Very interesting video from a local news program interviewing Dennis Flaherty of the Minnesota Peace and Police Officers Association. This is a group that opposes and testifies against any medical marijuana bill in the state and which the Minnesota Governor has said must approve the law.
Flaherty is an outright liar throughout the segment, claiming gateway effect for marijuana, etc.
Where it got interesting was that the reporter actually asked if enforcing illegal marijuana benefitted the police.
His response?
Absolutely not. That is a myth and a total… actually very irresponsible that anyone would suggest that law enforcement profits out of marijuana busts.
But just a bit later she got him to say…
Any monies, revenues that may be generated through forfeiture are just used to pay the salaries or getting further tools to focus on the problem.
Uh, yeah. That would be profiting. And she nailed him on it.
This is notable in that a local news station didn’t just let the police officers association control the message, but they actually questioned their motivation.
Oh, and by the way… prominently displayed on the desk in front of Flaherty was Kevin Sabet’s SAM manifesto, which Flaherty appeared to be using as a guide to his lies.
She should have asked the officer how much federal grant money his agency received for the last 5 years.
I wait patiently for someone to ask them that.
I intend to email/call my “local” and the major news media to ask them that excellent question
When OxyContin was FDA approved in 1995, did the then governor of Minnesota (Arne Carlson) declare that the Minnesota Peace and Police Officers Association had to approve of the drug before doctors could prescribe it?
When a new law enforcement procedure or tactic is being considered, does the governor of Minnesota seek approval from the Minnesota Medical Association before the procedure/tactic can be implemented?
How batshit crazy is this stuff?
Kudos to the reporter for the screeching rewind revealing Flaherty’s hypocrisy. Nicely done.
Dennis Flaherty? Can you say ‘Irish Catholic cop’?
Professional Catholics better watch out. Better not cry. They better not pout, I’m telling you why: Marijuana’s coming to town.
Marijuana’s making a list. Checking it twice; gonna find out who’s naughty or nice. Marijuana’s coming to town.
Not if the town’s in Iowa. I watched Chuck Grassley on C-Span yesterday, “grilling” Michele Leonhart.
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The Iowa Legislature jumped on the CBD bandwagon very recently. So recently that I think that the bill is still on the Governor’s desk. It’s just stunning how quickly Legislatures in States are overwhelmingly authorizing exo-cannabinoid medicine as long as the exo-cannabinoid isn’t ∆-9 THC. At this point authorizing CBD extracts appear to be moving faster and with less opposition than did bills criminalizing so called synthetic cannabis.
I don’t know what it means but it sure as heck proves that the lawmakers were never worried about FDA approval, potential harm to patient, preventing patients from suffering any more than humanly possible to avoid, or anything other than keeping Cheech, Chong or Jeff Spicoli from getting high regardless of their inability to make that happen.
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On Election Day 2014 Montana might vote on whether or not to re-criminalize medicinal cannabis. Signatures are being collected to get a ballot initiative modeled on the failed 1998 Arizona Prop 300. So the voters won’t be considering medicinal cannabis directly but whether or not Montana law will forbid the legalization of any substance listed on Federal naughty list number 1. They only need around 30,000 signatures so I’d expect that they will have to be genuinely incompetent in order to not bring the matter to a vote. That’s not impossible though. The prohibitionists did just that in Montana in 2010. At the moment the only substance that would be affected would be cannabis and would include the CBD extracts. I’d prefer that it make the ballot and be defeated. It would be a severely crippling body blow to the idiot prohibitionists, possibly fatal. Will Montanans cede that authority to the Feds? Stay tuned.
Alaska’s ballot initiative to codify petty possession and petty cultivation looks like it’s going to be pushed back to happen on Election Day rather than the primary in August. I don’t know if that’s good or bad as it appears to me that Alaska is one of the places where the elections are decided on the primary ballot.
Radical Russ has the scoop on CBD-only bills…and I tend to agree.
It’s a ruse, a feint, to try to end-run and nullify the need for legalization, keeping MMJ in the hands of Big Pharma and it’s why full-on legalization is the only way to go.
Meanwhile, in Clark County, Nevada, judges, mayors, casino owners, women’s cancer clinic directors, city council members, restaurateurs, newspaper publishers, and Las Vegas political heavyweights, are applying to get into the medical marijuana dispensary business .
