Rebane's Ruminations

Tongue tied in America

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 28 September 2016.]

‘The blue of the grass’ is the color green in an African language.  That’s a lot of letters compared to the five letters in the word ‘green’ to get across the same message.  But it’s also getting harder to communicate in English.  In the last several decades English has lost much of its ability for clear, concise, and complete delivery.  Techies call this ‘information carrying capacity’, and the capacity of everyday English has been going down.  We are paying a price for this loss in our public dialogue.

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary - 26sep16 (updated 28sep16)

George Rebane

Well boys and girls, the candidates went after each other in a most civil manner tonight.  The ad hominems were at an absolute minimum.  Hillary's health was not an issue; the lady stood up to the rigors of the evening in a commendable manner.  Both gave presidential level performances, and if anything, I would have to give Hillary a slight edge in her demeanor and how her messages impacted the undecideds.  If I divide 100 points, Hillary would get 53 and Trump 47.  More to say about the whole affair, but it's late and time for readers to weigh in.

[28sep16 update]  The most cogent analysis of the debate's national impact on our body politic comes from Newt Gingrich who writes 'The Intellectual Yet Idiot Class Gets the Debate Wrong (Again!)'.  From his report I extract some of the remarkable scores of the debate that have been generated and collected by various publications.  (H/T to reader)

Time: Trump 55 Clinton 45

Fortune: Trump 53, Clinton 47

N.J.com (New Jersey): Trump 57.5, Clinton 37.78

CNBC: Trump 68, Clinton 32

WCPO Cincinnati: Trump 57, Clinton 37

Variety: Trump 58.12, Clinton 41.88

Slate: Trump 55.18, Clinton 44.82

WKRN Nashville: Trump 64.58, Clinton 35.42

Las Vegas Sun: Trump 82, Clinton 18

Fox5 San Diego: Trump 61.45, Clinton 33.69

San Diego Tribune: Trump 65, Clinton 35

Ruminations – 24sep16 (updated 29sep16)

George Rebane

Globalization cannot come about as long as the United States remains an economically and militarily strong sovereign nation-state.  This alone explains and sustains the agenda of America's collectivists of all stripes.

NPR on systemic unemployment and guaranteed national income (GNI).  Even the National Progressive Radio has now come out with the revelation that technology is killing many more jobs than it is replacing, underlining the great ‘head in the sand’ stance of our country’s politicians of all stripes who feed constituencies their  pabulum of government retraining programs and trade-wars as repatriating jobs.  Of course GNI has not been a distant concept for the Left, but openly starting to propose it as public policy is something new and needed to launch the national debate.  (more here and here)

Corporatism confirmed.  The CEOs of the top 100 US corporations have decided not to support Donald Trump’s candidacy.  The fear that he will upset the cozy applecart between their enterprises and the government bureaucracies that help them push back competitors.  Fifteen of them are even betting cash money on HRC continuing the corrupt same ol’ same ol’ policies.

Why did FBI have to grant immunity to a bunch of Hillary’s staffers, lawyers, and consultants in order to get them to testify about her various scandals?  That question goes double for the email debacle which Team Clinton maintains to this day involved nothing illegal on their part.  If that is the professional opinion of her lawyers, why did Comey have to bribe them with immunity to obtain their testimony of non-criminal proceedings?  This much-declared dead skunk won’t stay buried and continues to reek.

Trump borrowed money from his dad is the latest shriek from the lamestream.  All businesses use debt capital for operations and growth whenever possible, instead of selling stock to dilute existing owners.  And borrowing from knowledgeable family members, those who are intimately familiar with the risk involved, give favorable rates, and provide other industry-related value added services, is the absolute smartest thing to do – a win-win for all involved.  If Trump had gone to commercial lenders for that debt capital, then it would raise eyebrows of those who know anything about business.  But for the double dummies about finance, this is news is red meat and proves Trump’s business incompetence, or even corruption for the triple dummies.

[update]  Mr Bill Tozer, longtime RR reader, commentator, and raconteur, posted a link that illustrated the following priceless bit of calcified progressive mindset - You shouldn't criticize Islam or else they will turn into terrorists, and as we all know - terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.

