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Stillahippies News Blog

LEGAL MARIJUANA Big news for Seattle and Washington state

stillahippie — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:57:49 +0000

He hasn’t even taken office yet, but the words of Mayor-Elect Mike McGinn have already perked some citizens’ ears.

My ears are wide open, Mayor McGinn believes pot should not only be legal, but also taxed. He says “We recognize that, you know, like alcohol, it’s something that should be regulated, not treated as a criminal activity. And I think that’s where the citizens of Seattle want us to go,” Oh! Oh! YES that is exactly what I want I have waited years for this. McGinn asked for the public’s help identifying the issues he should tackle as mayor. Topping the list was light rail expansion. The second slot went to legalizing pot. I remember a poll in the STRANGER. Now McGinn, as well as state leaders, are talking about it. McGinn says the drug should be legalized and also taxed to offset some of the city’s financial problems. THANK YOU MAYOR MIKE, THANK YOU STRANGER, THANK YOU KOMO. Listen to this McGinn slams a home run saying “I think if every elected official who ever smoked marijuana voted to legalize it, it’d probably be legalized in an instant,” he said; how right on is that?.
State Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, is sponsoring a bill that would do just that. She says “Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol, and it’s not working for marijuana,” Dickerson says the state’s ineffective policies on marijuana are costing taxpayers money. She recognizes there will be opponents to her idea. But she thinks many people, including the mayor, are ready for change. She is right We have all known this for years but NOW we have legislators with guts enough to come out and lay the stash on the table. Only Legislators who support this well get my vote We need big time media help up here in Washington state to inform people and legislators that cannabis is less harmful then other things like HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. People who live in Washington state or in California should call write and E-mail state senators and reps and tell them they wont get your vote unless they support marijuana legalization. We have to come out and do this or we will still be looking over our shoulders every time we light up…

LEGISLATIVE HOT LINE 800-562-6000

This is last post until the first of the year when will I will be back to take on the attractions and distractions of life.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR…

Surge 30.000 troops…The nightmare is here: time to hit the streets

stillahippie — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:32:53 +0000

Ripped from rolling stone

I hope I am wrong but this smell’s like a sell out. It’s not the change Obama promised or I could foresee in my worst nightmares when I voted for Obama. The words ” troops”, “surge” That’s Bull Shit we are putting thirty thousand more young men and women not Troops in harm’s way for what President Obama calls a “just war”. The new boss just like the old boss”…

TIME TO HIT THE STREETS, DARE TO STRUGGLE DARE TO WIN

…Or is the President being cagey; depending on protests to push a pull out?, the time is right for marching in the streets if we want to stop the war

Lakewood four Maurice Clemmons and the Media…

stillahippie — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:54:20 +0000

THE GOOD THE INSANE AND THE UGLY

It took the shooting of four Lake Wood Washington police officers By Maurice Clemmons to finally force media attention to the overall lack of focused attention on problems with law enforcement and mental health that often leave the criminal justice system frustrated when it comes to protecting society.
Mental health law needs change; big time change. Clemmons is not a cold-blooded killer. He was mentally ill but still part of our society. Yes he knew what he was doing when he shot the four Lake Wood police officers, We can’t understand his reason, because Clemmons was mentally ill his emotions were Scrambled. How can we know what he felt except that he was very intent on killing cops so he took a gun and went where he knew cops would be and killed them. Did he have some dark crazy motive. How many times have any of you been angry enough to want to kill?. I have been I didn’t I am not crazy.
Police officers Are for the most part good people but they are just folks, workers like you and me. They are not Gods but they are the face of our society’s criminal justice system. Did Clemmons Feel that society Had cut him a raw deal?, We will never know. But have you ever felt you have been badly treated by anyone a cop or society, ok the anger went away after you had a drink smoked a J chilled out because you are not nuts Clemmons Was mentally ill we need to reexamine how society and our justice system treats mental illness and insure this won’t ever happen again.
In the mean time we need to lose the lynch mob attitude toward the Clemmons family they knew after the mess the cops made of the Aunts home that they had to keep Clemmons out the cops hands if they wanted him to stay ALIVE!.

Whitehouse criminals

stillahippie — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:18:50 +0000

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) claimed on MSNBC this afternoon that the Bush administration purposely let Osama bin Laden get away in 2001 so they could use al-Qaeda as an excuse to invade Iraq.

