Posts Tagged ‘legalizing marijuana’



Swap Meet: Drugs, Money & the Underwear Bandit

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

Today Calbuzzard and Chief Editorial Pen Stabber Tom Meyer buzz kills the state Democratic party which, for reasons that remain hazy, made a hash of their chance last weekend to endorse the Prop. 19 initiative to legalize pot.

Following the half-baked example of Bill Clinton, members of the party’s executive committee wasted the political advice of chairman John Burton, who suggested their support would turn on the key cohort of younger voters.

Instead they honored the joint wishes of the Dem’s geezer headliners, would-be governor Jerry Brown and Senator Barbara Boxer, who found the idea a total bummer.

Call now while supplies last: Calbuzzers interested in owning a full color print of a Meyer cartoon can email Tom at tom@meyertoons.com .

Hits and misses: If there’s one thing that makes our blood boil, it’s the legions of adolescent journalists who find it amusing to make puerile jokes about the burning issues raised by Prop. 19.

That’s why we were delighted to learn that Slate has launched “Cash Crop,” a new blog focused on the serious business and political economy issues of marijuana, written by Bay Area journalist Dan Mitchell:

Over the past few months, whenever I’ve told people about my idea for a blog covering the business and political economy of marijuana, I’ve gotten one of two responses: They either said it was a great idea or they put on their best stoner accent and said something along the lines of “Ohhh, duuuuude. That sounds bitchin’.”

… the different responses highlight what I think could be a major challenge—making people realize that neither this blog nor the subject it covers is a lark or a joke. Though I will always try to make it fun, Cash Crop is a serious blog about a serious business.

How serious? Marijuana is one of the top cash crops in the United States (by some measures it is the top cash crop). So why is there so little coverage of this business, as a business? Consider that California is veritably peppered with medical-marijuana facilities, as other states increasingly are. Or consider that marijuana sales generate about $15 billion of revenue a year in California alone—twice as much as the state’s dairy industry.

eMeg’s not a candidate, she’s a trend: When last we saw NY Timesman Michael Luo, he was exposing the $1 million sweetheart deal Mike Murphy scored with the eMeg Empire; now comes Luo, with colleague Damien Cave, to offer the first quantitative analysis of the growing trend of zillionaires running for office:

Call it the Great Recession paradox. Even as voters express outrage at the insider culture of big bailouts and bonuses, their search for political saviors has led them to this: a growing crowd of über-rich candidates, comfortable in boardrooms and country clubs, spending a fortune to remake themselves into populist insurgents…

Through just the second quarter of the year, at least 42 House and Senate candidates — 7 Democrats and 35 Republicans — in 23 states had already donated $500,000 or more of their own money to their campaigns, according to the most recent data available from the Center for Responsive Politics. That list does not even include governors’ races, and the roster promises to grow as the campaign season progresses and spending escalates.

Impressive numbers at first glance, but consider: if each of the 49 congressional candidates cited as spending at least $500K of their own cash actually spent $1 million each, it would be only half of what Our Meg has already forked out on her own, for what communications director Tucker Bounds likes to call the “movement” backing her play for governor.

All power to the people!

Press Clips: Josh Richman deserves combat pay just for staying awake – but came back with all you need to know about the Prop. 23 debate.

Eric Alterman’s door stop piece on why we can’t have a progressive president is worth the two weeks it takes to read.

Who ducked the media first – the chickens or the Meg?

Wonder how David Brooks knows so much about narcissism?

Krauthammer does too!

Jon Meacham gets his swirl on: Why Newsweek is failing, Chapter 37.

Don’t try walking home drunk alert: surrealistic sidewalks.

Today’s sign the end of civilization is near: Oklahoma, OK!

3-Dot Cheap Shots: DiFi, eMeg, iCarly and Krusty

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Buzz kill: Calbuzz is scratching our collective head at the sight of the MSM prominently displaying stories about Senator Dianne Feinstein’s declaration of opposition to Proposition 19, the November ballot measure to legalize pot: Why exactly is this news?

From her earliest days in politics, DiFi’s political antennae have always been hyper-attuned to the slightest possibility that somewhere, someone might be having fun.

Her nickname around City Hall was “Goody Two Shoes,” and one citizen of San Francisco’s gay community famously summed up her well-earned school marm reputation:  “Dianne Feinstein doesn’t care who you sleep with, as long as you’re in bed by eleven o’clock.”

The Senior Senator from California, in fact, first made a name for herself in the ‘60s by carrying on a one-woman crusade against the production and presentation of X-rated movies in S.F., where entrepreneurs such as the infamous Mitchell Brothers were then pioneering the genre with aesthetic and commercial successes like “Behind the Green Door.”

