From Reason:
Clarence Thomas Condemns Civil Asset Forfeiture, Points to ‘Egregious and Well-Chronicled Abuses’
The Supreme Court offered no explanation today for its refusal to hear the case of Lisa Olivia Leonard v. Texas. But one member of the Court did speak up. In a statement respecting the denial of certiorari in the case, Justice Clarence Thomas made it clear that he believes the current state of civil asset forfeiture law is fundamentally unconstitutional.
“This system—where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use—has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses,” Thomas declared.
Furthermore, he wrote, the Supreme Court’s previous rulings on the matter are starkly at odds with the Constitution, which “presumably would require the Court to align its distinct doctrine governing civil forfeiture with its doctrines governing other forms of punitive state action and property deprivation.” Those other doctrines, Thomas noted, impose significant checks on the government, such as heightened standards of proof, various procedural protections, and the right to a trial by jury. Civil asset forfeiture proceedings, by contrast, offer no such constitutional safeguards for the rights of person or property.
This is a good step. Let’s hope the right case gets to the Supreme Court so this can be properly debated at that level.
Whatever the oligarchy deems right for themselves is the rule of law now.
I see no scenario where removing civil asset forfeiture is to their advantage, so I remain skeptical.
Thomas was also the dissenting judge in Gonzales v. Raich who righteously stated that if cannabis can be regulated via the Commerce Clause, then “the federal government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers”.
I still have not been able to come up with a more condemning statement possibly leveled against our federal government by a supreme court justice — yet there was no peep in the media about it.
Again, if you want consistency in our government’s behavior across the political spectrum (for decades now) — simply look at our oligarchy tumultuously gaining more power for themselves at the obvious expense of the masses (while usually disguising that gain as good for public safety) — e.g. the insanely horrific war on drugs.
A government presumes a criminal intent minus any real evidence of wrong-doing, then rejects intent in order to confiscate money or other valuables. The process reeks of the British writs of assistance imposed on American colonists that sparked a revolution. It mirrors the confiscation processes of the inquisitions, which produced an incredibly corrosive effect on legitimate commerce and the lives of innocent, ordinary people. Education suffered. The book industry was made a victim, as it was intended to be. Forfeiture, or confiscation, is part of the prohibitions of material items.
Bottom line, forfeiture is a tool of government corruption and repression. Laws and legal procedures are enforced which prove criminogenic, that is, the laws create crime rather than reducing or eliminating it. Illicit drug laws and the resulting drug war are examples, as are acts of heretication. The process works to the benefit of authoritarian governments and law enforcement profiteers, not citizens. Because it’s easier to do so, citizens are increasingly criminalized, repressed, and thereby more easily exploited for the image and benefit of the State.
Since the Supreme Court is proving itself dysfunctional, various states might want to consider a financial incentive beyond forfeiture itself. Forfeiture and prohibition creates an unsafe place for civilized people to travel to and from freely. It makes individuals feel a need for personal dash cameras in their vehicles. Business people fear leaving personal items of a sensitive nature such as papers or electronic gear in their hotel rooms when they step out, once a concern only when traveling abroad to countries run by inept dictators. It produces a flyover state. For these reasons and others many business conventioneers prefer to hold their gatherings in tyranny free zones, non-police states, democratic bastions that champion human liberty and oppose fascism. Or is it a coincidence that most flyover states possess the strictest and least rational drug laws?
Now that daddy Scalia has gone, little Clarence has found a voice. What’s he been doing all this time?
They get hooked and they die because they realize they’re 25, 35, 50, whatever-and it’s not going to get any better. They were half-trained for a world too specialized to even use them up and dispose of them properly.
Drug addiction is a portal to despair. And the “opioid overdose crisis” is a manifestation of that, not so much the chickens come home to roost as a long shot of the processing plant.
There is no government solution to those conditions, because government-city, state or federal-has too many “stakeholders” invested in the status quo to have an honest discussion about root causes-and a long-term government conspiracy to brew them up, across decades and generations, until poverty and despair became the calling cards of our ever-expanding underclass.
http://folioweekly.com/HALLUCINATION-Generation,17105
I really don’t see a problem. Implant all these folks with the new Kennedy/Giant-headed Gingrich buprenorphine units, ship em off to a private prison and have em labor for a buck-an-hour. Problem solved.
Turn that misery into a corporate smile. BTW, thanks for sticking these lyrics in my head…Marijuana, Marijuana,…LSD..LSD. Catchy tune though.
Sorry to run off topic, but this is just too good to leave on an old open thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9kSRBprPdE
I can’t even begin to describe how civil assets forfeiture is similar to legalized theft.
