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Like his Oakland City Council colleague Councilmember Desley Brooks (District 6 - Central East Oakland), Oakland City Council President Larry Reid (District 7 - East Oakland) also supposedly received a "Diploma of Certified Seedling," last year, and from the Oakland-based institution called UniCann. Or did he? The video's title - "Councilmember Larry Reid University of Cannabis graduate" - is just plain wrong. There's no video evidence of Councilmember Reid receiving the kind of diploma Brooks got last year. The video just has Larry expressing his gratitude for the location of the University of Cannabis facility in his District 7. Reid just says "Congratulations. Welcome to Oakland." Here's the video: It's no wonder the video's not being pushed via Twitter the way the video with Councilmember Brooks has been (and by members of the local and regional pot growing industry with Twitter accounts at @GroMaster, @M24Cabbage, an

The position of Chief of Police in Oakland should be an elected one. This blogger's reasons start with how a document announcing the search for a new chief in 2009, which became Tony Batts in 2010, was worded. There' an old job posting for the position of Chief Of Police For The City of Oakland that's still online, here . It's posted text, repeated below in case the City of Oakland had the original removed, explains, among other things, that the Chief of Police "reports to The City Administrator." Now, of course, many Oakland insiders know this, but the public's generally not aware of such things.  (Also, the Chief's salary was set at "up to $17,615.17 per month.  What Batts does with that 17 cents is anyone's guess.) But with that, one would agree it was wrong for certain members of the Oakland City Council to openly state that Chief Batts should have come to them regarding his job and working condition issues. The document openly s

Once upon a time in America, young people, workers, and fighters for social justice coined a phrase, “speak truth to power”. Most of us have settled for the media’s insistence that we now “speak only power to truth” or no truth at all. From the so-called energy crisis which was a Dick Cheney-Enron-induced cataclysm from which California has yet to recover, to the so-called mortgage meltdown, we have accepted lies and bullshit in place of research and another 60’s throwback, telling it like it is. Since those tumultuous days (lots of young people look back nostalgically to that time. Fear not, they are returning but with facebook, vimeo and all the repression, violence and STDs of that period) right wing think tanks have spent lots of their largess redefining the terms of our society and dictating them to the 90% of us who don’t control the wealth of our corporatocracy. These think tanks have developed the terms which define and then limit the debate to fighting a rear-actio

Hello Your Fit Day Friends! I have to admit, this warrior woman had been suffering pain for the past 3 months or so. It started back in June 2010 when I pulled my inner thigh muscles (called adductors in fitness speak) most likely doing dead lifts. After rolling it out using the foam roller, and taking it easy on the lifting for a couple weeks, I was soon back to running, as well as training hard for a figure competition I had penciled into my schedule for the June of 2011. The show must go on you know! But by the time August 2010 rolled around I was starting to feel tightness in my glutes (called the butt in plain speak) and I noticed that running stairs (a great plyometric and fat burning workout by the way) were becoming a little painful with the high – knee lifts. So, in September I decided to lay off the stair-running for a few weeks. Trail running, however, didn’t seem to bother me. Thank the universe, since I live for those East Bay trails! Then, when even long strides star