With Prop 19 vote coming up in just a few days, it may seem like everything that can be done has been done, but that’s not true by a long shot.
These last three days make a huge difference. It’s the final impression in voters’ minds. It’s the final decision to actually go and vote. This is the time to turn up the heat.
And our side is doing that. Between Just Say Now, and SSDP and LEAP and the Yes on 19 campaign, there’s a comprehensive effort involving education, marketing, and get out the vote efforts.
On the other side?
On the other side of the campaign, Prop. 19 opponents are running out of steam, having failed to show up for scheduled debates in recent weeks. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, for example, failed to show up for a scheduled debate in front of the L.A. Urban League of Young Professionals against pro-Prop. 19 LAPD deputy chief of police Stephen Downing (Ret.) earlier this month. And on Friday, No On 19 spokesman Roger Salazar failed to appear at a scheduled debate on KPFA against former Superior Court judge Jim Gray and labor union leader Dan Rush. Earlier this week, when No On 19 campaign manager Tim Rosales was asked by a debate moderator for the Commonwealth Club what his idea for a better world is, Rosales simply answered “vacation†– revealing just how ready he is to give up the effort.
If you’re in California, there are tons of ways for you to get involved in these last few days. Here’s a list of rallies, phone banks, literature drops, etc. where you can participate in different communities.
You can contribute. Yes, even at this late date, in political campaigns they can turn the money around that fast. As more money comes in they can contact their media reps and get additional airings of TV ads.
Don’t live in California? Don’t have money to contribute? No problem. You can actually help contact voters in California and the three states with medical marijuana initiatives by phone from anywhere. Just Say Now’s Phone Bank system is ridiculously easy to do. They give you a script and feed you phone numbers to call right on your computer. You don’t even have to leave the sofa.
Finally, do you have friends in California? Give them a call. Make sure they’re going to vote on Tuesday. Make sure they know why pot legalization is the most important issue before voters this election day.
Well this is amazing, it looks like the prohibs in cali seem to have given up. This truly might be the beginning of the end, and I’m excited.
one of my mantras over the years has been that we need to challenge these Farengis (Star Trek buttheads) to public debate. We need to chide them, poke them and prod them. They are bankrupt factually. Theirs is an argument of both intellectual and moral poverty. Shine a little light on ’em and it becomes apparent that not only are they few in number but those capable of debate are an even smaller group.
Here’s a big “Huzzah!” to the LEAPsters for stepping up and meeting these bozos (w/ apologies to Firesign Theater) nose on. If they can gain a forum where they can challenge ol’ Droopy Dog Gil, that would be like sex, really good sex… metaphorically speaking of course…
Ah…Mr. Rosales, my hopes for you are more on the lines of extended unemployment.
the prohibs might be giving up but the growers and dealers both legal and illegal arent giving up so easily
There should be free screenings of The Union!
Salazar is a Democratic Party operative working oh-so-very-hard at antagonizing the exact swing voters the Dems desperately need to maintain themselves in power this election. Which I am sure the Republicans are chortling with glee about.
To paraphrase an old saying, “After 19, the Deluge.” In other words, first we demonstrate we mean business at the voting booths by showing up and pulling the lever if only for 19. Then remember all those stupid Dem pols who stood in our way next election…and let them know why you’re voting against them next cycle. Let’s ‘send some messages’ of our own, shall we?
“Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.”
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.
Prop. 19 Supporters Apparently Coy With Pollsters
An odd trend among public and internal polls on the measure: People are less likely to tell a live person that they support legalizing pot than an automated pollster…
Does Obama Support Legal Pot or Not?
The Obama administration publicly opposes Proposition 19, the California ballot measure that would legalize pot. But the White House, perhaps fearful of angering the already frustrated Democratic base, is being conspicuously careful not to draw too much attention to its own stance on the issue.
Attorney General Eric Holder went on the record earlier this month in a letter to former chiefs of the Drug Enforcement Administation saying that the Department of Justice “strongly opposes” Proposition 19. And drug czar Gil Kerlikowske was in the state last week criticizing the measure. But as far as the administration’s active opposition to the measure goes, that’s about it…
The Prop 19 Paper Chase
*** There’s just one little catch: even if Prop 19 passes, marijuana cultivation, possession and sale will still be illegal according to the federal Controlled Substances Act.
*** Could the Justice Department nullify all the potential boons of Prop 19? No, says Stephen Gutwillig, California director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “The reality is that the federal government has neither the resources nor the political will to undertake sole—or even primary—enforcement responsibility for low-level marijuana offenses in California,” he wrote recently. In other words, without assistance from state and local law enforcement, the Justice Department doesn’t have the means to follow through on Holder’s pledge. That might be why Los Angeles County sheriff Lee Baca recently promised to help the feds by continuing to enforce prohibition laws even if Prop 19 passes. Baca’s October 15 announcement may also have been motivated in part by politics…
*** In a conversation with The Nation, Hanna Dershowitz, attorney for the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies and a Prop 19 advocate, called Baca’s statement “alarming and disturbing,” and argued that a California court would not accept a charge from his department unless it violated state or local law. “That an officer of the law would state affirmatively that he’s going to choose which laws he wants to enforce… that’s not his job, and that’s not his right,” Dershowitz said.
