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Poll shows Cali voters favor legalization

CaptainTrips

Active member
IMO this bill will pass due to the proposed taxation plan. This will bring much needed revenue to the state and local coffers. Polls don't really mean anything...Just ask Alvin Greene..

The bill does not address tax issues... Just passes it off to local govs. In hostile counties, which is probably a majority, there will be no retail sales, no taxes. Unless it passes, and the legislature takes action. I decent possibility I supppose, maybe Tom Ammiano's(sp) bill will gain traction if this passes...
 

Neo 420

Active member
Veteran
You are correct on the taxation plan. It is left to the city but the average voter doesn't know that. And believe me once this bill has passed and broke cities see the revenue generated by the cities that do allow it, some minds will be changed... Money talks..Bullshit walks...
 

CaptainTrips

Active member
You are correct on the taxation plan. It is left to the city but the average voter doesn't know that. And believe me once this bill has passed and broke cities see the revenue generated by the cities that do allow it, some minds will be changed... Money talks..Bullshit walks...

But that already exists in the med scene... Oakland for example, is collecting taxes from their licensed dispensarys. Yet SB/SD took Prop 215 to the supreme court.
 

Neo 420

Active member
Veteran
But in the legalization scene it will be triple fold..in minimum terms. And average folks understand that!!
 

CaptainTrips

Active member
But in the legalization scene it will be triple fold..in minimum terms. And average folks understand that!!

Legalization, which TC2010 is not... is not going to make SD and SB all of a sudden embrace weed. They will be still be hostile, no retail sales. Which might be a good thing for those in the scene, it will make growing safer(unless counties have power over that, which seems unclear) , but maintain black market prices... perhaps.
 

Neo 420

Active member
Veteran
Legalization, which TC2010 is not... is not going to make SD and SB all of a sudden embrace weed. They will be still be hostile, no retail sales. Which might be a good thing for those in the scene, it will make growing safer(unless counties have power over that, which seems unclear) , but maintain black market prices... perhaps.

SD and SB are problematic cites that have assholes that do not want to follow state law. Those cities have issues regardless. Counties do not have the authority or the power to stop a grower from growing in their 5x5 space in the T and C bill so that is a null point. The price for medium to low grade will fall but high grade and AAA grades prices will rise.
 

ocean_grown

Member
Hey I haven't followed along in this thread but I just wanna leave my 2 cents..

If this bill does pass, we as the growers and tokers of Cali MUST keep it as grassroots as possible! If you don't do this already, give as much of your crop away for free as possible! Everything I do not like about this bill is that it seems the only entities who will stay alive are those who already have the money to lobby for bigger licenses. I say fuck that, if we're gonna have a revolution lets keep greed out of it. I don't grow for a living right now, so I can understand where you're coming from if you are fearing for your livelihood.. But if at all possible, we should start using cannabis to BARTER for the things we need, keep taxes and greed out of it! Hell, flowers are worth more than the US dollar anyways! What do we need that shit for?

Peace.
 

Greyskull

Twice as clear as heaven and twice as loud as reas
ICMag Donor
Veteran
^^^^
lol
picture.php
 

vta

Active member
Veteran
Here is an interesting history lesson.





NO CLOSING TIME FOR INCOME TAXES

ON March 19, 1928, eight years into the reign of constitutional Prohibition, Pierre S. du Pont wrote a letter to William P. Smith, one of the very few people he ever addressed by first name. Du Pont was among the wealthiest men in the world, chairman of both his family's chemical colossus and the du Pont-controlled General Motors Corporation. Smith worked for a less well-known enterprise that Pierre du Pont also dominated: the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment.

"The object of the organization," du Pont told his friend Bill, "is not merely the return of the use of alcoholic beverages in the United States." He went on, "Another important factor is the tremendous loss of revenue to our government through the Prohibition laws" -- the revenue once collected through taxes on liquor and beer. With the end of Prohibition, he wrote, "the revenue of the government would be increased sufficiently to warrant the abolition of the income tax and corporation tax."

For today's advocates of legalized, taxable marijuana -- or new levies on, say, electricity use, baseball tickets or high-fructose corn syrup -- it's an appealing model. Some even believe that a tax on marijuana, which could be legalized by California voters this November, could lead to a reduction in the state's income taxes. But the history of the intimate relationship between drinking and taxing suggests otherwise.

