The Constitution of the United States has failed
This is not fine.
What kind of nation allows the loser of a national election to become president — and then does it again 16 years later?
What kind of nation retains an electoral process that was originally designed to inflate the influence of slaveholders?
What kind of nation permits its Congress to write a time bomb into law that periodically forces rival factions into a game of chicken that could wreck the world economy?
What kind of nation fights a civil war over the question of whether people of African descent are people or property, and then looks the other way when the loser ignores the resolution of that war? What kind of nation waits until 1965 to guarantee black people’s right to vote?
Americans speak of our Constitution as if it were a religious text. To label a law “unconstitutional” is not simply to say that it violates some procedural rule or legal technicality, it is to label it fundamentally unAmerican. To do so is to question the values of any lawmaker despicable enough to support such a law, and to suggest that those values are at odds with who we are as a nation.
But our Constitution has not served us nearly as well as we would have been served by other systems adopted by our peer nations. Nor has it lived up to the expectations of its drafters.
Now, our country is facing a man of superlative ignorance. A racist. An admitted sexual assaulter of women. A man poised to violate the Constitution the very instant he takes the oath of office. A man who openly encouraged Russia’s efforts to usher him into the White House. A man who owes his election to the underhanded efforts of deep state actors within our nation’s internal police agency. A man who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. And the Constitution has placed this man in the White House.
The Constitution gave Donald Trump command of the world’s most powerful military and an nuclear arsenal that can eradicate all life on Earth. It let him name a racist as our nation’s top enforcer of its laws. It let him use his office to sell hotel rooms to foreign diplomats. The Electoral College has voted. Trump will be our next president. This is what the Constitution hath wrought.
It did this because our Constitution remains the product of a compromise with moral monsters who believed that human beings could be owned as property. It did this because our Constitution offers no guarantee, or even much in the way of likelihood, that the men and women elected to lead the country will share the preferences of the nation as a whole. It did this because our Constitution fosters voter ignorance. It did this because our Constitution can be gamed — and was gamed quite successfully by the Republican Party.
The price of peace
There are competing theories for why America has an Electoral College. One, offered by Alexander Hamilton in an advocacy document written to persuade the nation to support its new Constitution, is that it would allow “men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to” the presidency to determine who should hold that crucial job.
Another theory, which Hamilton did not include in his sales pitch for the Constitution, is that the Electoral College was part of the price northerners had to pay in order to form a union with states whose entire economic model depended on slavery.
Regardless of which theory you prefer, it is undeniable that the Electoral College now serves the second goal of giving a leg up to racists far better than it serves the first. In 2016, the electors themselves are almost entirely obscurities — party activists who are typically selected more for their willingness to cast a vote for their party’s candidate than for their ability to analyse the qualities best adapted to the presidency. Even if they’d wanted to elect someone other than Donald Trump as the president, they lack the stature necessary to quell unrest that would likely ensue.
What the Electoral College has done is steal the presidency from the woman who won it, and given it to a man who openly campaigned on racism and nativism. It’s the sort of outcome that would make many of the Founding Fathers smile — the ones who demanded a terrible price as the cost of Union.
To be sure, there were good men at the Philadelphia convention that drafted the original Constitution. There were men who, as Gouverner Morris said in a speech to the convention, saw slavery as a “nefarious institution” and “the curse of heaven on the States where it prevailed.” There were also delegates from large states who stood for the very simple proposition that a vote from Virginia should count exactly the same amount as a vote from Delaware.
Yet these good men traded away their convictions. The new Constitution explicitly protected slavery. It allowed slave states to count each slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of calculating representation in the House and the Electoral College, even though those slaves could not vote. And it created the Senate, an anti-democratic body which today counts each person in Wyoming as 67 times more important than each person in California.
The good men in Philadelphia agreed to these terms in service of a singular goal: peace through Union. As Yale’s Akhil Amar explains, the Articles of Confederation, the loose alliance of states that preceded the Constitution, conceived of the United States as “an alliance, a multilateral treaty of sovereign nation-states.” Pennsylvania was as much a separate a sovereign nation from Virginia as Russia is today separate from China. The Articles largely bound these nations into a pact of mutual commerce and defense.
Nevertheless, the framers were well-versed in European history. They knew of the frequent warfare which plagued that continent, and they came to see Union as the best defense against a similar fate. As Amar describes their concerns, “each nation-state might well raise an army, ostensibly to protect itself against Indians or Europeans, but also perhaps to awe its neighbors. America would then recreate continental Europe — borders, armies, dictators, chains, and all.”
The threat from such armies, moreover, was twofold. As Hamilton warned, these armies could themselves be turned against the people, becoming “engines of despotism” that would lead the states in a “progressive direction toward monarchy.” Standing armies were a threat, not just to rival states, but to the people of their home states.
More than two centuries later, the Founding Fathers’ belief that their Constitution would keep America from keeping a standing army is quaint. The United States has the most powerful military in the world, in addition to a network of federal police, intelligence agencies, and an entire cabinet department devoted to internal security. Perhaps these institutions will balk if Trump orders them to impose the kind of tyranny Hamilton feared, but the Constitution sure did not stop them from being built.
It also didn’t save us from war among the states. The early history of the United States was an uneasy peace broken by regional conflicts and near-misses — the Nullification Crisis, Bleeding Kansas, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. And then the war came, a four year conflict that killed between 2 and 3 percent of the nation’s entire population.
Our Founding Fathers traded away democracy. They traded away the fundamental principle that every American’s vote is equal. They traded away every person’s inalienable right to freedom. And they’d traded it away for nothing.
Three generations of lost rights
If you go to the American South today, and you speak to a black person over the age of 50, you are most likely speaking to someone who was born into an apartheid state. If you speak to someone over the age of 70, that person probably had their voting rights stolen from them by a white supremacist regime.
This is not ancient history. These are flesh and blood Americans who live and work among us. America became a liberal democracy in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Free and fair elections, at least at the nationwide level, are not something we have all that much experience with.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the Civil War was won, the victors demanded a new covenant. They wrote slavery out of our Constitution. They wrote freedmen’s right to vote into the Constitution. And, in the most sweeping and radical change that has ever been written into the Constitution, they completely reworked the balance of power between the states and the people.
The Fourteenth Amendment declared, for the first time in American history, that everyone born in the United States is a citizen and that every citizen enjoys certain rights solely because they are an American (without this amendment, states were free to violate the Bill of Rights). It provided that no one can be stripped of their liberty without appropriate legal process, and it insisted on equal treatment along racial lines.
Yet, for much of the next century, the South gleefully ignored these guarantees. “Black codes” relegated freedmen to a status that was often difficult to distinguish from actual slavery. Black men were arrested for minor or even fabricated offenses, then rented out to whites as cheap labor. Jim Crow segregated African Americans and stripped them of their vote. And if anyone dared to question white supremacy, they were quieted by terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which often worked in close coordination with the state.
There are many villains in this saga. The resilience of white supremacist government in the South occurred because the Supreme Court largely sat on its hands, often explicitly embracing the South’s most odious practices. It happened because the rest of the nation lost its nerve, abandoning Reconstruction for a peace built from the bones of black Americans. It happened because of immoral men willing to use murder as a tool of political control. But white supremacy also thrived because of the Founding Fathers.
Remember that compromise? The one that gave Alabama exactly the same number of senators as New York? It also prevented Congress from enacting a single civil rights law from 1875 until 1957.
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was one of Congress’ final serious attempts to reconstruct the South. Enacted just over a year before Rutherford B. Hayes sold out black America in order to secure his presidency, the Act banned racial discrimination by “inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement.” It survived eight years before it was struck by the Supreme Court.
Though new civil rights legislation sometimes passed the House — five such bills did so in the 12 years following World War II — none of this legislation survived contact with the Senate. The same Senate malapportionment that, for many years, gave slave states parity with free states in Congress’ upper house, despite the fact that the free population in the North significantly exceeded that of the South, now gave the Jim Crow states a far louder voice in the Senate than their population warranted.
That thumb on the scale, combined with the filibuster, was enough to keep civil rights bills from becoming law.
Nearly six decades after the Senate finally ended its blockade of all civil rights laws, malapportionment continues to advantage conservatives and stymie progressives. To give just one example, the 54 senators who make up the current Republican majority (and who effectively kept the Supreme Court in Republican hands by preventing Chief Judge Merrick Garland from being confirmed to fill its vacant seat) represent fewer than 150 million people. The 46 senators in the Democratic majority, meanwhile, represent more than 170 million.
What’s more, according to the group FairVote, “the 46 Democratic caucus members in the 114th Congress received a total of 67.8 million votes in winning their seats, while the 54 Republican caucus members received 47.1 million votes.”
The ungovernable nation
Even setting aside the undemocratic Senate, the United States is an outlier among our peer democracies because of the unusual number of roadblocks our Constitution places before any bill that seeks to become law.
America’s separation of powers, which typically requires consensus among the president, two houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court — not to mention the cooperation of congressional leaders and committee chairs who have outsized power to hold up legislation — is generally taught to schoolchildren as if it were divine wisdom delivered to the Founding Fathers at Mt. Sinai. But it is a highly unusual system, in no small part because so many democracies that adopted similar models failed.
In his seminal essay “The Perils of Presidentialism,” the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz warned about the danger inherent in a constitutional system, like the one in the United States, which elects the nation’s chief executive separately from its legislature. In such a system, it is easy for two irreconcilable factions to each gain control of at least one veto point that enables them to halt the legislative process. Moreover, because both sides “derive their power from the votes of the people in a free competition among well-defined alternatives,” there’s no “democratic principle” that can be cited to break such an impasse.
As one Republican lawmaker defended his party’s actions in the lead up to the 2013 government shutdown, “I too won an election. You want me to just disregard all of my voters and all of the promises that I made and how I got elected?” The shutdown happened because both our Democratic president and our Republican House had an equal claim to democratic legitimacy.
The shutdown is an unhappy memory, but it is hardly the worse case scenario for what can happen if the president and the legislature face a unsolvable disagreement. It is “no accident,” Linz recalled of other nations that have faced such an impasse, “that in some such situations in the past, the armed forces were often tempted to intervene as a mediating power.”
The United States, fortunately, did not reach the point where Obama and former House Speaker John Boenher (R) needed to start counting their loyalists among the nation’s generals and admirals. But there’s still plenty of evidence of the issues that Linz is referencing in U.S. government.
Our stagnant, imperfect democracy leaves many problems — crumbling infrastructure, a job market that still has not fully recovered from the recession — unaddressed or underaddressed. It also denies voters much of the feedback that they need in order to cast their ballots wisely.
A likely reason why Republicans felt hornswoggled when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law is that they had good reason to believe that such a thing wasn’t possible. After all, every Democratic president since Harry Truman (as well as Republican Richard Nixon) promised a universal health plan. Yet, for more than six decades, they failed. Failed health care reform plans were as American as baseball and capitalism. It’s hard to blame Obama’s opponents for thinking they were safe from the horrors of affordable health care for the less fortunate.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s fiscal proposals, which include deep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, a plan to charge seniors up to 40 percent more for inferior health coverage, and big tax cuts for the highest earners, are unpopular with the general public, unpopular with Republicans, and unpopular even with most Republican donors. Pretty much the only people who like these proposals are rich Republican donors.
And yet, somehow, the American people just elected a Republican Congress that is poised to enact these unpopular proposals and a president (albeit not with anything close to a majority vote) who is likely to sign them into law. How can this be? Why did so many voters condemn themselves to policies that they hate?
Vox’s Sarah Kliff offers one explanation for this dichotomy. In a recent trip to a Kentucky town that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, despite the fact that many of its residents depend upon Obamacare for health coverage, she heard a frequent refrain. In Kliff’s words, these voters “just couldn’t fathom the idea that this new coverage would be taken away from them.”
In one of the most heartbreaking interviews in Kliff’s piece, a voter whose husband is waiting for a liver transplant was able to get health insurance for her family thanks to Obamacare. Yet she told Kliff that she backed Trump because “I guess I thought that, you know, he would not do this, he would not take health insurance away knowing it would affect so many people’s lives.”
In 2012, a Democratic super PAC convened a focus group to assess whether Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s support for the GOP’s fiscal proposals could be used against him. Yet the focus group’s reactions to these proposals resembled the conversations Kliff had with Trump voters in Kentucky. When the super PAC “informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan — and thus championed ‘ending Medicare as we know it’ — while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.”
The Constitution of the United States, in other words, built a nation where elections frequently don’t have significant consequences. In doing so, it lulled many voters into a false sense of security. It taught them not to believe politicians’ promises because, chances are, those promises won’t be implemented anyway.
And then, when a party actually does bring about sweeping radical change, the same voters seem flabbergasted that the government they elected actually did what it said it would do.
The risk of permanence
One good thing that can be said about unified Republican control of Congress and the White House is that it is likely to break this cycle. If Republicans succeed in repealing Obamacare, replacing Medicare with a voucher program, slashing Medicaid, cutting Social Security benefits by 20–50 percent, and using the savings to put more money in the wealthiest Americans’ pockets, then it will be hard to pretend that elections don’t matter. Or that voters shouldn’t pay attention to a party’s ideas before they cast a ballot for its candidates.
But the biggest danger arising from unified Republican government isn’t that it will enact bad policies that might be repealed later. It is that the GOP will use its moment at the apex of power to ensure that it can never be displaced from this position.
In many ways, this process began long before Donald Trump even declared his candidacy. Over the last several years, voter suppression laws thrived in Republican-led states. Meanwhile, these laws — many of which are unconstitutional — have survived judicial review thanks to a GOP-dominated Supreme Court that even went so far as to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.
