Later On

Horrifying. And focused on civilian noncombatants.

Worth reading. Pilates is an amazingly effective process—and, as The Wife observed early on, it’s “sticky,” unlike Feldenkreis. Feldenkreis can give you very interesting awareness of various aspects of your body structure and muscles, but it’s like a tour of a science exhibit: quite fascinating, but not much impact on daily life. With Pilates, in contrast, the work induces persisting changes, so that (for example) one obtains better balance, better posture, etc., even after the sessions.

Obviously, progress is always possible, and in any event it’s a process. I don’t know that you would ever “complete” the work. But so far the continuing improvements have certainly been more than worth the cost and (relatively mild) effort.

If you have access to a good Pilates instructor with a well-equipped studio, I’d encourage you to give it a go for 10 private sessions if you can. That’s 5 weeks at two sessions a week, enough to get an idea of what it can do.

I was told that Joseph Pilates said, “10 sessions to change your mind, 20 sessions to change your body, 30 sessions to change your life.” Our instructor commented that over and over she’s seen people start Pilates and then seem to start renewal in other parts of their life. Of course, people who start Pilates are already exhibiting interest in renewal, but Pilates had the interesting view that getting your body to do these specific things while exercising control (his own name for the discipline was “Contrology”)—that develops your brain in new ways, the brain being intimately involved since it, after all, is what controls the body. Indeed, controlling the body and internal processes while maintaining awareness of sensory input from internal and external sources so that the organism can respond optimally: that’s the brain’s job description and primary duties. This consciousness, rational thinking, language thing is a Johnny-come-lately and just a tiny sideline of what the brain does—save, of course, this new environment allowed the emergence and evolution of memes, whose own universe of struggle and development so affects our own lives (and evolution).

At any rate, Pilates is certainly correct that learning these new movements and how to exercise the muscle control to do them must of necessity lead to development within the brain, and since the mind resides there somehow, those changes will undoubtedly have ramifications for one’s mind. So perhaps the practice of Pilates does indeed open one’s outlook for new learning and development.

Try it and see.

UPDATE: The idea of signing up for Spanish classes came to me a month after I started Pilates. FWIW.

I mailed a link to this article to a lawyer friend (and classmate). His reply:

The article has an interesting perspective which, while not without its truths, seems to me to be a little too far over the economic right in its analysis.

Jefferson for one, as I’m sure you know, was a left-wing radical for his day, hoping for an agrarian, small-town republic not dominated by money interests; and Franklin is famous for a quip to a lady inquiring about what the convention had wrought with the reply, “A republic, Madam if you can keep it,”  (Franklin in fact candidly doubted it would be kept.)

Moreover, while the Electoral College and other devices (such as property limitations on voting) were designed to insulate the republic somewhat from “the mob,” the Founders could hardly have failed to understand the democratic implications of the structure they had built and the realpolitik logic it would have to follow.

The addition of the Bill of Rights (a condition for ratification by New York, among other states) certainly strengthened the democratic thread of the constitutional fabric.

Of course, it’s also true that the Hamiltonians beat out the Jeffersonians in the initial economic structure of the new nation, but John Adams was the first, last, and only Federalist President, allowing Jefferson a latitude that eventually led to Andrew Jackson and the much further democratization of the government.

So I think the article—again, while not without its kernels of truth—reflects a bit of wishful thinking and cynicism about the true range of the Founders’ thinking.  Its principles, I’m sure they realized, had an inexorable logic of their own, despite the threads of financial self-interest of the well-propertied the document was partly designed to protect.

Although the US has fallen on hard times, it is still leagues ahead of poor Italy, as described in this note by in the New Yorker:

Anniversaries are uplifting when you have something to celebrate. A couple on the edge of divorce do not rejoice that their wedding anniversary is around the corner. Something of the same uneasiness surrounded the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Italian state, on March 17th. As late as February, the government couldn’t decide whether the day should be declared a national holiday. The Northern League, a major party in the ruling coalition, complained about the loss of working hours; many of the League’s members have a separatist agenda and want to avoid a surge in national pride. The governor of South Tyrol, a German-speaking province ceded to Italy after the First World War, said that it was unreasonable to expect his people to celebrate their subjugation to an alien culture.