The link between the two is as old as the Republic; Alexander Hamilton provoked the Whiskey Rebellion when he persuaded Congress in 1791 to enact the first federal tax on liquor to help pay down the national debt. By 1910, as anti-alcohol forces were making a significant impact on American politics, the federal government was annually drawing more than 70 percent of its domestic revenue from the bottle and the keg. In those years before the advent of the income tax, only the tariff on foreign goods and materials provided a larger share.

The nation's dependence on the alcohol tax created a vexing problem for the leaders of the Prohibition movement. As early as 1883, the editors of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union's official newspaper coyly asked their readers, "How, then, will [we] support the government" if the sale of liquor is prohibited?

The editors had a ready answer: an income tax, they wrote, was "the most just and equable arrangement ever made for the equalization of governmental burdens." In 1895, the Prohibition Party recognized that an excise tax "is a pledge on the part of the state to defend and foster the thing taxed," and it soon nailed an income tax plank to its platform. And leaders of the most powerful Dry organization, the Anti-Saloon League, grumpily aware of what one called the "alleged 'loss of revenue' argument," chose to focus most of its attention on state-by-state, rather than federal, prohibitory laws.

But the league also encouraged the populist campaign to authorize an income tax. When this support finally bore fruit in 1913, the organization announced that "the adoption of the Income Tax Amendment to the federal Constitution furnishes an answer to the revenue problem." As a result, it said, the time had come for all foes of alcohol to put aside the state-by-state strategy and focus on a new goal. "National prohibition," its executive committee declared, "can be secured through the adoption of a constitutional amendment." By 1920, it was law.

Through the first nine years of Prohibition, income taxes went a long way toward covering the federal government's costs. But just as organized Drys had backed the income tax in 1913 in order to breathe life into Prohibition, a du Pont-led group of well-financed Wets would eventually seek to kill Prohibition so that the income tax might die with it.

The idea had first emerged in 1923, when the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Clarence W. Barron, argued that ending Prohibition would enable the government to collect $2 billion a year and abolish the income tax. In 1926, Pierre du Pont's brother Irenee told an associate that General Motors would save $10 million in corporate taxes each year with the return of the alcohol levies. Irenee's specific solution -- imposition of a 3-cent tax on every glass of beer -- would, effectively, make the working poor and the unemployed finance tax relief for the rich.

These plutocratic longings began to take palpable form when prosperity was upended by the Crash of 1929. The Depression corroded tax collections: federal revenue based on 1930 incomes was down 15 percent, the following year saw a 37 percent drop, and the year after that 26 percent -- a vertiginous 60 percent collapse in just three years. Capital gains taxes that had brought $1.5 billion into the Treasury from 1926 to 1929 dived into negative territory as the allowance for capital losses accrued. At the same time, the demand for government spending -- for relief, for reconstruction projects, for anything to restart the comatose economy -- soared.

By 1930, the chemical du Ponts had recruited a roster of other gilt-edged names to their anti-Prohibition cause: automotive Fishers, financial Harrimans, oil Harknesses, rubber Goodriches. Their publicity campaign featured pamphlets like "What Price Prohibition?" ( Answer: with the return of legal alcohol, "the necessity of levying income taxes would be eliminated" ) and "The Cost of Prohibition and Your Income Tax."

By 1932, as the Depression plunged toward its devastating nadir, a new handout from the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment spoke more urgently to the historical moment: "The Need of a New Source of Government Revenue." The authors didn't have to look far to identify one, as Pierre du Pont made clear in a radio address that summer. "The income tax would not be necessary in the future," he said, "and half the revenue required for the budget ... would be furnished by the tax on liquor alone."

That message was for public consumption; privately, he was even more direct. "The Repeal of the XVIIIth Amendment would permit federal taxation in the amount of $2 billion," du Pont wrote to a relative in April 1932, by which time the congenitally Republican industrialist had become an ardent supporter of the pro-repeal Franklin Roosevelt. "Such taxation would almost eliminate the income taxes of corporations and individuals."

He didn't have to wait long to see if he was right. The repeal amendment was ratified on Dec. 5, 1933, just nine months after Roosevelt's inauguration, and new tax revenues began to flow. In the first post-repeal year, the government collected $259 million from the alcohol excise -- instantly, nearly 9 percent of total federal revenue -- even though many states either remained dry or severely limited the sale of alcohol.

Unfortunately for du Pont, the other half of his equation didn't work out. Roosevelt and Congress did respond to the repeal windfall by cutting income tax rates for workers earning less than $3,000 a year. But the New Deal had little sympathy for the wealthy, whose taxes actually increased over the next few years. Rather than the trade-off du Pont expected, the government used the excise income to expand.

