined. What's really sad is that in the local paper world (that's humboldt county to the rest of you folks) we have a massive problem. We only have one paper (maybe) that could really tell the truth! The Eureka Reporter is owned by people who gave $12,000 to VOTE NO, NorthCoast Joke is almost as bad as the Arcata Lie, who I wouldn't trust to look after and take care of my pot plants. And now the VOTE NO PEOPLE, lead by Richard Salzman, are bring in OUT OF TOWNERS to vote in the recall!
Don't believe me? Go drive around Arcata and Eureka and tell me how many out-of-town (out-of-state) plated cars have a "NO ON THE RECALL" sticker.
Don't believe me? Go drive around Arcata and Eureka and tell me how many out-of-town (out-of-state) plated cars have a "NO ON THE RECALL" sticker.
Nader has more than Palco and Enron combined? Check your information. Now that Nader is running for pres, his worth will be made public record. You can check the companies' worth as well.
Robert Flanagan, the little rich punk from Sacramento, who's come to take Gallegos out of office for his rich timber johns, is a painful example of why this "out-of-town" talk is ridiculous. Another example is Robert "out of town" Manne, whos only been here two years, and thinks his rich ass speaks for workers in Humboldt County as he exploits the unstable working conditions Maxxam has put on us.
hmm...given the choice between pot growers or texas corporate raider scumbags I think I will stick with the growers..at least the taxpayers don't have to bail them out of trouble if their S & Ls fail.
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