In the news...

Where to begin? Sooo much to blog about, so little time… Let’s see….

Twenty two year old Justin Erbacher was arrested recently and charged with the sexual molestation of five young girls. There’s confusing information about the victims and the foster homes they lived in with Erbacher, but the most confusing thing of all is that one of the victims, a 13 year old girl, was also arrested. She is suspected of “fifteen felony counts of sexual abuse” but the Police refuse to say exactly what crimes she is being charged with.

Speaking of sexual abuse (and really, I’d rather not) another local man was arrested recently and accused of molesting three boys he adopted from the Ukraine. John Krueger says that he is innocent and the website he has showing pictures of the boys and telling people how they too can adopt a kid is really innocent. Krueger claims that the charges are bogus, despite the fact that this is not the first time a young boy has accused him of molestation. It happened once in 1991 and another time 1996. That tells me that either Krueger has very bad luck or he really is a creepy child molester. I guess we’ll find out which it is soon enough.

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The Son’s trial is back in the news this week. Two people testified on Tuesday that Officer Maxwell pulled out his gun on them during a routine traffic stop. Yesterday another witness testified that she watched as Maxwell stuck his gun in Sons face and threaten to shoot him rather than talk to him. Uh, yeah. I’d call that pretty threatening.

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Kern County Sheriff deputy Brian Carr testified yesterday in the preliminary hearing for the three remaining officers charged with beating James Moore to death on August 15, 2005. Carr said that he was disturbed by what he saw when he arrived at the downtown jail to book his prisoner. Moore was shirtless, shoeless, shackled, his eyes were swollen shut, and he was bleeding. Carr watched as “more than a dozen” officers escorted Moore to a patrol car and try to shove him in. Moore resisted (I wouldn’t want to go anywhere with those people either) and that’s when all hell broke loose. The officers knocked Moore down and began beating the crap out of him. Carr left to finish booking his prisoner, and when he returned he saw Moore lying on the ground all bloody. Unable to dismiss what he had seen, Carr wrote a memo to his supervisor a few days later which sparked the investigation into homicide. I imagine the three deputies in question are hoping to receive much better treatment than they dished out should they be found guilty.

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The sludge company that has been dumping its product all over Kern County are threatening to sue if Measure E passes in November. I don’t really get how intimidating people is going to win voters over, but whatever. Responsible Biosolids Management held a press conference of sorts earlier this week, meaning they had a conference call with The Californian. The president of the company, Jon Coffin, admitted that a lot of their problems come from bad public relations and even went so far as to say that he wished Sen. Dean Florez, leader of the anti-sludge movement (pun intended) was on their side. I don’t foresee that happening, but maybe they should try hiring a publicist. Disembodied voices threatening financial ruin doesn’t exactly give people the warm fuzzies.

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There’s an article in the paper today describing how a greater number of Kern County students are being accepted to the University of California. That’s good, right? Well sure, but we’re not talking UCLA, or Berkeley or something, we’re talking UC Merced. Now, I’m sure this going to piss a few people off, but isn’t UC Merced sort of the joke of the UC system? I mean, of all the great UC’s, who anyone chose Merced over the others? Sure, maybe a few. Like the people who already live there. Merced is like Bakersfield’s ugly step sister. I’d rather live in Madera.

Just kidding.