813. An Open Letter to My Fellow Democrats on Marijuana

2019 General Assembly - Hemp - Marijuana

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Friends --

The voters of Kentucky made one thing clear in November.  The Pension Crisis wasn't enough to turn out Republican legislators at the ballot box.  While the entire nation had a good night for Democrats, we in Kentucky quite honestly only did so in very few places.  For that we should be thrilled as we are sending some excellent new folks to the General Assembly, new blood, new ideas, new perspectives.  But we're already behind after this foolish Special Session.  The main reason given by GOP members in the House for its failure was the differences in this bill from that of SB151 in the 2018 Regular Session.  Jerry Miller and his pals will be back with SB151 as soon as they are able in the upcoming session.  Do we have a plan or are we just opposed to theirs?  The governor has moved money into the pensions by cutting services elsewhere and raising taxes which mostly affect working class people. If we are going to counter that, we had better have a plan that isn't just opposition to theirs and provides some stream of revenue that can be directed to the pensions.

As all of you know, a generation ago, Gatewood Galbraith started a movement to legalize hemp and marijuana in Kentucky. I voted for Gatewood twice, in 1983 for Ag Commissioner against David Boswell and again in 1991 against Brereton Jones for governor.  He ran last in both primaries but I'm still proud of those votes.  Gatewood's movement has finally come to fruition all these years later.  The problem for us is the Republicans, for the moment, own the matter.  Senator Mitch McConnell got himself onto the committee writing the final farm bill for the sole purpose of inserting hemp language and then made sure it got passed in Washington. When the president signed the bill two days ago, before the close of business on that same day, Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles submitted the necessary paperwork to the federal Department of Agriculture (USDA), which the bill requires, for Kentucky to begin its program.  He already had the program in place waiting for the president's signature, making Kentucky the first state in the Republic to apply for USDA approval of its hemp program.

My point?  The Democrats in the General Assembly and those running for governor, and any other leaders of the State Democratic Party, better get on board quickly, as in by the end of the year and certainly by the gaveling in of the new Session, on this issue and push the envelope much further, to full legalization.  We're not winning with the Pension issue.  But we can if we have a revenue stream.  We can if we have an issue.  Right now the GOP owns the hemp issue.  McConnell created it just as he did the Tobacco Buyout Program in 2004 cementing the votes and support of tobacco planters and sellers throughout the Commonwealth. We cannot wait or McConnell and Quarles will completely own this issue by January.  Hemp is here.  Recreational marijuana is not.  

A lawyer friend of mine originally from Shelbyville offered me this quote earlier today.  He said, "I can see this Fancy Farm line: "You're right Governor, marijuana is illegal today.  And you're also right that I wouldn't want my child to use it today.  But I'll tell you what.  I'd rather be high on an illegal substance than have a first term mired by illegal bills, low approval ratings, and no substance."  If we want to capture the imagination and votes of both younger Kentuckians for whom this is a no-brainer and older Kentuckians who may see this as an alternative to expensive medicine, push the envelope.  Hemp is here and Trump, McConnell, and Quarles own the issue.  Recreational marijuana, properly controlled and taxed, is out there on the horizon waiting for Kentucky Democrats to reach out and make it theirs.  Don't wait. 

Jeff Noble

Kentucky Democratic Party State Central Executive Committee 

At-Large member

812. Posting to be posting and a bit about the Election with a promise of more to come.

I keep promising to get back to the blog - but I haven't.  But I feel I should post something just to say "This is mine, Jeff's blog," in much the same tone as Hamlet did in Act V when he proclaimed " This is I, Hamlet the Dane."  Of course, everyone died after that but that is immaterial.  I grow concerned that someone will jump in here and claim my work if I don't go back to it now and again.  Thus entry #812 is just that - going back to it every now and again.

I'll be back soon.  I want to discuss much more fully the work the Yarmuth for Congress Campaign did in certain parts of the Third Congressional District in this last election earlier this month.  I had handled a schematic to follow and from that schematic devised a field plan which I believe was very well executed.  However, we won't really know that until the voters who actually voted are recorded, or dumped as we say, into the Votebuilder system.

At that point we can see if the people we talked to in the 7th and 17th Metro Council Districts, the 29th, 32nd, 33rd, 37th, and 48th House Districts, and the 20th, 26th, and 36th Senate District, actually turned out to vote.  We know that some of the people running in districts where we walked won their districts and some won their district within the 3rd Congressional District but lost elsewhere. 

As I said, I want to discuss this more fully as I believe it was a well designed plan and credit is owed to a number of people.

Until then, Happy Belated Thanksgiving.

P. S.  If you are reading, please let me know by leaving a comment.  Thanks.  jtn

811. Betrayal.

July 16, 2018 will be recorded in the history books of future decades as the day an American president betrayed the 61,000,000 people who voted for him and the 74,000,000 who didn't, and every other American, by telling the president of Russia that he favors and believes him, a tyrant and dictator, over our own American intelligence and military agencies. It's an incredible day; the day the music died.

