Thursday, July 9, 2009

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.

15 comments:

Writer X said...

I think I got high just reading your post today. Volunteering to pay taxes? These people must be high.

StanH said...

Whoa… far out man …like some really righteous cats are on the problem now… cool, “everybody must get stoned.” Yep Lawhawk, that’ll be as useful as teats on a boar hog, once again the Golden State leads the way. It’s a page out of “A Brave New World,” where weed is used like Soma, “yeah dude, raise my taxes, take my freedom …just pass the Cheetos.” Brilliant!

CrisD said...

I am very very anti-drug, including POT.
Recent studies in GB link it to chronic mental disorders such as various forms of depression and schizophrenia.

Note:Which would explain a lot about California and San Fransisco in particular.

Note:Try paying for a loved one with chronic mental disorder.

AndrewPrice said...

So California is going to encouraging smoking andthe munchies in the hopes of getting more revenues? That makes sense.

And why think so small?

How about legalizing theft and taxing it?

Maybe they should legalize illegal-immigration smuggling and just tax the smugglers?

How about legalizing counterfeiting?

Writer X said...

Andrew, they could make a fortune if they'd simply tax bad ideas.

AndrewPrice said...

Writer X, isn't that the truth!

But why not just go straight to the source of the bad ideas. . . I propose a "representative" surcharge -- anyone in an elected office needs to pay an extra 20% on their income tax.

Writer X said...

Make it 100%, especially since they love the sound of their own voices so much. :-) And since they'll all be smoking weed, they won't know the difference. It's a win-win.

AndrewPrice said...

Writer X,

I like the way you think! 100% it is! :-)

Unknown said...

WriterX: You have to be careful in this town. I have to keep my windows closed to keep my cigarette smoke in and their pot smoke out.

StanH: You have no idea how accurate you are. About a decade ago, they redeveloped the old warehouse district and turned it into yuppie heaven south of Market Street (used to be a no-go zone after dark). And what did they call it? SOMA. After the dot.com bust, they had plenty of homes, but nobody could afford to live in them. It became a reverse homeless zone.

Unknown said...

CrisD: You can pick any major downtown street in town and within five minutes, you'll see at least two people going past with dead eyes and complete unawareness of what's going on around them. We used to call it the thorazine shuffle. Now we call it the "mayor's march."

Andrew and WriterX: We could solve the deficit overnight by simply charging politicians a tax by-the-word. We could add a surtax for each use of the words "hope" and "change." Also, since they'll be paying 100% on their "earnings," and 100% on their words, they'll be at 200% of their income. Instant budget surplus. You have to be smoking pot to come up with those mathematics. Oh, wait! I think it's called Obamanomics.

Unknown said...

I just realized there's another out-of-state politician who could be a goldmine. When Obama visits, we'll charge a triple surtax for every use of the sounds "uh," "ah," and "um."

StanH said...

Lawhawk, I was trying to be sarcastic? I have to remember these are reports from inside the wire, and that what seems fantastic to a Flyover American could indeed be reality, in SF.

Unknown said...

StanH: The problem you'll find with San Francisco is that no matter how silly or how weird a concept you may come up with, and no matter how ridiculous normal people might think the concept is, San Francisco will probably already have it built into its way of life.

Tennessee Jed said...

Between Lawhawk and Iowahawk, I figure I have been brought up to date on the golden state. Wasn't Obama a stoner? Seriously, while legalization or non-legalization is a side show to more important issues, I do think California is a great example for conservatives to use to show voters where liberalism run amok leads.

Unknown said...

Tennessee: I had no idea Iowahawk was going to write that great article (I'm from the Illinois branch of the family). He writes from the outside and I write from the inside, and together we give you a pretty good view of the entire rotting corpse that is California. It's a good thing I believe the Lazarus story, or I'd be in complete despair (or like the Board of Supervisors, complete denial).

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