This is a very pleasant thing to see — a reporter for a major newspaper noting and pointing out how a federal drug warrior is actively lobbying against state laws.
Susan Greene: No one’s told drug-war soldier about peace breaking out
A Coloradan who works for the president’s drug-policy office is leading efforts to undermine the state’s constitutional amendment allowing cannabis for medical use. On the federal dime, Tom Gorman, director of the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, is lobbying state lawmakers to gut the Colorado law.
Either Gorman didn’t get the memo about changes in federal drug policy, or he’s going rogue. Whichever the case, no one in D.C. seems to mind. […]
“Technically, if you ask me who I represent, it’s the Colorado Drug Investigators Association,” he tells me, oddly.
That technicality exempts him from longstanding federal laws prohibiting federal workers from lobbying, he claims. Meanwhile, he’s lobbying without having registered as a lobbyist, and says he’s doing so with the nod of his bosses.
They wouldn’t comment.
Of course, this article disturbs me in the fact that Gorman feels so confident that he can do what he does with impunity. The good part is that here’s one reporter who isn’t falling for it:
And a lobbyist is a lobbyist, no matter which government agency happens to be laundering his paycheck.
yeah… sic ‘im Colorado. Drag this one around like a favorite blankee. People are pissed at the feds enough, to be caught messin’ w/ state politics… the appeal to voters for states to be making their own decisions free from federal interference grows.
Hopefully y’all Coloradans can give this creep the heave-ho. Or at least a practice a bit of political castration!
People like Gorman are today’s “dinosaurs.” The end is near. They know it and they can’t do anything about it. They evidently can’t get a Federal job so they steal State funds to mount a war against the people of their States.
I’d love to hear the rational behind that one.
I’m sure most of you have seen Avatar by now. There’s a line it it that shows what the Prohibs have never figured out. The female helicopter pilot breaks off an attack and transmits: “I didn’t sign up for this!” Evidently, the Prohibs DID!
Tar. Feathers. Rail. ‘Nuff said.
What is it that cops always say? “we’re just doing our job” Well no, you’re lobbying.
Take a good, longlook outside. They haven’t been doing their jobs since the 70s! I know what they learn in the Academy and it’s not what they’re doing today.
Its a desease that needs put down i tell ya! Our federal government is corrupt beyond measure, its gotta stop. Now we see state government officials acting just the same as federal officials, its gotta stop too. Our country has been over run by corrupt people, bending and breaking the rules to fit their agendas. They do most of their work in the dark, behind closed doors. Anything needing hidden is corrupt . This house needs cleaned.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826), Notes on Virginia
Ever notice how things done against the will of the people is done in secret? They fear losing control of our lives, thats why the do what they do. Its the same the world over for those who wish to control. It is the root of Facism and communism, control in the guise of the good of the people.Hitler took control legally through law, the same can happen here. Wake up people stand up against this .
“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood
in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
~ John F. Kennedy
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me
and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country…
Corporations have bee enthroned,
an era of corruption in high places will follow,
and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people
until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands
and the Republic is destroyed.”
~ Abraham Lincoln, November 12, 1864
“Italian fascism and German Nazism had their admirers within the U.S. business community and the corporate owned press. Bankers, publishers, and industrialists, including the likes of Henry Ford, traveled to Rome and Berlin to pay homage, receive medals, and strike profitable deals. Many did their utmost to advance the Nazi war effort, sharing military industrial secrets and engaging in secret transactions with the Nazi government, even after the United States entered the war. During the 1920s and early 1930s, major publications like Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor hailed Mussolini as the man who rescued Italy from anarchy and radicalism.”
~ Parenti/BlackshirtsReds
Whom Did the Fascists Get Support?
In every country and in every age,
the priest has been hostile to liberty,
He is always in alliance with the despot,
abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
~ Thomas Jefferson, 1814
“…somebody has to take governments’ place,
and business seems to me to be a logical entity to do it.”
~ David Rockefeller,
Newsweek International, Feb 1 1999
“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.” just say no
“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
~ From Benito Mussolini,
contributing to the “London Sunday Express,” December 8, 1935
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US,
and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers.
Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage.
