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corporations and their responsibilities in society. Regulatory pressures
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Tuesday, February 28, 2012
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The United States is experiencing an evolution in its
expectations of corporations and their responsibilities in society.
Regulatory pressures have failed to guarantee ethical behavior and
social responsibility in corporate America, and efforts at
self-management have fallen short time and again. The government usually
turns either to regulation or to tax credits to spur responsibility,
but to make these programs work, we need a combination of incentives
(usually through tax breaks or tax credits) and government involvement
to create new kinds of social systems.
There is one avenue that holds promise for revitalizing corporate social responsibility in a time of distrust and doubt: the creation of networks of stakeholders where responsibility is shared and the benefits accrue to all of the parties. In this construction, the three legs of the social compact – government, nonprofit organizations and corporations – come together to harvest capital, remake policy and employ strategies for the public good.
In recent columns I have discussed the importance of corporate citizenship and corporate social responsibility, teasing out the differences and pointing the way for a new role for corporations in a new century. Critical in these discussions has been the underlying notion that corporations reach the bar of citizenship best when they are able to serve their shareholders while satisfying their community responsibilities.
This is a key characteristic. When looking for innovative solutions to out-size problems, such as developing renewable energy resources or resolving health care financing dilemmas, the answer can’t be a regime of tax credits, venture capital or corporate giving. They aren’t sufficient to finance and maintain the momentum for massive, long-term undertakings. Instead, what is needed is a mutually beneficial philanthropy where corporations work with government and nonprofit organizations to create intense networks of capital, policy and practice.
The networks among stakeholders are critical; tax credits alone do not usually solve problems, just as regulation alone does not solve issues, though legislators often seem to miss the importance of building dense networks of stakeholders. This is the main reason recent tax credit-driven solutions, such as the New Markets Tax Credit and the Renewable Energy Tax Credit have failed to stimulate the growth in the areas they have targeted.
The most successful example of this case in recent years is the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the 1986 provision to the federal tax code that sparked a revolution in urban redevelopment and resulted in an upsurge of new organizations and activities to promote the development of low-income housing. The 1970s and early 1980s were dark times for urban America, and few in Congress knew how to turn the ship around. Congress had seen its earlier efforts to incentivize the investment of corporate resources in the development of low-income housing, including the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) and the passive-loss provision in the Economic Recovery Act of 1981, fail. With the CRA, Congress pressed banks to invest in poor communities, but they were reluctant to do so and looked for ways, including traditional grant giving to local nonprofits, to avoid what was arguably a risky financial proposition. Meanwhile, congressional efforts to encourage wealthy individuals to purchase low-income housing through the passive-loss provision had proven problematic as investors allowed their properties to decline to capture a greater tax write-off.
By the mid-1980s, Congress knew that something new had to be done. The LIHTC, approved in 1986, was the legislative response to significant changes in government housing policies. First, it addressed the elimination of direct federal subsidies for low-income housing development. Known as the Section 8 New Construction Projects grants, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development struck them as they became politically untenable.
With the LIHTC, the government would create incentives for powerful alliances of banks, nonprofit organizations and corporate investors to build low-income housing. In fact, the LIHTC became a catalyst for one of the most significant injections of corporate dollars into the inner city in the history of this country, providing tax abatements for corporations and giving rise to a host of community-based housing developers and the nonprofit, locally based organizations that lobbied for more housing for low-income individuals and families.
The process set in motion with the LIHTC saw corporations provide capital in exchange for federal tax credits. This capital was then used to leverage resources from banks and private developers, many of which were in partnership with nonprofit development organizations known as community development corporations, to build low-income housing. In effect, this limited the government’s involvement in public housing development and management yet resulted in a massive private investment that has few rivals in U.S. housing development history.