Nor does the rest of Italy see much reason to celebrate. The economy lags behind the French and German economies. Unemployment is at 8.6 per cent and youth unemployment at nearly thirty per cent. Wages are low, growth negligible. Meanwhile, Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is on trial for allegedly bribing a lawyer and has recently been charged with paying a minor for sex and then trying to obstruct police inquiries. Far from resigning, he has promised to use the trial to denounce a conspiracy against him by “Communist” magistrates and has introduced a bill to curb their powers. A constitutional crisis is brewing at a time when the government’s energies are required elsewhere.

Deeper than this, there has long been a feeling in Italy that the project of national unity was flawed from the start, and will never work satisfactorily—that the country’s government will always be stalled, and the south forever the unmanageable territory of organized crime. Three recent books express the mood in their titles: Manlio Graziano’s ambitious “The Failure of Italian Nationhood” (Palgrave; $80) seeks to get to the heart of the problem, examining crisis after crisis in the past century and a half in search of some recurrent behavior pattern that might explain Italy’s troubles; “Resisting the Tide: Cultures of Opposition Under Berlusconi” (Continuum; $130) and “Italy Today: The Sick Man of Europe” (Routledge; $47.95) are collective efforts. The first, edited by a group of Italian scholars from the University of Birmingham—Daniele Albertazzi, Clodagh Brook, Charlotte Ross, and Nina Rothenberg—documents the difficulties of opposing a Prime Minister who owns the three major private TV networks, exercises a profound influence on the three public networks, and controls a large part of the press, the publishing world, and the advertising industry. The second, edited by Andrea Mammone and Giuseppe Veltri, examines a range of troubling economic, political, and social issues. Where many accounts of recent Italian history have been prone to overheated rhetoric and cries of scandal, all three of these books are admirable for their sober, businesslike tone. Nevertheless, their findings are far from optimistic.

The idea of laying bare some persistent group dynamic that would explain the vagaries of Italian public life—Graziano’s aim—has haunted me throughout my thirty years in the country. . . .

Continue reading.

On my walk today, I came across a curious sight:

Apparently someone had no more need for his or her crutches, and there they are, discarded beside the sidewalk. Odd.

I took a fairly long walk: 30 minutes or so. I want to see if my knee can really take it now.

Very interesting post pointed out by The Eldest (and it’s on quite an interesting group blog):

In the past few weeks, I’ve become addicted to this new online thing.

And by addicted, I simply mean that participating in it has sort of taken over my free time.

No, it’s not Twitter or Facebook or Linkedin or FourSquare…in fact, it’s not any of the usual suspects.

My latest web crush is called OpenIDEO.

It’s an online platform developed by the design firm, IDEO, as a way to include a broader range of people in tackling significant global problems through the design process.

Basically, it works like this:

1.    A challenge is issued (e.g., How might we increase the number of registered bone marrow donors to help save more lives?).

2.    Participants contribute inspirations and concepts, collaborate with others, and evaluate ideas.

3.    Through this process, winning concepts rise to the top.

Why should you (the artist/arts professional) care? . . .

Continue reading.

This is painful to read, but very important. John Thompson writes an Op-Ed in the NY Times:

New Orleans – I spent 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on death row. I’ve been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my execution date. Those prosecutors were never punished. Last month, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a case I’d won against them and the district attorney who oversaw my case, ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that evidence — which included proof that blood at the robbery scene wasn’t mine.

Because of that, prosecutors are free to do the same thing to someone else today.

I was arrested in January 1985 in New Orleans. I remember the police coming to my grandmother’s house — we all knew it was the cops because of how hard they banged on the door before kicking it in. My grandmother and my mom were there, along with my little brother and sister, my two sons — John Jr., 4, and Dedric, 6 — my girlfriend and me. The officers had guns drawn and were yelling. I guess they thought they were coming for a murderer. All the children were scared and crying. I was 22.

They took me to the homicide division, and played a cassette tape on which a man I knew named Kevin Freeman accused me of shooting a man. He had also been arrested as a suspect in the murder. A few weeks earlier he had sold me a ring and a gun; it turned out that the ring belonged to the victim and the gun was the murder weapon.

My picture was on the news, and a man called in to report that I looked like someone who had recently tried to rob his children. Suddenly I was accused of that crime, too. I was tried for the robbery first. My lawyers never knew there was blood evidence at the scene, and I was convicted based on the victims’ identification.