There are also strong arguments that partisan gerrymandering violates either the First Amendment’s protections against viewpoint discrimination, or the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. Yet Republicans on the Supreme Court also thwarted efforts to combat such gerrymandering in court. These decisions, combined with geographic factors that advantage Republicans, prevent Democrats from enacting legislation even when they win. In 2012, for example, Democratic House candidates won nearly 1.4 million more votes than Republicans. Yet the GOP kept control of the House.
There are many good things in our Constitution. But they don’t mean very much if the Supreme Court is unwilling to enforce them.
Once Trump adds another Republican justice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Court’s first orders of business will probably be a long-pending dispute that seeks to hobble public sector unions’ ability to fund themselves — it is highly likely that Trump’s nominee will provide the fifth vote to inflict this wound on unions. That not only means lower wages for government workers in the long run, but also means Democrats will lose much of the political infrastructure that these unions provide.
And enabling voter suppression while carving up unions is really only a small part of the damage a truly partisan Supreme Court could inflict upon democratic governance. In the worse case scenario, a Supreme Court stacked with Trump justices could recreate the early twentieth century, when minimum wage laws, child labor laws, and much of the New Deal were blocked by an ideological Court that did not feel especially constrained by the text of the Constitution.
Despite all the obstacles laid by voter suppression and similar tactics, Democrats could claw their way back into congressional majorities and the White House — only to discover that their efforts to roll back Trump era legislation will be struck down by Republicans on the Supreme Court.
Learning the wrong lessons
If America holds a free and fair election in 2020, and if that election places a Democrat back in the White House, there’s a danger that liberals will learn the wrong lessons from four years of Donald Trump.
To be sure, some of the right lessons are obvious and unlikely to be missed. The Electoral College, for example, is a pathology that will have few informed defenders outside of the party that has twice seen its losing candidate declared the winner.
But conservatives also spent much of the last century spinning a fairly consistent narrative about what’s wrong with the American system of government. In their mythology, the problem with the United States is that it is too democratic. That it is too easy for the federal government to enact new programs and regulations. And that the way to save America is to erect barriers that make it harder for elected officials in Washington to govern.
This narrative is likely to have some appeal to liberals reeling from four years of Trump. The idea that Obamacare, or Medicare, or Social Security, could have been saved if only there’d been more veto points in our system will be appealing. We are likely to see just how bad things can get if government is able to move quickly.
If Brexit does prove to be a calamity, British voters will at least know who to blame.
But liberals will shoot themselves in the foot if they succumb to the appeal of a left-libertarian alliance whose sole goal is to keep future Presidents Trump from doing too much, too quickly. In the short term, they are likely to freeze government in the weakened state that four years of Donald Trump will produce. In the long term, such a single-minded alliance would exacerbate the constitutional defects that brought America to the point we find ourselves in today.
Today, as President-elect Donald Trump waits to take the oath of office, the nation of Great Britain faces a similar crisis. The Brexit campaign, which appealed to much of the same racism and nationalism that drove Trump’s campaign, is victorious. A web of alliances that helped end centuries of warfare within Europe is now at risk. British workers are expected to “make £38 less a week than their E.U. counterparts by the year 2030 once the country leaves the E.U.”
The British parliamentary system, which typically places a single party in charge of the entire government, did not prevent these outcomes. But if Brexit does prove to be a calamity, British voters will at least know who to blame. It was a Tory prime minister who allowed the Brexit vote, and a Tory government will manage the nation’s transition out of the European Union.
There can be no doubt in London that elections have consequences. And no further doubt about who foisted these consequences upon the British people.
And, if Tory candidates campaign on a plan to dismantle their nation’s universal health care system, British voters will know damn well that they better believe that these candidates will actually do it.
They won’t vote, as so many Americans did, to dismantle our social safety net by accident.
Source
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Monday, December 19, 2016
NORML issues open letter to incoming Vice President
From The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML):
Tomorrow, Michigan NORML will release an open letter to Vice President-Elect and presidential transition Chairman Mike Pence calling upon the incoming administration to declare their intentions on federal marijuana policy. Over 50 state and local NORML chapters representing tens-of-thousands of supporters have already co-signed.
The letter, combined with National NORML's petition to President-Elect Trump, is a powerful way in which we can influence the new administration as well as leaders in Congress in order to protect the rights of those in states that have instituted legalization, decriminalization, and medicinal marijuana.
Add your name to the thousands demanding cannabis clarity from the incoming administration.
With mixed signals coming from Donald Trump and his cabinet picks, the future of cannabis law reform has never been more uncertain. At times on the campaign trail, Trump has indicated support for states rights in regards to medicinal marijuana, yet his choice of Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, the man who will be the nation's prosecutor-in-chief, sends a conflicting message.
As you may know, Sessions throughout his career has been militantly opposed to marijuana law reform and would, if empowered by President Trump and Congress, will have the ability to reverse all the hard fought protections that we have achieved to protect responsible marijuana users rights and freedoms.
Join the thousands who have added their name to find out if President Trump will reverse our progress.
Only when we stand together and speak with one unified voice, clearly demanding an end to our nation's outdated and unjust marijuana prohibition, will we win.
Thank you for all that you do,
NORML Team
P.S. Did you see our email about Local 420: The Marijuana Consumers Union? Sign up to be a monthly supporter of NORML and you will get awesome NORML gear, special updates from NORML staff, and invites to policy calls with leading marijuana experts and policy makers. Sign up today!
Tomorrow, Michigan NORML will release an open letter to Vice President-Elect and presidential transition Chairman Mike Pence calling upon the incoming administration to declare their intentions on federal marijuana policy. Over 50 state and local NORML chapters representing tens-of-thousands of supporters have already co-signed.
The letter, combined with National NORML's petition to President-Elect Trump, is a powerful way in which we can influence the new administration as well as leaders in Congress in order to protect the rights of those in states that have instituted legalization, decriminalization, and medicinal marijuana.
Add your name to the thousands demanding cannabis clarity from the incoming administration.
With mixed signals coming from Donald Trump and his cabinet picks, the future of cannabis law reform has never been more uncertain. At times on the campaign trail, Trump has indicated support for states rights in regards to medicinal marijuana, yet his choice of Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, the man who will be the nation's prosecutor-in-chief, sends a conflicting message.
As you may know, Sessions throughout his career has been militantly opposed to marijuana law reform and would, if empowered by President Trump and Congress, will have the ability to reverse all the hard fought protections that we have achieved to protect responsible marijuana users rights and freedoms.
Join the thousands who have added their name to find out if President Trump will reverse our progress.
Only when we stand together and speak with one unified voice, clearly demanding an end to our nation's outdated and unjust marijuana prohibition, will we win.
Thank you for all that you do,
NORML Team
P.S. Did you see our email about Local 420: The Marijuana Consumers Union? Sign up to be a monthly supporter of NORML and you will get awesome NORML gear, special updates from NORML staff, and invites to policy calls with leading marijuana experts and policy makers. Sign up today!
Friday, December 16, 2016
Let's tell Congressman Paul Ryan that we do want to talk about marijuana reform
It seems that one of the many things that are taboo for discussion in the House is marijuana reform. Why is that? Because Speaker of the House Congressman Paul Ryan doesn't want to talk about it. On the other hand the American people do want to talk about marijuana reform. In fact they want more than mere words from Washington. They want action. This last election confirmed that. With the voters from a state deciding for themselves while ignoring the federal government. There are more states that day by day decide to put it to the people so the people can decide what they want. Obama even admitted it a few days after this last election. It's only a matter of time before it becomes a federal issue so let's contact the Speaker and tell him that We The American People want marijuana legalization and that we want the House to take this issue up. The more of us they hear from the better.
Rohrabacher Farr Act extended until April 28,2017
From the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML):
Members of Congress have re-authorized a federal provision prohibiting the Justice Department from interfering in state-authorized medical cannabis programs. The provision, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, was included in short-term spending legislation, House Resolution 2028, and will expire on April 28, 2017.
Initially enacted by Congress in 2014, the amendment maintains that federal funds cannot be used to prevent states from "implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana." In August, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the language bars the federal government from taking legal action against any individual involved in medical marijuana-related activity absent evidence that the defendant is in clear violation of state law.
Because the provision is included as part of a Congressional spending package and does not explicitly amend the US Controlled Substances Act, members must re-authorize the amendment annually. However, House leadership may prohibit federal lawmakers from revisiting the issue when they craft a longer-term funding bill this spring. Such a change in House rules would require members of the Senate to pass an equivalent version of the legislation, which would then need to be approved by House leaders in conference committee.
Members of Congress have re-authorized a federal provision prohibiting the Justice Department from interfering in state-authorized medical cannabis programs. The provision, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, was included in short-term spending legislation, House Resolution 2028, and will expire on April 28, 2017.
Initially enacted by Congress in 2014, the amendment maintains that federal funds cannot be used to prevent states from "implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana." In August, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the language bars the federal government from taking legal action against any individual involved in medical marijuana-related activity absent evidence that the defendant is in clear violation of state law.
Because the provision is included as part of a Congressional spending package and does not explicitly amend the US Controlled Substances Act, members must re-authorize the amendment annually. However, House leadership may prohibit federal lawmakers from revisiting the issue when they craft a longer-term funding bill this spring. Such a change in House rules would require members of the Senate to pass an equivalent version of the legislation, which would then need to be approved by House leaders in conference committee.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Trump adminstration may be hostile to Net Neutrality;individual privacy.
From Open Media:
The Internet is at a turning point: Under Donald Trump, Net Neutrality now ‘faces extinction’ at the FCC,1 and the NSA is poised for a dramatic expansion in spy powers.2 Either we stand up now for our digital rights, or we accept a world where everything we do online is monitored by governments and ISPs, free expression is quashed, and Internet access gets more expensive.
The United States has always been a trend-setter for Internet policy across the globe. If we stop fighting for our values then the door flies open for oppressive regimes the world over to follow our regressive lead.
Our nimble team is ready for this fight -- and we’ve received some seriously good news: a generous donor has just offered to double your donation every single month for a whole year if you sign up as a monthly donor right now.
This could make a huge difference in our fight against some of the most powerful and well-funded interests on the planet.
At OpenMedia, we’re experts in using cutting edge digital tools to force decision-makers to pay attention to citizen voices. But building and sharing these tools takes a lot of time and resources.
Our fight wouldn’t be possible without the strength of our grassroots donors: it’s their donations that enable us to run high impact campaigns to defend the Internet in the United States and around the world.
And if you donate today the Internet Society and TunnelBear have generously agreed to match the value of your donation. Please, give $10, $20 or whatever you can and double your impact protecting the open Internet!
Here’s what we’re up against in 2017:
A President and Congress intent on dismantling Net Neutrality consumer safeguards.1
Out-of-control government surveillance threatening to turn the Internet into something it was never intended to be: Big Brother.3
A president-elect who says he wants to “close down parts of the Internet” and who actually will have the power to make that happen.4
An AT&T-Time Warner mega-merger that will result in less competition and Internet price hikes for average Americans.5
If we are going to keep the Internet open, we’re going to have to fight to protect it. To succeed we need you to donate today so we can unlock essential matching funds. Please join for this time-sensitive opportunity.
The open Internet is under constant threat, but because of people like you we know we’ll be there to protect it.
With gratitude for all you do,
Alana,
on behalf of your OpenMedia team
P.S. The open Internet empowers everyday people in an unprecedented way--to create, share, communicate, learn, invent, challenge government, support a cause, and express ourselves. Big Media, Big Telecom, and governments all want to put you and the free Internet on a leash.Please donate now before our special matching funds program ends — for just this short time, we can double your impact.
[1] Net neutrality faces extinction under Trump. Source: CNBC
[2]FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump. Source: Bloomberg News
[3] US: Case Challenges Mass Internet Surveillance. Source: Human Rights Watch
[4] The Law That Could Allow Trump To Shut Down The US Internet. Source: Forbes
[5] Open Internet groups open letter to Trump and Clinton to stop the merger. Source: Coalition Letter
The Internet is at a turning point: Under Donald Trump, Net Neutrality now ‘faces extinction’ at the FCC,1 and the NSA is poised for a dramatic expansion in spy powers.2 Either we stand up now for our digital rights, or we accept a world where everything we do online is monitored by governments and ISPs, free expression is quashed, and Internet access gets more expensive.
The United States has always been a trend-setter for Internet policy across the globe. If we stop fighting for our values then the door flies open for oppressive regimes the world over to follow our regressive lead.
Our nimble team is ready for this fight -- and we’ve received some seriously good news: a generous donor has just offered to double your donation every single month for a whole year if you sign up as a monthly donor right now.
This could make a huge difference in our fight against some of the most powerful and well-funded interests on the planet.
At OpenMedia, we’re experts in using cutting edge digital tools to force decision-makers to pay attention to citizen voices. But building and sharing these tools takes a lot of time and resources.
Our fight wouldn’t be possible without the strength of our grassroots donors: it’s their donations that enable us to run high impact campaigns to defend the Internet in the United States and around the world.
And if you donate today the Internet Society and TunnelBear have generously agreed to match the value of your donation. Please, give $10, $20 or whatever you can and double your impact protecting the open Internet!
Here’s what we’re up against in 2017:
A President and Congress intent on dismantling Net Neutrality consumer safeguards.1
Out-of-control government surveillance threatening to turn the Internet into something it was never intended to be: Big Brother.3
A president-elect who says he wants to “close down parts of the Internet” and who actually will have the power to make that happen.4
An AT&T-Time Warner mega-merger that will result in less competition and Internet price hikes for average Americans.5
If we are going to keep the Internet open, we’re going to have to fight to protect it. To succeed we need you to donate today so we can unlock essential matching funds. Please join for this time-sensitive opportunity.
The open Internet is under constant threat, but because of people like you we know we’ll be there to protect it.
