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DEDICATED TO FREE THOUGHT AND FREE SPEECH IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD |
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The
Great Train Robbery 2000
by Philip Murphy
6/19/00 |
When it comes to getting in line for a piece of the state public pie, rural counties with their small population bases always have to work twice as hard to get their share. So when areas like the North Coast get their hands on some of that hard to get state money it is especially important that the funds be spent in a sensible and efficient manner.
A perfect example of how hard-up for cash Lake County is was illustrated by the recent cash grab by the Lake County Board of supervisors who took $400,00 out of $650,000 tobacco settlement fund to try to fill the $6,000,000 gap in funding for the Basin 2000 project. How else could this important project be funded? Perhaps the Board of supervisors could have asked state senator Wes Chesbro or assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin why they are supporting a plan to spend $65,000,000 to try to fix the un-fixable Eel River Canyon section of the North Coast Pacific Railroad instead of getting the money need to finish the far more useful Basin 2000 project.
This new infusion of cash follows the $70,000,000 plus that has been sucked up by this publicly run rail line over the past few years to fund an operation that has not run a train on it's tracks in over two years.
To fully understand the futility of trying to rehabilitate the rail line running between Willits and Eureka, a short history lesson is in order. The North Western Pacific Railroad has 300 miles of track that stretches from Marin county to Eureka, and when track conditions permit has run freight trains up and down it's line for 85 years. The problem is that on an all-to-often basis the track conditions have not permitted the use of the 200 mile section of the line that runs through the Eel River Canyon between Willits and Eureka, as the following report made about a landslide that shut down the line for 73 days in 1938 by the NWP's chief engineer shows: " The entire slide was completely saturated with water and the movement toward the Eel River, as it is measured at the railroad, attained a velocity of 13 feet in 24 hours on February 2nd, 1938. The surface of the slide takes on the characteristic form of mud glaciers, with lateral terminal moraines, with rolls and pressure ridges forming valleys and hummocks. Great cracks open up into which water from the surface enters. Commencing with the heavy rainfall period of February 1938, evidence appeared of the earth movement developing, and in spite of all efforts to maintain the roadbed the situation became so serious that on February 2nd it was necessary to remove the steam shovel and 600 feet of track in order to save the track material. 600 feet of track and two open deck trestles were destroyed. the moving mass upon entering the Eel River greatly restricted the stream bed area and was in turn washed away by the strong current".
The report estimated that the slide was approximately a quarter mile long. Part of the problem is that every one of the times the track has slid into the river the solution has been to cut further into the mountainside, which creates a steeper, less stable area surrounding the track which invites more wash-outs in the future. This situation has made the Eel River section of track the most expensive in the world to maintain on a cost-per-mile basis. That is why when the railroads were deregulated in the 1980's, the at-the-time owners (Southern Pacific RR) were eager to get rid of the line, in spite of the fact that they were running an average of 200 freight cars a day on the line. That kind of volume is not likely to be seen in the future, since the primary freight carried in that day was lumber, and with most of the good trees gone and the big clients like Georgia-Pacific and Louisiana Pacific leaving town the need for the line has disappeared. What will it cost to fix the line? It depends upon who you ask. 15 years ago Southern Pacific Railroad figured that it would cost about $1,000,000 a mile to save the Eel River section( though that figure did not include normal maintenance or repairs), for a total of about $200,000,000. Two years ago the North Coast Railroad Authority (who governs the NWPRR), contractors and geo-tech consultants surveyed the track between Dos Rios and Alder point, and determined that $600,000,000 would be needed to" fix" the track, though more damage has occurred in the meantime including a tunnel collapse that will undoubtedly add to that figure. Besides the landslides, tunnel collapses and track wash-outs, four railcars are derailed near Longvale, just north of Dos Rios another railcar lays in the Eel River, and eleven flat cars loaded with lumber have been stranded for years south of Alder point.
So why have our elected officials decided to try to do the impossible? Humbolt and Del Norte County politicos have decided that their economic future lies in the development of a deep water port in Eureka, to be served by the NWPRR who will run freight down it's line (weather permitting), to the bay area. Why you would want to send your cargo down 200 miles of shaky railroad track when you could get there much more easily by ship is a question that none of the proponents of this plan have been able to answer. When FEMA gave the NWPRR 8.3 million dollars recently to repair storm related damage to the track, the NCRA voted 4-3 to spend the money to fix the Eel River Canyon instead of using it to re-open the line between Marin and Willits, a far more feasible task. So today the newly constructed, never-seen-a-train depot in Cloverdale is likely to stay that way, while the NCRA sells off public assets like the depot in Ukiah ($468,000) and the Willits depot ($400,000) to fund it's day-to-day expenses.
How well is the NCRA running the line? An internal investigation two years ago found that funds were misspent, accounting was inadequate or missing altogether, and that standard management and related internal controls were non-existent, which is why Virginia Strom-Martin stated that the NCRA "Has at times appeared to be a black hole for public dollars".
When the decision was recently made by a 4-3 vote of the NCRA board to focus on "fixing" the Eel River line instead of re-opening the easily fixed southern section, the tie-breaking vote was cast by NCRA chairman Bob Jehr, who it is rumored is going to run for Strom-Martin's seat when she is term limited out, and he obviously needs the support of the north coast political honchos to fund his campaign, hence his favorable vote. Wes Chesbro continues to insist that the railroad is a" vital link" in the north coast economy, and even though Strom-Martin has questioned the efficiency of the process, she is also supporting the proposed $65,000,000 bailout.
Exactly one year ago today a 21 year old volunteer named Matt Black died when he came in contact with a live power line while he was fighting a small fire in a walnut orchard. To this day several important questions about this tragedy have never been publicly discussed, and very few people outside the department know what really happened. This is Matt's story.
It was 5:00 p.m. on a warm,breezy Wednesday afternoon when I left work and headed my motorcycle down Hill road,then turned eastbound onto the Parkway overpass. As I crossed over highway 29 I was very surprised to see smoke rising from the ridge directly behind the Hill road east fire station. Everything was wrong with the situation, the firehouse looked deserted, the smoke was to close to town and it was to late on this windy day for a controlled burn. I slowed down as I passed the station, debating whether or not to stop and report the smoke. I decided that they must have had an engine on the scene already, and kept on rolling.
As I got to the bottom of the hill, I saw flames along the northside of the road, and no firefighters or equipment were in sight. Two teenagers were running around trying to stomp out the flames that were surrounding a couple of homes, so I slowed down and looked for a place to park, deciding on a spot on lakeveiw road so as not to block the fire engines that I knew would be arriving at any second. The next five minutes were a confusing, frustrating time, because the three of us couldn't find a hose, shovel, or anything else that would qualify as a firefighting tool. We made sure that the homes were empty, and moved some pieces of wood away from the homes that could have started more problems. Beyond that, all we could do is to stamp out the flames with our feet. The fire was mostly fed by the knee-high weeds in the walnut orchard adjoining the homes, and while it produced a lot of smoke, it was not intense or difficult to extinguish.
As I stumbled around in the smoke, it became clear that the fire had started at the road, and I assumed that the cause of the blaze must have been a cigarette tossed from a car window. It never occurred to me that a few feet from where I had been stomping on the burning weeds a live 12000 volt powerline was waiting to cause more destruction. By this time the fire engines had begun to roll, and by the time firechief Al Moorhead was crossing eleventh St. a call came across the radio stating that a downed powerline was involved with the fire, a message that Matt Black's employer confirmed that Matt had heard on his pager.
Matt's crew turned up Lakeveiw road and two men were sent out with hoses to knock down the flames closest to the homes, and Matt was specifically instructed to concentrate on a small pile of burning debris. For some unknown reason, instead of heading for a pile roughly a hundred feet from the downed line, Matt went to the pile next to the road, and the live wire. Chief Moorhead speculated that possibly Matt did this so he could be closer to a fellow firefighter working nearby with whom he had a friendly rivalry. Whatever the case, two eye witnesses claim that as Matt approached the wire the hose he was dragging across the field snagged for a moment, then suddenly broke free,causing Matt to stumble forward onto the line.
In the blowing smoke and flames did Matt know exactly where the downed line was? we will never know for sure, but we do know that the difficult to see hazard was not marked with flagging tape or cones, a simple precaution that may have saved his life. This omission was noted by the several private and governmental agencies that have investigated this case as a flaw in the department's policy, and suggested changing the rules so that in the future all hazards of a serious nature will be identified with some kind of safety/warning device. Chief Moorhead says that his department will make marking hazards a mandatory procedure in the future, so at least the possibility of a repeat of this kind of tragedy is less likely. This aspect of the incident bothered me the most, because over a decade ago when I had served on another volunteer fire department it was taken for granted that simple safety precautions of this type would take place and if they didn't there would be hell to pay if the Chief found out. It was also hard for me to accept that a fine young man that we all assumed would be the kind of guy to really make something of himself had died just as his life as an adult was beginning.
In Lake County we have several sources to choose from when buying building materials and related items, but finding a good deal is a difficult to impossible task. When you look at tiny, one-store-operations like Kelseyville Lumber, Hardsters and Lake Builders supply it is easy to understand that these low volume operations are at a tremendous disadvantage when competing against nationwide operations like Home Depot, even though these three small stores are part of the ACE hardware chain. But there is a large difference between selling some generic ACE hardware products and outfits like Home Base and Home Depot, who discount all of their merchandise all of the time.
So the stores that are best positioned to take on the "big guys" are the mini-chains, like Mendo Mill (with stores in Clearlake, Fort Bragg and Ukiah),Piedmont Lumber (eight stores across the North Bay Area) and Friedman Bros. (Ukiah, Santa Rosa and Sonoma). Freidman Bros. is doing a great job of competing with Home Depot, and can stay within very close range of the huge national outfits in pricing and selection. Thanks to their high prices, Mendo Mill and Piedmont Lumber are actually helping to drive business away from Lake County and the eight store Piedmont chain is using the motto "shop hometown, not Home Depot", in spite of the fact that most of the business lost to out-of-county stores goes to Friedman Bros. in Ukiah, not Home Depot in far-off Santa Rosa.
Before I make the cost comparisons, I would like to point out that Piedmont has a core of knowledgeable,well trained and loyal employees(with the exception of the never-ending stream of trainee cashiers who frequently bring the checkstands to a grinding halt), even though they offer low pay with little chance for advancement. Piedmont also has flaws besides high prices and low pay, they constantly change their hours (closed at 3:00pm Sunday?), and a large part of the locally owned Lakeport store has recently been turned into a marketplace for over-priced dust collectors called Victoria's Corner. It should also be pointed out that Piedmont will match any competitors advertised price, although that time-consuming process wouldn't be necessary if they were competitive in the first place.
Home Depot price Piedmont price
Delta bathroom faucet N520-WFMPU $74.97
$109.99
Round-Up weed killer 1. gallon
$92.00
$129.99
30 gallon natural gas water heater
$137.00
$229.99
Ortho Diazinon insect spray 32 oz.
$8.96
$14.49
Rain Drip watering kit R520D
$23.97
$25.49
Rain Bird sprinkler 25 PJDA-C
$15.88
$19.49
3" ABS drain pipe "T" fitting
$3.19
$4.79
3" ABS drain pipe coupling
$1.19
$1.89
De Walt cordless drill 14.4 volt
$159.00
$219.99
De Walt cordless drill 18 volt
$199.00
$319.00
SKILL "77" worm drive saw
$146.00
$159.99
SKILL 7 1/4" 2.3 HP saw
$37.96
$51.99
Homelite 16" chainsaw
$139.00
$154.99
1/2" CDX
plywood $10.94
$15.38
1/2" particle
board
$10.47
$12.95
7/16" OSB
$9.43
$14.95
It should also be pointed out that some of the Piedmont prices were sale prices while none of the Home Depot prices were sale prices. Also, these prices were not "cherry picked", they represent pretty much the average disparity in prices which is in the 20% range. It is particularly disappointing to see the large disparity in basic building materials prices, a situation that guarantees that we will see more and more Home Depot trucks making deliveries around Lake County.