Another such policy is that even in a state where marijuana is decriminalized you can get fired if you test THC positive. Isn’t it obvious that people with legal access to marijuana would, on occasion, smoke marijuana? And now many of them are pushed to do a detox or even use synthetic urine to pass a drug test. I mean, really, we’re going to steal people’s jobs on the basis that they used marijuana in a state where marijuana is completely legal? Now that’s similar to theft as well.
Any other topic no one would have a problem with using the “F” word to describe the Ganjawar. Its simply Fascism. While a censored media keeps the people ignorant 45 years since Nixon rejected his own Commission’s report. Not only losing a job, many lower income and disabled are evicted from their homes. Had their children kidnapped by Foster Care. Kids kicked out of school. Trials are 95% plea bargained due to mandatory sentencing and Gag orders preventing the use of the term “medicinal” All falling back on Nixon’s CSA scheduling as the starting point with no Science backing it. Pure politics and profits or Fascism. When the schools are censored from Cannabis information, all of the experts are only excerpts of past reefer madness.
A federal government ban on the sale of guns to medical marijuana card holders does not violate the Second Amendment, a federal appeals court said Wednesday.
☛ Federal court upholds gun ban
for medical marijuana card holders
☛ California Woman Denied Essential Heart Transplant
Because She Uses MMJ
☛ The Heartlessness of Dying for Prohibition
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/585
☛ US Asked To Stop False Information on Medical Pot
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1531
☛ Who’s Really Fighting Legal Weed
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1974
☛ “Professionals” are more of a problem, than solution
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/481
Leonard W. Levy described it as A License to Steal: The Forfeiture of Property. Leonard W. Levy (Chapel Hill, NC.: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). pdf
The DEA presumably possesses a license to kill as well, given its activities south of the border.
GOP health-care bill would drop addiction treatment mandate covering 1.3 million Americans https://t.co/z4yQzYmnp7
Watch for that to be edited out before passage because that derails the entire rehab instead of incarceration policy change. If the poor are not covered by tax dollars it remains money walks and the poor continue to fill the prisons with little change over the way it is now.
Add the fact that nobody is building the rehab centers required to handle the flow and once more the drugs are winning the drug war.
When opiate overdose statistics are higher than ever,(“Maryland governor declares state of emergency for opioid crisis” https://tinyurl.com/zrto8lg , “Opioid Addiction Crisis Declared a Public Health Emergency in Virginia” – https://tinyurl.com/zqcmyjd ) this is a drug war escalation.
Let them suffer is apparently the Republican answer to the DEA created opiate overdose epidemic.
Not usually a good idea to sit back and watch them mass produce non victim drug criminals just to house for profits. When there are so many good ole X-ian out of work Trump Teabaggers in the same predicament. More capital generated in a $35k cage, more taxes than a minimum wage job or someone out of work due to outsourcing, prison slave labor and importing scabs. Especially when they outlaw the most affordable health care available homegrown in the herb garden.
How does anything GOP have to include a chunk for the deadbeat rich dodging taxes? Only the mindset of a very very wretched evil nasty group of obedient bottom line dwellers. Could traffic humans for profit in the name of saving them from themselves. While renting the captives to corporate telemarketing and for road gang maintenance. Whatever happened to those old fashioned American values like eating the rich?
Jeff Sessions reverses Obama order to phase out private prisons
Private prisons demand states maintain maximum capacity or pay fees
An In These Times investigation last summer revealed that ALEC arranged secret meetings between Arizona’s state legislators and CCA to draft what became SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law, to keep CCA prisons flush with immigrant detainees. ALEC has proven expertly capable of devising endless ways to help private corporations benefit from the country’s massive prison population.
☛ ALEC Exposed
Guns, Prisons, Crime, and Immigration
This page documents how bills pushed by ALEC corporations result in taxpayers subsidizing the profits of the private prison industry by putting more people in for-profit prisons and keeping them in jail for longer.
☀ Corporations and their politician allies voted behind closed doors through ALEC to change America’s criminal justice system and enrich profits.
☀ Increasing time served for drug offenses through mandatory minimum sentencing,
☀ The bills would also overturn long-standing rules designed to protect Americans’ constitutional rights,
☀ Reverse the “Exclusionary Rule” for unlawfully obtained evidence and,
☀ Eliminate the rule against hearsay when determining whether probable cause existed.
FDA Official Under Bush Is Trump’s Choice to Lead Agency
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/health/fda-scott-gottlieb.html
Trump to select Scott Gottlieb, a physician with deep drug-industry ties, to run the FDA
ALEC’s Prison Industries Act has quietly expanded prison labor across the country.