With gratitude for all you do,
Alana,
on behalf of your OpenMedia team
P.S. The open Internet empowers everyday people in an unprecedented way--to create, share, communicate, learn, invent, challenge government, support a cause, and express ourselves. Big Media, Big Telecom, and governments all want to put you and the free Internet on a leash.Please donate now before our special matching funds program ends — for just this short time, we can double your impact.
[1] Net neutrality faces extinction under Trump. Source: CNBC
[2]FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump. Source: Bloomberg News
[3] US: Case Challenges Mass Internet Surveillance. Source: Human Rights Watch
[4] The Law That Could Allow Trump To Shut Down The US Internet. Source: Forbes
[5] Open Internet groups open letter to Trump and Clinton to stop the merger. Source: Coalition Letter
Nominate Dr. Ron Paul, to the U.S. Federal Reserve's Board of Governors
From Campaign For Liberty:
"DONALD TRUMP'S ELECTION HAS WALL STREET QUESTIONING THE FUTURE OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE"
Even as the results poured in on Election Day, articles with headlines just like the one above began popping up in the press virtually every hour.
And even as I write you today, Wall Street banksters, Big Government apologists, and their pals in the media are screaming at the top of their lungs to tell Donald Trump "HANDS OFF!" of the biggest enabler of statism in Washington, D.C.
THE U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
Their goal is to win the battle for the corrupt big spending status quo in Washington, D.C. before Donald Trump is even sworn in!
If President-elect Trump is serious about "draining the swamp," and returning this country's glory days as a beacon of freedom and prosperity, there are TWO THINGS he can do right now to prove it...
1) Nominate my father, Dr. Ron Paul, to the U.S. Federal Reserve's Board of Governors; and
2) Double-down on past promises to make Audit the Fed part of his first 100 days in office!
If you agree, we simply must rally NOW to ensure Mr. Trump gets our message LOUD-AND-CLEAR, even as Washington, D.C.'s slick lawyers, banksters, and media elites are attempting to sink their fangs into him.
So will you please sign your petition urging Mr. Trump to take these two critical actions right away?
And, if possible, will you agree to your most generous contribution of $15 IMMEDIATELY?
Even if all you can do is chip in $10 or $5, it would be a TREMENDOUS help.
The truth is, there is no bigger enemy of liberty today in Washington, D.C. than the Federal Reserve.
From foreign-policy misadventures -- to crushing Big Government boondoggles like ObamaCare -- it's the Fed that foots the bills for Washington, D.C.'s madness when taxing and borrowing don't make ends meet.
Not only that, but the Federal Reserve system leads to:
***CONSTANT ECONOMIC CRISES
Centrally-planned interest rates and money manipulation lead to one economic bubble after another -- just as we saw in the housing crisis;
***THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS
As the cost of everyday necessities soar, those who are NOT on the government dole are forced to make do with less as the value of their money sinks;
***CURRENCY DESTRUCTION
History shows us that riots, violence, and full-scale police states can result when people finally realize our money isn't worth the paper it's printed on and REFUSE to accept it.
What better way for President-elect Trump to take a SLEDGEHAMMER to the Washington, D.C. Leviathan than by nominating my dad to the Fed's Board of Governors and passing Audit the Fed?
Monetary policy is what first inspired my father to leave his career as a medical doctor for the rough-and-tumble world of politics in the early 1970s.
Exposing the Federal Reserve has been his life's mission.
And there's not a crook, crony, corrupt bankster, or bureaucrat who leeches off this system that doesn't fear the very mention of the name RON PAUL.
Placing my father on the Fed's Board of Governors and passing his Audit the Fed Bill would be nothing short of earth-shattering...
But the truth is, America has already seen the earth shatter once on election night, with the jaw-dropping defeat of Hillary Clinton!
Of course, as always, the national media and insiders in Washington, D.C. are trying to co-opt and bend Mr. Trump to their will.
They're praising the parts of his plan to grow government (he certainly has some), while urging him to place on the back burner anything like Audit the Fed that would "rock the boat."
They're urging him to use "caution" and show "magnanimity" even as rioters all over the country are still destroying property, growing more violent, and issuing death threats.
They're attempting to build a cocoon around him, so that the only voices he hears are theirs...
That's why you and I have to take action NOW.
Please sign your petition right away.
And, if possible, please agree to your most generous contribution of $15.
Your generous gift will help Campaign for Liberty mobilize an army of patriots all over the country to ensure our message grows louder, louder and LOUDER!
How many times have we seen the American people cast their votes for freedom at the ballot box -- only to have it dashed?
How many times have promises been broken?
And how much more can our country take?
We have to take this opportunity to strike at the very heart of the Washington, D.C. Leviathan.
We have to finally end the Fed's grip on our economy.
If you agree, please sign your petition.
Please agree to your most generous contribution right away -- whether that's $15, $10, or $5.
Your action and support would mean the world to me.
In Liberty,
Ronnie Paul
Chairman of the Board
P.S. If President-elect Trump is serious about "draining the swamp," and returning this country's glory days as a beacon of freedom and prosperity, there are TWO THINGS he can do right now to prove it...
That's nominate my father, Dr. Ron Paul, to the U.S. Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, and double-down on past promises to make Audit the Fed part of his first 100 days in office!
But with Washington, D.C. insiders attempting to bend Mr. Trump to their will, we must act IMMEDIATELY!
So please sign your petition and agree to your most generous contribution of $15, $10, or $5a right away!
"DONALD TRUMP'S ELECTION HAS WALL STREET QUESTIONING THE FUTURE OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE"
Even as the results poured in on Election Day, articles with headlines just like the one above began popping up in the press virtually every hour.
And even as I write you today, Wall Street banksters, Big Government apologists, and their pals in the media are screaming at the top of their lungs to tell Donald Trump "HANDS OFF!" of the biggest enabler of statism in Washington, D.C.
THE U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
Their goal is to win the battle for the corrupt big spending status quo in Washington, D.C. before Donald Trump is even sworn in!
If President-elect Trump is serious about "draining the swamp," and returning this country's glory days as a beacon of freedom and prosperity, there are TWO THINGS he can do right now to prove it...
1) Nominate my father, Dr. Ron Paul, to the U.S. Federal Reserve's Board of Governors; and
2) Double-down on past promises to make Audit the Fed part of his first 100 days in office!
If you agree, we simply must rally NOW to ensure Mr. Trump gets our message LOUD-AND-CLEAR, even as Washington, D.C.'s slick lawyers, banksters, and media elites are attempting to sink their fangs into him.
So will you please sign your petition urging Mr. Trump to take these two critical actions right away?
And, if possible, will you agree to your most generous contribution of $15 IMMEDIATELY?
Even if all you can do is chip in $10 or $5, it would be a TREMENDOUS help.
The truth is, there is no bigger enemy of liberty today in Washington, D.C. than the Federal Reserve.
From foreign-policy misadventures -- to crushing Big Government boondoggles like ObamaCare -- it's the Fed that foots the bills for Washington, D.C.'s madness when taxing and borrowing don't make ends meet.
Not only that, but the Federal Reserve system leads to:
***CONSTANT ECONOMIC CRISES
Centrally-planned interest rates and money manipulation lead to one economic bubble after another -- just as we saw in the housing crisis;
***THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS
As the cost of everyday necessities soar, those who are NOT on the government dole are forced to make do with less as the value of their money sinks;
***CURRENCY DESTRUCTION
History shows us that riots, violence, and full-scale police states can result when people finally realize our money isn't worth the paper it's printed on and REFUSE to accept it.
What better way for President-elect Trump to take a SLEDGEHAMMER to the Washington, D.C. Leviathan than by nominating my dad to the Fed's Board of Governors and passing Audit the Fed?
Monetary policy is what first inspired my father to leave his career as a medical doctor for the rough-and-tumble world of politics in the early 1970s.
Exposing the Federal Reserve has been his life's mission.
And there's not a crook, crony, corrupt bankster, or bureaucrat who leeches off this system that doesn't fear the very mention of the name RON PAUL.
Placing my father on the Fed's Board of Governors and passing his Audit the Fed Bill would be nothing short of earth-shattering...
But the truth is, America has already seen the earth shatter once on election night, with the jaw-dropping defeat of Hillary Clinton!
Of course, as always, the national media and insiders in Washington, D.C. are trying to co-opt and bend Mr. Trump to their will.
They're praising the parts of his plan to grow government (he certainly has some), while urging him to place on the back burner anything like Audit the Fed that would "rock the boat."
They're urging him to use "caution" and show "magnanimity" even as rioters all over the country are still destroying property, growing more violent, and issuing death threats.
They're attempting to build a cocoon around him, so that the only voices he hears are theirs...
That's why you and I have to take action NOW.
Please sign your petition right away.
And, if possible, please agree to your most generous contribution of $15.
Your generous gift will help Campaign for Liberty mobilize an army of patriots all over the country to ensure our message grows louder, louder and LOUDER!
How many times have we seen the American people cast their votes for freedom at the ballot box -- only to have it dashed?
How many times have promises been broken?
And how much more can our country take?
We have to take this opportunity to strike at the very heart of the Washington, D.C. Leviathan.
We have to finally end the Fed's grip on our economy.
If you agree, please sign your petition.
Please agree to your most generous contribution right away -- whether that's $15, $10, or $5.
Your action and support would mean the world to me.
In Liberty,
Ronnie Paul
Chairman of the Board
P.S. If President-elect Trump is serious about "draining the swamp," and returning this country's glory days as a beacon of freedom and prosperity, there are TWO THINGS he can do right now to prove it...
That's nominate my father, Dr. Ron Paul, to the U.S. Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, and double-down on past promises to make Audit the Fed part of his first 100 days in office!
But with Washington, D.C. insiders attempting to bend Mr. Trump to their will, we must act IMMEDIATELY!
So please sign your petition and agree to your most generous contribution of $15, $10, or $5a right away!
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
We defeated the National Internet SalesTax Mandate
From Campaign For Liberty:
The tax-hikers are furious at you!
That's because -- thanks to our dedicated supporters -- Campaign for Liberty has prevented the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate from passing in the Lame-Duck Congress.
Thank you!
As you know, Congress' lame-duck session is a dangerous time -- when Liberty is most vulnerable to attack!
When Congressmen don't have to worry about re-election, they're most vulnerable to trading votes for personal gain.
But Campaign for Liberty and its supporters overwhelmed Congress with a barrage of phone calls and tens of thousands of fax-petitions.
With your help Campaign for Liberty made it impossible for Congressmen to ignore their constituents.
The National Internet Sales Tax Mandate is backed by some of the most powerful special interests in the country, making Campaign for Liberty's success is all the more remarkable.
And Campaign for Liberty was the only organization to mobilize opposition against this tax.
On Friday, I heard from a Congressional staffer whose boss shares our opposition to the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate:
"Campaign for Liberty has been crucial in the battle to stop the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate. Please make sure your members know how crucial their efforts were in stopping this new tax!"
Even in the face of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing, Campaign for Liberty managed to prevent the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate from even hitting the House or Senate floors!
But none of this would have been possible without the support of Liberty-minded individuals like you.
This is an enormous victory for Liberty, and one that sends a message to Big Government cronies trying to sneak legislation through back channels.
While this is certainly a cause for celebration, it's equally important we don't let our guard down.
There will always be Big Government shills trying to make their fortunes by restricting our liberties, and while we may have sent them packing this time...
...They are still skulking in the shadows, waiting for the next opportunity to chip away at our Constitutional rights and line their pockets.
That's why I want to say "Thank You!" But I also hope that you will continue to stand with Campaign for Liberty.
Without Liberty-minded individuals like you, Big Government lobbyists would be the ones celebrating today.
It has been a long, hard road but thanks to hard-working activists like you, we earned victory over the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate.
I hope we can count on your support in the future.
Thank you for all that you've done.
In Liberty,
Norm Singleton
President
P.S. With the support of Liberty-minded individuals like you, Campaign for Liberty has claimed victory over the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate!
Campaign for Liberty overwhelmed Congress with a barrage of phone calls and tens of thousands of fax-petitions.
As the only voice on Capitol Hill decrying the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate, Campaign for Liberty made it impossible for Congressmen to ignore their constituents.
Although this is a huge victory for Liberty, it is important that we don't rest on our laurels.
With Big Government lobbyists already plotting their next assault on our Constitutional rights, I hope you'll consider chipping in $25 or $10 to help us prepare for the coming battles in 2017.
The tax-hikers are furious at you!
That's because -- thanks to our dedicated supporters -- Campaign for Liberty has prevented the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate from passing in the Lame-Duck Congress.
Thank you!
As you know, Congress' lame-duck session is a dangerous time -- when Liberty is most vulnerable to attack!
When Congressmen don't have to worry about re-election, they're most vulnerable to trading votes for personal gain.
But Campaign for Liberty and its supporters overwhelmed Congress with a barrage of phone calls and tens of thousands of fax-petitions.
With your help Campaign for Liberty made it impossible for Congressmen to ignore their constituents.
The National Internet Sales Tax Mandate is backed by some of the most powerful special interests in the country, making Campaign for Liberty's success is all the more remarkable.
And Campaign for Liberty was the only organization to mobilize opposition against this tax.
On Friday, I heard from a Congressional staffer whose boss shares our opposition to the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate:
"Campaign for Liberty has been crucial in the battle to stop the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate. Please make sure your members know how crucial their efforts were in stopping this new tax!"
Even in the face of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing, Campaign for Liberty managed to prevent the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate from even hitting the House or Senate floors!
But none of this would have been possible without the support of Liberty-minded individuals like you.
This is an enormous victory for Liberty, and one that sends a message to Big Government cronies trying to sneak legislation through back channels.
While this is certainly a cause for celebration, it's equally important we don't let our guard down.
There will always be Big Government shills trying to make their fortunes by restricting our liberties, and while we may have sent them packing this time...
...They are still skulking in the shadows, waiting for the next opportunity to chip away at our Constitutional rights and line their pockets.