The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School A Speech to the California Judges Association 1995 annual conference Links to Related Documents This speech is derived from The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry into the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition by Professor Richard J. Bonnie & Professor Charles H. Whitebread, II In this speech, Professor Whitebread refers to the following documents which are online in this library, either in whole or in part. The Hearings of the Marihuana Tax Act and related documents. Marihuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding, by the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse.
Introduction
This session is going to be about the history of the non-medical use of drugs. Let me say that, because this is going to be a story, that I think it will interest you quite a bit. The topic is the history of the non-medical use of drugs and I think you ought to know what my credentials are for talking about this topic. As you may know, before I taught at the University of Southern California, I taught at the University of Virginia for fifteen years, from 1968 to 1981. In that time period, the very first major piece that I wrote was a piece entitled, "The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge - The Legal History of Marihuana in the United States".
I wrote it with Professor Richard Bonnie, still of the faculty of the University of Virginia. It was published in the Virginia Law Review in October of 1970 and I must say that our piece was the Virginia Law Review in October of 1970. The piece was 450 pages long. It got a ton of national attention because no one had ever done the legal history of marijuana before. As a result of that, Professor Bonnie was named the Deputy Director of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse and I was a consultant to that commission. As a result of Richard's two year executive directorship of the National Commission in 1971 and 1972 he and I were given access to both the open and the closed files of what was then called the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, what had historically been called the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and what today is called the Drug Enforcement Agency. Based upon our access to those files, both open and closed, we wrote a book called "The Marihuana Conviction- The Legal History of Drugs in the United States" and that book went through six printings at the University of Virginia press before being sold out primarily in sales to my friends at the FBI over the years. It is based upon that work that I bring you this story.
The Situation in 1900
If you are interested in the non-medical use of drugs in this country, the time to go back to is 1900, and in some ways the most important thing I am going to say to you guys I will say first. That is, that in 1900 there were far more people addicted to drugs in this country than there are today. Depending upon whose judgment, or whose assessment, you accept there were between two and five percent of the entire adult population of the United States addicted to drugs in 1900. Now, there were two principal causes of this dramatic level of drug addiction at the turn of the century. The first cause was the use of morphine and its various derivatives in legitimate medical operations. You know as late as 1900, particularly in areas where medical resources were scarce it was not at all uncommon for you to say, let's say you would have appendicitis, you would go into the hospital, and you would get morphine as a pain killer during the operation, you would be given morphine further after the operation and you would come out of the hospital with no appendix but addicted to morphine.
The use of morphine in battlefield operations during the Civil War was so extensive that, by 1880, so many Union veterans were addicted to morphine that the popular press referred to morphinism as the "soldier's disease". Now I will say, being from Virginia as I am, that the Confederate veterans didn't have any problems about being addicted to morphine because the South was too poor to have any, and therefore battlefield operations on the Confederate Army were simply done by chopping off the relevant limb while they drank a little whiskey. But the Northern troops heavily found themselves, as the result of battlefield operations and the use of morphine, addicted to morphine.
Now, the other fact that I think that is so interesting about drug addiction at the turn of the century, as opposed to today is who the addicts were, because they were the exact opposite of who you would think most likely to be an addict today. If I were to ask you in terms of statistical groups who is most likely to be involved with drugs today, you would say a young person, a male, who lives in the city and who may be a minority group member. That is the exact opposite of who was most likely to be addicted to drugs at the turn of the century. In terms of statistical groups, who was most likely to be addicted to drugs at the turn of the century? A rural living, middle-aged white woman. The use of morphine in medical operations does not explain the much higher incidence of drug addiction among women. What does is the second cause of the high level of addiction at the turn of the century -- the growth and development of what we now call the "patent medicine" industry. I think some of you, maybe from watching Westerns on TV if nothing else are aware that, again, as late as 1900, in areas, particularly rural areas where medical resources were scarce, it was typical for itinerant salesmen, not themselves doctors, to cruise around the countryside offering potions and elixirs of all sorts advertised in the most flamboyant kinds of terms.
"Doctor Smith's Oil, Good for What Ails You", or "Doctor Smith's Oil, Good for Man or Beast."
Well, what the purveyors of these medicines did not tell their purchasers, was that later, when these patent medicines were tested, many of them proved to be up to fifty percent morphine by volume.
Now, what that meant, as I have always thought, was the most significant thing about the high morphine content in patent medicines was it meant they tendedto live up to their advertising. Because no matter what is wrong with you, or your beast, you are going to feel a whole lot better after a couple of slugs of an elixir that is fifty percent morphine. So there was this tendency to think "Wow! This stuff works." Down you could go to the general store and get more of it and it could be sold to you directly over the counter.Now, for reasons that we weren't able to full research, but for reasons, I think, probably associated with the role of women rural societies then patent medicines were much more appealing to women than to men and account for the much higher incidence of drug addiction in 1900 among women than among men. If you want to see a relatively current portrayal of a woman addicted to patent medicine you might think of Eugene O'Neil's play "A Long Day's Journey Into Night". The mother figure there, the one that was played by Katherine Hepburn in the movies was addicted to patent medicines.In any event, the use of morphine in medical operations and the sale of patent medicines accounted for a dramatic level of addiction. Again, between two and five percent of the entire adult population of the United States was addicted to drugs as late as 1900.
Now if my first point is that there was a lot more addiction in 1900 than there is today and that the people who were addicted are quite a different group than the group we would be thinking of today, my next point would be that if you look at drug addiction in 1900, what's the number one way in which it is different than drug addiction today? Answer: Almost all addiction at the turn of the century was accidental. People became involved with drugs they did not know that they were taking, that they did not know the impact of. The first point, then, is that there was more drug addiction than there is now and most of it was accidental. The Pure Food and Drug Act Then the single law which has done the most in this country to reduce the level of drug addiction is none of the criminal laws we have ever passed. The single law that reduced drug addiction the most was the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 did three things:
1). It created the Food and Drug Administration in Washington that must approve all foods and drugs meant for human consumption. The very first impact of that was that the patent medicines were not approved for human consumption once they were tested.
2) The Pure Food and Drug Act said that certain drugs could only be sold on prescription.
3) The Pure Food and Drug Act, (and you know, this is still true today, go look in your medicine chest) requires that any drug that can be potentially habit-forming say so on it's label. "Warning -- May be habit forming." The labeling requirements, the prescription requirements, and the refusal to approve the patent medicines basically put the patent medicine business out of business and reduced that dramatic source of accidental addiction. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, not a criminal law, did more to reduce the level of addiction than any other single statute we have passed in all of the times from then to now.
The Harrison Act
The very first criminal law at the Federal level in this country to criminalize the non-medical use of drugs came in 1914. It was called the Harrison Act and there are only three things about the Harrison Act that we need to focus on today. Number one is the date. Did you hear the date, 1914? Some of you may have come this morning thinking that we have used the criminal law to deal with the non-medical use of drugs since the beginning of the Republic or something. That is not true. The entire experiment of using the criminal sanction to deal with the non-medical use of drugs really began in this country in 1914 with the Harrison Act.
The second interesting thing about the Harrison Act was the drugs to which it applied, because it applied to almost none of the drugs we would be concerned about today. The Harrison Act applied to opium, morphine and its various derivatives, and the derivatives of the coca leaf like cocaine. No mention anywhere there of amphetamines, barbiturates, marijuana, hashish,hallucinogenic drugs of any kind. The Harrison Act applied only to opium, morphine and its various derivatives and derivatives of the coca leaf like cocaine. The third and most interesting thing for you all as judges about the Harrison Act was its structure, because the structure of this law was very peculiar and became the model for every single piece of Federal legislation from 1914 right straight through 1969. And what was that model?
It was called the Harrison Tax Act. You know, the drafters of the Harrison Act said very clearly on the floor of Congress what it was they wanted to achieve.They had two goals. They wanted to regulate the medical use of these drugs and they wanted to criminalize the non-medical use of these drugs. They had one problem. Look at the date -- 1914. 1914 was probably the high water mark of the constitutional doctrine we today call "states' rights" and, therefore, it was widely thought Congress did not have the power, number one, to regulate a particular profession, and number two, that Congress did not have the power to pass what was, and is still known, as a general criminal law. That's why there were so few Federal Crimes until very recently.
In the face of possible Constitutional opposition to what they wanted to do, the people in Congress who supported the Harrison Act came up with a novel idea. That is, they would masquerade this whole thing as though it were a tax. To show you how it worked, can I use some hypothetical figures to show you how this alleged tax worked? There were two taxes. The first (and again, these figures aren't accurate but they will do to show the idea) tax was paid by doctors. It was a dollar a year and the doctors, in exchange for paying that one dollar tax, got a stamp from the Government that allowed them to prescribe these drugs for their patients so long as they followed the regulations in the statute. Do you see that by the payment of that one dollar tax, we have the doctors regulated? The doctors have to follow the regulations in the statute. And there was a second tax. (and again, these are hypothetical figures but they will show you how it worked.) was a tax of a thousand dollars of every single non-medical exchange of every one of these drugs. Well, since nobody was going to pay a thousand dollars in tax to exchange something which, in 1914, even in large quantities was worth about five dollars, the second tax wasn't a tax either, it was a criminal prohibition.
Now just to be sure you guys understand this, and I am sure you do, but just to make sure, let's say that in 1915 somebody was found, let's say, in possession of an ounce of cocaine out here on the street. What would be the Federal crime? Not possession of cocaine, or possession of a controlled substance. What was the crime? Tax evasion. And do you see what a wicked web that is going to be? As a quick preview, where then are we going to put the law enforcement arm for the criminalization of drugs for over forty years -- in what department? The Treasury Department. Why, we are just out there collecting taxes and I will show you how that works in a minute. If you understand that taxing scheme then you understand why the national marijuana prohibition of 1937 was called the Marihuana Tax Act. The Early State Marijuana Laws But before we get to that next big piece of Federal legislation, the marihuana prohibition of 1937, I would like to take a little detour, if I may, into an analysis of the early state marijuana laws passed in this country from 1915 to 1937. Let me pause to tell you this. When Professor Bonnie and I set out to try to track the legal history of marijuana in this country, we were shocked that nobody had ever done that work before. And, secondly, the few people who had even conjectured about it went back to the 1937 Federal Act and said "Well, there's the beginning of it." No. If you go back to 1937, that fails to take account of the fact that, in the period from 1915 to 1937, some 27 states passed criminal laws against the use of marijuana.
What Professor Bonnie and I did was, unique to our work, to go back to the legislative records in those states and back to the newspapers in the state capitols at the time these laws were passed to try to find out what motivated these 27 states to enact criminal laws against the use of marijuana. What we found was that the 27 states divided into three groups by explanation. The first group of states to have marijuana laws in that part of the century were Rocky Mountain and southwestern states. By that, I mean Texas, New Mexico,Colorado, Montana. You didn't have to go anywhere but to the legislative records to find out what had motivated those marijuana laws. The only thing you need to know to understand the early marijuana laws in the southwest and Rocky Mountain areas of this country is to know, that in the period just after 1914, into all of those areas was a substantial migration of Mexicans. They had come across the border in search of better economic conditions, they worked heavily as rural laborers, beet field workers, cotton pickers, things of that sort. And with them, they had brought marijuana. Basically, none of the white people in these states knew anything about marijuana, and I make a distinction between white people and Mexicans to reflect a distinction that any legislator in one of these states at the time would have made. And all you had to do to find out what motivated the marijuana laws in the Rocky mountain and southwestern states was to go to the legislative records themselves.
Probably the best single statement was the statement of a proponent of Texas first marijuana law. He said on the floor of the Texas Senate, and I quote, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff (referring to marijuana) is what makes them crazy." Or, as the proponent of Montana's first marijuana law said, (and imagine this on the floor of the state legislature) and I quote, "Give one of these Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona." Well, there it was, you didn't have to look another foot as you went from state to state right on the floor of the state legislature. And so what was the genesis for the early state marijuana laws in the Rocky Mountain and southwestern areas of this country? It wasn't hostility to the drug, it was hostility to the newly arrived Mexican community that used it. A second group of states that had criminal laws against the use of marijuana were in the Northeast, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York -- had one and then repealed it and then had one again -- New Jersey. Well, clearly no hypothesis about Mexican immigration will explain the genesis of those laws because,as you know, the Northeast has never had, still doesn't really, any substantial Mexican-American population. So we had to dig a little deeper to find the genesis of those laws. We had to go not only to the legislative records but to the newspapers in the state capitols at the time these laws were passed and what we found, in the early marijuana laws in the Northeast, we labeled the "fear of substitution." If I may, let me paraphrase an editorial from the New York Times in 1919 so we will get exactly the flavor of this fear of substitution.