[27sep16 update]  The Union tells us that the progressive idiots (redundant?) who populate the Nevada City city council are passing an ordnance that prohibits CCW holders from carrying in city parks.  The nut jobs and terrorists who plan to shoot up such places celebrate the utter ignorance of our 'gun violence' fighting liberals as they add another public gathering venue to the list prohibiting the presence of legal guns that might oppose any murderous spree they are planning. Such light thinkers are beyond remediation; they have no clue what actions of theirs invite the presence of criminals and guarantee that only they will be armed.

[28sep16 update] To illustrate the complexities of police shootings of blacks, we now add this incident in El Cajon where police shot a disturbed black man who suddenly pulled a vaping device from his pocket and assumed a shooting stance while pointing it at the officers. Here is CNN's report that includes a video frame of the shooting. (H/T to reader)

[29sep16 update]  The cold season will soon be upon us, and those lucky enough to still have a wood burning fireplace will enjoy cozy evenings in their living rooms, dens, and bed rooms.  This year firewood is especially plentiful due to the massive bark beetle infestation of our forests.  I have updated the piece (here) I wrote in 2012 on the building, care, and feeding of wood fires.  The new edition introduces readers to the Yule Log Angle and Keeper Chain - two pieces of easy to make equipment that enable you to build 'overloaded' fires that are long-lasting, safe, and require minimum maintenance.

 

CLINTON UNFIT TO LEAD (updated 27sep16)

[This article was submitted by Mr Norm Sauer of Nevada City, retired attorney, Nevada City resident, and member of the Union Editorial Board.  The Union has declined to publish it.  The piece appears here, as received, in line with RR's policy on publishing its readers, and also to augment my thin coverage of HRC's astounding 'interview' - definitely not an interrogation as part of a criminal investigation - with the self-evidently corrupt FBI (more here).  

27sep16 update.  Today Mr Sauer's article appeared in The Union here.  gjr]

Norm Sauer

On Friday before the long Labor day weekend the FBI dumped its documents about Hillary’s illegal server.  The timing of the dump was probably with the hope that people were away from their homes and by their return the story would have passed from the news cycle.

The FBI’s data dump demonstrates Hillary is either dumb, dishonest or seriously mentally impaired.

FBI notes show by using her server and the open internet, Hillary compromised classified materials representing the full range of American espionage: human intelligence of HUMINT from the CIA, signals intelligence or SIGINT from NSA, and imagery intelligence or IMINT from NGA (National Geospatial Intelligence Agency). 

Of 81 classified email chains, the FBI assessed 37 included Secret information while eight included Top Secret information.  Also, seven chains included Special Access Program (SAP) information which is highly protected and shared only on a restricted, need-to-know basis.  Worse, three chains contained Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) which always required special protection and handling.

The Effect of State Legalization of Marijuana (updated 30sep16)

George Rebane

The debate continues and heats on the pros and cons of states legalizing RMJ production, sales, and use.  In these pages we have covered the progress of attitudes about MMJ and RMJ in Nevada County.  The debaters often cite the experience of other states that have also gone through various forms of MJ legalization – the presented data is often incoherent and at odds.

To get a better understanding of what really has been the impact of MJ where it has been legalized, the Cato Institute has just completed a major report in their respected policy analysis series titled ‘Dose of Reality: The Effect of State Legalization of Marijuana’.  This is an extensive effort with lots of facts, data, graphs, etc.  Readers interested in MJ and the upcoming California vote on Prop 64 (more here) should definitely become familiar with the facts.

In this policy analysis Cato “assesses recent marijuana legalizations and related policies in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska.”  The authors close with –

Our conclusion is that state marijuana legalizations have had minimal effect on marijuana use and related outcomes. We cannot rule out small effects of legalization, and insufficient time has elapsed since the four initial legalizations to allow strong inference. On the basis of available data, however, we find little support for the stronger claims made by either opponents or advocates of legalization. The absence of significant adverse consequences is especially striking given the sometimes dire predictions made by legalization opponents.

[30sep16 update]  Oregon begins RMJ sales tomorrow.  The authorization is granted even though there is a shortfoll of the state's testing of profuct offered for sale because of the tremendous backlog.  "To protect medical users of marijuana, Oregon Health Authority is prioritizing testing for those products. The agency is responsible for developing and implementing testing rules for both medical and recreational marijuana."  (more here)

Ideological Images

George Rebane

The chasm that divides today's Left and Right has many facets, some of which can be illustrated graphically.  It is not clear that a progressive will understand the images shown below.

