Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/599199
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS The off-off-year elections have yielded some noteworthy results — Chris Christie's Jersey legislature has gotten bluer, Kentucky has gotten considerably redder — but election night's most fascinating tally was posted in Ohio, where voters refused to rebrand their state as Ohio. Atfirstglance,itwouldap- pear that the marijuana legal- ization movement was dealt a crushing blow. A ballot mea- sure that would've made Ohio the fifth legal state got clob- bered by a nearly 2-1 margin. That might sound puzzling, given the fact that nearly 60 percent of Americans want weed to be legal, and that at least five more states will try to go that route in 2016. What explains the landslide loss in bellwether swing-state Ohio? Crony capitalism and strange bedfellows. In other words, the politics of pot can be very nuanced. A motley coalition of foes co- alesced to kill legalization. The usual anti-drug groups — and the older, whiter vot- ers that typically dominate low-turnout off-off-year elec- tions — were joined on the No side by pot legalization peo- ple who hated this particular ballot measure. Because there was something transparently sleazy about the whole thing. It was, in fact, a new iter- ation of pay-for-play politics. A tiny group of rich investors put up roughly $25 million to get the measure on the ballot and advertise for its passage. If it had passed, they alone would've reaped the economic windfall — estimated at $1 billion a year — because they alone would've grown the marijuana on 10 pre-deter- mined farms that they alone would've owned. That's what a lot of le- gal marijuana activists have been dreading all along — a corporate takeover, a move- ment co-opted by crony cap- italists. Kevin Sabet, presi- dent of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, recently warned, "The values of Woodstock have been eclipsed by the val- ues of Wall Street .... For any- one who thinks legalization is about pot anymore, they need to look at Ohio and see it's not about pot, it's about money." Marijuana legalization is inevitable — albeit slowly, state by state — but most le- galization leaders want it done the right way. Ohio has no regulatory regime, be- cause it has no experience with medical marijuana; the ballot measure would've le- galized weed medically as well as recreationally — a perfect scenario for the cor- porate investors. Pot reform- ers say that big farms are more likely to cultivate the crop with the help of pesti- cides and other common ag- ricultural chemicals. Fairly or not, these fears helped fuel the No vote in Ohio. Another pro-legalization reformer, Tom Angell of Mar- ijuana Majority, applauds the Ohio defeat: "Voters won't tolerate this issue being taken over by greedy special inter- ests. Our ongoing national movement to end marijuana prohibition is focused on civil rights, health and pub- lic safety, not profits for small groups of investors." Which is precisely why so many reformers detested the Ohio effort. They thought it was bad politics — that the ballot measure played into the hands of the anti-pot leaders, who could then claim that greedy corporate inter- ests are trying to hook Ohio's kids. So much for this year. But there are plans for an- other Ohio ballot measure next year, this time without the crony capitalism, and its prospects for passage will be enhanced by the size of the presidential-year electorate. And at least five states — or as many as a dozen — will put legalization to a vote, be- cause the social justice argu- ments are so strong (the peo- ple jailed for pot are dispro- portionately minorities), and because states can reap lots of tax revenue (just ask Col- orado). As pot legalization expert John Hudak of the Brookings Institution reportedly says, "Anyone who suggests that Ohio's (2015) decision tells us anything about the success or failure of initiatives in 2016 is just blowing smoke." But those thwarted Ohio investors — one of whom was a descendent of Ohio-born President William Howard Taft — will surely be followed by others. A company called Privateer Holdings, birthed in the Silicon Valley, has already persuaded Bob Marley's fam- ily to license the dead reg- gae star's name and image for a national marijuana brand. And a tech millionaire named Jamen Shively has spoken publicly about creating a pot shop chain modeled on Star- bucks. (No doubt with better munchies.) So with billions of bucks on the table, how long can the reformers freeze out the suits? DickPolmanisthenational political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Philadelphia. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com. Dick Polman Why legal marijuana went down in Ohio Cartoonist's take The second column in No- vember always falls close to Vet- erans Day, on the 11th. Those who have worn the uniforms of, in no special or- der, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, the Army or the Coast Guard deserve, and are assured of, the respect and gratitude of a nation composed primarily of civilians. Due to the uncertainty and unpredict- ability of ever-present disagree- ments and disputes, otherwise peacetime service can be only a hair trigger away from war- time service—all are to be com- mended for putting country first. Thank you, veterans. Over the last week, elections have sent messages, candidates have honed their messages and members of the news media have exercised shameless ma- nipulation and attempted con- trol of the messages. In a "move along—nothing to see here" mo- ment, voters delivered numer- ous body blows to the Democrat paradigm of progressive inev- itability. In "Republican Victo- ries Highlight 2016 Stakes," a writer at The American Interest wrote, "Last night was a