The New York Times in an editorial in 1919 said, "No one here in New York uses this drug marijuana. We have only just heard about it from down in the Southwest," and here comes the substitution. "But," said the New York Times,"we had better prohibit its use before it gets here. Otherwise" -- here's the substitution concept -- "all the heroin and hard narcotics addicts cut off from their drug by the Harrison Act and all the alcohol drinkers cut off from their drug by 1919 alcohol Prohibition will substitute this new and unknown drug marijuana for the drugs they used to use."Well, from state to state, on the theory that this newly encountered drug marijuana would be substituted by the hard narcotics addicts or by the alcohol drinkers for their previous drug that had been prohibited, state to state this fear of substitution carried, and that accounted for 26 of the 27 states -- that is, either the anti-Mexican sentiment in the Southwest and Rocky Mountain areas or fear of substitution in the Northeast. That accounted for 26 of the 27 states, and there was only one state left over. It was the most important state for us because it was the first state ever to enact a criminal law against the use of marijuana and it was the state of Utah.
Now, if you have been hearing this story and you have been playing along with me, you think "Oh, wait a minute, Whitebread, Utah fits exactly with Colorado, Montana, -- it must have been the Mexicans." Well, that's what I thought at first. But we went and did a careful study of the actual immigration pattern and found, to our surprise, that Utah didn't have then, and doesn't have now, a really substantial Mexican-American population. So it had to be something else.Come on folks, if it had to be something else, what do you think it might have been? Are you thinking what I was thinking -- that it must have had something to do with the single thing which makes Utah unique in American history -- its association with the Mormon church. With help from some people in Salt Lake City, associated with the Mormon Church and the Mormon National Tabernacle in Washington -- with their help and a lot of work we found out what the genesis was of the first marihuana law in this country. Yes, it was directly connected to the history of Utah and Mormonism and it went like this. I think that a lot of you know that, in its earliest days, the Mormon church permitted its male members to have more than one wife -- polygamy.
Do you all know that in 1876, in a case called Reynolds against the United States, the United States Supreme Court said that Mormons were free to believe what they wanted, but they were not free to practice polygamy in this country. Well, who do you think enforced that ruling of the Supreme Court in 1876? At the end of the line, who enforces all rulings of the Supreme Court? Answer: the state and local police. And who were they in Utah then? All Mormons, and so nothing happened for many years. Those who wanted to live polygamously continued to do so. In 1910, the Mormon Church in synod in Salt Lake City decreed polygamy to be a religious mistake and it was banned as a matter of the Mormon religion. Once that happened, there was a crackdown on people who wanted to live in what they called "the traditional way". So, just after 1910, a fairly large number of Mormons left the state of Utah, and indeed left the United States altogether and moved into northwest Mexico. They wrote a lot about what they wanted to accomplish in Mexico. They wanted to set up communities where they were basically going to convert the Indians, the Mexicans, and what they referred to as "the heathen" in the neighborhood to Mormonism. By 1914, they had had very little luck with the heathen, but our research shows now beyond question that the heathen had a little luck with them. What happened apparently -- now some of you who may be members of the church, you know that there are still substantial Mormon communities in northwest Mexico -- was that, by and large most of the Mormons were not happy there, the religion had not done well there, they didn't feel comfortable there, they wanted to go back to Utah where there friends were and after 1914 did. And with them, the Indians had given them marijuana. Now once you get somebody back in Utah with the marijuana it all becomes very easy, doesn't it? You know that the Mormon Church has always been opposed to the use of euphoriants of any kind.
So, somebody saw them with the marijuana, and in August of 1915 the Church, meeting again in synod in Salt Lake City decreed the use of marijuana contrary to the Mormon religion and then -- and this is how things were in Utah in those days -- in October of 1915, the state legislature met and enacted every religious prohibition as a criminal law and we had the first criminal law in this country's history against the use of marijuana. That digression into the early state marijuana laws aside, we will now get back on the Federal track, the year is 1937 and we get the national marijuana prohibition -- the Marihuana Tax Act The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 Now, first again, does everybody see the date, 1937? You may have thought that we have had a national marijuana prohibition for a very long time. Frankly, we haven't. The marijuana prohibition is part and parcel of that era which is now being rejected rather generally -- the New Deal era in Washington in the late 30s.
Number two, you know, don't you, that whenever Congress is going to pass a law, they hold hearings. And you have seen these hearings. The hearings can be extremely voluminous, they go on and on, they have days and days of hearings. Well, may I say, that the hearings on the national marijuana prohibition were very brief indeed. The hearings on the national marijuana prohibition lasted one hour, on each of two mornings and since the hearings were so brief I can tell you almost exactly what was said to support the national marijuana prohibition. Now, in doing this one at the FBI Academy, I didn't tell them this story, but I am going to tell you this story. You want to know how brief the hearings were on the national marijuana prohibition? When we asked at the Library of Congress for a copy of the hearings, to the shock of the Library of Congress, none could be found. We went "What?" It took them four months to finally honor our request because -- are you ready for this? -- the hearings were so brief that the volume had slid down inside the side shelf of the bookcase and was so thin it had slid right down to the bottom inside the bookshelf. That's how brief the were. Are you ready for this? They had to break the bookshelf open because it had slid down inside.
There were three bodies of testimony at the hearings on the national marijuana prohibition. The first testimony came from Commissioner Harry Anslinger, the newly named Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Now, I think some of you know that in the late 20s and early 30s in this country there were two Federal police agencies created, the FBI and the FBN -- the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. In our book, I talk at great length about how different the history of these two organizations really are. But, the two organizations, the FBI and the
FBN had some surface similarities and one of them was that a single individual headed each of them for a very long time. In the case of the FBI, it was J. Edgar Hoover, and in the case of the FBN it was Harry Anslinger, who was the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 until 1962. Commissioner Anslinger gave the Government testimony and I will quote him directly. By the way, he was not working from a text that he had written. He was working from a text that had been written for him by a District Attorney in New Orleans, a guy named Stanley. Reading directly from Mr. Stanley's work, Commissioner Anslinger told the Congressmen at the hearings, and I quote,
"Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death." That was the Government testimony to support the marijuana prohibition from the Commissioner.
The next body of testimony -- remember all of this took a total of two hours -- uh .. You understand what the idea was, don't you? The idea was to prohibit the cultivation of hemp in America. You all know, because there has been some initiative here in California, that hemp has other uses than its euphoriant use. For one, hemp has always been used to make rope. Number two, the resins of the hemp plant are used as bases for paints and varnishes. And, finally, the seeds of the hemp plant are widely used in bird seed. Since these industries were going to be affected the next body of testimony came from the industrial spokesmen who represented these industries. The first person was the rope guy. The rope guy told a fascinating story -- it really is fascinating -- the growth of a hemp to make rope was a principle cash crop right where I am from, Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland at
the time of the Revolutionary War. But, said the rope guy, by about 1820 it got cheaper to import the hemp we needed to make rope from the Far East and so now in 1937 we don't grow any more hemp to make rope in this country -- it isn't needed anymore. If you heard that story, there are two things about it that I found fascinating. Number one, it explains the long-standing rumor that our forefathers had something to do with marijuana. Yes, they did -- they grew it. Hemp was the principal crop at Mount Vernon. It was a secondary crop at Monticello.
Now, of course, in our research we did not find any evidence that any of our forefathers had used the hemp plant for euphoriant purposes, but they did grow it. The second part of that story that, to me is even more interesting is -- did you see the date again - 1937? What did the rope guy say? We can get all the hemp we need to make rope from the Far East, we don't grow it hear anymore because we don't need to. Five years later, 1942, we are cut off from our sources of hemp in the Far East. We need a lot of hemp to outfit our ships for World War II, rope for the ships, and therefore, the Federal Government, as some of you know, went into the business of growing hemp on gigantic farms throughout the Midwest and the South to make rope to outfit the ships for World War II. So, even to this day, if you are from the Midwest you will always meet the people who say, "Gosh, hemp grows all along the railroad tracks." Well, it does. Why? Because these huge farms existed all during World War II. But, the rope people didn't care. The paint and varnish people said "We can use something else." And, of the industrial spokesmen, only the birdseed people balked. The birdseed people were the ones who balked and the birdseed person was asked, "Couldn't you use some other seed?" These are all, by the way, direct quotes from the hearings. The answer the birdseed guy gave was, "No, Congressman, we couldn't. We have never found another seed that makes a birds coat so lustrous or makes them sing so much."So, on the ground that the birdseed people needed it -- did you know that the birdseed people both got and kept an exemption from the Marihuana Tax Act right through this very day for so-called "denatured seeds"?
In any event, there was Anslinger's testimony, there was the industrial testimony -- there was only one body of testimony left at these brief hearings and it was medical. There were two pieces of medical evidence introduced with regard to the marijuana prohibition. The first came from a pharmacologist at Temple University who claimed that he had injected the active ingredient in marihuana into the brains of 300 dogs, and two of those dogs had died. When asked by the Congressmen, and I quote, "Doctor, did you choose dogs for the similarity of their reactions to that of humans?" The answer of the pharmacologist was, "I wouldn't know, I am not a dog psychologist."
Well, the active ingredient in marijuana was first synthesized in a laboratory in Holland after World War II. So what it was this pharmacologist injected into these dogs we will never know, but it almost certainly was not the active ingredient in marijuana. The other piece of medical testimony came from a man named Dr. William C. Woodward. Dr. Woodward was both a lawyer and a doctor and he was Chief Counsel to the American Medical Association. Dr. Woodward came to testify at the behest of the American Medical Association saying, and I quote, "The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug."What's amazing is not whether that's true or not. What's amazing is what the Congressmen then said to him. Immediately upon his saying, and I quote again, "The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug.", one of the Congressmen said, "Doctor, if you can't say something good about what we are trying to do, why don't you go home?"
That's an exact quote. The next Congressman said, "Doctor, if you haven't got something better to say than that, we are sick of hearing you." Now, the interesting question for us is not about the medical evidence. The most fascinating question is: why was this legal counsel to the most prestigious group of doctors in the United States treated in such a high-handed way? And the answer makes a principle thesis of my work -- and that is -- you've seen it, you've been living it the last ten years. The history of drugs in this country perfectly mirrors the history of this country. So look at the date -- 1937 -- what's going on in this country? Well, a lot of things, but the number one thing was that, in 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt was reelected in the largest landslide election in this country's history till then. He brought with him two Democrats for every Republican, all, or almost all of them pledged to that package of economic and social reform legislation we today call the New Deal.
And, did you know that the American Medical Association, from 1932, straight through 1937, had systematically opposed every single piece of New Deal legislation. So that, by 1937, this committee, heavily made up of New Deal Democrats is simply sick of hearing them: "Doctor, if you can't say something good about what we are trying to do, why don't you go home?" So, over the objection of the American Medical Association, the bill passed out of committee and on to the floor of Congress. Now, some of you may think that the debate on the floor of Congress was more extensive on the marijuana prohibition. It wasn't. It lasted one minute and thirty-two seconds by my count and, as such, I will give it to you verbatim. The entire debate on the national marijuana prohibition was as follows -- and, by the way, if you had grown up in Washington, DC as I had you would appreciate this date. Are you ready?
The bill was brought on to the floor of the House of Representatives -- there never was any Senate debate on it not one word -- 5:45 Friday afternoon, August 20. Now, in pre-air-conditioning Washington, who was on the floor of the House? Not very many people. Speaker Sam Rayburn called for the bill to be passed on "tellers". Does everyone know "tellers"? Did you know that for the vast bulk of legislation in this country, there is not a recorded vote. It is simply, more people walk past this point than walk past that point and it passes -- it's called "tellers". They were getting ready to pass this thing on tellers without discussion and without a recorded vote when one of the few Republicans left in Congress, a guy from upstate New York, stood up and asked two questions, which constituted the entire debate on the national marijuana prohibition. "Mr. Speaker, what is this bill about?" To which Speaker Rayburn replied, "I don't know. It has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it's a narcotic of some kind."