810. NPR and Soybean Futures

I listen to NPR News because I believe it has an intellectual bias I don't find elsewhere. Nonetheless I chuckled as I listened earlier to a report on the Chinese tariffs retaliation and the journalist trying to sound fully knowledgeable on "soybean futures." 

I do not remember "soybean futures" being mentioned on NPR in the past. It made me think of Barney Arnold and Jack Crowner and those early morning reports on the radio when I was a little kid.

809. Summer Solstice, 2018

About ten hours from now, at 6:07 a.m. tomorrow morning, we will pass one of those cardinal points on our annual journey around our personal star, the Sun. The Summer Solstice marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. In Louisville the period between sunrise and sunset will be 14 hours, 49 minutes, and 48 seconds, the longest day of the year. We're scheduled for some thunderstorms in between those two markers. 

Happy Solstice. 

I think it calls for naked dancing or something.

808. A little journey - figure it out.

So here was the path having left from my mother's house. South Park Road, Louisville to KY1450W to KY1526W to I-65S to KY245N to KY61S to KY733S to US62E to N. 5th Street, Bardstown to KY1430E to US31E N to KY245S to US150E to BG Parkway E to KY555S (a note on this later) to KY433S (where I piddled around a bit in Mackville - they have a really cool old bank building) - to KY152E to KY442S (the narrow highway full of cattle farms) to KY1920S to the park.

Leaving the park on KY1920S to US150E (where I piddled around a bit in Perryville - I had come across a house for sale online a few weeks ago that I remembered and found it at 216 S. Bragg Street) to US68E to US127N to US127BYP N to US127N (these last two changes require no turns) to I-64W to US42E to US42W to US60W to the Noble Abode in Butchertown.

807. If you think the GOP is conservative, you're not paying attention.

U. S. Senator Rand Paul has shut down the government, not over DACA, but over deficits.

He said, "If you were against President Obama's deficits, and now you're for the Republican deficits, isn't that the very definition of hypocrisy?" This is the same guy who just voted in December to give the rich and the corporate a huge tax break adding immediately to the deficit and long term to the debt. He represents the very meaning of hypocrisy as does the entire GOP crowd these days.

They claim the mantle of evangelicals yet support a president who paid off a whore shortly after the birth of his fifth child by his third wife. And they claim to be conservatives and libertarians yet the tax cut they passed in 2017 mostly helps the rich and the corporate and will add debts for future generations in the same manner that the wars and destruction of the American economy including the automobile and banking industries of George Bush, Jr. were paid for by the excessive borrowing of Barack Obama.

If you remain a conservative, and it is fine if you do, you need to go and form a new party because the Republicans in Washington are in no way conservative. They are big government spenders, big government borrowers, and huge, huge hypocrites. All of you know I am a big government tax-and-spend liberal in the form and image of LBJ and Richard Nixon.I am not a centrist such as Bill or Hillary Clinton or what Barack Obama proved to be, nor am I a borrow-and-spend Republican in the form and image of Ronald Reagan, both George Bush's, and Donald Trump.

806. Once in a Super Blue Full Moon with a Lunar Eclipse.

Once in a Super Blue Full Moon with a Lunar Eclipse.

Yeah, tomorrow morning's sky has it all, the triple header.

A super moon, the one when the moon is really close if 224,000 miles can be considered "really close" along with the Full Moon, the Snow Moon, arriving at 8:27 a.m. in the Eastern Time Zone, and since this is the second full moon in a calendar month, this is the Blue Moon that comes along "once in a Blue Moon." The last Blue Moon was July 31, 2015. The next one, however, will be two months from tomorrow so maybe they aren't that special after all. But the next one after that doesn't show up until Hallowe'en of 2020. I'll be 60 for that. The last time we had a Blue Moon on Hallowe'en I was 14. I think I remember that, I really do.

But on top of all this there will be a Lunar Eclipse just as the Moon is setting about the time the chickens are rising. At 5:51 a.m. Eastern Time look up and watch as the Moon enters Earth's penumbra (the lighter, outer part of its shadow). The penumbra slightly darkens the Moon, though only a little. It will touch the umbra, the darker part of the shadow which creates an eclipse beginning at 6:48 a.m. However, we'll miss the entire event as the Moon sets at 7:04 a.m.

All this early in the morning to start your Wednesday, end your January, and begin the campaign season in earnest here in Kentucky.

