California Free Press

The Left Is Finally Winning the War of Ideas

Published on Wednesday, December 04, 2019

by Truthdig

Simply take a look at the ideas that are dominating the Democratic presidential race, even though the corporate media has tried to ignore these solutions, attack them, dispute them, and then ignore them all over again.

by Lee Camp

 

19 Comments

Our media is owned and operated by the largest, most aggressive corporations in the world leaving little to no room on the air for the anti-war activists offering free hugs and senseless acts of kindness. But that’s why it’s all the more impressive that in so many areas, we are winning the seemingly endless battle for the mindscape of our country. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Good ideas are like viruses. They grow and spread despite our best efforts to stop them. And yes, our bulbous, awkward species does indeed work very hard to catch and kill good ideas.

At the time I write this column, the first Democratic primaries are approaching with the zest and excitement of an unavoidable bowel movement. Even if you read this a year or two or 10 from now, primaries will still be advancing toward you. As sure as the universe expands, the primaries approach. The moment we finish one election season, another is on the horizon.

This serves two purposes. First, it continuously makes voters think that we matter, that we have a lot of sway over the course this country takes. We don’t. (Well, not as much as we think we do.) And the second purpose is to fill the mainstream media airwaves with vacuous political play-by-play for two straight years. For example, by covering the three-point shift in Pete Buttigieg’s likability amongst Iowans (which matters as much as a three-point shift in the average Iowan’s concern about getting trichinosis from undercooked anchovies), the corporate media cogs can avoid talking about the exploitation of American workers or the massive debt crushing most people or the environmental collapse gripping the planet or the highly advanced, highly illegal surveillance state in which we live.

Our electoral politics is a beautiful smokescreen for the ruling elite.

But no matter what happens in these overtly rigged Democratic National Committee primaries, those of us who care about the world and care about our fellow human beings are winning the war of ideas. Simply take a look at the ideas that are dominating the Democratic presidential race, even though the corporate media has tried to ignore these solutions, attack them, dispute them, and then ignore them all over again.

1) Medicare for All

This is the idea that if you’re 5 years old and you break your arm, no matter how little you get paid at your child labor job, you shouldn’t have to fix your broken arm yourself with a papier-mâché cast made from soiled Kleenex and bird poop. Although  Medicare for All was initially put forward by the Green Party and left-wing activists, and now it’s a mainstream discussion. The idea perseveres despite interminable attacks from the moneyed and the well-heeled as they sit neck-deep in mountains of top-shelf health care. (I hear many of them get young blood transfusions just for kicks on the weekend.) The rich continue to espouse one of the worst systems in the developed world, as if it’s somehow justifiable that two-thirds of Americans who declare bankruptcy each year do so partially because of health care costs.

2) The Green New Deal

This is an economic proposal that would give a majority of Americans a job and switch to renewable energy, among other things. Basically it would solve both our fossil fuel death spiral and unemployment problems in one fell swoop. It was put forward initially by the Green Party and left-wing activists, but then it quickly rose to the level of mainstream discussion, resulting in a bill by Congress. This is an impressive feat even though there are criticisms of the Democratic rewriting of the Green New Deal (such as its failure to address the military-industrial complex, which happens to be the largest polluter in the known world, but maybe we’ll find a lost tribe in the Amazon that runs a few hundred thousand warships on diesel and then our Pentagon will drop down to the second biggest polluter).

3) Legalizing Marijuana

If I have to explain what this is to you, then you clearly haven’t turned on a television in the past 50 years nor caught a glimpse of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (the show, the movie, the action figure, the comic book, the video game, the candy or the song). The legalization of cannabis in all its nifty forms has rapidly spread across the country—which is not just crucial to people who have gained tremendous medical benefits from cannabis but also crucial for anybody who needs to get viciously baked in order to watch the impeachment hearings (which is the only legitimate way to watch the impeachment hearings).

Marijuana has become so widely accepted that Joe Biden recently became a laughingstock when he called weed a “gateway drug.” Yes grandpa, the evil weed is a gateway drug, and rock music is the devil’s work, and dancing with a girl before marriage can cause one’s phallus to fall off. … Not to mention, who is Joe Biden to tell us not to get a little loopy at the end of a long day? How many prescription meds must it take that guy to simply put on his pants each morning?

4) $15 Minimum Wage

I don’t have to tell you why this matters. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. You know what you can buy with $7 these days? A Ding-Dong out of the vending machine. So maybe, after a worker has labored for 39 straight hours, he can tether all the Ding-Dong packages together into a rudimentary raft that will allow him to float downriver to somewhere that treats him better. At $7.25 an hour, no one can possibly get by. I did the math: You’d have to work for 3700 years just to afford a ticket to the Mötley Crüe reunion tour. (And they’re not even good. Imagine if you wanted tickets to see someone good.)

5) Distrust of Mainstream Corporate Media

Even if you’re one of these certifiable nut-bags who still turns on CNN or Fox News every day all day, you still understand that you’re not getting the full truth. You might think you’re getting a piece of it, but not all of it. … Also, you should be euthanized.

(Okay, maybe not euthanized, but anyone who leaves cable news on in the background just to feel warm and cozy should at the very least be left on a faraway island to live out their days. If you’re one of them, please stop it. Corporate media crap is not the audio version of your childhood blankey. It’s pathetic PROPAGANDA. … Sorry to yell.)