Scattershots – 16sep16 (updated 20sep16)

George Rebane

Nevada City is my home town, a place unbelievably charming and full of character nestled with its sister city Grass Valley in the Sierra foothills.  We discovered it 25 years ago and have lived here for the last fourteen.  It is a community founded by miners, expanded by agriculture and timber, and 'modernized' by contending high tech firms and pot smoking hippies.  Today our county is a place starkly divided between people who want to maintain the culture that made America and this area the desired places to be in the world, and those who have a vision for mankind that requires a fundamental transformation of our beliefs and values.

This economy – how much longer?

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 14 September 2016.]

There was happy dancing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this morning.  The much publicized mirth has to do with what appears to a break in the longstanding doldrums in which our economy has been mired for the last eight years.  Everyone by now has heard about the Commerce Department announcing the big jump in last year’s median income.  It went up 5.2% in 2015 dollars after having declined since George W Bush left office.  But before strapping on your dancing shoes, there’s more to this story than the headlines screaming ‘America gets a raise!’

Sandbox - 14sep16

[Time for some fresh sand in which to conjure up scenarios that pit Hillary's health problems against the new counter-attack by Dems targeting an alleged illegal contribution from the Trump Foundation to the Florida AG.  Has this now become a contest to see whose smoke screen works the best?  gjr]

Confusing Confused Conspiracies

George Rebane

Conspiracy (n) – an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons; plot; a combination for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose.

Mid-roaders are some of the most ideologically opaque critters that reside on the political landscape.  In these pages I have attempted to gently take them to task for not willing (or able?) to define the tenets which make up their belief systems.  They mostly busy themselves by trying to convince people that they have risen above the fray of partisan politics, endeavors they deem some distance below the heights from which they observe the rest of us.

Brother RL ‘Bob’ Crabb, Nevada County’s favorite mid-roader, RR critic, and graphical essayist, has prominently published the above cartoon in the 13Sep16 Union from whence I promptly filched it for the edification of RR readers.

The well-read will immediately notice that almost all of Bro Bob’s illustrated conspiracies are not conspiracies at all, but only labeled beliefs held by divers people not even uniformly paired with either the “vast Left” or the “vast Right”.  For example, globally publicized and promoted Agenda21 is not a conspiracy, but a longstanding UN governance policy project that is being implemented through established and widely distributed ICLEIs (International Council for Local Environmental Intiatives renamed Local Governments for Sustainability).  Even our own county government staffers have attended its lectures and classes.  (Why the Left and some mid-roaders deny its existence, aims, and objectives is another story that has been extensively covered in these pages.)

The same guidance can be given for Bro Bob’s balloons labeled ‘Area 51’, Bilderberg Group’, …, and even ‘Elvis Lives’.  But most of all, very few of the represented hyper-ventilations have anything to do with the 2016 election or the pap pushed by the major parties.  But what I noted was missing in the mish-mash dredged from the depths of Conspiritoria were items like the Comey/Lynch Vote, Hillary’s Health, Trump’s Deplorables, Amnesty Reform, … the promotion of which really could be conspiracies to affect November’s outcome.

Finally, for his labors our celebrated cartoonist correctly selected the proper parsing tool from Friar Occam’s tonsorial kit.  However, seeing how willy-nilly it was wielded here, I have to admonish Brother Bob to salve his fervor in the future so as not to filet himself.

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 12sep16

George Rebane

Where, oh where have all the liberals gone?  RR readers notice the recent absence of the Left from these comment streams, and they themselves are to blame.  Our leftwing neighbors do realize that RR has been and continues as the most welcoming and open opinion forum in these parts.  But every time they come to disseminate the best that their progressive side has to offer, it is quickly reduced to such a rubble (to capitalize on the term of art du jour) that they are left without a reasonable leg to underpin them.  And since both sides here are in the business of addressing the independent, the undeclared, the mid-roaders, they see the flaying of their ideas and arguments as a definite liability overall, and especially amplified in the weeks running up to the election.  Were their assessment otherwise – i.e. that their countered arguments had staying power – they would double down knowing in their heart that the intended audience would see through the weakness of the Right.  And the more such a dialogue could be continued, the better.  But, sadly for them, that is not the case.