Hey it worked!; They have made FOOLS of us all. I believe the hand-picked Whitehouse crew accomplished what they wanted; Bush got to be “a war president” and the wars got them the pipeline, Iraq oil, profits for KBR, Halliburton and the rest of the MIC. We are paying the bill with our young peoples blood. So now almost nine years and thousands of casualties too late here we go listening to these chicken hawks and sending 30.000 more “troops” to do the short work 4.000 marines were ready to do in 2001. Remember those “Troops” all have faces, maybe your kid or the paper boy or the pictures in the current high school year book.
I think we better pull every one out now give the people of Afghanistan and Iraq what they need to rebuild there countries as they see fit.
Congress should go ahead with an investigation of the Bush administration. No matter what happens Afghanistan will always be George Bush jr’s war

First date with Mary Jane

stillahippie — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:33:05 +0000

In September 1958 seventeen years old just out of navy boot camp I ended up in Long Beach California reporting on board my first ship a troop transport the USS Talladega moored to a buoy off the fleet landing. It was late in the day so they just checked me aboard gave me a liberty card pointed out my bunk and locker.
“Make sure you are at quarters 0600 Monday”
As I waited for the very next boat back to the beach I met two of my new shipmates Kenny and Letch
“Hang with us; there is not shit to do here unless are you twenty one”.
“Im not”
The street from the landing ran in and out of a waterfront amusement park
Soon we were standing outside the greasiest window in the world…
“Star café this and the pike we just walked through are all of it”
Inside the star jumped the juke box blasted a even mix of rock and soul and a light breeze of jazz and blues, packed with moving dancing bodies, the air is foggy with smoke, smelling musty and exotic. I lost track of Kenny and Letch. A woman popped up in front of me flashed a sandwich bag of something at me.
“MARYJANE”
She disappeared and Letch appeared in the sea of bodes and faces.
“Take a walk?”
I followed him out the door and we walked down to a bench right on the seawall.
Letch held up a brown roll your own.
“Its grass do you smoke it?”.
“Ah you mean dope?”.
“No just weed; cheapest drunk you will ever have, wanna try it”.
“Will I be addicted or nuts from it?”.
Letch just laughed and lit up.
“Its called a joint, inhale deep and hold it in”
I did and choked coughing and spitting all at the same time.
“SHIT oh shit!”
“Try again”
This time I held the smoke in.
“I don’t feel any thing”
Letch took his toke and handed the joint back to me the lights of the harbor got sharper and brighter as we finished I stood up and felt 30 feet tall the voices and other sounds from the pike were super clear as we walked back to the star my senses seamed so fine tuned I could hear all the pistons pumping and firing in ever car on ocean boulevard. Back in the star I picked up on the music right away a woman stepped up and stared dancing with me then I saw her along the wall Mary Jane.
“How much”
“Ten a lid”
She flashed the Baggie, I handed over the bill she pushed the bag in my pocket. I have smoked a lot of pot in the fifty years since then and I have never regretted it, never been addicted to anything except coffee I still smoke it today

Where we live cont.

