San Francisco Diary--Journal Of An Exile

Up In Smoke: San Francisco has long been in the forefront of the marijuana legalization movement. Though I've long suspected that the vision for The City promoted from City Hall derives from a crack-pipe laced with LSD, the use of marijuana by the general populace is devoutly to be wished. City Father (or Mother): "We're going to ban automobiles, confiscate your meat, take your guns, mandate homosexuality, tax you at 100% of your earnings, and put your children in education camps." San Francisco Citizen: "Whffffffhh--Far out, man, cool. Ya got some Cheetos?"

NOTE: In California in general, and in San Francisco particularly, the people are waking up to the fact that the state is broke. In the spirit of good citizenship and sharing the wealth, there is a growing movement to legalize the use of marijuana. You might be foolish enough to believe that this is just a matter of a bunch of potheads wanting easy access to their drug of choice. Au contraire, mon ami. Pot advocates believe that marijuana legalization would quickly close the $26 billion budget deficit by providing happy, mellow taxpayers. The accountants haven't figured out yet exactly what amount of marijuana would need to be smoked and taxed to raise $26 billion, but they point out that it wouldn't all have to come from the marijuana tax. There would also be a rapid increase in revenue from the junk-food taxes as well.

According to the Joe Biden theory of taxation, these people are real patriots. Imagine--volunteering to pay taxes. They've even produced "tax us" ads, which began a limited run throughout the state on Wednesday. The fascist pigs at NBC in San Francisco and the ABC narcs in Los Angeles and San Francisco have so far refused to run the ads. But the CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC and CNBC cable franchises in San Francisco have all gleefully accepted the ads. The Fox News Channel is holding. Oops, I mean "holding out."

Says spokeswoman Nadene Herndon of Fair Oaks, an actual user (not a paid spokesperson): "The governor and legislators are ignoring millions of Californians who want to pay taxes. We're marijuana consumers. Instead of being treated like criminals for using a substance safer than alcohol, we want to pay our fair share." So far, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors hs been unavailable for questions about how they reconcile their anti-smoking, anti-junk food views with their pro-marijuana views. But who needs consistency when there's tax money to be had, and willing taxpayers to give it?

One consumer on the SF Gate (Chronicle) website said "Marijuana is not a drug. I used to s&%# d#&k for coke. Have you ever s&%#d d#&k for marijuana?" Even in San Francisco, the votes on that comment are running about 50/50. That might merely be a function of the number of coke dealers versus the number of coke users in The City, not that there's anything wrong with that.

NOTE: The contract between the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) and its 2800 union employees expired on June 30. The trains continue to run by mutual agreement to extend the negotiations. BART is currently $250 million in the hole after already having raised fares and cut service to help close the budget gap. The unions are still demanding a 3% pay raise even in a failing state and national economy with a 9.5% unemployment rate. So far, nobody has suggested that the operators and dispatchers be allowed to smoke marijuana while on duty in order to raise tax revenues to help cut the deficit. Maybe they don't have cable TV and have missed the ads.

NOTE: San Francisco may be in the forefront of disease as well. The City has reported that it has now had its third case of drug-resistant swine flu. In its resistant form, the disease is communicable between human beings. The teenager had the symptoms of the disease before boarding a flight to Hong Kong, but did not seek treatment in San Francisco. She is currently in isolation in Hong Kong under the watch of the World Health Organization. The Board of Supervisors hasn't yet demanded her immediate return to San Francisco to spread the disease. Local health authorities say the strain can be treated with a new drug called Zanamivir of which The City has approximately twelve doses. They are also experimenting with marijuana as a cure, but nobody is quite sure why.

NOTE: Mark Morford, the Chronicle columnist who writes gentle prose about the average American has done so again. He has announced that fully 11% of those crazy non-San Franciscans believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, "Worshipping Allah or secretly kneeling to Mecca 500 times a day behind his desk in the Oval Office while wearing a kufi and a rainbow-colored disha dasha." Where Morford got his statistic, let alone his recital of Muslim ritual, is unknown. But he does report "Here is some good news for you! Something you can believe in like crispy whitebread Jesus toast, part of this complete breakfast! Something to stick into your big heart of patriotic goodness like fresh imitation strawberry-flavored cotton-candy gunfire! 89% of Americans know that President Barack Obama is not a Muslim." Since I can't tell what the hell this guy is talking about (and I'll bet you can't either), I can only assume that he is a heavy taxpayer from the movement described in the first note in this column.

NOTE: The San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office says the body found Monday morning in McLaren Park was a man, not a woman as police reported earlier. No comment.

NOTE: The CBS channel in San Francisco has accepted the marijuana ad. CBS is the network of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. That would explain a lot.