Of gardens and plants

Two pieces of good news today, which is especially welcome given how every morning, when my alarm goes off, NPR comes on detailing further economic woes and such. The first item I'll just mention briefly, but the second I'd like to delve into a bit deeper (as I promised to do in a previous posts' comments section).

First up: Official indication that a White House organic garden, if not a farm, is an entirely probable eventuality. Neil Hamilton, an adviser to USDA head Tom Vilsack, was heard saying:

I believe that by this summer there will be a garden – another garden, a vegetable garden – on the White House lawn...I believe the Obamas are committed to that. It’s a big idea, and its gonna happen. During the campaign, going around shaking peoples’ hands, he never got sick once. He was eating well, and it could have to do with having an organic chef with him. This is someone who 'gets' nutrition.

Maybe Claire Strader will get her Obama Administration post after all, even if it's just as official White House Gardener instead of Farmer. In any case, this is good news.

Secondly, our new Attorney General, Eric Holder, made it clear in a recent press conference that, under the Obama Administration, the Justice Department will no longer raid places that distribute medical marijuana in states where such things are legal.

Under Bush, the JD had been instructed to carry out the rather draconian raids based on state law conflicting with federal law on the matter. So this new policy is definitely a step in the right direction, even if we, as a country, still have a long way to go on this issue.

Simply put, US drug policy as it specifically relates to marijuana is outdated, misdirected, highly flawed, and costly - both in terms of the cash required to enforce, and in the sense of pushing its cultivation and distribution underground, feeding into an often violent culture of organized crime (Prohibition, anyone?).

I am not a pot smoker. Frankly, I don't smoke anything, as I think it's gross. But you know what? I've still done the research, and I've talked to the people most effected, and I've come to the same conclusion as that of thousands of other, more well-informed and qualified individuals. We need to, at the very least, decriminalize the stuff.

As most advocates of relaxing laws related to pot will readily admit, marijuana is not an entirely harmless substance. But it still poses similar, if not lesser, risks to that of the use of alcohol and tobacco. As those things are legal but heavily regulated, so should marijuana be.

The US spends billions of dollars a year on the arrest and incarceration of people for pot related offenses. According to the most recent set of statistics released by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly half of all drug related arrests in the country are made for marijuana related offenses. Furthermore:

According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for pot-related offenses.

Decriminalizing pot wouldn't get rid of all of those offenders. Some of them are desperate or nasty sorts who will find other ways to make money, no doubt. But I think a pretty solid argument can be made that such a move would drastically reduce the overall number of arrests and incarcerations. The associated savings combined with tax revenues from good regulation would stand to make/save a decent amount of money for the country/tax payers.

Part of the problem that leads to our current, misguided policies toward pot is the sheer amount of misinformation that's been fed to the public for the past century. The stigmatization of the "demon weed" by moneyed interests has been well documented but somewhat poorly marketed.

The propaganda campaign aimed toward instilling a sense of fear and menace in regards to this plant has ranged, over time, from the ridiculous to the sneakily mundane, but much of what we've been taught has been either outright falsehood or very stretched truth. Worse, because of that atmosphere, truly scientific medical studies of its use were almost non-existent until very recently.

The real casualties of all this aren't to do with perpetually stoned hippies, but rather with those who stand to really benefit from its medicinal uses, and those who've come up with a whole slew of ways in which to use its non-intoxicating counterpart, hemp (read a comprehensive explanation of the plant and its many uses here).

Industrial hemp has many uses, including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, health food, and fuel. It is...one of the earliest domesticated plants known. It also runs parallel with the "Green Future" objectives that are becoming increasingly popular. Hemp requires little to no pesticides, no herbicides, controls erosion of the topsoil, and produces oxygen. Furthermore, hemp can be used to replace many potentially harmful products, such as tree paper (the processing of which uses chlorine bleach, which results in the waste product polychlorinated dibensodioxins, popularly known as dioxins, which is carcinogenic, and contributes to deforestation), cosmetics, and plastics, most of which are petroleum-based and do not decompose easily. The strongest chemical needed to whiten the already light hemp paper is non-toxic hydrogen peroxide.

