You're the employer of the government: be a better boss

May I have some coffee and the morning memos, thank you

It's not like you drive to Sacramento or Washington DC in the morning, prepped for a fight against, greed, overconsumption, pollution, and anything that stands in our way from providing education and compassionate health services for all.

What a wonder of a country we could be if we hired (voted in) the intelligent and fair employees into a system that rewards success and spends less time trying to make sure they spend the whole years allotted monies so that it will cost more next year.

Currently the government cannot save money and is spending it frivolously on amateurish and ignorant plans to run a failing government.

If the government fails it falls to the people.

Don't like that, then start thinking, reading and researching.

If you plan on having tea parties all around the country please take a history class so that you may have a perspective on why these sorts of protests took place.

I will be taking the time to show people not only how to protest, but how to get results. Of course, much to the dismay of political California, I will be demonstrating these gems for the politicians myself.

In other countries violence has supplanted the marching, sit in's, and civil war is the result.

We don't need another civil war and we don't need a war in the middle east either. Had that situation been handled years before by leaders who were not able to look to the future and forecast cloudy, misunderstood skies.

The history of American and European infestation into the Persian lands taking place in the last century with an assassination of a former Shah of Iran. He had to go because we needed to fuel up to get to Africa via Iran and Iraq. The next leader we put in power. You'll remember a religious leader showed up and was greeted with much enthusiasm, as they believed in religion over politics.

Funny, we have instituted a similar policy, just not the same religion, but religion has entered politics and war, if George W. was answering truly when he said the US was on a "crusade."

Let's take this opportunity with poverty and lack of opportunity, an antiquated educational system, right here in this country to focus on what is happening here.

I find it ironic that we are supposedly imposing an American Democracy on a nation where people still move a few goats around in the sandy areas of the vast deserts in the middle east.

When a country forgets it's educational system, it's doomed...eventually. How far can you fall behind before it's obvious in every way, especially the way the country is being run.

Now to my point, you are the boss of this government yet it is all about complaining.

When you have tired of yelling into the wind, start making phone calls, take your power as a voter, taxpayer, worker, drone, queen, and begin to lobby for you, your family, your community and your state.

Become a lobbyist by finding your representatives and sending them your ideas, the ideas of your group, and give them a direction their constituents want to go.

If you vote some in and do not tell them why you did, you may not get what you want.

It's another election year, and it's time to understand who you are in the scheme of America. Welcome to your job too...

Being the boss of a nation at war, broken financially, educationally falling behind the rest of the world, it's time to step up.

Violence is quite unnecessary unless you have a violent and entrenched government which is only representing certain, most likely, greedy interests.

There's no reason this whole world couldn't be well fed and aware of it's responsibility for keeping this planet alive and continuing to create. With China reconsidering it's one baby per family policy, you can expect a population explosion. The smog in China makes a huge impact on the environment, who is worried, raise your hand? It's not going to get better.

Geography as well as cultural respect, is something necessary in the big world we live in today. But keep your eyes on the prize here at home.

Our goals:
Breaking up the concentrations of power

Create a true list of what corporations actually own, and see what sort of measures we can take to save small business from being swallowed up.

The regulators in the bogus bail outs, did not even know how to find the accounting tricks and define them for the government officials so they could act and the American people could be kept informed. Keep your watchdogs trained or reap only confusion and animosity amongst the poor and the rich.

Find a simple way to supply healthcare without having to fill "every one's" pockets. It's not that hard and there are many ideas to support a low cost assistance plan, creating a larger insurance pool, allowing prices to drop. We don't think of the state of Oklahoma as being in the lead in much, except some football, but they have created an insurance pool so small businesses can provide health insurance.

Not a difficult thing to do. And it doesn't have to be done on the federal end only.

Growing food and food consumption. Stop the packaging nonsense. Stop shipping products across the nation when it can be distributed locally. Make it financially feasible to do so. Keep it local, really.