Slave Labor Means Big Bucks For U.S. Corporations
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/520
Truth is, without help from medicare and medicaid incarceration will be the only alternative for the mentally ill and individuals caught up in the justice departments drug war. They will fill those private prisons with people who really belong in treatment or therapy from the lower class and those who can’t afford the costs of the treatment route. If we don’t get marijuana removed from the csa its going to be mighty easy pickens for the justice department and Jeff Sessions, and his crusade to keep marijuana prohibited and his private prisons filled.
Huge grassroots movements, made up of millions and millions of people, are fueling the fight for a $15 minimum wage, fighting back against fossil fuels and the Dakota Access Pipeline, fighting to end fracking, fighting to remove lobbyist money from politics, fighting to end senseless wars and international violence, fighting for universal healthcare, fighting for the legalization of marijuana, fighting for free college tuition, fighting against systems of mass incarceration, and so much more. But mainstream Democrats aren’t really a central part of any of those battles, and, to be clear, each of those issues have deep networks, energized volunteers, and serious donors, but corporate Democrats virtually ignore them.
KING: The Democratic Party doesn’t get why it’s so unpopular
The Trumps little person Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III seems like he’s about to go off rebel yelling and swinging his sword like his little Napoleon Complex fits with his ties to the Prison Industrial Complex. Firing any persicutor not going along with the program. USA! Qaeda.
The quest for an adequate health safety-net in the US has a long history of obstruction:
As a nation, we are doing less than now lies within our power to reduce the impact of disease. Many of our fellow Americans cannot afford to pay the costs of medical care when it is needed, and they are not protected by adequate health insurance. Too frequently the local hospitals, clinics, or nursing homes required for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease either do not exist or are badly out of date. Finally, there are critical shortages of the trained personnel required to study, prevent, treat and control disease. — Dwight D. Eisenhower, Special Message to the Congress Recommending a Health Program, January 31, 1955.
Part of Eisenhower’s expansion of medical services was the creation of the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), later replaced by HHS and an Education Dept. spinoff.
“Philippine drugs war gets complex as Duterte creates new super-agency”
http://www.metro.us/news/philippine-drugs-war-gets-complex-as-duterte-creates-new-super-agency/Lmiqcj—EFu5yyYxKzw4Hpvi8UWRZg/
Jeff Sessions, needing a media distraction from his own problems, follows the well worn path of finding a scapegoat:
“Jeff Sessions urges US prosecutors to target drugs in push against violent crime”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/10/jeff-sessions-drugs-violent-crime
Trump Abruptly Orders 46 Obama-Era Prosecutors to Resign
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/us/politics/us-attorney-justice-department-trump.html
The Trump administration moved on Friday to sweep away most of the remaining vestiges of Obama administration prosecutors at the Justice Department, ordering 46 holdover United States attorneys to tender their resignations immediately — including Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan.
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In 2015:
…there were a total of 36 States with a violent crime rate higher than in Oregon.
…there were a total of 33 States with a violent crime rate higher than in Washington.
…there were a total of 27 States with a violent crime rate higher than in Colorado.
…there were a total of 9 States with a violent crime rate higher than in Alabama.
Alabama’s 2015 violent crime rate was 9.369% higher than the nationwide violent crime rate.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
While it might not look so good that there are a total of only 12 States with a violent crime rate higher than in California, the Golden State’s violent crime rate relative to that of the other States was consistently between 1st and 7th through 1996 inclusive.
One cop and justice worker at a time: they steal our property and they steal our jobs by denying hemp. If hemp is illegal because of marijuana related issues, and it can produce a wonderful hempen writing desk, then does this mean cops don’t know the difference between a fired up joint of the kind from a 52 by 52 inch brown hempen writing desk with drawers? Where are the American jobs in hemp paper and hemp plastics, clothes, soaps, ropes, furniture, heart healthy foods etc? Talk about taking stuff. At first the jobs weren’t enough then they had to utilize civil asset forfeiture. How many American jobs were lost to hemp being outlawed in the 1930’S and then the ‘Hemp for Victory’ remnants in the 50’s? At least tens of thousands of jobs from farming to selling the finished product: lost–fired, laid off during those times. If hemp was allowed, then more tractors and other farm equipment and supplies will need to be bought and made, therefore boosting production in non-hemp related industry. And factories that produce the hempen goods for the stores always need machines and parts made by other companies . . . they need tools and grease (maybe a hemp based one). We blame unemployment on machines and immigrants, why not the cops and courts? Can we not hit right wing politicians the way they hit the left: bureaucrats who don’t care that harsh restrictions akin to EPA restrictions makes for reduced job creation and production of goods i.e. other countries can sell it to us, but we cannot make our own for commerce, though others can do as they please in other industries. That’s Discrimination.
Have a wonderful weekend couch and may your pipes etc. have twice as enough cannabis in them.