In the meantime, can an elected candidate, supported by the Secret Service on the way to their gala swearing in ceremony overlooking Washington's impressive mall, be impeached for lying to the voters about their ability to discharge the duties of their just assumed office?

Never Forget (updated)

We must never forget that 9/11 was NOT a natural disaster.

[update] This morning I am sickened and saddened at our national observances of the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks and their reports in the lamestream media.  Examining the public remarks of leaders like President Obama and reports by Associated Press et al, they come across as a memorial to victims of a large hurricane, powerful earthquake, or a highly infectious and deadly epidemic.  But there are millions of us who do remember that 9/11 was not a Hurricane Katrina or an outbreak of ebola, it was an attack on the west by highly organized, trained, and dedicated Islamic terrorists.  And moreover, it was not an one-off assault on our civilization, but one of an already ongoing series of worldwide attacks that have since continued as Islam’s jihad against the west has grown and spread worldwide.

Viewing the terror attacks as part and parcel of the organized warfare conducted by ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taliban, … in concert with the Muslim migrations and non-assimilating colonization of Europe, one would expect that in the observance of this memorial our leaders and media would dispense with what most charitably can be called political correctness.  When Germany’s National Socialists launched the Holocaust and Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to secure its Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere our leaders had no problem naming our enemies and rallying the country to defend western civilization.  That is not the case today, even though our enemy by all measures comes from a much larger and virile cohort of dedicated, self-sacrificing fanatics imbued with an unshakeable belief that they are doing the will of their god and will be eternally rewarded for their undeniable faith as they so willingly give their lives.

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 8sep16 (updated 9sep16)

No statesman is in a position to indicate ten years in advance what he is going to do later; on the pathless fields of politics one cannot proceed by schedule like an engineer.  Konrad Heiden (1944)

George Rebane

Labor Day is past and we are now in the pre-debate phase of the campaigns.  Trump has indeed toned down his delivery, if not his message.  He now sounds more composed, deliberate, and therefore presidential as he modifies his policies for the final run to November with the help of advisors, notes, and even the teleprompter.  But no matter his tone, he continues to be the political maverick, as he must if he’s to have a snowball’s chance in hell for the Oval Office – his public demands it.  And that public is growing according to polls, some of these now show him even or even ahead a point or two.  I see the effects of retired general Mike Flynn on both his military policy and coordinating support from retired flags to counter Hillary’s chorus of the Obama-compliant officers.  But we have yet to see the obvious marks of Christie and Gingrich, maybe they are currently tutoring his debate performance.

Meanwhile Hillary continues to pile lie upon lie while bolstering the ones that already underpin her character with the thinly-informed.  Her email scandals do nothing but grow as the election approaches, and now we all await the October Surprise (or the “Ides of October” as one reader has dramatically labeled it).  That she remains unindicted is a terrible sadness upon our republic, giving overwhelming evidence that our justice and judicial institutions suffer from a deep corruption.

Ruminations – 6sep16 (updated 10sep16)

George Rebane

Windpower works when energy markets are deregulated.  Texas continues to make news. “The roots of Texas’ renewables boom go back to 1999, when then-Gov. George W. Bush and a Republican-dominated legislature overhauled the Texas power market. The free market-oriented deregulation broke the grip of most monopoly utilities that controlled generation, transmission and retail sales of electricity and introduced competitive auctions for wholesale power.”  (more here)

China again snubs President Obama as it forces him to deplane from the utility exit on Air Force One as it arrives for the recent G-20 international conference on world economics.  Our president has become the most scorned and disrespected national leader in decades, a fact that is more and more difficult for the lamestream to cover up and deny.  National leaders from Russia, Turkey, Philippines, Iran, China, Great Britain, … have variously shown their disregard for our leadership and national interests as the true mettle of Obama became known over his terms in office.