While some inroads have been made in certain states through the passage of bills making it legal for farmers to grow industrial hemp, there are still several hurdles to jump and a ways to go before the practice is legal and commonplace throughout the country. In the meantime, we're missing out on a valuable, sustainable, low-impact source for all sorts of goods.

And medical marijuana holds the promise of extreme pain relief, sleep assistance, and appetite increase (among other things) in patients suffering from a range of maladies. Peer reviewed studies have shown this to be the case, even in the face of continued ignorance on the subject by those making the laws.

I am only somewhat hopeful that the new administration will take a serious, scientifically-based look at and approach to US drug policy. We need to do our part to hold them to this, and to see that action is taken from the ground up, too - starting with our own communities. Such action makes economic, medical, and social justice sense.

Walker hates government, wants to be governor

Well I can't say that this comes as a surprise, but it sure doesn't make sense: Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker is definitely angling himself for a run at the governor's office come the 2010 elections.

Why doesn't that make sense? Because Walker has shown himself, time and time again, to be a person who doesn't believe government has any role to play, whatsoever, in much of anything at all. Dustin Beilke, writing at The Daily Page, has a good piece about this sort of moronic hypocrisy on the part of people like Walker. In the grand tradition of Grover Norquist's "drown it in the bathtub" attitude toward government, Walker has already succeeded in getting the county's public assistance role stripped by the state due to rampant incompetence. He's also come under recent (rightful) fire for his call for federal stimulus money to go toward a sales tax reduction, and Walker would like nothing more than to privatize just about everything you can think of.

Many others have done a great (and likely painful) job of keeping track of all the many and varied ways in which Scott Walker has worked so tirelessly to destroy everything he touches, so I won't go on just now. Click the links, and have a read. Try not to throw anything at your monitor while you do.

Suffice to say that I'm both humored and troubled by his apparent decision to run for the top office in the state. Humored because he's such an unflagging political idiot, and troubled because what if enough people actually support his run? I'm no great Doyle cheerleader, but compared to Walker the man's a savant.


(graphic courtesy the Brawler)

The horror and the gory glory

Yesterday morning, as I stumbled in to work all bleary-eyed and with the slightest hint of something pink stained along the sides of my mouth, a few people stopped to inquire about how I'd spent my Sunday. My response? "I passed several hours soaking in a pool of blood."

As you might imagine, that response earned me more than my fair share of raised eyebrows. Allow me to explain.

My friends and I like to make movies. I'm more of the dirty actor type, but fortunately I know quite a few people of the directorial persuasion and so I end up getting to be involved in several film projects. Even more amazing is that these director types that I know make actually a habit of finishing any given project, which is definitely an added bonus.

Currently, we're wrapping up "principal photography" on a new horror/dark comedy called "High School Sweethearts." It's a little something dreamed up by the twisted mind of Will Gartside, with assistance from the indomitable Rob Matsushita--the same crew that brought about 2007's horror-musical-comedy smash sensation, "Massacre! The Musical."

I worked on the soundtrack for that particular opus, but this time yours truly gets to take a turn in front of the cameras. They were even kind enough to go completely against my usual type casting by having me play the role of the ingenue. They're making me work for it, though. I've now spent more time than I'd care to recall covered in cold, sticky, fake blood. I also spent 40 minutes in near total sensory deprivation, fighting off panic attacks, to get my head cast in alginate. And through the vast majority of this, I've been duct-taped to a rickety wooden chair in a tarp-lined basement during the middle of a Wisconsin winter.

But what can I say? I love it.

Working on such extremely low-budget films can be a pretty thankless task. None of us are being paid in anything more than free food (which is a lot, considering). I don't think there's one of us who thinks being involved in this project is going to break us big in the movie world, and we're all giving up fairly copious amounts of our free time to allow our director free reign to torture us for hours on end.

So why do we do it? Because we love to create, try new things, make art we think will entertain, and probably most of all, because we enjoy working with each other. I can't stress enough how having a good crew can make or break productions like this. After all, if your director is a pompous jerk, your fellow cast members are complete nincompoops, and the guy holding the boom mic keeps hitting you in the head with it - why on Earth would you want to stick around?