After that, my lawyers thought it was best if I didn’t testify at the murder trial. So I never defended myself, or got to explain that I got the ring and the gun from Kevin Freeman. And now that I officially had a history of violent crime because of the robbery conviction, the prosecutors used it to get the death penalty.

I remember the judge telling the courtroom the number of volts of electricity they would put into my body. If the first attempt didn’t kill me, he said, they’d put more volts in.

On Sept. 1, 1987, I arrived . . .

Continue reading.

Do you believe that this outcome is just or reasonable? I do not.

One thing that politicians, bureaucrats, businesses, and the military all love is the ability to keep secret what they are doing, planning, and messing up. Quickly classifying as “Secret” anything embarrassing or wrong is a time-honored government practice. Generally speaking, progressives want more information made available and more transparency in government, and conservatives (who claim not to trust government) oppose transparency and favor secrecy for reasons that become apparent when you look at what they do.

Marian Wang at ProPublica tells what’s going on:

Though the budget deal struck by lawmakers over the weekend averted a shutdown of the federal government, it still has open-government advocates worried about a shutdown of another sort: a shutdown in transparency.

Lawmakers in both houses passed a six-month spending bill yesterday, dealing a deep cut [PDF] to key transparency initiatives. Some of those initiatives were launched with much fanfare at the outset of the Obama administration.

Under the budget compromise, funds for the Electronic Government Fund — which supports a number of government transparency websites — were cut by about 75 percent, from $34 million in 2010 down to $8 million. While this isn’t as drastic as the earlier House proposal that would have slashed funding to $2 million, it’s still sizeable compared to the administration’s original request of $35 million.

The reduction has riled transparency groups, which fear that the loss of funding could cripple or completely eliminate sites such as USASpending.gov, Data.gov and IT Dashboard.

As the Washington Post’s Federal Eye blog notes, USASpending.gov — a repository for data on federal contracts — operates under a legislative mandate. Data.gov, a clearinghouse of data from federal agencies, and IT Dashboard, a site that tracks the progress of the government’s IT investments, were created by executive orders and are not guaranteed federal funding, according to the Post.

Sunlight Foundation . . .

Continue reading.

The word “diet” refers to the foods you eat, but in modern usage it has the connotation or artificial (and temporary) restrictions in what you eat—e.g., the grapefruit diet, the Scarsdale diet. But diet in the sense of being simply the foods you normally eat—your diet—is the way I use the word.

Cool Tools has a very intriguing post on the Paleolithic way of eating—restricting oneself to foods available prior to agriculture: no grains or refined foods (sugars, flours, oils). Of course, we have continued to evolve, and many modern humans can digest milk, for example. So we do not exactly match the genetic makeup of our forbears, but the diet is still interesting.

Take a look.

I keep coming back to this Greenwald column. I think he identifies exactly some of the central problems that are undermining this country. The column begins:

Of all the topics on which I’ve focused, I’ve likely written most about America’s two-tiered justice system — the way in which political and financial elites now enjoy virtually full-scale legal immunity for even the most egregious lawbreaking, while ordinary Americans, especially the poor and racial and ethnic minorities, are subjected to exactly the opposite treatment: the world’s largest prison state and most merciless justice system. That full-scale destruction of the rule of law is also the topic of my forthcoming book. But The New York Times this morning has a long article so perfectly illustrating what I mean by “two-tiered justice system” — and the way in which it obliterates the core covenant of the American Founding: equality before the law — that it’s impossible for me not to highlight it.

The article’s headline tells most of the story: “In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures.” It asks: “why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?” And it recounts that not only have no high-level culprits been indicted (or even subjected to meaningful criminal investigations), but few have suffered any financial repercussions in the form of civil enforcements or other lawsuits. The evidence of rampant criminality that led to the 2008 financial crisis is overwhelming, but perhaps the clearest and most compelling such evidence comes from long-time Wall-Street-servant Alan Greenspan; even he was forced to acknowledge that much of the precipitating conduct was “certainly illegal and clearly criminal” and that “a lot of that stuff was just plain fraud.”