However, the building of networks of stakeholders did not end there. The passive-loss provision from 1981 worked in tandem with the LIHTC to allow corporations to double-dip when it came to applying federal tax incentives. “With large tax liabilities, the tax credit made sense for corporations, but on its own, it is basically an even tradeoff with paying taxes to the government (a dollar-for-dollar write-off of tax liabilities). However, by combining the credits with book value depreciation of the property meant that corporations could receive the double-dip Congress had explicitly argued against individual receiving: with the passive loss provision still in place for corporations, the opportunity existed to take the tax liability and turn it into an investment for corporations. Over a 10-year period, beyond the credit corporations could yield an additional graduated write-off against future taxes,” my co-author Michael McQuarrie and I wrote in “Privatization and the Social Contract: Corporate Welfare and Low-Income Housing in the United States since 1986” in Research and Political Sociology.
To help serve this complex structure, new organizational forms emerged to manage these investments (so the corporations could own the “asset” and thus qualify for the passive loss without becoming property managers) in the form of intermediaries such as the National Equity Fund (NEF) and the Enterprise Social Investment Corporation (ESIC), which emerged to facilitate these investments. Working with local community development corporations (CDCs), these organizations built relationships with banks and corporations to make these deals work. These relationships evolved into dense social networks that changed the game significantly.
For corporate America, this could easily become a model of social investment, eclipsing traditional corporate philanthropy in favor of a muscular social investment that is built on a complex and financially beneficial network of relationships between government, nonprofit organizations and corporations. These public-private partnerships are obviously built, in part, on tax incentives and government regulations, but they succeed in creating a new social compact by encouraging these dynamic and dense networks. By transforming the social structure through economic alliances, corporations and their partners in government and the nonprofit sector may be able to promote social change through aggressive corporate philanthropy and citizenship.
What is clear from this model is that this type of game-changing corporate philanthropic investment does not occur without substantially rewarding the corporate community through tax incentives. Even so, the urban revitalization that came about as a result of these networks and the catalyzing federal tax incentives offers an opportunity for corporate citizens and government leaders looking for new ideas to spark the next revolution, whether it’s in energy, health care or biotechnology.
As we demand that corporations take on the mantle of citizenship, we as a society must ask ourselves if we are willing to provide the financial incentives to not only woo corporations to an expanded social responsibility but also to ensure that they are successful.
There is one avenue that holds promise for revitalizing corporate social responsibility in a time of distrust and doubt: the creation of networks of stakeholders where responsibility is shared and the benefits accrue to all of the parties. In this construction, the three legs of the social compact – government, nonprofit organizations and corporations – come together to harvest capital, remake policy and employ strategies for the public good.
In recent columns I have discussed the importance of corporate citizenship and corporate social responsibility, teasing out the differences and pointing the way for a new role for corporations in a new century. Critical in these discussions has been the underlying notion that corporations reach the bar of citizenship best when they are able to serve their shareholders while satisfying their community responsibilities.
This is a key characteristic. When looking for innovative solutions to out-size problems, such as developing renewable energy resources or resolving health care financing dilemmas, the answer can’t be a regime of tax credits, venture capital or corporate giving. They aren’t sufficient to finance and maintain the momentum for massive, long-term undertakings. Instead, what is needed is a mutually beneficial philanthropy where corporations work with government and nonprofit organizations to create intense networks of capital, policy and practice.
The networks among stakeholders are critical; tax credits alone do not usually solve problems, just as regulation alone does not solve issues, though legislators often seem to miss the importance of building dense networks of stakeholders. This is the main reason recent tax credit-driven solutions, such as the New Markets Tax Credit and the Renewable Energy Tax Credit have failed to stimulate the growth in the areas they have targeted.
The most successful example of this case in recent years is the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the 1986 provision to the federal tax code that sparked a revolution in urban redevelopment and resulted in an upsurge of new organizations and activities to promote the development of low-income housing. The 1970s and early 1980s were dark times for urban America, and few in Congress knew how to turn the ship around. Congress had seen its earlier efforts to incentivize the investment of corporate resources in the development of low-income housing, including the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) and the passive-loss provision in the Economic Recovery Act of 1981, fail. With the CRA, Congress pressed banks to invest in poor communities, but they were reluctant to do so and looked for ways, including traditional grant giving to local nonprofits, to avoid what was arguably a risky financial proposition. Meanwhile, congressional efforts to encourage wealthy individuals to purchase low-income housing through the passive-loss provision had proven problematic as investors allowed their properties to decline to capture a greater tax write-off.