Undaunted, the guy from Upstate New York asked a second question, which was as important to the Republicans as it was unimportant to the Democrats. "Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?" In one of the most remarkable things I have ever found in any research, a guy who was on the committee, and who later went on to become a Supreme Court Justice, stood up and -- do you remember? The AMA guy was named William C. Woodward -- a member of the committee who had supported the bill leaped to his feet and he said, "Their Doctor Wentworth came down here. They support this bill 100 percent." It wasn't true, but it was good enough for the Republicans. They sat down and the bill passed on tellers, without a recorded vote.
In the Senate there never was any debate or a recorded vote, and the bill went to President Roosevelt's desk and he signed it and we had the national marijuana prohibition. 1938 to 1951 Now, the next step in our story is the period from 1938 to 1951. I have three stories to tell you about 1938 to 1951. The first of them. Immediately after the passage of the national marijuana prohibition, Commissioner Anslinger decided to hold a conference of all the people who knew something about marijuana -- a big national conference. He invited forty-two people to this conference. As part of our research for the book, we found the exact transcript of this conference. Ready? The first morning of the conference of the forty-two people that Commissioner Anslinger invited to talk about marijuana, 39 of them got up and said some version of "Gee, Commissioner Anslinger, I don't know why you asked me to this conference, I don't know anything about marijuana." That left three people. Dr. Woodward and his assistant -- you know what they thought. That left one person -- the pharmacologist from Temple University -- the guy with the dogs. And what do you think happened as a result of that conference? Commissioner Anslinger named the pharmacologist from Temple University the Official Expert of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics about marijuana, a position the guy held until 1962. Now, the irony of trying to find out what the drug did after it had been prohibited -- finding out that only one person agrees with you -- and naming him the Official Expert, speaks for itself. The next story from this time period was a particular favorite of the police groups to whom I spoke at the FBI Academy, because it is a law enforcement story.
After national marijuana prohibition was passed, Commissioner Anslinger found out, or got reports, that certain people were violating the national marijuana prohibition and using marijuana and, unfortunately for them, they fell into an identifiable occupational group. Who were flouting the marijuana prohibition? Jazz musicians. And so, in 1947, Commissioner Anslinger sent out a letter, I quote it verbatim, "Dear Agent So-and-so, Please prepare all cases in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons on a single day. I will let you know what day." That letter went out on, I think, October 24, 1947. The responses by the resident agents were all in the file. My favorite -- at the bottom line, there wasn't a single resident agent who didn't have reservations about this idea -- came from the Hollywood agent. This is the exact letter of the FBN agent in charge in Hollywood. "Dear Commissioner Anslinger, I have your letter of October 24. Please be advised that the musical community here in Hollywood are unionized and very tight we have been unable to get an informant inside it. So, at the present time, we have no cases involving musicians in violation of the marihuana laws." For the next year and a half, Commissioner Anslinger got those kinds of letters. He never acknowledged any of the problems that the agents said they were having with this idea and always wrote them back the same letter. "Dear Agent so-and-so,
Glad to hear you are working hard to give effect to my directive of October 24, 1947. We will (and he always underlined the word 'will') have a great national round-up arrest of musicians in violation of the marijuana laws all on a single day. Don't worry, I will let you know what day." This went on -- and, of course, you know that some jazz musicians were, in fact, arrested in the late 40's -- this all went on until it ended just the way it began -- with something that Anslinger said. I don't see anybody in here really old enough to appreciate this point, but Commissioner Anslinger was testifying before a Senate Committee in 1948. He was saying, "I need more agents." And, of course, the Senators asked him why. "Because there are people out there violating the marijuana laws."
Well, you know what the Senators asked -- "Who?" And in a moment that every Government employee should avoid like the plague, Anslinger first said, "Musicians." But then he looked up at that Senate committee and he gave them a little piece of his heart and said the single line which provoked the most response in this country's history about the non-medical use of drugs. Anslinger said, "And I don't mean good musicians, I mean jazz musicians." Friends, there is no way to tell you what a torrent ensued. Within 24 hours, 76 newspaper editorials slammed him, including special editions the then booming trade press of the jazz music industry. With three days, the Department of the Treasury had received fifteen thousand letters. bunches of them were still in bags when I got there -- never been opened at all. I opened a few. Here was a typical one, and it was darling.
"Dear Commissioner Anslinger, I applaud your efforts to rid America of the scourge of narcotics addiction. If you are as ill-informed about that as you are about music, however, you will never succeed." One of the things that we had access to that really was fun was the Commissioner's own appointment book for all of his years. And, five days after he says "I don't mean good musicians, I mean jazz musicians." there is a notation: 10 AM -- appointment with the Secretary of the Treasury." Well, I don't know what happened at that appointment, but from that appointment on, no mention is ever made again of the great national round-up arrest of musicians in violation of the marijuana laws all on a single day, much to the delight of the agents who never had any heart for it in the first place.
The final story from this period is my favorite story from this period, by far, and, again, there is simply nobody here who is really old enough to appreciate this story. You know, if you talk to your parents -- that's the generation we really need to talk to -- people who were adults during the late 30's and 40's. And you talk to them about marijuana in particular you would be amazed at the amazing reputation that marijuana has among the generation ahead of you as to what it does to its users. In the late 30's and early 40's marihuana was routinely referred to as "the killer drug", "the assassin of youth". You all know "reefer madness", right?
Where did these extraordinary stories that circulated in this country about what marijuana would do to its users come from? The conventional wisdom is that Anslinger put them over on Americans in his effort to compete with Hoover for empire-building, etc. I have to say, in some fairness, that one of the things that our research did, in some sense, was to rehabilitate Commissioner Anslinger. Yes, there was some of that but, basically, it wasn't just that Anslinger was trying to dupe people.
The terrific reputation that marijuana got in the late 30s and early 40s stemmed from something Anslinger had said. Does everybody remember what Anslinger said about the drug? "Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."
Well, this time the magic word -- come along lawyers out there, where's the magic word? -- Insanity. Marihuana use, said the Government, would produce insanity. And, sure enough, in the late 30s and early 40s, in five really flamboyant murder trials, the defendant's sole defense was that he -- or, in the most famous of them, she -- was not guilty by reason of insanity for having used marijuana prior to the commission of the crime. All right, it's time to take you guys back to class here. If you are going to put on an insanity defense, what do you need? You need two things, don't you?
Number one, you need an Expert Witness. Where, oh where, in this story, are we going to find an expert witness? Here it comes -- sure enough -- the guy from Temple University -- the guy with the dogs. I promise you, you are not going to believe this. In the most famous of these trials, what happened was two women jumped on a Newark, New Jersey bus and shot and killed and robbed the bus driver. They put on the marijuana insanity defense. The defense called the pharmacologist, and of course, you know how to do this now, you put the expert on, you say "Doctor, did you do all of this experimentation and so on?" You qualify your expert. "Did you write all about it?" "Yes, and I did the dogs" and now he is an expert. Now you ask him what? You ask the doctor "What have you done with the drug?" And he said, and I quote, "I've experimented with the dogs, I have written something about it and" -- are you ready -- "I have used the drug myself."
What do you ask him next? "Doctor, when you used the drug, what happened?" With all the press present at this flamboyant murder trial in Newark New Jersey, in 1938, the pharmacologist said, and I quote, in response to the question "When you used the drug, what happened?", his exact response was: "After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat." He wasn't done yet. He testified that he flew around the room for fifteen minutes and then found himself at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot high ink well.
Well, friends, that sells a lot of papers. What do you think the Newark Star Ledger headlines the next day, October 12, 1938? "Killer Drug Turns Doctor to Bat!" What else do we need to put on an insanity defense? We need the defendant's testimony -- himself or herself. OK, you put defendant on the stand, what do you ask? "What happened on the night of . ." "Oh, I used marijuana." "And then what happened?" And, if the defendant wants to get off, what is he or she going to say? "It made me crazy." You know what the women testified? In Newark they testified, and I quote, "After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette my incisor teeth grew six inches long and dripped with blood." This was the craziest business you ever saw. Every one of these so-called marijuana insanity defenses were successful. The one in New York was just outlandish. Two police officers were shot and killed in cold blood. The defendant puts on the marijuana insanity defense and, in that case, there was never even any testimony that the defendant had even used marijuana. The testimony in the New York case was that, from the time the bag of marijuana came into his room it gave off "homicidal vibrations", so he started killing dogs, cats, and ultimately two police officers. Commissioner Anslinger, sitting in Washington, seeing these marijuana insanity defenses, one after another successful, he writes to the pharmacologist from Temple University and says, "If you don't stop testifying for the defense
in these matters, we are going to revoke your status as the Official Expert of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics." He didn't want to lose his status, so he stopped testifying, nobody else would testify that marijuana had turned them into a bat, and so these insanity defenses were over but not before marijuana had gotten quite a reputation, indeed.
The next step -- and now we are going to move very quickly here -- in 1951. We get a whole new drug law called the Boggs Act and it is important to us for only two reasons. Number one, it reflects what I am going to call the formula for drug legislation in this country. Here is the formula. The formula really is always the same, think about it in our lifetime. The formula is that someone, and by the way, that someone is usually the media, perceive an increase in drug use. What's the answer? The answer in the history of this country is always the same -- a new criminal law with harsher penalties in every single offense category. Where did the perception come from this time? Well, if you have ever seen movies from this time period like High School Confidential, the perception was that kids in high school were starting to use drugs. What's the answer? The answer is always the same. The Boggs Act of 1951 quadrupled the penalties in every single offense category and, by the way, the Boggs Act had a whole new rationale for the marijuana prohibition. Do you remember the old rationale -- that marijuana was an addictive drug which caused in its users insanity, criminality, and death? Just before Anslinger was to testify on the Boggs Act, the doctor who ran for the Government the Lexington, Kentucky narcotics rehabilitation clinic testified ahead of Anslinger and testified that the medical community knew that marijuana wasn't an addictive drug,. It doesn't produce death, or insanity, and instead of producing criminality, it probably produces passivity, said the doctor.
Who was the next witness? Anslinger. And, if you see, that the rug had been pulled out from under everything he had said in the 1937 hearings to support the marijuana prohibition. In what I call a really slick Federal shuffle -- Anslinger, you know, had been bitten bad enough by what he said, he didn't want that again -- he said, the doctor is right, marijuana -- he always believed, by the way, that there was something in marijuana which produced criminality -- is not an addictive drug, it doesn't produce insanity or death but it is "the certain first step on the road to heroin addiction." And the notion that marijuana was the stepping stone to heroin became, in 1951, the sole rationale for the national marijuana prohibition. It was the first time that marijuana was lumped with all the other drugs and not treated separately, and we multiply the penalties in every offense category.
By the way, I told you that the history of drug legislation reflects the history of the country. 1951, what's going on? The Korean War, the Cold War. It didn't take the press a minute to see this perceived use in drug use among high school kids as our "foreign enemies", using drugs to subvert the American young. In our book, we have ten or fifteen great political cartoons. My favorite is a guy with a big Fu Man Chu (mustache) labeled "Oriental Communism." He has a big needle marked "Dope" and he has the American kids lying down -- "Free World" it is marked. There it was -- that our foreign enemies were going to use drugs to subvert the American young. What did we do?
We passed a new law that increased the penalties in every offense category by a factor of four. Well, now once you buy it, the ball is going to roll like crazy.
1956 and the Daniel Act
1956, we get another new drug law, called the Daniel Act, named for Senator Price Daniel of Texas. It is important to us for only two reasons. One, it perfectly reflects the formula again. What is the formula? Somebody perceives an increase in drug use in this country and the answer is always a new criminal law with harsher penalties in every offense category. Where did the perception in 1956 come from that there was an increase in drug use? Answer: Anybody remember 1956? In 1956, we had the first set ever of televised Senate hearings. And whose hearings were they? They were the hearings of Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee about organized crime in America.
