Jefferson Vote Today

The county I live in is having a meeting on whether to join the Jefferson movement. The Jefferson state movement is the effort of most of the counties north of Sacramento to form a new state out of this part of California and manage themselves rather than be dictated to by Angelinos and Bay Area swine who have most of the votes. Jefferson has most of the state's water supply and are essentially, not paid for it but expected to conserve it so LA can water its driveways during drought and behave like spoiled children. Jefferson is the Red Headed Stepchild of lower California, and Lower tends to be smug, arrogant, condescending, and conceited. Exactly the sort of people who need painful lessons to learn.

As joining Jefferson state would benefit the pot growers around here, and theirs is the only real industry, I expect this to go forward. Most of the visitors to this meeting will probably come to the library where I volunteer, which is essentially across the parking lot and pot growers borrow a lot of books. They read. They are independent businessmen, even if I dislike the business they are in.

Back when there was electronics manufacturing up here, there were honest jobs with real wages associated. Once those managers and owners started retiring, too sick to work in electronics anymore and poor teachers so they never handed off their businesses to the 3 younger generations, they had to sell off the patents and close down. Most of the time, when you sell your business, its a competitor that buys it for the advantage of reduced competition and possibly some patent or trademark they want. In any case, when the Dot.com boom crashed, most of the electronics in this area shut down. Now that China is modernizing, they've been selling lots of the local electronics there, but sales is hampered by the need for fluent Mandarin or Cantonese speakers. There aren't many Chinese here, and the few that are are mostly from Gold Rush families with over 100 years of English speaking. They're nearly as American as me, though my European ancestors have been in America for three times as long, since the early 17th century.

The pot growers are pioneers and homesteaders that found their food crops grown on the poor soil of the North San Juan Ridge won't pay the taxes or buy critical tools, so they cross the line and become crooks growing pot for cash. Jefferson state will fully legalize pot growing and sales so they wouldn't be breaking the law anymore and that stress of discovery and prison would end. The downside is the value of crops grown in secret have lower value, perhaps not enough to keep them in rags and ramen. This is the downside of legalization. And don't give me that "its taxable" BS. They grow in secret and sell in secret. That isn't taxed. Legalization just means they can't be arrested anymore.

I did note a potential upside to the pot legalization that occurred to me while sipping a Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA (delicious cold), a local beer from Chico. Hops, which give the IPA its flavor, is from the same plant family as marijuana. Pot growers are experts of cross breeding and selective harvest. They could grow really excellent hops to make better beer. There used to be a lot of hopyards in California. Growing conditions are ideal. It gets plenty hot. Also, with electric power being iffy, and summer temps being very high (it was 102'F yesterday and I was working unpaid construction in that heat). The wind blowing up the hill was HOT, but it helped, along with stops for chugging water. This is a pretty normal summer. If only the thunderstorms would cross the sierra crest and drop rain here, not just the East side. Sigh.

So yeah, good beer will result from the legalization of marijuana. And good beer is a proper tourist attraction. Colorado and Washington state have both legalized pot. So far no real disasters. As I understand it, brick and mortar head shops are being taxed, and paying taxes for the first time on their sales, and sales are up 200% previous. For now, people are ooo-ing and aah-ing over the legal forbidden fruit. Eventually they'll be price shopping and the value of the stuff will crash. It always does. Boutique-ing vintages of crops and curing methods might offer value, or not. I don't use the stuff because I'm old school and prefer good beer and affordable good wine. And I already know how to cook.

Another issue I wonder about is this: right to self defense. Lowlanders hate legal guns. They're fine with illegal ones used by criminals to rob and murder and rape, apparently, but not for people to defend themselves. This is nuts. Some lowlander in Berkeley announced he's working to import tens of thousands of grizzly bears into California after we successfully wiped them out a century ago. Idiots think its sad the Bear on our flag is gone. Idiots don't realize those things ate people. They don't care that those bears will be eating people around here, where I live, and that having a firearm on you will become your only real defense. As I understand it from many account, pepper spray SOMETIMES works on bears. Other times it attracts them. There is video of a bear in Alaska rolling itself in an area where pepper was sprayed. There's numerous accounts of bears actively following people with pepper spray that has been test fired because the bears like the smell and want more of it. I know of one case in Yosemite where a bear bit into a can of mosquito repellant for the taste. They had the tooth marked aerosol can in the ranger station for years up in Tuolumne Meadows.

Bears in California are already a danger. Black bears attack people pretty often, and eat them when given a chance. I'm not talking about momma bears. I'm talking black bears actively stalking people as prey. There are videos of this, and it offends the morons in Berkeley and Hollywood because they actually believe in Live and Let Live as a philosophy should apply to animals that aren't human but think we're tasty with or without ketchup. Think Birkenstock liberals with delusions. I hate those. Up here, they either quickly discover reality or they die. There are lots of cougars along the Yuba River, eating the deer. They go after the pot growers too. Cougars are ambush predators, so they lie in wait and jump from behind and go for the skull or throat. They punch a hole in the skull or seal the throat to strangle you. They mostly go after vegetarians because they don't smell like predators. They smell like deer. And guess what most hippies are? Hippies suffer for their delusions. And they get angry about how others aren't suffering too. This envy leads to cults and murder and you get Charlie Manson and the People's Temple of Jim Jones and eventually you get Kool Aid and the Weathermen.

There are cougars in the area, anywhere you find deer, you find cougars wanting to eat them. They've been caught stalking children and joggers in the suburbs of Sacramento, west of Folsom Lake, well into the housing subdivisions. Mommas with strollers are in danger. This isn't cute or cuddly and sweet. They're looking for people to eat. Berkeley F&*wits are fine with us being eaten, with our wives and daughters and children being eaten, because they live in Berkeley and they despise us for being independent from their superiority. This is another factor driving the Jefferson movement. We are sick of their conceited BS. Their murdering indifference to our living situation. We need legal open and shall issue firearms carry in Jefferson. Too many critters that think we're delicious running around here. They do things this way in Idaho and shootings of people by other people are rare there. Oregon and Washington state are both shall issue, and firearms violence is limited to Seattle and Portland, oddly enough. Places with excess tolerance to violent social groups with drug problems. I'm way more worried about cougars and bears and eventually heroin junkies. This is why I think the vote will support secession from California. This is why I think Jefferson is going to happen. Why I think California will divide further.

The West coast and Interior West are NOT like the East Coast and Midwest. There are huge geographic differences here, and those differences really do impact and limit our options. You can't just throw money at the problem when the problem is we aren't getting enough rain for 3 years now and Lowlanders want to fund another racist social program that costs everybody and drives racism further against the beneficiaries, who only get it because of their race. That's WRONG, but its happening. Only division can save us from the insanity of the Lowlanders. I wonder if their water being poisoned is what makes them so crazy, but I don't want to care that much. Once we divide, their problems are their problems. Jefferson can focus on the issues that matter. Dig out the reservoirs. Clear the sediment behind levees. Refill the reservoirs for agriculture use. Only fund schools that generate real jobs in agriculture, tourism, and manufacturing. 3Rs and arts in the schools rather than "test passing". No communist teachers. Fair taxes. Local spending. This is what should be done.

So I look forward to the visitors to the library today. I look forward to the news on the vote. I wonder if I can put forward some ideas, or if others have already suggested them so I can stick to library issues and not have to worry myself. It would be nice if other sane people were running things rather than murdering lunatics in Birkenstocks down in Berkeley, planning to release man eating bears in my neighborhood. If only the Oakland Hills Fire would reach Berkeley... Sigh. Maybe Ebola will get them? I can only hope.