By the mid-1980s, Congress knew that something new had to be done. The LIHTC, approved in 1986, was the legislative response to significant changes in government housing policies. First, it addressed the elimination of direct federal subsidies for low-income housing development. Known as the Section 8 New Construction Projects grants, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development struck them as they became politically untenable.
With the LIHTC, the government would create incentives for powerful alliances of banks, nonprofit organizations and corporate investors to build low-income housing. In fact, the LIHTC became a catalyst for one of the most significant injections of corporate dollars into the inner city in the history of this country, providing tax abatements for corporations and giving rise to a host of community-based housing developers and the nonprofit, locally based organizations that lobbied for more housing for low-income individuals and families.
The process set in motion with the LIHTC saw corporations provide capital in exchange for federal tax credits. This capital was then used to leverage resources from banks and private developers, many of which were in partnership with nonprofit development organizations known as community development corporations, to build low-income housing. In effect, this limited the government’s involvement in public housing development and management yet resulted in a massive private investment that has few rivals in U.S. housing development history.
However, the building of networks of stakeholders did not end there. The passive-loss provision from 1981 worked in tandem with the LIHTC to allow corporations to double-dip when it came to applying federal tax incentives. “With large tax liabilities, the tax credit made sense for corporations, but on its own, it is basically an even tradeoff with paying taxes to the government (a dollar-for-dollar write-off of tax liabilities). However, by combining the credits with book value depreciation of the property meant that corporations could receive the double-dip Congress had explicitly argued against individual receiving: with the passive loss provision still in place for corporations, the opportunity existed to take the tax liability and turn it into an investment for corporations. Over a 10-year period, beyond the credit corporations could yield an additional graduated write-off against future taxes,” my co-author Michael McQuarrie and I wrote in “Privatization and the Social Contract: Corporate Welfare and Low-Income Housing in the United States since 1986” in Research and Political Sociology.
To help serve this complex structure, new organizational forms emerged to manage these investments (so the corporations could own the “asset” and thus qualify for the passive loss without becoming property managers) in the form of intermediaries such as the National Equity Fund (NEF) and the Enterprise Social Investment Corporation (ESIC), which emerged to facilitate these investments. Working with local community development corporations (CDCs), these organizations built relationships with banks and corporations to make these deals work. These relationships evolved into dense social networks that changed the game significantly.
For corporate America, this could easily become a model of social investment, eclipsing traditional corporate philanthropy in favor of a muscular social investment that is built on a complex and financially beneficial network of relationships between government, nonprofit organizations and corporations. These public-private partnerships are obviously built, in part, on tax incentives and government regulations, but they succeed in creating a new social compact by encouraging these dynamic and dense networks. By transforming the social structure through economic alliances, corporations and their partners in government and the nonprofit sector may be able to promote social change through aggressive corporate philanthropy and citizenship.
What is clear from this model is that this type of game-changing corporate philanthropic investment does not occur without substantially rewarding the corporate community through tax incentives. Even so, the urban revitalization that came about as a result of these networks and the catalyzing federal tax incentives offers an opportunity for corporate citizens and government leaders looking for new ideas to spark the next revolution, whether it’s in energy, health care or biotechnology.
As we demand that corporations take on the mantle of citizenship, we as a society must ask ourselves if we are willing to provide the financial incentives to not only woo corporations to an expanded social responsibility but also to ensure that they are successful.
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Green Proving Ground: Using Technology to Improve Building Performance
Posted by on April 2nd, 2012
GSA’s Green Proving Ground (GPG) Program is using our real estate portfolio as a test bed to evaluate the viability of emerging sustainable building technologies. The first set of results assessing the use of wireless sensor technology in data centers showed significant energy savings. This GPG study shows a potential to save $61 million annually if the technology were to be applied across our portfolio by tenant agencies, which could reduce carbon emissions by 532,000 metric tons; this is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from approximately 104,000 passenger vehicles.