6) Distrust of U.S.-Backed Coups and War Games

Most Americans are opposed to endless war now. We’re opposed to harming and killing so many millions in the name of propping up our bloated, belligerent empire that eats entire nations and then vomits up new KFC franchise locations. Obviously the growing disgust among most of the country has not managed to stop the bombs from falling, but it’s a start.

I’m sure you don’t have the time to read the entire list of ideas that were once considered far left and are now mainstream vibrant discussions—abolishing ICE, holding police accountable, distrusting the intelligence community AKA the surveillance state, questioning capitalism, ending factory farming, confronting the extreme climate crisis, etc. etc. Sure, our elections are rigged in favor of the two corporate Wall Street-funded parties. And yes, our media is owned and operated by the largest, most aggressive corporations in the world leaving little to no room on the air for the anti-war activists offering free hugs and senseless acts of kindness. But that’s why it’s all the more impressive that in so many areas, we are winning the seemingly endless battle for the mindscape of our country.

Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show “Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp” on RT America.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Vaping or Cigarettes: Choose Your Poison

by John Lawrence, June 9, 2019

Only in America can you put a product on the market without any testing to see if there are any health risks. It's about testing by marketing to the American people and you find out later whether the product is toxic or not. In Europe they have the precautionary principle where products are tested first before they are released on the public. So who would have thought that a product that was touted as safer than cigarettes would turn out to be far more deadly and debilitating? Cigarettes contain tobacco which when inhaled is thought to be hazardous to your health, but, like a lot of other products, it won't kill you immediately. That will take 30 years or so. Vaping contains a toxic mixture of chemicals which, as it turns out, can kill you in far less time. Hundreds of people across the country have been sickened by a severe lung illness linked to vaping, and a handful have died, according to public health officials. Many were otherwise healthy young people, in their teens or early 20s.

So who would have thunk it? The Food and Drug Administration is warning that there appears to be a particular danger for people who vape THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. So people will just have to go back to smoking marijuana the traditional way - in a bong. Or maybe in a hookah. A hookah is a device for vaporizing nicotine using water instead of a bunch of chemicals. That seems far more healthier. It seems that the chemicals in e-cigarettes congeal in the lungs making their function useless and leading to lung disease. The e-cigarette industry, for whom vaping is extremely profitable, have tried to lay the blame on vaping THC and other street products. They would hate to see their investments go down the drain. However, in 53 cases of the illness in Illinois and Wisconsin, 17 percent of the patients said they had vaped only nicotine products, according to an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

So a word of caution to vapers: Get a life! You can smoke marijuana legally in most states now. Vote for a Democratic President, and, most importantly, a Democratic Senate in 2020, and marijuana will probably be legalized at the Federal level. Some so-called "hard drugs" have even been used on a regular basis by some people who have led very successful, even celebrated, lives. Take jazz drummer, Art Blakey, for example. Today he is being lauded for having had one of the most successful bands in jazz history. He is considered to be a legendary drummer. Blakey was a heroin addict, a very highly functioning one, and he introduced many of his sidemen to heroin. One of them was Lee Morgan, considered to be one of the great trumpet players of jazz history. However, Morgan's addiction did not have such a happy outcome as did Blakey's. By 1967 Lee was a junkie who had fallen so low that he was seen sleeping on the street outside Birdland without shoes and committing petty crimes so he could buy drugs. Still his record, "The Sidewinder", whose title tune was written on a piece of toilet paper during a break in a recording session, became Blue Note's best-selling record ever, breaking the previous sales record roughly ten times over. 

So a word of caution to Americans: be careful of what you put in your mouth. The American mantra is Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware. According to the journal article, “e-cigarette aerosol is not harmless; it can expose users to substances known to have adverse health effects, including ultrafine particles, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds and other harmful ingredients.” Omigod, you mean that I can't trust American products that I can buy legally on the market more than I can trust street drugs? Well opioids are a case in point. They have been prescribed by legitimate doctors, sold  by legitimate pharmacies and the patients have become addicts.

Another note of caution: stay away from Monsanto's Roundup, a pesticide whose main ingredient is glyphosate. The Guardian reports:

Germany has said it will phase out the controversial weedkiller glyphosate because it wipes out insect populations crucial for ecosystems and pollination of food crops.

The chemical, also suspected by some experts to cause cancer in humans, is to be banned by the end of 2023 when the EU’s approval period for it expires, ministers said.

Biologists have sounded the alarm over plummeting insect populations that affect species diversity and damage ecosystems by disrupting natural food chains and plant pollination.

“What harms insects also harms people,” said environment minister Svenja Schulze, of the centre-left Social Democrats, who warned of a future when fruit could become a luxury.

“What we need is more humming and buzzing,” added Schulze, stressing that “a world without insects is not worth living in”.

So modern technology is not all it's cracked up to be whether on the chemical level or on the fossil fuel level or on the plastics level. The fact of the matter is that the technology developed in the last couple hundred years since the advent of the Industrial Revolution is ruining the environment on small scales and large scales. Unless there is a change, the earth, let alone the oceans or mundane pollution, will become uninhabitable for humans at least. Probably some insects will survive, but insecticides and pesticides are doing their best to eliminate even those. Probably some day some space travelers will alight on earth only to wonder what happened here that the earth should have become a dead planet.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Are So Many Black Men Still in Jail for Possession of Small Amounts of Marijuana When Marijuana is Legal in Many States?

by John Lawrence, July 25, 2019

The mass criminalization of people of color, particularly young African Americans, is as profound a system of racial control as the Jim Crow laws were in this country until the mid-1960s. And despite decriminalization of drug laws and outright legalization of marijuana in many states, people of color still languish in jail. The aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws needlessly ensnares hundreds of thousands of people into the criminal justice system and wastes billions of taxpayers’ dollars. What’s more, it is carried out with staggering racial bias. Despite being a priority for police departments nationwide, the War on Marijuana has failed to reduce marijuana use and availability and diverted resources that could be better invested in our communities.