These hearings, which everybody watched on their little sets showed two things that we all know today, but it sure made their socks roll up and down then. Number one, there is organized crime in America and number two, it makes all its money selling drugs. There it was, that was all the perception we needed. We passed the Daniel Act which increased the penalties in every offense category, that had just been increased times four -- times eight. With the passage of each of these acts, the states passed little Boggs acts, and little Daniel acts, so that in the period 1958 to 1969, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Virginia was typical, the most heavily penalized crime in the Commonwealth was possession of marijuana, or any other drug. It led to a mandatory minimum sentence of twenty years, no part of which you were eligible for parole or probation, and as to no part of it were you eligible for a suspended sentence. Just to show you where it was, in the same time period first degree murder in Virginia had a mandatory minimum sentence of fifteen years. Rape, a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years. Possession of marijuana -- not to mention sales of marijuana with its mandatory minimum of forty years -- mandatory minimum of twenty years.
That is the situation in 1969 when we have a new drug law, the first one in this country's history that does not follow the formula. It is the 1969 Dangerous Substances Act. For he first time in this country's history, we have a perception of an increase in drug use during the Sixties, but instead of raising the penalties, we lower them. And, further, in the Dangerous Substances Act of 1969, for the first time we finally abandon the so-called "taxing" mythology. In the 1969 Act, what the Federal law does is, it takes all the drugs we know -- if you can't fill in this next blank, you are in trouble -- except two -- which two? Which two are never going to be mentioned? Nicotine and alcohol.
But, other than nicotine and alcohol -- every other drug. By the way, I tried this with the FBI for twenty years and they wouldn't listen, and you won't listen either but, I am going to try. If you are going to go out and talk about drugs and whatever you are going to do with drugs, will you please discard the entirely antiquated and erroneous word "narcotics." Narcotics are drugs that put people to sleep. Almost all of the drugs that we are interested in today don't do that. So, in 1969, the Dangerous Substances Act gave up the effort to define what are narcotic drugs. What the 1969 act did, and what most state laws still do, is to classify all drugs except nicotine and alcohol by two criteria. What is the drug's medical use? And, what is the drug's potential for abuse?
We put all the drugs, by those two criteria, in schedules, and then we tie the penalties for possession, possession with intent to sell, sale, and sale to a minor to the schedule of the drug in question. Now, again, I am no good at this anymore, I have not kept up with the drug laws, I don't know who is in what schedule, and many states have abandoned the schedule but, to give you a flavor of it: The first schedule, Schedule One Drugs were drugs that had little or no medical use and a high potential for abuse. What's going to go in there? LSD, marijuana, hashish, they are all in Schedule One -- little or no medical use and a high potential for abuse.
Then you get some medical use, high potential for abuse -- what do you want there? Barbiturates, amphetamines,. Then we are going to get what? High medical use and high potential for abuse. Morphine, codeine. Codeine is the best one because codeine is in almost every single prescription cough medicine and it is addictive as can be Then you go on down and get the antibiotics -- high medical use, almost no potential for abuse, and there you are. Once you schedule your drugs, you then tie the penalties for the drugs to no medical use and a high potential for abuse.Then you get some medical use, high potential for abuse -- what do you want there? Barbiturates, amphetamines,.Then we are going to get what? High medical use and high potential for abuse. Morphine, codeine. Codeine is the best one because codeine is in almost every single prescription cough medicine and it is addictive as can be.
Then you go on down and get the antibiotics -- high medical use, almost no potential for abuse, and there you are. Once you schedule your drugs, you then tie the penalties for the drugs to the schedule and then, because in 1969 they wanted to reduce the marijuana penalties they had to deal with marijuana separately and did so. But the 1969 act important for two reasons again: One, we abandoned the taxing mythology and; two, it was the first law in this country's history that, instead of raising the penalties in every offense category, lowered them. Well, then you know what happened. We get the War on Drugs. You know how it all went down. We got perceptions in the 80s that there was an increase in drug use, a great dramatic decision to declare war on drugs and, predominantly, war on drug users.What I want to say to you is this, and this is where I think some of you are going to be a little surprised. You know as much about that process as I do. You watched it. You saw how we had one law after another, raising the penalties so that as late as 1990, thirty percent of the minority group population of the City of Baltimore who are male and between 20 and 29 are under court supervision for drugs. Thirty percent, that's the number you are looking for. The War on Drugs, a very interesting war, because why? It was cheap to fight. It was cheap to fight at first -- why? You heard me in the "Recent Decisions" talk. What was last year's big moment, and the year before? The change in cheap and easy forfeiture. Criminal forfeiture was used to make this a costless war. That is, easy forfeiture from those who were caught allowed us to pay for the war in that way. I think we are going to have some real questions about whether people want to pay for the war on drugs through their taxes because now the Court has made forfeiture much, much more difficult in their overall concern for property rights. But here is what I think may surprise some of you.
You guys know as much about the War on Drugs as I do. I didn't come hear to talk, or to harangue, or to give you any opinions on that point. I think it speaks for itself. It is a failure and I think it will be judged as a failure. What I wanted to bring you instead was, instead of talking about that that everybody is talking about -- and you guys will ultimately resolve it and you guys are the ones who are seeing all the drug cases, day in and day out, and always will, until this changes. But, what I thought I could bring you was the part of the story you hadn't heard -- how we got to where we were when the War on Drugs was declared. Conclusion - The Issue of Prohibition And one other thing I want to do with you this morning, and that's this -- I want to say one thing. To tell you the real truth, my interest isn't in drugs, or in the criminalization of drugs although I think we should abolish the criminal penalties for drugs, and deal with it as the Europeans do in a medical way, but who cares? That's an opinion. What interests me though, isn't drugs. What interests me is that larger issue, and the reason that I wrote the piece, and the reason they were my tenure pieces, I am interested in a much larger issue, and that is the idea of Prohibition -- the use of criminal law to criminalize conduct that a large number of us seem to want to engage in. And, for my purposes, -- now, Professor Bonnie went on to be associated with NIDA and with all kinds of drug-related organizations and continues to be interested in the drug laws -- I am not. My interest is in criminal prohibitions and, for my purposes, as a criminal law scholar, we could have used any prohibition -- alcohol prohibition, the prohibition against gambling that exists still in many states. How about the prohibition in England from 1840 to 1880 against the drinking of gin? Not drinking, just gin -- got it? We could have used any of these prohibitions. We didn't. We chose the marijuana prohibition because the story had never been told -- and it is an amazing story. We could have used any of these prohibitions. We could have used the alcohol prohibition. The reason we didn't is because so much good stuff has been written about it. And are you aware of this? That every single -- you know how fashionable it is to think that scholars can never agree? -- Don't you believe that -- Every single person who has ever written seriously about the national alcohol prohibition agrees on why it collapsed. Why? Because it violated that iron law of Prohibitions. What is the iron law of Prohibitions? Prohibitions are always enacted by US, to govern the conduct of THEM. Do you have me? Take the alcohol prohibition. Every single person who has ever written about it agrees on why it collapsed. Large numbers of people supported the idea of prohibition who were not themselves, opposed to drinking. Do you have me? What? The right answer to that one is Huh?
Want to hear it again? Large numbers of people supported the idea of prohibition who were not themselves, opposed to drinking. Want to see it? Let me give you an example, 1919. You are a Republican in upstate New York. Whether you drink, or you don't, you are for the alcohol prohibition because it will close the licensed saloons in the City of New York which you view to be the corrupt patronage and power base of the Democratic Party in New York. So almost every Republican in New York was in favor of national alcohol prohibition. And, as soon as it passed, what do you think they said? "Well, what do you know? Success. Let's have a drink." That's what they thought, "let's have a drink." "Let's drink to this." A great success, you see.
Do you understand me? Huge numbers of people in this country were in favor of national alcohol prohibition who were not themselves opposed to drinking. I just want to go back to the prohibition against the drinking of gin. How could a country prohibit just the drinking of gin, not the drinking of anything else for forty years? Answer: The rich people drank whiskey and the poor people drank what? -- gin. Do you see it?
Let's try the gambling prohibition. You know when I came to Virginia, this was a very lively issue, the gambling prohibition. By the way, I think it's a lively issue in California. Are you ready for it?
Have you ever seen the rhetoric that goes around the gambling prohibition? You know what it is. Look, we have had a good time. We have been together yesterday, we have been together today, I have known a lot of you guys for ages. How about after the talk, we have a minute or two, let's go on up to your room and we will play a little nickel, dime, quarter poker. Want to play some poker this afternoon? Why not? It's a nice thing to do. Would we be outraged if the California State Police came barreling through the door and arrested us for violation of California's prohibition on gambling?
Of course we would. Because, who is not supposed to gamble? Oh, you know who is not supposed to gamble -- them poor people, that's who. My God, they will spend the milk money. They don't know how to control it. They can't handle it. But us? We know what we are doing. That's it. Every criminal prohibition has that same touch to it, doesn't it? It is enacted by US and it always regulates the conduct of THEM. And so, if you understand that is the name of the game, you don't have to ask me, or any of the other people which prohibitions will be abolished and which ones won't because you will always know. The iron law of prohibitions -- all of them -- is that they are passed by an identifiable US to control the conduct of an identifiable THEM. And a prohibition is absolutely done for when it does what? Comes back and bothers US. If, at any time, in any way, that prohibition comes back and bothers us, we will get rid of it for sure, every doggone time. Look at the alcohol prohibition if you want a quick example. As long as it is only THEM --- you know, them criminals, them crazy people, them young people, them minority group members --- we are fine. But any prohibition that comes back and bothers US is done for. Let's just try the marijuana prohibition as a quick one. Who do you think was arrested 650,000 strong two years ago for violation of the marijuana laws?
Do you think it was all minority group members? Nope. It was not. It was some very identifiable children of US -- children of the middle class. You don't have to answer my opinion. No prohibition will stand -- ever-- when it comes back and penalizes our children -- the children of US who enacted it. And in fact, do you have any real doubt about that? Do you know what a fabulous sociological study we will be if we become the first society in the history of the world to penalize the sons and daughters of the wealthy class? Unheard of. And so, yeah, we will continue the War on Drugs for a while until everybody sees its patent bankruptcy. But, let me say that I am not confident that good sense will prevail. Why? Because we love this idea of prohibition. We really do. We love it in this country.
And so I will tell you what I predict. You will always know which ones are going out and which ones are coming in. And, can't you see the one coming right over the hill? Well, folks, we are going to have a new prohibition because we love this idea that we can solve difficult medical, economic, and social problems by the simple enactment of a criminal law. We adore this, and of course, you judges work it out, we have solved our problem. Do you have it? Our problem is over with the enactment of the law. You and the cops work it out, but we have solved our problem. Here comes the new one? What's it going to be? No, it won't be guns, this one starts easy. This one is the Surgeon General has what? --Determined -- not "we want a little more checking it out", not "we need a few more studies", not "reasonable people disagree" -- "The Surgeon General has determined that the smoking of cigarettes will kill you." Now, all you need, and here is my formula, for a new prohibition every time is what? We need an intractable, difficult, social, economic, or medical problem.
But that is not enough. There has to be another thing. It has to divide by class --- by social or economic class, between US and THEM. And so, here it comes. ' You know the Federal Government has been spending a lot of money since 1968 trying to persuade us not to smoke. And, indeed, the absolute numbers on smoking have declined very little. But, you know who has quit smoking, don't you? In gigantic numbers? The college-educated, that's who. The college- educated, that's who doesn't smoke. Who are they? Tomorrow's what? Movers and kickers, that's who. Tomorrow's movers and kickers don't smoke. Who does smoke? Oh, you know who smokes out of all proportion to their numbers in the society -- it is the people standing in your criminal courtrooms, that's who. Who are they? Tomorrow's moved and kicked, that's who.
And, there it is friends, once it divides between the movers and kickers and the moved and kicked it is all over and it will be all over very shortly. It starts with "You know, they shouldn't smoke, they are killing themselves." Then it turns, as it has -- you see the ads out here -- "They shouldn't smoke, they are killing us." And pretty soon, that class division will happen, we will have the legislatures full of tomorrow's movers and kickers and they are going to say just what they are going to say any time now. "You know, this has just gotta stop, and we got an answer for it." We are going to have a criminal statute that forbids the manufacture, sale, or possession of tobacco cigarettes, or tobacco products period. You know that the cigarette companies are expecting it. What have they been doing? They have been shifting all of their operations out of the United States and diversifying like crazy. Where are they going to sell their cigarettes? In China, that's where. And they are already moving, because they see it and I see it. Ready? What are we going to have? You know what we are going to have.