The controversy Feinstein generated greatly raised her profile, at a time she was preparing to launch her first bid for office, a fabulously successful effort that made her the first woman elected president of the Board of Supervisors.

But her anti-smut campaign did not earn unanimous acclaim in Baghdad by the Bay: the late Charles de Young Thieriot, then publisher of the Chronicle, threw her out of his office when she came in to demand he stop running ads for adult theaters in the paper, while Charles McCabe,  a cranky and literate libertarian scribbler for the Chron, bashed her as a prudish busybody in a series of columns headlined, “Dianne Faces Life.”

What really moved Mrs. Feinstein to her little adventure, and her later demand that right-mindedness be enacted on all of us is something you don’t have to be a big brain to figure out. The real reason lies in the hearts and minds of a segment of elderly Irish biddies and Jewish mothers and Italian mama mias and German hausfraus. These ladies, most of whom are mothers, are threatened by porno and take an awfully strong line on the same subject. This they communicate one way or another, and often through priests and rabbis who have a vested interest in sin, to their duly elected representatives of whom Mrs. Feinstein is one. And conscientious.

The way to prevent the men from indulging their brutish natures is to pass laws, and more laws, and still more laws, to keep their pants firmly zipped at all times, except when the population explosion is to be assisted.

Roll ‘em and smoke ‘em Dianne.

eMeg to the ER stat: Here’s another thing we don’t understand: Why Meg Whitman keeps picking fights with the California Nurses’ Association.

Having already erected a new web site exclusively dedicated to brawling with the nurses’ union, and sent a personal letter to every member of the CNA, Her Megness announced yesterday that she is “forming an advisory board of nurses to advise her on issues during the campaign.”

The “Meg Whitman Nurses’ Advisory Board.” Got a real ring to it, no?

For their part, the nurses have announced a big demonstration and town meeting in Whitman’s home town of Atherton Thursday night, which is scheduled to include a stop at eMeg’s estate. So it looks like the baffling battle will only escalate.

Yeah, we get that Team eMeg has so much money they can afford a whole separate campaign against the nurses, while simultaneously running against Jerry Brown. But what’s the political play here exactly?

We consulted with Dr. P.J. Hackenflack, our staff psychiatrist and chief of medicine at Calbuzz Memorial Hospital and Outpatient Veterinary Clinic, who offered five possible reasons:

a–She’s still bitter that she didn’t get into medical school because organic chemistry kicked her butt.

b-If you’re going to start busting unions why not begin with one of the most popular in the state?

c-Murphy’s still pissed the nurses rolled him in his failed initiatives campaign for Arnold.

d-eMeg feels a special connection to the helping profession because her husband is a famous neurosurgeon (memo to Meg: don’t count on nurses being overly enamored of a guy named Dr. Harsh).

e- She really doesn’t like that whole “Queen Meg” thing.

Calbuzz sez: b) and e).

Grisly grizzlies: Setting the bar higher than ever for Republican whack job women, Nevada Tea Partier Sharron Angle has announced that God is behind her challenge to Senator Harry Reid,  a development that caused Calbuzz considerable concern that our own Hurricane Carly Fiorina may be falling way behind in the female division of the knuckledragger sweepstakes.

So we were delighted to learn from the Orange County Register that iCarly was recently blessed with a campaign contribution from Sarah Palin,  the Queen High Wingnut of Amazon Republicanism herself, who’s traveling the country on a mission to elect battalions of what she calls “Mama Grizzlies.”

As she trumpets Palin’s personal endorsement, Carly appears to believe that Screwball Sarah’s seal of approval will win hearts and minds throughout the state, which is only one of many big differences she has with her rival, incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer, whose campaign is working to drive traffic to a web video examining the Republican sisterhood of the traveling pants suits.

While Whitman has so far cautiously kept her distance from the tenets of Palinism, Neanderthal Carly has bought the whole package, eagerly embracing the right-wing’s positions  on abortion rights, climate change, gun control, immigration and offshore oil drilling, among others.

So completely has Fiorina festooned herself as a “pro-life feminist,” that one prominent anti-choice leader recently told our pal Carla Marinucci, that Carly “now stands tall alongside Palin and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, in a pantheon of new female political leaders.”

Michele Bachmann. Wow. Makes you proud to be a Californian, doesn’t it?

Historical Footfault: “If there is another $100 million spent on the Republican side, we will have our message,” Jerry Brown told KGO the other day. “Everyone in this state who votes will have more information than they want.”