It’s interesting that Sig Rogich is on that list. He was a republican media consultant who fought AGAINST Nevada’s Question 7 in 2006 to legalize and regulate – talk about hypocrisy…
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Well the first thing that strikes me is that they’re calling it cannabis. I wonder how that happened?
I’m sure that Uncle Fester is defining profit as personal gain above and beyond a reasonable salary range. Since the Byrne grants and money stolen by forfeiture doesn’t enrich the typical LEO on the street his reasoning is that they’re not profiting. Just because that new drone that the LEA bought with the stolen money is fun to play with it’s not profit because if the orificer quits his job, he doesn’t get to take it home. Also, Uncle Fester works for a “non-profit” organization and draws a reasonable salary, so how can the salary be profit?
I’m not agreeing with the arguments just trying to verbalize them. My wife works for a non-profit and I can tell you for certain that none of them think of their salaries or those of their co-workers are profit. Not even the CEO with his $750k pay and benefits package. My advice is to not waste your breath trying to explain it to them. I’ve had my wife’s ear for almost 2 full decades now and when it comes to this subject it’s eyes closed, fingers in ears, singing lalalalalalala ***I can’t hear you*** when this subject comes up.
“Non-profit” and “Governmental organ” are not synonymous. In fact the USPS is mandated to turn a profit. And a business profits, but the workers don’t take that home, either. Not a very supportable argument. And she doesn’t even mention the Byrne Grants….direct reimbursement for arrests.
Sorry, not to belabor, but the kids prevented me from making the edit window.
Non profit is a tax status, it’s not applicable to governmental agencies…they are the beneficiaries of those dollars, not their generators.
So I guess I’m saying that if they are generating revenue over and above their operating costs, it’s 100 percent profit. Every dime. And these guys (the agencies) do “take it home” they keep confiscated toys and cars and just paint them with their logos. Boom.
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Like I said, I was verbalizing my understanding of their point of view. Uncle Fester (the bald ugly man in the video) works for The Minnesota Peace and Police Officers Association, which is not an agency of any government. You don’t need to take my word for it, you can read their IRS forms filed here:
http://citizenaudit.org/410714987/
Fully 10% of the work force is employed by what are called “non-profit” organizations.
meanwhile, in Uruguay… their new regulations have been released.
$1/gram…
and unlike here, the pols goal in Uruguay’s legalization is to take away cannabis profits from the black market, not just filling coffers with tax $$.
even at a buck per gram Uruguay is the new land of the free. the people are free and the cannabis is cheap.
I’d recommend staying tuned to the Uruguay situation. Their president Mujica has been making comments about how their system will track the product AFTER the sale as well as before. That’s ostensibly because they have a limit on how much an individual can buy per month.
But even if it’s legal, how many people are going to want their government tracking how much they buy/use. If that system stays in place, I predict the black market will not go away, just shift its focus to cater to those who don’t want to be in the government’s tracking system. Probably not an insignificant number.
You can’t use an American view of our government as a model for how Uruguayans see their government. But a lot of us have witnessed what happens when outsiders get to see who chooses to enjoy cannabis. 5 years from now nobody in Uruguay is really going to care. Perhaps they have a lunatic fringe of Kev-Kevs and Fays and Semblers and Kleimans but for some unexplained reason I think those are a defect peculiar to the United States and our kinfolk countries. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t heard any Uruguayans squealing like stuck piglets in the last couple of years. Do they inspect people’s urine in Uruguay?
Wow my spell check says I misspelled Kleiman above. It suggested Klansman instead. Now that’s going to send me to bed chuckling.
It is time to force the police to admit they are driven by the same greed that drives the drug market prohibition created,the entrepreneurs into investing in a criminal activity and people spending a million dollars+ for a political office that doesn’t pay but 1/4 that amount,,,greed,,the driving force in a capitalist system,,,and greed will remove marijuana from government control just like it gave it to them.
Ware houses and closed down factories are being bought up in every state as the real estate gets it’s first breath of life in a decade,,,all marijuana and greed driven…..
Geezer now! and still no Respite! Not enough time left in Life, to get a Life! Need 1,000 Plane Raids on IMF/Rothschild/Vatican/$oros Fiat-Money HQ to end the Madness! Volunteer Work truly is Never Hard! All that is Old, is New Again! Use that McNoggin! Get McNaggin! Smart Meter and Shotgun, Made for each Other! Pooom!