If you want to persuade people, try ‘altercasting’ suggest modern psychologists and sociologists.  Altercasting is “a persuasion technique in which one person characterizes another as a certain type of person in order to encourage him or her to behave in a desired manner.”  In the modern manner, this new techniques was thought to have been developed recently.   Within a longer view altercasting people has been in constant practice since before biblical times, and since then it has been known by its more familiar name as bullshitting. (more here)

Education spending runs even more amuck if Obama has his way to rewrite law to increase federal control over education.  The US spends the most per pupil with absolutely dismal results – our bang per educational buck ranks last in the world among developed nations.  Part motivation for this is to make it more difficult to operate charter schools which continue to give union run schools a black eye.  And, of course, the whole thing is to do another end-run around Congress and the long established Title 1 funding in effect since 1970.  The details are bizarre. (here)

Nevada County government continues to gum up local development as reported by Ms Rachel Helm in the 3sep16 Union.  In her column (here) she takes us over the trail of tears she went through with the county to split her 10 acre parcel into two already zoned 5 acre parcels.  That little operation which should have taken less than a month actually took over two years and cost her over $43,000.  But the fun didn’t end there.  What the county then did to prospective buyers when she tried to sell it is another story that makes this saga worth a read, mostly because it gives us a look at what goes on with our Rood Center bureaucrats day in and day out.   “Is there any wonder that there’s a shortage of housing for buyers looking for a home in Nevada County that comes in under $500,000.”  Contrary to what our supervisors assure us about the ease of development in the county, the reality is quite different and we do it to ourselves.

[8sep16 update]  From investment pundit Bill Mauldin's current newsletter -

Thomas Jefferson once said, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” As a preview of next week’s letter, let me assert that current monetary policy is a tax on the middle class and retirees by unelected government officials. A relatively minor tax on tea was ostensibly the trigger for the American Revolution. Perhaps the Boomer generation should once again man the barricades, this time in protest of something really damaging to the future of the country.

[10sep16 update]  Blind to socialism.  Ever wonder why the Left does NOT wonder why socialism is such a disastrous form of governance wherever it is practiced, with the magnitude of delivered public pain corresponding directly to the scope and level of implemented socialist policies?  Beyond the historical examples now successfully kept from millenials’ education (‘capitalism is the cause of all the world’s ills’), we have the most recent examples of socialist disasters staring us in the face with Greece, Brazil, and Venezuela.  To that you could add Cuba since that island prison has again bloomed on the radar of public attention.  In the face of two centuries of damning evidence, the Left still insists on pursuing Mankind’s fulfillment down dark alleys seeking ever larger versions of the tentacled leviathan that can reach into every aspect of its citizens’ lives.  And to maintain this pursuit they need ever dumber constituencies to keep them in power.

Polling Phollies

George Rebane

We must always remember that more often than not the public mind is fickle, frantic, and foolish.

No one can escape the polls during this election season whose results will be deemed cataclysmic by at least half of the American electorate, no matter who wins.  So all kinds of people from government, campaigns, and academia are attempting to peer into the collective public mind to determine its sentiment and portents.  The instrument of choice for this endeavor is the poll.  A poll is a type of survey which consists of applying a questionnaire to a sample of respondents drawn randomly from the population of interest.

Polls are abundant, there being at least twenty of them prominently quoted on a daily basis.  To make sense of the plethora of divergent results, desperate people attempt to amalgamate them by various kinds of averaging each of which can stand about as much scrutiny as the legislature making laws, or worse, a bureaucratic brew drafting regulations.  Here I want to disabuse the reader of giving much credence to any of the, say, ten polls to which he is subjected on any given day.  The poll’s result is usually given by a set of percentages attached to alternative answers, percentages that are supposed to sum to 100% so that the waterfront is appropriately covered.

To add credibility to the poll, the media also often include the ‘margin of error’ and the number of people questioned or the sample size.  As an article of faith the poll’s consumer is supposed to believe that the population was properly sampled and that the questionnaire was not loaded with agenda-driven queries meticulously wordsmithed.  For the present exercise let’s all join that body of the faithful and concentrate only on the claimed credibility bestowed by stated sample size and margin of error.

[To continue reading this piece which goes on to contain numerical tables and graphics, please  Download Polling Phollies ]

Playing with Amnesty

George Rebane

Amnesty – “an act of forgiveness for past offenses, especially to a class of persons as a whole”, Random House Dictionary (unabridged).  “an act of oblivion, a general overlooking or pardon of past offences by the ruling authority”, Oxford English Dictionary (unabridged).