So when will Krusty and His Band of Merry Guerillas unload their muskets? 

“So we’re holding our fire,” Brown said, although not apparently remembering first-hand. ” If you remember the Battle of Lexington, the American revolutionaries said wait until you see the whites of their eyes before you start firing.”

Except — as most school children know –  if it was said at all, it was said by one of the colonial commanders — Israel Putnam, John Stark, William Prescott or Richard Gridley — at the Battle of Bunker Hill, not the Battle of Lexington.

New: Calbuzz Video, Hit on Meg, Cleveland Curse

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

In today’s installment of Calbuzz Video, multi-media reporter Jennifer Fey serves up her own take on Meg Whitman’s unexpected bump in the polls among Latinos, chatting with Field Pollster Mark DiCamillo and Cal politics guru Henry Brady, and hanging out on the Fourth of July to ask voters what they think about the Megabucks campaign.

For us, Fey’s money quote comes from Brady, Dean of the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, whose commentary carries echoes of the Calbuzz Standard Quantum Limit Theory of campaign finance:

This is a lot more money than we’ve ever seen before…She’s got a lot of money and we don’t know in this territory whether if you spend enough money, you can get such an indelible impression out there that it’s very hard for anybody to turn it around.

As for Jennifer’s question of “how Brown plans to combat Whitman’s war chest,” part of the answer came Friday, when the labor-backed I.E. California Working Families rolled out a new whack on Whitman that doesn’t pull too many punches, from its opening line:

How many lies can Meg Whitman jam into one ad?

The answer, it turns out, is seven, according to Camp Jerry’s interpretation of the analysis performed on eMeg’s last blast at him by Fact Check.org . The pro-Brown I.E’s use of the widely respected truth testing outfit at the University of Pennsylvania as a source to stand up its “lies” charge resulted in the entertaining spectacle of highly caffeinated eMeg spokeshuman Sarah Pompei  sputtering and spluttering a 141-word stream of consciousness response brimming with non-sequiturs and shaggy dog run-on sentences.

Fact checkers did not come to Jerry Brown’s defense on fiscal issues while he was Mayor of Oakland or Governor of the state (huh?)…During his career, Brown has championed Sacramento’s philosophy of raising taxes to the tune of billions of dollars, including personally signing into law a $2 billion-plus gas tax increase before he left the state reeling with a deficit and, as the media described it, “on the brink of bankruptcy.”

Jeez, for $100 million you’d think they could afford to hire a copy editor.

Roll ‘em and smoke ‘em: The new Field Poll showing Proposition 19, the legalize and tax marijuana initiative, trailing, is nothing but a buzz kill, sez Calbuzzer Barstool Blondie:

I didn’t get into the weeds on the methodology but… the stoner vote is going to turn out big. They’re not going to show up in the polls in enough numbers to make a dent but may well do so on election day. There hasn’t been another ballot measure in a long time so poised to rile the youngsters out of civic apathy.

Sounds like a match made in heaven for John Burton. Calbuzz is betting, however, that there’s going to be a lot of people who aren’t going to admit to pollsters that a) they ever smoked dope and b) that they’re going to vote to make it legal.

King James of Clowns: With deep roots in the Buckeye State, the Calbuzz Department of Professional Sports Haplessness and Home Town Hopelessness was born, raised and beat down broken hearted by Willie Mays’ catch of Vic Wertz’s drive to center, Michael Jordan shooting over Craig Ehlo, the Drive, the Fumble and the Great Satan Art Modell, among countless other depresso ray events leading to a lifetime of fan despair.

So we take this whole LeBron James to Miami thing real personal, and find our only solace in the bitter words of Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Bill Livingston.

James is…the great player who left unfinished business after quitting on his team on the court and left unanswered questions by quitting on his city off it….

By waiting to leave until after his high-profile basketball camp in his hometown of Akron, by surrounding himself there with current and former Cavs teammates, and by scheduling a one-hour national cable “event” just to exploit this city’s suffering, he hit the trifecta in deplorable behavior.

He had before invoked all the connotations of home, only to leave it. He had before summoned an image of family, only to reject it. He had before cherished loyalty, only to betray it. He wears “Family” and “Loyalty” tattoos on his torso. Dermabrasion, please. The sooner, the better…

Because home is gone. Because it’s personal here too.

Alas, the Curse of Rocky Colavito lives .

Update: Charles Apple at Visual Editors.com has a terrific collection of front page images showing how LeBron’s decision was portrayed in a batch of daily papers, including an instant classic from the Plain Dealer, where our old friend Susan Goldberg reigns supreme.