805. Call the House, Call the Senate, and Call the Governor

Governor Bevin has managed to pit 70 groups of program supporters against the 69 others, and many of the 70 seem to have lost sight of the pension crisis. Yes, there are some really good programs he has proposed to cut, in fact almost all of them and a few, maybe three, that maybe should be done away with. 
I'm partial to some eastern Kentucky educational programs, particularly the Robinson Scholars as well as several based in Lexington such as the University Press, this one mostly because my great-grandmother Alice Colston Hockensmith (Miss Alice to you Frankfort people) gave me many books from the press growing up and I've continued her gifts with gifts of my own.

The Chaffee Program in Louisville is an important program on its own but is nostalgically important to me because it is housed where I went to register for school for the first time, the old South Park Elementary School in Fairdale. That's probably not a good reason but it caught my attention. The Agriculture Public Service Program, another UK item, takes me back to my freshman year as an Ag-Econ student. Cuts to the State Tree programs and aid to the local County Conservation Districts show a lack of concern about the environment for the future. There is a conservation district in each county except Logan which has two.

And closing down the cafeteria in the Annex should be grounds for impeachment.

So these programs all have supporters and good reasons for that support. And as the governor points out, they all cost money. And he says he is proposing these cuts to help fund the pension crisis shortcoming which up until his address last night was all most anyone was talking about when it came to budget items in Frankfort.

Thanks to this "list of 70" the governor slyly and intelligently has everyone talking about all kinds of other things they want to spend dollars on and at some point, according to his critics, he is going to say "well if you want this, you can't have that" and "that" is pension reform. To the less cynical and more hopeful (and while it may pit me against my fellow Democrats, I should be counted in this group), he may say "if you want 'this' and 'that' then you've got to raise taxes."

Now I don't know if Matt quite has the gumption to say the word "taxes" or not but I firmly believe that he knows to do both, or to do any true pension reform, taxes must be raised. And, his Medicaid strategy debacle notwithstanding, I believe he wants to correct the pension crisis one way or another. But if he has 70 groups of supporters calling on the 138 to save their program with no coinciding and coordinating call for a raise of revenue, he'll understandably choose to do one or the other, or worse yet, allow the 138 to do one or the other and not both. If your concern is about pensions, make the calls to your legislators (800-372-7181, 502-564-8100) and tell them. If your concern is about saving one of the list of 70, make the calls to your legislators (800-372-7181, 502-564-8100) and tell them. If your concern is about both, make the calls to your legislators (800-372-7181, 502-564-8100) and tell them we need more revenues. And in this latter case, after you have called your House member and your Senate member, call Governor Bevin at 502-564-2611 and tell him he needs to lead the call for revenue to lead the Commonwealth forward.

This isn't about Democratic or Republican strategy - it is about taking care of the Commonwealth.

804. A Facebook exchange on Governor Bevin's posts about economic activity in the Commonwealth.

This was Governor Bevin's picture, along with the following comment, posted yesterday:

2017 was an INCREDIBLE year for economic development in Kentucky, with each district in the Commonwealth seeing significant business investment.

My response to the governor's post was: 

Then why the massive cuts in revenue to the state? Shouldn't there be increases? You've been in office since 2015. Unemployment in Kentucky is currently up? Explain.

A Mr. Donald Meagher responded to my comment earlier this evening with: 

Jeff Noble why does government have to take and spend more just because there is potential for increased revenue? A smart person would pay down debt or save for a rainy day not commit the potential revenue out to new real debt. An heck if government ends up with a real sizable surplus why not let taxpayers of KY keep more of their pay?

I replied to Mr. Meagher with this:

Mr. Meagher, good question - deserves an answer. And you've misinterpreted my post. Did I mention spending more? You've implied that I have. Tell me where. I said that with the governor touting these good economic tidings, one would expect increases in our revenues, not cuts in our budgets. Again, tell me exactly where I called for increased spending? I didn't. You made that up. But let's address what you said that is important and not fabricated. Yes, we should pay down our debt. Our credit rating has been imperiled since the Pension Crisis began in 2001, which is the same year that the Democrats lost control of the Senate and had to start compromising to pass a budget. I do not know if that is a coincidence or not. It would be nice to have a "real sizable surplus" someday and maybe someday we will. But we also have needs - not extravagant needs, but simple basic needs. Let's take infrastructure, something the president talks about a lot but has done nothing to address. The governor's own Transportation Cabinet has declared that 4000 miles of Kentucky roadway need repairs, that there are 1000 Kentucky projects on the books that need finishing. The Federal Department of Transportation last year ranked 1100 of our Kentucky bridges, bridges that carry you and me and grandmothers to the grocery and grandchildren on buses to schools as "structurally deficient. We pay one of the lowest gas taxes around, currently below 26 cents a gallon. Ohio, a Republican ran state pays 28 cents; Indiana, another Republican ran state pays almost 42 cents. We're woefully underfunding our futures and our safety, and this is just in the area of transportation. You can up and down the line see the need for both more revenue and more spending. The governor knows this although I'm not sure the legislature does. I hope someday we can do just what you say - save some money, have both a good rainy day fund and a surplus - get our credit rating up there with Virginia's - ran by Democrats I might add - their's is AAA, our's is A+. I am hopeful that all these projects the governor keeps telling us about at some point are reflected in the Kentucky budget as increases in our revenues. As of yet they haven't been and that's what my post was about. Here's a prediction for you. I sincerely believe the governor wants to solve the pension crisis. He knows it cannot honestly be done without a tax increase. He also knows that the legislature won't raise taxes on anything. I think once we get past the filing deadline (January 30), you'll see the governor come out swinging for both the framework for pension reform, and after this November's elections a strong push for tax increases to begin the long process of funding the pensions. Remember where you heard this. If you're close to the governor, ask him.