In my case, I have been incredibly fortunate to find myself fallen in amongst people who do what they do because they truly love it, who treat everyone with respect, and who are very much down in the trenches with you through the whole process. They're also motivated, creative, and hard-working, which certainly helps when you're lying on a chilly cement floor, wallowing in pools of red Caro syrup and the shards of a broken flower vase, trying to look like a glassy-eyed corpse.

Jealous?

Anyway, I've put together a little photo collage to illustrate some of the shenanigans and general trials of making a low-budget film. These were all taken this Sunday, but if you'd like to see more from the whole filming process, I will be periodically uploading quite a few shots to my Flickr pool. If you're not into fake blood and the like, though, feel free to steer clear.

We took time out from shooting to practice our hair cuttery skills.

All that pink makes it hard to be intimidated...until the blood starts gushing out of the dummy.

Being horribly tortured makes my eyes go all hooey.

This may well be my favorite shot of them all. Kelly makes an excellent axe murderer.

Yep, that's me with my head between the legs of a mannequin, about to be covered in blood. Good times.

If all of that hasn't effectively scared you off from ever seeing one of the film projects I'm involved in, be sure you keep you eyes peeled this fall for the release of a DVD that will include "High School Sweethearts," its double feature, "The Girls," and a bonus in the form of "Massacre! The Musical."

Don't leave tax incentives on the cutting room floor

No, no, and a thousand times no. Gov. Doyle has proposed eliminating the tax incentives for film productions in the state and offering a $500,000 grant in their stead.

And just when I was actually feeling mildly impressed by his new budget proposal, too. But hey, no one's perfect: that's why us uppity citizens are here to call Doyle and other elected officials out when they start spoutin' nonsense.

At first blush, it may seem like a good idea to limit tax breaks in the midst of a recession, but the film industry has already proved itself as something that creates jobs and brings millions of dollars in revenue to the state. It would be downright foolhardy to get rid of that now, just 13 months after first making the incentives available and after years of fighting to get them in place at all.

The upfront investment in film productions by the state leads to longer term benefits. It offers local industry professionals an opportunity to work near home instead of having to go to California. It creates jobs. And it brings cash to everything from hotels and restaurants to locations picked for filming and businesses that rent cars, do catering, etc.

So no, Gov. Doyle, now is not the time to cut out those tax incentives. It's tempting to start slashing and burning in the face of economic crisis, but that sort of tactic can often lead to the accidental chopping down of perfectly fruitful trees. Put down your axe.


(photo by gnecoffee on Flickr)

The good news for Feb. 19, 2009

I can't work up a full post today, so instead I'm going to offer you the thoughts and news of other, far more motivated people. I hope you'll take a moment to read them, and then check back here tomorrow, when I will again attempt to write something more substantial.

• [The Daily Page] Transportation analyst Tim Wong (who served on the Madison TPC for five years before getting the boot from the mayor) has a pretty interesting and well-fleshed out argument for why bus fares in the city should not be increased. I'm inclined to agree.
• [Discovery] The smartypants over at MIT have come up with this neat gizmo for your bike called the Green Wheel. It's an electric assist hub that recharges through pedaling and plug-in, but doesn't actually rub up against any part of your bike (Bluetooth technology!) so provides a much smoother ride. Plus, it looks like it will be a lot cheaper than existing electric hubs. Very cool.
• [Dane101] Things to do in Madison when you're (not) dead. Music, this weekend, so much!
• [SPLC] This is not good news. In fact, it's quite disturbing. Racist extremists are finding a foothold in our nation's armed forces, but officials continue to deny that there's a problem. Happily, the SPLC (my civil rights law firm crush) is on the case.
• [Wonkette] Rick Santorum still an idiot, last name still hilarious.
  

Doyle's budget plan remarkably sound

I'm reading over Doyle's budget plan and shaking my head - because, overall, it actually seems to make sense. Especially when compared to California's current budget gridlock, this is particularly refreshing.