Fifteen states have decriminalized marijuana but not legalized it. In these states, possession of small amounts of pot no longer carries jail or prison time but can continue to carry a fine, and possession of larger amounts, repeat offenses, and sales or trafficking can still result in harsher sentences. In states where marijuana for recreational use has been legalized, criminals buy marijuana there and cross state lines to sell it on the black market in states where it's still illegal for 4 or 5 times the price they paid. Marijuana crossing the southern border has gone down since criminal enterprises prefer to grow or purchase it here and distribute it to the black market even in states where it is legal. Even in states where marijuana is legal, there is still a black market because there are not enough legal dispensaries to supply the public due to the fact that the process of acquiring a license is so slow.

Between 1980 and 1989, the arrest rate for drug possession and use nearly doubled. And although surveys show that whites use drugs as much or more than blacks in the US, black people were arrested for drug-related offenses at five times the rate of whites in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That's because police have concentrated on law enforcement in black communities to a greater extent than in white communities. Marijuana possession is still illegal at the Federal level. Kamala Harris has a plan to fix that. Vox reported:

Harris’s plan, one that she’s rolling out alongside House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY), would decriminalize the possession of marijuana at the federal level, an effort backed by many of her fellow 2020 Democrats. Harris’s proposal goes one step further, however, imposing a 5 percent federal tax on the sale of marijuana that would be used, in part, to fund grant programs that help individuals who have been disproportionately penalized for marijuana possession in the past.

Black men, even if they're let out of jail have a hard time finding a job or renting an apartment unless their record is expunged from the marijuana offense. In some state this is a lengthy process. There is a move afoot to make expungement automatic since so many fail to fo it and suffer the consequences. When people are arrested for possessing even tiny amounts of marijuana, it can have dire collateral consequences that affect their eligibility for public housing and student financial aid, employment opportunities, child custody determinations, and immigration status.

Due to provisions of the law some black men are still in jail even after pot has been legalized. According to the Intercept:

In the 25 years he has served, Thompson has watched the rise of a bipartisan criminal justice reform movement and knows that his case illustrates its limits. The movement has focused on “nonviolent” criminals — preferably first-time offenders, preferably drug users — in its effort to roll back mass incarceration. But penal codes across the United States have become adept at stacking charges on defendants that legally qualify as violent — even if they didn’t commit a violent act — undermining that push. The problem is particularly pernicious as it relates to gun ownership, which is not just legal in the U.S., but fetishized as the pinnacle of patriotism. But when it comes to drug crimes, if a gun is anywhere in the picture — or even anywhere off-screen — the crime instantly becomes violent, and in Thompson’s case, as in so many others, the criminal unworthy of clemency. With a nation awash in weapons, the result is predictable.

Justice for black men in the War on Drugs means letting them out of jail, automatically expunging their records and giving them first dibs on starting a legal marijuana business. Those disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs—largely, black and Latino communities—should be first in line to benefit from the Green Boom, whether as business owners or beneficiaries of programs funded by earnings from the business.

Why We Must Legalize Marijuana

by Robert Reich

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

The federal prohibition on marijuana has been a disaster. For decades, millions of Americans have been locked up and billions of dollars have been wasted. It’s also deepened racial and economic inequality. 

We must end this nonsensical prohibition.

The facts are staggering. In 2017, more Americans were arrested for marijuana possession than for murder, rape, aggravated assault and robbery combined.That’s one marijuana arrest every minute.

The costs associated with enforcing this ban – including arrests, court costs, and incarceration – reach nearly $14 billion a year. 

Prohibition also hurts the economy in terms of lost wages. And Americans with criminal records have a harder time finding a job and getting the education they need.

On the other hand, legalizing, taxing, and regulating is good for the economy and creates jobs. 

By simply levying a tax on marijuana like we do cigarettes and alcohol, state and local governments could raise more than $6 billion a year. This doesn’t even include additional revenue from taxes on the marijuana industry. 

States like Colorado and Washington that tax and regulate marijuana have already generated millions of dollars for health care, education,and other public investments.

But this is more than an economic issue. It’s also a matter of racial justice and equality. 

The federal prohibition on marijuana dates back to anti-Mexican sentiment in the 1930s.  In large part, it was nothing more than another way to criminalize communities of color. 

Today, black and brown Americans are still much more likely to be arrested for marijuana than white Americans, despite using marijuana at similar rates.

Given the racist legacy of these laws, it’s particularly important that the economic gains of legalization extend to communities that have been most harmed by the war on drugs.

Support for marijuana legalization has surged in recent years, with two-thirds of Americans now in favor of it. Even a majority of Republicans are in support, and more states are taking action to reform their laws and move toward legalization.

Yet Donald Trump and his administration are trying to turn back the clock. They’ve even formed a task force to weaken public support for legalization and help spread misinformation about so-called “marijuana threats.”

Just as with the prohibition on alcohol in the 1920s, the federal prohibition of marijuana has been unnecessarily cruel – wasting billions of dollars, unjustly harming millions of lives, and furthering racist policies. 

It’s time to legalize marijuana.

