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You won't be hearing too much from me for a bit as I went into the hospital last Friday and had some unexpected major surgery. I will not be back in the office until at least June 16 and possibly later. I am recovering as well as can be expected and just want to say that the folks at Ukiah Valley Medical Center rock.
Here are a couple of responses I got from CalNORML and another reader about what I'd heard about CalNORML's support for No on B in Mendocino County.
First from CalNORML:
K.C. Meadows should have checked her facts before telling untruths about the
No on Measure B campaign.
The fact is that California NORML has nothing to do with any “slate
mailers.” Neither does the No on Measure B campaign committee.
The fact is that Cal NORML is not spending anywhere near $100,000 on the
campaign, though we did fund the color campaign mailer for the No on B
committee.
The fact is there is nothing “absurd” about the notion that B will
criminalize most medical marijuana patients. Measure B would limit
possession of medical marijuana to 8 ounces, which is just half the average
annual consumption of marijuana patients, namely one pound.
Therefore, even those patients who can grow their pound with just six
plants (which requires favorable conditions in the first place) will become
subject to arrest as soon as they harvest their crop.
The UDJ should get its facts straight before further misrepresenting
California NORML and the No on Measure B campaign.
Dale Gieringer
Director
California NORML
San Francisco
And the second:
I just finished reading K.C. Meadows blog, “No on B careening off course.” I
am reading words like, “word in PR circles in the Bay Area is” and “I’ve
heard as much as $100,000,” “mailer probably cost something like.” Lots of
supposition and undocumented accusations leveled at the No on B committee. I
donated $200 to the No on B committee, I don’t live in the Bay Area, belong
to CalNorml or consider myself particularly desperate. Above all as a county
voter and property owner I resent being called a “sheep led to slaughter, to
stupid to see a hoax when it comes in the mail.” I will vote no on Measure B
in June and if nothing else my vote will cancel K.C. Meadows’.
Tim Humecky
Fort Bragg
What is interesting to me is that while CalNORML says it does not plan to spend the $100,000 figure I had heard, it does admit to paying for the four page color brochure that made Sheriff Allman so mad he decided to come out and endorse Measure B. I emailed Mr. Gieringer back and asked him - in the interest of getting my facts straight - just how much CalNORML plans to spend on this campaign or how much it would be willing to spend to defeat Measure B. The reponse was that he's not saying, and that we'll have to wait until the next financial reports come out just before the election.
As for the slate mailers - which are the political advertising equivalent of "you've won the lottery, send us your bank account number" - the "Republican" slate mailer is already out and claims that Republicans are against Measure B which a lot of local Republicans are hopping mad about. We're stilling waiting to see if the "COPS" mailer which purports to be from law enforcement is still on the way. The Yes on B Coalition contacted the COPS mailer folks and let them know that virtually every law enforcement group in Mendocino County is supporting Measure B and to put out a mailer claiming the opposite would put their company high on the list of political shysters.
I see the two comments objecting to my post on (or my "allegations" about and "persecution" of) the Grace Hudson school, but neither answers my question: Is it true (as the mother who called me said she was told) that you can only register your child with Grace Hudson if you start at kindergarten, unless your child already speaks Spanish? I suspect that "picking up the phone" would have gotten me exactly the same answers.
And here's another question that came up in conversation at Schat's last week: Is there a group of staffers at Grace Hudson hoping to turn that school into a charter school?
(I know some people mistakenly take this blog for a news site. Blogs are, by their definition, fairly loose records of thoughts and opinions, hopefully creating back and forth conversations about issues and information. Some people have posted comments that I should be out there investigating and researching things before I post them. I find, on the other hand that posting something on this blog is - in many cases - a great way to get answers I'm looking for. And of course much of what I post is just my own opinion and I welcome all the responses.)
So here's a story I just have to share.
I got a call from a woman today who shall remain nameless but who was calling to see if she could keep her husband's name out of the arrest logs. Before I even knew why he was arrested I explained that her calling would not help. If his arrest was something that would normally go in, then he would too and there was nothing I could do about it.
So she goes on to tell me why she really really doesn't want his name in the paper and why she thinks he shouldn't have been arrested.
Her husband was arrested for marijuana cultivation. she told me, but that wasn't right, she said, because they had three medical marijuana cards and only 50 plants growing in their back yard in the Empire Garden subdivision in the north of town. The reason she didn't want her husband's name in the paper was because it would be embarrassing to their sixth and seventh grade sons who would get teased when they went back to school when their schoolmates found out their father had been caught growing pot.
