What has Measure Z Done for “Public Safety?”

A couple of years ago the voters of Humboldt County approved Measure Z, a new, regressive sales tax that disproportionately burdens the poor and homeless. When the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors sold us this ripoff, they promised us that the money would be used for “public safety.” Since then, we’ve had a wave of vicious violent assaults, mostly against the poor and homeless, and more murders than ever before.

Down here in SoHum, post Measure Z, the downtown Garberville shopping district is crawling with cops, who do little but harass street people all day. Then, late at night, after the stores have closed and the cops have gone away, local teenagers go out and beat homeless people with baseball bats while they try to sleep. Measure Z brought more cops to Southern Humboldt, but it also brought more violence to our community as well, and that was by design.

If you believed, for one instant, that the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors wrote Measure Z to make Humboldt County safer for the public you are a special kind of stupid. Unfortunately, the only thing we have more of in this county than greed and marijuana, is stupidity, and we can thank gullible NoHum liberals who voted for Measure Z for unleashing this latest wave of violence and bloodshed in Humboldt County.

What really happened was, the greedy landowners, real-estate bloodsuckers and the merchants down here in SoHum, convinced the tax-friendly liberals up North, to vote for a new tax that hits up the working poor, single mothers, and homeless people of Humboldt County, to pay for a police force for the unincorporated town of Garberville, which is swimming in drug money, but has no tax base. They called it Measure Z, and they said it was for “public safety,” because if they told you that it was a new, countywide, tax to pay for cops to insulate Garberville’s rich dope yuppies from their own customers and employees, you never would have voted for it.

The greedy, hoping to boost property values, and the mean-spirited, eager for blood, tricked naive liberals, who always fall for that “public safety” bullshit, into voting for a war against the poor. Measure Z was the first of a wave of “Fuck Poor People” laws in Humboldt County. The Board of Supes designed Measure Z to hurt poor people, both by taxing them unfairly, and then by punishing them for their poverty, with the cops they pay for. “No Camping” and “No Panhandling” laws soon followed, along with beefed-up enforcement of selective laws that impact the poor. Measure Z came first, however, and because Measure Z was so stacked against the poor, and encountered so little resistance, many people took it as a signal that it was open season on the poor and homeless.

What has it gotten us? Measure Z has given us a record-breaking year for murder, and Measure Z gave us more violence on our streets. Congratulations! And it only cost us, what, 20 million dollars so far? This is exactly what proponents of Measure Z wanted. They wanted more violence. They wanted more violence directed against the poor. They wanted cops to do more of it, but they wanted it done nonetheless.

Another body turned up at a homeless camp North of Redway on Halloween. The Sheriff claims that it is not immediately clear whether the man fell, or was thrown over the cliff, but however you look at it, he was certainly pushed. Local vigilantes known as “Locals on Patrol” have been going into homeless camps during the day to hand-out notices bearing the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Dept. logo and Sheriff Mike Downey’s name. The notices say: “You are on land owned by the State of California, the County of Humboldt or a private landowner in violation of penal code 602 (trespassing). If you are located on this property by any law enforcement officer you are subject to arrest per that section.”

Did the notice from the Sheriff’s office, and the nice people with tazers and pepper spray, who visited their camps to deliver it, scare people into moving their camp to a more precarious position, from which they fell, or did someone go back to the camp later that night to do the dirty work? Will we ever know? Will the Sheriff even conduct an investigation? Oh, and while you’re pondering rhetorical questions, ask yourself, “How does this improve “public safety?”

For politicians, Measure Z is a goldmine. For the poor people of Humboldt County, Measure Z has been a siege, and for the greedy, drug dealers who control most of the Southern Humboldt economy, Measure Z is about political power and selective enforcement. It’s about having cops to bust petty criminals, and harass homeless people around town while allowing major drug kingpins to operate with impunity in the hills, and not having to pay for it. All in all, Measure Z has been a shameful exercise in corruption, coercion, and violence against Humboldt County’s most vulnerable.

Measure Z has not made our streets safer, it has only made them meaner, more dangerous and more expensive, and the problems it was supposed to solve have only gotten worse. Remember that, the next time a politician tries to sell you something else for “public safety.”

The Myth of Mom and Pop Grower

 

I love living in Southern Humboldt and I feel good about my niche here at LoCO. I realize that not everyone appreciates my work, but I’m happy to offer my perspective, nonetheless. I think some people in SoHum find my opinion so shocking because I say things that have been left unsaid for far too long. Dope yuppies never hear this perspective from the merchants they patronize, the non-profits they support, or the people who work for them, and they certainly don’t say these things to each other. Instead, SoHum remains an enigma, full of sneaky, dishonest, but gullible, people who have been feeding each other bullshit for decades. There’s still a lot of truth buried beneath that bullshit, so I still have a lot of work to do.