The food is making people fat and there are industries preying upon their insecurities and their health problems. If these corporations were not keeping out other food from the national grocery chains people would have choices. And tax incentives for growing our own foods, and growing for others, and spreading that knowledge.

Cigarettes, killing only, but created a huge market of drugs, patches, gums, and are multi billion dollar companies. Wouldn't it be terrible to find out if the tobacco industry created the remedy to the product they sell? If we ever get a grant to do a research project where we trace the evoluation of big business, actually bonded together in a convenant of greed, we could find out. A lot of work, but I would be willing to pitch in.

Alcohol and alcholism. I've seen many pictures on the news of the horrendous car crashes caused by people drunk out of their minds. Ethanol may be good for gasoline, but it's a very heavy street drug, accessible and powerful. It has no medical value, but it is a part of most every culture. We cannot write more laws, but we can minimize the accessibility and create more remedies to treat the alcoholics.

Birth control and abortion. If we had a society not threatened by sex and sexuality, we could be more open with our children about how to avoid pregnancy, STD's, years of staying in the closet fearing be rejected because of sexual preference (See Senator Roy Ashburn, his life could have been one of being himself, but he chose to hide and was openly homophobic. That's a sad story to end a career on. Not a good example of strength of character.), and the obvious that women are not the only ones who have birth control created for them.

Where's the male birth control, where they can have "control" of their own bodies? And why are there not a fair number of women running this country? Women should be the stronger voice. Black women showed themselves to be some of the strongest and most resilient people on earth. Raising children by yourself is not a sin, a crime, but a call to the community for help.

Yes, it's true, it does take a village to raise a child. And the villagers need to walk the example, show the courage to step up when things are wrong. No child needs to be beaten, berated, sexually used. But they do need encouragement, love, time and communication. And when they are accepted for who they are they become a force in society

Marijuana, could be used for clothes, paper, medicine, and an industry. But there would be corporations losing money so corporations are not lobbying for this or it would have happened by now. The individuals who have been healed by this herb, and the constitution written on Hemp paper, and the fabrics made from the fibers, and it's cheap.

We spend money policing it and jailing some who use it. What is that costing us? But then there are only a few lobbyists out there. NORML was one of the first to take the government to task on the issue, and they have made progress.

Then we need to shut down our war machine. Share the responsibility of "policing" the world with the "world."

As an evolved society we need to take care and utilize our seniors who have both experience and knowledge which is being overlooked. Caring for our elders should be a respectable occupation, not a cheap operation where nurses and caretakers receive little compensation for the compassionate work.

Taking care of those with Alzheimer's and other crippling diseases is difficult at best, so we should not start shooting the full of chemical restraints and find a way to pay a good respectable wage to those who are caring for the people who may have raised you, been your friend, your husband or wife.

And those who have suffered a disability must have the opportunity to serve the community, work for a decent wage, get help to get back into society not be pushed out, and to create a disability program which exemplifies those ideals. Anyone at anytime can have an accident, disease, some malady that changes their whole life. This has to be addressed in a progressive, compassionate and intelligent way. Just because someone is damaged, doesn't mean they are just no good anymore. You'd be surprised, they might just be better.

Each state decides what they want to do with drug addicts who are harming themselves. I really don't care if people want to hurt themselves by becoming addicts, but there would be a solid rule: if you want to be a junkie have fun, but you can never have children or care for anyone else's children. Real simple.

And finally, education is the most important thing we can do to induce continued progress on the part of the US in the world. We still have many natural resources, but the biggest resource is the people who can do many things given the right opportunities. Let's teach everyone to find their passion, their work, their labor of love, and then give them the tools to actually use what the Lord gave us.

But even there we must realize there are many cultures and differences, people are different, have different talents, so education is going to need a makeover so it understands we all learn differently, but we all learn.

Yeah, it's sad, but not hopeless. You're the boss is this how you want your country to run?