Proponents of police militarization always talk about protecting police officers and the danger of terrorism. But the main function of local police militarization revolves around the unconstitutional “war on drugs.†After all, wars require soldiers, and the federal government doesn’t have the manpower to fight alone. The feds need state and local police to serve as foot-soldiers in their drug war. Militarization, combined with asset forfeiture cash, incentivizes the necessary cooperation.
In fact, a survey of applications made to federal programs by state and local law enforcement agencies revealed the drug war was by far the most common reason given for needing to militarize police officers.
Over the last two decades, police militarization has fundamentally changed policing. Law enforcement has evolved from “serve and protect†to “command and control.â€
The feds can to try to slap lipstick on a pig by quibbling over TACs characterization of MRAPs as “essentially†tanks, but as long as police can get free military toys from Washington D.C., with virtually no oversight, “peace officers†will continue to operate like armed combat troops. That can only mean more police shootings, brutalization and innocent people hurt in military-style police operations. And it also enables the federal government to perpetuate its unconstitutional war on drugs.
http://tinyurl.com/TenthAmendmentCenterArt
An opponent of drug freedom to watch, isolate, and freeze is Supreme Court Judge Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr. Justice Alito doesn’t generate the same crazed fanfare Antonin Scalia did, but his juridical nonsense makes him complicit in the drug war and a true believer that the government can do no wrong:
Judge Alito is unlikely to recuse himself from drug cases in which he’s previously participated as an agent provocateur and human rights criminal. We cannot realistically expect Alito to admit to wrongdoing while he continues to support drug enforcement exceptions to the Constitution. Antonin Gregory Scalia is dead. I therefore nominate Samuel (Tony the Ant) Alito as the new jerk-in-chief of the Supreme Court.
Take marijuana for example. Believing that marijuana destroys lives, jobs and families, busybullies pushed for ever more severe laws against its use. In its quest to “save†people from marijuana, the government then destroyed the lives, jobs and families of anyone it found using the drug. Under the sway of busybullies, government proved far more dangerous to marijuana users than marijuana ever was.
How do we know? Because recreational marijuana is now legal in eight states and the District of Columbia, and medical marijuana is legal in 20 more. Yet, contrary to what the busybullies claimed, all hell has not broken loose. Where marijuana was legalized, crime rates are generally flat or down, and neither teen marijuana usage nor drug-related traffic fatalities has risen.
http://limaohio.com/opinion/columns/234303/opinion-nation-of-busybullies-not-of-the-free
Alabama does it again. First Sessions as AG, now a church in Birmingham wants the state authority to hire and deploy its own police force. One guess as to what inspired it:
Smoking in the pews. How awful. You know you’re living in a police state when churches can hire their own drug cops. What’s next, their own military?
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You should move to DC. We’ve got police forces coming out of our ears. Some of my favorites are:
The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission Police. WSSC is the water and sewer utility in Montgomery and Prince George’s County. The company literally takes care of all of my shit. The WSSC police were invented in 2002 to prevent terrorists from interrupting the flow of sewage.
The Baltimore Harbor Tunnel Police. Their entire bailiwick is I-895 which is a grand total of 8 miles of highway.Merged into the Maryland Transportation Authority Police. They must have gotten tired of all the people who couldn’t stop laughing at them when they yelled “Freeze! Baltimore Harbor Tunnel Police!!” Who says governmental authorities can’t identify and mitigate bureaucratic stupidity?And of course my very favorite is the Secret Service Uniformed Division. Those people must have a very peculiar definition of the word secret.
Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Uruguay, among others, proposed a change in strategy at the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs on Monday.
>>
Bolivian government minister Carlos Romero also said the so-called war on drugs and the militarized response to the problem is a failure. Colombia, for its part, criticized the “frustrating” results of the fight against drugs.
Guatemala also called on the U.N. to continue advancing and deepening new approaches to dealing with drugs.
“It is not a matter of approving the prohibition or legalization, that is the decision of each country. The sovereignty of each state is more than important, we are only asking for openness to innovation, since every day drugs that made of new substances are winning the fight,” said Guatemalan Foreign Minister Carlos Morales.
http://tinyurl.com/TeliSurTVCosmo
Sounds as if they are proposing the dismantling of the single convention. The treaties were signed so that each nation does NOT have the right to decide whether legalization or prohibition is the correct path. Morales is saying it is up to each state to decide for itself. The only way to do that is to dissolve the single convention, and unsign the treaties involved.
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I haven’t got a clue how you came to believe that but it’s not true. Bolivia got their legal coca leaves and has been reinstated.
Bolivia Withdraws from the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
What the heck are they going to do? Send in troops?