California Dreaming: Cannabis Cash, Public Banks—and the State’s Own Mini-Fed?

by Ellen Brown, July 3, 2018

from truthdig

A medical marijuana shop at Venice Beach in Los Angeles, Calif. (Adam Jones / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Spurred by the heavily cash-reliant cannabis industry, Los Angeles residents will be the first in the country to vote on a public banking mandate, after the City Council agreed on June 29 to put a measure on the November ballot that would allow the city to form its own bank.

The charter for the nation’s second-largest city currently prohibits the creation of industrial or commercial enterprises by the city without voter approval. The measure, introduced by City Council President Herb Wesson, would allow the city to create a public bank, though federal and state legal hurdles would remain to be cleared.

The bank is also expected to save the city millions, if not billions, of dollars in Wall Street fees and interest paid to bondholders, while injecting new money into the local economy, generating jobs and expanding the tax base. It could respond to the needs of its residents and reinvest in low-income housing, critical infrastructure projects and clean energy.

The push for such a bank comes amid ongoing concerns involving the massive amounts of cash generated by the cannabis business, which was legalized by California’s Proposition 64 in 2016. Wesson has said cannabis has “kind of percolated to the top” of the public bank push, “but it’s not what’s driving” it, citing affordable housing and other key issues. He added the concept of a public bank should be pursued regardless of the cannabis issue.

However, the prospect of millions of dollars in tax revenue is an obvious draw. Los Angeles is the largest cannabis market in the state, with Mayor Eric Garcetti estimating it would bring in $30 million in taxes for the city.

State Board of Equalization member Fiona Ma, who is running for state treasurer, says California’s $8 billion to $20 billion cannabis industry is still operating mostly in cash almost two years after state legalization. She adds that the majority of businesses are operating on the black market without paying taxes. This is in large part because federal law denies them access to the banking system, forcing them to deal only in cash and causing logistical nightmares when paying taxes and transferring money.

Cannabis is still a forbidden Schedule 1 drug under federal law, and the Federal Reserve has refused to give a master account to banks taking cannabis cash. Without a master account, they cannot access Fedwire transfer services, essentially shutting them out of the banking business.

In a surprise move in early June, President Trump announced he “probably will end up supporting” legislation to let states set their own cannabis policy. But Ma says that while that is good news, California cannot wait on the federal government. She and state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, have introduced Senate Bill 930, which would allow state-chartered banks and financial institutions to apply for a special cannabis banking license to accept clients after a rigorous process that follows regulations from the U.S. Treasury Department. The bill cleared a major legislative hurdle when it was approved by the state Senate on May 30.

SB 930 focuses on California state-chartered banks, which can operate under a closed-loop system with private deposit insurance, unlike federally chartered banks. As Ma explained in a May 17 article in the Sacramento Bee:

There are two types of banks—those with federal charters, and banks with California charters. Because cannabis is still considered a Schedule 1 narcotic, we cannot touch federal banking wires. We want state-chartered banks that are protected, regulated and certified under California law, and not required to be under the FDIC.

State income taxes, sales taxes, unemployment, workers’ compensation and property taxes could all be paid through a closed-loop system that takes in revenue from the cannabis industry, but is apart from the federal banking system. … Cannabis businesses could be part of a cashless system similar to Apple Pay, and their money would be insured by a state-licensed institution.

That is a pretty revolutionary idea—a closed-loop California banking system that is independent of the Federal Reserve and the federal system. The provisions of SB 930 would allow only cannabis cash to bypass the federal system, and the bill strictly limits what the checks issued by pot banks can be. But the prospects it opens up are interesting. California is now the fifth-largest economy in the world, with 39 million people. It has the resources for its own cashless “CalPay” or “CalCoin” system that could bypass the federal system altogether.

The Bank of North Dakota, currently the nation’s only state-owned depository bank, has been called a “mini-Fed” for that state. California, with more than 50 times North Dakota’s population, merits its own mini-Fed as well. The Bank of North Dakota partners with local banks to make below-market loans for community purposes, including 2 percent loans for local infrastructure, while at the same time turning a tidy profit for the state. In 2017, it recorded its 14th consecutive year of record profits, with $145.3 million in net earnings and a return on the state’s investment of 17 percent.

It is significant that the proposal for a closed-loop California system is coming from players that have political clout. Ma won the June primary election for state treasurer by a landslide, and the current state treasurer, John Chiang, has been exploring for over a year the possibility of a public bank that could take cannabis cash. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the front-runner for governor, also has called for the creation of a public bank. These are not armchair academics but the people who make political decisions for the state, and they have substantial popular support.

Public bank advocacy groups from cities across California have joined to form the California Public Banking Alliance, a coalition to advance legislation that would make it easier to establish municipal banks statewide under a special state charter.

A press release by Public Bank Los Angeles, one of its founding advocacy groups, notes that 15 pieces of legislation for public banks are being explored in the U.S. through municipal committees and state legislators, and more than three dozen public banking movements are growing across the country. San Francisco has created a 16-person Municipal Bank Feasibility Task Force; Seattle and Washington, D.C., have approved $100,000 each for public banking feasibility studies; and Washington state legislators have added nearly $500,000 to their budget to produce a business plan for a public depository bank. New Jersey state legislators, with the backing of Gov. Phil Murphy, have introduced a bill to form a state-owned bank, and GOP and Democratic lawmakers in Michigan have filed a bipartisan bill to create one in that state.

