Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
The city of Hayward, Calif., is little known outside of … uh … Hayward, but it soon may ascend in the national consciousness as Pot Central.
This bedroom community, across the bay from San Francisco, has a population of about 150,000, which means it now has a “medical” marijuana dispensary for every 50,000 persons.
The City Council gave zoning approval to three dispensaries in its downtown district, but got tough with a fourth, which will have to relocate outside the city limits.
The latter currently is located inside a coffee shop. Presumably, one can pick up a lid, then celebrate the purchase with an espresso and croissant, thereby giving new meaning to the term “weed and feed.”
“Compassion” was cited as the reason for the council vote, and local pot aficionado Howard Bashford says he is grateful.
“It’s nice to know my local medical marijuana supply is assured,” he said. “I want to thank the City Council, as well as my physician, who recognized that marijuana was the only medication that worked on the otherwise intractable pain of my recurrent hangnails.”
Add to your list of reasons the United Nations is increasingly dispensable: The measure being advanced is to put the Internet under U.N. control. The sweet reason behind this is that such control would assure “standardization.”
It also would give a vote on Web operations to dictators around the world, who are very much in favor of majority rule – as long as they are in the majority.
A California Court has thrown out songstress Barbra Streisand’s lawsuit to have a part of a state coastline photo survey taken off the Web because it showed and identified her Malibu estate. It seems the judge didn’t think Streisand owned the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that includes visible light. Her reward for the litigation: hundreds of thousands of Internet “hits” for a previously obscure website … Moment of introspection: Why am I so pleased with this? Could it be class envy?
Please, let this become a national trend: Ted Costa, whose People’s Advocate initiated California’s gubernatorial recall, is doing some ominous saber rattling about reinstituting a part-time Legislature.
“If they don’t clean up their act and get some reforms in there, then they are going to get that kind of draconian measure,” Costa was quoted in the press. “It’s a hot issue. If someone introduced it (as a ballot initiative), it would pass.”
The full-time Legislature was approved years ago by California voters, who bought the late Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh’s line that the Golden State was so big and important and had so many complex problems it needed lawmakers on duty practically around the clock to keep things running smoothly.
This created a class of professional politicians who no longer had to earn a living practicing law, selling cars or manufacturing something useful, but could sit in their air-conditioned offices, thinking up ways to wring campaign contributions out of constituent groups.
Often, the fund-raising entails writing special-interest legislation, and as a result, California’s Assembly and Senate churn out literally thousands of mischief-making bills every year.
Politicians already are saying that a step back to a part-time Legislature would be “a blow to our prestige.” Right. The Legislature has so much respect now.
Let Californians – and residents of every state – adopt a new slogan: “Put a legislator to work.”
Culture notes: Amy Handleman is fascinated by the plot line of the latest Tom Cruise flick, “The Last Samurai.”
“We’re asked to accept the idea that an American soldier could go to Japan and in a relatively short period of time assimilate both the culture and the warrior skills of the samurai,” she says. “Hollywood really can shovel the Bushido.”
WATCH: The New York Times reporting not to expect results on election night
WND Staff