That's why I want to say "Thank You!" But I also hope that you will continue to stand with Campaign for Liberty.
Without Liberty-minded individuals like you, Big Government lobbyists would be the ones celebrating today.
It has been a long, hard road but thanks to hard-working activists like you, we earned victory over the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate.
I hope we can count on your support in the future.
Thank you for all that you've done.
In Liberty,
Norm Singleton
President
P.S. With the support of Liberty-minded individuals like you, Campaign for Liberty has claimed victory over the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate!
Campaign for Liberty overwhelmed Congress with a barrage of phone calls and tens of thousands of fax-petitions.
As the only voice on Capitol Hill decrying the National Internet Sales Tax Mandate, Campaign for Liberty made it impossible for Congressmen to ignore their constituents.
Although this is a huge victory for Liberty, it is important that we don't rest on our laurels.
With Big Government lobbyists already plotting their next assault on our Constitutional rights, I hope you'll consider chipping in $25 or $10 to help us prepare for the coming battles in 2017.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
According to CNBC even Jeff Sessions can't stop the marijuana train
In November, the country elected a new president who promised to shake up Washington. At the same time, the cannabis industry took a giant leap forward with seven states voting yes to measures further legalizing marijuana. In total, California, Nevada, Massachusetts and Maine legalized recreational use, and Florida, North Dakota and Arkansas legalized medical use, bringing the total number of states with legal marijuana to 29.
The recent slate of successful marijuana-related measures at the state level could be viewed as a national referendum on cannabis. The "yes" votes cut across party lines and presidential candidates. Today, two-thirds of Americans live in states with legal access to cannabis.
California, the first to pass medical marijuana two decades ago, is arguably the most significant bellwether state in the evolution of cannabis. It is the country's most populous state, the sixth largest economy in the world and a cultural trendsetter. California's Proposition 64 legalizing adult use of marijuana passed with 57 percent of the votes.
As President-elect Donald Trump nominates members of his cabinet, some have conjectured about what U.S. Attorney General appointee Jeff Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama, might mean for the future of the cannabis industry. The sober conclusion? Very little.
It is true that Mr. Sessions publicly has expressed contempt for marijuana users, but it is a giant leap to equate one's personal stance with a public policy position that will impact millions of lives. You can be a teetotaler, but still believe that the best way for government to control alcohol consumption is to regulate it, not ban it.
"The cannabis industry is on track to reach $23 billion by the end of the decade, it is already a major economic engine employing more than 100,000 and generating millions in tax revenue."
What we do know, from a policy perspective, is that Mr. Trump is on the record saying marijuana policy is something best left to the states, a position consistent with Republican Party's core doctrines.
U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a long-time supporter of marijuana policy reform in Capitol Hill, told reporters recently that he trusts that Mr. Trump's hands-off approach is likely to prevail.
In fact, Mr. Rohrabacher may hold more sway on federal policy than anyone in the executive branch when it comes to marijuana. The Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment, which he co-authored, prohibits the U.S. Department of Justice from prosecuting those who engage in state-sanctioned use, cultivation and dispensing of medical marijuana. It was first passed in 2014 with bipartisan support and again in 2015. It needs to be renewed each year, but it is currently the law.
Others have pointed out that the president cannot nullify state laws, and only Congress has the power to pass federal laws. And Congress' attitude toward marijuana is likely to reflect the U.S. electorate. The vast majority of Americans today favor legalizing marijuana, about 60 percent, the largest percentage ever, according to recent polls.
There are currently several bills working their way through Congress that could further ease Prohibition, including the Marijuana Business Access to Banking Act that would update federal banking rules to resolve conflicts between federal and state laws and allow banks and credit unions to provide services to legitimate marijuana businesses. U.S. Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), a co-author of the banking bill, has said the results of this year's elections could give his bill a boost.
As more and more states legalize marijuana, the federal stance will be become untenable in the long run. It is fundamentally unfair that the same act of consuming marijuana can be perfectly legal in one state, and land you in prison in another. President Barack Obama made that very point during a recent interview with Bill Maher telling the television host that the time will come when the federal government must review its stance on cannabis.
With all due respect to President-elect Trump and Mr. Sessions, this debate is larger than one administration or one cabinet nomination. The cannabis industry is on track to reach $23 billion by the end of the decade, it is already a major economic engine employing more than 100,000 and generating millions in tax revenue.
The way for progress is not to turn back time, but to continue institutionalizing this space with professional standards and reasonable regulations that protect consumers and citizens.
Source
I added "According to CNBC" to the original title. The original title might just poke the bear too much and too hard. If that happens that bear will swipe his paw and cause marijuana dispensaries nationwide to be closed down. If you were not around in the 80's you are not familiar with the prohibitionist mindset being mainstream. Where the DEA had society's blessings and those that used marijuana were labeled as "drug addicts","stupid potheads" and "waste cases". The police could act on a tip by an informer (there have been cases where the informer was a fictional character) breakdown you front door. Making you lay down on your stomach as they ransack your house. They didn't find anything but they are going to take your home,cars and other property away anyway under the asset forfeiture laws. Your children will be taken away from you and given to strangers. Those were the days of the 80's. The same 80's Sessions wants to return this country to.
The recent slate of successful marijuana-related measures at the state level could be viewed as a national referendum on cannabis. The "yes" votes cut across party lines and presidential candidates. Today, two-thirds of Americans live in states with legal access to cannabis.
California, the first to pass medical marijuana two decades ago, is arguably the most significant bellwether state in the evolution of cannabis. It is the country's most populous state, the sixth largest economy in the world and a cultural trendsetter. California's Proposition 64 legalizing adult use of marijuana passed with 57 percent of the votes.
As President-elect Donald Trump nominates members of his cabinet, some have conjectured about what U.S. Attorney General appointee Jeff Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama, might mean for the future of the cannabis industry. The sober conclusion? Very little.
It is true that Mr. Sessions publicly has expressed contempt for marijuana users, but it is a giant leap to equate one's personal stance with a public policy position that will impact millions of lives. You can be a teetotaler, but still believe that the best way for government to control alcohol consumption is to regulate it, not ban it.
"The cannabis industry is on track to reach $23 billion by the end of the decade, it is already a major economic engine employing more than 100,000 and generating millions in tax revenue."
What we do know, from a policy perspective, is that Mr. Trump is on the record saying marijuana policy is something best left to the states, a position consistent with Republican Party's core doctrines.
U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a long-time supporter of marijuana policy reform in Capitol Hill, told reporters recently that he trusts that Mr. Trump's hands-off approach is likely to prevail.
In fact, Mr. Rohrabacher may hold more sway on federal policy than anyone in the executive branch when it comes to marijuana. The Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment, which he co-authored, prohibits the U.S. Department of Justice from prosecuting those who engage in state-sanctioned use, cultivation and dispensing of medical marijuana. It was first passed in 2014 with bipartisan support and again in 2015. It needs to be renewed each year, but it is currently the law.
Others have pointed out that the president cannot nullify state laws, and only Congress has the power to pass federal laws. And Congress' attitude toward marijuana is likely to reflect the U.S. electorate. The vast majority of Americans today favor legalizing marijuana, about 60 percent, the largest percentage ever, according to recent polls.
There are currently several bills working their way through Congress that could further ease Prohibition, including the Marijuana Business Access to Banking Act that would update federal banking rules to resolve conflicts between federal and state laws and allow banks and credit unions to provide services to legitimate marijuana businesses. U.S. Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), a co-author of the banking bill, has said the results of this year's elections could give his bill a boost.
As more and more states legalize marijuana, the federal stance will be become untenable in the long run. It is fundamentally unfair that the same act of consuming marijuana can be perfectly legal in one state, and land you in prison in another. President Barack Obama made that very point during a recent interview with Bill Maher telling the television host that the time will come when the federal government must review its stance on cannabis.
With all due respect to President-elect Trump and Mr. Sessions, this debate is larger than one administration or one cabinet nomination. The cannabis industry is on track to reach $23 billion by the end of the decade, it is already a major economic engine employing more than 100,000 and generating millions in tax revenue.
The way for progress is not to turn back time, but to continue institutionalizing this space with professional standards and reasonable regulations that protect consumers and citizens.
Source
I added "According to CNBC" to the original title. The original title might just poke the bear too much and too hard. If that happens that bear will swipe his paw and cause marijuana dispensaries nationwide to be closed down. If you were not around in the 80's you are not familiar with the prohibitionist mindset being mainstream. Where the DEA had society's blessings and those that used marijuana were labeled as "drug addicts","stupid potheads" and "waste cases". The police could act on a tip by an informer (there have been cases where the informer was a fictional character) breakdown you front door. Making you lay down on your stomach as they ransack your house. They didn't find anything but they are going to take your home,cars and other property away anyway under the asset forfeiture laws. Your children will be taken away from you and given to strangers. Those were the days of the 80's. The same 80's Sessions wants to return this country to.
Let's ask Trump to clarify his position on marijuana
From The National Organization for the Reform Marijuana Laws:
Over the last several weeks, we have received dozens of calls from journalists with the same question: "What does NORML think that President-Elect Trump and his Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions will do in regards to marijuana once in office?"
However, the best public indicators we have to go on give mixed messages. Additionally,in nearly all of the articles
that NORML has been quoted in about Trump and Sessions, not one indicates that the writer had even attempted to contact the presidential transition team or Sen. Sessions.
So we've released our own request for clarification and we NEED you to join us in demanding answers as to how the federal government is going to respect the will of the voters in states that have ended prohibition.
Add your voice to the thousands calling on Trump to provide cannabis clarity TODAY.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to take a federalist approach to marijuana stating:
"In terms of marijuana and legalization, I think that should be a state issue, state-by-state... Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen - right? Don't we agree? I think so. And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states."
Yet his nomination of Sen. Sessions sends a very different signal. At a Congressional hearing just this past April, he stated that "good people do not smoke marijuana." His legislative track record and public comments show no intentions of ending marijuana prohibition or respecting the millions of responsible cannabis consumers throughout the country. If Senator Sessions' personal beliefs were allowed to dictate the policies of the Justice Department, we could be in for a rough four years.
With 8 states now having legalized the adult use of marijuana and over half the country having medical marijuana programs, the American people deserve to know what President-Elect Trump's policy towards these states will be.
Join thousands of others in signing the petition to ask President-Elect Donald Trump to answer this question and clarify his position on respecting state marijuana laws.
Going forward we must be vigilant to protect the progress we have made, keep fighting to protect the rights of responsible adults, and end finally end the prohibition of marijuana nationwide.
Onward,
NORML Team
Over the last several weeks, we have received dozens of calls from journalists with the same question: "What does NORML think that President-Elect Trump and his Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions will do in regards to marijuana once in office?"
However, the best public indicators we have to go on give mixed messages. Additionally,in nearly all of the articles
that NORML has been quoted in about Trump and Sessions, not one indicates that the writer had even attempted to contact the presidential transition team or Sen. Sessions.
So we've released our own request for clarification and we NEED you to join us in demanding answers as to how the federal government is going to respect the will of the voters in states that have ended prohibition.
Add your voice to the thousands calling on Trump to provide cannabis clarity TODAY.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to take a federalist approach to marijuana stating:
"In terms of marijuana and legalization, I think that should be a state issue, state-by-state... Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen - right? Don't we agree? I think so. And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states."
Yet his nomination of Sen. Sessions sends a very different signal. At a Congressional hearing just this past April, he stated that "good people do not smoke marijuana." His legislative track record and public comments show no intentions of ending marijuana prohibition or respecting the millions of responsible cannabis consumers throughout the country. If Senator Sessions' personal beliefs were allowed to dictate the policies of the Justice Department, we could be in for a rough four years.
With 8 states now having legalized the adult use of marijuana and over half the country having medical marijuana programs, the American people deserve to know what President-Elect Trump's policy towards these states will be.
Join thousands of others in signing the petition to ask President-Elect Donald Trump to answer this question and clarify his position on respecting state marijuana laws.
Going forward we must be vigilant to protect the progress we have made, keep fighting to protect the rights of responsible adults, and end finally end the prohibition of marijuana nationwide.
Onward,
NORML Team
Friday, December 9, 2016
Chelsea Clinton: Hillary's revenge
“The Clintons are like herpes,” actor Tim Allen said last month, “Just when you think they’re gone, they show up again.”
As if on cue, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has come back to life with a new plan to continue her family’s political dynasty – and she’s anointing her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, as our country’s next leader.
Hillary stopped sobbing over her defeat long enough to speak at Harry Reid’s retirement this week, where she announced that she’s throwing a “thank you” dinner inside the Plaza Hotel’s elegant Grand Ballroom on December 15.
Of course, she’s not thanking her voters like President-elect Donald Trump is.
That’s not the Clinton’s style.
Instead, Hillary is making the event ultra exclusive, inviting only the most elite of her financial donors to the six-figure gala.
To get on this list, you not only had to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for her campaign, but you also had to host an event introducing her to other donors. The bar is so high that even longtime Clinton pals are complaining about being snubbed, according to The Washington Post.
What’s behind all this? According to sources closest to her, it’s plotting her next move to put the Clinton family back into power ASAP – and it links straight back to Chelsea Clinton.
Since voters rejected her last month, Hillary has tried everything from hopeless state recounts, to claiming Russians hacked U.S. voting machines, to trying to sway faithless members of the Electoral College in order to steal the 2016 election.
Still, she’s walking away a loser – this time.
But the Clintons never go away, no matter how much the American people demand it. Journalist Ron Fournier, a Clinton confidante, wrote on Twitter that “sources close to her” told him that “raising doubts about legitimacy of election, even w/out overturning result, is part of Clinton’s plans to keep her options open for 2020.”
That’s right; Hillary Clinton is considering another run for president four years from now, at the age of 73!