ban- ner night for conservatives, who defeated a number of measures in liberal strongholds, includ- ing a transgender bathroom or- dinance in Houston, a $15 min- imum wage ordinance in Port- land, Maine, and a proposed law restricting AirBnB rentals in San Francisco. "But the most consequen- tial GOP victory came in Ken- tucky—a deep red state in pres- idential elections that has nonetheless had Democratic governors for 40 out of the last 44 years—where the conserva- tive populist insurgent Matt Bevin won the statehouse for Republicans by an almost nine point margin." Democrat deep pockets also failed to sway vot- ers in nearby Virginia, where Clinton-ista Governor Terry McAuliffe put it all on the line to gain his party's control over the legislature. However, Dem- ocrat money prevailed in Penn- sylvania Supreme Court con- tests, illustrating the prior- ity the left gives to having the black-robed judicial branch in their corner. Conservative electoral gains must be tempered by the reality of leftist/liberal dominance in entertainment, secondary and higher education, the regula- tory branch, Obama's appointed judges, among government em- ployees, their unions—and the journalist class. News media leans left and left-er depend- ing on proximity to local mar- kets, with the major metropol- itan broadcast, cable and print outlets—particularly the New York/Washington, D.C. beltway elite—being dominated by Dem- ocrats. It's not really disputable; "Re- publicans' media bias claims boosted by scarcity of right- leaning journalists," by Kelly Riddell, illustrated as much in the Washington Times. Party identification, voting patterns, positions on issues and contri- butions lean, at the minimum, 3 or 4 to 1 in favor of the Demo- crat left, and up to 9 to 1 among the beltway media elites. Of citizen-elected represen- tatives, the local and state lev- els have seen a massive dimin- ishment of Democrat-held seats, legislatures and governors while Obama has held the presidency. "This creates an interesting dy- namic. Because the Democrats' ranks have been eviscerated at lower levels of office, the stakes for winning the White House couldn't be higher. If the party loses the White House in 2016, it will have almost nothing left. "The prospect of losing every- thing creates an incentive for Democrats to double down even further on their presidential co- alition (i.e. Hillary endorsed the Houston transgender ordi- nance). But this strategy—of ap- pealing more and more strongly to the national base rather than reaching out to new segments of voters—makes them even less competitive in off-year and state-level elections." It might be a rhetorical ques- tion, by Jazz Shaw, in "Has the liberal wing of the Demo- crats finally pushed the party too far?" but if you look it up, you'll find an insightful read with quotes from The Hill's Al- exander Bolton. He explores the question of "whether or not the ascendant, hard left, lib- eral wing of the Democrats has finally pushed their party to a tipping point in the run-up to the next presidential election." Guns and race are prominent in this analysis. Even casual observers can't have missed the gun control/ safety/background check rhet- oric—even thinly veiled refer- ences to confiscation. Hillary promises using executive power in furtherance of the issue. Cali- fornia's gun-grabbers are cheer- ing Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom's ballot measures outlawing "large capacity," but otherwise standard, magazines; requiring background checks for all am- munition purchases; and man- dating reporting of lost or sto- len guns. San Franciscans cheer the de- parture of its last gun store over required photographing of cus- tomers. Los Angeles has out- lawed handguns widely owned from even being transported through the city. A map I saw showed it to be physically im- possible to leave some munici- palities without driving through LA and ordinary travel in So- Cal is close to impossible with such guns. Most of us immedi- ately reject the racialist slogan- eering of the "Black Lives Mat- ter" movement. It reeks of race- grievance mongering. We are inclined to dismiss the obses- sive skin-pigment, "social jus- tice warrior" fanaticism as yet another permutation of the rep- arations crowd. In "6 Things We Learned About the Demo- crats," Robert Tranciski item- ized a few outtakes from their debate: 1) The era of big govern- ment is back, 2) Utopian trans- formation/socialism lives, 3) They have no plans for the econ- omy beyond taxing "the rich", 4) They have no concept of na- tional security, 5) Democrats are defined by who they hate, and 6) The conservative Demo- crat is a dinosaur. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@ yahoo.com. The way I see it News media and Democrat narratives The usual anti- drug groups — and the older, whiter voters that typically dominate low-turnout off-off-year elections — were joined on the No side by pot legalization people who hated this particular ballot measure. StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 2060 Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 895-4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator. nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558- 3160, governor@governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Of- fice Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393- 0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Fran- cisco 94111, 510 286-8537, fax 202 224-0454 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 District 5, Burt Bundy, Ext. 3016 Red Bluff City Manager, Rich- ard Crabtree, 527-2605, Ext. 3061 Corning City Manager, John Brewer, 824-7033 Your officials Don Polson OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, November 10, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6