Ken Mettler on Harvey Milk: Republican forerunner in 32nd Assembly district

"That Ken Mettler is on the phone again, Senator Ashburn, what do you want me to tell him?"

"Got Milk?"



It's the political season and it's time to put on our raincoats as we will be showered with parfum and cake for the coming months...well except for certain candidates who play a different sort of game: they are naughty.

Pictured here is Ken Mettler, the bad boy of this year's Kern County election.

Once a Kern Valley High School District board member who gave the public a good schooling on not to talk when he's giving a class on who is in charge, is not my kind of candidate.

Types like Mettler are elected only because of name recognition, not because they are endowed with wisdom and experience which will help them "serve" the public, but because the press can't get enough of them.

From the time he came out swinging at a private citizen after a meeting, to the article in the Bakersfield Californian today, which explains that Mr. Mettler, (whose hubris may make you think he's running for Governor and not just a local assembly seat) used funds from the Kern County Republican coffer to actually trace the heckler from the meeting, along with other somewhat scandalous operations.

Considering Ashburn just...

After a local Senator, Roy Ashburn, turned his station from country western to show tunes recently, it's odd that Mettler would come out so defensively about having a "Harvey Milk" day.

If it weren't for a recent movie, not many people would know who Harvey Milk was, and why some people want to celebrate his life.

Milk was shot and killed by someone who didn't agree with his politics but most especially that he was openly gay way before openly gay became a very rich demographic.

Ashburn spent years bashing gay agendas and then took that next leap from homophobia to "I'm too gay for my shirt."

With Mettler acting awfully homophobic and his politics or personal problems are sliding off the right wing, I'm afraid he may end up a candidate or even a winner in this assembly race.

Yes, Kern County is conservative, but it's not a haven for extremists, I think anyway. Or could I be wrong?

Republicans are not necessarily against abortion and they are not necessarily a member of a Christian church.

They are also just people who prefer a little less government and more or less continued privatization of the economic market.

However, when the press eats at the dish of an extremist just because that is all he has got to go with, they are helping to elect him.

Where's Jean Fuller? Does she have to chase someone out of a meeting and key their car to get a good story in the paper?

Would Fuller be more interesting if she recently checked out of the Betty ford Clinic?

Could we blame the press for these perverse curiosities? ABSOLUTELY!

Recently the media has become defensive and weepy, "the President doesn't want to talk to us" "we're victims" "we don't write fluff."

Oh yes they do. The media controls the elections right up to polling before everyone has voted. That is ridiculous.

If a television station or newspaper hasn't learned that you can elect idiots because they are "news worthy" (yeah, it's called news of the weird), then they don't know how "most" people vote.

Sarah Palin even has a chance...I say fire the media and the current politicians and let's start over.

And regarding Mettler, let's not talk about him anymore, let's get down to the real business of what we are going to do to set the course for success here in California.

He's not interested in what I have to say or people attending public meetings, so I say, there must be nothing to say about him.

Who is worthy of your vote?

I've listened to a few people this year who are running for one office or another. I found one candidate interesting, but only in a funny way. He wants to fix the government by doing something about the problem with gerrymandering.

Yes, there are districts which are drawn in a prejudice manner, to serve one party or the other, or to preserve power over an area, and it makes no sense in the real world, but that is how it has been done.

We could straighten out the problem rather quickly with a map, marker and calculator, but that would be too easy.

One candidate has an interesting solution to this problem: Split the state in half.

Okay. Now wouldn't that be gerrymandering too?

And this is why, we need to research before we vote...Stay with me, and we will find some good people to vote for in this election.

If you're 18 and over it's time to take responsibility for the people who work for you: Elections 2010.

Senator Ashburn is not gay...what are you talking about?

Since I'm in the journalism field, I rarely read anything but my own stuff, but on the off chance a newspaper fell at my feet, I picked it up and saw a headline: Senator Roy Ashburn says "He's gay."

And I smoke marijuana because it's medicine. Whatever.