*** San Francisco-based defense attorney Zenia Gilg made a similar argument, citing People v. Tilehkooh, a California Court of Appeals case in which the court ruled that a probationer who faced a violation-of-probation charge for possessing state-sanctioned medicinal marijuana could not be convicted “because a state judge is not responsible for enforcing federal law,” Gilg told The Nation.
*** Meanwhile, a number of California cities—including Stockton, Berkeley, Sacramento, San Jose, Long Beach and Oakland—have already put measures on the ballot to set taxes for marijuana sales should Prop 19 pass.
*** States have long served as “laboratories of democracy,” and this fall Californians have a historic opportunity to embark on an experiment that will ultimately benefit all Americans, pot smokers and abstainers alike. As Prop 19 supporters grapple with the prospect of legal challenges to the law, they should bear in mind that the specter of the Supremacy Clause is no reason to stay home on November 2. The proposal to legalize marijuana in California may be drawing out the tension between our federal and state governments, but this is a tension our noble republic was designed to sustain.
The “campaign” will not be finished until cannabis is legal in the United States. In years to come Proposition 19 will be known as the first hammer blow against “The Prohibition Wall”. We do not have to crumble the wall, only break it. All we have to do is make the “Wall” unsafe for any politician to stand behind. The illusion of invulnerability has been broken. Insert wedges in a crack and gentle blows will break granite. 19 is the crack in the “wall”, now it’s….Hammer Time!
the job’s not finished until the gulags are empty and our brothers and sisters are free. we are the small ax, let’s make some chips.
For the seventy plus years this policy has stood, it has never been subject to a plebiscite. Now we get to see.
Unfortunately I know two different lifetime cannabis users who have both been arrested in their lives for cannabis. They insist corporations are poised to take over cannabis and flood the market with crap. They also insist that taxing it is an intolerable act of oppression and that 19 means personal homegrows will also be taxed, requiring purchase of tax stamps etc. Ludicrous notions but these guys should be yes voters and they can’t be the only ones that we should have on our side but don’t.
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With the years of fighting/defying the marijuana laws comes
a certain amount of skepticism and suspicion of anything that has to do with now paying taxes for what we have been hiding for so long.
All this hullabaloo about taxes on personal grows will disappear because if the cities put too much tax on personal grows,guess what will happen,people will just continue to hide their grows.
New technology on the led lighting systems are moving forward and when they are capable of outperforming the
current 1000 watt systems,there goes the fire hazards,
the high electric usage and the heat signature that the law uses to catch you now.
I hate that I am not 21 and just now getting too experience these days ahead,they may be disappointing,
exalting or exquisite,but they will never be boring.
allen420, the Ferengi are far to sensible to prohibit cannabis as medicine. Now they might indeed make you pay through the nose, but no way would they mindlessly waste resources and toss money down the rathole of prohibition. The Ferengi would be simply flabbergasted by the idea of wasting money because some people might enjoy getting high. The Ferengi would more likely be ecstatic that there are such idiots in the universe, and would be operating their own black market outlet and counting their gold pressed latinum and laughing at the idiot prohibitionists all the way to the bank.
clay, you sound like a Chinaman issuing a curse of society.
Interesting times indeed.
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So here’s something that almost got by without my noticing. The Republitard candidate for Governor of New Mexico Susana Martinez has vowed to repeal New Mexico’s medical cannabis laws if elected.
What is it with these idiots? Do they teach people over at politician’s school that it’s a good idea to shit on something supported by 70% of the voters?
So we have the grand pooh-bah of morons, Mr. Andrew Cuomo in New York saying medical cannabis over his dead body. Great, let’s accommodate him. The world minus his asshole point of view would be a better place. Then there’s the dingbat of the year in New Mexico. Fucking New Mexico isn’t exactly a free for all with their anally retentive medical cannabis program.
Not only to shit on the will of the people but to promote misery and suffering for no other reason than they don’t want people to enjoy getting high. May they both get cancer and AIDs so that we may tell them ‘tough luck assholes, suffer.” Here, have a marinol pill. Oh my, you can’t keep it down? Well that’s the only FDA approved treatment available for you. We can’t have people getting relief from unapproved sources, now can we? Too bad, so sad! It’s much more important that little 13 year old Timmy be required to buy his cannabis from a black market vendor than to bring relief to the sick and suffering!
Ah well the thing that makes me really, really sad is that we probably couldn’t bring ourselves to actually do that, not even to total fucking assholes who deserve it as much as Ms. Martinez and Mr. Cuomo. But it doesn’t mean we can’t dream about it happening. Well maybe we could just for a week or two? Just to make sure they get to experience how it feels to be sick, suffering, and denied relief by a fucking Know Nothing politician?