Nestled between the base of Hull mountain and the shores of Lake Pillsbury is the small Gravelly Valley airport, an unpaved airstrip that was built by the Forest Service to resupply forest fire fighting efforts in the Mendocino National Forest, but is used mostly by private pilots on weekends. The Forest Service plans on shutting down the field on July 8th unless someone besides the Forest Service shows an interest in maintaining the facility and renews the operating permit. THIS VALUABLE ASSET SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO DISAPPEAR!
Gravelly Valley is unique in several respects, out of around four hundred airports in California, Gravelly Valley is the ONLY one where you can park your plane and camp a short walk from a lake, let alone a lake with spectacular scenery, great fishing, swimming and boating. There are only a few airports in California where you can camp, and they can be very popular, as a visit to Columbia or Pismo Beach on any nice weekend will confirm.
Gravelly Valley needs several things to be a really popular destination field, first of all, IT HAS TO REMAIN OPEN! It needs to have its maintainance taken over by the county, it needs to be promoted to the flying public, and it needs to have it's boulder strewn surface made more inviting to pilots used to paved runways who are leery of causing damage to their airplanes landing gear. The runway is currently 4050 x200, but to handle light plane traffic a runway of about 2500 x40 would be adequate, and could be smoothed out with road base type rock for a relatively inexpensive all-weather surface that would need little further maintainance. If the County showed the iniative to take over operations at the field, PG&E might be coaxed into improving the adjacent campgrounds which are very basic and rather stark , which in turn would attract even more use if the field had even minamal promoting. Lake Pillsbury is one of Lake County's great untapped resources, and this county is already down to its last public airport, NOW is the time to combine these two diamonds in the rough and utilize them to their fullest potential. Several years ago we traded Pierce Field for a McDonalds, and all the promises made to find a replacement site have been quietly forgotten about.
Now we have an opportunity that is not likely to come again to get an airport that could be a real benefit to the county from an economic and image standpoint, and Gary Lewis should lead the effort to keep this irreplacable one-of-a-kind asset open to the public.
To: Honorable Judge Crone
County of Lake
April 13, 2000
From: Joan Moss
9291 Wildcat Road
Kelseyville, Ca 95451
1-707-279-1650
Dear Judge Crone,
I am writing to support Alfonso Robles, CR 4881, for his sentence hearing. As a long time friend of his grandmother Theresa Brown, I know Alfonso on a greeting basis only, and I have never known him to be out of line. However, after reading his file and talking to Theresa, I question whether or not justice is being served by Alfonso's plea of guilty to CT I to 288[c][1], "willfully and unlawfully and lewdly committing a lewd and lascivious act upon and with the body of Jennifer Sue Albee Place who was 15 years old with the intent of arousing, appealing to, and gratifying the lust, passions, and sexual desires of the defendant, who was at least 10 years older than Jennifer Place." I am attaching records to this letter, copies of investigation reports by Clear Lake Police. In these reports, Jennifer and her friends tell investigators that Jennifer lied about her age to Alfonso Robles, telling him she was eighteen. Alfonso apparently believed that Jennifer was 18 when he began his relationship with her. He did not knowingly have intercourse with a minor child. Furthermore, Jennifer told police that her mother was responsible for bruises on her body. Her mother told investigators that she was having trouble with her daughter Jennifer, and Jennifer told Theresa Brown that her mother had kicked her out of the house. Jennifer also told Theresa Brown that she, Jennifer, was 18 years old.
Soon after Alfonso Robles learned in September that Jennifer was in fact a minor, he left to attend school in Sacramento October 10, 1997.
Except for what Theresa told me about Jennifer telling her she was 18, the information I am writing about is contained in his file. In another case, the jury ultimately acquitted a woman named Patricia Munoz for resisting arrest because her attorney Susan Feeney proved that she did not willfully resist arrest. The word willfully is very important, in Patricia's case and in Alfonso Robles's case also.
Thank-you for reading this letter.
Joan Moss
Last week was a week of big changes in my life, I quit the job I had been working at for the last three plus years, but more importantly, I made the decision to leave the Democratic party. Changing party affiliation was not an easy decision to make, because my Democratic roots stretch back to the early seventies when I worked for the presidential campaign of George McGovern. Ever since then I have been one of the party faithful, putting up signs for Democratic candidates, attending rallies, and twisting the arms of the undecided. As far as I was concerned, the Democratic party was the only political organization that could defend the country (and world) against the party bought and paid for by corporate America, the Republicans. The Democratic party was in my corner on all the important issues, from civil rights to the environment they were the only thing holding the evil Republicans at bay.
But things change, and now it is harder than ever to tell the difference between the two dominate political parties. There has been a long string of events that led me to the conclusion that however futile the gesture might be, I must be true to my heart and stand up to the polices that I know in my heart are not legitimate. One unforgivable act committed by the president that I twice voted for was to continue the embargoes against Cuba and Iraq, the only reason that I could see that Mr. Clinton continued to support these indefensible and counterproductive strategy was that he lacked the political courage to admit that this particular part of our foreign policy was a failure that was punishing the civilian populations of these countries far more than the leaders. The repercussions of the embargo against Iraq will continue to haunt the United States for many years, as the suffering of the common people of Iraq feeds the perception held throughout the middle east that America doesn't understand or care about the Arab/ Moslem peoples. As long as the embargo against trade with Iraq is enforced, we will all have to live under the threat of another airliner exploding in midair, or another skyscraper being bombed, and we will also have to live with the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens on OUR hands. And all because of the lack of courage of our president and the rest of the Democratic party faithful, who have made very little noise about an issue that honest people are quite capable of understanding.
Then there is the environment, where the difference between the two big parties was perhaps most apparent. Along ame the Headwaters deal, where the taxpayers and the forests took a major hit thanks to the Demos and Diane Fienstein in particular. All the governor had to do to save the magnificent redwoods of the Headwaters grove was to tell the CDF and the DFG to do their jobs and follow the existing laws. Instead of doing the right thing, the Democrats gave in to the extortion demands of Charles Hurwitz, an old pal of Diane Fienstein and her husband. Not only were the taxpayers bilked out of nearly half a billion dollars to protect trees that were already protected under existing laws ( the endangered species act, for one), but the rules governing timber harvesting in the forests surrounding the Headwaters Grove were relaxed, and even the Headwaters Grove isn't really safe, as there is an area of nearly one square mile in the center of the preserve that will be clear-cut. Incredible as it may seem, on the steepest slopes in one of the most sensitive watersheds supporting the streams where the few remaining Coho salmon are left, we are going to throw out the rule book and let the lumber industry do as they please. The whole string of Demos from Strom-Martin to Chesbro, Davis, Babbitt, Gore and Clinton all signed on to this deal, and they all ignored the obvious, as did the mainstream media, who jumped right on board the bandwagon that set the stage for ever larger and unending extortion d ands from other landholders.
For more proof that economic interests are always going to come before quality-of-life concerns, look at what has happened during the last eight years in the auto industry. Every year the auto makers have been churning out more and more overpowered, gas-guzzling behemoths,and instead of demanding that the industry acknowledge the fact that we are wasting our rapidly diminishing resources and destroying our environment at the same time, all we get from the Clinton administration is lip-service. Not only is this "hands off " policy concerning fuel economy and pollution setting a bad example for the rest of the world, it also endangers this country because every day that passes makes us more and more dependent on foreign oil, which will have to be paid for from time to time with the blood of America's youth. The gulf war wasn't about oil? Bullshit. The Clinton administration never made a serious effort to change the wasteful and dangerous direction the auto makers were headed in because they were afraid that it might affect the tremendous profits reaped by the industry during the last eight years, which in turn might affect the short-term success of the party, and long-term consequences be damned.
Next on the list of Demo disappointments is the drug wars that we are fighting around the world. We will spend tens of millions of dollars in Columbia this year, and most if not all of the money will be wasted in an effort to prop up a corrupt and inept government that is fighting a losing battle against both the drug lords and a rebel army that is dependent on the drug trade for logistical reasons. The fact of the matter is that America has single-handedly destroyed the social fabric and governments of countries like Columbia with OUR drug use problems, and the peoples of those countries are paying a far higher price than we are for our indulgences. We have to solve OUR drug use problems on our own turf, and stop trying to fix them by supporting corrupt regimes, spraying poison on everything that grows, and trying to keep an eye on thousands of miles of borders twenty-four hours a day. But our current anti-drug use programs aren't working you say? What do you expect when we have 600,000 people locked up for using or selling marijuana, a drug proven to be far less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. Our anti-drug commercials are heavily laced with half truths and outright lies, and now we know that the media has joined the disinformation campaign by working anti-illegal drug use messages into the plots of prime-time television programs in exchange for not having to sacrifice valuable commercial time on public service spots. The government has finally taken it's first obvious steps into directly subverting the media, and we have drug Czar Barry McCaffry and Mr. Clinton to thank for it. By the way, one of the strongest voices speaking out against prop. 215 , California's medical marijuana initiative, was that world-class hypocrite Diane Fienstein
Even the local branch of the Democratic party has done it's part to underwhelm, with the latest example being the $65 million dollar gift of the taxpayers money given to the famously inept North Coast Rail Road. This most recent attempt to fill a bottomless pit with our money is the work of state Senator Wes Chesbro and state Assembly woman Virginia Strom-Martin, who both think that $65 million will be enough to fix the section of track in the Eel River Canyon. This part of the rail line falls into the Eel River every year there is a big storm, and is being rebuilt to support the pipe dream deep water port envisioned for Eureka. No one has every made a plausible argument as to why anyone would want to send cargo several hundred miles by rail so that it could end up in the same place that it could reach by ship without a government sponsored train ride. If you have the right political sponsors you don't need to have a rational plan, and the brand-new-never-used train station in Cloverdale is going to stay unused thanks to the complete lack of oversight and accountability by Wes and Virginia.
But the straw that broke the camel's back was seeing our dim-bulb governor say that he thought our three strikes law was just fine the way it is, and didn't need any fine-tuning. The three-strikes law is a classic example of people not having a clue as to what they are voting for, and most people still don't understand that we are sending people to prison for the rest of our their lives for nonviolent minor crimes. In fact, we are sending people to $500,000 worth of hard time who have never committed a violent offense, and big-spending unions like the Correctional Officers Union will continue to pull the strings attached to Gray Davis types as long as more bodies equal more money.
Even worse than that scenario is the executions that our Democrat governor has presided over, more proof that it is a lot easier to let an innocent guy get sent to the gas chamber than it is to stand up and say, " this guy MIGHT be innocent and we will keep him in jail until we know for sure", which is what the conservative governor of Illinois recently said. Some people deserve the gas chamber, but Gray Davis hasn't shown any qualms about the possibility of making lethal mistakes.
Record-Bee
editorials: NO SENSE and NONSENSE part
1
Submitted by Philip
Murphy
The latest offering from the Lake publishing editorial board is typical of the shallow, self-serving silliness that we have come to expect from the local journalistic brain trust. This time out we are again treated to another plea for help (money) for one of publisher Judi Pollace's pet charities, the Holy Family Catholic school. By now Record-Bee readers should be very familiar with the details of this robot factory, um, I mean school, since this educational institution has received more publicity and ink per student in the R-B than any other school in Lake County by a huge margin.
It never ceases to amaze me that a school that only has 47 students can get people like representative Mike Thompson to show up at their fundraisers can anyone remember Mike ever showing up at a Lake County public school fundraiser?, and can squeeze $60,000 out of the 200 people in attendance at their Harvest Moon event. Suffice to say that this is not just a private religious school, it is also a haven for the offspring of the privileged.
The public schools with enrollments ten times larger can only dream about rounding up a fraction of what Holy Family gets from their supporters at their fundraisers.