This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations
with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
~ Harry Anslinger, U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics,1937.
testifying to Congress on why marijuana should be made illegal,
(Marijuana Tax Act, signed Aug. 2, 1937; effective Oct. 1, 1937.)
“May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face.”
~ Frank Zappa
Ganjawar F-A-S-C-I-S-M.jpg
It’s finally happened. A media sort has discovered the Hatch Act.
Of course, the media sort didn’t come out and call it that. But I’m sure that some of them will know very soon, as people here and elsewhere will be informing her of said hatch Act and how prohibs have been violating it with impunity…and letting her know just how long this little gaming of the taxpayer has been going on.
And I just did so. I might recommend that others do likewise…
When the law enforcement tell you they are just doing their job,remind them that the Nuremberg trials have already ruled that it’s not a legal defense.
I wonder if there will be war crime trials when America finally figures out how much money the government has wasted over the last 40+ years because an ego-maniac declared war on the hippies,just because he couldn’t pull the wool over their eyes,they recognized him for the egotistical,wanna be king sorry s.o.b. that he was,4 years before the rest of America did.
If only the Obama Administration were as dogged fighting the corporate looting of our economy by the banksters and the pin-stripped bandits, our financial troubles would be over. The fact that they choose to circumvent the Hatch Act with subversion and semantics, all on our collective nickels, should give pause to anyone who believed Obama when he said that Medical Cannabis would be a low priority.
No, they would rather sabotage the will of the citizens of a ‘sovereign’ state over a freakin’ plant which people use to feel better. What part of the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights do you not understand, Mr. Gorman?
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!
Recipe for subjugation of a nation;
1) Move manufacturing off shore so there are only service sector jobs left. Check
2) Drug test the service sector jobs left over to limit people’s right to earn a living. Check
3) Freeze the credit market for small businesses and create barriers to entering the marketplace with usurious interest rates, and unaffordable liability and errors and ommissions insurance to keep out new businesses. Check
4) Lower the fed interest rate to close to 0% to punish the savers as they get crushed by inflation and allow the speculators to buy on the margin cheaply. Check
5) Go to states and subvert the will of its citizens and destroy one of the few remaining ways for people to make an honest living and help people with thier suffering. Check
“Pot smokers are gaming the system,†[Gorman] complains, “and addiction, chaos and moral decay no doubt will ensue.â€
Someone might as well staple a blinking neon sign to Tom Gorman’s forehead that says ‘Authoritarian’. His statement is the classic clue to identifying the rule-crazy personality type infamous for bending the rules themselves whenever they delude themselves into thinking they’re saving all of humankind. Because they’re so special, and all that.
In the future, the government should do itself and everyone else a big favor by forcibly retiring nutbags like Tom Gorman to a remote island.
Hey Cliff, that looks like a recipe for revolution giving the government the ability to impose martial law there by taking over this country and completely shredding the constitution and imposing a socialist/facist government. Did I miss any thing?
Just Me;
Thanks for the feedback. It seems the Feds are trying a back door revolution against America.
Cliff, a long time ago I read a book called “The Devil’s Advocate” that posited a future tyrannical US engaged in a series of wars around the planet while oppressing its’ citizens at home, and the efforts of an Underground resistance to worm its’ way into the bureaucracy with the intent of making things so progressively worse, the people eventually rose up to end the oppression. Sort of opposite of the way a classic terrorist operates. The classic terrorist was supposed to stand on the outside, forcing change, but this time, in the book, with government-as-terrorist, the people were given a clear choice of either overthrowing it, or face unending worsening of their own conditions.
Although I strongly doubt it, given what’s been happening under the aegis of the DrugWar, with civil liberties in tatters, unConstitutional laws passed and prosecuted, a permanent criminal underclass created with no reason to care about the future of a society that cast them out, etc. it would seem that somebody read the same book…but reached the wrong conclusion.
No matter. The result will be the same. For we just can’t keep this insanity going any longer…and a lot of people are waking up to that realization.
kap’n
Fascinating take. I always feel like I’m in one of my college classes here. So many sharp and articulate minds here to learn from. You always leave me with more to think about after our exchanges or when I read a comment from you regarding another post. If you ever write a book about the drug war, I will surely be one of the first people in line to purchase it.
If he ever writes a book?
But we’ve already read it!
:0)