Cities and states are seeking ways to better leverage taxpayer dollars and reinvest them in the needs of local communities. Public banking serves that purpose, providing local determination and the opportunity for socially and environmentally responsible lending and investments. The City Council of Los Angeles is now taking it to the voters, and where California goes, the nation may well follow.

Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including "Web of Debt" and "The Public Bank Solution."

IN THIS ARTICLE:

ballot measure banking bob hertzberg california cannabis eric garcetti fdicfederal banking regulations federal reserve financial fiona ma gavin newsomherb wesson john chiang los angeles los angeles city council marijuana potpublic banks wall street

How Uncle Sam Launders Marijuana Money

From Oped News

Posted on January 23, 2018 by Ellen Brown

In a blatant example of “do as I say, not as I do,” the US government is profiting handsomely by accepting marijuana cash in the payment of taxes while imposing huge penalties on banks for accepting it as deposits. Onerous reporting requirements are driving small local banks to sell out to Wall Street. Congress needs to harmonize federal with state law.

Thirty states and the District of Columbia currently have laws broadly legalizing marijuana in some form. The herb has been shown to have significant therapeutic value for a wide range of medical conditions, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, lung disease, anxiety, muscle spasms, hepatitis C, inflammatory bowel disease, and arthritis pain. The community of Americans who rely on legal medical marijuana was estimated to be 2.6 million people in 2016 and includes a variety of mainstream constituency groups like veterans, senior citizens, cancer survivors, and parents of epileptic children. Unlike patented pharmaceuticals, which are now the leading cause of death from drug overdose, there have been no recorded deaths from marijuana overdose in the US. By comparison, alcohol causes 30,000 deaths annually, and prescription drugs taken as directed are estimated to kill 100,000 Americans per year.

Under federal law, however, marijuana remains a Schedule I Controlled Substance – a “deadly dangerous drug with no medical use and high potential for abuse” – and its possession remains a punishable offense. On the presidential campaign trail, Donald Trump said the issue of marijuana legalization “should be up to the states,” continuing the “hands off” policy established under President Obama. Under the 2013 Cole Memorandum, the Department of Justice said it would not prosecute individuals and companies complying with robust and well-enforced state legalization programs. But on January 4th, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded that memo and gave federal prosecutors the authority to pursue marijuana cases at their own discretion, even in places where the herb is legal under state law. The action has made banks even more afraid to take marijuana cash, which can be prosecuted as illegal “money laundering,” an offense that can incur stiff criminal penalties.

The Government Has “Unclean Hands”

As explained by Dr. Richard Rahn, author of The End of Money and the Struggle for Financial Privacy:

Money laundering is generally understood to be the practice of taking ill-gotten gains and moving them through a sequence of bank accounts so they ultimately look like the profits from legitimate activity. Institutions, individuals, and even governments who are believed to be aiding and abetting the practice of money laundering can be indicted and convicted, even though they may be completely unaware that the money being transferred with their help was of criminal origin.

The law has focused on banks, but all sorts of businesses accept money without asking where it came from or being required to report “suspicious activity.” As Rahm observes, even governments can be indicted and convicted for money laundering. Strictly construed (as Attorney General Sessions insists when interpreting the law), that means the US government itself could be indicted. In fact the US government is the largest launderer of marijuana cash in the nation. The IRS accepts this tainted money in the payment of taxes, turning it into “clean” money; and it is not an unwitting accomplice to the crime. Estimates are that marijuana business owners across the U.S. will owe $2.8 billion in taxes to the federal government in 2018. The government makes a massive profit off the deal, snatching up to 70 percent of the proceeds of the reporting businesses, as opposed to the more typical rate of 30 percent. It does this by branding marijuana businesses criminal enterprises which are not entitled to deduct their costs when reporting their income. This is not only a clear case of the unequal protection of the laws but is a clear admission by the government that it is knowingly accepting illegal funds. The government is a principal beneficiary of a business the government itself has made illegal.

Under those circumstances, both marijuana businesses and banks should be able to raise the “unclean hands” defense. As summarized in Kendall-Jackson Winery, Ltd. v. Superior Court (1999), 76 Cal.App.4th 970, 978-79:

The defense of unclean hands arises from the maxim, “He who comes into Equity must come with clean hands.” The doctrine demands that a plaintiff act fairly in the matter for which he seeks a remedy. . . . The defense is available in legal as well as equitable actions. . . . The doctrine promotes justice by making a plaintiff answer for his own misconduct in the action. It prevents a wrongdoer from enjoying the fruits of his transgression.

The government is enjoying the fruits of money it considers “dirty.” It has unclean hands, a defense against prosecuting others for the same crime.

Off the Top of My Head

Prohibition Didn't Work for Alcohol. Neither Does It For Marijuana

by John Lawrence

Prohibition of alcohol was in effect from 1920 to 1933. During this time period, marijuana was legal. After the prohibition of alcohol was lifted, the prohibition of marijuana went into effect. Neither prohibition has worked, and both have only increased criminal activity regarding the making and selling of the banned substances. Now 29 states have legalized marijuana for medical use and 8 states have legalized it for recreational use. As a result the crime of marijuana distribution and sales will decline although there will still be black market distribution and sales in the states where it is still illegal.

California is the latest state legalizing marijuana for recreational use. As a result many people now in jail for use or sale of marijuana will be exonerated and have their records expunged. This is a blow to the private prison industry which has made a fortune off the incarceration of these individuals, many of them black way out of proportion to their numbers in the general population.