Not only should we let the politicians know how we feel, we should let the people in the medical pot industry know too.
I’m frustrated and tired of being warned by dispensary owners and workers, growers, and even my pot doc about how bad prop 19 will be. They have been making money hand over fist, unfairly taking advantage of patients and faux-patients alike. I think we should boycott the providers which campaign against prop 19.
Another thing we can do, is post comments in support of prop 19 wherever there are articles in opposition to it. I got here by news googling “no on prop 19” to look for newspaper endorsements for the opposition. I’ve been linking to this video everywhere I can:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUfTdASDfHo
Embed it if you’re permitted to do so.
Frustratingly, there is a lot of propaganda against prop 19 in the newspapers. It’s almost as if they are so self-conscious about not appearing too liberal these days, that they oppose 19 merely to help define their public image as tough and non-biased (i. e. — conservative). It’s helpful to our cause if right below every one of those op-ed/anti-prop 19 endorsements, there is a pro prop 19 argument which refutes the newspaper’s lies.
It appears very ugly now. But, just as the polls changed for the negative seemingly overnight, they can change back just as quickly. I don’t like the term “Broadus” effect, as I don’t think Snoop Dogg will change anybody’s mind, nor get any more hip-hopsters to the polls than were already registered and planning to vote. However, there may be some credence to the idea that people haven’t been so honest in the polls.
I can think of many people in my profession in front of whom I wouldn’t want to show my enthusiastic support for prop 19. It’s possible that there are some people who might even be afraid to tell their opinions to strangers on the phone in order to avoid incriminating themselves in any way. In California it would be highly unlikely for the police to run a sting through a fake political poll. But in other states it might be prudent to keep your opinions about illegal behavior between yourself and your most trusted friends.
Hopefully this is the situation we have in California in regard to the prop 19 polls.
It’s late (early). Time to crash and start where I left off in the morning(day).
See you at the polls!
Brown/Boxer/No on 23/Yes on 19! ☮
Man the next 3 days are going to be tedious. I need one of those stasis units they have on the Enterprise so I can sleep through it and wake up Wednesday morning, if just for my own sanity. The Know Nothings are out in force and I think it would likely be more pleasurable to be beaten over the head with a baseball bat than to read their fantasy land reasoning.
What? Hold on, one more time please? Oh, I could just turn off my computer or simply look at porn? No, I don’t think that’s possible but thanks for the suggestion. Well unless you know of a porno site which features Miss Calvina getting stuck in the ass with a large, pointed stick. Shit, I’d even carve out an exception to my personal policy concerning Internet porn and would pay a nominal fee to watch that.
Damn, I wonder if anyone else feels that way? Setting up such a site would likely generate lots and lots of money from fees charged to watch something so pleasurable. I understand I probably couldn’t get Miss Calvina to work for me in that capacity, but there are look alike/body doubles, photo shopping, and then there’s always animation to get around that obstacle. Well, no I guess it wouldn’t work because so many people would like to see that that my servers would be continuously crashing from so many people trying to get a glimpse. http://www.scaredstraight.xxx featuring Miss Calvina, only $29.95 for a month of viewing pleasure. Oh well a guy can fantasize, right?
joeschmeaux, frankly I’d rather just document the fact that so many in the medical cannabis distribution chain are enemies of freedom. One of the perpetual pieces of nonsense from the Know Nothings is the baseless accusation that medical cannabis is a ‘stalking horse’ for re-legalizing recreational cannabis. Oh yeah, well why did all these people who contributed to the passage of prop 215 come out against Prop 19?
Tip of the pin for your excellent posting alias.
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The world is full of kings and queens
who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
And they’ll tell you black is really white
The moon is just the sun at night
And when you walk in golden halls
You get to keep the gold that falls
it’s Heaven & Hell.
a good thrashing from a fat and psychopathic wife
That sounds like one great town to me ;>)
Miss Calvina getting stuck in the ass with a large, pointed stick.
Make that a burnt stick and you,ve got your first subscriber!
The British study just confirmed again that Cannabis is much safer than alcohol and hard drugs. AARP reports that more and more older Americans use Medicinal Cannabis for a variety of Medical conditions! And yet another study is proving that Cannabis may play a significant preventative role in aggressive breast cancer! Cannabis should never have been made illegal to begin with. It has been used as a medicinal plant and as a recreational substance since time immemorial. Cannabis is not physically addictive, as its use does not lead to the development of a physical withdrawal syndrome. The so-called “gateway drug” theory has been completely discredited as invalid, and declared “half-baked” by a recent large study. It is a myth, but unfortunately this particular myth takes a long time to die! At the same time it is an accepted scientific fact that Cannabis use suppresses violent behavior, which I believe is very important from the public safety point of view. It is also being proven that Cannabis may serve as an “exit” substance for recovering alcoholics/hard drug/prescription drug abusers, which has a potential of alleviating the Nation’s drug and alcohol problem. YES on Cali Prop. 19! YES to Medicinal Cannabis in all 50 States ASAP!