Where do these journalists get this stuff. We know the man was drinking that night, he was drunk when he said it.

I mean you don't spend your whole career bashing gays only to become one the year you're quitting. Do you?

He is quitting right? (Brett Farve?)

Anyway, then I run into a friend who is talking about this story, and I ask, "do you think Barney Frank is gay too?"

Whatever the look, it was frankly rude I thought.

Everyone knows Frank came out as gay just to get some of that gay demographic. He was one of the first campaign geniuses to use that fallacy to reform campaigning.

Now, if Frank, who looks more like a football player than a ballet dancer, can pull off this ruse than anyone can, and many have.

However, Mr. Ashburn, is somehow using this gay thing at the end of his career.

If these damn journalists would take their time to investigate that politicians rarely go gay at the end of their careers, there's no pay off.

It could be as simple as Ashburn forgot his glasses which you see him wearing in every picture, am I not right, and went into this bar, didn't read the sign, "ladies night, free ladies" hopped in his car with his free lady who turns out to be a man.

The cops give him a hard time. Could be some pyschological damage, now he thinks he's gay, yet, he forgot his glasses. I think it's typical, they call it something like, his name is, yeah, "gerrymandering."

What silliness. I apologize.

(let's not think there isn't another explanation. The gay underground got to him. That's another possibility. You know what I'm saying.)

Just a few warnings for politicians during election year: (might keep you safe)
Keep your hands to yourself
If you're feeling gay, wait until after the election, and keep your hands to yourself
Don't email anything sexual (unless you are a radio broadcaster like Rush Limbaugh) that can come back on you
Cell phones are a bad place to store your mistresses phone number, whether you're the husband or the wife
So, basically, no porn and popcorn, keep your hands to yourself, don't switch from gay to straight or vise verse until after the election. It's a cinch.

I'm pretty sure it's not that tough to handle this. If I were your campaign manager, that would certainly be my advice.

And to Mr. Ashburn: I guess now we know what your plans are after your political career is over? (I'm only assuming, he's been pretty quiet about that too)...okay...sorry.

Links to election data for California

The next Statewide Primary Election is on June 8, 2010 and then the big day will probably be a chilly Nov. 2, 2010.

So, it's time to begin the studying, the research about who we are potentially going to be electing and how this person and their background, opinions, and goals for the future, will effect us all.

Here in Kern County we have some role changing as Assemblywoman, Jean Fuller, will be grabbing her suitcases and moving over to the Senator's seat, Roy Ashburn, who is terming out this year, to make a run for it.

But Fuller has some interesting opponents in her own party to defeat before she moves on to the democratic opposition.

Fuller has been visible and accessible to the people of the Kern River Valley, the home of the elder abuse case which rocked our rocks up here. Fuller has said in the past she supports all efforts to keep the hospital not only open and functioning, but growing services which fit the community.

If she were to be elected to Ashburn's seat, she would have the ability to bring even more leverage for the rural community that is lost amongst so many other, larger, prospects which contain bigger voting bases.

But the KRV is known as conservate central, but there is a diversity up here in the valley which would like to see change for reasons other than voting for one party or another.

The following links will give you the head start for elections upcoming.

http://elections.co.kern.ca.us/Elections/

And on the California Secretary of State website much information can be found which may help those needing to register or who are running for office.

The website lists the key dates for this year's election:

http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/

So, let's begin...

don't get disabled or fired because there is no net for you out there right now...

It's not the like the government has ever known what to do with the hundreds of thousands of disabled people throughout our country from children born with organs outside their skin, in need of transplants.

Then there's the high rev lifestyle where exciting adventures on dirt bikes, or setting sail on the high seas, leaping off cliffs attached to rubber bands, which lead to potential accidents which have paralyzed and or maimed millions, taking away their independence.

Yes, it would be exciting to think we could have healthcare reform which worked like this: anyone experiencing a broken back, would automatically be given the genetic makeover required to heal it, though costing an arm and a leg (bad joke, but probably true) if we don't deal with the real problems, divvying up the pile of dough for all.