I tell the truth about Southern Humboldt because we will never solve our problems as a community, until we understand our problems, as a community. I live here. I care about this community. Back in 1990, when National Guard troops were pointing guns at your kids, I was one of the people who stood up to say that the War on Drugs was wrong, and that no one should go to jail, or lose their home, for growing marijuana. I was on your side then, and I’m on your side now.

It took an enormous effort to turn the tides in the War on Drugs, pass Prop. 215, and bring us to where we are today. To do that, it became important to convince the public that marijuana growers were decent All-American people. It wasn’t enough to convince them that growing a green plant does not constitute criminal behavior; we also had to convince the public that the people who grow, and use marijuana, were, in fact, likable, otherwise law-abiding, citizens.

We found some “poster children,” and we propagated the myth of “Mom and Pop Grower,” the “small family farmers” and the “back to the lander.” Sure, we made broad, overly positive, generalizations about the industry, and the industry was happy to help us propagate them. The industry remained underground, however, so the public had to take our word for it. Of course we overlooked some things back then, and kept our mouths shut about others, while we searched for evidence of this myth we concocted for political purposes.

 

Fast forward to today. The industry continues to propagate these myths enthusiastically, while the amount of stuff they expect us to overlook, ignore, and keep our mouths shut about has grown to such gigantic proportion that it is now visible from space. Ignoring the reality of the cannabis industry in SoHum is like trying to ignore a hash lab explosion in the apartment next door. You heard it. It shook the building, but you just don’t want to know how bad it is.

We don’t want to see the results of the recent explosion in the cannabis industry. We don’t want to see the clear-cuts. We don’t want to know how much water it uses, or tons of soil, or miles of plastic film, or what all the trucks that haul it do to our roads and environment. We don’t want to know about the pesticides, herbicides and rat poison, and we don’t want to know what happened to Chris Giauque or Ray Maniaci, or half-a-dozen others. Instead, we recite those wholesome old myths about Mom and Pop Grower, the “small, family farmer” and the “back-to-the-lander,” that we concocted thirty years ago to stop the government from throwing us in jail. Those stories weren’t entirely true then, but they’re laughable now.

As long as we continue feeding each other the same old bullshit, we never will address the issues that we can and should tackle as a community. The black-market economy undermines community values, and devalues honest work. It contributes to our high murder rate, suicide rate, and drug abuse rate, not to mention our housing crisis, among other problems. That’s a high price tag for those black market profits, but the dope yuppies don’t pay that bill. The rest of us do.

The War on Drugs has crippled this community, and left our streets littered with human wreckage. We’ve got to quit treating people like it is OK to make money off the violent oppression, and brutality inflicted on millions of their brothers and sisters in the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs is wrong, and a lot of the people in it are cut from the same cloth as other war profiteers, like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They don’t care about anything but getting more for themselves. Their money will not solve our problems. Their money created our problems, and the more money they make, the more problems we will have.

The War on Drugs creates a vortex that sucks greedy opportunists into Southern Humboldt, where they exploit the land, water and the community. It’s time we stopped mythologizing them, and faced facts. I know you don’t want to hear it, but you might as well hear it from me.

Humboldt County’s Nuclear Caviar

We have a long history of shortsightedness here in Humboldt County. I suspect that we’re as eager to throw our long-term assets away for a fast buck as we ever were, and the impending legalization of marijuana gives us another opportunity to do just that.

Right now, the black-market cannabis industry holds this county hostage, politically and economically. The illegal marijuana industry has already brought enough social problems to Humboldt County, problems ranging from poverty and homelessness to hard drug abuse, violent crime and murder. Feeding this disease, and fueling the destruction it causes, the misguided War on Drugs has turned a harmless, easy to grow weed into expensive contraband. Now that the tides have turned on the War on Drugs, politicians and drug dealers will try to convince you that marijuana is nuclear caviar.

Nuclear, meaning that they will tell you that marijuana is so dangerous that it requires as much government oversight, control and regulation as a nuclear power plant. Caviar, because they intend to concoct some scheme to control cannabis production, to keep the price of cannabis artificially inflated, so that good pot remains an expensive luxury that working people can ill-afford.

Cannabis is not nuclear caviar. Cannabis is a giant fucking ripoff. Until now, the price of cannabis has been highway robbery at the point of a cop’s gun. If the CA legislature passes the current passel of pending cannabis legislation, they will simply turn iron-fisted prohibition into a state sponsored racket. It will still be highway robbery at the point of a cop’s gun, and pot will remain a giant fucking ripoff. For now.