Despite that clarity and abundance of the evidence proving pervasive criminality, it’s entirely unsurprising that there have been no real criminal investigations or prosecutions. That’s because the overarching “principle” of our justice system is that criminal prosecutions are only for ordinary rabble, not for those who are most politically and financially empowered. We have thus created precisely the two-tiered justice system against which the Founders most stridently warned and which contemporary legal scholars all agree is the hallmark of a lawless political culture. Lest there be any doubt about that claim, just consider the following facts and events:

When Bush officials were revealed to have established a worldwide torture regime (including tactics which Obama’s Attorney General flatly stated were illegal) and spied on Americans without the warrants required by law (which Obama himself insisted was criminal), what happened? This, from The New York Times, January 11, 2009: . . .

Continue reading.

The GOP understands that, were everyone to vote, they would lose in a landslide: their policies of protecting businesses the wealthy and funding the government on the backs of the poor and middle class and yanking the rug from under consumers and workers are not so popular. So the GOP spends a lot of time constructing barriers to voting, particularly barriers that are most formidable to the elderly, poor, and otherwise marginalized. From The Center for American Progress in an email:

Since taking office in January, conservative legislators in state houses across the country have raised the specter of voter fraud to quietly — and quickly — push through a series of bills that would make it significantly more difficult for large swaths of the population to vote, including college students, rural voters, senior citizens, the disabled, and the homeless.

Proposed legislation would dramatically change how the country votes ahead of the 2012 elections, requiring Americans in some states to present their birth certificate  before registering to vote and show a DMV-issued photo identification at the polls.

These voter ID bills would not only dampen voter turnout — depressing Hispanic turnout by as much as 10 percent — but also cost cash-strapped statehouses (and taxpayers) millions of dollars. Yet in dozens of states, Republicans have made bills restricting voting a central part of their legislative agenda — passing voter ID bills before they even begin to work on budgets.

Conservatives have claimed their assault on voting rights is necessary to combat the threat of mass voter fraud. Yet the Brennan Center for Justice notes that voters are more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud, and the Bush Justice Department’s five-year “War on Voter Fraud” resulted in only 86 convictions out of 196 million votes cast.

As The Progress Report’s Alex Seitz-Wald notes, “The only fraud in voter fraud is the allegation of fraud.” Instead, like their assaults on unions, Planned Parenthood, and AARP,  conservatives’ anti-voter agenda is aimed at silencing the voices of those who disagree with them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Great tune.

Including a chess clock of all things. Take a look at the choices here (underneath the clock).

I came across this to use in timing my 20 minutes of listening to Spanish, which I’ve just now completed.

A very fine shave today. The brush (Omega “artificial badger”) and razor (Elite Razor made of black onyx with gold lacings) will, along with Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving, Fourth Edition, a shaving soap, and a bar of MR GLO, will become a silent auction package for The Younger Grandson’s school—I’m shipping them off as soon as I get my order of the book.

So this is a farewell shave, and an excellent shave it was. The Elitle uses the Merkur Classic frame and head, so it’s a fine razor.

First was a terrific lather from the Speick shave stick. Then three smooth passes of the Elite with a previously used Swedish Gillette blade, followed by a splash of Speick. Wonderful!

The Eldest had an interesting take on pride: that pride (in the pejorative sense, rather than the ameliorative sense—the latter being pride in a group to which one belongs, for example) is the refusal to acknowledge a need for help and thus not to seek help or to allow help—or can be shown another way by denigrating help that is accepted (by oneself or by others—in effect, denigrating the idea of help).

In terms of Christian theology, this explains why pride is such a deadly sin: the entire premise of Christianity is that God became human to make a sacrifice sufficient to redeem the human race, given the impact of Original Sin and all that to which it led. To refuse help ultimately is to hold that help is not needed, that oneself is unmarred by Original Sin, and, by implication, refusing God’s grace (though whether sanctifying grace can be refused is a tricky issue). Thus pride does indeed precede a fall: refusing to be saved is, in Christian terms, a large fall indeed.

But it also rings true in the secular sense: to refuse help is ultimately to refuse to be a part of the group (whichever group is relevant to the issue), and groups in general do not take kindly to non-members—doubtless part of the cost of evolving as a social animal: groups are important to social animals… very important. So to be outside a group—whether through ostracism or through refusal to join—is a seriously bad thing in the eyes of the group. (As to whether a group would in effect punish someone for not being a member even though the group itself in fact rejected the person: yes. Anyone who has had encounters with groups—and, since we are social animals, that includes every one of us—knows that from personal experience somewhere along the line.)