We collaborated on the GPG study with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to evaluate the technology in a U.S. Department of Agriculture data center located within a GSA facility. The findings showed that by using low-cost, easily installed sensors, data center operators could baseline performance, make quick and precise changes to improve energy efficiency and achieve significant cost savings. The test location was selected because, in its baseline condition, it represented what the industry would already characterize as an efficient data center, operated by a very engaged facilities staff.GSA's Green Proving Ground is using technology to make existing buildings more sustainable.
With the installation of nearly 600 wireless sensors, the data center’s facilities staff was able to reduce cooling loads by 48 percent, thereby decreasing overall data center energy use by 17 percent. The payback period at the demonstration site was calculated at just under three and a half years.
Results for five other technologies currently being evaluated under our GPG Program are expected to come out this summer — and that’s not all. In response to our 2012 GPG Request for Information we received more than 160 submissions. These technologies also may have the potential to help federal agencies meet the ambitious sustainability targets before them, while saving taxpayer dollars in this tight budget climate. We will announce the technologies selected for evaluation this summer.
By testing these technologies in the real world, in our buildings, we can provide not only the federal government, but also the larger corporate real estate and building products industry insight into what works and where. It’s all about fostering innovation and leveraging our purchasing power to make markets for tomorrow’s building technologies.
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Isleton's Ire: How A Tiny California Town Got Tangled In The Complex Web Of Cannabis Laws
First Posted: 07/28/11 12:21 PM ET Updated: 09/26/11 06:12 AM ET
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"We asked: Is it state or federal law you're concerned with? She
wasn't really clear," Larsen said. "I've been a city attorney for 30
years. We're not hayseeds here. But all we could get from them was that
they were going to conduct an investigation."
"We tried to cooperate," added Pope. "We kept asking 'What's your issue here? Let's work to resolve it.'... We never got an answer."
'THERE'S NO INDUSTRY HERE'
Isleton, a tranquil settlement along the winding Sacramento River surrounded by cornfields and pear orchards, has had more than its share of troubles with the law over its 88-year history. The labyrinths of the river delta's sloughs and tributaries have long provided privacy to smugglers and other kinds of people looking to live below the radar. Locals still mention the former brothels on the two-block long Main Street, which today features only few restaurants, shops and art galleries.
More recently, the city's failure to file annual audits and charges of corruption in the police department and city government have resulted in other grand jury investigations -- until Pope and Sullivan were hired a few years ago to straighten things out.
"There is nothing we've done that has not been fully public," said Pope.
The economy now victimizes Isleton more than any criminal activity. Half the storefronts on Main Street have "For Lease" signs in their windows, and businesses elsewhere in the city limp along with the patronage of loyal locals and a limited number of tourists, bikers and boaters.
"Isleton is not a river stop anymore. The canneries are gone. Asparagus is being grown elsewhere," said John Romero, a boater and Bay Area telecommunications specialist who lives in an unincorporated part of town. It was no wonder, he said, that a city with no remaining economic foundation saw in the cannabis project a hope of survival.
"We're really bummed it's not happening," said Karen Franscioni, a stained glass artist and gallery owner. "All the people we know in town were in favor of it. Because it was going to bring money into town. There is no industry here."
Hair stylist Maria Vasquez, proprietor of The Hairloom on Main Street and the mother of two school-aged children, said that not everyone in Isleton initially supported the cannabis farm.
"I was concerned at first. None of my family or friends do drugs, and my children are young, so I didn't really know what this proposal was going to do, and whether it would create a drug environment here, or what," she said.
But as she found out more about the nature of the project, "I came to agree that it would do a good thing for this town," she said. "Because of the money, and also those people who really need it."
"Where was the harm? Who was going to be hurt by it? No one," said Pace, sitting in her bar among sparse customers on a recent weekday afternoon. "All the money would've been put to good use."
While it was too soon for any sort of allocations to have been devised, Pope said that every department in the city government would have benefited from the increase in funding, from the volunteer Fire Department to youth recreation programs. More than 50 Isleton area residents would have found employment on the project, including a local architect and contractors.
Pope disputes the grand jury's characterization of DAG as an "elusive" company that "exploited" a city "highly vulnerable to a seemingly lucrative proposal." He said that the jury's charge that DAG came in and offered to beef up the local police department with new computers and video surveillance equipment to secure the grow facility -- and the town -- was also false.
"They didn't offer -- I insisted on it," Pope said.
Sullivan felt particularly angered by the grand jury investigation's implications that he stood behind the proposal for personal or departmental gain.
"Some media have painted me as being blinded by greed for these things," said Sullivan. "It's not greed. It's reality ... Here we've always been poor. But when the economy tanked, this place suffered even more."
Sullivan added that revenue from the project could have been used to pay his reserve officers, who currently volunteer, an hourly wage. "We could have a state of the art police department here," he said.
As a former enforcer of marijuana law, flying helicopter patrols with the California Highway Patrol, Sullivan explained that things look different to him now, on the ground.
"I've educated myself: What's a collective, a dispensary, that there are people already growing medical marijuana within our city and around the state," he said. "I also know about the Mexican cartels and the white boy grows up in Humboldt County. I know there are people in it for the money. The real problem is we have people who are legitimately ill and need it. I'm not opposed to that; I am opposed to abuses of a system that permits it."
"I think the D.A.'s and the A.G.'s concern is that it's going to get so big -- we're talking beaucoup bucks," he added. "And they haven't figured out what they want to do about it."
"We tried to cooperate," added Pope. "We kept asking 'What's your issue here? Let's work to resolve it.'... We never got an answer."
'THERE'S NO INDUSTRY HERE'
Isleton, a tranquil settlement along the winding Sacramento River surrounded by cornfields and pear orchards, has had more than its share of troubles with the law over its 88-year history. The labyrinths of the river delta's sloughs and tributaries have long provided privacy to smugglers and other kinds of people looking to live below the radar. Locals still mention the former brothels on the two-block long Main Street, which today features only few restaurants, shops and art galleries.
More recently, the city's failure to file annual audits and charges of corruption in the police department and city government have resulted in other grand jury investigations -- until Pope and Sullivan were hired a few years ago to straighten things out.
"There is nothing we've done that has not been fully public," said Pope.
The economy now victimizes Isleton more than any criminal activity. Half the storefronts on Main Street have "For Lease" signs in their windows, and businesses elsewhere in the city limp along with the patronage of loyal locals and a limited number of tourists, bikers and boaters.
"Isleton is not a river stop anymore. The canneries are gone. Asparagus is being grown elsewhere," said John Romero, a boater and Bay Area telecommunications specialist who lives in an unincorporated part of town. It was no wonder, he said, that a city with no remaining economic foundation saw in the cannabis project a hope of survival.
"We're really bummed it's not happening," said Karen Franscioni, a stained glass artist and gallery owner. "All the people we know in town were in favor of it. Because it was going to bring money into town. There is no industry here."
Hair stylist Maria Vasquez, proprietor of The Hairloom on Main Street and the mother of two school-aged children, said that not everyone in Isleton initially supported the cannabis farm.
"I was concerned at first. None of my family or friends do drugs, and my children are young, so I didn't really know what this proposal was going to do, and whether it would create a drug environment here, or what," she said.
But as she found out more about the nature of the project, "I came to agree that it would do a good thing for this town," she said. "Because of the money, and also those people who really need it."
"Where was the harm? Who was going to be hurt by it? No one," said Pace, sitting in her bar among sparse customers on a recent weekday afternoon. "All the money would've been put to good use."
While it was too soon for any sort of allocations to have been devised, Pope said that every department in the city government would have benefited from the increase in funding, from the volunteer Fire Department to youth recreation programs. More than 50 Isleton area residents would have found employment on the project, including a local architect and contractors.
Pope disputes the grand jury's characterization of DAG as an "elusive" company that "exploited" a city "highly vulnerable to a seemingly lucrative proposal." He said that the jury's charge that DAG came in and offered to beef up the local police department with new computers and video surveillance equipment to secure the grow facility -- and the town -- was also false.
"They didn't offer -- I insisted on it," Pope said.
Sullivan felt particularly angered by the grand jury investigation's implications that he stood behind the proposal for personal or departmental gain.
"Some media have painted me as being blinded by greed for these things," said Sullivan. "It's not greed. It's reality ... Here we've always been poor. But when the economy tanked, this place suffered even more."
Sullivan added that revenue from the project could have been used to pay his reserve officers, who currently volunteer, an hourly wage. "We could have a state of the art police department here," he said.
As a former enforcer of marijuana law, flying helicopter patrols with the California Highway Patrol, Sullivan explained that things look different to him now, on the ground.
"I've educated myself: What's a collective, a dispensary, that there are people already growing medical marijuana within our city and around the state," he said. "I also know about the Mexican cartels and the white boy grows up in Humboldt County. I know there are people in it for the money. The real problem is we have people who are legitimately ill and need it. I'm not opposed to that; I am opposed to abuses of a system that permits it."
"I think the D.A.'s and the A.G.'s concern is that it's going to get so big -- we're talking beaucoup bucks," he added. "And they haven't figured out what they want to do about it."
Related News On Huffington Post:
Huge Marijuana Farm Planned In Isleton, California
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A grand jury says the lure of easy
money led a cash-strapped California town to approve a giant medical
marijuana farm. A...
Read more from Huffington Post bloggers:
Nick Turse: Tough Times in Troubled Towns
Most distressed small towns are suffering in silence
and, as a group, they may only be the proverbial canaries in the coal
mine.
Around the Web:
Isleton, California - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Isleton Chamber of Commerce Located in the California Delta
California Delta Chambers and Visitor's Bureau - A Guide to the ...
Isleton insists planned pot farm isn't dead yet
Isleton History - Isleton Chamber of Commerce Located in the ...
Insight: Isleton's Marijuana Project / Medical Marijuana Testing / SacPress ...
Insight: Isleton Marijuana / 70 in 70 / Poetry Benefit
Isleton Pot Farm Plan Blasted by Grand Jury - 420 Magazine
Isleton pot farm plan blasted by grand jury - SFGate
Grand jury condemns Isleton's pot farm plan | News | West Stockton ...
Isleton Pot Farm Plan Scrapped After Federal Warning « CBS Sacramento
Proposed Isleton pot farm up in smoke | Staff report | Dim Bulb ...
Isleton defends itself from grand jury's pot farm criticism ...
Isleton defends itself from grand jury's pot farm criticism
New federal memo on medical marijuana stirs angst
Justice Department shoots down commercial marijuana cultivation
Editorial: Marijuana memo is stark reminder: Law is unchanged
U.S. Warning Shuts Down Isleton Medical Marijuana Farm Project ...
Isleton city officials summoned over marijuana farm « The Humboldt ...
Sacto 9-1-1: Isleton fires back at grand jury over marijuana farm
Isleton, California - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Isleton Chamber of Commerce Located in the California Delta California Delta Chambers and Visitor's Bureau - A Guide to the ... Isleton insists planned pot farm isn't dead yet Isleton History - Isleton Chamber of Commerce Located in the ... Insight: Isleton's Marijuana Project / Medical Marijuana Testing / SacPress ... Insight: Isleton Marijuana / 70 in 70 / Poetry Benefit Isleton Pot Farm Plan Blasted by Grand Jury - 420 Magazine Isleton pot farm plan blasted by grand jury - SFGate Grand jury condemns Isleton's pot farm plan | News | West Stockton ... Isleton Pot Farm Plan Scrapped After Federal Warning « CBS Sacramento Proposed Isleton pot farm up in smoke | Staff report | Dim Bulb ... Isleton defends itself from grand jury's pot farm criticism ... Isleton defends itself from grand jury's pot farm criticism New federal memo on medical marijuana stirs angst Justice Department shoots down commercial marijuana cultivation Editorial: Marijuana memo is stark reminder: Law is unchanged U.S. Warning Shuts Down Isleton Medical Marijuana Farm Project ... Isleton city officials summoned over marijuana farm « The Humboldt ... Sacto 9-1-1: Isleton fires back at grand jury over marijuana farm
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12:45 PM on 08/01/2011
It's actually more straight forward , the government rather see 40
000 mexican killed in the most horrific condition than legalize
something that would put all these cartel out of business , it is to the
point when one must wonder how far in the political ladder drug made
it's way .
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03:49 PM on 07/31/2011
check out the plaque in the fifth photo.there's yer problem town. built on an indian burial ground.
hahaha!
03:08 PM on 07/31/2011
Great reorting! Thank you for keeping Californians informed about
what's happening to our fellow citizens and neighbors. Isn't it funny
(not funny ha ha; funny predictable) that first, Oakland approves four
industrial medical cannabis growing locations then Isleton does it and
they move to put a stop to it real quick. Typical. What happened to
equal protection under the law? Sounds like the tyranny of the majority
strikes again. 
09:24 AM on 07/31/2011
It's really a win-win; the people of Isleton are spared the evil of
marijuana and the Mexican cartels keep their market share. 
04:21 PM on 07/30/2011
We may have won the day in WW2; but it did not put an end to the fascists, or those that think as they do. 
03:09 AM on 07/30/2011
Anti-Cannabis people are either ignorant, stupid sheep, racist,
support corruption, and/ or greedy. They would rather have a person
locked up for possession of a plant than to spend the money on capturing
murderers, rapists, child molestors, & other dangerous criminals.
These fools lack Spirituality because they are controlled by corruption.We know better, but we don't have the corrupt money that these anti-Cannabis fools have. We must use our networking skills to reach a wider audience and vote out all these corrupt individuals and defeat the enemies of Freedom and Justice.
02:13 AM on 07/30/2011
You got slapped around by California? I'd have seized the Model Home titles
after taking criminal evidence found
hidden in the garages. I'd ask courts
to sledgehammer city government as
it would criminal organizations. I'd
ask for Federal Zip Code removal.
12:39 AM on 07/29/2011
The feds are overwhelmed by weed. Random busts of major growers
isn't a means of operation that will bring victory against the
increasing amount of weed being grown in N. America.
10:14 AM on 07/29/2011
And it grows wild in the midwest, you can see it growing by the roadside in Iowa.
02:18 AM on 07/30/2011
What you see isn't the bred big money versions that knock your socks off.
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There are More Comments on this Thread. Click Here To See them All
09:37 PM on 07/28/2011
I do not understand the evangelical frothing at the mouth that
occurs every time the federal government talks about marijuana, yet the
two biggest trouble-makers and citizen-killers, alcohol and tobacco, are
allowed and encouraged. This country, steeped in a tradition of drinking and smoking, is also steeped in a tradition of Joe Citizen paying a high price for stepping over the line. Cancer and DUI's go hand-in-hand in the great country that is America. The misery and mistakes, profited on, by the government, courts, lawyers, doctors and anyone else who can make a buck on the addictions of the drinkers and smokers.
That's all good though. These are Americas “government approved” intoxicants. Drinking and smoking is hardwired into everything we do and it reeks devastation across the landscape. But don't smoke a joint. That's illegal. That's a gateway drug.
What a load of crap the populace is fed by our incompetent, ill-intentioned government.
02:30 AM on 07/30/2011
I want a drug testing required for any state or federal license.I want zero tolerance for failures and six month wait to detox.
I want vehicles immediately impounded for DUI and auctioned
if zero tolerance fails second license application testing. Any
other drug testing failure is good for two years in State Pen.
or The Funny Farm.
01:37 AM on 08/01/2011
Attempting to control people is never more efficient, in the final
analysis, than creating the conditions necessary for the development of
healthy, intelligent and compassionate human beings. If external control
was effective and more efficient it would have been successful in
totalitarian states that have failed. It would also produce prison
populations that are models of civility, but the failure of that system
is obvious. You may be moved to such proclamations for control for good
sentiment but where such a strategy would be restrained from becoming a
stop and search fascist state is problematic. Eventually we would
require an elite group of controllers for the controllers, and so forth
in ever increasing spirals of paranoia and grandiosity. Developing an
understanding for the contextual environment necessary for proper human
development into a citizen who feels hopeful, meaningful and
significant, may not be as simplistic in its formula as we have become
accustomed to assuming. But sometimes tacking is more efficient than
stubbornly sailing into the wind. Of course such a perspective requires a
sense of the limits of human will and a healthy respect for both the
external and internal biology of becoming human. Otherwise, the control
everyone with enforcement and threats approach is doomed, in my opinion,
to producing the similar failures of prohibition and "just say no". 
09:22 PM on 07/28/2011
Dang I wish I had known what was in those garages. We drive by
there every couple weeks or so, under cover of night I could have
scored. Just kidding but those houses look so lonely just sitting there
half done. I always wondered why someone could not finish them, they
were very close or sell them as is. It would not take much to finish
them off. Pity
10:16 AM on 07/29/2011
Interestlingly the last house on the right hase windows in the door,
wonder if they blacked them or obscured them, otherwise it woulda been
obvious that something was going on, all they had to do was look thru
them.
11:45 AM on 07/29/2011
So, you actually got close to the houses? How funny. We drive by
maybe every other month when we are coming bck to Rocklin from Antioch
picking up our grandchild andI always felt the houses looked so lonely
sitting there. The town maybe should have kept their plan a little
quieter or perhaps there ws a filing of some kind that alerted this
Scully lady. Oh well I hope they come up with another plan I thought it
would be kind of nice to live there now that we are retired.
07:58 PM on 07/28/2011
This troubles me that Isleton is foreshadowing what would come of a
state level legalization of marijuana. After two hundred years of
implementing constitutional law, we have still not decided how federal
legislature should affect state legislature (a catalyst for the American
Civil War), as well as state leg. vs. city laws. If marijuana is ever
legalized in California, I have little faith that the state government
will do anything to protect its citizens' rights against the federal
government drug war machine. Proposition 215 is a Catch 22, as in you
can legally grow medical marijuana in large, industrious sized farms,
and sold in clinics state-wide, but both farms and clinics can be raided
and shut down at any time because the D.A is suspicious of the money
changing hands, or because it conflicts with federal laws. It seems that
inevitably government entities' own agendas trump common sense every
time.
02:45 PM on 07/31/2011
Cry HAVOC! And unleash the dogs of war! ; No government or other
entity will ever give up any power they have gained without a fight.
Since it was ratified, the 10th Amendment has been either ignored or
wrongly interpeted. The federal government DOES NOT have the authority
to regulate ANY business that is conducted within any state, only
importing and exporting with another state or country and, thanks to the
13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude. Congress can pass
any law they want but they have no constitutional authority to enforce
those laws. Congress can't even amend the constitution, the states get
to do that. In short, the federal government does not have the right to
do anything unless expressly stated in the Constitution. The States and
the People HAVE the right to do anything they want unless expressly
prohibited by the Constitution.
07:39 PM on 07/28/2011
I liked this report. I have visited Isleton several times over the
last twenty years and it has always felt like a ghost town. The town
deserved the financial opportunity. At some point soon this state
seriously needs to get its act together! Working with town and city
officials to help improve the local and statewide economy is the
solution - not fighting against them!
10:18 AM on 07/29/2011
What with global warming and such it might be better to pay folks to
'GET OUT' and break the levees and let it return to river bottom
marshland. 
04:31 PM on 07/28/2011
You can't pick and choose what laws you want to follow. You can't
say, "Hey, it's legal by California law, so that is all that matters".
How naive. Of course Federal Law overrides state law - that is the way
it works. Don't like it - change it. Or, if you don't have the votes,
then suffer. But this isn't newsworthy - this is a bunch of folks who
thought they could do whatever they wanted to do, and it doesn't work
that way. I fi supported legalization, I'd be uppset with these people.
First, it gives people like me someone to scoff at for their stupidity,
and that is what it is here, make no mistake. But think of the money
that could be used by PAC's and speical interest groups to go to
Washington and get these laws changed, instead of blowing it on law
suits and legal costs that, at the end of the day, they know they will
lose.
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