But critics says that announcement may just be a smoke screen
For once, Hillary may be doing something that doesn’t benefit her own political career — she’s trying to convince her top donors to shift their money to her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, the Clinton’s cartel’s ace-in-the-hole.
A source close to the Clintons told The New York Post that “the Clintons need some time to regroup after Hillary’s crushing loss,” but “they will not give up.”
“Chelsea would be the next extension of the Clinton brand,” the Clinton insider said.
The plan is for Chelsea Clinton to run for Congress, maybe as early as 2018.
Chelsea will run for the seat of Rep. Nita Lowey, a 79-year-old far-left Democrat from New York, when Lowey retires.
Lowey’s district has two advantages: It’s a Democratic safe seat. Chelsea is unlikely to run into any serious competition there. And Lowey represents the city of Chappaqua, where the Clintons have a home. Chelsea doesn’t live there – she lives in Manhattan with husband Marc Mezvinsky – but that’s no problem for the Clintons. After all, Hillary didn’t live in New York before becoming its U.S. senator.
So, the plan is to put Lowey out to pasture and install Chelsea in her place.
So far, Chelsea has made a comfortable living by cashing in on her family name and access to power, and has been groomed for years by her power hungry parents.
Chelsea Clinton is vice chair of the ethically challenged Clinton Foundation, where she has taken a special interest in its fundraising operations. Coincidentally, she has an estimated net worth of $15 million and owns a $10.5 million apartment overlooking New York City’s Madison Square Park.
And like her parents, Chelsea’s media connections run deep. For example, in 2011 NBC News paid her $600,000 as a special correspondent, although she had no experience in journalism – or, as far as we could tell, any talent, either.
Chelsea only faces one major problem: Lowey is not stepping aside quietly. She says she has no plans to retire, Chelsea’s future plans be damned.
“You’ll have to ask Chelsea” where stories about her retirement are coming from, Lowey said. “I’m running for office. I currently serve, and… I will keep running.”
In fact, a New Rochelle newspaper first published reports that Chelsea plans to run for Lowey’s seat five years ago – but still Lowey hasn’t budged.
If Chelsea wants her seat, it will be over her dead body (which rumors say can be arranged in Clintonland).
But at a minimum, Chelsea will have to work for it, which is more than this 36-year-old grown child has done for anything else in her life.
Source
As if on cue, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has come back to life with a new plan to continue her family’s political dynasty – and she’s anointing her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, as our country’s next leader.
Hillary stopped sobbing over her defeat long enough to speak at Harry Reid’s retirement this week, where she announced that she’s throwing a “thank you” dinner inside the Plaza Hotel’s elegant Grand Ballroom on December 15.
Of course, she’s not thanking her voters like President-elect Donald Trump is.
That’s not the Clinton’s style.
Instead, Hillary is making the event ultra exclusive, inviting only the most elite of her financial donors to the six-figure gala.
To get on this list, you not only had to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for her campaign, but you also had to host an event introducing her to other donors. The bar is so high that even longtime Clinton pals are complaining about being snubbed, according to The Washington Post.
What’s behind all this? According to sources closest to her, it’s plotting her next move to put the Clinton family back into power ASAP – and it links straight back to Chelsea Clinton.
Since voters rejected her last month, Hillary has tried everything from hopeless state recounts, to claiming Russians hacked U.S. voting machines, to trying to sway faithless members of the Electoral College in order to steal the 2016 election.
Still, she’s walking away a loser – this time.
But the Clintons never go away, no matter how much the American people demand it. Journalist Ron Fournier, a Clinton confidante, wrote on Twitter that “sources close to her” told him that “raising doubts about legitimacy of election, even w/out overturning result, is part of Clinton’s plans to keep her options open for 2020.”
That’s right; Hillary Clinton is considering another run for president four years from now, at the age of 73!
But critics says that announcement may just be a smoke screen
For once, Hillary may be doing something that doesn’t benefit her own political career — she’s trying to convince her top donors to shift their money to her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, the Clinton’s cartel’s ace-in-the-hole.
A source close to the Clintons told The New York Post that “the Clintons need some time to regroup after Hillary’s crushing loss,” but “they will not give up.”
“Chelsea would be the next extension of the Clinton brand,” the Clinton insider said.
The plan is for Chelsea Clinton to run for Congress, maybe as early as 2018.
Chelsea will run for the seat of Rep. Nita Lowey, a 79-year-old far-left Democrat from New York, when Lowey retires.
Lowey’s district has two advantages: It’s a Democratic safe seat. Chelsea is unlikely to run into any serious competition there. And Lowey represents the city of Chappaqua, where the Clintons have a home. Chelsea doesn’t live there – she lives in Manhattan with husband Marc Mezvinsky – but that’s no problem for the Clintons. After all, Hillary didn’t live in New York before becoming its U.S. senator.
So, the plan is to put Lowey out to pasture and install Chelsea in her place.
So far, Chelsea has made a comfortable living by cashing in on her family name and access to power, and has been groomed for years by her power hungry parents.
Chelsea Clinton is vice chair of the ethically challenged Clinton Foundation, where she has taken a special interest in its fundraising operations. Coincidentally, she has an estimated net worth of $15 million and owns a $10.5 million apartment overlooking New York City’s Madison Square Park.
And like her parents, Chelsea’s media connections run deep. For example, in 2011 NBC News paid her $600,000 as a special correspondent, although she had no experience in journalism – or, as far as we could tell, any talent, either.
Chelsea only faces one major problem: Lowey is not stepping aside quietly. She says she has no plans to retire, Chelsea’s future plans be damned.
“You’ll have to ask Chelsea” where stories about her retirement are coming from, Lowey said. “I’m running for office. I currently serve, and… I will keep running.”
In fact, a New Rochelle newspaper first published reports that Chelsea plans to run for Lowey’s seat five years ago – but still Lowey hasn’t budged.
If Chelsea wants her seat, it will be over her dead body (which rumors say can be arranged in Clintonland).
But at a minimum, Chelsea will have to work for it, which is more than this 36-year-old grown child has done for anything else in her life.
Source
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Where does the Donald stand on marijuana?
Where does President-elect Donald Trump stand on marijuana-medical and recreational,state's rights and the nomination of Jeff Sessions,staunch prohibitionist extraordinaire,for Attorney General?
NORML is asking that same question. That is why they are sending Trump a letter asking him to clarify his position. NORML would love it if you added your signature to the letter.
Trump has stated that he will respect the laws the states have enacted concerning marijuana. Yet his nomination of Jeff Sessions contradicts that position. I have written on Sessions and posted news stories about him when it concerns marijuana legalization. Sessions longs for the old days of police brutality,broken in doors,destroyed families and properties. Not to mention legally stolen items that have nothing to do with the crime but good luck proving your innocence. Wait,I thought it was innocent until proven guilty. Not in military court martials and asset forfeiture hearings.
NORML is asking that same question. That is why they are sending Trump a letter asking him to clarify his position. NORML would love it if you added your signature to the letter.
Trump has stated that he will respect the laws the states have enacted concerning marijuana. Yet his nomination of Jeff Sessions contradicts that position. I have written on Sessions and posted news stories about him when it concerns marijuana legalization. Sessions longs for the old days of police brutality,broken in doors,destroyed families and properties. Not to mention legally stolen items that have nothing to do with the crime but good luck proving your innocence. Wait,I thought it was innocent until proven guilty. Not in military court martials and asset forfeiture hearings.
Legal bud reams the alcohol industry
Beer sales are taking a hit in states where marijuana is legal.
So far this year, beer volumes have dropped roughly 2% in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, which have all legalized recreational pot, according to Neilsen data cited in a recent report from Cowen & Co.
At the same time, marijuana consumption has grown in those states.
The data indicates that many beer drinkers are swapping their six-packs for marijuana instead, and that has major implications for the beer industry — especially for makers of cheaper beers like Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors Brewing Company.
"Mainstream beer" including Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, is "under siege" from legal marijuana, with volumes down 4.4% in the states studied, according to Cowen and Co. analysts.
Craft beer sales growth is slowing in those states, but not to the same degree.
The trends show significant overlap between buyers of cheaper beers and users of marijuana.
"The pressure we are seeing on lower-priced beers is consistent with the trends we are seeing in cannabis use by income group nationally," analysts wrote. "Indeed, while cannabis incidence has been on the rise nationally, over the last 10 years (through 2014, the most recently available) we have seen the biggest increases among lower-income households, where cannabis use is also highest."
As additional states consider legalizing marijuana, beer companies will be at an even greater risk.
"With Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors Brewing Company controlling roughly 70% of the overall beer category in the US, there is clear risk that growing cannabis use will weigh on their businesses," analysts wrote.
Source
A lot of groups brought up the so-called disadvantages when it comes to marijuana. Most were just blowing hot air out of their asses. The alcohol industry is the most angry because they are finding out that legal marijuana is a wealth detriment-detriment to their wealth. When given a choice between a manmade concoction that causes health problems,broken marriages and abused children. Not to mention possible police involvement. That goes from the police arresting the drunk driver to a possible domestic disturbance. Or a natural plant that has been used for centuries from medicinal use to recreational use. This plant does not cause the problems that are mentioned above. Let's look at their following death rates: For alcohol: which category do you want to go with? Death by drunk driving? Cirrhosis? Other health problems? Criminal acts against family members? We're talking a lot of deaths here. I would say into the 1,000's. For marijuana: zero,nada,nilch,nothing. Which one of these is the wiser choice?
So far this year, beer volumes have dropped roughly 2% in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, which have all legalized recreational pot, according to Neilsen data cited in a recent report from Cowen & Co.
At the same time, marijuana consumption has grown in those states.
The data indicates that many beer drinkers are swapping their six-packs for marijuana instead, and that has major implications for the beer industry — especially for makers of cheaper beers like Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors Brewing Company.
"Mainstream beer" including Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, is "under siege" from legal marijuana, with volumes down 4.4% in the states studied, according to Cowen and Co. analysts.
Craft beer sales growth is slowing in those states, but not to the same degree.
The trends show significant overlap between buyers of cheaper beers and users of marijuana.
"The pressure we are seeing on lower-priced beers is consistent with the trends we are seeing in cannabis use by income group nationally," analysts wrote. "Indeed, while cannabis incidence has been on the rise nationally, over the last 10 years (through 2014, the most recently available) we have seen the biggest increases among lower-income households, where cannabis use is also highest."
As additional states consider legalizing marijuana, beer companies will be at an even greater risk.
"With Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors Brewing Company controlling roughly 70% of the overall beer category in the US, there is clear risk that growing cannabis use will weigh on their businesses," analysts wrote.
Source
A lot of groups brought up the so-called disadvantages when it comes to marijuana. Most were just blowing hot air out of their asses. The alcohol industry is the most angry because they are finding out that legal marijuana is a wealth detriment-detriment to their wealth. When given a choice between a manmade concoction that causes health problems,broken marriages and abused children. Not to mention possible police involvement. That goes from the police arresting the drunk driver to a possible domestic disturbance. Or a natural plant that has been used for centuries from medicinal use to recreational use. This plant does not cause the problems that are mentioned above. Let's look at their following death rates: For alcohol: which category do you want to go with? Death by drunk driving? Cirrhosis? Other health problems? Criminal acts against family members? We're talking a lot of deaths here. I would say into the 1,000's. For marijuana: zero,nada,nilch,nothing. Which one of these is the wiser choice?
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Americans For Safe Access sue the DEA
From American For Safe Access:
Today, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) took a major step to stop the DEA’s misinformation campaign on cannabis once and for all. And as an ASA member, you helped make it happen!
ASA filed a new petition under the Information Quality Act (IQA) on behalf of our members that could force the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to update its outdated and unscientific information about medical cannabis. If this new effort is successful, it will be a watershed moment in the effort to end the conflict between federal and state law. This important step will also mean politicians will no longer be able to use this misinformation to fight against medical cannabis.
ASA has worked with the prestigious international law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to file the petition on behalf of our 100,000 members nationwide. U.S. Department of Justice guidelines require a response to IQA petitions within 60 days of filing. That means that the Obama Administration can still act on our members’ IQA petition and instruct the DEA to grant the request before Inauguration Day on January 20th.
The IQA requires federal agencies to employ reliable and sound science when making regulations and disseminating information. It also provides a mechanism for people and companies to challenge government information they believe to be inaccurate. Business, consumer, environmental and conservation groups have all used the IQA to pursue changes in government policies. Now is our chance to use this tool to make a real difference in federal policy.
Forcing a change in federal policy towards medical cannabis before Obama leaves could make all the difference when it comes to rescheduling and changing federal law during the new Administration.
ASA cites 25 violations under the IQA, alleging that the DEA website currently contains inaccurate statements that do not meet informational standards required by the law. Making matters worse, the DEA continues to distribute statements about the efficacy of medical cannabis and its risks, which have been refuted by the DEA itself in the recent “Denial of Petition to Initiate Proceedings to Reschedule Marijuana,” issued August 12, 2016. If this petition is successful, it means that the DEA will no longer be able to use misinformation about cannabis on issues such as the gateway drug hypothesis, irreversible cognitive decline in adults, and how cannabis can be linked to psychosis or lung cancer to deny patients access to medical cannabis.
If you want to be a part of history, it is not too late to join ASA and be a part of this amazing moment. If you are already a member, you can also help by making a generous one-time donation or affordable monthly contribution to help us fight for your IQA petition – all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Please know, we cannot do this without you!
Now is the time to act! We need all ASA members and allies to join together and take the offensive in the effort to finally change federal medical cannabis policies. Do not miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to make a difference in medical cannabis policy!
We need all of our voices to be heard to get this petition approved right now or in the federal courts next year. Please contribute today to support this effort.
Thank you in advance for being a part of the IQA campaign. Together, we are getting closer and closer to our goal – safe and legal access to medical cannabis for everyone who needs it.