Bolivia gave the UN a 6 month notice of withdrawal from the conventions, and immediately after withdrawal, they re-signed a modified agreement which does not include coca leaves and products made from them, such as soap and food. In my above remarks, I was addressing the words quoted in the previous item. In it, Carlos Morales, Guatemala’s foreign minister, is quoted as saying that it is up to each country whether they legalize or not. Currently, it is NOT up to each country, because that is prohibited by the conventions. IOW for countries to resume the role of decision makers regarding legality of drugs, means that the conventions must be overturned or heavily modified. There is no other way.
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Wow! That’s some mighty fine precision hair splitting primus.
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I think maybe Snoop Dogg has established himself as household name and/or earned a free vacation at Club Fed. Sheesh, he should have used “I Shot the Sheriff” for the music part. Also he might have been better advised to use one of those prop guns which have a rolled flag that unfurls and says Bang! when the trigger is pulled.
Snoop Dogg on ‘Lavender’ Video Parodying Trump: ‘Nobody’s Dealing With the Real Issue With This F–king Clown as President’
Infographic: America’s 2015 Marijuana Sales In Context | Statista
https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_4550_america_s_2015_marijuana_sales_in_context_n.jpg
☛ Government Marijuana Looks Nothing Like Real Stuff
Take a look at the photo above. That’s what most marijuana consumers picture when they think “marijuana†— chunks of pungent green plant material coated in sticky, crystallized THC-rich resin. http://drugsense.org/url/jTKJ8y1c
But if you’re a researcher looking to work with marijuana — to say, investigate how it impairs people, or how it could help people suffering from certain ailments — you don’t have access to the weed that everyone else is using. Since the late 1960s the federal government has mandated that all marijuana used in research has to come through the federal government.
☛ Scientists say the government’s only pot farm has moldy samples —
and no federal testing standards March 8, 2017
A researcher in Dr. Sue Sisley’s lab pours out a sample of marijuana produced by the federal facility responsible for growing cannabis for clinical research. When she received marijuana for a PTSD trial last year, Sisley says the packages contained mold and weren’t as potent as she requested. Photo courtesy of MAPS.
☛ Sessions Wants to Know the Science on Marijuana
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread29051.shtml
Sessions science using results from Mississippi Schwag? Maybe he could test some wild ditchweed burlap hemp. The drug war perpetuation is possible by sabotage, lies, roadblocks and intimidation, It hasn’t changed since it started. Profits over People.
☛ Egregious and Well-Chronicled Abuses of Civil Asset Forfeiture
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/1160
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“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.â€
George W. Bush
“I wouldn’t answer the marijuana questions.
You know why?
Because I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.â€
~ George W. Bush
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I think Marco Rubio used a similar excuse as to why he wouldn’t reveal his “youthful indiscretions” as a 2016 presidential candidate. As if kids across the country just can’t wait to mimic pathologically lying, pasty men in suits. Yeah, big cultural influencers, those guys…
The use of civil asset forfeiture in drug enforcement starting in the 1920s Prohibition Era illustrates the threat posed by governments and public ignorance. The drug war built upon such ignorance to produce a fascist insurgency within the US government deep state that currently poses an existential threat to the Republic as we know it. Michael J. Glennon offers a summary of summaries written by noted authors concerning failed governments:
“…the long memory is the most radical idea in America…”
Utah Phillips
“.. and no damn road will ever give you freedom.”
Old men sip coffee and slip through the seams.
But there’s seldom a miner goes underground without his tin of morphine.
https://youtu.be/QmNjjiKsHAM
Senate rushing to escalate the drug war
https://engage.drugpolicy.org/secure/vote-today-senate-rushing-escalate-drug-war
As soon as this afternoon, the U.S. Senate could vote on a bill that would escalate the drug war by expanding the ability of states to drug test people who file for unemployment insurance. If it passes, it will go to President Trump to be signed into law.
The vast majority of people who receive unemployment insurance and other public assistance do not use drugs. But more importantly, drug testing programs have been proven again and again to accomplish nothing. They often have faulty results and waste millions of tax dollars.
Instead of following the evidence, Congress is stigmatizing vulnerable people looking for jobs to ramp up the failed drug war.
This is shameful, especially considering that members of Congress rushing to pass this legislation have claimed it will help people who struggle with addiction to opioids and other substances.
Yet most states that have tried these kind of drug testing programs don’t even offer or fund treatment for people who struggle with substance use.
In addition to being ineffective, harmful, and a complete waste of money, mandatory drug testing by states has been deemed illegal and unconstitutional by the courts time and again.
Contact your Senators immediately and tell them to oppose this attempt to escalate the drug war.