Obviously hypothetical, but that future is so close, that it will be a consideration in the near future. That's called looking ahead and planning, a simple sort of concept.

The players: the insurance companies, John Garamendi knows them as do others here in California.
I could add some personal anecdotes but I will save them for when we discuss this issue with the insurance companies themselves.

That's an easy one.
Pharma, is about as entracted as the tobacco industry, aren't they related?

Whatever your situation, healthcare can "easily" be reformed and nobody would be severely limited or put unfairly out of business. If it has the goal of not just saving lives, but making people healthy so they can work, go to school and contribute, then yes, that's an easy answer.

But what are the complications? Oh boy, that's where it gets fun. We will get there soon.

Election year is here are we all excited?

"It's the worst economy since the depression," a teenager told me the other day, as he rummaged through his jean pockets trying to find a few extra coins so he could be a value hamburger off the menu meal.

"You know that food will kill you eventually," I kidded him.

He said, "I know, but you tell me what else I can eat with a buck?"

Yeah, that's definitely a problem.

Somebody across from me at the gas pumps told me she had filled the tank twice in one week, and was speculating that the owners of the gas stations are diluting the fuel to make more money.

Yes, there is so much confusion, not just with our legislature and every agency in the land, but with the kids who inherit this great big boondoogle.

It's not just the children either, grandparents are taking life hard as social security was burned up in war and political misappropriation.

Confusion and fear

Nobody knows if their house they may have worked all their life to buy and pay off will be worth anything once they retire.

"Oh it can't last that long," somebody of a different ilk explained to me the other day.
"Why not," I asked?
She didn't have a response, and her uncertainty made me realize people are just trying to make themselves feel better as they watch the disaster around them.

Life has changed, the government can't keep up, the information is too much for the average person trying to raise a family, and family means something different too.

I told somebody that I had three mothers and three fathers, and a father I didn't know.
How could that be? It sounds like a trick question, but we have not evolved in our awareness that great change took place and we missed it.

I was adopted at 6 weeks old by my mother and father as I knew them. They stayed married until I was ten, then both remarried, giving me an extra mother and father.
When I turned 18 I had to know my roots so I quickly found my biological mother who gave birth to me.
Now, I had three mothers, two fathers. Yes, you figured it, my natural mother got remarried, so there is the final father.
But if you were to say this thirty or forty years ago, you would have been blashphemous or deluded.

Families have changed and we need to change with the families. We could start with getting the male "birth control" on the market allowing men to feel more in control over their bodies.

With men, fathers, in jail, not paying support or not being able to pay support, the dynamic must change.

As women we have made it pretty clear what we want in the way of control of our bodies, our children, and the more we bring women into the chambers once only seating men, white men with property, we see a profound change in our culture.

The influence of women in society

The movements we saw last century, those without property or power were nothing but forced to act or be run over by a patriarchal system using religious materials as justification in many cases.

Now, we see many more women who are making choices their forebearers would not have done.

Graveyards are full of women who died in childbirth, there were no pink ribbons back then, and the rule of thumb was to keep the father alive so he could work the land, fight the wars, and tame the country, all along in battle; never in harmony.

Now women are still recieving hysterectomies in great numbers all in the name of cancer and the relief of night sweats. Men may have only recently discovered that they have a high cancer risk in prostrate cancer, but that is not as significant as the breast, ovarian, and cysts which have been the reasons for taking out what doesn't need to be there?

Our country needs women, women in charge. They need the experience a woman provides in knowing children, food, and a sense of being part of creation.

The founding mothers

This years elections are going to bring about much change, and certainly we will see that sort of push in Washington, other than to cram a horse pill sized healthcare reform pill or bill down our throats.

It's time to think, and we will try and bring as much good, provocative and thoughtful information as we can to make our voting choices, just that choices.

