The Market Fundamentalist

Think small, tight, enclosed. Imagine a rat in a maze. There are definite boundaries to his development. If he is gonna get the cheese, it will be where the maze builder puts it…

Now, dress the rat in a calico shirt, tie a ribbon around his neck, and call the maze his “community”. The nearby planted cheese is now his workplace, close to the straw bed he calls his home. There is suddenly no need for the rat to even imagine leaving the maze, to venture out from any hole in the wall into a vast kitchen filled with cuboards and baseboards to explore and discover random bits of cheese…no, everything is close to home, confined, built up, not out…

The war on suburbia, given the perjoritive name “sprawl”, like all wars, is about control of territory. It’s about drawing definitive “growth management boundaries” defined with legal barb wire regulations. It’s about diplomatic maneuvering, media propaganda, demands and concessions. It is a frontal assault on the private property rights of ordinary Americans. And, it is a foreign war being waged on our land (literally), directed by international forces, operating from the UN and various affiliated NGO’s.

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Today I met with Dianne Cornwall, Congressman Jim Gibbons’ ( R-NV) District Director, in his Reno office.

The meeting was arranged by Aaron Houston and Kaycee Dempsey of the Marijuana Policy Project. The purpose was to lobby for the passage this summer of the Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment to the Justice Department Appropriations Bill.

Ms. Cornwall was polite, and an occasional smile did ever so finely turn up her lips. I started by saying I was not a paid lobbyist, but a concerned citizen. I launched right into the topic. Of all the Nevada legislators, the Congressman seems the most antagonistic to the idea of medical marijuana. Of course, you can’t rely on the press, but sometimes even our jaded press captures a politicians true opinions.

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Yesterday I went to Cartoon City as we like to call our State Capital, Carson City, (no offense to Kit.)

I was to testify before the Senate Commerce Committe on AB 87, the Legislative Version of the ‘Give Nevada a Raise” Initiative that would permantly establish a mandate on business to raise the minimum wage, indexed to the CPI.

The meeting was chaired by Senator Randolph Townsend,attired as usual in suspenders and off white dress shirt, who grinned and quipped at the proceedings from his perch on the Committee dias.

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