This kind of pride—refusing to acknowledge the need for, as well as the offer of, help—is, I imagine, the Ego in action, and thus the Ego=Satan notion works out well.

And examples abound of this sort of pride: refusing to ask directions, refusing sound medical advice or assistance, refusing medications (generally speaking), and denigrating people who actually do seek help of one kind or another, or denigrating the help itself.

The fact is, we have in the US the myth of the Rugged Individual, the man (almost always) who does everything on his own and refuses help—he asks no quarter and he gives none. Etc. And, generally, the heroic figure is placed in the American West, the most heavily subsidized and lavishly supported—by the work of millins—development in modern times. Federal land grants, Federal protection, Federal courts, and Federal laws made it possible for the Rugged Individual to exist.

I continue to draw a total blank too often when listening to Spanish—and these are my textbook exercises, for goodness’ sake. But the way the terminal letter of one word often serves as the initial letter of following word tricks my ear no end.

I realize that the problem simply is practice: I have not spent enough time listening to spoken Spanish so that the little unconscious engine(s) that parse speech can learn how to grok the new language. So now I am going through my BBC podcasts—news programs with interviews—and listening to them 20 minutes a day. I listen for a couple of minutes, then back it up and re-listen to the same segment, then perhaps again, and work my way through the program that way. For a while I’ll stick with the one program until it becomes familiar.

It’s boring in a way: I have to pay attention and try to understand, even though I only intermittently make out a word, and I have to keep it up long enough and frequently enough so those engines, working with the various pattern-recognition capabilities we have, work out how to hear Spanish.

This is the common course of experience-based learning: learning a skill, which can be done only through experience and practice, training the unconscious.

On the whole, I greatly prefer knowledge-based learning, which for me is faster and easier: information I quickly learn and retain.

I suppose it’s natural to prefer something at which one is good (and thus which is easy) to another thing at which one must struggle. And since not everyone likes knowledge-based learning, it stands to reason that there are those who prefer experience-based learning (presumably because they are good at it and find it easy, and thus even enjoy the process of learning). “Natural athletes” doubtless fall into this category.

So I have to systematically set up a schedule and measure my effort to succeed—which I suppose is measuring and counting my food portions. Thank heavens we have the tools to help those whose natural skills are insufficient.

We know of several instances of agriculture being invented—some seven times in different locales and times, if I recall correctly. With better communication in later years, it was necessary only once to invent the steam engine, and then the invention’s path branched as it was adapted to various situations and experience dictated refinements.

Language turns out to be like the steam engine, not agriculture. Nicholas Wade reports in the NY Times:

A researcher analyzing the sounds in languages spoken around the world has detected an ancient signal that points to southern Africa as the place where modern human language originated.

The finding fits well with the evidence from fossil skulls and DNA that modern humans originated in Africa. It also implies, though does not prove, that modern language originated only once, an issue of considerable controversy among linguists.

The detection of such an ancient signal in language is surprising. Because words change so rapidly, many linguists think that languages cannot be traced very far back in time. The oldest language tree so far reconstructed, that of the Indo-European family, which includes English, goes back 9,000 years at most.

Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has shattered this time barrier, if his claim is correct, by looking not at words but at phonemes — the consonants, vowels and tones that are the simplest elements of language.  Dr. Atkinson, an expert at applying mathematical methods to linguistics, has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: A language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it.

Some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration route out of Africa, has only 13. English has about 45 phonemes.

This pattern of decreasing diversity with distance, similar to the well-established decrease in genetic diversity with distance from Africa, implies that the origin of modern human language is in the region of southwestern Africa, Dr. Atkinson says in an article published on Thursday in the journal Science.

Language is at least 50,000 years old, the date that modern humans dispersed from Africa, and some experts say it is at least 100,000 years old. Dr. Atkinson, if his work is correct, is picking up a distant echo from this far back in time.

Linguists tend to dismiss any claims to have found traces of language older than 10,000 years, “but this paper comes closest to convincing me that this type of research is possible,” said Martin Haspelmath, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Dr. Atkinson is one of several biologists who have started applying to historical linguistics the sophisticated statistical methods developed for constructing genetic trees based on DNA sequences.  These efforts have been regarded with suspicion by some linguists.