So how much does this operation need to keep going? According to the R-B article, a mere $676,000 should tide them over for now, though the accounting practices of the local branch of the Catholic church make even that figure open to question. So what angle is the R-B using in their pitch to get us to help subsidize the education of Lakeport's Catholic elite? The premise of the editorial is that we need" choices" in education, though in the entire editorial there is no mention of why it is so important to provide alternatives to public education, let alone why anyone who is not Catholic should support a school that is run by the wealthiest religious organization on the planet
Then there is the issue of " The cloud" of (diocese) controversy that is casting a "dark shadow " over the school. That is a rather vague and not particularly accurate description of the events that have proven again that the Catholic church harbors an in ordinate amount of sexual predators and embezzlers, which should make people wonder if this particular religious group should be in charge of educating children at all, since they are generating so many terrible role models. Having grown up virtually in the shadow of the Jesuit seminary called the Novitiate( ex-governor Jerry Brown's alma mater) , I can tell you from personal first hand experience that many of the people at that institution were not role model material, unless your idea of a role model is a child molesting drunkard.
The economic health of downtown Kelseyville has taken a rapid turn for the worse, and many local residents are wondering when the exodus is going to stop. Only a few months ago virtually all of the storefronts on mainstreet Kelseyville showed signs of life , but now the place is beginning to look like a ghost town. Consider this list of businesses that have left or are about to leave: Angelina's Bakery, a popular meeting spot for many locals is backing up and heading for greener pastures in Lakeport. Nina, owner-operator of the bakery-coffee shop, has said that in spite of grossing $2000 daily and having a loyal clientele, she believes that the town is "dying", and believes her only viable option is to move to Lakeport. Then there is the burger joint, who some say was done in by the closed campus policy recently adopted at the high school which killed the lunchtime traffic. Holdenreid Farms is also closing the doors due to the retirement of the owner, which is also the case with the Book Nook ,who's owner is unable to find anyone willing to keep the doors of her small shop open. Cocos Mexican restaurant has been closed for awhile, and it is doubtful that anyone will try to open another eatery in a location that has been unsuccessful for the last two restaurant operators. The saw and paint store has also left mainstreet, and adds another empty building to the main drag.
Kiko's gymnastics is another business that has
left Kelseyville for a hopefully better future in the Lakeport area.
Other unconfirmed defections include the possible closure of the huge
Adobe Creek pear packing operation due to a horrendous '99 crop that
returned an average price per ton of well under $100, which is a
situation that will probably force some growers out of the business.
Most other sheds's averages were around 50% higher, which says alot
about the problems at t he management level.
Last on the list is Parnum Paving, who it is rumored will be closing its asphalt plant in the not-to-distant future, which would leave a huge mess to clean up and would also leave a fair number of workers without work. This scenario makes sense, since most of the state maintained roads have been recently re-paved, and the county has very little money to spend on large-scale road repair projects.This would also explain their slow -motion repair job on Merritt road, which took twice as long to complete as scheduled,in spite of un-seasonably good weather.Oddly enough, county roads superintendent Jim Wright used the miniscule amount of rain that fell during the project as an excuse for the extremely tardy completion of the project, instead of ripping Parnum for causing their clients/neighbors a major inconvenience as they leisurely rebuilt the road that Parnum's trucks played a major part in destroying. All in all the picture for Kelseyville's near-term future is not bright, and as usual, not a peep about this major problem has been heard from the areas supervisor, Bill Merriman.
There are two great things about Lake County farming operations that are different than similar operations in other counties, and more vineyard developments by out-of-county firms could threaten both of them. These two differences are the fact that we are not dependant on outside sources for water and we are also one of the last bastions of family farming left in this country.
First, the water issue. Many walnut orchards that have been dry farmed have now been converted to vineyards that can use huge amounts of water during frost protection season. Much of the water used by vineyards is stored in open ponds, where it is wasted in evaporation. Oftentimes the ponds are kept full year-round, even though they may only be used for frost protection on a few chilly mornings a year. Many of these ponds are in the foothills, where they keep the run-off from reaching the lake or recharging the aquifers of down stream farmers. It is quite likely that the ramifications of the huge increase of ag water use will not be known until we have a couple of dry years or a full-on drought, when it is almost certain that somebody's well will run dry. Some people have already claimed that this has happened to them when a vineyard went in next to their home. If there comes a time during the pear growing season that farmers wells start drying up, there will be some very unhappy constituents to deal with, I can assure you.
Then there is the concept of bringing more out-of-county vineyard developers to Lake County, which seems to mean more big-time corporate farming.
What does Lake county get out of a new development? Probably a few low paying jobs, a small increase in property tax revenue, and a big commission check for the realtors involved. We also get more wear and tear on the roads as the grapes are hauled off to the developer's out-of-county winery, more pesticide and herbicide use, and more competition against the small-time Lake County farmer. And can any one explain what is going to happen if the market is unable to absorb the tremendous increase in production that will occur when the grapes from huge acreage increase of premium wine grape plantings hits the market? Will the heavily financed small local growers get through that scenario better that the corporate growers? Consider the fact that the market has grown at about 3% a year and over a third of Lake County's wine grape acreage is not yet in production.
The same situation exists in not only the surrounding counties, but world-wide as well.
Perhaps some if not all of these questions should be asked and answered before the board of supervisors gives a wink and a nod to this particular marketing scheme.
Philip Murphy,
Big Valley pear and walnut grower
As the regular readers of this website probably already know, ex- Record-Bee staff photographer Joe Mickey has written us several e-mails accusing the Free Press of an array of misdoings, including the unforgivable sin of using his name in print without his permission. Joe says that he should be off limits to us because he is just a "regular Joe", and because he doesn't work for the R-B anymore and now resides in another county. Mr. Mickey seems to forget that he is constantly in the public eye due to the fact that he now teaches a college course in photography at Mendocino College,a course which has gotten more free promotional ink in the R-B than any other class offered by MCC or any other college. Joe's ads for his course are also on seemingly every public bulletin board in Lake County, so its kind of hard not to notice that Mr. Mickey is now drawing a paycheck courtesy of you and I, the taxpayers.
The fact that Mr. Mickey is a government employee in itself makes him fair game, and this website will defend itself from any and all unwarranted attacks regardless of who they may come from. Mr. Mickey has claimed that all we do is to make un-researched, tabloid style attacks on people and institutions, which is completely untrue. Mr. Mickey seems to have failed to notice the fact that the Free Press organized and sponsored the Kelseyville school board debate, which cost us around $100 to promote, and came out of my pocket. Mr. Mickey also seems to have missed the things that we did for our readers before the last election, like provide all the local candidates for judge and supervisor with a free forum to make a case for getting our votes. Our coverage of the candidates positions was undeniably superior to that of the Record-Bee, and we were better at picking the winners than they were.
Now what really got Mr. Mickey upset was the fact that we claimed that he was a better photographer than the current R-B staff photographer, Bob Minenna. Bob got off to a rather shaky start and I had my doubts that he was going to be able to do a proper job of it. Happily, I am able to report that Mr. Minenna has really gotten the hang of it, and can now even get some sports-action shots that are in focus. I have publicly acknowledged Mr. Minenna's continuing improvements in work quality, and try to make a point of noticing in print when R-B employees do something well. I have also been pretty hard on R-B staff writer Cynthia Parkhill, but when she took a nice photo of my daughter that ended up on the front page last month,I sent her a note complementing her on her fine photography skills ( did she take the Joe Mickey course?). Now one of Mr. Mickey's ex-coworkers has gotten so fed up with Joe's whining that he sent along a message that suggested that Joe "SHUT THE FUCK UP!", a response that Mr. Mickey and his sidekick Coors Lite have mistakenly attributed to the writers of this website. The problem is that Joe defends the R-B against our completely justified attacks, when the bulk of the R-B employees are on our side, because we know what the Record-Bee is.
What is the Record-Bee? The R-B is an outfit that is owned by a back-east publishing corporation that has only one goal- to turn a profit, and we pay the price for their greed because the populace of Lake County is served by a newspaper that is plagued by frequent turnover of it's staff due to the chronic problem of low pay. To make matters worse, the R-B's head honcho is a woman who seems to think that the paper was created to enhance her social standing. Add to that a managing editor who likes to call himself "scoop" and who thinks that the Press Democrat is a first class newspaper, so it's no wonder that we get a paper that's long on crap and short on content (sports department excepted). Why does Mr. Mickey rush to the defense of this alleged news source? It's hard to say for sure, but I suspect that it may have something to do with the free ad space that Joe gets for his teaching gig, and perhaps Mr. Mickey figures that if the need arises, he might have to ask for his job back.
In short, if Mr. Mickey thinks that Lake County doesn't need a
news source that isn't more worried about losing an advertiser than
telling the truth, he is mistaken. If Mr. Mickey thinks that a news
paper that is run by the head of the local chamber of commerce can be
trusted to reliably report on the doings of the Lakeport business
community, he is mistaken. If Mr. Mickey believes that our agenda is
to do anything other than fill the gaps left by the R-B, he is also
mistaken, because no one at this website has gotten a single penny
for any of their writing, and we have spent our own time and money to
do our part to make our democracy function as it was intended to.
What, if anything has Mr. Mickey done for his fellow countrymen out
of the goodness of his heart?
The Meaning of life? Don't screw with people who are trying to help
you.
To the Tribal Chair,
Business Committee, and General Council of Robinson
Rancheria
The 1934 IRA established General Councils that utilized tribal councils or business committees to keep business records and do business on behalf of the Tribes. It assumed that these "Councils" would act In the best interests of the General Council. Unfortunately the way it was put together these groups often have the ability to misuse their position to help themselves and their families financially without looking out for the best interests of the Band as a whole. Take a look at our Rancheria for instance, When we first developed our Rez, we put in water and sewer for our land and built 41 homes for Tribal members. We built a Tribal Center and had many dreams and plans for our People. Knowing that getting good employment opportunities in Lake County would continue to be difficult we approved construction of the Bingo Hall. It opened January 21 1987 and since then it has been apparent that a majority of the Tribal Council leaders have used their positions to increase their own economic opportunities and stability without being responsive to the needs of the People, especially our children and Elders. It is almost as if they expect that they deserve this for standing up as leaders of the Tribe. But where has the traditional concept of service gone? If we a re truly a Tribe, then despite our petty squabbles and differences we have to care for each other and support the welfare of everyone. If we don't have that then we may call ourselves a Tribe but we have lost the meaning of that word.
The original "Constitutions" demanded that 30% of the People be in on any Tribal decision. In other words, the real power in the Tribe was controlled by the general council of members. All of us had a voice. Today it seems like those who are acting in our business interests really don't want to bear from the general members. If a member stands up and criticizes a decision or asks for an accounting of how things are done, or how monies are used instead of the Tribal council respecting their opinion they are viewed as a troublemaker. This is about respect. Just because one is an elected official does not mean that their voice should have greater weight than mine.
I, for one, am very tired of having our Tribal Council stand above our People. They should be accountable to all of us for what they do in our name. We need to look at our constitution carefully to see if perhaps they have been given too much power without the checks and balances necessary to make them responsible to the General Council. The agencies that are supposed to protect us from the abuse of our government systems have been unresponsive. Even when presented with evidence of cases of embezzlement, they turn their heads and do nothing saying they do not want to interfere with an "internal" problem. It is time for us to decide who we are and what we stand for. Greed has divided us. Our Casino has not significantly benefited our people. Our leaders have not made themselves examples of integrity and service. Why do we have to follow in Washington's footsteps and have leaders who get rich and do nothing substantial for their people? When will we return to traditional forms that require leaders to be determined by what they can do best for their People not what they can get for themselves. It's all about respect. If our leaders, who get paid good wages, spend all their time on bureaucratic paperwork and meetings, then we won't get any more real work done than they do in Washington. We need leadership that's willing to take chances, willing to buck the system, willing to challenge what has gone before.
We need leaders who are leaders because of their honesty, integrity and personal power to do good for our People not because they dress in the nicest clothes or drive the fanciest car. The white man has treated us the same way for years, tying us up with red tape, meetings, bureaucratic decision-making, etc. and what has it accomplished for US? Some will say "look at the things we have now we didn't before." I say: we would have gotten those things anyway with the changing of the times. But what are we continuing to lose while we divide ourselves arguing about money? To me that's not being Indian. Our language is in danger, our culture is. being forgotten, our children are having problems with dependency and education and we are still poor! Just having more money won't help, we need leadership. If a leader does something criminal it reflects on us all. Is that the way we want our future leaders, our children, to think things should be done? We all know who is doing it but many of us just look the other way. We can't afford to do that anymore. They should be exposed and prosecuted so our future generations will know we won't allow it. Many of our People feel this way. If you agree speak out!