It was a good night.

803. Burrel Farnsley, 1946-2017

Burrel Farnsley's memorial service took place today at Christ Church Cathedral.

Burrel and I have been friends for decades. He has regaled me with many stories about his youth, his family ancestry, his father (and especially his time as mayor and his Friday afternoon Open Houses at City Hall), his ownership of the Schenck Mansion with Sandy Speer up in Vevay, unending theater talk, and lots of the history of the United States, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Episcopal Church. I was a natural pupil for his history lessons.

After his loss to John Yarmuth in the 2006 Democratic Primary, he came and volunteered at our campaign headquarters and somehow became my responsibility. He wanted to do a special Voter Registration Drive to prove a point on voter turnout. He chose two precincts in Smoketown, L111 and L112, and I created the voter lists for him. His goal was to knock on every door of those listed and if the person whose name appeared on the rolls was not the person who answered the door, then he would offer to register whoever answered. If no one answered he left them an already-stamped envelope with a voter registration card to be returned to our office so we could track the results.

I drove him over to the area around Shelby and Breckinridge streets most every day and dropped him off and picked him up later in the day. He'd have a handful of new registrants. We kept track of the all of new voters registered due to his efforts and sent them a letter ahead of the election encouraging them to vote. At the time both precincts voted at the old Presbyterian Community Center.

As it turned out, voter turnout was up, not significantly, but up, in both precincts. Once the voter rolls were updated, we could see that many of Burrel's new registrants were also new voters. His plan was a success.

Burrel and I continued our friendship through the years as his illnesses and demons began to take a toll on his body. He continued to call the office through October from various places, the last being a nursing home in Indiana. Unfortunately, I did not take the last of the calls he made to the office. I regret that now. 

May he rest in peace. O God, Grant to him eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon Burrel. May his soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Here is his obituary as posted in the Courier-Journal on January 2, 2018 by Legacy.com.

Burrel Charles Peaslee Farnsley, who was born on September 13, 1946, died on December 30, 2017. 

Burrel attended Atherton High School and he graduated from the Wooster School in Danbury, Connecticut. He also attended the University of Louisville. Burrel was a devoted Episcopalian and was a member of the Church of the Advent. He had also been a member of Calvary Episcopal Church. 

Burrel worked in the family's publishing business, the Lost Cause Press. A lifelong Democrat, he sought his party's nomination for mayor, Congress, and Senate. 

Burrel is survived by his brothers and sisters, Sally Bird of Arlington, VA, Ann of Vevay, IN, Alexander of San Diego, CA, and Douglass (Eliza), of Louisville, by his nieces and nephews, and by many friends. 

Burrel was predeceased by his parents, Charles and Nancy Farnsley. Charles Peaslee Farnsley was mayor of Louisville from 1948 to 1953. From 1965 to 1966, Mayor Farnsley was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Burrel was brilliant and will be missed by his family members and by his many friends. Burrel's family expresses their gratitude to the staff of Riverview Village for the outstanding care they provided during his final month. Visitation will be 4 - 7 PM Tuesday at Pearson's Funeral Home, 149 Breckenridge Lane. A Memorial Service will be 1 PM Wednesday at Christ Church Cathedral, 421 South Second Street.

Burrel's ashes will be buried in the Farnsley family lot at Cave Hill Cemetery. Pearson Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements. In lieu, of flowers, memorials may be made to Calvary Episcopal Church or Christ Church Cathedral.

802. It's a new year and a full moon, and some other stuff. 2018 begins.

Fellow Moon Lovers, tonight's the night. The First Full Moon of 2018, a supermoon presently rising as a larger than usual orb in the eastern skies, occurs about three hours from now, at 9:24 p.m. E.S.T. It is known by some as the Wolf Moon for the sounds of wolves howling, communicating with each other on the cold lonesome nights of January. Find a fellow Moon Lover and do some howling! Tonight's the night!

I was prompted by a friend today to start posting more on the blog. Today's entry marks the eleventh anniversary of the blog so we are entering the twelfth year. At least for the next four and half months, it will be an interesting year due to politics. I'll explain in a subsequent post. 

For now, this is a start. Welcome back.