Amnesty for illegal aliens today has become the new third rail of politics for both sides.  On long established principle the Republicans will not countenance it from their politicians (save the special amnesty once approved by Saint Ronald).  The Democrats, aided by the lamestream, will do their damnest to implement it without using the word or letting their faithful learn of it (the latter being an unusually easy task).

Part and parcel of the progressive propaganda blitz on amnesty is the dunning of Trump’s immigration policy speech in which he declared that 1) legalization of resident illegal aliens will be done according to existing immigration laws, and 2) the disposition of remaining illegal aliens will be addressed after the border is secured.  The rationale being that granting illegals amnesty by allowing them to shortcut the path to legalization, over those hundreds of thousands abiding by our immigration laws, is both unjust and motivates more illegal entrants, further breaking of our laws, and burdening the country’s fisc.

For openly stating that part of his immigration reform policy Trump has been likened to Hitler herding Jews during the Holocaust.  The country’s leftwingers and socialists take every opportunity to remind their acolytes and the muddled mid-roaders that the fate of the fabled ‘eleven million’ under Trump will be midnight knocks on the door and cattle car trains full of Hispanics heading for our southern border.  Unfortunately, the nation’s aggregate critical thinking skills are not up to parsing this ridiculous image that is daily tattooed on such minds.

But the bottom line is that any path to legalization, let alone citizenship, for resident illegal aliens that circumvents our laws is in fact amnesty.  The information-free thinkers must always be reminded that these people within our borders are not ‘immigrants’ in the normative sense of the word, since our country was not party to any agreement that permitted their surreptitious entry.  However, on these shores today that is not the dispensed wisdom; in the public square we, instead, pirouette with words few understand.

Prop64 misses on RMJ legalization

George Rebane

It’s RMJ time again as we consider Prop64 that will appear on the November ballot and invite Californians to not only legalize the dear weed but allow adults to possess, purchase, transport, and give to another adult an ounce of marijuana, all for recreational purposes.  Moreover, Prop64 would “prohibit local governments from banning any indoor residential growing of marijuana, provided the crop does not exceed six plants.”

I was motivated to get back to the MJ issue by Union columnist Terry McLaughlin’s article (here) in this morning’s (2sep16) edition of  the newspaper.  Terry’s article is a substantive and informative piece that unfortunately confuses the issues by introducing irrelevant asides about MMJ which really have nothing to do with the RMJ thrust of the proposition.  I will try to avoid a similar temptation in the sequel.  Full disclosure – Terry McLaughlin is also an ideological fellow traveler and a friend of both Rebanes.

My position on legalizing MJ has been on record for years (see here), and I believe that the legalization of RMJ will come to pass across the land in the various forms determined by the lower jurisdictions of states and counties.  As readers know, I am a proponent of local control and governance to the reasonable extent possible.  However, Prop64 misses on several fronts as a positive step in this direction.

When considering the legalization of RMJ we should keep in mind that it has been shown to be a ‘gateway drug’ to more serious narcotics like heroin as reported on a recent edition of 60 Minutes.  McLaughlin also cites some Washington state stats about “deaths in marijuana related car accidents” doubling since RMJ was legalized.  Additionally, it has been clinically shown that RMJ consumption by teenagers puts a permanent dent into the cognitive processing of their brainbones which at that age already do a poor job of assessing risks.

What concerns me about the latter is the impact of Prop64 related sleaze whose proponents have fought to deny voters ballot information spelling out the proposition’s allowance of RMJ grows and media advertising of same.  The impact of airing Joe Camel has been established, especially on young people.  No rocket science is required to transfer that experience to a buxom Mary Jane on the boob tube showing how sociable and cool it is to light up or pop a brownie.  Apparently a California judge has put the kibosh on RMJ advertising, so hopefully that will no longer be an issue.

The bottom line for me for opposing Prop64 is that it removes the element of local control.  We in Nevada County could no longer determine how/whether RMJ can be produced and consumed here.  Commercial Street in Nevada City already smells to high heaven during summer weekend evenings.  After Prop64 that could turn into an olfactory treat to filter out tourists and locals not disposed to such aromas.  In sum, I think a better proposition could be written to permit a more controlled and controllable way for consuming RMJ in California.  (Yes Virginia, even conservetarians are in favor of some level of government regulations.)