And follow-up with a call to your Senators. Find their phone numbers here and you can say:
As a constituent, I am calling to urge my Senator to oppose H.J. Res. 42 which would expand state drug testing of people who file for unemployment insurance. The vast majority of people who receive unemployment insurance and other public assistance do not use drugs. But more importantly, drug testing programs have been proven again and again to accomplish nothing. They often have faulty results, and waste millions of tax dollars. Please oppose H.J. Res. 42. Thank you.
We are doing everything we can to stop this bill from becoming law. But we’re counting on you to help us.
Sponsor: Rep. Brady, Kevin [R-TX-8] (Introduced 01/30/2017)
Committees: House – Ways and Means
FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 97
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll097.xml
H J RES 42 YEA-AND-NAY 15-Feb-2017 5:10 PM
Yeas 236
Republican 232
Democratic 4
Nays 189
Republican 1
Democratic 188
NV 6
H.J.Res.42 Democrat Yeas
Lipinski – Cooper – Peterson – Schrader
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/13/colombia-juan-santos-call-to-legalise-drugs
Why don’t they ever mention all the deforestation caused by farming coffee?
In a live stream CNN broadcast at about 10 AM EST, AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III spoke to state and local law enforcement about how the feds were going to help stop violent crime and restore public safety in Richmond, Virginia.
According to Sessions, violent crime is reaching crisis levels in the US and is precipitated by felons with guns, and in particular drug smuggling and opioid addiction. He alleges drugs are fueling the existence of Mexican drug cartels on the streets of America, and he said the feds will focus on bringing down the cartels.
The AG came down hard on recreational marijuana. He asked the audience if they could believe that some people think it’s okay that marijuana will be sold in neighborhood corner convenience stores. He treated medical marijuana as a joke when he asked the audience if they had heard the latest one, the claim that marijuana can help addicts get off heroin, which he called absolutely stupid. Sessions believes THC is dangerous and cited higher strength marijuana as a villain. He also said it’s the goal of law enforcement to ensure that heroin remains expensive, scarce, and impure. Yes, that’s what the man said, “impureâ€.
So there you have it, the US Attorney General on drugs. Felons with guns, heroin, and recreational marijuana are the new/old scapegoats in the federal government’s arsenal of law enforcement propaganda. Sessions emulates John N. Mitchell, Nixon’s AG who was sentenced to jail for 19-months at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, for his involvement in Watergate. Remembering John Mitchell may be a key to understanding the role of the new AG, Jeff Sessions:
I’ve been waiting to post the following links to see on-topic comments posted first and to also see what rumblings Sessions was going to make. In light of Servetus’s comment, I think the time is now. They’re all long reads:
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/09/519415023/what-is-steve-bannon-and-jeff-sessions-shared-vision-for-remaking-america
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/magazine/jeff-sessions-stephen-bannon-justice-department.html?_r=0
If Sessions and Bannon had their way, I think it’d be back to 60s and 70s hippie-punching and 80s Just Say No drug war. Whether or not they get their way is another thing.
OT, but tangentially related, are in-depth articles about Trump, Putin, and their motivations/psychology:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/donald-trumps-worst-deal
Epigenetic alterations to the brains of people with heroin use disorder have been discovered which can potentially be reversed using a cancer drug that inhibits hyperacetylation, thereby reducing drug seeking behavior:
More discoveries like those of Dr. Hurd’s will surely rain down on AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions’ efforts to distract the media by subjecting hapless victims to severe drug prosecutions, something that so far has accomplished little beyond generating more crime. Likewise, the drug rehab business is threatened with extinction should JQ1 and similar drugs prove effective. Property confiscation will be reduced. Political correctness will require politicians to say ‘heroin use disorder’ instead of ‘heroin addict’. It’s no wonder Sessions and the Trump administration hate science so much. Real science takes the fun out of being a human rights criminal and an authoritarian jerk.
Drug Warrior gets caught with a teenage boy in a hotel . . . he’s an Oklahoma Senator.
Senate officials told Fox News Shortey would still be allowed to vote and that he will continue to receive his $38,400 annual salary as a senator.
http://tinyurl.com/CosmoDailyNews
Last night Cris Hayes of All IN had a town hall meeting
in WV and many of the guests said they knew someone taking
pain pills — was shocked as to how many pills were taken
in small town – he said we are building a wall to keep them
out but crowd said big farma.