Regards,
Steph Sherer
Executive Director, Americans For Safe Access
For more information on the IQA petition please refer to this webpage.
P.S. – You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support the educational and legal work of Americans for Safe Access Foundation, including the IQA petition campaign, online or by mailing a check or money order to Americans for Safe Access Foundation, 1624 U Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20009.
Today, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) took a major step to stop the DEA’s misinformation campaign on cannabis once and for all. And as an ASA member, you helped make it happen!
ASA filed a new petition under the Information Quality Act (IQA) on behalf of our members that could force the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to update its outdated and unscientific information about medical cannabis. If this new effort is successful, it will be a watershed moment in the effort to end the conflict between federal and state law. This important step will also mean politicians will no longer be able to use this misinformation to fight against medical cannabis.
ASA has worked with the prestigious international law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe to file the petition on behalf of our 100,000 members nationwide. U.S. Department of Justice guidelines require a response to IQA petitions within 60 days of filing. That means that the Obama Administration can still act on our members’ IQA petition and instruct the DEA to grant the request before Inauguration Day on January 20th.
The IQA requires federal agencies to employ reliable and sound science when making regulations and disseminating information. It also provides a mechanism for people and companies to challenge government information they believe to be inaccurate. Business, consumer, environmental and conservation groups have all used the IQA to pursue changes in government policies. Now is our chance to use this tool to make a real difference in federal policy.
Forcing a change in federal policy towards medical cannabis before Obama leaves could make all the difference when it comes to rescheduling and changing federal law during the new Administration.
ASA cites 25 violations under the IQA, alleging that the DEA website currently contains inaccurate statements that do not meet informational standards required by the law. Making matters worse, the DEA continues to distribute statements about the efficacy of medical cannabis and its risks, which have been refuted by the DEA itself in the recent “Denial of Petition to Initiate Proceedings to Reschedule Marijuana,” issued August 12, 2016. If this petition is successful, it means that the DEA will no longer be able to use misinformation about cannabis on issues such as the gateway drug hypothesis, irreversible cognitive decline in adults, and how cannabis can be linked to psychosis or lung cancer to deny patients access to medical cannabis.
If you want to be a part of history, it is not too late to join ASA and be a part of this amazing moment. If you are already a member, you can also help by making a generous one-time donation or affordable monthly contribution to help us fight for your IQA petition – all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Please know, we cannot do this without you!
Now is the time to act! We need all ASA members and allies to join together and take the offensive in the effort to finally change federal medical cannabis policies. Do not miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to make a difference in medical cannabis policy!
We need all of our voices to be heard to get this petition approved right now or in the federal courts next year. Please contribute today to support this effort.
Thank you in advance for being a part of the IQA campaign. Together, we are getting closer and closer to our goal – safe and legal access to medical cannabis for everyone who needs it.
Regards,
Steph Sherer
Executive Director, Americans For Safe Access
For more information on the IQA petition please refer to this webpage.
P.S. – You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support the educational and legal work of Americans for Safe Access Foundation, including the IQA petition campaign, online or by mailing a check or money order to Americans for Safe Access Foundation, 1624 U Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20009.
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Senator Jeff Sessions' asinine quote
The following is the most ignorant statement I have ever read from a member of Congress. Here is the entire quote:
You have to have leadership from Washington. You can’t have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana … you are sending a message to young people that there is no danger in this process. It is false that marijuana use doesn’t lead people to more drug use. It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal.
It was the prevention movement that really was so positive, and it led to this decline. The creating of knowledge that this drug is dangerous, it cannot be played with, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about, and trying to send that message with clarity, that good people don’t smoke marijuana.
Lady Gaga says she’s addicted to [marijuana] and it is not harmless.
-Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Now here's me tearing it a new one:
You have to have leadership from Washington. You can’t have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana … you are sending a message to young people that there is no danger in this process.
True leadership comes from We The People. We grant certain powers upon our elected representatives through elections. Those in Congress are our servants. The People do want to discuss marijuana reform. The recent elections have proven that. The reaction of the People toward the Drug Enforcement Agency when they raided lawful marijuana dispensaries was one of disdain and rightfully so.
It is false that marijuana use doesn’t lead people to more drug use. It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal.
What is Sessions asking? Does a little use of marijuana lead to a big use in marijuana or does marijuana lead to harder drugs such as crystal meth,heroin and cocaine? States that have medical marijuana report the decline in the use (and abuse) of opioid drugs because of it. DUI's (DWI's) declined while revenue skyrocketed. It got so bad that the State of Colorado had to give the excess money back to the taxpayers as per Colorado law. Oh the horror.
It was the prevention movement that really was so positive, and it led to this decline.
You mean as in those early dawn drug raids? The kind that tore a new asshole in the 4th Amendment and ruined a lot of people's day? Those ones? You know the kind that should have never existed the United States Of America,the land of the free,in the first place? Yeah,those. Amazing we were wagging our fingers at the Russians while we murdered our own Constitution. It lead to a slight decline in supply but not demand.
The creating of knowledge that this drug is dangerous, it cannot be played with, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about, and trying to send that message with clarity, that good people don’t smoke marijuana.
Your hysteria Senator Sessions is quite comical. Marijuana is the one of the safest substances on earth. It has no death rate. The only problem with marijuana are legal ones and you are someone in the way of reform. A reform that is long overdue. That message is quite clear as well. Good people do smoke marijuana.
Lady Gaga says she’s addicted to [marijuana] and it is not harmless.
Nice try. Lady Gaga's problem is not America's problem.
You have to have leadership from Washington. You can’t have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana … you are sending a message to young people that there is no danger in this process. It is false that marijuana use doesn’t lead people to more drug use. It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal.
It was the prevention movement that really was so positive, and it led to this decline. The creating of knowledge that this drug is dangerous, it cannot be played with, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about, and trying to send that message with clarity, that good people don’t smoke marijuana.
Lady Gaga says she’s addicted to [marijuana] and it is not harmless.
-Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Now here's me tearing it a new one:
You have to have leadership from Washington. You can’t have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana … you are sending a message to young people that there is no danger in this process.
True leadership comes from We The People. We grant certain powers upon our elected representatives through elections. Those in Congress are our servants. The People do want to discuss marijuana reform. The recent elections have proven that. The reaction of the People toward the Drug Enforcement Agency when they raided lawful marijuana dispensaries was one of disdain and rightfully so.
It is false that marijuana use doesn’t lead people to more drug use. It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal.
What is Sessions asking? Does a little use of marijuana lead to a big use in marijuana or does marijuana lead to harder drugs such as crystal meth,heroin and cocaine? States that have medical marijuana report the decline in the use (and abuse) of opioid drugs because of it. DUI's (DWI's) declined while revenue skyrocketed. It got so bad that the State of Colorado had to give the excess money back to the taxpayers as per Colorado law. Oh the horror.
It was the prevention movement that really was so positive, and it led to this decline.
You mean as in those early dawn drug raids? The kind that tore a new asshole in the 4th Amendment and ruined a lot of people's day? Those ones? You know the kind that should have never existed the United States Of America,the land of the free,in the first place? Yeah,those. Amazing we were wagging our fingers at the Russians while we murdered our own Constitution. It lead to a slight decline in supply but not demand.
The creating of knowledge that this drug is dangerous, it cannot be played with, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about, and trying to send that message with clarity, that good people don’t smoke marijuana.
Your hysteria Senator Sessions is quite comical. Marijuana is the one of the safest substances on earth. It has no death rate. The only problem with marijuana are legal ones and you are someone in the way of reform. A reform that is long overdue. That message is quite clear as well. Good people do smoke marijuana.
Lady Gaga says she’s addicted to [marijuana] and it is not harmless.
Nice try. Lady Gaga's problem is not America's problem.
Friday, November 25, 2016
Joining with Drug Policy Alliance in opposing Jeff Sessions' nomination
We at Among Other Things are joining in with Drug Policy Alliance in opposing the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions as United States Attorney General. We fear Sessions will clamp down on marijuana dispensaries in states that have approved marijuana for medical and/or recreational use. If approved by the Senate Sessions will have the authority and ability to undo years of progress in a very short time with the DEA backing him up. If the dispensaries are closed down patients are going to be forced to buy from the black market. Opening them up to arrest and incarceration for marijuana that may be adulterated. With their money going to support a criminal organization. Closing down the dispensaries makes criminals out of otherwise law abiding people. Prohibition failed. It's time to move on to legalization.
Protect Net Neutrality
From Fight For The Future:
BREAKING: The Washington Post is reporting that the Trump transition team is preparing to “dismantle Net Neutrality.” Will you chip in to help save Net Neutrality?
No matter what you think about the election, one thing is clear: Net Neutrality is in the cross hairs.
Donald Trump has called Net Neutrality an "attack on the internet" and a "top down power grab," even though neither of those things is true.[1] Many members of Congress are already making plans to gut the rules we worked so hard to win.
And now Trump has has put Jeffrey Eisenach, an anti-Net Neutrality crusader funded by Verizon, AT&T, and Clear Channel, in charge of the FCC transition.
That's why The Washington Post is reporting that Trump is on the verge of "all but erasing” Net Neutrality.[2]
But this isn't the first time telecommunications lobbyists thought Net Neutrality was dead--and every time the public backlash has been enormous. Now we need to fight again.
Will you chip in to help save Net Neutrality?
The FCC's Net Neutrality rule is the only thing stopping Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner from blocking, throttling, and censoring the Internet either for political reasons or for profit.
Trump will definitely have the power to go after Net Neutrality if he wants to. He'll soon pick a new FCC chairman and shortly after will get to replace the swing vote on Net Neutrality at the FCC.
That's why one top industry analyst this week said that under Trump, "Net neutrality has a big target on its back."[3] And Breitbart News, the alt-right news website run by Trump strategic advisor Steve Bannon said last week that "Net Neutrality is dead."[4]
But we heard the same predictions of doom for Net Neutrality when George W. Bush and Barack Obama were in office too. Every time, we used the collective power of the internet to defend freedom of expression and openness online. And we still haven’t been beaten.
When Barack Obama proposed bad policies on Net Neutrality, we stood up to him, and won. Now we'll do the same with with the new president. And all the evidence so far says that under President Trump, Net Neutrality is in deep, deep trouble.
But we've fought too long and too hard to win Net Neutrality to let it all get erased now. Will you chip in to help save it?
Yes, I'll chip in to help save Net Neutrality.
[1] Twitter
[2] The Washington Post
[3] The Denver Post
[4] Breitbart News
BREAKING: The Washington Post is reporting that the Trump transition team is preparing to “dismantle Net Neutrality.” Will you chip in to help save Net Neutrality?
No matter what you think about the election, one thing is clear: Net Neutrality is in the cross hairs.
Donald Trump has called Net Neutrality an "attack on the internet" and a "top down power grab," even though neither of those things is true.[1] Many members of Congress are already making plans to gut the rules we worked so hard to win.
And now Trump has has put Jeffrey Eisenach, an anti-Net Neutrality crusader funded by Verizon, AT&T, and Clear Channel, in charge of the FCC transition.
That's why The Washington Post is reporting that Trump is on the verge of "all but erasing” Net Neutrality.[2]
But this isn't the first time telecommunications lobbyists thought Net Neutrality was dead--and every time the public backlash has been enormous. Now we need to fight again.
Will you chip in to help save Net Neutrality?
The FCC's Net Neutrality rule is the only thing stopping Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner from blocking, throttling, and censoring the Internet either for political reasons or for profit.
Trump will definitely have the power to go after Net Neutrality if he wants to. He'll soon pick a new FCC chairman and shortly after will get to replace the swing vote on Net Neutrality at the FCC.
That's why one top industry analyst this week said that under Trump, "Net neutrality has a big target on its back."[3] And Breitbart News, the alt-right news website run by Trump strategic advisor Steve Bannon said last week that "Net Neutrality is dead."[4]
But we heard the same predictions of doom for Net Neutrality when George W. Bush and Barack Obama were in office too. Every time, we used the collective power of the internet to defend freedom of expression and openness online. And we still haven’t been beaten.
When Barack Obama proposed bad policies on Net Neutrality, we stood up to him, and won. Now we'll do the same with with the new president. And all the evidence so far says that under President Trump, Net Neutrality is in deep, deep trouble.
But we've fought too long and too hard to win Net Neutrality to let it all get erased now. Will you chip in to help save it?
Yes, I'll chip in to help save Net Neutrality.
[1] Twitter
[2] The Washington Post
[3] The Denver Post
[4] Breitbart News
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Sorry Rush
On today's Rush Limbaugh show Rush brought up a few people considered for Trump's cabinet that the leftists objected to. Amongst them was Senator Jeff Sessions. Rush pointed out that their fears about these cabinet members was unfounded. Usually the left's fears are unfounded. This time however the left is correct on this one. Recreational and medical marijuana have been approved by several states. If Jeff Sessions becomes Attorney General those rights and laws that have been severely fought for may be taken away from us by systematic raids by the DEA with the blessing of Sessions himself. We can't take that risk. We have to oppose the nomination of Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. The best way we can do that is to contact our Congressional Representative along with our Senators. Let's tell Donald Trump himself here and here.
Monday, November 21, 2016
Pussies on campus
Many undergraduates, their fawn-like eyes wide with astonishment, are wondering: Why didn’t the dean of students prevent the election from disrupting the serenity to which my school has taught me that I am entitled?
Campuses create “safe spaces” where students can shelter from discombobulating thoughts and receive spiritual balm for the trauma of microaggressions. Yet the presidential election came without trigger warnings?
The morning after the election, normal people rose — some elated, some despondent — and went off to actual work. But at Yale, that incubator of late-adolescent infants, a professor responded to “heartfelt notes” from students “in shock” by making that day’s exam optional.