Instead of the tired old (typically Republican) insistence on across the board tax cuts being the savior of us all, there's actually a proposal to raise taxes on those enjoying the top 1% income bracket. There are spending cuts which may result in some painful decisions for the affected organizations, but may well be necessary for the time being. He's also included funding for commuter rail (praise be that this is finally catching on nationwide). And the icing on this money cake? A cigarette tax hike and another proposed statewide smoking ban.

Two things in the budget likely to raise the most hackles are the income tax hike and the early release of certain "low risk" felons. The former strikes me as a non-issue - those people bringing in the most money should be taxed proportionally. Rep. Robin Vos, R-Caledonia, took umbrage at this proposal, however, saying that "the income tax increase would strike at small business owners who already have difficulty maintaining or creating jobs." Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly would this hike for the top 1% of earners affect small businesses? I'm willing to bet that most of them don't make enough to qualify for this in the first place. If someone can better explain this to me, though, I'm all ears.

And as for the early release program, done with the appropriate amount of thoughtful consideration, I can see this as being the right (if most controversial) step. Our prisons are wildly overpopulated as it is, and letting so-called low risk inmates out early could help solve that problem and save the state money. The trick, of course, lies in making sure these people have proper support once on the outside, so that they aren't as likely to reoffend.

I'm hopeful that Wisconsin can get this budget into place and make the necessary choices and moves to see our state through the economic downturn with as little pain as possible. It helps that we don't have the ridiculous 2/3rds majority rule for passage as in California, but we do have bitter partisan battles, so who knows. One thing's for sure: We need smart, swift action to stay on track - not petty power struggles and old, tired ideas.

Hip hop is not the problem

I physically cringed when I read yesterday's headline that a fight had broken out and arrests made (including that of Rob Dz, one of the area's most well-respected emcees) at a local hip-hop show at the Brink Lounge. Great, I thought, just what we need more of in Madison, another excuse for people to stigmatize the music based on the actions of a few bad actors.

Lo and behold, I (and many others) was sadly right: The Brink has now officially decided to stop booking hip-hop acts all together.

The Daily Page reports on several elements of the incident that I had only suspected, but do now look to be the case. That police likely responded with excessive force, quickly and needlessly escalating a situation that was, by the time they'd arrived, well under control. Sixteen MPD officers (plus an undisclosed number of Capitol Police) showed up when called about a fight between two women at the show. How is that at all reasonable? They then peppersprayed and arrested several of the event's performers for, as far as I can tell, trying to 1) get their equipment out of the building, and 2) protest when they saw what they felt to be excessive force being used on the female suspects.

I wasn't there, so I can't make any definite judgments on how things were handled and why, but after hearing from several witnesses and people directly effected, I can't help but suspect that this was a case of inappropriate action on the part of the MPD, based mostly on the overall stigma now associated with hip-hop in this city.

It's an absolute shame, too. As mentioned in the Daily Page article, "...media and political attention to hip-hop in Madison is focused on negative matters and doesn’t focus on positive events like recent shows geared towards registering voters, collecting winter coats for the indigent, or raising money for a child with cancer."

Every experience I've had with Wisconsin hip-hop artists has been an overall positive one. A lot of the emcees and DJs do a lot of work in the community to not only bolster the profile of their music, but to help kids find a productive purpose in life, to do community organizing, and to work on behalf of social justice issues. Hell, sometimes what they do is just artistic expression without any immediate or grander purpose, but that's just as valid.

The problem isn't with the genre as a whole (you could make an argument against certain specific artists glorifying violence, etc., but I can't think of one single local musician who'd fit that profile). The problem is with individuals who happen to be in the audience and decide to do something stupid. But that happens at shows of all different genres. I'd be really curious to see statistics on fights and other disturbances breaking out at live shows in general, and if there's any correlation between their frequency and corresponding genre. I doubt it.

So now, based on ill-founded but widespread fears, hip-hop artists have one less venue to play in town. We could start focusing on regular ol' security issues, good capacity and organization regulations, and personal responsibility - or we can keep choking out an otherwise vibrant and relevant form of artistic expression. Which is it, Madison?