650 Students in Southern Humboldt will be without home to school transportation in the near future. The cuts equals $1,800 per student a year. Can't the Southern Humboldt MJ Growers kick down what they should be paying in state and federal taxes directly to the School Districts to help with the shortfall? Greedy ass holes won't even help their own fire districts! Start a foundation to help the kids. Want to make money off the Rural land but not help the rural children? Shame on you!

It could be worse though, in the Death Valley Unified School District has to spend $3,500 per student. Don't think they grow as much dope there. Nothing grows except scrub brush.

Why did Home to School Transportation get cut? Might want to ask Chesbro, Huffman and Evans!

Assembly Bill 121, considered a “Trigger Bill”, was introduced by Huffman, Chesbro and other members of the Committee on Budget. This bill called for the elimination of $248 Million from the Home-to-School transportation fund.  It was voted on by the Assembly and Senate floor on 6/28/11. The Assembly passed this bill 51-28 with both Huffman and Chesbro as “Aye” votes. The Senate passed the bill 23-17 with Noreen Evans voting “Aye”. The bill was enacted with Governor Jerry Brown signature.

I would venture that when arguments were coming up about this bill, someone probably pointed out that only 16% of the students in California use the bus, so this affects only a small part of the population. But why did our rural legislative representatives not consider how harshly this would affect our far north counties? Or how can they justify what has happened.

Stephen Rhoads of Strategic Education Services, which represents a coalition of school transportation departments. says that what has been rumored was that the Democrats thought that cutting transportation would hurt the Republicans. In the end, it doesn’t hurt the Republicans at all, because none of them voted for AB 121. Rhoads says that the Democrats were following the direction of their leadership and may not even have known what they were approving.

Both Evans and Chesbro seem to be experiencing regret on voting for this bill. Chesbro has been getting a lot of mail and phone calls and is meeting in caucus with his peers to come up with a way to restore the funding. Evans, too, is scrambling to undo the damage.

I appreciate that our legislators are now trying to do something about the issue, but what do you think those odds are? Not very good in my book.

(Thanks to Mary Anderson of the Redwood Times for some of this information)

McKinleyville Press sensationalizing story? Robin Marks to jail? Samoasoftball needs conjugal visitation?

2nd Congressional Predictions Mendocino County.

I am not convinced that Republican Dan Roberts will have any legs in any of the Northern Counties. Less than 50% of the Republicans will vote for him, with many split votes all over the place. This is a harder County to canvas and campaign, so I am giving the advantage to Huffman, Adams and Lawson. After Del Norte, Trinity, Humboldt and Mendocino, I have Solomon with 13,184, Huffman at 12,789, Adams at 12,505 and Lawson at 11,075. Very close with 2 counties to go. Watch for Roberts making a dramatic move down south!

County		Population	Voters	Dems	Reps	Other	Percent
Mendocino		86,000	48,000	11054	5645	6821	49%
	Banafsheh Akhlaghi			221	56	68	1.5%
	Normon Solomon			2245	286	1156	15.7%
	Dan Roberts			553	1976	682	13.7%
	Susan Adams			2110	890	1364	18.6%
	Jared Huffman			2310	800	1400	19.2%
	William Courtney			553	169	205	3.9%
	Andy Caffery			521	56	273	3.6%
	Stacey Lawson			1888	960	1400	18.1%
	Tiffany Renee			653	452	273	5.9%
				11054	5645	6821