Still, dramatic changes, already underway in the cannabis industry, will continue. The marijuana industry of today looks nothing like the marijuana industry of 20 years ago. Humboldt County will probably produce more marijuana, this year alone, than it did in the entire two decades between 1980 and 1999, and the cannabis industry of the future will look nothing like the cannabis industry of today.

The cannabis market will become more competitive, production will expand and automation will increase. Profit margins will shrink, leading to rapid consolidation. That means lots of people lose their jobs or go out of business. That’s how legal industries work. The cannabis industry is rapidly becoming a legal industry, full of businessmen who know how to run a business, and aren’t afraid to make tough decisions.

That is a dramatic change from the cannabis industry we all know and love. We like pot growers to be spendthrift fools who have no idea how much money they really make, buy everything retail, and drip money as they walk down the street. More than the cannabis itself, our local economy relies on the stupidity and shortsightedness of black-market dope growers who’s lack of business acumen lured them into this line of work to begin with. The black market takes money out of the hands of hard-working people, who might otherwise save it, and puts it into the hands of the people most likely to squander it. That’s how prohibition boosts the economy, and that’s what we see here in Humboldt County.

The fact is, no matter how legalization plays out, most of the people who benefit from the marijuana industry in Humboldt County today, will eventually get squeezed out. Will it happen in three years, or will it take five? That depends on a lot of things, but it will happen, regardless. A lot of people around here will have to find something else to do, and the sooner, the better.

The War on Drugs is a cruel racist policy. Mostly, the War on Drugs provides a legal framework for the violent control of minority communities, but here in Humboldt, we see another racist aspect to the War on Drugs. Here, the War on Drugs provided a relatively low-risk avenue to affluence for privileged white kids with no particular skills, talent or ambition. Hey, I’m a privileged, white, college drop-out myself. I certainly understand the attraction, but it’s still racist. It’s still wrong, and it’s still a huge fucking ripoff, but rest assured; that side of the War on Drugs, will evaporate too. The marijuana industry will no longer be dominated by white middle-class dilettantes looking for a low-stress, way to support their high-consumption lifestyle.

When you think about it, these are the people who make Humboldt County attractive and interesting, at least to me, the artists, performers and musicians, the idealistic art history, English and ancient language majors and the disillusioned scientists and engineers who decided they didn’t want to build weapons systems or devise new, environmentally destructive, products. For people like this, growing pot was a way to finance their art or their writing or their political activism, or their other interesting hobbies, without distracting too much from them. The cannabis industry of the future will have no place for these people.

Instead, the cannabis industry will be dominated by greedy white farmers who know how to grow pot and run a business, but have few, if any, other interests. Greedy white farmers do not attract tourists. If they did, people would flock to Iowa to watch corn grow. Greedy white farmers drain rivers, kill fish and destroy habitat, and they use their political clout to make sure that no one gets in their way. That’s what greedy white farmers do everywhere, and that’s what they intend to do here.

Yes, farming is boring and ugly and no one wants to see it, and the same is true of farmers, but we have something else here in Humboldt County that is worth more than all of the black-market marijuana we’ve grown here in the past, and all of the nuclear caviar we hope to produce in the future, put together. That is natural habitat.

Natural habitat has become remarkably rare around the world. I mean really rare, not artificially price-controlled, “rare,” but genuinely uncommon, and truly valuable. The Earth has lost half of its natural biodiversity since the first Earth Day, and the primary reason is loss of habitat. If we should treat anything around here like nuclear caviar, it is the natural habitat here in Humboldt County.

People want to see natural habitat, and they want to see it teeming with life.. Natural habitat attracts tourists. Biodiversity attracts tourists. No one will ever figure out how to produce habitat on the cheap and flood the market with biodiversity. Habitat will only become more rare and valuable. Pot, on the other hand, is easy to grow and cheap to produce, and it won’t be long before some state, like Nevada, Texas or Kansas, decides to get out of the way and open up the floodgates to an ocean of cheap cannabis.

That will leave us, here in Humboldt County, facing the same decision we face now, but with fewer options, and greatly diminished assets: Do we sacrifice our lives, and the natural habitat we love, in a vain attempt to compete with market forces beyond our control, or do we use our imagination, and learn to do something else, that harmonizes with the natural splendor of this unique place, and works for the kind of people who make up this community, and make this community special.