Academia should consider how it contributed to, and reflects Americans’ judgments pertinent to, Donald Trump’s election. The compound of childishness and condescension radiating from campuses is a constant reminder to normal Americans of the decay of protected classes — in this case, tenured faculty and cosseted students.
As “bias-response teams” fanned out across campuses, an incident report was filed about a University of Northern Colorado student who wrote “free speech matters” on one of 680 “#languagematters” posters that cautioned against politically incorrect speech. Catholic DePaul University denounced as “bigotry” a poster proclaiming “Unborn Lives Matter.”
Bowdoin College provided counseling to students traumatized by the cultural appropriation committed by a sombrero-and-tequila party. Oberlin College students said they were suffering breakdowns because schoolwork was interfering with their political activism.
Cal State University, Los Angeles, established “healing” spaces for students to cope with the pain caused by a political speech delivered three months earlier. Indiana University experienced social-media panic because a priest in a white robe, with a rope-like belt and rosary beads, was identified as someone “in a KKK outfit holding a whip.”
A doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Santa Barbara, uses “feminist methodologies” to understand how Girl Scout cookie sales “reproduce hegemonic gender roles.” The journal GeoHumanities explores how pumpkins reveal “racial and class coding of rural versus urban places.” Another journal’s article analyzes “the relationships among gender, science and glaciers.” A Vassar lecture “theorizes oscillating relations between disciplinary, pre-emptive and increasingly prehensive forms of power that shape human and non-human materialities in Palestine.”
An American Council of Trustees and Alumni study — “No US History? How College History Departments Leave the United States out of the Major,” based on requirements and course offerings at 75 leading colleges and universities — found that “the overwhelming majority of America’s most prestigious institutions do not require even the students who major in history to take a single course on United States history or government.”
At some schools that require history majors to take at least one US history course, the requirement can be fulfilled with courses like “Mad Men and Mad Women” (Middlebury College), “Hip-Hop, Politics and Youth Culture in America” (University of Connecticut) and “Jews in American Entertainment” (University of Texas). Constitutional history is an afterthought.
Small wonder, then, that a recent ACTA-commissioned survey found that less than half of college graduates knew that George Washington was the commanding general at Yorktown; that nearly half didn’t know that Theodore Roosevelt was important to the construction of the Panama Canal; that more than one-third couldn’t place the Civil War in a correct 20-year span or identify Franklin Roosevelt as the architect of the New Deal; that 58 percent didn’t know that the Battle of the Bulge occurred in World War II; and that nearly half didn’t know the lengths of the terms of US senators and representatives.
Institutions of supposedly higher education are awash with hysteria, authoritarianism, obscurantism, philistinism and charlatanry. Which must have something to do with the tone and substance of the presidential election, which took the nation’s temperature.
Source
Could you get through this without laughing? I couldn't. Not at George Will,not this time but at the nation's university and college campuses. Hey kids,you know who your safe space will not protect you from? ISIS that's who.
Campuses create “safe spaces” where students can shelter from discombobulating thoughts and receive spiritual balm for the trauma of microaggressions. Yet the presidential election came without trigger warnings?
The morning after the election, normal people rose — some elated, some despondent — and went off to actual work. But at Yale, that incubator of late-adolescent infants, a professor responded to “heartfelt notes” from students “in shock” by making that day’s exam optional.
Academia should consider how it contributed to, and reflects Americans’ judgments pertinent to, Donald Trump’s election. The compound of childishness and condescension radiating from campuses is a constant reminder to normal Americans of the decay of protected classes — in this case, tenured faculty and cosseted students.
As “bias-response teams” fanned out across campuses, an incident report was filed about a University of Northern Colorado student who wrote “free speech matters” on one of 680 “#languagematters” posters that cautioned against politically incorrect speech. Catholic DePaul University denounced as “bigotry” a poster proclaiming “Unborn Lives Matter.”
Bowdoin College provided counseling to students traumatized by the cultural appropriation committed by a sombrero-and-tequila party. Oberlin College students said they were suffering breakdowns because schoolwork was interfering with their political activism.
Cal State University, Los Angeles, established “healing” spaces for students to cope with the pain caused by a political speech delivered three months earlier. Indiana University experienced social-media panic because a priest in a white robe, with a rope-like belt and rosary beads, was identified as someone “in a KKK outfit holding a whip.”
A doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Santa Barbara, uses “feminist methodologies” to understand how Girl Scout cookie sales “reproduce hegemonic gender roles.” The journal GeoHumanities explores how pumpkins reveal “racial and class coding of rural versus urban places.” Another journal’s article analyzes “the relationships among gender, science and glaciers.” A Vassar lecture “theorizes oscillating relations between disciplinary, pre-emptive and increasingly prehensive forms of power that shape human and non-human materialities in Palestine.”
An American Council of Trustees and Alumni study — “No US History? How College History Departments Leave the United States out of the Major,” based on requirements and course offerings at 75 leading colleges and universities — found that “the overwhelming majority of America’s most prestigious institutions do not require even the students who major in history to take a single course on United States history or government.”
At some schools that require history majors to take at least one US history course, the requirement can be fulfilled with courses like “Mad Men and Mad Women” (Middlebury College), “Hip-Hop, Politics and Youth Culture in America” (University of Connecticut) and “Jews in American Entertainment” (University of Texas). Constitutional history is an afterthought.
Small wonder, then, that a recent ACTA-commissioned survey found that less than half of college graduates knew that George Washington was the commanding general at Yorktown; that nearly half didn’t know that Theodore Roosevelt was important to the construction of the Panama Canal; that more than one-third couldn’t place the Civil War in a correct 20-year span or identify Franklin Roosevelt as the architect of the New Deal; that 58 percent didn’t know that the Battle of the Bulge occurred in World War II; and that nearly half didn’t know the lengths of the terms of US senators and representatives.
Institutions of supposedly higher education are awash with hysteria, authoritarianism, obscurantism, philistinism and charlatanry. Which must have something to do with the tone and substance of the presidential election, which took the nation’s temperature.
Source
Could you get through this without laughing? I couldn't. Not at George Will,not this time but at the nation's university and college campuses. Hey kids,you know who your safe space will not protect you from? ISIS that's who.
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Congressional drug prohibitionist arrested for possession of cocaine
WASHINGTON — In September, Rep. Trey Radel voted for Republican legislation that would allow states to make food stamp recipients pee in cups to prove they’re not on drugs. In October, police busted the Florida Republican on a charge of cocaine possession.
“It’s really interesting it came on the heels of Republicans voting on everyone who had access to food stamps get drug tested,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told BuzzFeed Tuesday. “It’s like, what?”
The House over the summer approved an amendment by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) that would let states drug test people on food stamps. The amendment passed by voice vote, meaning members’ individual yeas and nays were not recorded. Radel later voted in favor of a broader food stamps bill that included Hudson’s measure.
In support of his drug testing legislation, Hudson cited the many state legislatures around the country that had considered similar requirements for other means-tested programs in recent years.
“This is a clear and obvious problem in our communities as nearly 30 states have introduced legislation to drug test for welfare programs,” Hudson said. “We have a moral obligation to equip the states with the tools they need to discourage the use of illegal drugs.”
Most of the state legislation was authored by Republicans. Oftentimes, state Democrats responded by suggesting lawmakers should be subject to tests as well. If the government’s going to make sure recipients of taxpayer-funded benefits are clean, the argument went, then why not also make sure the recipients of taxpayer salaries are clean, too?
In June, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) made that very suggestion when he questioned why recipients of crop insurance and other government benefits weren’t also targeted for drug tests like people on food stamps.
“Why don’t we drug test all the members of Congress here,” McGovern said shortly before the drug-testing measure passed. “Force everybody to go urinate in a cup or see whether or not anybody is on drugs? Maybe that will explain why some of these amendments are coming up or why some of the votes are turning out the way they are.”
The fate of the food stamp drug testing provision is in the hands of a House-Senate conference committee hashing out differences between food stamp and farm legislation that passed the two chambers. It’s got a chance. Last year, Congress passed a law to let states drug-test some unemployment insurance recipients.
Radel apologized Tuesday for his cocaine bust and said he’d seek treatment.
“I struggle with the disease of alcoholism, and this led to an extremely irresponsible choice,” he said.
Source
Fuck him. Throw him to the wolves. I'm tired of hypocritical assholes like him. He comes off so self righteous only to a be a sinner himself and the worst kind. Like Lamont Hill said this asshole had no problem taking food out of the mouths of you and your children. He has no problem denying you food because you used medical marijuana to save your life and now that you've come up positive for drugs you are cut off from food stamps. A program you need to feed yourself and your family. This prick asks for love and compassion when it comes to him but he has no problem imposing draconian measures on the rest of us. This clown needs punishment. I say we contact our Congressperson and the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and let them know of our disgust and that We The People are not going to take it anymore.
“It’s really interesting it came on the heels of Republicans voting on everyone who had access to food stamps get drug tested,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told BuzzFeed Tuesday. “It’s like, what?”
The House over the summer approved an amendment by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) that would let states drug test people on food stamps. The amendment passed by voice vote, meaning members’ individual yeas and nays were not recorded. Radel later voted in favor of a broader food stamps bill that included Hudson’s measure.
In support of his drug testing legislation, Hudson cited the many state legislatures around the country that had considered similar requirements for other means-tested programs in recent years.
“This is a clear and obvious problem in our communities as nearly 30 states have introduced legislation to drug test for welfare programs,” Hudson said. “We have a moral obligation to equip the states with the tools they need to discourage the use of illegal drugs.”
Most of the state legislation was authored by Republicans. Oftentimes, state Democrats responded by suggesting lawmakers should be subject to tests as well. If the government’s going to make sure recipients of taxpayer-funded benefits are clean, the argument went, then why not also make sure the recipients of taxpayer salaries are clean, too?
In June, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) made that very suggestion when he questioned why recipients of crop insurance and other government benefits weren’t also targeted for drug tests like people on food stamps.
“Why don’t we drug test all the members of Congress here,” McGovern said shortly before the drug-testing measure passed. “Force everybody to go urinate in a cup or see whether or not anybody is on drugs? Maybe that will explain why some of these amendments are coming up or why some of the votes are turning out the way they are.”
The fate of the food stamp drug testing provision is in the hands of a House-Senate conference committee hashing out differences between food stamp and farm legislation that passed the two chambers. It’s got a chance. Last year, Congress passed a law to let states drug-test some unemployment insurance recipients.
Radel apologized Tuesday for his cocaine bust and said he’d seek treatment.
“I struggle with the disease of alcoholism, and this led to an extremely irresponsible choice,” he said.
Source
Fuck him. Throw him to the wolves. I'm tired of hypocritical assholes like him. He comes off so self righteous only to a be a sinner himself and the worst kind. Like Lamont Hill said this asshole had no problem taking food out of the mouths of you and your children. He has no problem denying you food because you used medical marijuana to save your life and now that you've come up positive for drugs you are cut off from food stamps. A program you need to feed yourself and your family. This prick asks for love and compassion when it comes to him but he has no problem imposing draconian measures on the rest of us. This clown needs punishment. I say we contact our Congressperson and the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and let them know of our disgust and that We The People are not going to take it anymore.
Trump won the popular vote
Ever since the presidential election, liberals have been whining about the fact that Hillary Clinton should have beaten Donald Trump because she won the popular vote. However, some massive voter fraud was just uncovered that reveals that in reality, Trump was the one who won the popular vote.
Infowars reported that a whopping 3 million votes were cast by illegal immigrants in this election. This disturbing find was uncovered by Greg Phillips of the VoteFraud.org organization, who found that without the illegals, Trump likely won the popular vote.
“We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens,” tweeted Phillips after saying that his group had completed an analysis of a database of 180 million voter registrations.
“Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million. Consulting legal team,” he continued.
Current statistics say that Clinton won the popular vote by 630,000 votes, even though 7 million ballots are still uncounted at this time. Since basically all of the 3 million votes from illegal aliens were for Clinton, it appears that Trump actually won the popular vote by over 2 million votes.
Many illegals used the names of dead people to cast their ballots. On the morning of the election, there were 4 million dead people on American voter rolls.
Most states require IDs to vote, but there are also many that don’t. California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C., all require no identification from voters.
Source
Infowars reported that a whopping 3 million votes were cast by illegal immigrants in this election. This disturbing find was uncovered by Greg Phillips of the VoteFraud.org organization, who found that without the illegals, Trump likely won the popular vote.
“We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens,” tweeted Phillips after saying that his group had completed an analysis of a database of 180 million voter registrations.
“Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million. Consulting legal team,” he continued.
Current statistics say that Clinton won the popular vote by 630,000 votes, even though 7 million ballots are still uncounted at this time. Since basically all of the 3 million votes from illegal aliens were for Clinton, it appears that Trump actually won the popular vote by over 2 million votes.
Many illegals used the names of dead people to cast their ballots. On the morning of the election, there were 4 million dead people on American voter rolls.
Most states require IDs to vote, but there are also many that don’t. California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C., all require no identification from voters.
Source
CONGRESS JUST VOTED TO STRIP ALL POWER FROM OBAMA FOR THE REST OF HIS PRESIDENCY!
It will take a lot of work to clean up the mess created by Obama. The House of Representatives just gave President-elect Trump a head start.With fewer than 10 weeks left as President, President Barack Obama’s time in the White House is about to be finished.
It couldn’t happen soon enough!
Now, Obama’s team is rushing to pass countless last-minute regulations to implement even more of Obama’s radical agenda. Presidents are infamous for controversial, last-minute decisions.
Now, the Republican-lead U.S. House of Representatives just took a major stand against Obama. They voted 240-to-179 to allow Congress to stop and un-do any last minute rules and regulations approved by Obama.