I have not been able to find whole show of last nights town hall but here
is a link to his show he also has a book coming out that looks
interesting.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/9-million-painkillers-shipped-to-tiny-west-virginia-town-895420995808
https://chrishayes.org/
The axe falls. If and when the US government decides to allow and fund research on the positive benefits of cannabis and its constituents may be delayed indefinitely due to Trump’s war on science:
Science is labeled “sprawling†partly because it challenges and counters fascist assumptions about substances such as marijuana, or the environment. Addiction research threatens the rehab industry and the entire drug war concept as it relates to its use by governments in counterintelligence, spending fraud, and social repression. Lacking a drug war, Trump loses one of his justifications for building the Mexican Border Wall, which is expected to cost American taxpayers $12 to $15 billion.
to those that are working on wording of
marijuana bills see who this grant is designed to work
with.
http://michiganmedicalmarijuana.org/topic/51479-medical-marijuana-operation-and-oversight-grant-awarded-to-sheriffs-office/
Eva Nanopoulos at openglobalrights.com has some bad news concerning any actions designed to bring Trump & Co. to task under international human rights laws:
There is however something stronger than international human rights law in the United States. That strength is found in the number of people who have smoked weed, enjoyed it, and favor its legalization or decriminalization. Based on multiple personal experiences, more than half the population of the US have a favorable view regarding marijuana and support drug law reform. If a rich clown with guinea pig hair thinks he’s going to conquer the unconquerable weed, let him give it a shot. If he continues to support the drug war, and he likely will, Trump will find himself and his douchebilly AG skewered with the political equivalent of Nazi defeat on the Russian front.
Or in the view of Leon Trotsky:
I hope readers understand the significance of this important comment. We have a tool for the resistance and we need to step up.
Cannabinoids Protect the Brain and Heart. Get Over It!
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/2083
March 14, 2017
~ Stroke, Heart Failure Linked to Marijuana (may. might)
It is not clear
One limitation of the study
It is also not clear why
Future research should
~ Study: Cannabis Use History Not Associated
With Increased Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease
~ New Study Tells Nothing About Marijuana’s Role in Heart Disease
~ Studies: Cannabinoids Protect the Brain and Heart From Injury
~ Study: Marijuana Smoking Not Associated With
Greater Mortality Risk Among Heart Attack Survivors
~ Calls for ibuprofen sale restrictions after study finds cardiac arrest risk
~ Ibuprofen-like painkillers linked to an increased risk of heart failure
~ Aspirin and Heart Disease
Know the risks
~ When Heroin Was Available to Housewives
and Aspirin Was Bad for the Heart
Toss it out and see if it sticks? Short term memory loss? Funding Research from Schwag probably gets schwag results. Jeffrey’s taking Drumpf’s advise about Gossip over Science.The problem with an AG and PotUS wearing tin hats is that one of them has access to the nuclear codes. Spencer can’t keep up covering up tweets only the most brain dead lapdogs believe. Sessions gets applause with National Cops. The bottom line of all of this gossip and government ineptness is Americans are being tormented. Some in very vulnerable situations just trying to stop the nightmares.
Adding stress to cancer patients and parents of seizure kids. Just creepy nasty inexcusable acts from small monded conspiratorial mass murderers basing the entire Ganjawar on lies. Now to drag out the hobgoblins and bully seniors finally finding a sleep aid that works without zombie side effects usually prescribed. From the government pushing war and cutting medicare to pay for it. Fear mongering and cutting anything not going to Wall St Banksters, Cops&Prisons and the Pentagon. Cutting meals on wheels while fighter jets costing billions can’t fly? Punish the middle class while the most wealthy get tax breaks. Now the nonsense is more spread out, reaching across the aisles. Not just caging sick people for illegal remedies. The Breitbark Administration wants all of the unemployed, homeless and impoverished and disabled in for profit cages or for profit asylums. Trump voters and Teabaggers. disgUSting
Ignorant Jeff. Miner’s Lullaby Drug Overdoses & MMJ
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/1161
When Cosmo’s assistant posted the Utah Phillips link, I saw him preform in Santa Cruz in the early 90s it was also around the time I watched the West Virginia Town Hall with Bernie Sanders. The discussion was about WV high rate of od’s, high unemployment. How many would lose health care with the new tax break health care from the goperverts. WV isn’t in the top 10 for harsh cannabis penalties. Since Sessions ignorance is making him double down on terrorizing citizens. Being bad ass trying to overcome his 5’7″ height. Killing Americans.
Legalizing Marijuana Decreases Fatal Opiate Overdoses Jeffrey. It should be a crime for short people with big Ego’s to keep killing. Especially when he escalates killing the plant that is stopping the death from overdosing on Big Pharma profits. Now that they have been hand picked for the FDA and HHS the killing will no doubt continue. To justify killing those growing the plant alternative to the white powders killing people. Where actual people elected to protect the rights of the citizens. Pass laws to punish people for protecting citizens from pain and suffering. These states are not worthy of statehood with such silly stupid government reps ignoring Science giving the people lies. All due to the Feds master lie scheduling Cannabis as S#1.