The Huffington Post reports:

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reports 2.2 million people are in our nation’s jails and prisons and another 4.5 million people are on probation or parole in the U.S., totaling 6.8 million people, one of every 35 adults. We are far and away the world leader in putting our own people in jail. Most of the people inside are poor and Black.

Police discriminate. The first step in putting people in jail starts with interactions between police and people. From the very beginning, Black and poor people are targeted by the police. Police departments have engaged in campaigns of stopping and frisking people who are walking, mostly poor people and people of color, without cause for decades. Recently New York City lost a federal civil rights challenge to their police stop and frisk practices by the Center for Constitutional Rights during which police stopped over 500,000 people annually without any indication that the people stopped had been involved in any crime at all. About 80 percent of those stops were of Black and Latinos who compromise 25 and 28 percent of N.Y.C.’s total population. Chicago police do the same thing stopping even more people also in a racially discriminatory way with 72 percent of the stops of Black people even though the city is 32 percent Black.

Now Attorney General Jeff Sessions is sicking his dogs on the legal marijuana industry because, while it's legal in certain states, it's illegal at the Federal level. I guess states' rights doesn't matter since it only evidently applies to red states. The Federal focus should just be on the illegal shipping of marijuana from legal states to illegal states, and the prosecution of any marijuana coming in over the Mexican border. The legalization of marijuana should, if not putting a stop on marijuana from Mexico, at least slow it down considerably which is a good thing. The Mexican drug cartels will lose money.

New Analysis Shows Federal Marijuana Legalization Could Raise $130 Billion, Add 1 Million Jobs by 2025

Published on Wednesday, January 10, 2018 by Common Dreams

In addition to putting dent in failed 'War on Drugs,' legalization could put hundreds of thousands of people to work and generate billions in revenue

by Jon Queally, staff writer

 

5 Comments

Dave Warden, a bud tender at Private Organic Therapy (P.O.T.), a non-profit co-operative medical marijuana dispensary, displays various types of marijuana available to patients on October 19, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)

Though a key argument for legalizing marijuana in the United States is that it would put a tremendous and necessary dent in the domestic and global failure known as "the War on Drugs," a new analysis out Wednesday reveals that federal legalization could also raise more than $130 billion in tax revenue by 2025 while also creating more than 1.1 million new jobs.

The new study was published by New Frontier Data—a research and marketing firm whose stated mission is to "inform cannabis-related policy and business decisions through rigorous, issue-neutral and comprehensive analysis of the legal cannabis industry."

As the Drug Policy Alliance has shown, the criminalization regime and enforcement of keeping marijuana and others drugs illegal costs the U.S. government more than $50 billion annually—that includes the outrageous costs of imprisoning tens of thousands of people for nonviolent drug offenses.

Meanwhile, according to New Frontier CEO Giadha Aguirre De Carcer,  the government would stand to do very well if marijuana, as has been shown in Washington state and Colorado, was taxed as a legal commodity. "The three most common business taxes that any standard business pays to the federal government are federal business taxes, payroll taxes and sales taxes," De Carcer explained. "If cannabis businesses were legalized tomorrow and taxed as normal businesses with a standard 35% tax rate, cannabis businesses would infuse the U.S. economy with an additional $12.6 billion this year."

As opposed to the current patchwork of states that have legalized either medical marijuana, its recreational use, or both, the analysis looked at what could happen if the U.S. government made it legal to sell marijuana nationwide and included these major findings:

• If full legalization occurred in all 50 states today, there would be an excess of 782,000 jobs, and would increase to 1.1 million jobs by 2025.
• Full legalization would result in more legal businesses participating in the market, more consumers participating in the legal market, and more employees on official payrolls, resulting in $4 billion in payroll taxes. By 2025, payroll deductions would increase to $5.9 billion.
• Assuming a sales tax at the federal level was implemented at 15%, the total tax revenues from 2017–2025 would theoretically be $51.7 billion. This amount of revenue would be entirely new revenue to the U.S. Treasury, as there are currently no federal sales or excise taxes.
• By combining the business tax revenues, the payroll withholdings based on the theoretical employment required to support the industry, and the 15% retail sales tax, one can calculate the total federal tax revenue potential of legalization: The combined total is estimated to be $131.8 billion.
• The difference between the current structure and the theoretical model is a $76.8 billion increase in federal tax revenues.

The new data comes in the wake of polling that shows historic levels of support for marijuana legalization nationwide. In October of 2017, a Gallup survey found that 64 percent of Americans now favor legal marijuana—the highest level ever recorded. It's also an issue that receives backing from people across the political spectrum. According to the Gallup poll, a majority of Republicans (51%) are in favor while Independents (67%) and Democrats (72%) support legalization at even higher levels.

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Struggling L.A. cities look for business opportunities in relaxed marijuana laws — and face pushback

From the LA Times:

Roberto Perez at Righteous Glass Gallery Roberto Perez, owner of The Righteous Glass Gallery in Maywood, sells smoking equipment on Slauson Avenue. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

by Leila Miller, August 11, 2017

As California braces for the impact of relaxed marijuana laws that allow recreational use for adults, several small, financially strapped cities in southeast Los Angeles and elsewhere are at the forefront of efforts to seize business opportunities — despite pushback from some residents.

In Los Angeles County, cities like Maywood are approving marijuana licenses in anticipation of boosting local economies, creating jobs and filling commercial lots. Huntington Park has issued three permits, and Lynwood is negotiating development agreements with 13 applicants for marijuana businesses.