As an enrolled member of the Robinson Rancheria General Council I want to call for an investigation into accounting for the Bingo and Casino operation. I think each of the Tribal business council members and the Tribal Chairperson for. the last seven years should be investigated for possible crimes against the Tribe. If they are innocent then they have no need to fear any investigation, but if not they need to face the consequences
For those who are afraid of losing monies, government benefits, etc. I say. Do Not Live In Fear! Our relatives were brave men and women who were willing to suffer and sacrifice for their People Are we so much less powerful than them that we would allow our fears to come before our People's best interests? What do YOU think our oldest Elders would have to say about this? Have you asked them?
When will we begin acting like Indians again instead of assimilated Americans s? It's OK to be successful in this modern world as long as we maintain the values and ideals which make our Peoples special. Don't you feel it? We are special people with thousands of years of balance and harmony behind us. Lets forget the bad things in our hearts between us and work together to find Unity again. With leaders who have traditional values we can make the Bingo and Casino serve our dreams! Some of our People don't share this view, they have accepted that the Indian Way is gone. They believe in an individual goal of success and wealth at the expense of their tribal identity. They say they're Indian but they have forgotten what that means, more than just being part of a Tribe it is a way of looking at the world. It is a relationship to the Earth and a dedication to making things better for ALL our children. We have all done things we regret and are ashamed of, but we can start a new path at any time.
We need real leaders who lead by example, and who sacrifice and stand up for our whole People. Leaders who understand that money will not make us better people, will not unify us or make us more powerful will not preserve our language and culture. Only we can do that. Greed is a deadly Sin.
Add your voice to Mine. Whatever must change- let's insure that our People come first,, especially our Children and Elders. The Tribal Council must serve everyone.if not perhaps it's time. we change our form of government!
Sincerely, Clayton Earl Duncan
To Whom it May Concern,
I am a relative of 21 year old John W. Sloan who was arrested January 24, 2000.
I'm really concerned about his well being, due to his appearance in court. It looks as if he's been mistreated and verbally abused by the officers. They have pumped fear into John. He has lost weight because of not eating for 6 or more days and lack of sleep, because the sheriffs took him out of his cell and in a boat late at night for 4 nights a row, not knowing if they were going to shoot him.
Before he was arrested, Kiya Brown, who works for the sheriffs, told him to run, not knowing why. The officers are intimidating him behind bars. At his first arraignment he asked Judge Mann if Native Americans can be executed. The Judge then replied," I can't answer your question. You need to ask your public defender."
John just stood there, started to shake, and broke down into tears while the officers started to stare and laugh.
I felt all the hatred and hostile looks they give us Native Americans as we entered the courtroom. They violated John's rights. He requested a counselor and he was denied one.
I feel that Mr. Sloan does not deserve the death penalty, the reason being 'He shot in self defense," not knowing he took another's life. I think John is devastated and showed remorse to the other side of the family. He didn't mean to take anybody's life. I feel for the parents of the lost lives but they were gang bangers, threatening someone's life also.
They were Southsiders. Taking John W. Sloan's life isn't going to bring your sons' lives back.
It feels to me that nobody wants to listen to this young man's side of the story. The officers didn't seem to be concerned about why he shot. They have taken one side of the story, because he's a Native American. I remember back when they threatened to take us out one by one. I'm starting to believe it. This is why I'm trying to seek help and support . We are in need of activists to fight for John's life, and observe the verbal abuse that they are putting him through His mother has been put through a lot and not knowing if she is going to make it through because of the fear that they pumped into her child and no communication. We the family of John W. Sloan, need all the support and help that anybody can donate to the family. You can contact us at 998-4052 or 998-1745 and ask for Bonnie Maranda or sister Ermadina Sloan.
Monday, January 31, 2000
To: Human Rights People
I'm the Aunt of John W. Sloan, who was accused of murdering two people in self-defense. We are not well liked people in Lake County, by the police officers here. We have been mistreated by them, right down to our little ones. John W. Sloan has an unjust trial going on. The court will not listen to his half. They have picked this man up on the 24th. day of this month, taken in a boat four night's in a row to find a weapon in the lake, without supervision or his attorney. How do we know they wouldn't kill him out there in the lake, because the police do not like Native Americans? John's mother is not well off. She is a very ill lady, and worried for his well being.
This child has not been eating for six or more days. He has lost 7 lbs. from "_ not communicating. He's been stressed-out not knowing what is going on.
I feel he still is a human being. If the shoe were on the other foot would they do the same? Even in the court room it is the same. The police laugh at him when he stands up to ask questions. As they were taken him back to Hill Road Correctional Facility they say things that are not necessary. I feel he's been violated by the police, detectives & the press. They have violated our rights as Native American's as well as the victims family, because they exploited our homes where we live, our reservation, and our families. These boys who died belong to south side, STV, or what ever they claim to be and we fear for our children's life and well being.
These boys were gang banger of some sort. Don't get me wrong. I feel for their parents, but I also fear for us as well. They are trying to seek the death penalty. 1 feel that it is not right because it was self-defense.
We are asking for any donation to help out our families, those of John W. Sloan & Haughton G. John you can contact : BONNIE MARANDA: 998-4052 OR 998-1745
To Whom It May Concern:
I am responding in behalf of John W. Sloan and Haughton G. John.
I am the girlfriend and friend of these two boys.
There has been many misunderstandings and unnecessary remarks made towards these boys without any knowledge of what happened the 17th night of January. The public and newspapers have failed to acknowledge the fact that these boys acted in self defense towards these so called south side gangbangers. Our boys are not the gangbangers. I would like to say that they are also not "cold blooded killers. I know first hand that these boys are remorseful for what happened and did not plan on killing anybody. These boys are loving, caring family men very involved with their spirituality.
We are upset that the police, press and the public are mistreating them. They are being tortured by the jail staff They deny these boys counseling. They make crude remarks towards these boys and haven't been feeding them correctly. John Sloan has lost 7 lbs due to the stress and torment towards them. They acted in self defense they didn't mean it. No one is listening to their side. They discriminate against Native Americans making this a racial issue. We, the family of these boys, are also being tormented by the false publicity and have also had our rights violated to the fullest. We are pleading for your support. Francisco and Javier are not the only victims. Our voices should be heard and backs should not be turned on us. There is reason why those boys shot that night and I think everyone should know. Please understand that our boys are loving and caring and never meant to kill. Please don't punish or ridicule them for acts of self defense. We are raising funds for Sloan and John and the families for support. If you can help please contact Bonnie Maranda at 998-4052. Thank you for listening
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The Record-Bee, KXBX, LCTV and the Free Press all reported on the candidates for local offices, with widely varying degrees of effectiveness. First off we have the Record-Bee, who launched a two pronged attack on the subject by helping to sponsor a candidates forum and with their eight page election special. The forum was set up along the usual lines, which is to say that any intelligent questions and discourse was carefully screened out of the process in the name of keeping everyone from becoming to emotional or to well informed. In that the R-b was successful, the evening was almost a complete waste of time for the 120-odd people in the audience, who all seemed to be supporters of one particular candidate or another, rather than impartial citizens seeking enlightenment.
Some of the problems with the forum was that their was no back-and-forth between the candidates, no follow up questions, and no questions could be directed at a particular candidate. How can the average citizen publicly challenge a candidate when they make a bogus statement when the only public forums are designed to keep the contestants safe from intelligent questions?
R-B editor Dave Stoneburg was undoubtedly worried that someone would get asked more questions that someone else, or someone would set up their favorite candidate with a question designed to highlight some aspect of their campaign. This would put Mr. Stoneberg in a position of making a judgement call, which would carry the danger of offending someone else, so that whole process was to be avoided at all costs because at the R-B the golden rule is " don't rock the boat, it could affect our profit margin".
So the other form of election season enlightenment offered to us by the R-B was their "election special" eight page supplement. In this eight page document there is no less than three full pages of ads for candidates and propositions, which has to make you wonder if a election guide that has well over one third of its space devoted to generating revenue for the paper is really concerned about providing us with useful, impartial information.
Apparently not, since their isn't any in their downright goofy voting guide. This turkey was the work of the other political wizz kid on the R-B staff, Jim Shock, who's lack of any known form logic is apparent in the spastic layout of the feature. The only bright spot in this mess of wasted opportunities is the group of photos of the candidates for the two seats on the board of supervisors, which is downright hilarious. Fist off we have the picture of Tony Farrington, who looks like the poster boy for the young Republicans or the Alpine corp, I am not sure which. Then there is Peggy McCloud, who not only declined to provide us with her age in the vital statistics section, but also submitted a photo that had to be twenty years old, and I am being generous. Mary Ann McQueen has a nice photo that makes you think she was junior high school principal material. Roy Parmentier has a "I just got caught coming out of a motel with my secretary " look on his face, nice work Mr. Minnena! Rob Brown has a very sedate look on his face, I guarantee the only way to get him that calm in person is to hit him with a tranquilizer dart. Bill Merriman is last, and if that is as close to a smile as he can get I really feel sorry for him.
The text? Almost 100% crap. Think about this fact, in five pages of alleged information on a total of 12 candidates for judge, supervisor, first assembly district plus all the propositions, Steve Hedstrom gets to blather on for one FULL Page. A total of three totally lame questions are asked of Mr. Hedstrom, half of what the free press managed in far less space. For some reason Mr. Shock asked the judicial candidates what the most important issue facing the county was, it kind of makes you think that Jimbo doesn't know the difference between the supervisors and judges, which is probably true.
Next is the one minute spots on KXBX, which feature candidates for supervisor and judge in a format that is almost completely useless. That is too bad because Paul Reading is a damn good reporter when he puts his mind to it, and I know he could have done a much better job of it if he had the air time necessary to do a thorough job.
The Free Press is next, and we did a fairly good job on the supervisors questions, ( to bad Roy and Peggy couldn't be bothered to participate)but we, ( I mean me ) really fell down on the judges questions which were a real last minute lash-up and it showed. We'll do better next time, I promise!
Last of all we have LCTV, who did a great job of it with both the judges and supervisor wannabes. The candidates got to grille each other, the questions were pretty good, but there were some down sides also. The biggest problem was that LCTV gave no warning of the event, Lake County marketing at it's worst! Aura Sanderson's performance was a little shaky, she needs some training if she thinks she is going to have a future in that field. All and all, LCTV did by far the best job of informing the electorate, though the Free Press gets a strong second.
Well here is another one of the usual Lake County scenarios
the former Lake County Outlook now the Lake County Outlook &
Landscape calling itself the voice of the people of Lake County but
as is the case with so many of this county's politics, business
functions and many of its local employers there is something fishy
going on. Maxwell is not in Lake County. While all of our local
businesses beg us to shop locally to keep the money in our county too
many of them don't lead by example, do as I say not as I do seems to
be their motto.
Through personal experience having a small freelance shop here
for the past 10 years I have seen almost all of our bigger more
prominent resorts, manufacturers, winerys, taking money and products
from its local citizens and sending work and good paying jobs to
vendors outside of the county. Most don't seem to see that the reason
they have such a large turnover in employees and spend so much time
and money on training and overworking the staff who do remain is
because the pay is not equal to the work or the skills that they
supply.
When an employee with proven skills works at a job for four
years and is still getting $6.50 an hour do you think this fosters
pride in his job or any form of devotion to that employer, of course
they are going to move on or out which is the case all to often. And
the pool of qualified workers dwindles. Most of the people I know who
have good jobs and those jobs are not in Lake County, no surprise.
They do most of their shopping out of this county they can afford to
buy a new car so they go where they get a better price and service,
where good food, nice clothes, a wide selection of books, art
supplies, just to name a few things, where the opening of another
Jack in the Box is not a cultural event. Where independent businesses
sell quality not just quantity, where the choices are wider than
Kmart or Walmart who put more small specialty shops out of business
than almost any other big chain stores.
Wake up Lake County nurturing brings growth. Where the
hell is Maxwell? And how many times should we pay to see the Beach
Boys, Willie Nelson or James Brown? The only show in town is getting
as old as some of the acts that they bring here.
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