I’ve written previously about the pot growers of Mendocino County. Today’s LAT reports on a new development.
Mendocino County set up a program to register medical marijuana growers:
The DEA raided the first person who registered.
In spite of this, the county intended to continue registering growers:
The county is now fighting the subpoenas. Three things about this:
- “Wonderful thing, a subpoena.”
- It feels like we’re moving ever closer to an armed showdown between federal and state law enforcement over marijuana laws.
- How many of the same people who are applauding Mendocino County’s actions do you suppose are appalled by the actions of Texas, Wyoming and other states?
Meanwhile, in local news: Austin has a moderately successful chains of bars known as “Little Woodrow’s”. The owners want to put a new location at 5425 Burnet, but they need a zoning change first. Here’s 5425 Burnet on Google Maps:
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This is a stretch of road I’m fairly familiar with; there’s not much along there except strip centers and stand-alone businesses. As the Statesman notes, there’s a mixed-use apartment/shopping development (with a parking garage) right across the street, which Little Woodrow’s hopes to cater to. There’s two bars close by that I can think of: Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon, mentioned in the article, which is also famous for chicken (stuff) bingo, and Billy’s on Burnet (which does very good hamburgers and has limited parking).
Anyway, the point is: the usual suspects – the Brentwood and Allandale neighborhood associations – are all butthurt over this, claiming there won’t be enough parking, the bar would be too noisy, yadda yadda. In spite of their opposition, “the opponents are short by roughly half the number of signatures needed on a petition that would require six of seven council members to approve the rezoning”. They had two votes against in a preliminary vote: Laura Morrison and Kathie Tovo.
(On a completely unrelated note: anyone got any experience organizing recall elections?)