stillahippie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:41:49 +0000

Salish Sea Where we live part one

stillahippie — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:23:58 +0000

The Salish sea is a fjord system Of flooded valleys scraped out by glaciers twenty and fifteen thousand years ago. The ecosystem is connected to the north pacific ocean by the straight of Juan de Fuca and Georgia straight; fed by the rivers that come down from the mountains and cross the lowlands that surround the sea.
At least 8.000 years before immigrants began arriving the Salish people thrived here tens of thousands lived with in the eco system hunting ,fishing and farming even farming oysters. These Americans lived in houses built of cedar and fir log, beams and thick planks. I like to walk shore lines around the sea and rivers in the early morning and imagine how it was a thousand years ago.
George Vancouver and Peter Puget explored the sea in 1792 they went around naming stuff they ‘discovered’ after them selves and pals stuff like Mountains islands and sounds. On June 4 1792 Vancouver claimed the land for the British Empire they drew charts that divided the eco system up with lines of latitude longitude borders lines the Salish people who were the only Americans present at the time did not under stand or think they needed . The whole Salish sea and its surrounding area was placed under the administration of the Hudson bay company. The fur trade and liquor was introduced in to the eco system causing economic subjugation in to a thousands year old tribal culture. In 1833 Hudson’s bay company opened a trading post and farm in south end of the sea Fort Nisqually. Settlers began pouring in from the east on the Oregon trail.
In 1846 a settlement named New Market now called Tumwater was raised by settlers who called them selves Americans and called the Salish people Indians. At first the Salish out numbered the “Americans” but more and more settlers poured in and the Salish were forced from the land crowded out of the ecosystem that had been in there steward ship thousands of years.
By 1853 new settlements had broken out around the sea, Henry Yesler built the first steam powered saw mill on Elliot bay in just 30 years William Renton noted all the first growth timber that had covered the low lands around the sea had been cleared. Some time during that 30 years 1873 my biological fathers family followed the logging trade to the foothills of mount Rainer…
Starting in the early 1920s the paper industry was the big business and pulp mills sprang up around the sound wood pulp competed with hemp pulp, timber barons had the most power and influence and owned news papers so hemp and marijuana were made illegal and the second growth forests were cut. Some of the towns around the sea had grown in to cities the sewerage poured in to the sea and the rivers that run to it. Seawalls were built separating the sea from the land, river were damned to generate electricity and control flooding. Factory’s were built along the river banks polluting the river the earth and air around them my Mom and (step father) Dad came to Seattle in the in the early 1940s to build B 17s at Boeing.
So I have lived around on and in the Salish sea for over sixty years we have not been good stewards as the Salish people have been we started cleaning it up in the1960s but starting has not been enough the problem now seems to be rain water run off.Come on people it rains a lot here we gotta fix this: we need to be careful what we pour on the ground, wash the car with, spray on the lawn or send to the land fill. http://www.firstnations.de/development/coast_salish.htm

Marijuana, wheat and apples

stillahippie — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:14:17 +0000

Its Harvest time in the northwest for apples, wheat and marijuana the value of last years apple crop was one billion two hundred eighty three million one hundred sixty three thousand dollars. Wheat came in for this state at seven hundred fifteen million one hundred sixty three thousand dollars.
No one knows the value of the marijuana harvested in Washington every year. A very rough 1995 estimate of five hundred fifty million dollar market value was all I could find, marijuana’s illegal the growers don’t tell the value of the crop and they don’t pay taxes on the profit. Instead of legalizing marijuana and collecting taxes our state spends millions on eradication
The Marijuana Eradication Program (MEP) is sponsored by the Drug Enforcement Administration and managed by the Washington State Patrol. The emphasis of this program is to combine the efforts of federal, state, and local enforcement agencies to eradicate marijuana-growing operations within the state of Washington.. Last year the MEP took credit for ripping out and destroying one hundred thirty six thousand pot plants state wide the estimated street value of those plants two hundred seventy two million dollars. So that and what ever the operational costs for MEP came out of our states economy.

There are other draw backs beside waste, to the enforcement and eradication of cannabis law enforcement agencies often turn suspects arrested for other crimes by offering reductions of charges against them in exchange for gathering and giving information these snitches or confidential informants are often turned loose without regard to the CI’s criminal history and the danger to the community
The MEP Hotline receives and monitors anonymous information from concerned citizens about marijuana-growing operations. This information is sent to an enforcement agency near the reported marijuana grow for action. Some of your neighbors may hold a grudge..
We now have decades of proof that treating marijuana use as a crime is a failed strategy.
In 2010 the Washington legislature will consider MARIJUANA DECRIMINALIZATION BILL # 5616 I support 5616 but I believe it should go farther. To allow regulated and taxed sales just like liquor if sales are allowed the drug cartels will disappear. Law abiding gardeners will gladly grow legally and pay taxes and merchants will sell legally and collect sales tax.
Some of our state legislators do not believe there is support for any of this legislation . We have to show them we support legal pot.
A phone call or letter may be enough to show we are a majority if not we may all have to go to Olympia in 2010

http://www.wsp.wa.gov/crime/hotline.htm

Hey Chicken Hawks

stillahippie — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:13:47 +0000

I am talking to you Sen. McCain Sen lebeirman, Mr Gates and Gen McChrystal When a majority of Americans Voted for president Obama we voted for change. I bet getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq was a big part of what most of us expected. Now Gen McCristial is running all over the planet making speeches to pressure president Obama into “Putting more boots on the ground” or the mission will be lost. What well be lost? if we leave. I can tell you what will be lost if we stay; a lot of American lives will be lost for what chicken hawks to save your face or haliburtains stock average?. Why don’t you go on a patrol, take the point and/or fly in a helicopter as a door gunner. I know what you think: ” we don’t have to we already served see or medals. You see I have heard it before. I am an old guy now but I will tell you this chicken hawks if we don’t get out of both wars, my boots will be on the streets getting us out…