"I acknowledge my mistake," du Pont wrote in 1936, after he and many of his colleagues had transferred their energies and financial support to the rabidly anti-Roosevelt American Liberty League. "The effort should have been directed against the XVIth Amendment" -- the income tax amendment -- "which I believe could have been repealed with the expenditure of less time and trouble than was required for the abolition of its little brother," the 18th.

Prohibition had been dead for three years, but the damnable taxes Pierre du Pont had expected to die with it lived on. Contemporary Californians indulging a fantasy of income tax relief emerging from a cloud of legalized marijuana smoke should realize that it is likely only a pipe dream.


URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n443/a04.html
Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Daniel Okrent
 

trixman22

New member
Weather you agree with the bill or not you should still vote to pass it. I don't want to wait another 10 years to get the chance to vote on it again. They can fix the bill as we go. The only reason the state is even considering it is because they saw how much money was being made off of the MMJ and thought "only if we could apply this revenue to everyone instead of just the sick" Lets put a huge whole in the Mexican cartels pockets and lead the way for the rest of the country. If CA legalizes I give it 10 years tops till the feds do as well.
 

Yes4Prop215

Active member
Veteran
still gonna vote no....this bill is basically just the government looking for more sources of revenue because they mismanage our tax dollars and cant seem to get things right.

they will tax weed, then realize they need more money so the taxes on weed will go up. then they will tax everything frmo hydro shops to towing cars in front of clubs to make even more money.


fuck the government and fuck big business...keep this shit underground dont give those fuckers 1 cent.
 

Yes4Prop215

Active member
Veteran
shit im risking jail time right now if it happens its because i fucked up....but people can go strong if they take precautions...its the trade off that makes the other side so damn good.
 

CaptainTrips

Active member
and keep letting people go to jail?

How many people are going to jail for carrry 1oz or less in cali? How many of them were dealing? I know some cops will make up dealing charges on possesion charges, but I wonder whats to stop them from the doing the same if tc2010 passes. I believe "dealing" will still be illegal, so the state could still arrest you if that wanted to...
 

subrob

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
not for the people who will go to jail between november and next time we get a chance....
----this part is not directed at anyone in particular...just the "vote no" side in general....i still have not heard an argument that will persuade me that sacrificing more people to the penal system here in cali is worth voting no for...i respect that some of you have come out and said "i dont wanna vote for it cuz im making money w the way things are" rather than the, err, ummm, argument, that it isnt a perfect utopian hippie ideal legalization....if you are willing to let people go to jail for years while you make a quick buck...well, good for you! but im not, still lookin for a valid reason to say no....
 

CaptainTrips

Active member
Who is going to jail for "years" for weed in cali? Only ones I know are the ones making money, not the end users who you say you want to protect...
 
I'm waiting for a phone call from CA Assemblyman Tom Ammiano

if anyone doesn't know, he's the author of

Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act. AB 2254
http://bit.ly/besEZw

DOWNLOAD AN AB2254 FLYER
http://bit.ly/9xO5yg

I want to pique his interest in an initiative

and generate a rough proposal for him

I'll let you know if he calls, and has an interest
 

Yes4Prop215

Active member
Veteran
subrob people are still going to go to jail after this bill passes...people who smoke or grow recreationally are not going to jail right now in CA anyways....people who grow for living (like many on this site) will still go to jail after this bill passes, and margins will be way lower.


why not just keep it the way it is. underground but still semi legal so people arent doing any serious time. no restrictions on sq footage, etc. and no government control taking away our profits.

its fine the way it is for the most part...the sick and elderly are getting their medication cheap if not free and are not facing prosecution under medical status...
 

subrob

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
i cannot get past the big picture. im sorry. the idea, of a state, that gets that first ...not even precedant, but grants legal status is too much for me to overcome. my problem is i do not look at this as a california issue. i think of this as a flashpoint for the next generation of change. nation wide and world wide. that is the importance i attach to the decision i am making, regardless of how it will affect me personally. and again, i have the luxury of being a med patient, which may cause bias, but i would like to think i would be of the same mindset irregardless...im having trouble concentrating, its taken me 15 minutes to type this much...ok...bout a half hour ha..heavy p-med day...i will listen..right up to voting time...
 

superbolan

Active member
This is the first in a chain of dominos , once california legalizes there will be more inertia for it to be legalized elsewhere.
 

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