Elsewhere, the desert town of Adelanto has tried to sell itself as a place for growers with a 30-acre industrial park divided into units that will be sold to marijuana cultivators for $7.5 million each. And in Northern California, Oakland has received more than 100 applications for marijuana businesses under a city program where at least half of available permits will be granted to applicants that include individuals with marijuana-related convictions.

In contrast, under a proposed plan for Los Angeles, marijuana growers and sellers would receive a “certificate of compliance” instead of a business license or permit. Marijuana businesses in L.A. would remain illegal but could operate with “limited immunity” from criminal prosecution if they follow city and state laws.

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Are African American Males an Endangered Species?

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

As a white guy, this question is still very germane for me since my grandson is an African American male. Or rather he is half African American and half European-American - actually a little less than half African American with a little Native American thrown in. And he has already been placed in a tenuous position at the age of six because next year he will be repeating kindergarten. His parents were not able to afford the level of pre-school instruction that the other members of his kindergarten class evidently received. It's amazing that now they expect kindergarten children to do first or second grade work with spelling tests and homework every day. When I went to kindergarten, the only thing expected of us was that you would learn to tie your shoes.

His case is not so much a case of racism as it is a case of being raised in relative though not extreme poverty. The only reason it wasn't extreme was that there were extended family resources available to them. That isn't always the case for many African American or blended families. Many black children, and in particular black male children, are raised in extreme, unremitting poverty. In many cases a family member is in jail. It could be a father, an uncle, a brother, a cousin. Going to jail is a very common experience for African American families. The root cause is that many of them have had meager job training and very limited employment opportunities. Most are in jail for minor drug offenses. If marijuana were to be legalized, the prisons would empty out.

America has less than 5% of the world's population but about 25% of all prisoners. There are more African American males in jail now than there were working as slaves at the height of slavery. And they are not the only ones punished for minor drug offenses. Their families are punished as well. Their children are denied the opportunity of having a father in the home. Their wives are denied the opportunity of having a breadwinner other than themselves in the family. In 2008 one in a hundred American adults was behind bars.

According to Glenn C. Loury in an article in Washington Monthly:

America, with great armies deployed abroad under a banner of freedom, nevertheless harbors the largest infrastructure for the mass deprivation of liberty on the planet. We imprison nearly as great a fraction of our population to a lifetime in jail (around seventy people for every hundred thousand residents) than Sweden, Denmark, and Norway imprison for any duration whatsoever.

That America’s prisoners are mainly minorities, particularly African Americans, who come from the most disadvantaged corners of our unequal society, cannot be ignored. In 2006, one in nine black men between the ages of twenty and thirty-four was serving time. The role of race in this drama is subtle and important, and the racial breakdown is not incidental: prisons both reflect and exacerbate existing racial and class inequalities.

The so-called "war on drugs" has resulted in large numbers of African American males ending up in prison while a few decades ago marijuana was perfectly legal and alcohol was outlawed. Prohibition of alcohol consumption started in 1920 and ended in 1933. Up until 1933 marijuana consumption was perfectly legal. As soon as they made alcohol legal again, they started Prohibition of marijuana. The arbitrariness of the laws has determined that large segments of the African American population have become outlaws when their grandparents and great grandparents lived during a time when their recreational drug of choice didn't result in breaking the law. At that time marijuana was part of African American culture and remained so to a large extent after it was outlawed.

Now serving time in prison has become part and parcel of the African American experience. As Loury says, "... the ubiquity of the prison experience in some poor urban neighborhoods has had the effect of eliminating the stigma of serving time." In these poor neighborhoods on any given day there are as many as one in five African American males in jail. Children grow up with the knowledge that a family member or someone they know is spending time behind bars. Such is the epidemiology of African American poverty. As in my grandson's case, his having to repeat kindergarten was more a function of his parents' relative poverty which resulted in their not being able to afford preschool for him than it was because of the fact that he is African American.

For everyone incarcerated who had poor employment opportunities before they went to prison, when they get out, their employment opportunities are virtually non existent except for doing illegal activities where employment is readily available. Their environment and their prison contacts determine their employment prospects post prison. The determining fact of their situation is that the culture they live in is one of crime and poverty.

And this suits the interests of the prison-industrial complex just fine. They employ lobbyists to encourage lawmakers to pass even stricter laws criminalizing as many things as possible. Why? the more people serving time, the greater are their profits. And they have been hugely successful! Private prisons have spent millions on lobbying to put more people in jail. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. "Three strikes" laws have led to an aging prison population. Many of these prisoners will never see the outside world again, and, if they did, their lives would be entirely dysfunctional as they are completely adapted to prison life and maladapted to living outside of prison.

According to "The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?":

Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut [ed.note: now called GEO Corporation], which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, “the secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum number of prisoners.” The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for “good behavior,” but for any infraction, they get 30 days added – which means more profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost “good behavior time” at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons.

Finally, we wonder why no bankers went to jail after committing massive fraud and other white collar crimes during the 2008 recession involving billions of dollars while huge numbers of African American males are in prison for possessing microscopic amounts of drugs. Mat Taibbi thinks it's because there are two standards of justice in American society. The poor are criminalized while the rich can do no wrong. It is a society in which "money talks and shit walks." He says in his book, "Divide, American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap":

We're creating a dystopia, where the mania of the state isn't secrecy or censorship but unfairness. Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers, using institutions like the courts to speed the process. Winners get rich and get off. Losers go broke and go to jail. It isn't just that some clever crook on Wall Street can steal a billion dollars and never see the inside of a courtroom; It's that plus the fact that some black teenager a few miles away can go to jail just for standing on a street corner, that makes the whole picture complete [or in Trayvon Martin's case walking home with a bag of Skittles].