Notice Officer Flaherty’s tell when asked if cops profit from asset forfeiture…he immediately breaks eye contact with the interviewer, looks down and closes his eyes as he speaks. I’m sure his own police training has told him that that is a body language reaction when telling a lie.
The confirmation that he knows it’s a lie comes when his repressed truth forces its way out of his mouth later on. Then of course there’s the Sabet Book of Spin prominently placed on the table. I think perhaps Flaherty is none too bright.
Jean if you refuse to hire people because they are too intelligent then eventually the leadership candidates are made up from a choice of the smartest of the stupid enough to be a cop.,,,
Which also explains Congress.
Our whole system of government is due for an overhaul. It started with the minds of men, probably some of the smartest of their time, but still focused through the lenses of their experience. The US population in 1776 was approximately 2.5 Million for the entire country. That’s a smallish city by today’s standards.
We don’t necessarily need to tear down the entire foundation, and blast into bedrock, but otherwise, this house needs a re-model badly. Some of the additions were only meant to be an additional bedroom, but now they have converted the closet into an entrance to a subterranean bat-cave with flying bears with fricken laser beam eyes. Throw out some of the furniture (keep the couch!) and take out the trash would you? WTF, where did that come from.
OT (kinda) question…
My memory seems to tell me that at some point Kev-kev worked for Calvina, can anyone confirm or deny?
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Sure, he’s the whip test dummy at Ms. Calvina’s Land of Submission and BDSM world. Employee of the month 43 months running now. There isn’t anybody else that can snivel, squirm, screech and submit like Kev-Kev. And Ms. Calvina is no slouch with the whip.
huh, didn’t see that on Kev’s wikipedia page. Is that like, real? She’s prolly on FL Fetlife then. You’re not pulling my leg again are ya? It’s only Tuesday.
“Oh dear, the guys on the couch are in rare form” …and it’s only Tuesday.. 🙂
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allan, I’ll pull your leg anytime you want as long as it’s not the third leg you want pulled. (not that there’s anything wrong with that)
As far as Ms. Calvina being a cruella de vil style of dominatrix is concerned I haven’t any physical proof but I’m a strict adherent of believing what I see with my own two eyes and that’s what I see when I look at Ms. Calvina.
“… prominently displayed on the desk in front of Flaherty was Kevin Sabet’s SAM manifesto, which Flaherty appeared to be using as a guide to his lies.”
Talk about the butterheaded leading the nitwits…
A week ago I sent a bit of a smart ass E-mail to Sam Canada
http://samcanada.net/
explaining that on the header for one of their articles there was a typo ” THE COLORADO EXPIREMENT ”
They have not responded or fixed the error which must mean that the Canadian Branch is not a serious player in the cannabis prohibition business. Just a stupid website and no more.
They just don’t get it.
They lost. L-O-S-T, lost when they tried to BS an entire generation, thinking them nothing but programmable little robots, mental wind-up toys that once wound up, stay wound up.
It’s poetic justice, really. They were BS’ed by the people they thought they could BS. The kids told them all they wanted to hear, all the ‘correct’ (as opposed to honest) answers, and so the prohibs thought their rice bowls were secure for the next 20 years. You have to wonder how many LEO’s thought they could buy that bigger house, newer car, etc. based on the expectation of being able to use the drug laws to enrich themselves at the cost of the taxpayer.
But guess what? Grammaw and Grammpaw aren’t paying taxes because they’re too messed up or dead…and they didn’t leave anything for Office Jack Boot in their wills.
Even worse for Officer Boot, the very kids he thought he could BS, and who BSed him, are now the grown-up taxpayers. And they don’t want a DrugWar.
The prohibs made all the wrong plans; instead of scaling down, they thought they could continue to ‘live large’. They were fully expecting the gravy train to continue barreling along, crushing us under its wheels.
They never thought we’d storm the engine, and take control of the fuel lines…which is what our taxes – and our votes – represent. A point which will become abundantly clear as time goes on.
Hear Hear! Kap’n. Amazing, Your Uniquely Styled very high IQ Mortar-and-Pestle writings come as if a Bulldozer, Crushing Walls. A Toast! (Ginger Ale)
The time is rapidly approaching when to support the drug war is to indicate to those around you that you have limited intelligence, perhaps a fool?
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Great piece Pete. Sabet’s drivel is the gift that just keeps giving.
Hope is stunning.