In 2003 Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray, another biologist at the University of Auckland, reconstructed the tree of Indo-European languages with a DNA tree-drawing method called Bayesian phylogeny. The tree indicated that Indo-European was much older than historical linguists had estimated and hence favored the theory that the language family had diversified with the spread of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, not with a military invasion by steppe people some 6,000 years ago, the idea favored by most historical linguists. . .

Continue reading.

I’m still getting used to the Mac, and I discovered something sort of dangerous: the Mac’s red button with Firefox.

The red button in Windows exits the program—same thing as selecting “quit” or “exit” from the menu. The red button in the Mac closes the window, but leaves the program running. Note: it closes the window. Both the Mac and Windows have a separate button to minimize the window (it vanishes from view but you can bring it back), but the Mac’s red button terminates the Window altogether.

I accidentally hit the red button on my Mac. Now if I quit Firefox and return, I get back all the tabs that were open in the last session. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the red button doesn’t work this way: close the window with the Mac red button and all tabs are lost. Gone. Goodbye, have fun.

It’s very like losing a file in the impact—especially since I don’t recall all the tabs. I have relied on the Firefox and the computer: that’s why I have them. I feel betrayed.

By going over the Firefox history for the past week or so, I could probably extract from the mass of listings the tabs of interest, but that’s a daunting prospect: I’m a very active browser, and I keep open for later study only a tiny fraction of the tabs I look at.

I think the Mac red button is a terrible idea.

The Gerson worked up a fine lather from the vintage Paisley shaving soap, and the Feather with a Feather blade did a fine three-pass shave, ending with a nice splash of Floïd. Great way to start the day.

Industrial hemp is a valuable crop that grows well on marginal land and makes superb rope, paper, and other products that use plant fiber. The seeds are nutritious. But the US, though it allows industrial hemp to be imported, does not allow it to be grown in this country. Why? The restriction is stupid. Farmers pushed to the wall economically want to grow industrial hemp, and they are trying to get laws changed to allow it. I just received this note in an email:

Last week the California Narcotics Officers’ and Police Chiefs Associations announced that they oppose Senator Mark Leno’s hemp farming bill, SB 676. Their opposition letters were sent less than 24 hours before the hearing in Agriculture Committee and featured incorrect and outdated arguments against the bill. Industrial hemp is defined in the bill as cannabis with 0.3% or less THC which clearly has no drug value. There are a number of licensing requirements to ensure that farmers will not be growing drug type cannabis. So why would the narcotics officers and police chiefs oppose allowing California farmers to grow hemp once again?

The answer is John Lovell, the Sacramento lobbyist for both law enforcement groups. Fortunately Vote Hemp attended the hearing in force, thanks to your support, and we were ready to counter his tired old claims that hemp farming was somehow going to make life difficult for law enforcement. In fact, Lovell was on the defensive and ended up being removed from the witness table by the Sergeant at Arms during the hearing due to repeatedly interrupting other witnesses!

During the hearing Vote Hemp board members Patrick Goggin and David Bronner testified on behalf of the bill and the Agriculture Committee recommended the bill “do pass” by a bi-partisan 5 to 1 vote. This is a great start thanks to your help but we have more work to do. The bill now moves to the Public Safety Committee for another hearing. We need your help so we can continue to build support for passage of the bill. Please make a donation today so we can continue to attend hearings, build support around the state and educate legislators and the media. Vote Hemp helped to pass the previous two versions of the bill in 2006 and 2007. Please read the CapInsider story Leno Fights to Expand California’s Economy With SB 676 for a sense of the history. With your support, we can see legal hemp farming in California soon.

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps has generously agreed to match every dollar you donate, doubling the impact of your contribution. Please make a donation now. Every dollar helps. We rarely send out email requests for just donations. Usually we give you a lot of hemp news and strategy updates, but the need now is urgent.

We hope that you are in a position to make a donation and if not, please forward this email to your friends and family and ask them for us. We have been soliciting donations from the hemp industry along with letters of support for SB 676, now we need you to help, too. I thank you in advance for all that you do for the cause.

About the organization:

Vote Hemp is a national, single-issue, nonprofit organization dedicated to the acceptance of and free market for industrial hemp, low-THC oilseed and fiber varieties of Cannabis, and to changes in current law to allow U.S. farmers to grow the crop. Web Site: http://www.VoteHemp.com