The great nonprosecutions of Wall Street in the years since 2008 ... were just symbols of this dystopian sorting process to which we'd already begun committing ourselves. The cleaving of the country into two completely different states - one a small archipelago of hyperacquisative untouchables, the other a vast ghetto of expendables with only theoretical rights - has been in the works a long time.

...

And as every individual who's ever been charged with a crime knows, anyone facing criminal arrest can expect collateral consequences. A single drug charge can ruin a person's chances for obtaining a student loan or a government job. It can nix his or her chances of getting housing aid or a whole range of services - even innocent members of your family may lose access to government benefits. You can lose your right to vote and your access to financial aid. You can even have your children taken away.

I'm hoping that my grandson will somehow escape the cultural propensity and milieu that seems to redound to some members of his ethnic group or rather one of his ethnic heritages. After all he didn't grow up in the ghetto; he's a naturally smart and spirited little boy. That doesn't mean he will adapt well to society's norms as exemplified by the school system which tends to penalize people with his set of talents and personality traits regardless of race if they don't conform. The school system has a tendency to dispirit spirited people in an attempt to get them to be docile and compliant. And if they're hyperactive, they want to drug and sedate them with Ritalin in preparation for an adult life dependent on prescription or street drugs.

He has two older sisters that seem to have the talent and intelligence to transcend society's norms regardless of race. One has been in the gifted class since she started school and the other is on the honor role. An even more positive prognosis is that his parents are back togther after a four year interlude and finally pulling themselves out of poverty. However, there are many others that could be constructive members of society if they were only able to obtain a little outside help which, unfortunately, too many do not have access to. As Billie Holiday said,"Papa may have. Mama may have, but God bless the child who's got his own, who's got his own."

Is Colorado’s Experiment Becoming Just Another Retail Venture?

by Melissa Hathaway

On a cold January morning, Colorado became the first state to begin the legal sale of marijuana. Over a year since the vote was cast to legalize the drug, thirty seven dedicated shops opened their doors as people began queuing outside, keen to become part of this historic occasion. Whereas many states have endorsed the use of marijuana for medical reasons, Colorado is the first state which has authorized (and taxed) the sale of the already ubiquitous substance. Dubbed by some as ‘Green Wednesday’, the grand opening found many stores selling out in hours, and eventually having to turn away customers, citizens who were eager to become a part of a shifting attitude towards the use of previously illegal drugs. Despite discrepancies between federal and state laws, Colorado’s legalization of the chemical is now an industry which faces a system of regulation and bureaucracy, just like any other.

With recent statistics suggesting that over forty percent of American adults have engaged with marijuana or hashish at some point in their lives, the widespread prevalence of the substance is typically accepted within the American culture. With the majority of grievances and citations made following the complaints of citizens rather than police led investigations, the change in policy is perhaps simply in keeping with the cultural acceptance of cannabis use in the wider society. With many aspects of pop culture now openly discussing the use of marijuana (though under the pretext of its illegality), the shifting paradigm of criticism and denouncement moved towards one of acceptance. With the effects of using now widely known, the use of the drug has become, culturally speaking, just another plot device on our television shows. The change of law in Colorado, the widespread usage (even if it refers to a single occasion) and the existence of marijuana as a cultural norm reflect the changing attitudes of the American public towards the substance, though wide spread calls for extensions of Colorado’s policy are still a long way away.

On an administrative level, the shops themselves are now subject to many of the regulations and demands faced by other service and sales industries. Passed with fifty five percent of the vote, Amendment 64 includes a great many parameters for the sale and distribution of the previously banned substance. This includes the maximum possible tax rate and the right of cities and councils to decide whether they should be allowed to include the stores within their regulative limits. Despite the obvious annoyance of the Governor of Colorado - who suggested that "Colorado is known for many great things — marijuana should not be one of them" – the existence of a regulated medical marijuana community before the passing of the law may well have helped to ease the transition in the minds of the voting public. Built on the solid foundation of a dependable and well-administered medical marijuana platform, the acceptance of the viability of recreational sales could well stem from the somewhat experimental implementation of the distribution of the drug for medical use. One of the key aspects for the maintenance and observation of the legal selling is the requirement that each retailer must cultivate their own crop, which will remain in place until October of next year. Whilst this might hinder the growth of the industry and heighten costs, it has helped the government regulate what is a nascent and controversial industry.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for those selling marijuana is finding the right place in the market. As mentioned above, the medical market provided a fine testing water for many of the retail ambitions of the store owners. But with the competition brought by becoming a retail business, rather than a medical one, store owners must attempt to chart untested waters. Should they price the product too low, they face criticism from those who feel they might be encouraging excessive consumption. Too high and they face competition from the illegal dealers who plied their trade before the legislative bill was passed. Despite prices fluctuating, a typical range of $250-$300 for an ounce seems to be becoming the norm. When factoring in sales and state taxes (possibly over twenty five percent), as well as the costs of running the store, the new wave of legal Colorado weed dealers are facing the same challenges as any newcomer to the retail industry, and could well be raising a great deal of money for the state. When it comes to changing public opinions and grand legislative changes, it seems strange that a chemical once deemed so illicit is now subject to the same market pressures as a new candy shop or clothes store. Now that the drug is legal, the next considerations could well focus on the viability and sustainability of these stores as business models, rather than legal experiments.