REMEMBERING

SERGEANT HART

I happened upon your article (“Brave Hart,” Artvoice v5n10) this week via another soldier from the 172nd Chemical Company. My name is Frederick Feeley and I served with Sgt. Hart during the deployment to Kuwait in 2003. I remember being there for a year, sitting behind those same fifty-caliber machine guns and up in the towers. I remember the way that information would flow from the front lines and the stories that began to drift in. I remember being stationed toward the end of our deployment outside of the Kuwait International Airport and seeing the faces of those who had been in battle and seen the atrocities that the war had provided.

I remember also the pain, the thousand-yard stares, the heat, the anger of the soldiers coming down to Kuwait to either go home for their R & R trips or for redeployment, and I thought to myself “By the grace of God, there go I.” Our unit was very lucky in the fact that we were not exposed to those harsh conditions. I also know of the things that we were subjected to. The lies, the manipulations, the higher-ranking officers trying to make names for themselves, the politics and danger of getting in the way of these things.

Reading this article angered me at first. I thought some pretty rough things toward my former comrade about his decision, but I have since had a change of (no pun intended) heart. The war was extremely mishandled, whether or not it is justified in legal terms isn’t really the issue. The issue is that from the beginning, there were plenty of mistakes made, mistakes that have cost lives of those who swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, those who swore to fight for their families and friends, and those who fought to destroy a regime that was monstrous.

In short, we have turned into the regime we were so hell-bent on destroying. In the guise of “humanitarian responsibility” we have turned against our own people and have mercilessly sacrificed the lives of our young people for a group of religious militants that have taken to destroying each other and have no problem catching us in the cross-fire. In my opinion, we need to withdraw and let them deal it themselves; you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.

As far as Hart and his family goes, my thoughts and prayers are with them. This wasn’t an easy decision to make. Eight thousand people have deserted the Army during the duration of this campaign, and if that’s the case then there is definitely something wrong. I know soldiers, I know the feelings of responsibility that they possess and I know that they will beat themselves over the head to aid someone in trouble. It takes a special kind of person to put on that uniform everyday and accept the risks that come along with it.

Frederick Feeley

Taylor, Michigan

New York’s

Outlaw Farmers

Once a small part of New York’s farm economy, marijuana is now the state’s second-ranked money crop and, nationally, with an annual market value of $35.8 billion, marijuana ranks ahead of corn and wheat crops, combined. As New York’s congressional delegation helps piece together a new federal farm bill in Washington, they should consider how marijuana, long an agricultural outcast, would better serve the folks back home as a legal, regulated crop—like tobacco.

A good starting point for this policy review is Marijuana Production in the United States (2006), a study by Dr. Jon Gettman, a regional economics expert and adjunct instructor at Shepard University.

“Despite intensive eradication efforts,” says Gettman, “domestic marijuana production has increased ten fold over the last 25 years, from 2.2 million pounds in 1981 to 22 million pounds in 2006…and its proliferation to every part of the country demonstrates that marijuana has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of the national economy.”

Currently marijuana use is discouraged through draconian law enforcement policies. Using crop eradication tactics, federal and state agents attempt to wipe out the annual marijuana crop, but they only reach about eight percent of it, leaving the rest to enter a thriving underground marketplace. What is needed is a new policy capable of controlling not just a fraction of the marijuana crop, but one that effectively deals with the 92 percent now reaching marijuana buyers.

New York’s Cash Crops. In 2006, New York’s marijuana crop was valued at more than $329 million, behind the 2003-2005 average for the state’s leading cash crop, hay at $341 million, but ahead of vegetables at $311 million. New York is not unique. In 12 states marijuana is the top cash crop and in 17 more it ranks second or third.

While marijuana is generally consumed in the state in which it is grown, Gettman calculates that production in Alabama, California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii, Washington, West Virginia, Arkansas and Alaska exceeds local needs and allows these states to become marijuana exporters.

Past studies suggest that new federal and state policies regulating rather than outlawing marijuana could benefit New York three ways:

Cut costs. Taxpayers could save up to $1.1 billion a year by no longer enforcing anti-marijuana laws.

Add revenues. Tax revenues on marijuana sales could bring in up to $65 million per year.