I found this old story about ~ MINERS AND MORPHINE 27 April 1900. Miners would carry the tin of morphine in case of cave ins or being alone and getting hurt. The morphine would let them go to sleep and ease the pain before dying. I wonder if Sessions and the GOPers would have said it was death with dignity and started raiding Miner’s homes, I also have to wonder if there is a connection. Now that the mines are closing due to the environmental hazards. Are the tins still in their pockets with Oxy? The drug of choice for Lush Rimbaugh. Boredom was mentioned as one of the reasons people are doing drugs, Six States Where You’re Most Likely to Die of a Drug Overdose are Red States.
So here we have a state that could grow Hemp and Ganja to solve their two major problems that are killing their people and keeping them unemployed. With the Senate rushing a Piss tasting bill for unemployment insurance. The only logic is profits are made on sick people and criminals. Not the Fat Pharma drug traffickers actually killing the people for $300bn+ in profits. Those financing the drug worrier cults. These Corporate Cartel’s aren’t put in prison, they’re put in charge of testing drugs. Or put in charge of not testing certain plants that might take profits from other drugs.
Sean Spicer compared marijuana to opioids –
but there’s major differences”
All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it.”
~ Paging Dr. Spicer:
Cannabis Could Help Fight Opioid Abuse
and Save Us Billions, Actually
~ Cannabis Connection:
A Primer for Jeff Sessions on Marijuana and Opioids
His is yet another example of why cannabis regulation should be taken out of the hands of law enforcement and put exclusively under the purview of medical professionals. Even the most cursory examination of the evidence suggests that cannabis can likely play a role in pain management and opioid addiction recovery.
Stupid as a fox? Is Sessions’ idiot side-show on cannabis and opiates a shot across the bow of future possible Democratic candidate for President, Elizabeth Warren?
Regular readers here know that she’s probably the biggest congressional voice on this topic. Poison the well in the eyes of the idiot-corp who laps this shit up.
Oh, it’s a joke!
He seems to be featuring lies about what Warren would like to see happen. Coincidence?
My congress critters staff person that I spoke with a few days ago thinks Sessions will lay of California and his bullshit is just a way to intimidate any of the states who might consider future decrim, MMJ, or re-legalization. Time will tell, but I do suspect part of this is designed to be anti-Warren.
You’re a sick puppy dude and I congratulate you for that. Like a lot of readers here you have Underdog Disease bad. One of the worst cases I’ve seen and I’m proud to share the same internet space.
More Traditional Republican Hypocrisy
Last November, in what may surprise some of you, Oklahomans actually passed a state referendum to reduce many drug laws from a felony to a misdemeanor and to increase funding for drug rehabilitation. Hey, what can I say? Even in red states like Oklahoma we’re tired of the “War on Drugs.” Well, Shortey felt that Oklahomans didn’t know what was best for themselves and introduced legislation to overturn that vote and maintain many of the felony marijuana laws. What makes this so extra? When the police showed up at the hotel where Shortey and his underage escort were, they detected a very strong odor of the devil’s weed, which according to the police report wasn’t found anywhere, but was probably flushed down the toilet. They did find lotion and condoms, so you know, at least they were practicing safe sex.
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/03/16/25026540/more-traditional-republican-hypocrisy
.
.
That Shortey is really something else. He’s also known for this;
Before his arrest, Shortey was perhaps best known for introducing a bill in 2012 that would have banned the use of aborted human fetuses in food — a measure that drew widespread ridicule and was never granted a hearing in a Senate committee.
Yikes, thank Shortey for at least trying to keep aborted fetuses out of food — or was this a thinly veiled attempt on his part to hint at another fetish of his? We’ll probably never find out.
It’s interesting that one of his recent arrest charges was “engaging in prostitution within 1000 feet of a church”. Now, you’ve got to hand it to Oklahomans, at least they know the value of not tempting pastors, priests, and preachers (and members of their congregations) with easily accessible prostitutes. I mean, where’s the sport in just plucking one of your favorite hookers right off the church steps after the heated sermon you just gave has you all hot and bothered? Make them work for it a little. Good thinking.
Another corrupt Republican, former Texas Rep. Steve Stockman, bites it.
Some highlights from Steve Stockman’s bio and career (Wiki):
Agendas during Stockman’s 1995 Congressional term:
Unfortunately, Sessions was on the House Committee for Science, in Subcommittees on energy and environment. During his tenure:
Marijuana works in strange ways. Had Steve Stockman been busted for cannabis instead of Valium® (more than two billion tablets sold by Big Pharma in 1978 alone — Wiki), he would have been barred from serving in Congress, and he most likely wouldn’t be facing a federal prison term starting on St. Patrick’s Day.