"This was going to be the last time anyway," she said. They were going to quit growing after this crop.
All their friends already know they grow marijuana so it's not that they'll be exposed to friends, just that their sons will be teased at school.
So, here's what strikes me, see if you agree:
• She isn't concerned that she and her husband are growing pot in their back yard when they have young children living in the house. Apparently whatever message the kids were getting here was not, "Stay away from drugs."
• If she's got 50 plants that would yield, conservatively, 25 pounds. At say, $3,000 per pound, again conservatively, they've got $75,000 worth of weed in the back yard that lots of people know about and, once again, two young children at home.
• She is fully admitting that although they pretend this is medical marijuana by holding three "cards," they were going to quit anyway, meaning none of this was really medical marijuana to begin with.
We now have seen the full color four-page mailer that No on B has put out in a rush to try to convince voters that Measure B is going to make "criminals" out of all medical marijuana patients. Patently absurd but we knew that argument was coming. The interesting thing is, word in PR circles in the Bay Area is that CalNORML is pumping big bucks into the No on B campaign (I've heard as much as $100,000). The mailer they sent out probably cost something like $15,000 and they have spent another estimated $4,000 to be placed on a "slate mailer" for Republicans and another $4,000 to be on a slate card touting itself as from COPS (which has nothing to do with police officers but the initials are supposed to make you believe law enforcement is behind it).
Slate mailers are a kind of low-budget political advertising put out by we'll-do-anything PR firms who take money from anyone and put them on "strategic" postcard mass mailers purporting to have support from popular mainstream organizations. That No on B would put themselves on a "Republican" slate mailer and on the "COPS" slate mailer tells me that they are desperate and turning to help from outside political consultants who think our county's voters are just sheep to be led to the slaughter, too stupid to see a hoax when it comes in the mail.
I got a call from a single Mom who has two children, a kindergartner heading to first grade next year and a fourth grader heading to fifth grade. The two children both go to Frank Zeek School, which is not their neighborhood school. This woman got permission to put her kids into Frank Zeek (Nokomis is her neighborhood school according to UUSD) because she thought they would get a better education there and their father lives in the Frank Zeek neighborhood. The other day, this Mom got a letter from the principal of Frank Zeek saying that because her fourth grader had been absent from school four times in the past year and tardy 14 times, he was no longer welcome at Frank Zeek and that she would have to go register him at Nokomis next year. I understand she got a similar letter for her daughter who she admits had a tough kindergarten year tardiness wise, not wanting to go to a different school after a happy pre-school experience.
This woman lives in the neighborhood of the Grace Hudson School which she thinks would be a good place for her children, but was told by the administration there that her children would not be eligible to go because they do not speak Spanish. According to this Mom, she was told by the Grace Hudson School that kids going to that school must enter at kindergarten because of the immersion Spanish program which teaches English speakers to speak Spanish.
Apparently the waiting lists for local charter schools is long and her only option is to try for the lotteries at each school, which does not guarantee her children will go tot he same school.
Why doesn't she want her children at Nokomis? She says she knows that children there get bullied and beat up regularly and that the campus security is lax.
So, I am wondering:
- if it's true that only kindergartners or kids who already speak Spanish are allowed to enroll at Grace Hudson School even if they live in that neighborhood?
- if four absences in a 9-month long school year can result in your kid basically being expelled from the school?
- if Nokomis's reputation - and I recall our own news stories from four or five years ago about the bullying at Nokomis - is deserved and what the school district is doing about it?
The letter I got Thursday began:
" If you were given the opportunity to become part of a community of people who cherish their rights, and the rights of others, to think, speak and act for themselves - people who get involved when they know they can make a difference - wouldn't you jump at the chance without even thinking twice?"
This is this the letter I got from KZYX radio on Thursday at home.
It went on to say that "Fostering acceptance of varying opinions and news sources is what free speech is all about."
Of course it's a mass mailing that takes no account of who's on the list. It just seems ironic and funny to get this letter - which goes on to ask me to donate to KZYX - after my suspension from the station.
A number of people have asked me this week if KZYX has asked me back as a programmer or tried to make amends in any way, and the answer is no. I got an email from KZYX affirming the official "warning" following suspension that my behavior (see earlier blog "KZYX isn't happy with me") elicited. I followed with my letter of resignation and that's been it.