The Ganjier’s Circular Reasoning

Lately, I’ve noticed a new circular tucked into the North Coast Journal, from our local SoHum cannabis dispensary, Wonderland Nursery. Even though we live in the heart of the marijuana industry, we were one of the last places in California without a dispensary, until Wonderland opened up a few years ago specializing in potted cannabis seedlings. I see from their circular that they now also dabble in edibles and concentrates.

I’ve never been to Wonderland, but I always enjoy hearing “The Ganjier” of Wonderland Nursery, Kevin Jodrey talk about marijuana. In my lifetime so far, I have listened to way too many people talk way, way, waaaayyyyyyy toooooo much about marijuana. Really, I love marijuana,and I’ve grown marijuana, but I don’t find gardening particularly interesting. I’m more interested in getting high, and when I get high, the last thing I want to hear, is some idiot drone on about how awesome this new strain of marijuana is. I get it. I’m stoned. It’s good pot, now shut-up about it.

But it’s different with The Ganjier. Kevin Jodrey really knows his cannabis, and he’s very articulate and well spoken. When I have the opportunity to hear him talk about marijuana, I take notes. So, of course, I read the editorials that appeared in the Wonderland Nursery circulars. I don’t think I’ve ever read an editorial in an advertizing circular before, but I’ve also never seen a circular advertizing marijuana plants before, so the Wonderland Nursery insert struck me as novel for a couple of reasons.

Anyway, the first editorial I read from the Ganjier pointed out that as we move towards legalization of cannabis, the interests of the “cannabis cause” will diverge from those of the “cannabis industry.” I appreciate the heads up Kevin, but I’ve seen the cannabis cause, and the cannabis industry, and I don’t think the two could be any more divergent. The cannabis industry loved prohibition because prohibition made an easy to grow weed more valuable than gold.

The cannabis cause was made almost entirely of marijuana consumers. The people I met through High Times Freedom Fighters and Mass Cann all had jobs. Back then, people from the “cannabis industry” only joined the “cannabis cause” after they got busted. Some of us grew our own weed, but we supported the legalization movement with money we earned AT WORK, and we attended rallies, wrote letters, and went to meetings in our “free” time, AND we bought marijuana at outrageously high black market prices.

Thankfully, Jack Herer came along. Jack sold books, bumper-stickers and T-Shirts and taught people all over the country how to sell legalization. Thanks to Jack Herer, and his book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, marijuana legalization became a business, and anyone could open a franchise. Jack taught us to sell legalization, and pretty soon, some people were making a living from it. That’s what turned the tide towards legalization. The cannabis industry had almost nothing to do with it.

The cannabis industry was busy making money, from us, the cannabis cause. They were buying big diesel generators, damming creeks and putting out rat poison. They were breeding better marijuana. I’ll give them that, but when it comes to legalization, the cannabis industry was not a big help, except for the fact that marijuana smokers everywhere really, really, resented the high prices, and that resentment motivated them to work for legalization.

So, now that legalization seems inevitable, and the cannabis industry begins to rise up out of the muck of prohibition, it’s not asking “How may we help you?” Instead, it’s warning us that it may no longer have our best interests at heart. The Ganjier warns those of us who want to “free the weed” that the cannabis industry prefers to “expensive the weed.”

In the second editorial, however, The Ganjier laments all of the bad publicity that the cannabis industry has experienced lately. Why does the press always focus on the habitat destruction, the murders, the stream diversions, and the rat poison when there’s so much more to the cannabis industry than that? Look, one dispensary uses electric cars, the Ganjier tells us.

The Ganjier thinks that the cannabis cause should help the cannabis industry with its little image problem. I don’t think so. Here’s why:

First, People should know that Humboldt County is a terrible place to grow cannabis. People should know that this is not farmland. We live in a forest. The land here is steep and poorly suited to agriculture. You cannot produce cannabis here economically, without the huge government subsidies known as prohibition. This is not a place for farmers. This is a place where criminals go to hide their criminal activity. Now that cannabis is going legal, the cannabis industry should move out of the closet known as Humboldt County.

Second, people should see the ugliness and the stupidity behind the current cannabis industry. People get killed. People get hurt. Lots of people get ripped off. Besides that, people in the cannabis industry do a lot of really stupid shit, like setting a camper on fire on the side of the road, or dropping a refrigerator off of the Alder Point bridge or leaving a truck full of diesel fuel parked in the riverbed.

Finally, the cannabis industry has all of our fucking money. If the cannabis industry gave a fuck about anyone but themselves, not only could they have legalized pot, they could have financed a guerrilla army that would have already liberated this nation from the capitalist police state, once and for all. They don’t give a fuck. Instead, they want bigger trucks, wider TVs and newer smart phones. So fuck ’em.