Three Dot Thursday: Cheap Shots at the Wounded

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

photos2Memo to Methuselah: Jerry Brown airily dismisses Gavin Newsom’s bid to make a generational contest of the Democratic primary, but maybe that’s because Crusty the General hasn’t looked in the mirror lately.

Calbuzz was shocked – shocked! – while viewing a TV report on Brown’s recent visit to the Central Coast to realize that the 71-year old former everything really, really, um, looks his age on the tube.

Since we’re a solution-oriented outfit, we immediately dispatched some recent photos of Brown to the Calbuzz Division of Superficial Issues and Cosmetology Fixes for some quick action step recommendations.

ebsenAfter a full-body scan, in-depth analysis that lasted until a few minutes before lunch, our highly-trained and highly paid technicians reached consensus that Brown needs some work on those geezer eyebrows, which make him look like a cross between Jed Clampett and the prophet Isaiah.

Yo Anne! What – they don’t sell products in Oakland?

Using the latest in online, web-based, digital era technology, Calbuzz herein proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that a little dye job would take 20 years off the guy’s face; once you’re done with that, General, we can discuss those white-as-snow sidewalls . . .

gay_marriage_210

Gay Marriage – The Long March: Same-sex marriage advocates made a smart calculation by pushing plans for a new initiative to roll back Prop. 8 into 2012 instead of next year.

For starters, there’s the boost in voter turnout guaranteed in any presidential election; beyond that, recall that Kuwata’s Law holds that every campaign includes three fundamental pieces: money, organization and message. Two years provides a much more realistic time frame than a 2010 rush job for assembling the first two and for carefully framing the third in a way that addresses the pro-marriage side’s political weaknesses within religious and minority communities, which proved fatal in 2008.

As for the governor’s race, the move takes a little steam out of Newsom’s gov run by nulling his signature issue, but also makes it easier for him to appeal to Latino and African American voters, who supported Prop. 8 in large numbers last year. Although it won’t be an issue in the June primary, gay marriage might still provide a little traction for whoever the Democrat candidate is in November, assuming either Meg Whitman or Steve Poizner wins the GOP nomination (Tom Campbell favors gay marriage).

Without gay marriage on the ballot, the wannabe governors will be forced to focus more than ever on state finances as the dominant and driving issue of the campaign; in scoping out a distant second, don’t discount illegal immigration, legalization of marijuana and, of course, the constitutional convention; initiatives on all three subjects are either circulating, or sitting at the Attorney General’s office awaiting title and summary.

megsteve

Poizner vs Whitman, Round 62: While Meg Whitman’s top priority on a recent visit with Santa Cruz Republicans appeared to be barring Calbuzz from the event, chief rival Steve Poizner was busy scoring grassroots points elsewhere on the Central Coast.

While eMeg basks in being the darling of Beltway Big Feet, Poizner keeps rolling up the backing of street level pols, the kind of guys and gals who’ve, you know, actually run and won elections in California. His latest list of Central Coast endorsers includes former Assemblyman and current Assessor Tom Bordonaro Jr. of San Luis Obispo, Councilman Jim Monahan of Ventura City, Vice-Mayor Jim Reed of Scotts Valley, Vice-Mayor Victor Gomez of Hollister, Councilman Glen Becerra of Simi Valley, Councilwoman Charlotte Craven of Camarillo, Councilman Leo Trujillo of Santa Maria, Trustee Robert Huber of Ventura County, and former Councilman Jim Heggarty of Paso Robles.

Of course, Fred Barnes and George Will have never heard of any of these people.

Three dot special: Over at Calitics, Dante Atkins reports that he was awakened last Sunday morning by a poll-taker for Fairbanks, Maslin, Maullin and Associates who was apparently testing lines of attack for PXP oil company, in its continuing efforts to win state approval for an offshore drilling lease at Tranquillon Ridge, off the coast of Santa Barbara. This one ain’t going away anytime soon, sports fans . . . Hardcore junkies will want to check out Politico’s early line on what the wannabes are up to a mere 1,182 days before the 2012 presidential election . . . News that stays news: LiveScience.com reports that the average dog is as smart or smarter than a two-year old curtain climber; the key question remains unanswered, however:  how much smarter are Rex and Fido than the average teenager? . . . Norm Pattiz, founder and chairman of Westwood One, America’s largest radio network, UC Regent, Joe Biden buddy, Democratic donor and mongo Lakers fan gets inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. Calbuzz is impressed .