We will be sold many reasons as to why tax increases will be fired at us like shrapnel, and we need to be prepared to understand where we can actually help, and where the responsibility falls in lack of oversight by people in their respective communities.

It's time to pull together, but I must say I see people are pulling apart. Fear our favorite friend.
What fear is not is a motivator, so parent's it's not always necessary to frighten to teach.
What counteracts fear is education. Educate yourselves, there are many incredibly intelligent, funny, daring and determined sites out here in the land of the internet and still hiding out in our newspapers.

And I will be adding posts where you can link up with newsletters which let you know what is going on. It's going to be some year, a defining year, as to how we handle it.

Were we unprepared for this? No bottled water and canned goods?

Yes, we didn't see this coming a long way off...

Harvest Fest celebrates marijuana as a medicine: the Kern River Valley celebrates the bounty, the knowledge

;
The 6th annual Harvest Fest went off without a hitch, but many bongs and pipes, and joints were passed around as Medical marijuana patients came together in Havilah, California, in the mountains east of Bakersfield.

For the last six years, the Reverend Victor Love, and the love of his life, Debbi, have been pushing for marijuana reform, and in the small valley, surrouding Lake Isabella, and the Kern rivers, has become somewhat of a hero.

Love, who in the early days, which wasn't so long ago, had to deal with the local Kern Countty Sheriff's no tolerance program, versus the state's and voters reform of the marijuana growing laws.

The local sheriff's came in and claimed Love's bounty of pot, leaving with trash bags full of weed. But Love not only won his case, but he claimed his weed back, as the sheriff's had not followed their own laws.

The Harvest fest's allow patients to exchange recipes and new, cleaner ways of ingesting the medicine. There are new ways other than the standard rolled joint, there are new gadgets which use heat and vaporize the materials without burning it, as well as other handy crystals which are solar powered.

Many recipes are handed out, how to make cookies and candies and also what part of the plant to use when looking for a certain type of effect. For instance, the red hairs, are qite good for head issues, while an oil can be just the thing for reducing acid without having to take regular pharmaceuticals.













One of the main claims of medical marijuana propenents is that they don't have to use standard medicines and with some research, sometimes just on the part of patient's themselves, like Love, they are able to reduce the amount of prescription medications they have to take.

Love has been growing and passing along his secrets for years, and as the movement progresses, where people are allowed to have more control over their lives and their healthcare, more of these events will take place all across the nation.

"No alcohol," a sign posted at the entrance to the property which was donated for the event by Dennis Fluhart who has allowed these events to take place for several years now.

There haven't been any fights or any sort of problems during the harvest fests as well as the June gatherings, most camp out, enjoy the music, and a large meal consisting of beef and pork is barbecued up to feed the large crowds.

With 187 people on hand in an area which has a small population, the gatherings have grown as the years have passed.

And with the recent announcement by President Barak Obama that the DEA leave the people with prescriptions alone and not try to bust them, patients are feeling more safe and are coming out to support their cause.


Although, a representative from the local newspaper for the area, The Kern Valley Sun, appeared at the event, he did not write a story, in fact, one of the creators of the gathering wrote the thank you article, and then paid them $40 to have it printed.


So, the local media was squeamish but that didn't keep the event from being advertised.
With only one radio station in the Kern River Valley, the talk show host, and notorious figure sitting on the local public healthcare board, Bob Jamison, saw the flyer for the mariujana event, made a huge deal about it on the air.

Listeners heard as he read off the flyer which included things like raffles, best buds, music, food and camping.

The radio DJ made sure not to read the warning, "no alcohol" allowed at the party. But yet he railed against the small party.

He also made it a larger party. With the biggest turnout ever, the people putting on the party were able to give $400 away to charity.







































No foul, no harm, as the sheriff's checked to make sure that the party goers were all carrying their prescriptions. No one was cited, and sheriff's went on their way.

"They do this every year, it's nothing different or unexpected." Love said.

They will be back out in June to do this again. And more and more people join in