As the bill’s sponsor Rep. Darrell Issa explained, this bill stops Obama’s last-minute, shameful regulations forever:
“This bipartisan bill is about reviving the separation of powers to ensure our laws are written by the Representatives we actually vote for – not unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats who are on their way out the door. Presidents of both parties have made habit of enacting scores of last-minute regulations, with little oversight, to sneak in as much of their agenda as possible before the clock runs out on their time in office. The bill helps ensure this President, and any future president, will be held in check and that their policies have the proper level of scrutiny by both Congress and the American people. I’m pleased to see the House pass this important measure and look forward to its quick passage by our colleagues in the Senate.”
This is a massive victory for conservatives, trying to make the transition to a Trump administration easier to enact pro-growth, pro-job creation policies:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter Wednesday to congressmen alerted them to the cost of regulations put on the books by administrations on their way out the door:
A recent report issued by the Regulatory Studies Center at the George Washington University entitled The Final Countdown; Projecting Midnight Regulations found that executive branch agencies typically issue a significantly greater number of rules during the final months of an administration in a rushed effort to implement remaining policy objectives. Midnight regulations issued by prior administrations have proven highly problematic and required subsequent correction. The ability of Congress to disapprove these rules under the CRA is limited by tight deadlines for action that make separate debate and votes on a rule-by-rule basis impractical.
FreedomWorks CEO Adam Brandon says he’s pleased with the House vote and he committed his Washington-based logistics and policy hub for Tea Party and conservative activists to working with Capitol Hill conservatives to return law-making authority to Congress.
Source
It couldn’t happen soon enough!
Now, Obama’s team is rushing to pass countless last-minute regulations to implement even more of Obama’s radical agenda. Presidents are infamous for controversial, last-minute decisions.
Now, the Republican-lead U.S. House of Representatives just took a major stand against Obama. They voted 240-to-179 to allow Congress to stop and un-do any last minute rules and regulations approved by Obama.
As the bill’s sponsor Rep. Darrell Issa explained, this bill stops Obama’s last-minute, shameful regulations forever:
“This bipartisan bill is about reviving the separation of powers to ensure our laws are written by the Representatives we actually vote for – not unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats who are on their way out the door. Presidents of both parties have made habit of enacting scores of last-minute regulations, with little oversight, to sneak in as much of their agenda as possible before the clock runs out on their time in office. The bill helps ensure this President, and any future president, will be held in check and that their policies have the proper level of scrutiny by both Congress and the American people. I’m pleased to see the House pass this important measure and look forward to its quick passage by our colleagues in the Senate.”
This is a massive victory for conservatives, trying to make the transition to a Trump administration easier to enact pro-growth, pro-job creation policies:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter Wednesday to congressmen alerted them to the cost of regulations put on the books by administrations on their way out the door:
A recent report issued by the Regulatory Studies Center at the George Washington University entitled The Final Countdown; Projecting Midnight Regulations found that executive branch agencies typically issue a significantly greater number of rules during the final months of an administration in a rushed effort to implement remaining policy objectives. Midnight regulations issued by prior administrations have proven highly problematic and required subsequent correction. The ability of Congress to disapprove these rules under the CRA is limited by tight deadlines for action that make separate debate and votes on a rule-by-rule basis impractical.
FreedomWorks CEO Adam Brandon says he’s pleased with the House vote and he committed his Washington-based logistics and policy hub for Tea Party and conservative activists to working with Capitol Hill conservatives to return law-making authority to Congress.
Source
Friday, November 18, 2016
The Trump Administration wants to do away with Net Neutraliy
From Demand Progress:
"Trump Win Means FCC's 'Net Neutrality' Regulation is Dead."
That's the blaring headline from Breitbart News, the website run by Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign chairman and now his chief strategist in the White House.1
And it's not just Breitbart. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal are warning that Net Neutrality is in deep trouble.2,3
We're going to have to fight with all we have to save Net Neutrality. Will you chip in $5?
Yes, I'll chip in $5 to save Net Neutrality.
Trump has falsely called Net Neutrality a "top down power grab" and an "attack on the internet."4 And the front-runner for his choice as FCC chairman is an anti-Net Neutrality zealot and paid Verizon consultant.5
We know that we can't count on Republican leaders in Congress to push back they've gotten millions from Comcast and their telecom buddies and would be thrilled to overturn Net Neutrality.6
To save Net Neutrality, we're going to need a grassroots mobilization as big as what it took to enact it in the first place.
The good news is that Trump can't just get rid of Net Neutrality on his own. He's going to have to go through a lengthy rule-making process, giving us months to mount opposition.
But we're counting on you to stand with us—and to make sure we have the resources to fight back and win.
Net Neutrality is facing a mortal threat from the Trump presidency. Will you chip in $5 to help save it?
Thanks for standing with us,
Kurt Walters and the Demand Progress Team
1.Source
2.Source
3.Source
4.Source
5.Source
6.Source
"Trump Win Means FCC's 'Net Neutrality' Regulation is Dead."
That's the blaring headline from Breitbart News, the website run by Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign chairman and now his chief strategist in the White House.1
And it's not just Breitbart. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal are warning that Net Neutrality is in deep trouble.2,3
We're going to have to fight with all we have to save Net Neutrality. Will you chip in $5?
Yes, I'll chip in $5 to save Net Neutrality.
Trump has falsely called Net Neutrality a "top down power grab" and an "attack on the internet."4 And the front-runner for his choice as FCC chairman is an anti-Net Neutrality zealot and paid Verizon consultant.5
We know that we can't count on Republican leaders in Congress to push back they've gotten millions from Comcast and their telecom buddies and would be thrilled to overturn Net Neutrality.6
To save Net Neutrality, we're going to need a grassroots mobilization as big as what it took to enact it in the first place.
The good news is that Trump can't just get rid of Net Neutrality on his own. He's going to have to go through a lengthy rule-making process, giving us months to mount opposition.
But we're counting on you to stand with us—and to make sure we have the resources to fight back and win.
Net Neutrality is facing a mortal threat from the Trump presidency. Will you chip in $5 to help save it?
Thanks for standing with us,
Kurt Walters and the Demand Progress Team
1.Source
2.Source
3.Source
4.Source
5.Source
6.Source
Tell your Senators to oppose the nomination of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General
From the Drug Policy Alliance:
This was our worst nightmare.
Donald Trump has picked Jeff Sessions to be the next Attorney General.
It really couldn’t get any worse.
Over these last four years we’ve made great gains across the political spectrum toward treating drug use as a health issue, not a criminal one. Jeff Sessions will try to dismantle all that.
Jeff Sessions is a drug war extremist. There’s really no way around that.
As a U.S. Senator from Alabama, Sessions called for increased federal marijuana enforcement, and said “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He once joked that his only issue with the Ku Klux Klan was their drug use. He was even denied a federal judgeship 30 years ago, by a Republican-controlled Senate, for racist views.
Get ready for raids on marijuana businesses. Get ready for militarized, Reagan-era drug war tactics.
We can’t let this stand.
The Drug Policy Alliance and our allies will fight Jeff Sessions’ nomination in the Senate tooth and nail. He won’t be nominated until Donald Trump takes office and the new Congress is in session. But with only six new Senators taking office, we must start fighting now.
Tell your Senators to oppose Jeff Sessions for Attorney General.
This nomination makes it clear that the new administration will be an enemy of drug policy reform, and we’ll be fighting to defend our hard fought victories for the next four years.
You can help us fight any and all attempts to expand the drug war by becoming a sustaining member today. We’re going to need all the help we can get over these next four years, and just $10 a month will go a long way.
We will fight to preserve everything we’ve gained, and we’ll never stop advocating for drug laws grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.
This was our worst nightmare.
Donald Trump has picked Jeff Sessions to be the next Attorney General.
It really couldn’t get any worse.
Over these last four years we’ve made great gains across the political spectrum toward treating drug use as a health issue, not a criminal one. Jeff Sessions will try to dismantle all that.
Jeff Sessions is a drug war extremist. There’s really no way around that.
As a U.S. Senator from Alabama, Sessions called for increased federal marijuana enforcement, and said “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He once joked that his only issue with the Ku Klux Klan was their drug use. He was even denied a federal judgeship 30 years ago, by a Republican-controlled Senate, for racist views.
Get ready for raids on marijuana businesses. Get ready for militarized, Reagan-era drug war tactics.
We can’t let this stand.
The Drug Policy Alliance and our allies will fight Jeff Sessions’ nomination in the Senate tooth and nail. He won’t be nominated until Donald Trump takes office and the new Congress is in session. But with only six new Senators taking office, we must start fighting now.
Tell your Senators to oppose Jeff Sessions for Attorney General.
This nomination makes it clear that the new administration will be an enemy of drug policy reform, and we’ll be fighting to defend our hard fought victories for the next four years.
You can help us fight any and all attempts to expand the drug war by becoming a sustaining member today. We’re going to need all the help we can get over these next four years, and just $10 a month will go a long way.
We will fight to preserve everything we’ve gained, and we’ll never stop advocating for drug laws grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.
Donald Trump is considering marijuana prohibitionist Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General
From NORML:
We have some dire news to share. This morning, President-Elect Trump announced his pick for Attorney General and it couldn’t be much worse for the marijuana law reform movement and our recent legalization victories.
Trump’s pick, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, is a militant prohibitionist. We could go into great detail about how Senator Sessions has been an outspoken opponent of reform for decades, but in this case his rhetoric is so off the wall...we’ll let his past statements speak for themselves:
It was the prevention movement that really was so positive, and it led to this decline. The creating of knowledge that this drug is dangerous, it cannot be played with, it is not funny, it's not something to laugh about, and trying to send that message with clarity, that good people don't smoke marijuana.
Lady Gaga says she's addicted to (marijuana) and it is not harmless.
You have to have leadership from Washington. You can't have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana … you are sending a message to young people that there is no danger in this process. It is false that marijuana use doesn't lead people to more drug use. It is already causing a disturbance in the States that have made it legal.
His former colleagues testified Sessions used the n-word and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were "okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."
SOUNDS CRAZY, RIGHT? DONATE TODAY TO HELP US BE READY TO FIGHT BACK
Senator Sessions is clearly off the reservation on this one and is diametrically opposed to the overwhelming public opinion which stands in favor of the legalization and regulation of marijuana. This could foreshadow some very bad things for the eight states that have legalized marijuana for adult use and the more than half of the country that has operating medical marijuana programs. With the authority the position of Attorney General provides, Sessions could immediately get to work attempting to block the implementation of the recent ballot initiatives, start dismantling a legal industry in Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and Alaska, and begin conducting massive raids on existing medical and recreational retail stores.
We must be ready to fight back. We must be ready to mobilize in defense of all of our hard fought victories. We already have our opponents calling for a recount in Maine and prohibitionists in Massachusetts working to gut core provisions like home cultivation from their state's initiative. With an assist from a newly minted prohibitionist Attorney General, things might get worse before they get better.
Help us send a message to President-Elect Trump and his Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions that the American people won’t stand for intervention into state marijuana programs and that we want to move towards descheduling at the federal level and legalization in all 50 states.
DONATE $20 TODAY TO HELP US RAISE $4,200 FOR OUR EMERGENCY RESPONSE FUND!
It would probably be a good idea if we contact President-elect Donald Trump and let him know that we are not that thrilled with the idea of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. You can contact Trump on facebook and/or twitter and let him know that we don't like the idea of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Tell him Ted Cruz is a better choice. Cruz is not the prohibitionist that Sessions is and he is being considered for Attorney General along with Sessions.
We have some dire news to share. This morning, President-Elect Trump announced his pick for Attorney General and it couldn’t be much worse for the marijuana law reform movement and our recent legalization victories.
Trump’s pick, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, is a militant prohibitionist. We could go into great detail about how Senator Sessions has been an outspoken opponent of reform for decades, but in this case his rhetoric is so off the wall...we’ll let his past statements speak for themselves:
It was the prevention movement that really was so positive, and it led to this decline. The creating of knowledge that this drug is dangerous, it cannot be played with, it is not funny, it's not something to laugh about, and trying to send that message with clarity, that good people don't smoke marijuana.
Lady Gaga says she's addicted to (marijuana) and it is not harmless.
You have to have leadership from Washington. You can't have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana … you are sending a message to young people that there is no danger in this process. It is false that marijuana use doesn't lead people to more drug use. It is already causing a disturbance in the States that have made it legal.
His former colleagues testified Sessions used the n-word and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were "okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."
SOUNDS CRAZY, RIGHT? DONATE TODAY TO HELP US BE READY TO FIGHT BACK
Senator Sessions is clearly off the reservation on this one and is diametrically opposed to the overwhelming public opinion which stands in favor of the legalization and regulation of marijuana. This could foreshadow some very bad things for the eight states that have legalized marijuana for adult use and the more than half of the country that has operating medical marijuana programs. With the authority the position of Attorney General provides, Sessions could immediately get to work attempting to block the implementation of the recent ballot initiatives, start dismantling a legal industry in Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and Alaska, and begin conducting massive raids on existing medical and recreational retail stores.
We must be ready to fight back. We must be ready to mobilize in defense of all of our hard fought victories. We already have our opponents calling for a recount in Maine and prohibitionists in Massachusetts working to gut core provisions like home cultivation from their state's initiative. With an assist from a newly minted prohibitionist Attorney General, things might get worse before they get better.
Help us send a message to President-Elect Trump and his Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions that the American people won’t stand for intervention into state marijuana programs and that we want to move towards descheduling at the federal level and legalization in all 50 states.
DONATE $20 TODAY TO HELP US RAISE $4,200 FOR OUR EMERGENCY RESPONSE FUND!
It would probably be a good idea if we contact President-elect Donald Trump and let him know that we are not that thrilled with the idea of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. You can contact Trump on facebook and/or twitter and let him know that we don't like the idea of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Tell him Ted Cruz is a better choice. Cruz is not the prohibitionist that Sessions is and he is being considered for Attorney General along with Sessions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