Listen, if the newly emerging legal cannabis industry wants help from the cannabis cause, the cannabis industry damn well better find a way to produce marijuana at a reasonable price. No marijuana is worth more than $50 an ounce, and I’d much rather see the current cannabis industry collapse as support the environmental destruction, violence, and stupidity that defines the cannabis industry today.

Our Finest Hour

Our Finest Hour

My Fellow Americans,

 

Today, we face challenging times. Economic malaise, global environmental meltdown and worldwide political upheaval threaten everything we hold dear. Some would say that times like these demand strong leadership. I say, “Hogwash!”

Strong leadership got us into this mess. Self-confident liars have used our instinctual trust, cooperative nature, and natural compassion against us, and we have paid dearly for our willingness to believe in them. It’s high-time we learned our lesson from those mistakes.

 

We don’t need leaders anymore, because we are not followers. We are not sheep, and will not be led hither and yon by a well-funded political class with its own agenda. We reject the voice of authority, and scoff at the voice of reason.

Instinctively, we know how to navigate these rough seas. We know what to do in a cultural dead-end, like the one we currently face. When things fall apart, and nothing makes any sense anymore, we turn to the things we can count on; drug abuse, kinky sex, and stupid humor, the things we get from each other.

You can count on me for stupid humor, just like I count on you for sex and drugs. We need each other, but today, I need more from you than sex and drugs. Today, I need your vote. Please vote for this blog, “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” in the North Coast Journal’s “Best of Humboldt” reader survey. Today is our last day to inundate the NCJ with votes for this blog, so please, do it right now.

Cast your vote for stupid humor and fresh perspective, today! Go to the NCJ website. Click on the long skinny bar near the top of the page that takes you to the ballot. Click through all of the categories until you get to the last one, number 40, “best blog”. Type in (or cut and paste) “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” into the space next to that category. Then click through the remaining pages until you see the winged kitten. It’s that easy, and takes less than a minute. You’ll be glad you did, but DO IT NOW!!

Don’t throw your vote away on one of the news blogs. Don’t you get way too much news? Isn’t it sick the way they compete to be the first to tell you about the latest grisly traffic fatality or police shooting? Like you don’t have enough trouble in your life, that you can’t wait a few hours, or even a few days, to learn of the death of a stranger.

Yes, journalists like to quote Thomas Jefferson to justify their existence, and hide behind an air of professionalism, but these low-lifes chase ambulances simply to bait the rubbernecker in us with the freshest blood. Journalists pimp human suffering purely for the purpose of indulging our prurient curiosity. Don’t fall for their ruse, and don’t encourage them by voting for a news blog. Instead, vote for “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” in the NCJ “Best of Humboldt” readers survey.

Political blogs are even worse. The idiocy that passes for political debate in this country, and the horse-race style coverage of political campaigns should provide anyone with a gnat’s wit or better, plenty of evidence that democracy has failed. Still, Humboldt’s political blogs, full of pitifully dull posts and littered with moronic comments, continue to fester. I don’t know why anyone would sip the puss from those infections. If I were you, I wouldn’t admit to reading these blogs, let alone vote for them.

Besides news and political blogs, blogs that revolve around recipes and human interest stories suck too. If you read a recipe on line, it might look good, but to really enjoy it, you still have to buy the ingredients, and prepare the dish, and even then, you might not enjoy it. You have to spend the money. You have to do the work. You have to follow their instructions, like some indentured servant, before you get to enjoy anything. They get to tell you what to do. You just do what you are told and eat what they tell you to eat. How pathetic!

Reading a blog is enough work, I say, and I expect something for it. I should get a laugh, a chuckle, a grin, or at least a fresh, if somewhat twisted, perspective, and I shouldn’t have to make a mess of my kitchen in the process. If I spend my time and energy to read something, dammit, I better enjoy it, right now! I write “Like You’ve Got something Better To Do” for people like me; people who hate to read, love to laugh, and demand immediate gratification. If you read “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” regularly, you know that I deliver the goods, week in, and week out.

Today, I ask you to give back a little. Please cast your vote for “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” in the North Coast Journal’s “Best of Humboldt” readers poll. We have entered the very last hours of this campaign. Today, Weds. September 5, at 4pm, the NCJ will close the survey, and they will accept no votes after that time, so please, do not delay, do it today. Cast your vote now.

If you’ve already voted for “Like You’ve Got Something Better To Do” as Humboldt’s best blog in the 2012 NCJ readers poll, I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. Thank you and God Bless America!!!