Page 4 - Sonoma County Gazette March 2017

LETTERS cont’d from page 3
Steelhead Valentine
Peaceful Con ict
cannabis is, federally. still an illegal drug, so that AT ANY TIME, the federal government can use this
fact to shut down a state controlled cannabis business. What happens to the taxes collected on an illegal sale? How are we able to tax something that is still illegal? During prohibition, when the government was busting
Just a note to thank you for republishing “Steelhead Valentine” in your February issue. Nor could it be more well-placed than there in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
Like many of us in Sonoma County, I was appalled by the hostile confrontation of a Trump supporter, Nathan Morton, whose video of the scene went viral. I read about the incident in the Press Democrat, but
it was the video that induced me to write. It is a perfect lesson of how not to have a conversation where there is conflict.
up stills and pouring barrels of liquor and beer down the sewers, there were no taxes collected by the states.
I’ve been getting emails from friends who saw it. Several have commented on the eye-catching photo of the fish above the text. It is drawing your readers eyes to the article, and I’m just delighted.
Our nation has never been more divided and our conflicts will exacerbate as long as we continue to verbally abuse and disrespect one another. Many of us are horrified by the passage of too many resolutions by the House of Representatives within the first three weeks of the new administration, which will further divide us and return us to the bleak days of Charles Dickens.
Safety Regulations
On this foggy drizzly day, I know the steelhead are in our creeks, shoving their way upstream. The local people here used to say (as all Native Pacific coast people say), the fish need our conscious receptivity to find their way back.
One of the government’s arguments for controlling and taxing cannabis
is that the purity and consistency
can be regulated. I would have more confidence in this argument if I weren’t familiar with what happened to the tobacco industry. Chemicals are added to cigarettes, primarily
And doesn’t it make sense that our welcoming hearts help bring them home?
to keep tobacco more addictive, and even resulting in more carcinogens. Full time lobbyists are powerful enough to keep this deadly product on the market for many decades past the time we learned for certain it is deadly. Who was watching out for the safety of tobacco smokers, hmmm?
Thank you again and many blessings,
We have been so caught up with our present crisis, most of us, especially our news media, missed
an opportunity to raise awareness about a positive, culture changing bill, which was introduced without any fanfare. It not being reported is a sad fact because this bill, HR1111, is probably the most concrete legislation to address the violence in our country, and one that can effect a change in our increasingly violent culture.
Elizabeth C. Herron
We Can Have One Without the Other
Karen reads your articles in the paper about the Guerneville scene and saw a recent article you did about that lame brained plan of the SCWA to truck Occidental’s sewage to the Guerneville plant at exorbitant cost, not to mention the load on the Guerneville plant.
It should be remembered that cannabis legalization and Big Pot Commercialization are two different things. We COULD just legalize it, and allow the normal (near 10%) sales tax be enough of a state revenue. The hefty (greedy) tax structure is just money grabbing by opportunists.
My employer, Lescure-Engineers, has done several large package treatment plants: Orenco AdvanTex systems, that are self-contained trickling filters that use a thick felted textile as the treatment media, sewage trickles down and thru the textile where the attached bacteria consume the organic nutrients, nitrogen & phosphorus and clean up the waste water.
Violence pervades every
aspect of our lives and woven
into our justice system
affecting us all, especially
immigrants, people of colour
We tolerate unprincipled business and banking practices; agribusinesses’ violence to domestic animals and their flagrant use of pesticides and GMOs, together with the fossil fuel industry, destroying our land, ocean and watersheds.
There is only one conclusion I can make about this commercial takeover of a grass roots movement: We end up screwed again.
and the poor.
Chris Dec
This is wrong for all the right reasons. At least put in something for Sonoma County Veterans. We’re the hardest hit by this law.
The end result: secondary, denitrified, effluent is dispersed
by drip tubing, installed by hand labor, in redwood groves, which can consume large quantities of water and nutrients via evapotranspiration and cellular metabolism.
Sadly, mountaintop removal by
the coal industry continues and I read this morning, about the possible demise of the EPA; the unethical multinational pharmaceutical and medical Insurance corporations will have more power while public radio and public education are headed for the chopping block to make way for emerging big business enterprises.
Jim Kelly
What is the use tax per acre of vineyard?
Lescure did Camp Newman on Mark West Springs Rd at 20,000 gpd, Odd Fellows Park and recently River Bend along the River, which are about 20K and 10K gpd respectively. So we have the technology and the expertise in house (local) to design and put into operation a system for Occidental for a small fraction of the estimated cost of the SCWA scheme.
Or what is the use tax per acre of lettuce?
4 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 3/17
Max Kroschel
The establishment of restorative justice practices in all our institutions
All of the county should pay the tax not just unincorporated
It is our children who will suffer the most and it is this legislation
that can change this culture. The
bill, HR1111, for a US Department
of Peacebuilding, was reintroduced by Representative Barbara Lee on Thursday 16th February. It is “ a
multi system approach to violence prevention and intervention which will generate a positive impact toward cultured nonviolence.”
And proceeds go to drug and alcohol rehab and schools
The vineyards should pay the tax also.
A major problem in Occidental is all the infiltration into the system which jacks up the winter time flows enormously. Nobody has bothered
to run a simple smoke test to see where the infiltration is coming from! Typically it is rain down spouts from roof gutters plumbed into the sewage system (illegally).
A lot of lives, environment and water are destroyed from vineyards ~ Cress Cresswell
LETTERS cont’d on page 5