Reduce sales to minors. High school students claim that marijuana is easier for them to get than liquor because it isn’t regulated. Using tax revenues on marijuana sales, public officials could do a better job keeping marijuana out of the hands of minors and fund anti-drug education programs aimed at kids.

Comparing marijuana to other widely used drugs, Gettman writes, “Effective control over the production of tobacco and alcohol are prerequisites to both controlling access to those drugs by teenagers and the implementation of successful educational and discouragement campaigns.”

Lobbyists for the big agri-businesses growing most of the nation’s corn, cotton, rice and wheat will, as usual, use the new farm bill to hit up taxpayers for more than $11 billion in farm welfare payments each year. Marijuana growers, on the other hand, are prospering without handouts of any kind from Albany or Washington. That could be good news for our debt-riddled federal government and probably a welcome prospect in Albany as well.

What to do? The president’s draft farm bill sent to Capitol Hill earlier this year includes, in a section titled, “Specialty Crop Support,” a request that Congress help the nation’s potato farmers compete in the marketplace. If members of Congress declare the potato a “specialty” crop deserving help, they will surely agree that marijuana farmers also raise a specialty crop with marketplace hardships.

Here is an opportunity for Congress to begin easing marijuana into the agricultural mainstream by replacing a failed federal policy with one that actually controls the use of marijuana. This, in turn, will give state lawmakers in Albany and elsewhere the green light to do likewise.

Ronald Fraser

West Falls

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization.

THE COST OF LOST TREES

Buck Quigley’s recent article, “Stumped” (Artvoice v6n24) highlighted two key ills hobbling Western New York: cronyism and knee-jerk, bottom-line thinking.

While cronyism seems endemic and epidemic in these parts, the simplistic “chase any free money” mentality can be particularly dangerous and costly when it converges with the cronyism Buck unveiled.

My own experience in the nearby ’burbs illustrates the hurdles facing anyone hoping to defend the trees. When I contacted local officials in Lancaster regarding the rationale for marking entire rows of damaged but living curbside trees near my home in the village of Lancaster, I was told that they would each be examined by a certified forester before being cut down, and that I might have an opportunity to object if I disagreed with particular decisions. Unfortunately, the official who offered those assurances was on an extended health leave when FEMA contractors showed up with saws to cut down a pair of Bradford pear trees in front of my house on Walden Avenue in Lancaster. My efforts to achieve a “stay of execution” by calling local officials failed and instead local police were called in to deal with me, deemed a troublemaker for interfering with a federal (FEMA) project. I was given a choice of being arrested and fined or leaving so the crew could finish removing the trees in front of my house. Realizing that I wouldn’t spare the trees either way, I backed off and planned to focus on replanting instead.

To start the replanting process, formally, I made a series of phone calls to village, town, county, state and federal officials to see if replanting was in the cards. I learned that the town planned to plant one-inch saplings sometime next year—but no guarantee that they would get to my address then or the following year. At best, I would be dead and/or gone before those saplings shade my house again. Hence I made another flurry of calls to the same government offices, and more, to get clearance to replant larger trees myself. To my dismay, everyone referred me to yet another office and another…and yet no one seemed to feel that they could give me the go- ahead. At least one official, unofficially suggested planting without permits—to avoid the hassle.

Several weeks and many calls later I finally had a state permit application package, the first of several official hurdles, but we were then in the midst of a drought. Assuming that my permit was granted, there was also a $40 permit fee, and the cost of trees ($ 100-250+) plus delivery ($75-100). And double that for actual planting. When you add the cost of watering them and the week or more worth of work time lost pursuing the process, my cost could easily exceed $1,000—a strong incentive to settle for one-inch saplings. If you add the value of services lost over the 15-20 years it will take those trees to mature enough to again shade and protect my house like the original trees, the total cost of losing the pair of trees easily reaches several thousand dollars, including increased air conditioning, lower property value, noise reduction costs, increased house vibration, carbon absorption (global warming) and oxygen production and increased risk of potential damage from vehicular accidents etc.

Finally, as in the MasterCard commercials, there is the “priceless” loss of privacy and aesthetics, including the songs of robins, orioles, cardinals, etc. which I will no longer hear while working with the endless drone of traffic at my back. What is that worth ?

That is why I advise and urge Buffalonians to speak up for their and defend their viable marked trees—or prepare to miss them as I do mine.

Carl Mrozek

Lancaster