George Rebane
Supes Miller and Weston gave their “rationale” for floating Measure W on the 7jun16 ballot (op-ed in 22apr16 Union). They tell us that W is “strictly about controlling nuisance, environmental and public safety impacts from outdoor (MJ) grows.” Well maybe. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m on record for sharing these concerns voiced by our electeds, including Sheriff Royal and many other county officials. But Messrs Miller and Weston slide by the real question of ‘why W vs Ordinance 2405?’ adopted last January. The big unanswered question is why go from a readily modifiable county ordinance to a voter approved measure that must also be modified/rescinded by future voters.
Their answer is a vapid attempt to embrace democracy and avoid voter disenfranchisement when they state that “the 62,000 voters in Nevada County deserve to have their voices heard. This is why we believe a ballot measure is needed — it is important to hear from all voters to determine what really is the majority opinion and how we want to define our community.” But the county’s voters have already been heard in their emplacement of the current Board of Supervisors who are chartered by law to make such ordinances. Instead, the current Rood Center machine is really disenfranchising future voters and their electeds to the extent that it is much harder to change a codified voter approved initiative than for a future BoS to change an ordinance. And to confirm the real purpose of W, we note that its passage is optional as far as what powers the county will actually have to regulate MJ grows. Ordinance 2405 is alive and well, and can be tweaked to do whatever the powers that be want. However, because of the large opposition to W, such tweaks will also require spending some political capital (aka balls) which, from the looks of it, must be in short supply at 950 Maidu Ave. Taking the cue from Sacramento, it’s always safer to work from behind vox populi.
Speaking of the people’s voice, on vox.com Emmett Rensin in his ‘The smug style of American liberalism’ spells out the roots of our country’s polarization most clearly –
There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them. … The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its success was perhaps inevitable: the theory that conservatism, and particularly the kind embraced by those out there in the country, was not a political ideology at all. The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're voting against their own self-interest.
And that’s why we all need the care of a comprehensive state under which we will not be burdened by decisions that are out of our ken. The reader need go no further than these pages to confirm Rensin’s "smug style" assessment. The entire piece is definitely worth a read.
State senator Ted Gaines writes about ‘California’s high-speed fail’ in which he also presents the dismal stats about cost overruns continuously authored by California bureaucrats at the behest of its liberal legislators. In the aggregate Californians demonstrate daily that they have failed the Great Experiment on which our Founders embarked. Given CA’s critical infrastructure needs – e.g. roads, water storage – spending non-existent billions on a demonstrably insane project is yet another confirmation that in the large big government is incompetent. Which reminds me of the CEO who opined in a recent Union that Obamacare was going to be a blessing to the country since administering over-regulated healthcare today consumes 30% of its overall costs, and when government finally takes over the coming single-payer system, then administration costs will be cut in half. Now when was the last time anyone ever discovered a program that government could administer more efficiently than the private sector? Dumbth rules!
(BTW, I finally found a data source on the costs of single payer systems around the world. Soon I’ll report on its findings about the sustainability of such programs.)
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment