Pubdate: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 Source: Appeal-Democrat (Marysville, CA) Section: Off Beat Copyright: 2010 Appeal-Democrat Contact: http://www.appeal-democrat.com/sections/services/forms/editorletter.php Website: http://www.appeal-democrat.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1343 Author: Harold Kruger TEAM SUTTER JUST BLOWIN' SMOKE Behind the bravado displayed Tuesday night by three Sutter County supervisors is the kind of loopy logic you've come to expect from the rural backwater in California. So if 56 counties follow a state law, Sutter County must be right in ignoring that same state law. Sounds logical, no? Remember, Sutter County was one of the last agricultural counties in the state to go along with the Williamson Act to preserve ag land. Why? Just because they could ignore it for 30 or 40 years. Of course, Yuba County still doesn't have the Williamson Act, but it does have medical pot cards. Oh well. You can't have it all, at least around here. Thanks to the M&M Boys and W, Sutter County residents won't have to worry about a right almost every other California resident enjoys, except for Colusa County, which may be worse off in a lot of ways than Sutter. As one of the M Boys proudly proclaimed, Sutter County is "the most conservative county in California." Huzzah. And the unemployment rate is one of the highest. Is there a correlation? Would you rather live in the libertine Bay Area with all those nutty leftists, where the unemployment rate is far lower and wages are much higher, or remain in right-thinking Sutter County, where jobs are few and far between? Supervisor W admitted that marijuana "has some medical uses," but as a teacher "I see firsthand how substance abuse wrecks children's lives, their dream, their futures." Somehow, W conflated the narrow use of marijuana for medical uses with almost every legal and illegal drug on the planet. Quite a conflation, indeed. Supervisor James Gallagher, who actually spent some of his formative years in the aforementioned libertine Bay Area at the University of California, Berkeley (Piedmont annex), voted for the medical marijuana card program. He's seen the outside world. It apparently hasn't affected most of his political views, but this time logic trumped his more conservative tendencies. And poor Stan Cleveland must feel he's in the "Twilight Zone." Up is down. Black is white. Wrong is right. Sutter County is right. Everybody else is wrong. If a legal challenge eventually comes, you can be sure Team Sutter will voice the same certitude it always has when it comes to big legal battles. Team Sutter said it was right when it denied a use permit for the Sikh temple. A federal judge told them otherwise. Team Sutter said its South Sutter Specific Plan met all legal requirements. "America was built on guts, and I think that's what we have to do," one of the M Boys said back in 2002. "I think we have to have the guts to go forward." Well, guts and glory didn't help Team Sutter back then. A judge tossed out that specific plan in 2003. Will it be any different this time? - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D